I take the last boat home to my Ohio

According to the mystics and statistics, so says Warren Zevon, someday California will slide into the ocean. And while I won't quite be able to take the last boat home to my Ohio, we will have a whole lot less fucking hippies to deal with.

Like this idiot I'm taking an online class with. We'll call him Brandon. Well, cause that's his name.

The class is on Business Systems, yet we've spent a lot of time focusing on outsourcing and globalism. Okay, both systems, true, but I had forgotten how theory based higher education is ... and how I'm a practical person.

And a pragmatist. A realist. Not a visionary of how wonderful the world truly should be.

Like Brandon.

Who, like most liberals and hippies (not mutually exclusive groups), cut and ran when confronted with the truth, and when he had his own words used against him.

Witness the following display (all grammar mistakes courtesy of the respective authors):

Brandon, responding to the question about has globalism hurt or helped:

I have lived in many countries and have witness the negative impact of Globalization on 3rd world countries. Small businesses struggle to compete with large low price warehouses like Amazon and Walmart driving a further cap between capitalism and the working poor. Personally, I feel the cloud of consumerism reaching every crevice of the world is taking us quickly in the wrong direction if we plan to continue living on this planet. The addiction to stuff is causing use to eat up our natural resources and pollute our environment.

Hopefully globalization will cause people to seek the best solution for how to consume while reusing and not destroying our resources

Sebron, another classmate responding:

I think that people are forgetting that business is not just about making money. Everyone seems to be forgetting the people component in all of this. There has to be a happy medium somewhere. We as Americans, live in the top most strata of wealth and privilege. Is making our lives even more comfortable worth sacrificing many others?

Me, well, being me (a.k.a. takes out big stick. Stirs the pot:)

The purpose of business is profit. Period. No business ever created to simply employ people to better their lives has turned a profit or survived in an open market in this country prior to globalization. And in any other country before, or during, the current globalization craze.

The whole point of business is profit. Return on the investment. In order to make profit, to have a return on your investment, or the investment of your stakeholders, you must provide a product or service that the market wants, needs or demands.

The quality of your product is driven by the those demands - the market price is based on the quality of your product.

If you make a million bales of hay, and sell them for $1 each, that's good. If you make a million bales of hay, and sell them for $2, that's better. But if I can make a million bales of hay, and set up my tractor next to yours, and sell my hay for 50 cents a bale, you need to convince the consumer that your hay is twice as good as mine, because it's twice the price.

Think about it in your own life. What products do you purchase because they're the brand name that you like (not talking trendy, or what the kids *have to wear to look cool at school*)?

Personally, I'll spend $100 on a pair of Rockport shoes without blinking an eye because they last almost two years, I can walk in them all day without my (six-times under the knife) surgically repaired knees hurting all day, and they look good.

Does Rockport make a better shoe? I'm no shoe expert, so from a process standpoint, I can't say yes or no. But as a consumer, it's a big yes. Do I think it's five times better than a $20 shoe? Again, a big yes. I've had my share of $20 shoes that lasted three months. And left my knees hurting. So to me, that lack of pain, alone, is worth 10 times the $20 shoe. And its even better when I can find the Rockports on sale. As a Rockport consumer, the value, longevity and pain-free existence, to me, is worth the extra cost.

While yes, taking care of employees is always a concern, because better morale equals a more productive workforce, profit is the number one concern of every single profitable business. It has to be.

Brandon's response to me:

I think the point Sebron is making, and one I strongly agree with, is with all this human energy and global resources being focused on turning a profit little room is left for what matters in life. That's fabulous that Rockport makes comfortable shoes, but at what and whose expense? Is it worth $100 for a pair of shoes that in the end they'll end up in a landfill and what progress has been accomplished?

Businesses NEED to put the interest of the public first rather than their wallets, the consequences are already apparent when the U.S. contributes more CO2 to the environment than any other country in the world. We need to wake up and realize it is all about OUR dream not MY dream.

There is not a single product that I purchase now a days whose company is not out there with people's best interest in mind as a whole.

My response ... to which there hasn't been a reply for two days:

To some ... including the majority of for-profit corporations, making a profit *is* what matters in life.

