‘It aint no joke at xmas to be broke’
T-Bone
As you might be able to tell I have been watching a lot of The Wire lately and its made me consider putting a package onto the street so that I dont have to sell my kidney on the black market.
One of my uncles is loaded, no I mean seriously he is Mr. Bank. He sold a regional cable company that he owned (and built) to Paul Allen’s company Vulcan Enterprises in the late 1990’s. He had worked very hard to build the company so when it sold it was good to see the little guy rake in some cash for once. No one knows how much he sold it for as it was a private company but it was at least in the low seven figures and probably a lot more.
As soon as he sold it he realized he no longer had any thing to do, so he decided to start taking classes in an area of interest and then put the skills he learned into action. But he did this a little differently than most of us would or could. Example: He went to wooden boat school for a year and then built his own 50 foot sailboat. He learned about cabinet making and bought 200k worth of equipment for his personal shop, to date he has only made cabinets for his own house some 6 years later.
And this all leads to his new venture, he went to school to learn about greenskeeping. You might have already figured this out by now but he has now just finished his 9 hole golf course on his property. The first nine of a planned 18. The course has sand traps, a full state of the art drainage irrigation system, and even tee boxes. The odd thing is, well he hates golf. Hates people that like to golf. Thinks its a waste of real estate. So why did he build it? Because he needs something to occupy his time and a way to spend his money. He is not the type of guy that will ever buy a Rolls or even a beach house in Hawaii, he drives a VW van that has about 400k miles on it.
And I am sure he is not alone in this lifestyle, there are people all across this land that have no idea how to spend their bank vaults full of money. They feel guilty spending it without having a practical reason and something to show for it.
So I have decided to start an new endeavor, Unemployed Ben’s money spending school. I will teach these lucky bastards how to spend money guilt free, ya know just like Republicans do.
What two things does it say when someone buys you an axe? It’s either good luck on that burgeoning serial killer career or add this to your collection you manly lumberjack you. I am neither of these things. I have chopped wood of course but not in awhile. I have thrown axes and hatchets before but not since my hard drinking days. So here I am the proud owner of a carbon steal blade that I could probably cut a car in half with, seriously this thing might be a tad overkill for even Paul Bunyan.
So what to do. I would shit myself if I saw me walking down the street wielding this bad boy, so maybe I could start a protection service in my beach community. ‘Pay me 10% of all your money or I don’t leave the axe home tomorrow’, would be our motto. Yep I see big things because of this.
So everyone seems to have Rock Band and its cool to play but I just never envisioned my older family members being so interested in a video game. Let alone the music being a lot of what I grew up on, this made for a few odd glances at the family gathering.
Went a different route with the food this year, hand served and that meant no casserole dishes packing the table (thank Jebus) . No, this was Cognac Creme’ Roasted Reds, Prime Rib with a port reduction, and dessert by TBone himself. This is the tradition I want to see repeated over and over again. Fuck that turkey and ham bullshit.
T:Mobile - The once innovative wireless provider has become an also ran, their seemingly foolish choice not to build out the network and stay ahead of the curve has led to its demise. If and when they get a serious high-speed wireless data they will be so late to the table it wont matter. AT&T might not be much better but they have the iPhone, what do you have? A Dash, a SideKick, and zero high end Nokia handsets make us wonder maybe a executive from Walmart wasn’t the best decision to let run a wireless company during a time where there couldn’t be more on the line. John Stanton and Bob Stapleton built the company that had all the wireless companies scared with huge activation numbers which some even counteracted by switching their networks to GSM. Spending money stopped when Deutsch Telekom came along and along with them all the baggage of a large company.
Prediction for 2008: Much of the same and will find no real answer for the future of wifi, a huge part of their wireless strategy, and one that is perilous at best when demands for free wifi access are at an all time high.
Microsoft: Vista was slow, bogged down with trial software, and damn expensive to be able to run its most entertaining features. Not to mention the fact that the lack of drivers for peripherals made it impossible to not have a dual boot system unless you wanted to brick both high and low end products that a lot of people have built up over time. To simply have the view that people should buy new products or be very very patient is a sad state of affairs for a company that can do so many things so well and yet other times look like a startup, and a poor one at that.
User account control. Who stood up at a meeting with this idea? And who in the world then agreed with it? Pop Ups will save the day? This just might be the biggest misjudgment of the decade, note to Microsoft we do not like things ruining our experience. Once click should keep us safe and be enough to know we want our computers safe from prying eyes and from malicious code that destroys our data and privacy. And how about doing all this when the computer is in sleep mode and not when we are home and awake on a weeknight.
Entire computer industry - Why so slow to innovation? Video game consoles are dominating you in the fun factor and you have had little response. I want to play every game that is on a console on my computer, why would anyone leave this massive revenue stream so barren?
And why cant I yet literally walk into my computer with full touch controls for a hugely immersive experience. Monitors should bend around us and let us become a part of the game.
When people saw the Minority Report computer interface their collective jaws dropped and then wanted it for their own. Its now five years later and we are still pointing and clicking. We are past the time where our computer at our jobs and the ones we have in our homes should even remotely be the same. And sticking a webcam into a monitor is not a great leap forward, thats where we all hang them correct?