Entries Tagged 'Oddities' ↓

I read the news almost every few hours, and here are some of the highlights of the business news that made me spit out my tea this week.

1. Countrywide fatcats get 19 million dollars in “performance incentives” - Bank of America is taking over Countrywide Financial, and they will be disbursing “stock valued at $10 million for chief executive Angelo Mozilo and $9 million for President David Sambol”. Gee, lets see what the performance of the company was. The stock price went from over $40 to around $6. The entire time the stock was in free fall Mozilo was dumping his shares. There are over 14,000 homes owned by Countrywide currently listed on their site valued at nearly 3 billion dollars. My only question is, how can I find a job where I can be a royal screwup and still get rewarded $10 million? Then maybe I could buy this house.

2. Walmart sues brain damaged employee - Apparently Walmart’s health plan states that if an employee gains healthcare money in a legal settlement, they are supposed to pay Walmart back. So a woman who suffered an accident that made her brain damaged and disabled is being sued by Walmart for half a million dollars. All she has is 277k left in her settlement and there is no way she could pay Walmart back. It is pretty sad and the case is inciting a lot of public outrage. Walmart makes billions of dollars a year, and they have a clause in their health plan that says employees have to pay it back if they had the money? That is a ridiculous health plan. The employee in this case paid for her insurance, and isn’t the point of health insurance to cover accidents? I’ve never bought anything from Walmart, and I probably never will.

3. The Fed loans another $100 billion - According to the article, “The Fed has worked some positive magic.” That phrase just invoked an image of Bernanke in a pink tutu flying around spreading wads of cash. I wonder when this fairy dust is going to come back and bite us in the rear.

4. Qwest in Colorado tells employees to pee in plastic bags - Apparently some supervisor didn’t like the long bathroom breaks his reports were taking. So he distributed urinal bags! Wow, that is really one crazy boss.

5. Viagra turns 10 - It is kind of funny that the 10th birthday of this little blue pill made national headlines. I don’t see anyone celebrating the birthday of penicillin or digitalis. Anyway, I don’t have anything against Viagra except for all those annoying spam messages that say “xxVIAXXgra”. Oh crap, now my blog is going to get Viagra ads.

I wonder what next week will bring.  Have a great weekend everyone!

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In my article about how I saved $30,000 in college I wrote that I entered a lot of sweepstakes, and some people are curious how exactly that works. Today I will share in detail what I did, and give some tips through what I learned.

1. Use a sweepstakes list - It is time consuming to find out about individual sweekstakes yourself. What I did was use online-sweepstakes.com. It is a great community and forum with thousands of contests that you can enter. It used to be completely free, but now there is a subscription fee for some of the premium content (more sweeps and site specific contests). I paid subscription for one year because I won so many things from there.

2. Use a sweepstakes only email address - This is to prevent spam and newsletters from rendering your main email address useless. No matter how hard you try, if you are a sweeper you may be spammed.

3. Always read the rules - You should always read the rules and see if you qualify. Otherwise, if you won something and then got disqualified it would be a sad loss. Usually sweepstakes disallow Floridians to enter because of the laws there. Liquor companies also do not allow Californians to enter for prizes worth more than $5.00.

4. Try to enter contests sponsored by reputable companies - This is important because there are scammers out there that try to collect emails and addresses and then sell these lists. If you only deal with companies that are fairly well known then the chance of being scammed is lessened greatly.

5. Use a form filler - The most popular form filling software I have seen is Roboform. Before Roboform I had to write my own form fillers. It is usually not against the rules to use Roboform to fill out a contest entry.

6. Enter local contests or limited entry contests for better chances - Some contests have rules that say they are limited to the first X number of entrants. These contests will give you a much better chance at winning. Local television and radio stations are also good places to look for contests because the pool of entrants is much smaller than a national contest.

7. Never give out money - Sweepstakes should be no purchase necessary. This is the law. If a sweepstakes asks for money or credit card information you should avoid it. There should be no entry fees of any kind.

