Lively Debate

What happens when we outsource the most intimate of negotiations?

Welcome to my new blog. Lively Debate is an extraction of the "non-professional" content from my blog, Professional PHP. From now on, technical discussions will be there. Everything else is here.

In the course of redirecting posts from the old blog to this one, I've had to review many of my posts over the last year and a half. Here are some of my favorites that can be found at Lively Debate:

• Climbing the corporate ladder in sweat pants and bare feet - Where do reporters find these "representative" people?
• Competing with Wal-Mart - My direct experiences with Wal-Mart coming to town.
• Fast Food Outsourcing - May I take your order?
• Bush wins despite campaign mistakes - A day after wrap up of the election.
• The connection between gay marriage and terrorism - Things over heard.
• Offshoring is good for America - Free trade from a tech perspective. The sky is not falling.
• Carnival of the Metronome - My top picks from the Carnival of the Capitalists acts like a metronome, forcing me to post on a regular basis.

Grab a feed and stay awhile. Regular posting resumes now.

I was stunned by this quote from this survey of Apple Employees:

"I never dressed nicer than sweat pants. I often came in whatever I slept in the night before and walked around the office barefoot. Nobody cared." said a customer solutions specialist who works for Apple in Austin, TX. But the opportunities for advancement were not that great, the employee said.

I would like to know where the opportunities for advancement are great for a barefoot customer solution specialists wearing yesterdays sweat pants.

I'm sick. I had an ear infection / strep throat last month, but I misread the instructions on the antibiotics and took 1 twice a day instead of 2 twice a day (half dose). The antibiotics worked ok for the first few days. I felt well enough to wrap up some client work, and was planning on pushing out the next WACT release last week and the first three days of this week.

Unfortunately, about the time I started wondering why my anti-biotics weren't gone, my strep came back and with a vengeance. I went to the doctor and got a new antibiotic, but this one seems to be very slow acting, or I have some sort of nasty super bug.

I think I must look pretty bad, because no-one seems to want to get near me. Which is a shame. Yesterday was our annual family reunion. I understand that this one went well, adding some live music on friday night in addition to some of the other traditional activities over the weekend. I heard them announce 93 attendees at the sunday dinner. Unfortunately, none of them wanted much to do with me. My cousins did take some pity on me, especially my cousin Sara.

Anybody got a PHP job in Atlanta? Sara lives in Atlanta and I think she would really like it if I moved out there. I'm very tempted. I miss visiting her when she was in Ann Arbor.

So, I am completely and utterly sick of watching TV. My brother finally brought me the John Stossel book and I read it this weekend. I had no idea how much of a libertarian he was. I did enjoy the book and I'll probably post a more complete review. Reading stossel's book has prompted me to finally pick up Atlas Shrugged. I've read the Fountainhead, but have been putting Atlas off for some time.

I've lost almost 10 pounds since I've picked up this nasty infection. I'm Down to 168. Four more pounds would put me below a BMI of 25 and make me skinnier than 60% of the men my age. (Nice BMI Calculator) I was almost shocked to see my face in the mirror today. Gaunt was the first word to come to mind, but actually, I look more like did before hypothyroidism and McDonalds made my cheeks puffy.

I'll end this whining diary entry with that and return you to the normal professional / political content.

This post was inspired by seeing a Marine's post on Kuro5hin: Marine fights Altovis charges.

With slick commercials designed to look like those of FDA approved drugs and the supposed cure to a nonspecific disease that everyone has (who is not tired?), I have to grudgingly admire Altovis as the pinnacle of the craft of selling snake oil.

It turns out that the same company, Berkeley Premium Nutraceuticals, that makes Altovis makes Enzyte and Avlimil. If you haven't watched commercial TV lately, Enzyte is marketed as "natural male enhancement" (penis pills) with a series of slick commercials full of double entendre.

The non-specificity of Altovis for fatigue may only be exceeded by the non-specificity of their new product: Numovil for memory loss. Who doesn't forget things? Beware. Evil marketing genius at work.

There is an Enzyte class action lawsuit against the makers of these products claiming that they billed customer's credit cards without authorization. Corey Nahman's summaries of Altovis, Avlimil and especially Enzyte do a good job of documenting the complicated billing procedures that trick people and form the basis for the class action lawsuit. They also do a good job of explaining how BPN is very careful not to claim that their products actually do anything.

Acording to this article, the company employs 800 people and will make $260 million dollars this year. After reading this, I have to wonder, is it only in America that the headline here is "entrepreneur makes tons of money selling snake oil."

