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HamsterHookah

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Everything posted by HamsterHookah

  1. I think so. China caused one of the biggest meltdowns in recent history-- economically, politically, medically, socially, et al. In a perfect world, the world bans together to put China in a corner and demand accountability and remedy. Lord knows we can't do it alone or even with a small group of powerful countries. I think the moral hazard to just say "China is too big too fail to demand accountability from so we just have to get over it and they get away with it" is bad. But then again, maybe it's just a tough pill to swallow because we have played ourselves into this hand with our overreliance on globalization and China's growth and power of the last 25 years. The whole thing makes me sick to be honest, which is probably a fault and flaw of my human self. I want justice as if it's black and white and easy, knowing the geopolitical world is not that easy.
  2. 11 year old daughter had to have these airpods because apparently the [tween, pre-teen and teen private school starter pack] must have: latest iphone (already had) and shaming anyone with an android airpods in ears at all times oversized hoodie with private school emblem to barely meet dresscode crocs on at all times outside of uniform and on fridays (ironic or unironic, i can't figure it out)
  3. This is the post that can't be glossed over. There are still people today who want to hand wave the root cause and just saw "what's done is done, lets move on, water under the bridge", etc. because the truth might be dangerous. But at some point, we need to hold China accountable. The problem is they aren't some tier-2 country we can bully around, so to put their nose in this and smack them with the rolled up newspaper is going to cause a lot of pain and damage and cost. Further, acknowledging the root cause of this gives oxygen to theories and people and politics who are a) prone to take a mile if given an inch and b) throw a monkey wrench in what has been pretty buttoned up for easy consumption, which a lot of people don't want.
  4. I read recently, I'll try to find the link, that the Apple Store and Genius Bar took a more transactional and retail posture under Tim Cook that has Steve Jobs rolling in his grave. Steve Jobs wanted the store to be like a Starbucks-- hiring smart, tech-savvy people to give customers a place to hang out or enjoy products, etc.-- whereas Tim Cook hires anyone with a pulse (mostly low-end retail types without much tech experience) and gives them sales quotas at the genius bar and they have an average handle time for talking to customers, etc. Think of your average Verizon or AT&T store employees trying to sell cell phones.
  5. Maybe because I just read a two-part profile on Einstein (from The New Yorker; 2014) and his popularity and what it meant to the world (it's a study in sociology how he become kitchen-table famous for things that housewives can't comprehended) that I find this statement above to be an extreme emotional overreach and hyperbolic.
  6. I will never EVER check bags when traveling for business and solo. When traveling with a team, you will be roasted to an oblivion if you do it near or around seasoned business travelers as well. That said, with the family on family vacations, there is little reward to being so spartan. Also the lack of TUMI luggage recommendations is disappointing. You guys steered my guy zepol in the wrong direction. Has the lack of travel since COVID-19 really made us forget so much?
  7. Agreed. I once took a family trip to Cali and had 13 bags for 5 people (4 females). Two bags were just hair dryers and straighteners and other toiletry items.
  8. You are clearly an IBMer from your last two posts lol BUT you have a point. I was harsh on IBM with Ginni Rometty at the helm which saw them lose market share almost as fast as Tesla the last few months, but spinning off their consulting and staying close to the enterprise, this is an interesting read: IBM is up 6% in 2022, topping every large-cap tech stock. https://www.cnbc.com/2022/12/27/ibm-stock-outperformed-technology-sector-in-2022.html But that guy is right-- the Mainframe is still king for IBM imho
  9. Couldn't edit to add, but for further reading on the source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wassily_Kandinsky#Artistic_and_spiritual_theorist Probably mostly subject matter and discussions in MFA classrooms and in performative spaces or New School, but thanks for humoring an old chunk of coal like me.
