This morning, the Business section of the Seattle Times has an article about how the current scandals are affecting the Seattle branch and its employees.
New e-mail addy
I’ve always kept three active e-mail accounts. One I only give out to my close friends and family, one I give to friends and contacts, and the third is the one I use publicly, on this page and whenever I sign up for anything via the web (this shuffles most of my spam to the public addy).
Due to changes in Yahoo! Mail‘s terms of service, I need to discontinue using my @yahoo.com address. My new public e-mail address is djwudi@myrealbox.com.
(Incidentally, parents, friends, or anyone who has either of my other two addys — you don’t need to worry, those are staying the same).
Yesterday, Yahoo! Mail sent out a notice to all of its POP3 service users (this allowed you to use an external client — such as the Mac OS X Mail program — to check your Yahoo! Mail account, rather than having to use the web-based client) stating that as of April 24th, they would no longer be providing this service for free — rather, you’d have to purchase a $30/year ‘premium’ account. Since I would much rather use my Mail client than have to use the web client, I decided to find a new public addy.
I found a thread on MetaFilter discussing this, and one of the comments suggested that we take a look at Lycos UK‘s free e-mail, as it has the best free e-mail deal available on the web today (“…15 meg of storage, POP3 access, and importantly — SMTP access with unlimited attachment size for outgoing mail.”).
So, I stopped by this morning and signed up. Now I just have to ferret out all those places on the web that I gave my yahoo.com addy and change them over…(sigh).
Update: For one reason or another, the lycos.co.uk server was incredibly slow, to the point where it proved unuseable. I did end up finding MyRealBox, which is run by the folks at Novell, and looks to be a truly good service. So…that’s the addy I’m at now.
Update: In the end, MyRealBox didn’t cut it either. As with many people, I’ve since moved to Gmail. If you really need to find me and don’t have my e-mail addy already, check the ‘about’ page on this site to track me down.
Pro-US, anti-Bush
It’s kind of funny that one of the most accurate and incisive editorials I’ve read on the ability to be pro-USA and yet anti-Bush comes from a British newspaper.
MovableType 2.0
I’ve just upgraded the backend for my site to Movable Type 2.0, which was just released today. New toys are always good! :)
Front page changes being the most visible, I’ll address those first.
Of lesser consequence, I’ve taken off the ‘Recently Read’ box for the time being. I’m not reading as much as I was before my ‘puters got down here (something I hope to work on correcting after the hullabloo of moving into my new apartment settles down), and I wanted to open up space for the newest addition.
The newest feature addition is one I’ve been looking forward to being able to do since I started reading that it would be included in the MT 2.0 upgrade. On the right below the archive listings, you’ll now notice a ‘Recently commented on’ section. This lists the ten posts that people have (hrm…let’s work on this….) most recently commented on. Yeah, that was tough to figure out, wasn’t it? ;) Anyway, new comments will pop a post to the top of that list, and if you hover your cursor over the post title, it’ll display a comment telling you how many comments have been made total for that post. Nifty, eh?
The less-visible change I’ve made is to the monthly archive listings, and it’s also a change implemented in MT 2.0 that I’ve been waiting for. While I like the standard of having my newest post at the top of the main index page, ensuring that the newest information is always the first to be seen, it seemed kind of silly to me that this forced my monthly archive pages to also display in reverse chronological order. MT 2.0’s stronger sorting features, however, allow me to keep my main page as is, while sorting my monthly archives so that they can be read in chronological order, top to bottom. Makes much more sense to me.
I think those are the only changes I’m going to make for the moment. I’m sure if I stumble across something else that I feel I just have to add, I’ll babble about it. And, of course, suggestions are welcome, if anyone has any.
Explaining Enron
A quick primer on the Enron scandal (courtesy of A Boy and His Computer):
Explaining the Enron collapse through simple financial terms.
If you’re an average layperson, your grasp of high finance consists of knowing your ATM code. So you’re probably bewildered by this scandal surrounding the collapse of Enron, which had been the seventh-largest corporation in America.
