Archive for December, 2007
Posted on December 23, 2007 - by Venik
Corporate logic
As you are doing your holiday shopping, here is a good reason to avoid Circuit City: according to a Washington Post article, Circuit City execs had the bright idea to lay off the more experienced salespeople, who are earning $14-15/hr and replace them with entry-level sales personnel for $9/hr. Circuit City stocks took a nosedive [...]
Posted on December 22, 2007 - by Venik
Back from New York
I am back from New York and getting ready for the holidays. If you never worked in IT, the pre-holiday time is the worst. Every lazy user, who was sitting on his ass for months doing nothing, suddenly realizes that its the end of the year and nothing has been done. So he submits a [...]
Posted on December 12, 2007 - by Venik
The battle of the experts
Go to Google News and pick a few random articles about the latest events in Russia. Quickly look through each article and write down names of various Russian political analysts and experts quoted in the article. Also write down the names of the organizations these experts represent. You will end up with an interesting list [...]
Posted on December 10, 2007 - by Venik
Russia’s liberals: the identity crisis
I just stumbled upon a remarkably-balanced article about Russian politics: “In Russia, a democratic message blurred“, by Nikolai Petro, US State Department’s former special assistant for policy on the Soviet Union under George H. W. Bush. It is not every day that in an American newspaper one encounters an intelligent thought about Russia’s political life. [...]
Posted on December 10, 2007 - by Venik
Grand Hyatt New York, Part II
To continue where I left off: the expectation of the fifty-dollar breakfast. The previous night I requested the breakfast to be delivered to my room between 6:30 and 7am. It arrived fashionably late at 7:10am, wrapped in cellophane like a TV dinner. It was supposed to be a Japanese breakfast with miso soup, grilled salmon, [...]
Posted on December 10, 2007 - by Venik
Grand Hyatt New York, Part I
So here I am, sitting in my overpriced room on the 23-rd floor of the Grand Hyatt in Manhattan. The problem is not with the room – the room is not bad. A little dusty, but OK. I am not a picky person. I’ve seen worse. There was something gelatinous floating in the toilet, so [...]
Posted on December 3, 2007 - by Venik
Western press on Russian elections
I guess sometimes the desire to criticize is just too overwhelming to resist. Western journalist covering the Russian elections resemble a herd of wildebeest crossing a river, falling prey to logic and common sense. An unstoppable desire to print something scathing, and brutal, and full of appearance of righteous indignation. It doesn’t matter if the [...]
