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Look…we all get it. Tiger likes to fool around, and had unlimited opportunity, unlimited funds and an above-average appetite. Well, he’s a product of our time. Porn is a huge industry, as everybody knows. Tiger is a young(er) man. The elephant in the room is the popularity and consumption of porn among enough people to create a multi-billion dollar industry. And porn consumption is really sex consumption. And while millions of people are watching porn all the time – we want to believe that a famous rich athlete has no such appetite? how naive are people?
I noticed that Accenture pulled the tiger photo from their flash photo gallery the other day….I guess his time off will help the situation. I hope for himself and his family it does and he can shamelessly golf again.
After experiencing how well the Genius works on iTunes (it really does) I liked their newest concept of the DJ: the Genius works non-stop spinning tunes from your library. After looking at the DJ’s playlist however, I was left cracking up….must be a real joker working up there in Cupertino.
I mean, really, Rachmaninoff’s “Vocalise” followed by Ashlee Simpson, followed by Handel, etc. This must be a joke….
 Captured from my DJ playlist on my mac
1. Keep a routine: daily, weekly, annual – with goals for each – and stick to them!
2. Keep track of your time for 3 weeks – this will force you to do what you know you should
3. Make a “todo” list and follow it – Rememberthemilk.com is a good way to do this online
4. exercise every day – for 1 hour, mix it up – swim/bike/run
5. don’t surf the web – If you have a “break” in your day, ok. Otherwise, no HuffPost until after dinner
6. work after dinner for 1 hour
7. close your office door when you’re officially working
8. get out of the house once/day at least – plan a lunch, jog, or trip to the gym/store
9. don’t mix home work (bills, projects) with your for-profit work
10. keep a daily timecard – you can do this with Google Calendar
I was thrilled to learn that my ARM kicks in this next year (rates are at “record lows“) and my mortgage payment will be down by like 20%. Our fixed rate of 5.125, which seemed high at the time, is in fact too high and we’re saving funds beginning Jan for the year of 2010. Good News…..
Running with Carles was easier than I thought over the weekend. We did like 15 km and I felt fine the whole time, so I’m slowly getting back in shape, hopefully in time for the Carlsbad Marathon….
Thanksgiving came and went quickly this year. Peter was able to join us, along with Leo and Debbie, and we had a great meal and relaxed time this year…..Cathy already has her Christmas decor coming out – and I snapped a photo of the famous Nutcracker collection for the FB page. It’s so colorful and festive I had to add it….
How about that Tiger (or should se call him “Bear”) news over the holidays? I know we need to respect his privacy, I know. But this story is made (sadly) for our times and is so, well, humorously contradictory. Let’s see, Tiger leaves his home at 2:30 am after Thanksgiving. Apparently he’s the only guy in the country for which a giant turkey dinner is not sleep medication. Out for a spin? Picking up donuts and fruit for breakfast the next day? We’ll never know as he did not make it out of the driveway but rather plowed over a fire hydrant and ran into a tree (sounds like a scene from It’s a wonderful life). Then his supermodel wife emerges with a nine-iron and turns into Wonder Woman to save him from the car by bashing in the rear window. And she either ran down the driveway, or, took a golf cart? she cannot recall. All this happens the week that the Enquirer says he’s been seeing a NYC “Hostess” who apparently was, coincidentally, in the same hotel as Tiger during a recent tournament in Australia? but they actually don’t know each other?? (John “total denial” Edwards has boosted the credibility of the Enquirer )…
Hopefully Monday and December bring focus back to our terrible jobs situation in SD, CA and the nation…but there do seem to be some signs of improvement.
Recently, Mozilla released some alpha versions of a new program – Raindrop – that has the magnificent objective of re-personalizing email and messaging. Aside from the classic objectives of unified messaging, this is an attempt at making the tools we’ve been using for 15 years practical again. I read earlier this year that 90% of all email is now spam.
Even after the spam filter, more like 50% of what gets through is not personal, and the other 50% few are addressed only to me. Like junk mail, most of what we do now is rapid filtering and disposal. Most of us are no longer outraged by email as we once were, but resigned to the permanence of it, and the endless stamping out of it like roaches.
