Sicilia

EuroRoss has taken a bit of a backseat lately, don't get your panties all in a bunch I'm just cruising around Sicily with understandably limited internet access and even more limted time. Take a look at this pic from Taormina and tell me Sicily isn't the place to be (at least until the hockey season starts that is! ;-)



Ciao, see you next week! :-)

Deseronto Paris

It's true what they say. Despite it being one of the largest cities in the world as well as the #1 tourist destination on the planet, Pairs is deserted in August...



My favorite bakery, closed for the past month on vacation (re-opens Monday).
New trandy watering hole, closed at 1am on Friday night (usually open until dawn).
Old watering hole, open... but with only a single waiter and no other customers.

At least the Subway shouldn't be a nightmare tomorrow morning... who am I kinding, of course it will! ;-)

Stuttgart Savy

Stuttgart is like a second home to me, so it's always great when I'm able to experience something new in the city, even if it was at 6am in the morning!:



Of course hitting some of the city's staples for a good time is also a necessary vice! ;-)

Earth, Wind, Fire, Water

Rolling waves under a western sunset? Actually the sun going down on another day over clouds at 35,000 feet...

Start It Up NHL!

Another great season of NHL/OHL hockey is about to get underway, this time I'll be somewhere a little colder than the tropical restaurant watching the games :-)



...but in defence,you certainly couldn't beat the rays! :-)

Women Have Secrets Too

11 Secrets women will never tell you. That's all and good, but the list misses the other 989 secrets ;-)

"The Secret" - Rodin Museum (1909)

Bayern Tears

When Bayern Munich flexes their financial muscle as the powerhouse of the Bundesliga to steal away great players and talent from other clubs there's no problem, but when international clubs try to do it to Bayern they cry and go running to mommy:

"Bayern Munich warned Manchester United on Tuesday to stop trying to
recruit England midfielder Owen Hargreaves or it will complain to FIFA"

Cry babies.

[Using your best Arnold Schwarzenegger voice] Oooo, my name is Kahn, don't even look at me, I'm a crybaby! ;-)

OH NO!

Am I having a nightmare?!?!? The fattest man in the history of the bundesliga and incidently also the worst teamate, most selffish ball hog and freeloading slob is flirting with a return to the Bundesliga... with my team VFB Stuttgart!!!

Please wake up, please wake up, please wake up... somebody pinch me quick! (preferrably someone female and cute ;-)



Yes, this picture is upside down because the posibility of having the fat man on our team (no matter how much suffering we are sure to experience this season) definatly deserves 2 thumbs down! ;-)

Please wake up, please wake up, please wake up...

Waiting

Forgive, sounds good.
Forget, I'm not sure I could.
They say time heals everything,
But I'm still waiting...

My First Special Guest Blog

I've got a friend who's a writer and a cop. She works for the CSU division - CSI for you TV viewers. She's been working the graveyard (bad joke in that) shift and sending me the occasional email about her night at work when she gets home in the morning. It's interesting, sometimes gruesome, sometimes funny, sometimes sick-funny stuff. She's given me permission to occasionally use some of her emails here if I want.

I want. I'm going to put them here verbatim. Keep in mind that my friend is a very careful, good, polished writer, but when she sends me these emails it is after a long, hard overnight shift at work. Here's the first one, from yesterday:


Nobility & Nitwits
It was a busy night. We had 5 calls last night, four deaths and one aggravated sexual assault suspect. I had no sooner arrived at the office than the phone rang and we were rolling out on a suicide. This was a stark contrast to the idiot from last week who shot himself after an argument with his wife. Last night's call was about dignity. The gentleman was a 74 year old cancer patient who had just signed up for hospice help. He was on morphine and had asked his wife when he would get his next treatment. She told him that it would be 15 minutes and she went back to clipping coupons. Then she heard the shot. I guess he was tired of waiting.