These are the basics of sweeping, but there are a lot of other things I learned through the few years I was a sweeper. A lot of sweepers are stay at home moms and they are generally very friendly. The key is to be careful when you are online and supplying private information. You also have to be persistent to win. I have won some very nice prizes and tried many products that I would otherwise not have bought. So I think if you have a lot of free time on your hands it is a good hobby.

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I really have no words for today’s accident on the 101 besides that I am glad that no one is hurt. Basically the stretch of highway that I drive from the office to home was shutdown in both directions because some woman named Revuelta (flipped over in Spanish) flipped over an oil tanker with her minivan and spilled over 2000 gallons of oil onto highway 101 causing the asphalt to deteriorate. I was lucky not to be stuck in that jam because a coworker of mine tried to go home around five pm and came back to the office past six saying that he got through maybe 2 miles in an hour. All the local streets were packed to the brim and El Camino was literally a parking lot. I left around 8pm and took the 280 home and I have never seen that many cars on that highway before. Anyway, in honor of this accident, here are a list of supplies that I think commuters in Northern California may need for survival.

1. A Brick - This is for crossing the various bridges.  In case you have automatic windows that don’t open once your car is under water then  you may need a brick to break the glass.  Otherwise bricks are also good for self defense.

2. Life Vests - One of my ex-coworkers actually has these in his car because he can’t swim.  He is afraid that if he were crossing one of the bridges his car may fall in and he may drown and he bought the life vests after he heard on the news a bridge collapsed in some other state.  I think this is reasonable and life vests are not very heavy.

3. A Fire Extinguisher - So the highway patrol closed down most of the southbound lanes today because they were afraid the gasoline was going to catch on fire.  So in case your car is on fire a fire extinguisher may be good equipment to have.

4. Liquids and Snack Packs -  Imagine you were one of those people who were stuck on the highway for hours upon hours.  Actually, I have been there when I tried to drive home one Christmas.  It took me four hours to drive 40 miles on the 101 from the Peninsula to the East Bay.  Water and snack packs are needed to keep your energy up.

5. Gas Mask or Hazmat Suit -  Having lived here for ten years I can’t believe how many times hazardous materials have spilled over on the highways.  Last year a highway connector freaking burned down because of another tanker turn over. Seriously, a gas mask or hazmat suit may save your life one day.

6. Board Games, Cards, and Other Entertainment -  If it gets really bad and you have to shut off your engine, you may have time for a friendly game with the rest of the travelers who are stuck.  If you are a loner it might be good to have portable gaming or a portable DVD player.

7. Car Charger for you Cell Phone - This is pretty essential everywhere I guess.

On days like this I wish I still lived in a high density area with plentiful public transportation, but then again, a bus could be stuck on these highways too and I wouldn’t be packing my gear. The bottom line is people need to be more careful when they drive. For some reason Northern California is rife with bad drivers riding in fancy cars.  It was really a culture shock when I moved from Hawaii to here and saw so many rude drivers that think they own every single road. If everyone just slowed down a bit and tried not to cut people off, then maybe we could have less tankers rolling over.

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Today I was away at an all day company meeting.  The good thing about it is that there were a lot of food and drinks along the way, but the bad thing with these long meetings is that they are almost always quite sleep inducing and includes a lot of speakers and very little interactivity.  So here are some tips I have to make these meetings a little less painful.

1. Sit Near the Exit -  The reason for this is so that it’s easier to get up and go to the bathroom.  When a meeting is more than three hours a lot of people go to the john, and getting up and having to say “excuse me” a million times is pretty annoying.  Also, when the meeting is over it’s easier to get out of the door!

2. Sit Near the Back -  I do this because it’s easier to be not noticed and it is easier to take a nap or play with something I brought.  Though, in smaller meetings this tactic doesn’t work very well.

3. Bring Portable Entertainment - Portable entertainment could consist of a novel, a portable gaming device, a computer, or a notebook.  In my previous company I was able to get through a good part of a Nintendo DS RPG through a three hour meeting where the executives repeated what they said in the previous meeting.  With a computer you can do a lot more things like emailing and instant messaging if there is internet. If there is no internet you can still blog offline.