  10. @here Good conversation you great people. I'll leave you with this last excerpt, again, from Kandinsky's "Concerning Spiritual in Art" manifesto: "The artist must have something to say, for mastery over form is not his goal but rather the adapting of form to its inner meaning. The artist is not born to a life of pleasure. He must not live idle; he has a hard work to perform, and one which often proves a cross to be borne. He must realize that his every deed, feeling, and thought are raw but sure material from which his work is to arise, that he is free in art but not in life. The artist has a triple responsibility to the non-artists: 1) He must repay the talent which he has 2) his deeds, feelings, and thoughts, as those of every man, create a spiritual atmosphere which is either pure or poisonous 3) these deeds and thoughts are materials for his creations, which themselves exercise influence on the spiritual atmosphere. The artist is not only a king, as Peladan* says, because he has great power, but also because he has great duties. If the artist be priest of beauty, nevertheless the beauty is to be sought only according to the principle of the inner need, and can be measured only according to the size and intensity of that need. That is beautiful which is produced from the inner need, which springs from the soul. Maeterlinck**, one of the first warriors, one of the first modern artists of the soul, says: "there is nothing on earth so curious for beauty or so absorbent of it, as a soul. For that reason few mortal souls withstand the leadership of a soul which gives to them beauty." *https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joséphin_Péladan **https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maurice_Maeterlinck
  11. It's not price-gouging as much as it is dynamic pricing and the demand being exceptional to the supply in a last minute crunch. The decision engine technology that flex that price don't hate you personally. I guess AA could override and keep a static price as a goodwill gesture and good PR.
  12. At the risk of taking us into a completely different conversation, in most organizations the role of CIO has changed in modern times. I realize I'm generalizing here, but what I've seen and what I think the data backs up is that the modern CIO isn't strategic and they aren't asked to bring the CEO solutions to complex problems. They are dictated to from the CEO/CFO/LOB leaders. They are handed a list of big rock business priorities and told to go make that happen. So when someone comes along with a better way or to help them, amazing ROI or not, if it's not on their radar, it's not going to get it's day in court until maybe the next fiscal if he wants to fight for it. That is why like the guy you responded to says, it takes a big business black-eye to create a priority and all of a sudden you have budget and a need to fix an issue when it becomes a national nightmare, like this one.
  13. Exactly this. The ROI and business outcomes are, obviously, there.
  14. Knew the Futurama dog was coming when I read the thread title. I cry lots at TV shows. In fact, I cried the other day at one of my daughters teeny bopper shows; something about getting cancer and helping her out or something. Lots of TV shows manufacture these tears by using tear-jerker subject matter and material (children's illnesses, cancers, deaths, etc.) and no matter how formulaic, I can't help but still cry at certain things. That said, when shows are creative or unconventional to draw out emotions that is when it's really memorable. Like the Futurama dog.
  15. No offense, but your POV's seem pretty one-sided from the internal, central IT perspective. As a consultant and delivery partner I've been a part of many, many "digital transformation" projects and invariably the reason we are brought in is because your CEO/C-Suite doesn't trust you. They don't believe the talent in-house can execute on big, board-level, mention-on-earnings-calls transformational projects. In most organizations you have a bunch of great wrench turners who can do what they are asked to do in a narrowly defined skill and responsibility set. Great. But, when, for example, you are rationalizing off 200 instances of ECS to 1 instance of S/4HANA you need a team of Accenture folks (or pick your poison, but you namedropped ACN) then, yes, it's gonna be multiple multiple millions of dollars with messy scope creep because your own executives and technical staff didn't even understand their own internal instances and processes and scope of work. An optimal approach, in my experience, is a good blend of bringing your SME's and in-house central IT along with the consulting and delivery partners. I haven't worked with Southwest Airlines. From what I understand they are not fun to work with and they don't often pick best-in-breed solutions. They often go with scrappier, smaller-but-smart (read: cheaper) firms which seemed to be on brand for them as a scrappy, cheap but smart organization. But I have consulted with American Airlines in multiple ways-- from some IBM stuff (they are a huge IBM shop) to some M&A and business/process/IT integration stuff with some regional airline folded in the American Eagle brand. AA for all their faults is at least attempting to invest, to modernize, and to cater to the customer experience with digital products, mobile products and ease-to-use (as mentioned multiple times on this thread). As most know, it's difficult with an organization of this size like trying to turn around a battleship, I mean just getting an MSA and legal paperwork done took nearly a year with AA if that gives any insight. I'm feeling pretty validated here because I've always thought Southwest was a half a step up from the budget airlines (e.g. Spirit, Frontier, etc.) and being someone who flies a ton having to deal with American Airlines garbage from time to time was worth it due to the executive platinum benefits, especially with international travel. Anyways, it will be interesting to see what sort of changes this national PR disaster will compel within Southwest's leadership and business. The new CEO could use this to really define his time in the top seat, but like was mentioned-- could the public have a short term memory about this and just chalk it up to general airline shenanigans? For example I didn't even remember the Delta meltdown mentioned the last few posts (and am not a Delta guy so maybe that's why).
