Shoes

What a bailout

The ONE is beating up hedge fund managers, bondholders and widows as greedy capitalist pigs.
Shame on them! They won’t part with their secured holdings at pittances between $0.15 and 0.29 on the dollar. Obama wants to give this booty to the unions as a reward for campaign donations.
In return, Mussolini Motors er Fiat will build cars that Obama says you WILL buy!
Government Motors, after it restructures, by grabbing every widow’s mite will build their cars everywhere but in the US.
Under Restructuring, GM To Build More Cars Overseas
The U.S. government is pouring billions into General Motors in hopes of reviving the domestic economy, but when the automaker completes its restructuring plan, many of the company’s new jobs will be filled by workers overseas.
According to an outline the company has been sharing privately with Washington legislators, the number of cars that GM sells in the United States and builds in Mexico, China and South Korea will roughly double.
The proportion of GM cars sold domestically and manufactured in those low-wage countries will rise from 15 percent to 23 percent over the next five years, according to the figures contained in a 12-page presentation offered to lawmakers in response to their questions about overseas production.
As a result, the long-simmering argument over U.S. manufacturers expanding production overseas — normally arising between unions and private companies — is about to engage the Obama administration.
Essentially in control of the company, the president’s autos task force faces an awkward choice: It can either require General Motors to keep more jobs at home, potentially raising labor costs at a company already beset with financial woes, or it can risk political fury by allowing the automaker to expand operations at lower-cost manufacturing locations.
“It’s an almost impossible dilemma,” said former labor secretary Robert B. Reich, now a professor at the University of California-Berkeley. “GM is a global company — so for that matter is AIG and the biggest Wall Street banks. That means that bailing them out doesn’t necessarily redound to the benefit of the U.S. or American workers.
“More significantly, it raises fundamental questions about the purpose of bailing out these big companies. If GM is going to do more of its production overseas, then why exactly are we saving GM?” [snip]
Force them into bankruptcy court, where Obama cannot play around. The courts will deal fairly, correctly according to established law and cut Obama’s bully tactics out of the equation, the unions too.
The more Obama loses, the more America wins.

From Bugs to Rockets [Photo Synthesis]

As the sun sets on a wonderful set of insect photos from the Wild... I thought I should start with a transition photo, on a photosynthetic bug bed, to a new photo theme - rockets: Many insects have served as brave cosmonauts - flying as a somewhat unwilling payload in Estes rockets. The National Association of Rocketry has rules against living payloads, but they make an exception for invertebrates. (I think the intent of the rule was to prevent kids from flying their sister's pet, but to allow for some curious exploration.) The Quark is the smallest rocket I have built, with rear-swept fins to avoid nose weight and light enough to tumble back without parachute. It takes half-A-size motors. If you have participated in some of the 500 million Estes rocket launches that have taken place over the years, you may recall that each letter grade of a motor is a rough doubling of total impulse (B is 2xA, C is 2xB and so on). So, on the other end of the spectrum, the home brew Q-motor in Wedge's Nike is about 2^17 larger than the Quark ½-A motor. That's over 100,000 Quarks going at once. 4x the impulse of a cruise missile booster. It's a powerful subwoofer roar to witness... as 437 lbs roars off the pad going supersonic: So blog topics can include extreme rocket launches, on-board video, night launches, tips on photographing supersonic shreds overhead, how to get started, and the joy of rocket science. What would interest you? Read the comments on this post...

Have you ever made a 'mark' on somebody elses life?? How? Why??

I was lying down when I thought of the idea does everybody have that innate thing on themselves to have 'marked' somebody elses life with something they have done out of helping or you just wanted to give away things or encourage somebody on something. I have seen my parents help out friends not because they need to but they want to. And so I grew up with a heart of helping friends out whether it was financial concerns or not. I do not want anything return but to see them better, happy and enjoying the life that they should be. How about you..What did you do that made you 'mark' something on somebody elses life and why did you do it. Is it out of the goodness of your heart or you were forced to do it.

Julie Bowen Welcomes Twin Sons!

Julie Bowen of Boston Legal and her husband, Scott Phillips, welcomed twin boys this past Friday morning her rep confirmed with PEOPLE! The little ones are named, Gus and John. The couple are already parents to Oliver who is now 2 years old. Scott is a real estate investor and the couple was married in 2004. Recently Julie has played attorney Denise Bauer on Boston Legal and has also made appearances on Weeds and Lost.Congratulations to Julie and Scott!Source

Julie Bowen Welcomes Twin Sons!

Julie Bowen of Boston Legal and her husband, Scott Phillips, welcomed twin boys this past Friday morning her rep confirmed with PEOPLE! The little ones are named, Gus and John. The couple are already parents to Oliver who is now 2 years old. Scott is a real estate investor and the couple was married in 2004. Recently Julie has played attorney Denise Bauer on Boston Legal and has also made appearances on Weeds and Lost.Congratulations to Julie and Scott!Source