Quack Watch has a wealth of information about nutritional supplement scams.

I took this picture of my photogenic grandmother today. She recently had her 80th birthday and overcome cancer and is sporting her spectacular new post-cancer 'do. She has an iMac and is proficient at sending email.

Last week, we went to a church potluck. Although it was a somewhat poorly attended, they had rhubarb pie there, and I really like rhubarb pie. Those church ladies really know their pies. Afterwards, we watched some old home videos from the church that had been transfered to video tape. My great grandfather was in the movies, as he had helped build the roof to an addition on the church some 50 years ago.

Since I discovered how nice the park is here in town, I have been planning a lunch time picnic for us in the park. Perhaps I can take more pictures then.

I went shopping at Wal-Mart today. I live in a small, rural town, population 2,000. Until last January, there were only two grocery stores in town: Glenn's and Brian's Meat Market. Glenn's is a traditional grocery store and Brian's carries only meat and produce. Generally, Brian's produce was both cheaper and better quality than Glenn's, with some occasional fantastically good and cheap bulk seasonal produce. Since one store was across the street from the other, we generally bought our produce at one and then the rest of our goods at the other.

Six months ago Wal-Mart came to town. This was a pretty big event around here. Almost everyone from the area talked about it endlessly. On the first few opening days, the isles were clogged with people standing around chatting. (everyone knows everyone here). Gangs of high school kids roamed the store. This was the social event of the season. Almost everyone went to see the new store. The parking lots of Glenn's and Brian's were ghost towns.

Then a few weeks later, I started hearing people talk about how they liked the new store, but that the checkout lines were slow. They started to talk about how their prices on some goods wasn't really any lower than the other two stores. After the opening, Wal-Mart started adjusting its prices upward to match the other local stores. The parking lots of the other stores started to fill up again. The parking lot of Wal-Mart started to dwindle on weekdays. Wal-Mart missed their opportunity to fully capture the market in the area mostly because they didn't staff their checkout lines.

Now, six months later, there is another side effect of the Wal-Mart invasion: reduced quality. Wal-Mart has very low grocery prices on a lot of goods. However, if you look at the ingredients on their cheaper store brands you will find that these are often inferior quality goods. They are highly processed and loaded with high fructose corn syrup and partially hydrogenated vegetable oils. I bought chip dip there that was as awful as it was cheap. It contained mostly water and partially hydrogenated vegetable oil, with enough food science magic to make it look like they weren't selling watered down white margarine and calling it chip dip. The produce at our Wal-Mart store is shameful beyond normal grocery store tasteless produce shame (R.I.P. tomato). I've seen mold on their lemons and grapes in the store.

Unfortunately, the reduced quality is not limited to Wal-Mart. The buzz around town is about how the other two stores, Glenn's and Brian's have lowered the cost and the quality of their goods to compete. I used to like to buy the french bread loaves from the Glenn's bakery, but since Wal-Mart, they have switched suppliers and the new loaves are inedible, but cost half as much. I won't buy the new loaves at all. Glenn's has stopped selling Stonyfield yoghurt, the only brand they sold that does not contain high fructose corn syrup. They still sell Breyers, which has less HFCS than others for .65 a container. Wal-Mart sells the same thing for .50 per container. Neither store sells a non-HFCS yoghurt, so why would I buy yoghurt at glenns? The Wal-Mart brand of yoghurt sells for .33 per container, but contains more HFCS than fruit. Today I heard that others have been complaining about Brian's produce quality going downhill.

Fast Company has a fascinating article on Wal-Mart and its relationship with suppliers. Apparently, they require their suppliers to reduce their prices every year on the same goods. For many suppliers, Wal-mart may sell 25% or more of all of their goods. They can successfully pressure suppliers to lower and lower prices. For some suppliers the demands force them to improve their operations and improve their business. For others, it forces them to simply cheapen their goods.

Based on my perception, the Wal-Mart juggernaught is not unstoppable. I would not want to compete with them in the area of price on brand name products, nor on price for store brand products. Their achilles heal is quality. It is not far from being known for carrying cheap products (low prices are good) to being known for carrying cheap goods (low quality is bad). Ask K-mart what its like to get a reputation for selling junk.

One last thing. I couldn't help but notice how many of the shoppers at Wal-Mart were, well, fat. I don't it is a coincidence that the seriously obese shop at the store with the cheapest most abundant highly processed foods and the worst produce.