Today’s spam of the day brought to you buy some yahoo, who asks would you like a brain tumor? in the subject line. I didn’t read the mail but I have to wonder, who answers yes to that.

Until today I was a huge amazon.com fan. Then I logged on to order a few books and discovered that their number one music purchase recommendation for me was the new Celine Dion cd. Excuse me? What on EARTH have I purchased from them that led them to that conclusion? I’ll admit to some funky taste in music, but Celine Dion? Pulllleeease!

So I went to ebay and bid on the books instead of buying them from Amazon in revenge 😉

So sez the former prez:

I see in the near future a crisis approaching that unnerves me and causes me to tremble for the safety of my country. . . . corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until all wealth is aggregated in a few hands and the Republic is destroyed.”

— U.S. President Abraham Lincoln, Nov. 21, 1864
(letter to Col. William F. Elkins)
from the always thought-provoking metafilter

Old man winter passed us by this year, but he must have made a deal with his buddy Spring cause for our first day of spring this year, we got this:

And for his second act, we got the coldest day of the year for Friday and then a weekend of just barely above freezing temps. Thankfully summer is on his way to remind me why I love living up here 😉

As I was walking out the door to lunch today I engaged in an internal debate – to bring the camera or not to bring the camera. I decided not to because I was only headed to the sandwhich shop up the road, 2 blocks away, and it’s a miserable gray day outside.

So I get a half block away from my office and I spy 2 crows scoping out a squirrel, who was digging around in the wood shavings at the base of a tree that had been recently cut down. After a couple of seconds of scoping him out, both crows converged on him. The squirrel stood up to them for maybe 4-5 seconds, standing on his hind legs and eyeing one of them, then turned tail and ran. What he had I don’t know, and as far as I could tell the crows didn’t find it either, but I do wish I had my camera with me to capture it. From now on it comes with me, bad weather or no.

So check out the spiders on drugs and tell me why I shouldn’t give up the habit of drinking a few cups of coffee every morning and move towards….more recreational substances?

I’m just testing the software to show Nick how weblogging software works, ignore this please, I’ll post photos this week.

I can’t speak to how true this is for the Japanese, but it’s spot-on for the U.S.

A Japanese company and an American company decided to have a canoe race on the Missouri River. Both teams practiced long and hard to reach their peak performance before the race.

On the big day the Japanese won by a mile.

Afterwards, the American team became very discouraged and morally depressed.

The American management decided that the reason for the crushing defeat had to be found. A “Measurement Team,” made up of senior management was formed. They would investigate and recommend appropriate action.

Their conclusion was that the Japanese had 8 people rowing and 1 person steering, while the Americans had 1 person rowing and
8 people steering.

So American management hired a consulting company and paid them incredible amounts of money. They advised that too many people were steering the boat and not enough people were rowing.

To prevent losing to the Japanese again next year, the rowing team’s management structure was totally reorganized to four steering supervisors, three area steering superintendents and one assistant superintendent steering manager. They also implemented a new performance system that would give the one person rowing the boat greater incentive to work harder. It was called the “Rowing Team “Quality First” Program,” with meetings, dinners and free pens for the rower: “We must give the rower empowerment and enrichments through this quality program.”

The next year the Japanese won by two miles.

Humiliated, the American management laid off the rower for poor performance, halted development of a new canoe, sold the paddles, and canceled all capital investments for new equipment. Then they gave a High Performance Award to the steering managers and distributed the money saved as bonuses to the senior executives.

Gotta love the Japanese.

I’ve lived this. It often amazes me how well the US does internationally given my direct observations of the management culture in this country.

So after much thought, I decided to get myself a new digital camera for myself for my birthday. Nothing too fancy, the main selling point is that Canon makes a relatively inexpensive watertight enclosure for the camera so that I can take it out with me on the Kayak without fear of ruining the camera. The camera also has addon lenses that will allow me to get macro and wide angle lenses relatively cheaply. Soon there should be more photos posted to this space as a result 😉

…invades my computer and brings a big smile to my face. Story at 11.

who am I kidding. There’s no story. But enjoy the link. Requires Flash btw