I think the MSNBC headline for this story is mostly sensational, but in reading the article, I believe the points to be spot-on. As someone who has complained about excessive meetings before, I found it quite refreshing to find some validation like this.

When you venture to countries in Asia, you typically find that English has invaded popular culture, if only in some small way. Here, English words, phrases or acronyms are everywhere, particularly on cars. If you think our cars in America have a lot of badges — with identification markings for make and model, [...]

Greetings, gentle beings. Chief Oddball here, with another update from GMT +0700. (Thailand time, by any other name.) It’s been a few days since I’ve posted, not because I’ve been overwhelmingly busy or distracted, but because I wanted to get my latest photos off my digital camera first. Because I was [...]

Today begins the Chinese New Year, the Year of the Pig (or Boar, if you will). Here in Thailand, where much of the population is of Chinese ancestry, it’s a cultural event on the order of our own Gregorian New Year back home. Many people (including myself) wear bright red shirts on this [...]

I meant to post here before we left for Thailand on Wednesday, but the days leading up to our departure were a whirlwind of activity — packing, finishing tasks, preparing our house for a lengthy vacancy, et cetera. Last week I had thought I was already prepared and ready to take off, but of [...]

Pontiac’s not the only car company making headlines today. Ford has announced that they majorly screwed up by abandoning the brand equity they’d built up (and then torn down, naturally) in the Taurus nameplate. As a result, they’re renaming their new Ford Five Hundred sedan — it will be the new Ford Taurus [...]

At the Chicago Auto Show today, Pontiac unveiled its all-new G8 sedan, the 2008 model year replacement for the Grand Prix. As many of us aficionados have long known, the G8 is based on the next-generation Holden Commodore, which in and of itself is a very svelte and muscular grocery-getter. Now we finally [...]

Yesterday was quite a day for both Apple and I. Because it was Super Bowl Sunday, Apple’s restaurant was closed, so she had a rare day off. To celebrate, we decided to go up to the new Coconut Point mall — supposedly one of the region’s biggest — and see what it was [...]

Well, it never fails. Shortly before Apple and I are due to embark on a very lengthy trip, for which much preparation is needed, our homeowner’s fiefdom association sends us another notification that we are “out of compliance” and, as reasonable people who “understand and appreciate the need to maintain an acceptable level of [...]

Some issues my mom was having with her blog earlier today — they’re still ongoing, actually — caused me to reflect on the pros and cons of rolling your own blog (such as Wordpress) vs. going with a free service (like Blogger). Blogger recently rewrote their core system, and there have been a lot [...]