tdaxp

There are few artists quite like swaydo-Islamist Muslimgauze, and there are few Muslimgauze tracks quite like Hindu Kush Opium Crop

I can hook anyone up with the mp3, but can this possibly be the spoken words for HKOC?

He is welcome, always always
I like to see you always please
Print Media [???]
I am gone right now so [???]
We have a policies
about Saddam Hussein
Kill Him
Kill Him Desperately
Kill His [???]
[???] an investment bank
Yeah, he has money and everything
Everything
(repeat)

Off to UNL for the day... back late tomorrow

Another vanity post. No political value, yet marginal humor value.

So I'm in the bank drive-thru window to cash some checks. It's a complicated transaction -- one is a whole dollar amount, the other for some dollars and ninety-nine cents. Being studious, by the time I am at the teller window I have a penny out, making the deposit nice and round.

I became away years ago that the teller window is technically a Diebold machine. I assume it is named after a family name, as having the very war-like imperative Die Bold! is somewhat ostentatious.

Then, within seconds, the following occurs

1. I roll down the driver's side Window,
   
2. I reach my hand over the window, placing the checks and the penny in the tray
   
3. I rest my hand on the outside of my door
   
4. The wind whisks the check away
   
5. I open my door to get out, place my finger directly on the (sharp) end of the Diebold tray
   
6. I let my foot off the gas, without putting the car in park
   

What happens next is equals part stupid, mildly painful, and fast

It's a boring story, true, and perhaps proves I am a wimp. But considering it's all the fashion to complain about evil Diebold, at least now I can be a cool blogger too.

PS: I've been posting on Lounsbury enough that I joined Biz and got myself my own LiveJournal account. Featuring mainly a list of posts here, I present to the world: tdaxp's Cobuyitaphobia Central.

"Yale, HBS and Wharton on Fiorina Firing," Clear Admit, http://www.clearadmit.com/2005/02/yale-hbs-and-wharton-on-fiorina-firing.html, 10 February 2005

I blog for my entertainment and my education. It is very helpful to write words down because it forces me to think about what I believe. My blogging on cobuyitaphobia, the fear of synergetic mergers, is part of this.

Consider this CA post on the MBA-education ramifications of Fiorina's dismissal

The New York Times has published an interesting article about the dismissal of Carleton S. Fiorina as CEO of Hewlett-Packard.

What makes the New York Times article of note for the MBA community is that the journalist asked leading professors like Mike Useem (Wharton) and Rosabeth Kanter (Harvard) to weigh in on the news, along with Jeffrey A. Sonnenfeld, the Associate Dean at the Yale SOM.

For those of you who are curious, Fiorina has an MBA from the University of Maryland and a master's of Science in Management from MIT. She pursued her undergraduate studies in medieval history and philosophy at Stanford University.

The blogosphere is amazing because this connectivity is effortless. We live in a wonderful time.

"Accessibility & transparency: should Carly have blogged?," by Debby Weil, BlogWrite for CEOs, http://blogwrite.blogs.com/blogwrite/2005/02/accessibility_t.html, 10 February 2005 (from The PubSub Pulse).

Debby Weil wonders if HP's Carly Fiorina would still have a job if she was a blogger

Yesterday's abrupt news that Carly Fiorina was ousted as CEO of H-P got me to thinking... should Carly have had a blog? BTW, the link on Carly's name goes to the bio page on H-P's site where the copy has already been changed to "Former Chairman and CEO." Don't write off the blogging idea as ridiculous. Consider...

An Internal Blog
If Carly had had an internal blog (i.e. behind H-P's firewall and not for public viewing), she might have been able to warm up her apparently chilly and/or distant relationship with many H-P employees. Maybe she could have reestablished some of the collegiality that defined H-P's culture not so long ago. She might have titled her internal blog "Dateline Carly..." and doled out choice anecdotes about her constant travelling. Maybe she could have blogged about how wonderful it was to fly on the corporate jet and how much she appreciated it. I bet they had great snacks on the plane. Did she have a real bed? She might have shown a photo of it. People *love* this kind of detail, especially when it's divulged by a celebrity... and it's pretty harmless info.

The post goes on to compare her to Sun's Jonathan Schwartz, who does blog.

Of course, there's still the little matter of the huge publicly traded companies she ruined

"HP's Fiorina doesn't get Valentine from Board, quits," by Dave Taylor, Intuitive Systems, http://www.intuitive.com/blog/hps_fiorina_doesnt_get_valentine_from_board_quits.html, 9 February 2005.

Cobuyitaphobia is the fear of synergetic mergers. HP's board should have been cobuyitaphobes when Fiorina merged them and Compaq. Dave over at Intuitive Systems gives more details on HP's dismissal of Fiorina.

I've been tracking the performance and strategic management of HP CEO Carly Fiorina as I've watched her steer Hewlett-Packard further and further from the path of success in the challenging personal computer and peripheral industry. I've talked about Fiorina's rift with the Board, HP's dispute with Apple about the iPod, and HP saddles PC division to printer group, among other topics.

To reiterate, though, it was her reinvention of the company as a centralized management hierarchy, after decades as a loose collection of mostly autonomous divisions, that began concerning me, then her decision to saddle the successful printer division -- typically viewed as the bright spot in the HP portfolio -- with the failing personal computer division, rather than jettison the completely commoditized business. The acquisition of Compaq was really the beginning of the PC debacle at HP, not changes in the industry, but that's another topic entirely.

Fiorina's prize for dragging down HP?

Two additional items of data have surfaced as the day has proceeded. First, the Board of Directors apparently asked Fiorina to resign, so it wasn't so much that she offered to step aside at all. Second, and this is one of those stories of how CEOs just live different lives to you and me: The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Fiorina's severance package is going to be $21.1 million. Nice work if you can get it.