4. Play Games Like “Bullsh*t Bingo“ - The rules to this games is explained in the link.  Basically, you make a list of business buzzwords that people say in meetings like “synergy” or “web 2.0″.  Try to get coworkers to make their own lists, and then check off each word as they are said and the winner is the person who has his/her list completed first.  Of course, this game requires paying attention to the speakers, but if the meeting is sort of small and you can’t play other games, this is the way to go.

5. Take Naps When You Can - This is a no brainer, when you’re bored you tend to sleep, and sleeping is much more fun than a boring meeting because at least you can dream.  Just make sure you don’t snore very loudly and you don’t mind sleeping sitting up.

6. When There is Free Food and Drink, Bring Containers – Today we had a lot of free beer and other drinks, and some people had backpacks.  They could have hauled a whole six pack of Guinness home.  In my first company a guy always had Tupperware for these events so he could bring food home. My supervisor in my last company would bring a shopping bag and put a whole food tray in it.

Anyway, don’t do any of these things if  you are actually a presenter at the meeting and have to sit somewhere near the front. If you are interested in the topic presented then the best option at these meeting is to listen, but if you are an engineer and they are commending the salesmen repeatedly and reading off the sales numbers by every region in the world, then it gets pretty darn boring!  Try these things at your own risk!

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If you live in the Bay Area you would know that we’re in the midst of the worst winter storm in two years, and over a million residences and businesses have lost power today. San Mateo County was the hardest hit and I spent the most of today without electricity. It was a really strange day since I attempted to go to work, but every traffic light leading to the office was broken and the intersections morphed into bizarre four way stops with three to four lanes each. This made a nine mile drive take 40 minutes (it took me 20 minutes just to get to highway 101, which is less than 2 miles away). I braved the gusts and pouring rain into my office building only to see the lights off and the IT lady sitting in the dark. I asked her if the office is closed and she said, “yeah, we have no power, no email, nothing!” So I walked back to my car and went to run an errand and then went home.

On the drive home I heard that the power outages could go well into the weekend and hundreds of thousands of people were without electricity. Since my condo had power in the morning I thought I am one of the lucky ones who already had service restored. Unfortunately, when I got home the power was off again. I thought that I could get a lot of cleaning done, but I was wrong. The laundry room required electricity to run the machines, and the vacuums also needed to be plugged in. So then I thought, okay, maybe I will cook something for lunch. Alas! The stove is electric! So then I thought maybe I can go out for some food, but every single nearby restaurant shut down because they had no power. I found an uneaten breakfast bar in my pocket, and I wolfed it down.

So there I was with nothing to do. My phone was out of power, and so was my Nintendo DS. What can I do to entertain myself? I ended up picking up everything off the floor and putting them away. The hubby’s parents recently dropped off a few boxes of the hubby’s things from his childhood and I started reading those. I read his fifth grade essays and his college application essays and “awwed” at his pictures. However, this entertainment was limited, and after I put everything away I was going starking crazy. The skies soon turned dark and I ended up lighting up candles. I was so bored that I started to pour the wax from one candle to another. Finally I ended up playing a board game in single player mode with candles lit on the side. I was reading the instructions by candlelight and I set it down on one of the candles by accident. A plume of smoke rose and I mentally panicked for a second, but I quickly blew the fire out but the instructions has a permanent hole in it right now.

Finally after eight hours, the power finally came back on. My hubby got home and I showed him his scorched game instructions and he said, “thank goodness you didn’t burn anything else down”. Then I told him that I put everything away and cleaned the floors and he said, “at least something good came out of this. I can’t believe you were so bored that you cleaned!”

I have been through blackouts before, but I think this is the longest one I have went through and having the lights on was like having a fresh breath of air. (I was really getting dizzy from the aromatic candles.) Seriously, I don’t think I can live without electricity. I’m not sure what the economic impacts of this mass blackout is to the Bay Area, but it nearly drove me insane.

Anyway, currently a lot of the coastal areas in San Mateo is still blacked out and I hope everyone is alright. Electricity is something many of us take for granted, and it is amazing how much of our lives is so dependent on this. To all the PG&E crews out there, thank you for your hard work.

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