  16. I don't remember that, but I do remember him doing a good deed about getting a wheelchair donated (maybe from this site?) to someone who needed it, or something like that. Unless that was all fake, that seemed like a cool thing of him to do. Maybe he wasn't having an episode then and we all know nobody is all good or all bad, all the time.
  17. Still have yet to start these, but saw a funny review of it I thought I'd share: “Reading it is like immersive theatre: one of those elaborate warehouse productions where you stumble about from tableau to tableau, trying to piece the story together … The novel is long on atmosphere and short on sense. There are slick, movie-style conversations with a private investigator, a Vietnam vet, and a trans woman; long lunches with a garrulous criminal friend; flashbacks to Alicia’s hallucinations; the obligatory bit of survivalism (would it even be a McCarthy novel without an episode involving tinned foods and roadkill?) … James Joyce is invoked. An oblique reminder that great literature requires hard work? But McCarthy’s difficulty is perverse. The decision to open The Passenger with an impenetrable conversation between Alicia and her hallucinations; the quantum mechanics; the pinball structure; the confusing dialogue—all this just makes the novel hard to read. Nothing meaningful is gained. It’s a shame because at times these books are more interesting than McCarthy’s key works … We think these books are unflinching. Really, they are kitsch: McCarthy’s is an art of exaggeration. A con trick is being practised … That’s how you garner comparisons to Hemingway and Faulkner—when, in fact, you’re a mediocre hybrid of both.” –Claire Lowdon on Cormac McCarthy’s The Passenger (The Sunday Times)
  18. Brady looks washed this year; unimpressed with him 90% of this game. That said I’m 90% sure this mediocre Bucs team will beat the Cowboys in wildcard game and I’ll cry.
  19. The Eagles rolled out backups at QB, RT, Safety, nose tackle, they turn it over 4 times and we still barely beat them. Not a great game IMO and not confidence inspiring for a run in the playoffs. We look like a one-and-done.
  20. I would have swore City of God was a 90's movie. Good catch.
  21. And just like that, as soon as I post, I read an article where Tesla is extending discounts to the crappy models (3 and Y) and the stock is down another 9% in response: https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/tesla-offers-discount-some-car-models-us-canada-2022-12-22/
  22. Much like with Bitcoin, I can sit outside of the cultdom and still try and game out how to make money on this. And much like with Bitcoin, I do think TSLA will sell off to a point where it makes sense to buy it and realize a profit. The literal million dollar question is: at what price? I've been contemplating this for weeks and gotten nowhere. That said, the truly bizarre thing to me was Tesla being a status symbol the last few years. Most of them are not attractive and at the entry level model they aren't even hard to acquire. I think the base price is the same as a base price with like a bare bones Acura or a slightly modified Honda Accord. A model 3 is not signaling to anyone you have any sort of wealth and it certainly doesn't symbolize style as they are ugly, so I never understood how people thought how owning a Model 3 was a compelling event. I think with legacy car manufacturers figuring out the EV game (and from what I understand Elon is owed a debt of gratitude for that, if you believe his making his code/IP open source to others was helpful and if you think EV provides a more sustainable future), the Tesla products on the low end at least, are even less attractive. A guy in my neighborhood got his F-150 Lightning a couple months ago-- now THAT is an impressive and attractive vehicle. Also sucks because the price is up 40% from when I got on the list to get one two years ago.
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