For People Who Live Their Work

Ah Comcast….  For many years I and many others thought you deserved the Yugo award for worst customer service.  Your technicians were late or didn’t show up at all.  Work was sloppy.  You acted like you just didn’t care.  Then a couple years ago things seemed to get better.  You operators were friendly and your installers were on time.  Your guys wore spiffy uniforms. You began advertising how much good you do for the local community. Your digital cable is just, well, COMCASTIC, and your broadband service is really fast!  We all had high hopes.

But somehow, someway, you have slipped again.  Perhaps into a much more evil place than just rude or incompetent.   Recently you came under fire for blocking your subscribers’ access to certain web sites, and then not telling them you were doing so.  In fact…. is it possible you are now being run by the Chinese government?  [click to continue...]

I begin this blog with the admission that I am not a sports fan. Much to my wife’s delight, I don’t spend my weekends watching sports on television (unless somehow Wii fitness counts). And while I think that the concept of the Olympics is a great thing, I don’t watch them, track them, or really know anything about them. But as a sometimes fine American I do feel an obligation to have an Olympic-themed entry, and accordingly I was pleased when guest blogger Ray Link (a guy who does spend his weekends watching sports) sent the following:

Ray’s Analysis of Track Versus Swimming At The Olympics:

Please don’t take this wrong. I am a purist when it comes to the Olympics. I think Michael Phelps is fantastic, a credit to the United States, well deserving of the fame and riches that will be bestowed upon him. But he is not the greatest Olympian of all time.

Why do I say this? Simple – there are just too darn many swimming events that a swimmer can compete in compared to a track athlete. At last count, there are 15 swimming events a “sprinter”swimmer can compete in, versus just 8 for a track sprinter, and that includes 2 hurdle events and the long jump. I have defined sprints as any individual or team event 400 meters or less. Plus, the swimmers have a 50 meter event while the track athlete has the 100 meters as the shortest event.

Swimmers have a decided advantage, as they have the freestyle, the backstroke, the breaststroke and the butterfly. While last I saw, the track athlete has just the “run as fast as you can in any one style of your choice”. They do not have the run backwards, the hopping, skipping and other variations of style where each event gets medals.

In my view, the greatest Olympian is still Jesse Owens, as he won 4 track gold medals, all in world record times in the 1936 Berlin games. Remember he did this as an amateur, without the aid of extensive free training, and he was under immense pressure, in front of an extremely hostile crowd. If he could have entered more events, he most likely would have won many more medals.

About the Author: Ray Link is a CPA and holds an MBA from Wharton. He is EVP/CFO of FEI Company (NASDAQ: FEIC), a world leader in tools for nanotechnology including the Titan, the world’s most powerful electron microscope. He is on the Portland State University Business Advisory Council and on the Board of Directors and Audit Committee for Cascade Microtech (NASDAQ: CSCD) He also watches a lot of sports. Baseball, basketball, swimming……. I’ve even seen Ray spend hours watching billiards!

I begin this entry with a broad apology to my numerous “very moral” lawyer friends, and the many lawyers I must unfortunately pay to protect me and my company from those that would use the law to keep from paying their bills, avoid their contractual obligations, and perform other immoral actions.

OK - that might have a “holier than thou” sound to it. Certainly any of us might get into legitimate disputes with no clear winner or one side that has the lower moral ground, and it is wonderful that we have the law and lawyers to arbitrate such disputes. I also believe that left unchecked, the system always has the potential to overrun the less fortunate and those that can’t afford proper legal firepower. We are lucky that we have bright very moral lawyers willing to step forward and protect them, the basic tenants of the legal system, the environment, and certain aspects of our society and political system that might otherwise be endangered. So the title of this entry is certainly not aimed at everyone that passed the bar.

However, as one that has been involved in many legal disputes over the years, I am constantly struck by how smart lawyers can manipulate the law to help their clients do some very immoral things. It seems there is a fine line between providing “the best possible legal defense”, and assisting a client with some pretty nefarious and scummy actions. [click to continue...]

It seems like the environmental train might finally be leaving the station! While there is an enormous amount of political and technological work to be done, a national movement towards solar and wind energy seems to be gaining momentum. Yesterday the Oregon Department of Highways announced they would be installing solar panels in highway divides to power lighting on the roads. The Columbia Gorge may soon feature the largest wind power development in the world. In a few months it’s being reported that we can look forward to a Toyota Prius that features solar panels to recharge batteries.

And as an owner of a solar-powered house I can add a personal testimonial. I just received my power bill for last month for the electricity to power a 3000 square foot house. The total - 14 cents. The bill to heat the swimming pool - zero - thanks to the solar water heating system.

Over the next few years there will be enormous debate over how to finance the needed solar and wind infrastructure, but we all have to consider the long term financial implication that makes a renewable power system different than most other investments. The sun and wind cost nothing, and when we pay off the hardware needed to produce the power, our major investment, aside from maintenance, is over, This is far different from fossil-based fuel systems that must be continually fed with an increasingly expensive declining resource.

