Australian Open Starts

http://www.australianopen.com/en_AU/players/cmatch/atpf324.html

Roger Federer, a man who truly epitomizes sportsmanship, class, and style is looking to tie Pete Sampras' record of 14 grand slam championships.  I wish him well.  Roger is my favorite athlete of all time and many aspects of his game can be used as analogies for real-life situations.  The sport of tennis is unique to play since it requires tremendous coordination, condition, and most of all, complete control over one's emotions.  Adding that there are no team members to rely upon makes the disciplined mind even more important.  Experience in these situations can keep one calm when a boss or client is putting the pressure on.  It can help one maintain focus when work goes until 3am... and the list goes on.  This is one of the few times of the year that I wish I had cable (the other 3 are Wimbledon, the French Open and the US Open).  I've never had an experience watching sports that was quite as intense of set 5 in last year's Wimbledon when Nadal triumphed over Roger.  Perhaps one of the best memories of my life was being able to see him play live in Miami a couple years ago.

I think heroes are important so long as you try to emulate the best qualities the each has.  They give us something almost unreal to look up to yet they are also real humans, thus proving that seemingly impossible things can be accomplished.  Something to work towards, I suppose.

Go Roger!

Hope

http://obamiconme.pastemagazine.com/

Plane Crashes into Hudson River - Everyone Survives

http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSTRE50E8AI20090116

Plane crashes, but... everyone LIVES!  Goes to show you that even if you do not have any engines, you can still land safely.  The Wall Street Journal had an article describing how this is possible.  It was a water landing in the Hudson River.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123205611103787217.html

Props to that pilot.

The most exciting article I've read in a while

http://edge.networkworld.com/news/2009/010809-palm-pre-webos-debut.html?page=1

The Consumer Electronics Show is taking place now in Las Vegas.  It is the yearly drool conference for the world's geeks which is why it excites me.  Anyway, when the first year of my Verizon phone contract is up, I will be looking to upgrade to a smartphone.  I've been waiting for a phone that includes certain things that I care about such as easy syncing, USB, removable memory, good battery life, bluetooth, wifi among other things.  So far, the the first G1 phone by HTC that carries google's Android operating system seems to fit the bill, though reports say that the battery won't even get you through one day.  At CES, the fledgeling company, Palm, introduced a new smart phone that is a serious contender.  You can read an article about it at the above link.

Why not the iPhone?  Well, it's just too trendy and will be soon pushed back to obscurity because the OS is not developer friendly - aka - Apple made it difficult for computer programmers to write their own programs for the iPhone.  Plus, the keyboard sucks.  With Android and Palm's new OS, the OS is completely open meaning the possibilities are literally endless.  This next year will prove to be the most exciting year for phones.  I can't wait.

Now, if only I knew java, html, css....

Chicago public schools spend $67,000 on cappuccino machines

http://www.suntimes.com/news/education/1365268,CST-NWS-inspect07.article

I wonder how many people will get fired for this.  Let me make a prediction....

If this happened in a privately run organization the number of people fired or severely reprimanded would  = everyone involved.
Since this happened in the public sector, the number of people fired will = 0.

This goes to show you again that incentives matter.  When you are spending someone else's money, who cares?  It's such a shame that this is how our money is spent.  I mean, come on folks, at least at the Federal level, we can probably cut our costs by 75% and run things more efficiently.  Unfortunately, there is just no incentive to do it.  I would have to say, then, that tax fraud is probably one of the most honorable crimes one can commit.  It certainly is much more helpful to society than paying taxes.

So where does your Federal tax money go?  I advise you to look at the Citizens Against Government Waste website.
http://www.cagw.org/site/PageServer

German Billionaire commits suicide after losses

Whatever happened to a bottle of booze and a shotgun - ?  Train tracks???  Come on!!  Financiers are supposed to use the classic forms of investment stress related suicide.

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/07/business/worldbusiness/07merckle.html?ref=business