Ordinary People

Tonight I found myself hugging/holding a guy while he cried inconsolably.  I reveal this on a public blog with no disrespect to his privacy; he and I are acquaintances so by altering his name there is no risk of publicly identifying him.

"Mohammed" has never seen the movie Ordinary People but he is living it:  Older, beloved brother died in a bad accident.  One parent letting it be known they wished it had been him instead.  The other parent caring but distant.  I guess I landed the counselor role in this real life movie.

What struck me as he was talking - and he had a lot to talk about - was that what he needed most was someone to listen.

I left the night feeling oddly good because I know he felt better just to get a lot off his chest.  I also felt incredibly grateful that I have many really valuable friends I know I can turn to when life hands me lemons.

This blows

Today I found myself explaining the difference between, "Blow me off" and "Blow me."

After I tried to explain it I found I really can't explain why "Blow me off" means what it does.

I don't get it

Facebook is filled (for friends of my age) with posts claiming the past was sooo much better than the present.  "We are the last generation to play out a friend's house" is one of the claims.

While I love 80's music, I guess I view the 70's and 80's differently than the nostalgia-bots.  It was the age where people smoked everywhere.  Tab collars and wide ties for guys and women wearing shoulder pads were cool.  We were the first "me" generation before reality TV made being "me" something anyone else would want to watch.

My generation is not a generation of heroes.  We are the first generation to go horribly in debt going to college. That's not our fault; it's what our guidance counselors told us to do.

I am happy to be of the era I am from.  I would have accomplished nothing in college if I had a smartphone and access to FB during class.

Each generation has this insatiable need to feel morally superior to those younger than them - a feeling I can't understand or identify with.  I believe the children are our future... Oh, sorry, Whitney Houston interrupted me while I was writing this...

Busted

This is the week before finals.  Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus and I work at a place that has finals that run into February.

I gave my classes a make-up online homework/quiz to replace a lower quiz score earlier in the semester.  The first class of guys took it at 12:30.  The average score was 90/100.

For my 3:30 class I changed the numbers on five questions.  The answers listed were the same but the correct answer changed.  Almost half of the class missed those questions.

One of the guys was shocked at his score and said, "But teacher, I know I had the right answers!"  I pulled up his quiz and said, "Yes, Mohammed, you had the right answers for the quiz I gave the 12:30 class."

He literally ran out of the room.

Apple earnings report

I awoke at 3AM and thought, "Apple must have released it's 4th quarter results by now!" (Doesn't the performance of Apple wake everyone up in the middle of the night?)

(The rest of this post goes quite a bit deeper into the weeds than I expected.  Not worth reading if you are not interested in stocks.)

The numbers were an eye-opener:

• Sales of $46 billion from which they made a profit of $13 billion.  
• They are sitting on $96.7 billion in cash.  
• In three months they sold 37 million iPhones - blowing away all estimates.  They also sold more than 15 million iPads and 5 million Macs.  

The real story is not the sales, it's the profit.  Apple squeezes every dime out of its Chinese suppliers and is able to charge its customers a premium for its products.  A net profit of $13 billion on $46 billion in sales is simply unbelievable.  That's an astounding 28% net profit margin. Want some comparisons?
Exxon-Mobil in the last quarter had $10.3 billion in profit on $120 billion in revenue (sales):  8.6%
Wal-Mart a paltry $3.3 billion in profit on $110 billion in revenue: 3%

Google had almost as high of a net profit margin and Microsoft did better than Apple:
Google had $2.7 billion in profit on 10.6 billion in revenue - a 25.4% net profit margin.
Microsoft does even better on a percent comparison:  20.8 billion in revenue yielding $6.6 billion in profit - Their net profit is 31.7% of revenue.

The difference:  Apple generates most of its profits from selling physical items - phones, tablets, and computers.  Most of those companies make a very small profit margin.

HP - in their best quarter in the last year (spring) - had a 7.3% net profit margin and only .7% in the most recent quarter.
Dell's net profit margin: 5.8%

So Apple's numbers are nothing short of astounding.  It will be interesting to watch the stock price.

Pug porn

Sent to me by a friend...

I love the "innocent" pug look...

Newt!

My wonderful niece Gina had this shirt made and sent to me. By the time of the Iowa caucuses Newt had fallen so far that the politically correct move was to support Santorum...  but I felt awful (like I was cheating on my first love).  Fortunately, Newt knows a thing or two or three about infidelity so I know he'll forgive me.

