Wednesday, April 28, 2010

HPalmCompaq

HP acquires Palm. It isn't suprising that Palm got acquired, what is surprising (to me anyway) was that it was HP. Everyone else was mentioned at one point.

That puts both U.S. PC makers - Dell and HP - into the cellphone market. Add Smartphone giants Apple and RIM, plus Microsoft's and Google's recent foray into cellphones, then include struggling Motorola, and we have a nice little cellphone industry located right here in North America.

Of course none of the manufacturing is done here - it's all overseas.

Friday, April 23, 2010

Rocky (Sales) Relationship Letter

Dear Joe,

I wanted to share with you my feelings about our relationship.

I feel I really put myself out there for you, wondering about your needs, concerned about how you are doing.  I think about you a lot, and believe I have much to offer you, but my emails go unanswered my phone calls ignored.

I don't hear from for months, writing you off for good, and then you ask me out of the blue to come see you.  And then when I'm standing there in front of you, you have the nerve to blame ME that the relationship is rocky, that it is somehow my fault that we aren't moving forward together.

It's only when you have "urgent needs" and a deadline that you suddenly find me interesting. But when your needs go away I know your interest will too.  I'm a grown up, Joe, I've seen this before.

I want you to know that I really want us to work.  But it has to be a two-way street.  You can't just discard me then suddenly call when you find you need me.

I'm here for you, Joe, but only to a point.  There are others out there - your competitors - who value what I have.   They want me and treat me with respect.  And if you can't do that, then maybe it's time we should part ways.

Please think about this.  Take some time, and if you feel that you want to work on this, develop a real relationship, you have my number.

Sincerely,
Your Sales Guy

Thursday, April 22, 2010

Come in here, dear boy, have a cigar...

Fact: The use of Prozac has risen in direct proportion to the decline in tobacco use.

Monday, April 19, 2010

You Think Man Can Control The Environment?

I know a dozen people hit by the volcano eruption, including one guy from my company. Right now it looks like jet travel will be slowly put back into place over the next week, but the affect from eruption will be felt logistically for weeks, economically for months.

It’s just another example of how little control man can put over nature. Any attempt to control it is an illusion and it’s one of the fallacies of the "global warming" crowd (besides the data being total bullshit). The fact is that there is not some ideal world temperature can be controlled by man; there is no magic thermostat than can be achieved by just controlling enough people and their daily lives.

The world will do what it is going to do. Despite there being billions of people, millions of machines and hundreds of thousands of cities, it has no affect over nature, and ultimately man has no control over the environment. Earthquakes, volcanoes, weather, it doesn't matter. The name of the game is to adapt to the environment, not to control it.

In the end the earth will disappear, swallowed up in a few billion years when the sun turns into a red giant. So the next thing you know the global warming crowd will try to force measures into place to delay or eliminate that too. It won't do anything, but it makes them feel better.