I saw this quote come by my inbox today at work:

Simple Math for Safe Doubles [Fool.com: Commentary] January 26, 2006

Mr. Market has the memory of a goldfish and the foresight of a mole. When he sees a company growing at 30% per year, he gets very excited.

Indeed!

Click the link – it’s actually a pretty good read.

Spin

Addressing Employee Complaints
In this segment, Dr. E.L. Kersten provides executives and managers with a shockingly effective strategy for responding to the complaints of their subordinates.

Hahaha… another gut busting video from Despair.com on how to manage employees. Check it out.

MercuryNews.com | 01/30/2006 | New ramps opening at 101-85 should clear up merging messes

Me, and I have good news for you. This is a work in progress and new ramps could open in time for Tuesday’s commute, easing one of the worst merging messes in Silicon Valley. Enjoy:

• The off-ramp from northbound Highway 85 to Shoreline will open, eliminating the need for those drivers to merge with cars trying to reach 101 from north 85.

• A second bridge — the freeway connector from north 85 to north 101 — will be ready. No longer will these drivers have to weave through cars trying to exit at Shoreline or Old Middlefield Way.

• Northbound 101 traffic heading to Shoreline will also have a new off-ramp to themselves without battling traffic merging onto the freeway.

• Work on the carpool-to-carpool lanes between 85 and 101 should finish in May.

Hurray!

Amazon.com: The Logic of Failure: Books

D?rner identifies four habits of mind and characteristics of thought that account for the frequency of our failures:
1. The slowness of our thinking-We streamline the process of problem solving to save time and energy.
2. Our wish to feel confident and competent in our problem solving abilities-We try to repeat past successes.
3. Our inability to absorb quickly and retain large amounts of information-We prefer unmoving mental models, which cannot capture a dynamic, ever-changing process.
4. Our tendency to focus on immediately pressing problems-We ignore the problems our solutions will create.

Successful problem solving is so complex that there are no hard-and-fast rules that work all the time. The best take-away from the book (and this is my favorite quote): “An individual’s reality model can be right or wrong, complete or incomplete. As a rule it will be both incomplete and wrong, and one would do well to keep that probability in mind.” The book is 199 easy-to-read pages, and D?rner gives lots of interesting examples from lab tests illustrating people’s actual behavior in problem-solving situations.

This sounds pretty interesting. The human mind seems to have a lot of bugs! I hope to be able to find time to read this some day. Have you read it?

I’m at the Dr Martin Luther King Jr Library in Downtown San Jose right now. I’m connected via ethernet. Check out the bandwidth:

Whoa!

The Associated Press

A pastor who threatened a national boycott against Microsoft and other major corporations for endorsing a gay rights bill urged supporters Tuesday to buy up the companies’ stock and dump it to drive prices down.

Rev. Ken Hutcherson, pastor of Antioch Bible Church in the Seattle suburb of Redmond, said the stock-dumping plan had been part of his strategy all along.

“You got to find out how you affect a company,” Hutcherson said, conceding that it would be hard to get people to shun products from companies that dominate the marketplace as Microsoft and Boeing do.

He wants supporters to buy one or two shares over the next few months, then sell them May 1.

Hm, according to Moneycentral the average daily volume is 62.54 million and has a 56.1% institutional ownership. Something tells me that this plan might not work out too well… On the other hand, I’ll keep my eye out for May 1st – might be a good day to buy MSFT at a bargain price!

This article came to my attention today:

Microsoft ads aim to erase ‘huge’ image

Microsoft Corp., the world’s biggest software maker, will spend $120 million a year on an advertising campaign to fight its image as “a huge American company.”

The campaign, using television, print and the Internet, highlights Microsoft’s education and economic development projects in 32 countries, including France and Taiwan, according to group advertising manager Mike Lucero. Actor William Macy of the movie “Fargo” narrates the ads.

“We are often perceived as a huge American company,” Lucero said Friday in an interview.

“We wanted to be very specific about what we are doing in each country in education, innovation, economic opportunity and security,” he said.

I forwarded this on to Scoble, who had a good reply – I’ll let him post it.

My take – is this really a good investment? I mean, sure, positive exposure is always a good thing. But unlike blogs and CES, this doesn’t seem very… well… personal.

It seems to me that this $120 million might be better spent offering some great free service to potential customers around the word, and to rely on word of mouth instead.

I haven’t seen the ad campaign yet – so I guess I’ll have to wait and see how this turns out.

Avoid Doubletree Bellevue Hotel room 530 (A review)

I kind of sensed that there was a lot of road noise when I was getting ready for bed, but once I actually got into bed, the noise was horrible! In particular, the truck traffic really picks up at night!

So after getting my complaint feedback, the hotel sent me a letter to apologize. They also gave me a voucher for a 1 night free stay. Thanks Doubletree Bellevue! I’ll take them up on it – and ask for a room on the West side!