CareerJournal | Energy & Utilities — Salary Data and Hiring Trends

Saddled with an aging workforce and lacking enough young engineers to fill the vacancies, the oil and gas industry faces a talent crunch even as a hungry energy market drives an expansion that’s seen continuing for the next few years.

But software executives, interested in tapping potential clients in the oil industry, say information technology could help bridge that generational gap by enabling outsourcing and better information management. Others, however, say those tools alone aren’t enough to completely overcome the challenge.

“How do you capture important skills so they can be passed to tomorrow’s engineers? There’s great potential for software to get past that bridge,” said Microsoft Corp.’s (MSFT) Chief Financial Officer Steven Ballmer, at a Houston energy conference Wednesday.

An interesting piece on the situation in the oil industry. Right now I don’t know much about natural resources industries, but I do know that with China becoming an economic powerhouse, our insatiable demand for oil, and that we all share the same planet Earth, that this field will be interesting in the future.

At least from an investment point of view.

Unfortunately, this article does cite Steve Ballmer as the CFO of Microsoft - a pretty silly mistake. Here’s an eye popping fact though:

Fifty percent of the oil industry workforce is eligible to retire in five years

Wow.

So I’m going to be going to NY again in the first week of April.

And I really want a Canon SD400 for my trip. Unfortunately, it’s ship date is unknown. March 30th? April 13th? That’s the range Amazon gave recently. GULP.

Currently I have an order at J&R, Amazon, and Ritz.

But I only want 1.

Any ideas on how I can manage this situation?

I thought I’d post this entry to help travelers who are looking for the premium lounges in Narita Airport in Japan.

The premium lounges that I went to were the American Airlines Admiral’s Club, and Cathay Pacific’s lounge. They were both located in the OneWorld area of the airport.

Right around the corner (to the left) of where you pick up your boarding passes is an elevator. Simply get into the elevator and take it to the 4th floor. (Note how smooth the elevator ride is… Japanese elevators are tuned to be smooth, whereas NYC elevators are tuned to be jerky.)

When you get to the 4th floor, this map will help you find the lounge you are looking for:

As I said, I went to 2 lounges.

The American Airlines Lounge was full of… well… Americans. Both times I went it was quite crowded, a bit stuffy, and rather noisy. It did have a nice place for you to get work done, showers, and a desk of very helpful, English speaking agents to help you deal with boarding pass, upgrade, and other issues. The beverage selection was ok, as was the snack food. Not great. Oh, and if you smoke, go here. If I had to describe it in a word: crowded.

Here is a picture of some people sitting (click to enlarge):

The Cathay Lounge was much quieter and had free Wifi Internet Access. (Note that you could also use this free Wifi if you are sitting at the shared wall between the Cathay and the American lounge.) The snacks were far better, and it was easy to get a seat. There was also a telephone room where you could talk loudly on the phone (”CAN YOU HEAR ME NOW?”) without disturbing others. The desk agent’s command of English wasn’t all that great. I now wonder if she spoke Chinese, but since my Cantonese is awful, I didn’t even think of it. If I had to describe the lounge in a word: empty.

Here is a picture of the snack area (click to enlarge):

Another note about NRT, it seemed like people were almost always missing the AA flights, or on the verge of missing them. There were a lot of last last last last last calls. So beware and be diligent.

Happy Travels!

Seattle Post-Intelligencer: AP - Business: Microsoft to buy Groove Networks

Microsoft Corp. said Thursday it was acquiring leading collaboration software company Groove Networks Inc., and naming its founder, Ray Ozzie, as Microsoft’s chief technical officer.
Financial terms of the acquisition weren’t immediately disclosed.
Ozzie, a creator of Lotus Notes, will report directly to Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates and continue his work with the Groove team.

Oh wow. This is really exciting. Groove is one of my most favorite applications. It provides an awesome peer-to-peer, *SECURE* collaboration and file sharing system.

I use it all the time.

This is perfect for Microsoft as Groove really shines the spotlight on the power of having rich clients at the edge of the network.

Holy Cow! When I drove by the Chevron on Tuesday night, gas was only $2.39 a gallon. At that point I was thinking “Gosh what a big increase from last week when it was just $2.29!”

Tonight when I drove by again, it was $2.44!

Looks like investing in RD was a good call on my part. Though I wish I had invested in VLO…

So tonight I ended up running into Mark Jen again. Congrats to Mark on getting employed at Plaxo. His entry on his new job and interviewing experiences is a something that everyone should read and think about when searching for a new opportunity.

Congrats again Mark.

So for the last 5 years I’ve been using Pobox.com as my email service provider. It’s a great service - if you ignore the fact that you’re paying to have a lifetime email address.

In any case for the last week I was unable to send e-mail from my PC at home and I wasn’t sure why. For a while I thought it might have been transient errors on Pobox.com.

Then last night I finally dug into it, and found out that SBC started blocking SMTP port 25. Without notice.

Thanks SBC.

This is what the folks at Pobox had to say:

We’ve received other comments from SBC users who told us that SBC had suddenly decided to block port 25, so I suspect that you are right.
Because this block is becoming more common, Pobox also runs its SMTP server on another port; your provider blocks external SMTP access by preventing outgoing connections on port 25 (the standard SMTP port), so we run the server on port 587 as well.

You will want to locate the settings in your email client where you change the SMTP Server and look for a place to enter a port: enter 587.

Sometimes I hate PC’s, and here’s a classic example of why.

Recently I bought the absolutely gorgeous Dell 2001FP monitor. Let me tell you, it is an awesome monitor.

Unfortuantely, driving it’s absolutely amazing resolution of 1600×1200 seems to be putting an additional strain on my Dell desktop of some sort - as the fan now kicks on an even higher level.

Now my computer is noisy. Great. Just great.

I recently got a Dual Processor 2ghz G5.

It’s practically silent. Why can’t all computers be like that?