For years Google was my primary search engine. If I wanted to find something on the Internet I went to Google first. In the past year, Google has become completely irrelevant. A simple search on a common topic returns utter nonsence. For instance, I was trying to let Google know about my frustration and searched on “contacting google.” All the results were about contact managers and adding contacts. There was nothing in the results about contacting google corporate or support. I tried to refine my search by adding the phrase “customer support”, but this took me further from my goal.

From a business perspective, I can’t figure out where Google is going. They have so many projects that I am left with the impression that they have lotsa money and no focus. Not a good combination in a failing economy.

Maybe Microsoft should pass on buying Yahoo and just stick it out for a few years. My guess is that Google will be available for a song by then. I know Eric Schmidt is better and smarter than me, but as far as I can tell both Sun and Novell eventually went to the toilet, so why not Google too.

Only time will tell.

I am keeping my eyes glued on the Nokia acquisition of Trolltech. I expect good things to come from that relationship.

GM is discussing the prospect of cutting thousands of white color jobs and eliminating more of it’s brands in an effort to stem their financial bleeding. Chief Executive Rick Wagoner has been poo-pooing calls by board members and executives to trim the fat and reduce the redundancy. I personally think that Rick Wagoner is an goofball who couldn’t manage his way out of a paper bag. I wrote Rick two years ago and suggested that he trim the fat and consolidate his car lines before it was too late. Guess he didn’t wan’t to listen to me either.

I’ve been missing in action. Actually, I didn’t really have a lot of motivation or energy to blog. I thought I would provide an update to anyone who cares. Zoie is 12 and 1/2 months old. She is the cutest baby on the earth with my nieces and nephews running a very close second. Alla and I have constant backaches from bending over Zoie and holding her hands while she learns to walk. Zoie is tiny and her hands are not much high than knee level.
It’s amazing, but I just don’t have the energy or drive to get angry about anything. The economy is in the toilet, there is no relief from the fighting in Iraq, and we have a president who is a moron, but it all seems so far away when Zoie is flashing me one of her well rehearsed smiles.

Here are the important things I learned this year:

1. Children are fun. Even when both parents are exhausted and burnt mentally. Raising children is a truly amazing experience.

2. With teenagers, time is your friend. Eventually, they get on with their lives so you can get on with yours.

3. Everyone else’s job always seems easier.

4. Vacations are god’s way of reminding us that we are usually to tired to notice that we are too tired.

5. The more money you put into fixing the car, the more it breaks.

6. People will vehemently defend their irrational and losing position until the evidence is 100% against them. Then they start looking for someone to blame.

7. The same people will continue to believe the above mentioned people they blame if it supports another somewhat related albeit irrational and losing position of their fancy.

8. An intelligent black man will lose his color with each well reasoned argument he makes, whereas an equally intelligent and well reasoned woman will still be a woman.

9. Barack Obama is too inexperienced and John McCain is too old. Both are equally good at flip flopping the issues. Not much of a choice, if you ask me.

10. Anthony Scalia would be considered great judge and superior intellect, if we lived in the Soviet Union and weren’t bothered with such nonsense as habeas corpus.

A few years ago I worked for a Boston based company that has a remote office just outside Portland, Maine. The company had an ongoing rivalry between the Suburban Boston and Maine branches. The Maine employees referred to the ones in Boston as “the city folk” while the Boston referred to the “potato farmers” in Maine. All pleasant name calling aside, the Maine branch was run like a family town grocery store with more focus on country anecdotal experience then sound business judgment. They were very proud of the way they held onto customers in spite of the fact that business was flat or falling in their region.

Alla and I just returned from a very pleasant week with Zoie in coastal Maine. Anecdotal research showed that the tourism business has been in steady decline over the past few years, in spite of increasing travel costs due to high price of gasoline. At the same time, the Cape Cod chamber of commerce is reporting record bookings on the cape. Maybe there is some truth in the potato farmer moniker that the Boston people gave to those from Maine. The only booming businesses we could find in our coastal Maine towns was lobstering with prices driven sky high by the dollars low value. Seems that the rest of the world has developed a taste for Maine lobsters at bargain prices. I hope the dollar continues to stay in their favor, cuz the rest of us local folk have lost our taste for the expensive ugly creatures. It’s good to know that someone is benefitting from the current U.S. foreign policy debacles.

