The Panasonic DMC-FZ50 Loves Neon

I went out to eat last night at Pappa’s Seafood.  It is by far the best seafood anywhere.  Somewhat expensive, but worth every dime.  When we were leaving, I was able to snap two really great pictures with excellent resolution.  My camera loves neon!

Flickr Uploadr 3.0

I re-imaged my laptop this week.  I try to do that once every 6 months or so.  It’s always good to have a fresh start.  Thanks to Norton Ghost, the whole process takes about 10 minutes.  When I do re-image, I need to go to all the sites that have the programs I use so I can download the latest version.  This time, I found a gem.  Flickr Uploader 3.0 is out.  If you have a Flickr account, get this!  It is far and above superior to the previous version on many levels.

I also found Better Gmail.   It makes an already great app even better!

The Underbelly of a Toll Road

I won’t win a Pulitzer for this one, but I thought it was cool.

The Moon

The Moon is Earth’s only natural satellite, and the fifth largest one in the Solar System. The average centre-to-centre distance from the Earth to the Moon is 384,403 km, which is about thirty times the diameter of the Earth. The Moon has a diameter of 3,474 km — slightly more than a quarter that of the Earth and slightly smaller than the east–west distance across the United States. This means that the volume of the Moon is about 2 percent that of Earth. The gravitational pull at its surface is about 17 percent of the Earth’s. The Moon makes a complete orbit around the Earth every 27.3 days, and the periodic variations in the geometry of the Earth–Moon–Sun system are responsible for the lunar phases that repeat every 29.5 days.

Journalistic Hack Outs Online MBA Programs

I read a lot of stuff on the web every day. Education is a big topic I tend to troll for, for obvious reasons. Yesterday, I came across an article on American Consumer News written by Matthew Paulson. Just by reading the article, I’d be willing to bet this guy has never attended an accredited online university.

The title of the post is “Don’t Get Your MBA Online”, and it is filled with inaccuracies and generalizations that not only put online MBA programs in a bad light, but is factually inaccurate. If anyone was actually doing research on how or why to get an online MBA, this is one article that I hope they would miss.

The “meat” of the story is based on a Wall Street Journal / Harris Survey that polled recruiters to see how effective an online MBA program actually is. I have several problems with this.

“What the survey found was rather shocking. They had asked a number of corporate recruiters what they found when looking at candidates who were full time versus those who were part time. 80% of the recruiters said that online degree programs are not nearly as effective at building and developing business skills as traditional full time programs. 40% of the recruiters actually said the programs were not effective at all!”

In my many years in the corporate world, I have found that “recruiters” are usually the lowest common denominator in the equation of business. External recruiters are focused on the dollar signs, as finding potentially qualified referrals is how they make their money. They are going to recommend the candidate they think will be the best fit.

Internal recruiters are usually nowhere near in touch with the actual job that the potential employee will be performing, and thus are in no better position to make a decision based on any of the accomplishments of the candidate. How can anyone with a conscience allow others to recruit for jobs that the recruiter has never done themselves? Seems like a waste of resources to me.

A recruiter has no more knowledge or authority to determine how effective a degree program is that I have the knowledge to tell someone the best method to do a heart transplant. The sole purpose of a recruiter is to locate and facilitate the hiring process of talented people. Period. As a manager in my company, I permit our recruiters to accept applications and resumes, and then forward them to me for review. When I decide who I want to hire, I allow them to make the offer. That’s it. Recruiters have no business telling me who is qualified for a job in my group.

A more effective way to determine how good a degree is might be to ask the supervisors and managers of the person who holds the degree. One might ask if that degreed employee actually seems to apply what he or she learned in the program. What do the performance reviews of that employee look like? How did they score on the GMAT? There is a ton of criteria from which to measure.

Determining the effectiveness of a program only by the method in which it was delivered is asinine.

Another fallacy promoted by the recruiters was “Others say that When you’re working for 8 hours a day at a job and working on an MBA for another 4, it can often be very difficult to put a large amount of focus on your pursuance of a masters in business administration.”

Sure, it can be difficult, but online degree programs of all types are designed for highly disciplined people who can manage the workload of a job, school, and family on top of that. Not everyone is cut out for it. And no matter how many hours a day one spends at work and on school, if the student is able to complete the curriculum and keep up with the class, then there isn’t a recruiter in existence that has the ability to accurately judge the quality of anything related to any individual’s educational pursuits.

Another misleading, blanket statement found in the article was, “A lot of the online MBA programs are not accredited, and often taught by professors and instructors who are less qualified than full time universities.”

Yet more proof that the writer has not done any research into online MBA programs. I guess what bothers me about this is that we have a journalistic hack who is propagating false information about online MBA programs. The best way to expose them is to do what I’m doing now.

What the writer failed to mention is that any online MBA program worth anything at all IS accredited by a regional agency, AACSB, or ACBSP.  So to say “A lot of the online MBA programs are not accredited” is blatantly false and reflects on the lack of research done for this article.

Needless to say, it does get me fired up when someone not only writes about a topic which they are obviously uninformed, but also propagates disingenuous information about that topic.  This article is a classic case.

