If you use the Gregorian Calendar, Happy New Year to you.
I am celebrating the new year by tiling the pet room. Actually I started Thursday and it has been going a bit slow. I hope to have the last of it grouted by this evening. I originally had wanted to tile it but was overruled so instead the floor got vinyl flooring because it is easier to sweep. Well in the course of the last couple of years the chinchilla has proven that vinyl flooring is not proof against chinchilla teeth. Mr. Ichabod Peabody has eaten several holes into the floor through the vinyl. He will get quite a surprise when he tries to bite into ceramic tile I think.
Things I would like to see this year.
1. Good weather. I wouldn’t mind a winter of 35-40 degrees in the lower parts of Michigan. I would enjoy a winter that was 50 degrees or higher here.
2. I would like to see a new law (I don’t often ask for a new law) that requires contract houses to disclose to contractors how much they are being paid by the company they are sending the contractors to work for. Also they should have to disclose to the company how much they pay the contractor. This is for outside contract positions, not the case where one outside contracting company is say hosting the help desk for some company. Basically where there is a one to one relationship between the bill rate the company pays to the contract house and the rate the contract house pays to the contractor. It isn’t a problem I have any more but I have friends who are still being screwed over by contract houses like this.
3. Much better software coding. This was a pretty bad year for security holes that have been exposed. These holes come mostly from coders who are looking for shortcuts or don’t have a strong understanding of what they are doing. We have too many coders like that any more.
4. Companies to realize that their future is completely tied up in how they handle IT/Computers and their employees that make it so that the computers work as expected. This stuff becomes more and more important as a company tries to produce products closer to their time of need versus way out in advance. I believe this is the only way car companies and other manufacturers are going to become profitable. They need this flexibility. The plant managers are going to have to lose that attitude of “We make blah, not computers” where blah is cars, bicycles, stereos, whatever and focus time, money, resources, and attention on the systems that make it possible for them to produce whatever it is that they produce. Companies that treat their computer tech people like crap by putting ridiculous demands on them and paying them crap are really going to feel it when the techies kick them in the soft spots.
5. I would like to see a focus on straightening our country out versus trying to straighten out the rest of the world.
6. Alternative energy source work really seriously dug into. We need to get off of oil. I recently heard we have more money invested in protecting the middle east oil concerns than there is value in the oil there now… I.E. We will not recoup our losses. WTF?
7. Drug companies lowering costs and advertising, notice how well that fits together? I bet if they didn’t run multimillion/billion dollar ad campaigns and giving kickbacks to Dr.’s for prescribing their stuff you wouldn’t have to spend $5 a pill for some medicine you absolutely must take 3 times daily.
8. I would like to find out authoritatively that George Bush is actually a muppet. I hate to think that someone that daft could actually be our best candidate to run our country but instead all that voted for him were fooled because no one can resist a cute muppet.
9. Firefly to be reinstated as a TV series.
10. Religious organizations paying taxes.
Again….
Happy New Year.