Speaking of lobsters, did you know that Boston has a professional tennis team called the Boston Lobsters? You didn’t? Well … neither did I. Go figure.

I am still around, but life is very busy with a one year old. Hard to believe it, but Zoie will be one this month.

I am still spending a lot of time on the road. Right now I am at Logan Airport waiting for my flight to California. I recently flew USAIR, United, and today I am flying Jetblue. I admit that I don’t know much about the airline industry, but in my humble opinion, Jetblue is going to win out over many other players because the offer a good comfortable seat and entertainment at a fair price. No elite fliers, or upgraded first class passengers to eat up all the $$$ allocated to passenger comfort and safety. We are all equals and are treated as such. Maybe this will change in the future, but I don’t want elite status. I want to be treated reasonably well for a fair price.

I can say this from years of flying experience. I have been gold level on Continental and American and Premier executive on United. Jetblue is a much better experience.

If I get the time, I will update the blog periodically.

We are at home this evening watching the Jack Nicholson and Dianne Keaton movie “Something’s Gotta Give” when the program goes to commercial and Pizza Hut tries to entice us with pre-cut pizza strips served along with three plastic cups of various dipping sauces. The value of this novel idea escapes me completely. Take a marginally flavorful pizza and cut it into tiny strips. Then buy three cups of pre-packaged salad dressing, dump out the dressing, and then fill the empty cups with salty goo of various flavors. Is this suppose to be appetizing? If the pizza is so good, then why do they need dipping sauce? Shouldn’t the pizza already have enough flavor on its own? I know that if I made pizza, and someone tried to dip it in goo for extra flavor, I would be really insulted. I guess the chefs at Pizza Hut have much lower standards. It must come from making pizza that tastes like cardboard.

Anyway, we were unmoved by the pizza commercial and decided to have ice cream instead. I had mine with chocolate dipping sauce

My wife Alla has an obsession with toys and baby products that are manufactured in Europe. From the beginning of her pregnancy, she made it clear to me that we were not going to buy or use products that were manufactured in China. Her mantra has been “Europe good, USA (and China) bad.” To use my words, US companies design and manufacture crap and you can’t trust Chinese manufacturers any further than you can toss them.

I thought she was being a bit extreme until the stories about poison pet food and lead laced toys hit the newspapers. Now she is vindicated and, in my mind, proven to be a goddess. Realistically, US companies produce crappy products and we are only beginning to see how awful they really are.

If you think that the financial issues driving market volatility are a random fluke, you should re-examine the evidence. Our woes are caused by greedy wall street criminals who felt it was acceptable to rip-off uneducated poor people with sub-prime mortgages. These are the same folks to deluge unsophisticated consumers with unsolicited credit card applications and then cry foul when these same customers over-extend themselves. They also make it very easy for criminals to commit credit card fraud and then hike up the interest rates to cover the costs of the resulting bad credit.

I keep reading that America will continue to be a financial driving force in the world and we alone are positioned to take advantage of global opportunities. I may be too uneducated and unsophisticated to catch the subtleties, but is seems to me that if we produce nothing, but crappy products, then eventually our value and standard of living will be driven down by those countries who still strive towards excellence.

We are no longer a country of innovators. We are becoming a country of automatons that worship the likes of Jack Welsh who, along with his minions, are systematically six sigma-ing the creativity and innovation out of American industry. As an example, the CEO of 3M corporation recently decided to nix the six sigma program at his company along with one of Welshes disciples because he realized that 3M’s only asset, their creativity and innovation, was being eroded by American industry’s obsession with cost accounting and commoditization.

if you are the officer of an American corporation and you are obsessed with efficiency and cost cutting at the cost of providing value to your customers, then I recommend that you stop it. Stop your short sighted and myopic practices and start moving your manufacturing and customer support back to the US. Why? Because you products and support suck and I have already stopped buying them. You should listen to me because I am truly a trend setter. And if I am not, then I have the good fortune of being married to one.

Sorry I am not writing more, but it seems that when I am not sleeping I am walking around work in a fog, changing diapers, or soothing a screaming little girl.

More Pictures will follow shortly.