1,474 Mega Pixel photo from inauguration

Too cool! You can play “Where’s Cheney”. Hint: he’s the evil looking one in the wheel chair with the gloved hand and the white cat on his lap.

Inauguration from geosynchronous orbit

Amazing handlebars

The melt down expalined, really…..also, when it will get better

Jim Rogers on CNBC

In 1970, Rogers joined Arnhold & S. Bleichroeder, where he met George Soros. That same year, Rogers and Soros founded the Quantum Fund. During the following 10 years the fund gained 3,365% while the S&P advanced about 47% (963.99/800.36).^[1] It was one of the first truly international funds.

In 1980, Rogers decided to “retire”, and traveled on motorcycle through China. Since then, he has been a guest professor of finance at the Columbia University Graduate School of Business.

Doom & Gloom from Sequoia

The guys who know everything about everything called in all their portfolio CEOs yesterday and told them this.  Amazing stuff given that tech is the only industry that isn’t leveraged to the hilt. Punch line is that even these guys are scared pissless and are hunkering down for a long, long winter. If you haven’t gone through your personal finances and made adjustments, you really should IMO.

click here to see the slides from presentation

New SRAM stuff from Interbike

Republicans are socialists?

Funny how a republican administration can negate the principals of free market economics, create a socialistic bail-out over night and still claim to promote a diminished role for government in our lives?

Is it any wonder the world thinks we’re insane?

clipped from www.minyanville.com Our free-market economy enabled money, credit and resources to be sent to the economic players who needed it. Entrepreneurs could raise money to start new, innovative businesses; researchers could seek out cures for diseases that touch millions of lives, as well as those that afflict just thousands; firms that made enough bad decisions went bankrupt. The effects of these actions, this fundamental ideological shift from capitalism towards socialism, represents a seismic shift in the history of this country. The events of the past week — and what it says about our collective ability to take our lumps, drink our medicine and recognize that the path to the ultimate goal is one littered with hairpin turns and drop away cliffs — will not be lost on future generations.

Canon, a new service standard

We’ve all read the horror stories; bad-tempted service people, insane refund requirements, etc. We quickly spread the word over the net partly to get even with the companies that screw us and partly to help our fellow consumers avoid that same situation we just endured. 

But how often do we take the time to write about a company that quietly goes out of its way to give excellent service or is so forward thinking and logical that their entire systems and procedures are designed to delight the consumer? Not very often unfortunately.

So here’s one.

I’ve been a loyal Canon consumer for 15+ years; i’ve purchased everything from printers to cameras and everything in between. The products have always been top notch in quality and compatibility. But they do wear out and break after years of use and that’s when the service organization either gives us reasons to continue our loyalty or move elsewhere.

So how did Canon react when my camcorder that was over 2 years old developed a nagging case of zoomitis?? 

I’ll tell you but a few details are in order.

First, the problem seemed to be epidemic; a quick google search confirmed that many consumers who had a similar camcorder experienced this problem. 

Second, no recall was every issued nor were any service bulletins published. It was one of those quite problems that plague most CE manufacturers. 

So with that said, i went online and submitted a repair request using a very convenient and logical web system. I then printed out the appropriate forms, threw it in a box with the camcorder and shipped it to Canon fully expecting them to contact me and tell me it would cost $100+ for repair since it was out of warranty. Expecting the worse i was prepared to point out they had a design flaw and even though this product was out of warranty i expected them to stand by their products. If that wasn’t successful i was prepared to drop it as the camcorder had done its duty rather well over the years and i had already purchased a new HD Canon camcorder. 

I then went on vacation. I checked email occasionally and never saw anything from Canon. I figured they had probably sent a letter to my home or worse sent the entire camorder back to me with a note saying “sorry”.

To my very pleasant surprise I found a freshly repaired camcorder sitting in my house at zero cost to me!

So why is this important? 

It’s not that i got something that i shouldn’t have or i got something for free. What i got was respect. Canon basically said to me “even though we don’t have any responsibility to fix this, we’re going to anyway because we beleive this is the best way to build loyalty”. And we’re they ever right in my case.

We’re all individual consumers and have unique ideas and needs when it comes to these types of issues. I hope Canon realizes that there are in fact many of us out here that are legit consumers who simply want to keep buying their products as long as we’re treated fairly. 

All i can say is Canon has my business both now and in the future as long as they keep showing me that they care enough to do the right thing, which in this case was good for me and great for them. 

The “Mojave Experiment”

Too funny, Microsoft. If you can’t sell it to them based on its merits, trick them.

Click here

[smile] 1,2,3,4