When we arrived the first thing I noticed was that except for the gaping hole in his head, our complainant was immaculate. There was no nursing home smell, and the house spoke of a lifetime of care. The walls bore evidence of better days, and I couldn't help but note the proud smiles that gazed down at me from old photographs. Yet it was the single item on his dresser that said the most. Dated August 8, of this year, a card was propped open so that our old gentlemen could still read it. Happy Anniversary, 50 years. The oxygen tank stood like silent sentry beside the bed, a necessary, but unwelcome visitor. A partially filled urine container whispered a reminder of the cruel injustices that come with aging. His room told a story, but a bit of gentle probing yielded even more.

I offered to call someone for his wife, but she said that even though she had a daughter, she didn't want her to see him like this, and so she patiently waited until we were through. The bullet blew a gigantic hole through his fragile temple and went out the back to lodge in the pillow behind him. The blood spray on his hand left little doubt that he had fired the gun he still clutched.

Although hidden in the dark, on a trip back through his front yard for my camera, I discovered three of the largest lemon trees I had ever seen. Lemons as large as grapefruits dragged against the branches. Later, a talk with his wife revealed that our gentleman had smuggled the seeds for these trees back from a trip to Mexico. She told me the story, and then grimaced and begged forgiveness when she realized that she'd just spilled the beans, or in this case, the lemons, to the police. Despite the somber circumstances, I had to laugh at her. This earned me a smile.

Every time I walk into someone's home, it speaks for them. This home spoke of a life well lived, with love, care, and dignity.


My next call was to the jail to process a suspect in a high profile aggravated sexual assault case. We had to take DNA cheek swabs and hair samples. This is where your suspect stands naked on a sheet of white butcher paper and you inform him that either he can pluck the samples or you will. This is more effective if you're holding a pair of pliers. The samples must be taken from 5 different spots on the scalp and groin. Lovely mental picture....... And this guy was a real winner. Fortunately, no one had bothered to tell him that he was staring at a life sentence, so he wasn't too much of a problem. Just nasty, and stupid. A class A nitwit...... such a stark contrast from our first call. I wonder what his home looks like.

Celeb Birds

I love it when celebs lash out at the poperotzi. Here Michelle Williams (Dawson's Creek) and Heath Ledger (multiple chick-flicks) get a little creative in their aggression. Either that or they know that their lively-hood relies on their images and stardom which is at least in part fed by these photo-stalkers. Hilarious stuff:

Wedding Time

I'm soon off to the first of three wedding's of the summer, hopefully this isn't how some of the grooms will be getting to the alter ;-)



I'm getting old however, whereas for the past five years there's been 3-6 weddings to go to per season it's now starting to decline and be replaced by 3-4 baby annoucements... times flying ;-)

Weight On My Shoulders

Sometimes it feels like I'm pulling more than my share of the weight around here ;-)



So much to do, so little tiem...

Nothing, Nil, Nada

There is nothing, nil, nada to say right now. It's time to just live it out and write about it later. Do and be done... living with no regrets. Sometimes I don't believe myself the life I am able to live with the travel and experiences I'm able to hoard.

I'll catch up with you all shortly... as always, first beer on me :-)

Home Down Under

The view from my future home for one and a half months next March/April in Sydney and again the year after that more permanently in Melbourne, Australia:



Sweet! Thanks for the pics Al!

Guns and More Guns

Yesterday I went to the Glendale Gun Show. I am not what anyone would call a "gun nut." I don't own any guns, although there was a time when I did. But, I don't have any tattoos either and sometimes I go to tattoo shows. Then again, I find some tattoos kind of sexy. There is nothing sexy about guns. People who think there is, well, they scare me.

There were some scary people at the Glendale Gun Show. But mostly there were a lot of misguided regular folk like my kindly neighbors. The kind of people who think that if they have a gun in their house, they are going to be safer. They think this in defiance of every single statistic that shows they are way more likely to shoot a fellow family member, or the meter reader, or the UPS guy than they are to actually blow away a bad guy trying to break in and do them any harm.

There is that famous slogan: "When guns are banned, only criminals will have guns." It sounds okay at first, but the fact is that criminals kill and wound a whole lot more innocent people with their guns than the other way around. And "innocent" people kill and wound a whole lot more other innocent people with their guns than they do criminals.