This is a recently started blog, and already, I’ve been sent several posts that are essentially spam that needed to be deleted. They all appeared to be automated. When I made a website for a late friend, Jim Gavuzzi, the “message board” was taken over by a swinger’s club in costa rica. I had to delete it all…like…every other day. At least it was not automated spam
LIke the robber barons of Wall Street, we’d like to seem these people publicly shamed and humiliated as the widespread harm they’ve done has been mind boggling. Safe steps include the obvious: don’t click on links that are the entire body of the email, don’t open spam, don’t reply to spam, get off all mailing lists,etc. If you want to learn more, read Symantec’s state of spam.
Are there people in your life, personal or professional, that insist on speaking on the phone? Oh, they could email you, but they don’t. If they do email you the message is: call me. Are they worried about leaving a paper trail?
Written communication is so easy and quick – forcing one to consider and summarize the key thoughts and messages, if only banal ones, into a coherent form. If there is something to decide, information to be passed along, insights to be shared, it is so preferable to have that summarized and documented if only in a 200 word email, than a rambling phone call. For many that’s the only way they really want to communicate.
People working in sales are really like this, but they have a specific purpose: to get you to do purchase something from them. Whether it’s a long-term large sale, or a quick one, a salesman (I’m not talking retail sales) will try to insist on a face-to-face meeting. If they cannot get that, they will ask for a phone call. If that fails they will, as a last resort, email you. They may also send you snail mail to make an impact that way as well. They understand how important it is to have the personal touch and email has the lowest score in that area. It’s hard to say “no” to a person who has flown accross the country to see you for an hour.
I met somebody on a travel vacation this past summer who has called me a few times. I had not spoken with her for a month or so and I got a facebook message from her to “call her”. I replied “what’s up?” to which she replied “see above” which means “call me”. I REALLY hate game-playing like that, so apparently she does not really want to speak with me. I let her figure that one out.
The fact is that time is our most precious commodity and a phone call can frequently be a waste of time. People with lots of time on their hands seem to prefer phone calls, while others avoid them unless it’s the fastest way to accomplish something. Even those people who call and talk to you about a hundred different topics and complain that they are “swamped” with work have not learned that they habitually squander their most precious resource. One wonders who they call when you finally get them off the phone.
To keep this short, I will mention the classic time-waster-phone-call: the “i’m driving” phone call. Do you have people who call you when they are in traffic, or otherwise on a long commute? The call lasts the length of their drive: they are killing time – your time. Of course if you are talking about something of interest you may be engaged, only to learn that the phone call will be terminated once they reach their destination. Your dialogue with them is of limited importance.
Use time wisely: text first, email second, phone third and meet last.
 A southwest flight taking off on the single runway in downtown San Diego Like a toxic waste dump, San Diegans don’t want a new multi-runway international airport to replace the present location of Lindbergh Field – in their backyard anyway. In There has been a lively debate on the need for a new airport since I’ve been living in San Diego (I moved here with my family in 1970). The argument is – the airport will reach capacity by…Pick one:
1. 2005 (oops…guess not)
2. 2020
3. 2044
4. Never
These are all estimates from paid consultants and groups from different sides of the issue. Presumably the airport authority, a public entity which “owns” the airport and is governed by a 12-member board appointed by the Mayor of San Diego. The board members are a group of mostly longtime San Diegans such as the former mayor of Coronado, city councilman from Carlsbad, retired military leaders, etc. Their mission is to “…plan for and provide air transportation services to the region with safe, effective facilities that exceed our customer expectations. We are committed to operating San Diego’s air transportation gateways in a manner that promotes the region’s prosperity and protects its quality of life ” After a long study, including many reports and analysis from consultants and other, they issued a recommendation to consider joint use of Miramar. There were a wide range of opinions then (as now) on the subject, but it keeps coming back to location (and cost, benefit, military impact, etc). Nobody wants the airport to be in a location near them, but the alternative would be where there are few people, and such areas are too far away. The conclusions of all analysis is that there are strains now, but it will keep getting worse and running out of capacity.
Which begs the question – what is “capacity”? I have a coffee cup sitting next to me here that has a “capacity” of 8 fluid oz. If you try to put 9 oz in it will overflow. There are 18,500 parking spaces at QUALCOMM stadium. If you want to park after it’s filled, you will need to park near a local trolley station and take the trolley to the stadium. But what determines the capacity of the airport? If a 40 year old tries to put on the clothes he/she wore in the their 20s’ they may find they’ve exceeded capacity in the waist or hips. But if you squeeze and hold your breath, you may still fit. I think that’s what were talking about here: gradual weight gain.