Did Henry Ford make cars to help people? No. He did it for profit.

Does Rockport make shoes to help people? No. They do it for profit.

Was the University of Phoenix created to help people?

Hardly.

If so, would they have spent $154.5 million for a 20-year contract to name an NFL stadium after themselves?

No. They'd give scholarships. Or help the spotted owls.

Not give money to an-already wealthy NFL team to help them, as the team's vice president said, field a competitive team.

We could argue all day about global warming ... and C02 emissions, but I won't go there, except to ask if you can remember the 1970's when man was responsible for the global cooling and we were all urged to cut back on everything, too.

I'm glad you take the time to research your purchases based on how "nice" a company is. You obviously chose wrong with UoP then based on their business practices and the fact they're a for-profit university.

One final question - so you think me spending $100 on one pair of shoes that wind up in a landfill is better than spending $100 on five pairs of shoes that will eventually wind up in a landfill? I can't go barefoot. I have to wear shoes. And Ho-Chi Min sandals are so off the corporate dress code - open toed shoes made from spare are prohibited. Some 'safety' regulation' to protect me from injuring myself and suing them for letting me be stupid.

But that's my opinion. Then again, I was raised in what's now the rust belt. We drank orange water cause it was good for us (more minerals). We breathed in polluted air (when we *had* steel mills because it put the food on our plates.

Most of us lived.

I’m not in such a hurry to call you tonight

Because you are one of the knobs on my learning team.

Welcome to the first post of a writing assignment I created for me to work off of the ideas of others. Basically, I've taken a song I love, listed the lyrics line by line, and am going to write a blog entry somehow relating the line to something going on in my life.

Forcing my topic de jour to conform to someone else's title.

And I have to do it in the first line.

How's that for a writing challenge?

So why am I doing this? So when I look at the month of March 2007 in my blog title dropdown, I'll have the full and complete lyrics to a song. Cool, eh?

Yeah, cause I'm nerdy like that.

Anyway, we got our learning assignments today. I should have known this was coming, but I was put in a group with this genius woman who said computers have been around for centuries ... and the guy who said this:

"The Loveletter virus of 2000 which impacted many mainframes, personal hard drives and businesses caused Congress to institute this act."

(This act being the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. Which deals with corporate accounting in publicly owned companies hoping to regulate full disclosure to prevent another Enron. Not a virus out break. But it gets better - or worse - depending on how dumb you can make yourself:)

"Further acts such as 9/11, identity theft and hackers were also a factor in creating this ACT."

WHAT THE FUCK? Hackers, identity theft and Arabs crashing planes into buildings kick-started the corporate accounting transparency laws? I guess school is educational. Cause when I read the required articles I saw mention of all of those things as issues facing corporations; but nowhere did I see they were inherently responsible for the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. Damn.

Reading is fun-duh-mental.

No, I'm not in such a hurry, to call you, either of you, tonight.

I love school on-line!

Yeah, I'm back in school.

On-line.

With my schedule, there's no other way for me to do it. Case in point: Next week.

I start the week in Youngstown. Then I'll be in Cincy for two days, then Columbus, then back in Youngstown.

The next week - Youngstown.

The week after that - Columbus.

The week after that - Cincinnati.

Yeah.

Now it's only been two days, but I'm finding there are some really beneficial things about going to school on-line.

First - I can do it when I have time. Be that at work, after work or at midnight.

Second - When I read something posted by one of my classmates, I don't have to stifle my response. I can say, loudly, "That the dumbest fucking thing I've read today."

Case in point:

An answer to why business systems still need work:

Business systems still need more development because the market is constantly changing and updating itself. Desktop computers have been around for centuries, but most are outdated and lacking in the new-world technologies. Business systems have to integrate and grow with the new technology its surrounded by in order to stay competitive in the business world.

Desktop computers have been around for CENTURIES? That's the dumbest fucking thing I've read today.

About the author - she's 25, lives in Chicago, works for a pharmaceutical corporation. Her goal in life - to design video game covers. Not games. Covers.

Follow a dumb kid home ...