I'm sorry, but people without a very specific reason to, and the training to back it up - like, for instance, "a well regulated Militia", as stipulated in the Second Amendment to the Constitution - should not be allowed to own guns. In most "civilized" nations, they aren't. There would be a whole lot fewer dead spouses, children, parents, meter readers and UPS dudes if there were fewer guns in the hands of the public. Cops, just trying to do their job, would be safer. This is particularly true of handguns.

Okay, so in a rural area let people own rifles - not, however, assault rifles. They might need to take out a marauding bear or something, or even fell a buck to fill the freezer with venison. (There oughta be a law though that makes them eat what they kill.)

But pistols just plain make it too plain easy to kill the wrong person. They should be banned for possession by the general public. The ones that are already out there ought to be confiscated.

There was a target for sale at the gun show.


If I'm ever the hostage in this situation, I'm going to feel a whole lot better about it if there's a highly trained cop with a gun trained on the bad guy, than my sweet, well-intentioned, shaky-handed but well-armed neighbors.

As a matter of fact, I worry about where my neighbor's bullets are going to end up if they ever wake up in the middle of the night scared and decide to start shooting. Luckily my bedroom is at the opposite end of my house from theirs. I'm hoping the walls in between will prevent any mistakes.

Most gunshows also have a lot of other stuff for sale. Russian nesting dolls, for some inexplicable reason, seem to be popular; as are a great many little geegaws and doodads. My friend who went with me bought a telescoping, stainless steel dentist's mirror. The guy who sold it to him for two bucks cautioned him, with a wink, to not use it for the purpose of peeking up women's skirts.

There was a table selling an astounding array of right wing bumperstickers. Those people do seem to be afraid of an awful lot of different things. And for "Christians" they don't seem very charitable toward anyone who isn't white, straight, christian and American. It was horrifying to see how many of the bumperstickers longed for the "good old days" of the Confederacy. There were black people in attendance. Some of them were buying guns. Some of them were probably christians. Wonder what they made of that? I was pleased to see that, at least in the time I was there, no one seemed to be buying any of the bumperstickers.

There was some good stuff too. I bought several different types of jerky. I imagine the elk jerky was the product of a hunter with a gun. I don't suppose the beef jerky was. I also bought, I couldn't resist, "The Official Axis of Evil Currency Collection." It was a bargain at twelve bucks. (It came with a bonus Taliban-era Afghani and a current Iraqi Dinar, but they aren't so impressive looking.) Here it is:



SILENT? GUNS
So now the guns in Lebanon are supposedly silent. What's been accomplished?
1. The stablilizing, relatively peaceful, increasingly democratic country of Lebanon has been pulverized yet again and set back many years in its development.
2. The democratic, independent government of Lebanon has been severely weakened.
3. Hezbollah has been made to look heroic to people all over the Muslim world and has been strengthened politically in Lebanon.
4. Syria, which had mostly been booted out of Lebanon, has probably regained a great deal of influence.
5. Iran, through Hezbollah, has probably gained more influence in Lebanon and more allies throughout the Middle East.
6. A largely peace loving population that was increasingly showing signs of a willingness to live and let live with Israel has been radicalized. (Having your neighborhood flattened and your children killed will do that to you.)
7. Well over a thousand Lebanese - more than 90 percent of them non-combatants, the majority of them children - have been killed; and over a hundred Israelis.
8. The kidnapped Israeli soldiers haven't been returned. Even if they had, was all the carnage worth it?
9. Gaza has also been pulverized - although that doesn't seem to be getting much attention. That's strengthened the radicals in Hamas and undermined the moderates in the Palestinian authority.
10. Israel is less, not more, secure than it was before because it is now surrounded by people who are even more pissed off and determined to destroy it than they were before, and they're living in less stable places with governments that are less able to function diplomatically or control militant groups within their borders.

What is there to be said about Israel? Can anyone say: Their own worst enemy. (And, of course, the U.S. is happy to assist in Israel's self-destructive actions and policies.)

Chillin'

Gotta love summer - BBQ, beer and babes :-)

Your Kiss

You don't have to be rich,
To be my girl.
You don't have to be cool,
To rule my world.
Ain't no particular sign I'm more compatible with,
I just want your extra time, and your...

