Ed Icionsub

One of the most interesting aspects of using the internet is that it is truly an international medium. I have been able to access newspapers all over the world, and participate in bulletin boards and discussions with people from a variety of different countries.

One of the most interesting bulletin boards that I found recently is based in India and helps the people having issues with various businesses as a public consumer forum.

One of my company’s franchisees is from India and he still has a lot of family there. He was in a meeting with me this morning and during a break he went online to check his emails and surf a few web sites. He showed me the consumer court India website and shared some of the recent posts with me. It was truly fascinating.

There are a variety of topics available for comments and discussions. I read the laptop computer forum and was very surprised to see how many complaints were lodged against all the major laptop manufacturers. It was a real eye opener and worth considering when shopping for a new laptop.

I wish there was a panic button on my computer keyboard. I have had a few times that something really bad was happening on the screen. I sure wish I could have pushed a panic button and had help dispatched immediately, even if it was just a phone call from a geek somewhere that could walk me through the problem and make me feel like somebody out there knew what they were doing and cared about my computer.

Wow – just saw a commercial with Eric Clapton for a cell phone. I think the phone is a T-Mobile exclusive, which actually is making me consider switching from AT&T so I can get this phone. It has a special design on the case and in the commercial, it shows Eric Clapton strumming what looks like guitar struts on the phone display. I wonder if that is a special application that lets you play the phone like a guitar? How would that even work? Not that it matter so much to me – I can’t play the guitar anyway. I just like the case design and the thought that it has a variety of cool apps that you can get for it. Plus, I’m a huge Clapton fan – from way back.

There is an article on Yahoo that links to the new Fortune magazine piece, “Best Companies to Work For.” The online article lists the top 10 companies, based on things like low employee turnover, employee satisfaction (from surveys), and company paid perks.

The number one company this year is SAS, a software company based in Cary, NC. I did not realize that SAS is based in Cary until I read that this morning. I used to know some people who worked for SAS in the Washington DC and Huntsville, AL areas.

What impressed me about SAS is the philosophy of their CEO, Jim Goodnight, about taking care of the employees and the corporate culture that he models.

“My chief assets drive out the gate every day,” Goodnight likes to say. “My job is to make sure they come back.”

Goodnight backs that up with impressive statistics. According to Fortune, the average tenure at SAS is 10 years. The company has 300 employees that have worked 25 years or more. The SAS annual turnover rate was just 2% in 2009, compared with the software industry average of about 22%. Women make up 45% of the SAS workforce in the United States, with an average age of 45.

I love duck tape. But I was recently told that I am calling it the wrong thing. That the proper name for it is duct tape. So I hade to back off on that argument until I could get online and check it out. Come to find out, BOTH names are correct. You can buy duck tape and you can also buy duct tape and you will end up buying the same thing, regardless of what you called it. So I was not wrong and neither was my neighbor.

Every time I have a business trip or reason to go to Chicago, I make an effort to get together with a couple of my friends who live there. Two of my good buddies are Chicago born and raised, and I met them while playing cards on the internet about 12 years ago.

They are both excellent card players and we’ve played hundreds of games together, both online and in real life. They told me about an online casino guide that describes the various web sites and has other helpful information.

This morning I was reading one of their articles about American Indian casinos and the effect of their revenues related to the country’s bad economy.

Another interesting article on their site was about technology advances that will be making the gambling tables appear in 3-D. Wouldn’t that be cool? I’m a big fan of 3-D in today’s movies – and I would love to see 3-D on the home computers, too.

Looking forward to another trip to Chicago in February. It can be crazy cold in Chicago during the winter months. I’m hoping for a few days of decent weather so I can get back and forth without freezing my toes, and maybe I can find a free evening to hook up with my buddies for a few card games, too.

Where did all the search engines go? I used to have a list of search engines and web sites to help me do my research. Lycos, Altavista, GoTo, and Excite are all toast. They each had their own advantage.

Now we are stuck with just Google, Yahoo and Bing. There’s not much difference between those three. You just pick which homepage you like the looks of best and type in a couple words. The three search engines all give you the same basic stuff back. Boring!

It bothers me that popular games have books and online resources for players who want to get a hint, find a shortcut, or cheat to win the video games. The idea of cheating is very bothersome and offensive to me. Like in the old west, if someone was to accuse me of cheating I would push my chair back from the saloon table and demand an apology or challenge the scoundrel to a duel in the street.

I have a lot of personal integrity and would not cheat anyone in a card game or a board game. As much as I like to win, I do not believe in winning at all costs. You must play with good sportsmanship and honor, or the win is just a shallow victory of points, not a true win.

With the holidays here, I decided to check my digital camera gear and make sure the batteries are charged, the memory sticks are clear and the lenses are clean.

I am hoping Santa might bring me a nice new camera for Christmas. As much as I love my Sony Cybershot that I got 2 years ago, there have been alot of new technology and enhancements to the newer cameras.

This coming year I plan on taking a professional camera class somewhere and I will want to buy a professional quality digital camera for my new hobby. Some of the photos I took this year are worth printing and framing, and maybe even entering in an amateur contest. So I am going to go ahead a learn more, but new equipment and get busy taking photographs next year.

There is a fun game that I found on Facebook called Zuma. It’s a quick little solitaire game. You are a frog that shoots different colored balls from your mouth. When the colors line up correctly you score points. Of course, the balls are a moving target and you have to beat the advancing line of balls.

The version on Facebook is limited to a tournament type of game, but you can buy the full version and have many more levels and competition types. I like it so much that I went ahead and bought the full version for about twenty bucks. Now I can play a quick couple of games without having to be online.