Interviewed by Entrepreneur Magazine

I was interviewed yesterday by Sara Wilson of Entrepreneur Magazine.  We talked about my career and how it fit in with my goals in higher education.  When the article is printed, I will post the URL.

Remember That Night: Live at the Royal Albert Hall

I just finished watching Remember That Night: Live at the Royal Albert Hall.  The content of this recording (especially the finale, “Comfortably Numb”) will make the hairs on the back of your neck stand up.  This was one of the best performances I’ve seen. 

David Gilmour is cut from a stone that no longer exists, and just goes to further my own personal belief that of all the bands that have ever “made it big”, and all the bands in history who have been imitated, there will never, ever be another Pink Floyd or David Gilmour.  To even try to imitate these guys is an insult to humanity. 

The term “musical genius” was never so appropriate.

The Home Loan Crisis and Distance Education

Before we continue, let me set the stage for this post. The two ramifications of distance education: Large amounts of debt incurred by the students, and the job market being flooded over time with newly-degreed people looking for better jobs.

I have been doing some thinking recently about the home mortgage “crisis”, and it made me think about distance education. Somewhere in the middle of my thought process, I correlated the two into possible scenarios based on shared characteristics of the funding mechanisms of both education and housing. I quickly began to wonder if the education market could turn out like the housing market.

If you look at the housing market, we’re in this problem that was caused by bankers, lenders, speculators, and others pushing property on people who could not afford it. The customer base was filled with people who had eyes and dreams bigger than their wallet. People understood that their rate would fluctuate, but they figured they’d just “deal with it” when the time came.

A few years ago, almost regardless of your qualifications, people could get a home mortgage, get into a big house, reap the benefits of it for a couple of years, then risk losing it because they could not pay for it.

Let’s compare that to distance education. All you have to do is put the words “distance education” into Google to see how much this beast is growing. To achieve and sustain or increase the current rate of growth, education has to be made available to lots of people. Accomplished. It has to be easy, streamlined, and marketed as such. Accomplished. People have to have access to lots of money (loans) to pay for it. Check.

The cost of distance education is very high in a lot of cases, and the students won’t even start paying for those loans until they get done with school. Is it feasible that $30k – $60k in debt is being absorbed by people who won’t really consider the impact until it’s time to pay up? You bet!

Look at my situation. Even if I stopped going to school when I graduated from Kaplan, I would be able to pay the $40k bill I racked up, but not everyone can. I was fortunate enough to have a very well paying job before I started school. I didn’t have dreams of earning $50k a year after graduation. I was well over that along time ago. I was lucky.

How did I get the $40k? I told someone I wanted it. I filled out some paperwork, and poof! It was done. In the four years at Kaplan, I paid less that $1k out of my pocket. It could not have been any easier. I got $40k in debt and didn’t have to lift a finger.

I suspect that a percentage of the thousands of working professionals, stay-at-home moms, and other people who are honestly trying to do well for themselves will end up tanking when they get the final bill. Some people may have the best of intentions, but in reality, they are dreaming when they think their newly-minted degree is going to bring them riches.

They will get the final bill and will be unable capitalize on better pay and other things that they had counted on, because the job market is being flooded with online degree students. The how many of these loans will default? I am willing to bet that the number of defaults is going to rise in the next 5-10 years. I don’t know if it will be labeled a “crisis”, but you see where I am going with this.

Addendum: A couple hours after I wrote this, I found this.

New Photos

I’ve just added some photos to the Buildings and Signs and License Plate galleries.  Hunting personalized license plates may seem like a childish adventure, but I look at it more like a scavenger hunt.  In militaristic terms, I am a sniper, sitting prone with my sniper rifle at the ready, waiting for my target to cross my path.  But it’s not that serious. 

Polar Opposites in Advertising

There are currently a series of commercials running that are polar opposites in their effectiveness (from my point of view).  When I look at a commercial or listen to a radio advertisement, I do so from the perspective of both a potential customer and an advertising analyst.  I try to judge the the commercial on several levels.

Some of the best and most appealing commercials going today are those by Geico.   The lizard is a great idea and he’s funny.  Most of all, it’s a very effective piece.  The latest one stars Peter Frampton.  Anyone who is familar with his music will “get it”.

A lot of these great commercials can be found at YouTube.

To be polar opposite of the Geico commercials, you must suck horribly.  You will need to be ineffective in the message, annoying, and tend to drive the customers to hit the mute button.  Billy Mays fits into that category.

If you are going to try to sell me something, all I ask is that you put forth your best effort.  Present your warez in the best possible light.  Don’t assume that I will buy something from a guy who yells at me.  I don’t care if you’re selling the latest BMW or Mercedes at a 75% discount off MSRP.  If you yell at me, you can keep your inventory.

Based on how often I have used the mute button, I can only tell that Billy Mays sells junk, and he likes to yell at me in an effort to get $20.00.  It’s not working.

Here’s a very funny Wikipedia-type parody of Mays.  This pretty much sums it up.

This comparison just goes to show that some people are smarter than others.