Outfitting your house with green energy systems can seem a daunting expense, but with today’s high energy prices you can have a pretty quick payback when your electricity for a month costs 14 cents!

I was watching the news last night when they showed a clip from a John McCain speech, and it suddenly occured to me “is this guy dead?”. Not dead as in “wow, Obama is going to cream this guy in November”, but rather, “literally dead”. Not breathing. The eternal snooze.

A caveat here. I like John McCain. He’s a war hero, occasional straight-talker, and a fine example of an American. I don’t like him enough to vote for him unless Obama resigns from the race and is replaced by David Hasselhoff, but overall I think he’s fine. And I certainly hope he is among the living.

But I think we would all agree that his campaign has not been going well. He seems very low on energy, mumbles and stumbles, seems disoriented a lot, and it suddenly dawned on me that the Republican party might be pulling a “Weekend At Bernie’s” trick on the American public.

Imagine this. McCain passes away a couple months ago. The Republican party realizes that no decent candidate will ever jump in at this point. Following Bush and opposing Obama is really political suicide. So they decide to stick with the dead guy. They surround him with people to keep him propped up and mouth a few unintelligible words now and then. And if by some miracle McCain wins, Rove can prop him in a chair in the Oval Office and it will be business as usual.

Could happen! Don’t say I didn’t warn you! The big potential question, if it does come down to a “Dead McCain” versus “The Hoff” race, who should I vote for?

I don’t believe in market timing, and I think investing (be it in the market, real estate, or almost all other potential investments) is ideally a long-term game. But as the chart I just received from blog-contributor Ray Link illustrates, the market certainly has hot and not-so-hot decades (and right now we are in a chilly one). Of course if you started investing in 1980 and stuck to the course, the current market is a minor annoyance and a blip on the performance screen. Personally. I am in this for the long haul, and see opportunity unfolding right now (since I plan on living a few more decades).

An Analysis of S&P Returns

Decade                Cumulative Return         Annualized Return
1930-1939                              -41.9%                                       -5.3%
1940-1949                               34.8%                                        3.0%
1950-1959                              256.7%                                      13.6%
1960-1969                               53.7%                                        4.4%
1970-1979                               17.2%                                         1.6%
1980-1989                              227.4%                                     12.6%
1990-1999                              315.7%                                     15.3%
2000- June 2008               -12.8%                                      -1.6%

I’m prefer to do my shopping online, and accordingly I was thrilled to find several sites that actually pay you to use them as your shopping portal.  The concept is amazingly simple, and profitable for the shopper.  Go to sites like www.ebates.com. www.fatwallet.com, and www.cashbaq.com - set up a free account - and then use that site as a portal to shop at the hundreds of featured online sites.  When you make a purchase, the portal will send you a check for as much as 10% of your shopping price (each site offers a different rebate), so it is like an automatic discount.

And you won’t be shopping at tiny unknown sites.  All of the above shopping sites feature big-name online retailers - probably sites you are already shopping on already, so it is like found money.

I have been using ebates and fatwallet for over a year, and am pleased to report they operate very efficiently. I just discovered cashbaq so can’t report on how well they work, but I was pleased to see they offer a 4% rebate for www.1000bulbs.com, a site I recommended earlier for CFL light bulbs, so you can use them to save a little more on your green efforts.

Not that I want to turn this into a blog about cell phone enhancements, but…..  Cha Cha is one more really interesting free cell phone enhancement I recommend.  Just call 800-224-2242 (take off your call block first if you have it) and your questions will be answered!  Not quite sure how the economics of this service work, but you can call Cha Cha - ask any question you want - and within a few minutes they will text you the answer.  This service becomes a bit addictive as you try to stump Cha Cha with weird or difficult questions…

• Is JD Salinger still alive?
• Who is the President of Brazil?
• What’s the most common name for a male dog?
• How tall is Tom Cruise?

Cha Cha is like a really smart friend hidden inside your cell phone.

Tired of paying those high charges when you use directory assistance on your cell phone?  Well, Google has kindly provided a free option - Goog411. Just call 1-800-466-4411 instead of your cell phone carrier. They will even give you suggestions for restaurants, etc. based on the area you want to visit. The call and the info is free!

I love technology that makes life easier - especially when it is free!  And here is a very nifty free addition you can make to any cell phone that will save you time and potentially money. (And my caveat here - I do not own stock in this company, nor do I benefit in any way - I just thought this was a very interesting technology for “bizzy” people.)  

Go to www.jott.com - sign up for a free account - and use the service to send yourself and others texts and emails converted from your voice.  It’s simple - you just log on once and put in your and up to five other email and cell phone numbers.  Then, when you call 866-568-8123 it will prompt you to record a message.  You can send the message to yourself to your phone and computer - (Tim, don’t forget to report to your parole officer tomorrow) - or to someone else - (Kelly, don’t forget to remind me to report to my parole officer tomorrow).  OK, I really don’t have a parole officer, but you get the idea. 

An if you are all thumbs and hate texting, this is a much easier way to get the message across.