San Diego International is the busiest single-runway commercial service airport in the United States, and second in the world after London Gatwick, with approximately 600 departures and arrivals carrying 50,000 passengers each day, and a total of 18.3 million passengers in 2007 (from wikipedia). As San Diego’s population has grown by 50% in the past 25 years (from 2 million to 3 million) there remains a single runway limited capacity airport.
When the issue was debated as a rather toothless ballot measure – Prop A in San Diego in 2006 – it was soundly defeated. That measure would have approved the airport authority to “work toward obtaining 3,000 acres at MCAS Miramar by 2020 for a commercial airpot”. However, what the voters defeated was not a referendum about the need for a new airport – eventually – but the specific location at a San Diego military air field (trivia: prior to being the Marine Corps air station, this was Naval Air station that was the model for the flight school in the Tom Cruise movie – Top Gun)
The the topics of issue appear to be location and location. That is, rather than the funding – which would be the biggest issue if there was agreement on location – nobody wants it near them, and nobody wants it too far away. Let’s face it, if you live anywhere from San Ysidro to Del Mar you’ve got an easy 20 min drive to the airport. If you are a visitor to San Diego you’ve got a 5 min cab ride to downtown.
Ok – you agree that the current airport, due to it’s location, is too small to accomodate a city the size of San Diego. But so what? Ever been to the Santa Barbara airport? it’s small. And Santa Barbra’s population has gone from 300 to 400 thousand over the past 25 years. Cities cannot outgrow their airport, but San Diego appears to be giving it a shot, and some argue the impact wis huge:
“Several economists have placed the negative economic impact at billions of dollars. It is difficult to understand numbers that large. But clearly, the negative impact will affect our economic growth, which in turn will reduce our income and standard of living. In the end, this means fewer high-paying jobs, lower tax revenues for local government and a threat to our quality of life.” (according to Dennis Burks, the retired general manager of SeaWorld San Diego who chairs ASAP 21, and John Chalker, a former Navy fighter pilot who is the managing director of LM Capital Group LLC )
The Airport Authority selected Miramar after looking at civilian sites as far away as Boulevard (seriously? Boulevard? source of the famous “where the hell is Boulevard” bumper sticker? 65 miles from San Diego??) and the Imperial County desert. A board majority concluded the Marine Corps base was the best option to replace Lindbergh Field because of its central location.
Everybody who travels a lot knows that most big cities moved their airports “out of town” years ago. Ever fly into the old Hong Kong airport? the one that was downtown like Lindbergh field? You could literally see people close enough hanging their laundry to see what brand they had. To embark and disembark planes you frequently had to put on a “disposable rain suit” (basically a garbage bag) and walk accross the tarmac since there were so few gates. Now they have a new airport Heathrow to London? 1 hour drive in traffic (but the heathrow express solved that). Inchon airport to Downtown Seoul? JFK to Manhattan? 15 miles. Lindbergh field to downtown San Diego? 1 mile.
Hong Kong also had a single runway airport (as referenced above) that was replaced in 1998. Chek Lap Kok Airport was designed as a replacement for the former Hong Kong International Airport (commonly known as Kai Tak Airport) originally built in 1925. Located in the densely built-up Kowloon City District with a single runway extending into Kowloon Bay, Kai Tak had only limited room for expansion to cope with steadily increasing air traffic. By the 1990s, Kai Tak had become one of the world’s busiest airports – it far exceeded its annual passenger and cargo design capacities, and one out of every three flights met delays, largely due to lack of space for aircraft, gates, and a second runway.[5] In addition, noise mitigation measures restricted nighttime flights, as severe noise pollution (exceeding 105 dB(A) in Kowloon City) was estimated to adversely affect at least 340,000 people.[6][7] (wikipedia)
When the city of Denver had similar airport issues with their former main aiportt – Stapleton International Airport – it too was replaced by the current DIA – one of the busiest airports in the U.S. Estimates that have been done on the impact of more/bigger international flights through a city are huge and San Diego is missing out on those. The impact of a single regular daily flight from Asia on the region was estimated to be $150 Million annually. So why not move lindbergh field?
Back to that chronic “location” issue. Miramar, which is 17 miles from downtown, is already the site of a large airport, was considered the best option, but – not surprisingly – not to the local residents. The residents of north county San Diego in places like Encinitas and Carlsbad almost passed with 49% approving, but the residents in Santee -which is in the flight path – only 28% approved. This is likely to become more polarizing in the future, unless and until the overcrowding demonstrates more clearly (as it did in Hong Kong) that it simply must be done, or, the people of the city can decide that they don’t want to grow any bigger.
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