Kiss

Days Gone By

Another day gone by in the city...

Adverlaughing

Sometimes the marketing guys get it right and inform customers on their product or service while getting a laugh or two out of us:

Movies, Movies, Movies

After almost a year of crappy movie releases that I wasn't interested in seeing my standards have been sufficiently lowered to the point where there are now 3 movies I really want to see:

Token Chick Flick - "The Last Kiss"

Looks like this is the unwritten sequel to Garden State. Garden State is one of the best movies of all time.



Token Mindless Flick - "Talladega Nights"

Yes this is a retarted movie. Why do I want to even see it? Four words: Beer and Will Ferrall.



Token Intelli-Flick - "An Inconvenient Truth"

Finally something for the mind, ok I've seen it already, but it wacks your brain into awareness.



I lied, here's two great movies I saw this past year - "First Decent" and "Over The Hedge", go check em out!

Workplace Evals

Matt McAlister has been working at Yahoo! for a year now and breaks down the positives and negatives of working there as he sees it. Having recently started just 8 months ago myself I started comparing and thinking of my own +/- 's. And without further ado here's my post-it note sized comparison list (it has only been 8 months after all ;-)

Positives:

Management - I've replaced the first 6 on the list with "management" since it rocks hardcore in my group/department/division. Best boss ever, back you up to the wall and provides all the resources needed to succeed. #1 Strength by a country mile.

Great Work Environment - Great people, very understanding, terrific... now if it was only located in Stuttgart, Ottawa, Melbourne, Nice or Rotterdam we'd have a winner ;-) There is however a Tim Horton's just downstairs, bonus!



Position - I've added this one to the list as well. With any job it's SO important to have a good fit between the individual and the position (job requirements/responsibilities, skills, learning, etc.). I've been lucky that I couldn't have asked for a better fit, what they need is what I've got education, experience and passion in and the integration with my studies and learning areas is a great fit. Makes all the effort in the application process, decision mulling and ultimate relocation all worth while.

Travel - Lots of flexibility here, it's a job positive but mostly because #1 on the list makes it possible. Great co-workers, terrific boss, constant learning and travel, 4 of the 6 keys for a happy Ross - hockey and the last negative listed below being the other two ;-) ...although they tell me Hamilton's in the running for an NHL team soon... YEAH RIGHT!

Now on to the...

Negatives:

Control - Using Matt's words: "There are way too many people “owning” things and not enough people contributing their expertise in the places where it’s needed most" doing things. In fact the "owners" do a great job of suppressing the "doers".

Innovation Constipation - More like innovation aversion for our client groups within the organisation, although I will say that our department's on this like white on rice.

Isolation - With regards to our group being spread out over 2 floors and also not being near our client departments. Errr!

Product Duplication - Not that I know of, rather we have responsibility overlaps causing problems. There are still 3 groups that I can't tell the responsibility difference between in our division, it's not just me, I ask others that have been here for years and they can't tell me the difference either!

Analysis Paralysis - This is a HUGE problem. Don't even get me started on the whole "don't jump to solutions, that's our job, just give us the analysis" bullshit. Combined with control above it forms a deadly duo requiring a daily war-like effort to overcome. I guess that comes with the territory when you work within government :-(

Where are all the women at? - Amen to that brother. Amen. ;-)

Overall the positives massively outweigh the negatives (although there's always room for improvement!) and I'm lucky beyond belief (at least for now) to be where I am. I can only hope that my other colleagues can say the same...

Get Your Digs

Looks like I'm going to be on national TV soon, today while humping back to work after lunch I nearly ran over the tv crew for a small late-night Canadian television show called "JR Digs". Discounting the fact that this show is borderline cable access, it's actually not a bad show. Basically JR goes around making fun of himself and others... mostly others, and that's the show. Yes there's a reason it's on at 2am in the morning ;-)

Anyways, on my way back home after work there they were again just inches from my appartment complex tormenting some half-baked, fully-loaded bum. You'll notice a stylish handsome man walking in the background... that would be me ;-) Please ignor the $2.99 Wal-Mart shades I happen to be sporting... my Oaks are... um... in the shop? ;-)



I'd wait to post and tell you the day I'm actually on, but I most likely won't be watching... :-)

Reporting Inconsistancies

So which is it Fox? Talk about sitting on the fence! ;-)

Damn You Real Player

Fuck, I had to install Real Player on my machine to run a file today and the frigging thing is so annoying I am reaffirmed that I should have listened to myself in my past decision to never load that crap on my machine ever again. This pic says it all:



Grumpy Monday's... actually it's a Tuesday-Monday ;-)

Huh?!?

