Robert Hall

I think they are just trying to survive right now... Chevy can fill the Avis niche Pontiac left behind (weren't many sales at Pontiac in this decade fleet)? Other than a few low-volume speciality models (GTO, G8, Solstice) the rest of late-model Pontiac were just forgettable FWD generics that Chevy has plenty of... beyond the G8 and Solstice, any Excitement!! was just marketing.

Speaking of banks, I'm currently contracting at one of the largest banks in the US...the inefficiencies in their SW development processes, etc is amazing.... I'm truly amazed anything actually works...infinite levels of beauacracy, hidden reporting structures, departments that won't communicate, complex, poorly documented systems, hundreds of acronyms, etc.

I've heard that in my own family...a sibling that attributes basically all that was good to our late father, and all that is bad to our mother. There is some degree of truth to it, but once you are out of the house and on your own--college and beyond--you make your own choices in life, good or bad..can't blame anyone but yourself at the point and beyond, IMHO. Blaming everything on your childhood and a repressed, conservative emotionally distant mother only goes so far... My own family has had plenty enough of it's own drama over the years, enough to convince me I have no need to have children. Of my 2 siblings and myself, the one that is definitely the most f*cked up is the one that isn't taking any meds... the other and myself have our prescription anti-depressants and sleeping pills going on.. Putting the fun in dysfunctional. Rob

Damn..that's an amazing number...architecture is your field? I've talked w/ a few recruiters lately, and they claim it's about 5 percent in the Phoenix metro, and about 3 percent in the Denver metro for my niche.. Rob

That was one of my stranger job experiences...anti fraud software company..the interview went well, they were building some interesting technology, but working there sucked...I worked with a bunch of obnoxious 20-something Toyota fanboys that gave me a hard time constantly for driving an American car and stole things out of my cube...

They took my stapler. (this really happened at the startup I worked at last year...the bastard Toyota-lovin' kids stole my red Swingline)

That one has an interesting description...'purchased from CIA fleet'... the CIA?? Interesting...wonder what they used them for.

In English, please...'GMMG'? 'B4C'?

Around here black has been the most common color..then yellow, bright red and silver. Also, i've seen one in white (looks great), one in the dark red, one in the met. orange. Haven't seen a gray one or either of blues yet.

Problem solving is one of the main reasons I like software development... not just design problems, but I even enjoy solving production problems...digging through code, log files, etc to see why last night's batch update took a dump, etc...

I like the backyard Stonehenge...

Chevrolet Fleetmaster or something?

<cynical> he's just messing with our heads again.. </cynical>

So you are going over to Ohio this week and next week (24th-25th is the G20 meetings, thought you said 17th-18th in another thread)?

Are they also going to bring the Ute version w/ a cap for police animal control handling use? (Like the pic PCS posted the other day). And the wagon for coroner's office use?

I've been guilty of that... Move from company to company with my collection of stories, different ones for different contexts... I'm also guilty of when encountering a situation at work, saying 'well, at company XYZ, we did this..."..

That's what I thought.

Many of them are...but a lot of innovative and interesting technologies, esp. w/ phones, come out of Japan and Europe, but haven't caught on here because of our fragmented cellular networks and approach to data plans. And most all of the hardware is manufactured in Asia.

The best was my first week on the job at a large telecom company in Colorado Springs, June '97. I had just moved to town from Michigan, really my first big corporate job after grad school....my manager came by my cube, serious look on his face...asked if I had found a place, moved in, etc and if I had found a church, and invited me to his...one of the largest evangelical ones in the country (New Life, the megachurch who's pastor was in the gay prostitution scandal a couple years ago). I politely declined, but he asked me to come to events of theirs a couple more times over the next year before he decamped to Finland. Only after living there a few months did I realize I had moved to a place that was a hot bed of right wing fundies. Living in Ann Arbor and Chicago the previous few years, I only knew Colorado Springs for the Air Force Academy, great weather and great scenery... Rob

Ford seems to have achieved good crash test ratings w/ the Mustang and kept the weight reasonable.

+1. And those that laugh at everything...I used to have a coworker that sat over the cube wall from me that would do that... 'I just got an email..hah-hah-hah.'... 'I have a meeting..hah-hah-hah'. 'The production database crashed. Hah-hah-hah'. Got old after a while..after 3 years, got really old. Though he was very sharp and a great guy to work/lunch/drink with otherwise. A current pet peeve are the ones that come in late (9:30-10) and stay late (till 6:30) and send out emails expecting a reply after 5pm. I consistently come in by 7:30 and leave by 4:30 (some in my dept come even earlier/leave earlier). One guy on my team comes in at 9:30-10 and always misses the 9am Monday meeting. One thing working in Colorado Springs back in the '90s I found very irriating were managers, coworkers, etc that were always trying to invite me to join their church, etc. I'm not religious and find it pretty presumptive of them to assume I was a Christian (not every WASPy guy that moves to Colorado Springs is an evangelical).

Nice..getting into convertible season here now... Saw a bright red '10 Mustang GT convertible, top down on the freeway this morning. Also a clean mid '90s Merc 500SL roadster in black, top down. Rob

Counterpoint--printing newspapers is very expensive and polluting (sourcing paper, the printing process, the cost of transporting paper, the cost of recycling/waste in landfill of used papers). Posting content online is much cheaper. And for the consumer of said news product, it's very flexible--I can read the news (From many sources) on my wireless laptop, desktop, cell phone, etc, anywhere, anytime. And many online news sources have extensive archiving of back articles for future reference--i.e. the New York Times is particularly good at that, for example. If anything, the # of sources for news and information online far exceeds that of the print era--with print papers, a consumer might subscribe to one or maybe 2 dalies or a weekend edition. Online, I can source news from a vast number of sources---I get local news in my inbox from the local paper and a couple local TV stations, local news from other cities of interest, national and international news from multiple sources (Reuters, CNN, MSNBC, NY Times, LA Times, BBC, Der Spiegel, London Times, etc). There are plenty of news sources that seem to cover every political stripe out there also, from far left to middle of the road to far right, secular to religous, business oriented to grass roots. Not to mention email newsletters and RSS feeds for realtime updates, as well as tweets from news sources. Print papers are always out of date by the time you get the hard copy, the Internet can be updated immediately. I liked reading print papers back in the day, but it's a 19th century medium that's on it's way out, for better or for worse. Online--whether viewed via a computer or a cell phone or whatever the Next Big Thing is as far as devices, is the primary means of disseminating information in the 21st century.

Hmm...had the unintended consequence of creating an anti-theft device..

Very clever.