Last night, I had dinner with several venture capitalist guys who are all a heck of a lot smarter on the financial markets situation and the proposed bailouts than I am. Here was the crux of the conversation:
1) The largest issue with the banking crisis is FAS 157 (FASB is the Financial Accounting Standards Board and FAS is Financial Accounting Standard). FASB is the organization that recommends and implements financial accounting standards for all businesses is the US and is generally driving many international accounting principles. They start with a recommendation and the allow for discussion on the recommendation, then in most cases the recommendation becomes a regulation. Once the recommendation becomes a regulation, the regulation becomes part of GAAP (Generally Accepted Accounting Principles) and most companies implement immediately. More on FAS157 below.
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Whenever I describe my political views, I generally state: “I am socially liberal, financially conservative”. This means I generally vote for conservative Democrats and Liberal Republicans. I am not into extremes. One of the main reasons I tend to lean Republican is: fiscally the Republican Platform makes more sense to me. As a businessman and an individual, I have studied the pros and cons of a free market society and I believe in most cases, the free market is the best way to insure growth and prosperity for ALL citizens.
Today I am scratching my head wondering how the fiscally and socially conservative Republican Party has seemingly overnight turned into a socialistic society. Those on the Democratic side of the street claim the bailouts being proposed and executed (a good word for it) is simply cronyism, which is completely absurd. I believe the real issue is the current Republican Government (good old GWB) is attempting to stabilize the economy in a fairly transparent effort to bolster support for John McCain. First and foremost, I do not believe McCain needs that sort of help, secondly, IT IS STUPID, DESTRUCTIVE, AND EXACTLY WHAT WE DO NOT NEED!
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I am trying to keep up with all of the idiotic partisian crap flying around the 2008 Presidential Campaign, and I certainly expect most of the mainstream press to slant their stories to favor the Democrats (in fairness, I expect Fox to slant things a little to the Republican side of the house). Today I came across a Time-Blog.com posting from Karen Tumulty.
John McCain’s campaign has begun lambasting Barrack Obama over his choice of advisers, in the ad Tumulty references, they are going after Frank Raines (Former Fannie Mae chief). In Tumulty’s “report”, Tumulty alleges that the McCain ad is displaying ” Sinister images of two black men, followed by one of a vulnerable-looking elderly white woman.”
Tumulty uses the image of a smiling Barrack Obama and a somewhat sinister picture of Raines as evidence that the McCains ad “Plays the race card”. What a bunch of political bullsh*t. Go figure that Time-Blog.com is “In partnership with CNN”. I am more balanced in my own made up blog than this idiot is.
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I have read MANY advertisements for Cyberpowerpc.com, though I have never paid much attention to them. I generally buy high-end Dell PC’s, or I build my own. I read MaximumPC magazine religously and I was surprised to see the high marks they gave the CyberPower Gamer Ultimate SLI QUAD. I currently have an aging home built dual core E6700 oc’d to 3.06Ghz with an NVidia 8800Ultra. One of the biggest issues I run into is drive performance, since I am running dual 400GB drives in a RAID-1 configuration. My ASUS mobo basically sucks and the RAID performance really sucks. I am going to turn this box into my new sever at home.
Back to my CyberpowerPC.com story. I spent the last few weeks pricing out rigs and looking at many PC manufactures, I also looked at parts to build my own. I came to the conclusion that I could buy a system from CyberpowerPC.com cheaper than I could build one, plus I get VIsta (I already have XP for a new PC if I need it) and some nice freebies. Read more…
My wife is pretty smart. When we were watching Sarah Palin’s acceptance speech, she looked at me and said “She looks just like Tina Fey, Tina should play her on Saturday Night Live”. While Tina does look a little bit like Sarah Palin, I mostly dismissed the idea as interesting if it happens.
This Saturday Night, we were watching SNL, the opening clip was Sarah Palin (Tina Fey) and Hilary Clinton (Amy Poehler). If you have not watched this clip GO HERE now! Let me tell you, Tina Fey was so incredible at playing Sarah Palin, I was not immediately sure it wasn’t Sarah Palin (and I knew it was Tina Fey!!).
So, barring anything other reason to vote Palin (and old what’s his face), it would be for 4 more years of Tina Fey playing Sarah Palin on SNL!
On a side note, everything else in this episode of SNL pretty much sucked as usual. (sigh)
I have really enjoyed my blogging experience to date. I have installed WordPress many times in the past, but someone else set the site up. When my friend Matt built my hockey team website (tnt-hockey.com) with WordPress, I figured it was time to learn how to USE WordPress (You know this if you have been following the site for more than 9 days!).
Today I was chatting with Matt and he was complaining about how Godaddy’s web hosting service kind of sucked for WordPress. Things like ftp uploads did not set permissions correctly on his files and permalink redirects taking 3+ hours to change.
I have a GoDaddy virtual server running CentOS (which effectively is my own Linux server on the Internet). I offered to let Matt use my server for his blog. I did this because he is a friend; it will not cost me anything; he turned me on to WordPress; and he did build a pretty awesome hockey site. Read more…
On June 12th, I received one of MANY emails from Hockey Giant, advertising clearance hockey gear. I ordered a couple of nice Minnesota Wild shirts for $25.98. I decided to pay with PayPal. Now Hockey Giant has a totally screwed up way to pay them via PayPal. You have to place your order with Hockey Giant, receive a Hockey Giant order number, then go to PayPal and initiate a payment to Hockey Giant, inputting the order number into a Payment you make directly from PayPal (Hockey Giants web site does not link directly to PayPal).
Now, I admit, seeing what a crap job Hockey Giant did of integrating to PayPal, I should have pulled out my trusty Visa card. But, I thought, “What could go wrong, it is only $25 dollars and PayPal protects up to $200″. (Boy was I wrong). Read more…
I just finished watching the Tennessee Titans beat the Jaguars in a defensive struggle. However, Titans 3rd year QB Vince Young seemed to be having more of the struggle than anything Jacksonville’s defense did. Young never looked good and without the surprisingly good Chris Johnson, the Titans looked destined to lose this game. Late in the 4th quarter, Young went down with an injured left knee. (Which followed a one play series where Young threw one of the ugliest interceptions I have ever seen).
In comes Kerry Collins, seasoned veteran and sometimes NFL headcase. Collins preceded to march the team down the field for an apparently easy touchdown. Now I am still a Vikings fan, but living in Nashville I follow and pull for the Titans. My questions, is it already time for a quarterback controversy in the Music City?
I say no. Collins is at the point in his career that the bench and selected backup duty is probably his best role. Young is the “future” of the Titans, however, if he does not impress in the first 6-7 games, i truly believe the Titans may go to the free agent market.
The Titans defense looks impressive, but a Vince Young run Titans offense fails to impress thus far.
PS. Go Vikings!