A totally useless post... I guess "I'm talking" ;-)

The Sunday-Monday Sites

Today is a Sunday-Monday. Because today is a holiday and it's a long weekend, Sunday night becomes like a second Saturday night and Monday becomes like... well it's like a Sunday-Monday. Hence the Sunday-Monday links:

Greatest old video game ever - Oregon Trail, an now you can play it online.

Another example of a customer service nightmare.

A good look at market share analysis.

Atheist quotes.

Crazy online business ideas that worked.

And finally a great site that's got lots of food for thought. The Canary Project takes "before and after" pics of landscapes to shockingly show the effects of global warming. After seeing the effects of just a few locations it really hits you.



That reminds me, if you haven't seen "An Inconvenient Truth", the documentary of Al Gore's presentation tour on the impact of CO2 emmissions on global warming and the damaging results of that, then go and see it now... nothing you probably haven't heard about before, but the presentation is put all together in a very interesting and thought provoking format.

We need our landscapes, forests and beaches people!! ;-)

Vista-Ready?

Putting aside the fact that Microsoft still hasn't even released minimum requirements needed to run the new Vista "glass" interface, and that they've pushed Vista's ship date a couple times (rumoured to be doing it again soon), the thing I'm most looking forward to is the release of some wise-guy photo for Vista like this (take a look at the sign):

Hilarious! :-)

Secrets

I've got a secret, I cannot say,
Blame all the movement to give it away.
You've got somethin, I understand,
Holding it tightly, caught on command.

Leap of faith, do you doubt?
Cut you in, I just cut you out...

Whatever you do,
Don't tell anyone.
Whatever you do,
Don't tell anyone...

Look for reflections, in your face,
Canine devotion, time can't erase.
Out on the corner, locked in your room,
I never believe them and I never assume.
Still can't believe, there is a lie,
Promise is promise, an eye for an eye.
We've got something to reveal,
No one can know how we feel.

Whatever you do,
Don't tell anyone.
Whatever you do,
Don't tell anyone...

I think you already know,
How far I'd go not to say.
You know the art isn't gone,
And I'm taking my song to the grave.

- Queens of the Stone Age

Change

When you lose something you wanted more than anything else in the world you sometimes find a person inside yourself that had been waiting to emerge... all... those... years.

Rack It In

So I figured I'd check out my local pub where I regularly catch the game since I hadn't been back since leaving for World Cup in Germany (summer's a slow pub scene with no hockey/soccer/football having started yet). As I'm sitting there, minding my own business, enjoying the 2-0 Breman smackdown on Bayern for the Liga Cup, the waitress and bartender start smiling when I asked for the bill. Weird.

With the bill comes a closed envelope, weird. I ask them what's up and they just shake there heads with a sly smile on their faces. The envelope... filled with cash! You betcha, I won the World Cup pool!

Having totally forgotten that I had even entered ($5 and I played it one day before the World Cup started and before leaving for Germany). Four hundred bones, BAM!

PS> It actually ended up costing me about $500, $100 for the round for the bar and $800 for the all-inclusive flight/hotel/food/booze weekend to the Florida keys I bought with the winnings... I guess I'll just have to win this years NFL pool to cover the "loses" ;-)

Hockey Fists of Fury

The biggest fight in international hockey history. If I'm not mistaken I believe that both teams never actually played that game and were both disqualified from the tournament (an even bigger deal considering Canada/Russia typically went 1-2 in the standings as the best two hockey nations in the world).

