It would be a heck of a ride for half the population for a short while if the earth suddenly stopped.

Oh great. Had our monthly employee meeting. Even though they got a bunch of cash, if the current sales trend continues to the end of they year they will go bankrupt. Announced a 10% workforce layoff. Sure am hoping with 35 years of service I will NOT be on that list. Have worked there too long and trying to find another job at my age would be very close to impossible unless it's flipping burgers or something. Last statement have 5 years salary in my 401K. Don't think that's enough to retire at 56.

Hope the IT managers that are making the expensive exchange decisions get sacked.

Stuff like paying for training against phishing attacks is more expensive than getting a good spam filter that stops them from getting thru. Or putting Exchange on a hosted service, then moving to another hosted service that costs more. Then paying $30K to have everything moved when I could do it. No wonder they can't make a profit.

Those not flung into space get squished into pancakes. Fun, fun, fun!

I did mention half of the population.

Exactly where did they get these people? Is English their first language?

Seems to me non-english speaking managers might be an improvement.

When I was in charge of all the literature I put together a system that all you had to do was update a products specs in a Filemaker database and it would automatically update all the literature web/print/pdf where that spec was used and email out notices to distributors and customers that subscribe to the updates list. And took only one person to keep the literature up-to-date.

The new IT guy replaced my system with custom programming 3 guys have been working on 3 years. It is all separated out. The guys making the changes make change to spec database, then update each place in the literature in Indesign and create PDFs themselves. Then they distribute the updated PDFs to all the different places it is stored or distributed from. It now takes four people well versed in our product, Indesign and Acrobat. Not only did my system take less people, but only required 1 license of Indesign and Acrobat to make the changes since a computer did it. It also had only one place to enter changes so there were less instances for someone to make a mistake in making the changes or distributing the literature.

He didn't like my system because it used a Mac and Filemaker to track everything and Applescript to do all the work. He said it was not enterprise hardware or software.

Oh yeah, and the notices my system sent out sent a pdf with a description of the changes for each piece of literature. The new one just sends links you can download the pages that changed in the past week and there is NO information on what was changed or why.

It's this kind of improvements these people are doing that is making it so difficult to make a profit in these lean times. Also very frustrating and glad I work from home so I don't have to see it. Sure hope it doesn't mean I am going to lose my job in the family company.

Oh no, Interestingly enough while writing this I got a notice where we are about to lose our ISO 9001 certification that evaluates the processes to guarantee our product specs, literature, and products themselves all match up. It is required for sales to many companies.

Have been told "It's not what you say, or how you say it, but you make people feel stupid."

When I was taken from being in charge of all the literature and tech specs I was putting together integrating a DAM system, Digital Asset Management. My goal was to have everything including media, drawings, and specs integrated, stored, organized and accessed in a meta data oriented database so that any time any literature, media, or data is used it would be on-the-fly accessed with the most current information. It would have also tightly controlled who had access to view, use, and/or edit anything.

One of the first things I noticed when taken out of the loop is that photos and drawings of trademarked products was being used without a ™ or ® symbol. That usage nullifies the copyright protection of the trademark. No artwork, photos, or drawings can exist of a trademarked product without the actual ™ or ® on the art or you will lose the protection of the trademark.

Good Morning.

Hoping I will be able to continue to say good morning next week.

Good Morning Folks.

I saw the article in the paper about Kimray's layoffs. That sucks. With the layoffs at Chesapeake, Devon, Sandridge & Continental and other oil and gas equipment companies the traffic during the commute is a lot less. It is strange to see the roads with so much less traffic. I am sure all the restaurants are feeling it as well. It feels much like the 1980s oil bust again.

For whatever reason we have been busy with several mapping projects and we are still making money. I am sure we ill not be flying much oil and gas exploration sites for a while.

Good Luck Richard.

Sorry to hear this Richard. Seems like you would be exempt from losing your job as you are family.

Good luck, Richard!

There are 650 employees left after the buy out thing. Three executives retired including my brother who was President and CEO, he is now Chairman of the Board. In the last month the assembly department has been working overtime.

We have users using Microsoft Office, they a using paid for box licenses. The IT wiz is wanting us to go to Office 365 for everybody. Seems to me that increases the cost of software by a HUGE amount by making us pay monthly for software users already have paid licenses for? Bet that helps that bottom line! And I don't care how much easier it is to manage licenses. Paid for is paid for in my books.

And yes I've done the math and Adobe's monthly licensing is very close to the same cost as I've been paying for photoshop and and updating it over the years. And I did NOT update it every time a new version came out. Typically updated when the version I was using was last on the list before not being eligible for an update discount.

Texted my brother and told him I sure hope I don't get laid off. He texted back say he has not yet seen the list and doesn't think I would be on it. Sure hope he is correct.

However, have been asked 3 questions this morning from the IT director that prove I know what I am doing with Exchange.

Just remembered something having to do with the new coffee thing. They dropped all the different flavored coffee's etc to just regular coffee, sugar, and plain non-dairy creamer. I remember my Dad ALWAYS took a big thermos of his own coffee to work and NEVER drank any of the stuff made in the commissary.

Also several months ago they went thru and removed all electrical devices that were not company provided. I know of several people that had all kinds of stuff like clocks, lights, radios, extra heaters, their own coffee makers, lit up decoration stuff, etc. I wonder what the real dollar savings was realized on the electric bill.

A while back I spent a month hardly using any lights and unplugging anything that wasn't actually in use at the time. The next month I had everything plugged in, even stuff not using that had transformers, and left lights on, some 24 hours a day, etc. The difference in my bill was $10.

morning all. two days to go and I already had to guess on the hours for today and Monday to get paid.....

So you will officially be "Under New Management"?

Tuesday is day one. The whole I9 process to boot.

For the last month I've had hardly any lights on in the house because all the vitreous hemorrhage floaters in my left eye and the eye seeing a little darker and blurry isn't nearly as noticeable and annoying.

With the new better vision and clearness in my right eye I am getting kind of excited about being able to see better. Eye doc says I will probably want to spring clean the house as I will be able to see dust and dirt that I am just not seeing now.

dust is not something you do its something you have.

Still probably have a bunch I can't see right now. Especially with Pepper going in and out all the time. Still working on the washing her feet ritual as she comes in.

I'm busy, but today is still going very slowly.