The most amazing stat for me that is that Newt's supporters are largely supporting him because they believe he's the most electable.

I thought, "Oh, come on!  They can't be that deluded..."

So... I may not be posting regularly anymore but I still do a lot for eight three blog readers.  I have spent the past two hours reading Hannity Forums. While some Romney supporters struggle to show respect for their guy it is clear the far-right has become smitten... and not with Mitten.  They love the bold audacity of the Newt.

Newt! Newt! Newt!  Long live the Newt!

Is this heaven?

No.

And it is not Iowa, either.

This shot looks extraordinarily similar to the Amana Colonies.  It is from a region of Germany where my great-great grandfather was born.  My new German friend Lukas is doing the research and he found this website with plenty of pictures of the region.  Alter the architecture of the buildings and you'd think these pictures were from Iowa.  It's no wonder my ancestors chose to settle in Eastern Iowa - it was home.

Hotel in Doha

I'd like to post a picture of how small my hotel room is in Doha but it's too small to take a picture that will do it justice.  The check-in experience is part of why my blood pressure has risen since moving to the middle east:

Steve:  I would like to check-in.
Clerk:  Mr. Kranz it says you booked a room for two people for two nights.
Steve:  That must be the default for Expedia.  There will only be one person.

After getting my information:
Clerk:  Now, Mr. Kranz, can you give me the information about the second guest?

I asked for a room as high as possible and I got a room on the first floor...

*****
Qatar is - per capita - one of the richest countries in the world.  Given some of the sky scrapers you can see it but seeing the neighborhoods around the city and the many poor streets it doesn't strike me as a super-rich country.  I hope I can post a few pictures after I return to the Emirates tonight.

Doha bound

In six hours I am on my way to Qatar for the weekend.  I'm going because:  1.  My friend and former student Abood is doing his internship so I will visit his workplace.  2.  I have never been to Doha and this is as good of an excuse as I need.

I'll only be there for 3 days and 2 nights.  Given that the entire country is the size of six typical Iowa counties that should be enough time!

I haven't packed anything and I only made my hotel reservation 10 minutes ago.  I guess the pre-flight anxiety I'm used to having has been replaced laziness.

Massacre

Like me, I'll bet you've never felt sorry for a honeybee... that is until you watch this.

New Year's resolutions

I'm not big on New Year's resolutions because the inevitable failure (year after year) is too much to bear.  Nevertheless, I made a promise to improve in 2012:  No more spending money on people for whom I have no chance of having sex.

And since that eliminates the population of the planet I should be saving a lot of money in 2012.

Five hour day

I'm back in the UAE... it was not a great flight in that my cold was worse while in the air.  Every time I tried to sleep my head would start spinning and I'd feel like I was going to throw up.  So it was my first international flight without taking ambien and I stayed awake for almost all of it.

The plane was flying east.  Going east meant the time for daylight was just under five hours.  It's kind of depressing to get on a plane at 8PM Iowa time and get off of it at 7PM UAE time the next day.  It's literally losing a day.

Anyhow, none of the Coke glasses broke so it was a good trip...

Christmas 2011 trip over...

Highlights:

• Unbelievably nice weather with many days over 40.  It made me try to forget horrible Iowa winters of the past.
• A really nice Christmas with my family.  That's not a given in my family so it was a nice surprise.
• Ten days of seeing friends for breakfast, lunch and dinner.  Some days it was two lunches.  I was on course for gaining 20 pounds on this trip until...
• A nasty cold took me out with a week left in the trip.  I cancelled on several friends and just felt miserable.  For a couple of days I had lost my voice to the point of not being able to talk on the phone.  
• I proudly caucused for Santorum; anything to promote crazy in a party that doesn't need much help.

I'm now in the O'hare business class lounge - although, unfortunately, I didn't get the bump up to business class.    The free beer and chips before the flight will have to make up for it.

You can track the flight here:
http://flightaware.com/live/flight/ETD150/history/20120105/0155Z/KORD/OMAA

If all goes well I'll be back in my apartment in 18 hours.  OK... that just depressed me.  Yeesh, sometimes I wonder why I chose to live so far away.

Oh, that's right, it was better than selling AFLAC.