Questions Galore

Got a question that needs attending to? Let the Yahoo! Answers community resond :-)



Curious little monkey question tails :-)

The Fallacy of "Corporate" Taxes and What That Has to Do With Campaign Finance Reform

On paper, taxing corporate profits sounds like a good idea. We, individuals, get taxed on our income, why shouldn't companies pay tax on their's? The problem is that in the real world the corporate profits tax is just another sneaky way of taxing us - you and me.

Who do you think pays corporate taxes? We all do. Like every other cost of doing business they are simply factored into the prices that companies charge for their goods and services. And, thanks to simple mathematics, we pay corporate taxes - on behalf of companies - at a higher rate than the companies are charged.

Here's how it works: Acme Widgets makes a pretty good premium DooDad. It costs them one thousand dollars to make, distribute and sell the gizmo. Included in that cost is the physical cost of the materials, worker's salaries, rent, utilities, advertising, insurance, delivery, etc. - and taxes. You don't think they're going to leave out taxes as part of the cost of making their premium DooDad do you? Now Acme's management has decided it wants to make ten percent profit on its premium DooDad, so they charge $1,100 for it.

But now someone comes along and thinks it's a good idea to raise Acme's taxes to pay for something worthwhile. And the great thing is that they'd be raising taxes on a company, not on voters like you and me. So they raise the corporate profit tax rate, say, 0.2 percent. What that means is that Acme now has to pay twenty cents more (0.2% of its $100 profit) to make and sell its premium DooDad. If it wants to maintain its ten percent profit per DooDad, it has to raise the price by 0.22 percent.

But wait, it doesn't stop there. Acme makes its premium DooDad out of aluminium, plastic, oyster shells and polyester thread. It buys the machinery it uses from eight other companies. It buys packaging materials from three different companies. It ships via two different trucking companies and one airline. It pays rent to a company. It uses a law firm and an accounting firm. All of those companies are now paying twenty cents more for each hundred bucks of profit. If they all want to make ten percent - which is not an unreasonable profit margin - they've all got to raise their prices to Acme.

And guess what? Acme passes all those price hikes along to its customers. By the time the smoke clears it is now costing Acme $1,020 to make its DooDads and to maintain its ten percent profit margin it has raised the price to $1,122 per DooDad - a price rise of 0.22 percent to the consumer, caused by a tax hike of 0.2 percent to the company.

Acme's biggest customer buys 10,000 DooDads a year, so that raises their cost of doing business $220,000 per year. What it really raises is your cost of buying from them.

What This Has to Do With Campaign Finance Reform
Here in California there is a proposition (#89) on the November election ballot. It is yet another attempt at campaign finance reform. I'm all for campaign finance reform. I think it's one of the most vital issues in any democracy - especially ours. I'm even willing to pay a little more in taxes to pay for the reforms.

One of the big selling points of the bill is that it will finance its reforms by a 0.2 percent increase in corporate taxes. The supporters of the bill are trying to make voters believe it won't cost them anything because companies are going to pay for it, not them. That's utter bullshit. (See above.)

I support much of what the bill is trying to do and even some of how it's trying to do it. I'll probably vote in favor of it. But I'd appreciate some honesty from time to time. I know there's no free lunch. I can take it. If you want me to help pay for something worthwhile, just ask. Don't try to disguise it as something else.

UEFA HO's

Spineless moneygrubbing bastards. Sports is suffering and the leagues and governing bodies don't even know it yet. When the integrity of the game is called into question there's no differentiation between "sports" and "theatre".

When will leagues (I'm looking at you Major League Baseball - steroids, German Bundesliga Soccer - referee scandals, Italian League Soccer - bribeing officials, cycling - doped up riders, All Soccer - diving, etc. etc. etc...) wake up and realize they're gambling with the future of their sport!?!?

UEFA laid down to the jack today with the announcement that Milan will be allowed to play. A poor and utterly obvious retarded technicality as an excuse is no justification. UEFA you suck today.

Happy Times With Borat

Seems like a little humour needs a go around, and while the movie isn't out yet you can start to get your 'Borat' fix on by hitting the website. Low brow laughs to be sure, but worth a giggle or two:



I love this guy, his Ali-G charater and show are also hilarious.

Dreams

I believe that dreams can come true...



(pic via Zooomr Hits)