SharePoint Conference 2008 Recap and Session PPTX Downloads

We've been preparing for this conference since since the fall and oh, was it worth it. I had a blast! Not only with the sessions, parties, but simply hanging out with 3900+ incredibly cool people (with 500 on the waiting list) and taking about our passion.... SharePoint! The Keynotes by Bill Gates, Jeff Teper, and Kurt Delbene included some Awesome stats... (Numbers added to simplify for non U.S. math and term confusion.) 1 Billion (yeah with a B! $1,000,000,000 USD) in revenue 100 Million CALs (100,000,000) by end of fical year June 30 (this is estimated to be 10% of all PCs, not just business PCs) 500 Million Licensed Office PCs (1/5th of that total licensed for SharePoint, but that number includes consumer PCs... makes you wonder if it's more like 40-50% of business PCs.) 3/4 of the Fortune 100 that's 75% of Fortune 100 companies Fastest growing server product in Microsoft History (maybe in any company ever?) 2250+ SharePoint ISVs (integrated solutions vendor) (Photo courtesy Chandima SharePoint MVP) The Solution Accelerators demo'ed very well. Tom did an excellent job, even if he did over sell them :) just kidding. He did a great job. If you have followed my previous posts you'd see I've worked closely on all of them. I'll provide more info on the extranet or external collab one in a future post. I'm trying to get them to decouple the workflow provisioning and approval site collection piece from the user management and ADAM with FBA piece. SharePoint Capacity Planning ToolPerformance models for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007 and Windows SharePoint Services (WSS) 3.0 that use the analysis and simulation features of Microsoft System Center Capacity Planner 2007 to help you plan your SharePoint topology. SharePoint Monitoring ToolkitHelps you monitor and manage Microsoft SharePoint environments by providing a set of management packs for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 and Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (including SP1). These management packs are supported by both System Center Operations Manager 2007 and System Center Essentials. SharePoint Cross-site ConfiguratorThis tool contains sample code that you can use to automate the deployment of configuration changes across SharePoint site collections as broadly as entire web applications or even entire farms. External Collaboration ToolkitIt consists of software and guidance that will help you to deploy a customizable solution built on Microsoft® Windows® SharePoint® Services 3.0 or Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 that teams can use to collaborate securely with partners outside the firewall. The toolkit’s familiar SharePoint interface makes the solution easy for project team members to understand and use. The SharePoint Online beta (register now) announcement was well received. I think heard a few customers wheels spinning on that one. The best way to understand this amongst the other SharePoint hosted offerings is to look at the various offerings. Office Live (this one is released)- Small Business Site Collection Hosting (Consider this the site collection hosting) SharePoint Online Standard beta - SharePoint (in the Cloud) hosting (I'd consider this the multi tenant hosting solution) (up to 5000 users) SharePoint Online Dedicated Hosting beta - Dedicated SharePoint Farms in MS data centers with 99.9% SLAs and integration with AD resource forest, Exchange and OCS. (This internally use to be called MMS (Microsoft Managed Services) now the team is BOSG (Business Online Services Group)) (5000 users and up). I worked with Mike Watson and Kimberly Malone amongst others to design the SharePoint hosting for the pilot with Energizer. Good times :).. A couple of my sessions were top rated. Let me thank those of you who went to my Upgrade session and my Governance session. I really appreciate all the 9's and nice comments. I do read them and really appreciate them. Thanks to Shane and Brian who co-spoke with me on those. Bob Fox's presentation with me... well ok. It was fun to present. The comment I got from the users that they thought we were both drunk wasn't very nice, and wasn't accurate. I was drinking lemonade the night before, so it couldn't have been me. Bob did a great job for his first time and I'm sure he gained some new fans as a result. He has a lot of knowledge and he had a lot of pressure leading up to this. Under the circumstances he did well. I'll leave it to your comment to set the story straight. I enjoyed the session even if it wasn't one of the top rated. I got feedback from more than a couple people in the crowd who thoroughly enjoyed it. My Session Downloads (may require SPC login): Governance: From Chaos to Success in 10 Steps - Joel Oleson and Brian Cook What's New in Windows Server 2008 and SQL 2008 for SharePoint Admins - Joel Oleson and Bob Fox Upgrading from SPS 2003 to MOSS 2007 - Joel Oleson and Shane Young Advanced Administrative Architecture, Deployment and Operations - Joel Oleson and Shane Young Commentary: "Proactive Planning Crucial to Avoiding SharePoint Chaos" - By Margie Semilof, Senior News Director, 05 Mar 2008 SearchWinIT.com One other thing to add to your favorites and dig into is the new adoption, planning content, engineering, release and adopt to GEAR UP! Also, be sure to check out Microsoft Search Server Express 2008 general availability announced during the keynote! Developers and more will want to look at the SharePoint Silverlight Blueprint which definitely promises to make the UI much more exciting and rich. Relevant Partner Announcements you shouldn't miss as an IT Pro: AvePoint Announces the Release of a Revolutionary Product for Global Control and Administration of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (.doc file, 863 KB) Barracuda, LLC, Announces DeliverPoint: PERMISSIONS for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 and Windows SharePoint Services 3.0 (.doc file, 28 KB) echoTechnology Announces echo for SharePoint 2007 (.doc file, 32 KB) Nintex Announces Nintex Reporting 2008 for Microsoft SharePoint Products and Technologies (.doc file, 35 KB) NSE Announces Release of eSENSE Bridge V3 to Manage, Monitor and Protect Entire Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 Environments (.doc file, 38 KB) Syntergy Announces Replicator Add-On, Presentation Publisher, for Further Enhancing Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 (.doc file, 34 KB) (Full list @ http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/events/sharepointconference/partners.mspx) Miss a party? Go behind the scenes and see the social side of the SharePoint