Today we’re going to explain the Enron story, using simple financial terms that you can understand, such as “dirtballs.”
Q. How, exactly, did Enron make money?
A. Nobody knows. This is usually the case with corporations whose names sound like fictional planets from Star Wars. Allegedly, Enron was in the energy business, but when outside investigators finally looked into it, they discovered that the only actual energy source in the entire Enron empire was a partially used can of Sterno in the basement of corporate headquarters. Using a financial technique called “leveraging,” Enron executives were able to turn this asset into a gigantic enterprise whose stock was valued at billions of dollars.
Q. What does “leveraging” mean?
A. Lying.
Q. Why didn’t Wall Street realize that Enron was a fraud?
A. Because Wall Street relies on “stock analysts.” These are people who do research on companies and then, no matter what they find, even if the company has burned to the ground, enthusiastically recommend that investors buy the stock. They are just a bunch of cockeyed optimists. When the Titanic was in its death throes, with the propellers sticking straight up into the air, there was a stock analyst clinging to a railing, asking people around him where he could buy a ticket for the return trip.
Q. So the analysts gave Enron a favorable rating?
A. Oh, yes. Enron stock was rated as “Can’t Miss” until it became clear that the company was in desperate trouble, at which point analysts lowered the rating to “Sure Thing.” Only when Enron went completely under did a few bold analysts demote its stock to the lowest possible Wall Street analyst rating, “Hot Buy.”
Q. What other stocks are these analysts currently recommending?
A. Mutual of Taliban.
Q. Doesn’t Enron have a board of directors whose members are responsible for overseeing the corporation?
A. Yes. They are paid $300,000 a year.
Q. So how could they have allowed this flagrant deception to go on?
A. They are paid $300,000 a year.
Q. But didn’t Enron have outside auditors? Why didn’t they discover and report these problems?
A. Yes, Enron had one of the most venerable auditing firms in the nation.
Q. What do you mean by “venerable?”
A. We mean “stupid.” As a result, Enron executives were able to deceive the auditors via slick and sophisticated accounting tricks.
Auditor: OK, so you’re saying you made $600 million in profit.
Executive: Correct.
Auditor: Can I see it?
Executive: Sure! It’s right here in my desk! UH-oh! The drawer is stuck!
Auditor: Wow! Just like last year!
Q. What should be done to punish the Enron executive dirtballs who, knowing the company was in trouble, cashed in their own stock and screwed thousands of small investors?
A. In the interest of putting this ordeal behind us, we believe they should receive only a slap on the wrist.
Q. Really?
A. With a hatchet.
Q. Isn’t that a pretty severe punishment?
A. Actually, it has been deemed harmless.
Q. By whom?
A. Wall Street analysts.
I’m organized, really
Equal parts fascinating and reassuring:
The messy desk is not necessarily a sign of disorganization. It may be a sign of complexity: those who deal with many unresolved ideas simultaneously cannot sort and file the papers on their desks, because they haven’t yet sorted and filed the ideas in their head. [Many people] use the papers on their desks as contextual cues to “recover a complex set of threads without difficulty and delay” when they come in on a Monday morning, or after their work has been interrupted by a phone call. What we see when we look at the piles on our desks is, in a sense, the contents of our brains.
9/11 slang
The phenomena itself shouldn’t be a surpise, but the Washington
Post has a good article about teenagers adapting Sept. 11th buzzwords into modern-day slang.
You are being lied to!
More in my current semi-fascination with conspiracy theories, and which ones might be more true than others — I’m considering picking up You Are Being Lied To.
You Are Being Lied To acts as a battering ram against the distortions, myths, and outright lies that have been shoved down our throats by the government, the media, corporations, organized religion, the scientific establishment, and others who want to keep the truth from us.
If nothing else, it could be an interesting read.
Neuman sells out
An interesting piece about Alfred Neuman’s product endorsements. William Gaines is probably rolling in his grave about now.
Jesus on skis?
I’m sure these were made with the best of intentions, but somehow these ‘Inspirational Sport Statues’ are just disturbing.