Random Quick Hits

I got on the scale this morning, as always, and saw that I finally got back below a certain magic number. I'm not quite at my ideal "race weight" yet, but I'm within striking distance. Anyhow, I immediately threw my arms in the air and began singing the chorus to We are the Champions. There's really no good transition out of that, so I'm just going to move on and leave you with the image...

Kristin sent word that the Executive Leadership Program she just finished up at Seattle University was recently rated as a top ten program in "corporate responsibility" of its kind in the USA, right along with Duke and Harvard and other schools of that caliber. The ranking was done by the Corporate Resposibility Officer, an online magazine located at here. When I saw this my first reaction was, isn't corporate responsibility an oxymoron? My second was The CRO must be based in Seattle. They're not, they're actually based in Edison, NJ -- the town where I was born. Coincidence? I think so. Kristin starts the proper Exec-MBA portion of her coursework next week at a weeklong retreat at the four-star Salish Lodge located two miles down the road from us. Yes, I have every intention of stowing away with her.

Is the writer's strike really over? I think someone needs to let Lorne Michaels and the folks at SNL know they don't have to smuggle scripts in from their children's 8th grade creative writing classes anymore. Hey SNL, you really have a staff of writers? Seriously? You actually pay professionals to write jokes? Seriously! You mean to tell me that you don't turn them in for burglary whenever they cash their paychecks? You didn't ever want to first maybe see if the scripts they wrote were funny? Seriously. Seriously? Seriously!

(actually, the Seriously sketches and sometimes Weekend Update are about the only thing funny on that show anymore. Pains me to say, but I can't say I'll be watching again.)

I had to dig my PS2 out of the closet the other day to put something together for work. Fortunately the system decided to actually work, unfortunately I forgot how bad the games look on it. I was actually playing one of the prettiest PS2 games, but being that it's been a year since I've touched a console other than the Xbox 360 I wasn't ready for the visual shock. The jaggies were burning holes in my eyes! Actually, what was even more shockingly apparent was just how much I've come to dislike the Dualshock 2 controller. I used to consider it one of the best controllers ever, but now it just feels flmsy and imprecise. And those analog sticks? How did we ever like that design? Since the game I had to record some videos of could have also been played on a PS3, I briefly considered buying one. Then I looked at the available games for it and the price and I thought to myself, Now why the hell would I want one of those? Maybe one day, but not today.

Lastly, I just want to give a big shout-out to the Federal Reserve! I hope the bankers and millionaires really appreciate the rate-cuts you've been doing lately because now not only are all of our mutual funds in the toilet, but the rates on our savings accounts have joined them. We were getting close to 5% interest just last summer on the account we use to save for our RTW trip. Now we're barely getting half that. Thanks, dude.

4 comments:

Brad Gallaway said...

Just out of curiosity, did you have your PS2 hooked up to an HD set? i threw my old SD set in the garage when i got my new HD and i gotta say, PS2 games look WAY worse on HD than they do on standard.

(additionally, every Wii game looks like *complete* ass on HD as well.)

If you've got the option, drag out a standard set to power through.. it's not beautiful, but it'll be bearable.

Brad Gallaway said...

Oh, and about the PS3... just the other day i was looking at mine which has been untouched for months, and i commented to the wife that i could have easily put off buying the thing for another half a year at least and not missed a thing. unless you're a hardcore MGS nut (which i don't think you are) you're probably better off saving the cash until this christmas, at the very least. 99% of the remotely good stuff will be on the 360 anyway.

Maarten said...

Yeah, some would say that corporate responsibility is merely a market gimmick and has to be, at least for publicly traded companies, because they're legally obligated to maximize shareholder return. So in most cases CSR tends to be part of the company's "we're a good citizen" image marketing.

I hadn't thought much about this until I recently read Robert Reich's Supercapitalism, which has the highest ratio of title dorkiness to thought provoked by content. In other words, it sounds dumb from the title, but it's a great book about how capitalism in the US has evolved in the past 100 years, and how we might want to redirect its role in society a bit.

Doug Walsh said...

Thanks for the comments guys. The PS2 game was being played on the same monitor I used to always work on, so that wasn't the issue. It was just that I forgot how bad the anti-aliasing issues are with that system (and last-gen systems in general).

Maarten, I'll be sure to pass along word about that book to Kristin. I think she has more than enough reading for school right now (a truckload of case studies, actually) but she might be able to get it on audiobook through the library.

I have a lengthier post about corporate responsibility and the Seattle U program specifically coming next week. Let's just say, that my earlier preconceptions were proven wrong.