General

HP 2133 Mini-Note Six-Cell Battery

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A few weeks ago I bought an extended six-cell battery for my HP2133 Mini-Note. I had originally thought that the three-cell battery would be enough for me, but I was spectacularly wrong.  As I’ve just started my PhD, I am finding that I have a lot of two-hour seminar sessions that I have to complete, and the three-cell battery was battling to get to an hour or so, tops, when I ran it on the ‘high-performance’ settings. 

And running the HP2133 Mini-Note on low-power use is not recommended if you need to do anything substantive, although it’s fine for tapping out a few notes.

With the extended battery, and on low-power mode, I’m easily getting 3 or more hours of practical use out of the notebook.  The battery is very good, although I don’t like the way that the higher battery makes the machine sit up – it’s far less ergonomic if you’re typing on a flat surface (which is what you should be aiming for).  With the six-cell battery, and if you keep the three-cell charged up and carried around with you, you’ll get through a day interspersed with meetings and presentations and plane flights very easily in my view. 

If you’ve got the mini-note, the extended battery is a must-have. 

Are John McCain and Barack Obama the products of a broken political system?

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I continue to be fascinated by the United States’ political system.  As a political system, it was designed to work within the confines of an 18th century world.  Nonetheless, it seems to be entirely broken.  How can it be efficient to spend $1 billion (and more) just to come up with two alternative candidates that are then presented to voters. 

In essence, John McCain seems unelectable – clearly he’s 72, had many health scares, has ‘a bit of a temper’ and wants to start a new four-year job that, usually, looks to be an eight-year job if it all looks good at the halfwaymark.  Although he’s a ‘maverick’ republican he seems to have toed the line more frequently than most ‘mavericks’ would expect to.  The Republicans too seem to have been hijacked by fundamentalist ideologues, which is a shame because there are more pragmatic reasons for following conservative policies than simple religious alignment.  Sarah Palin is a nod to the religious right and fundamentalists without the power of critical thinking.  She also demonstrates the old adage that a ‘vice-president doesn’t help you, but they sure can hurt you’ by starkly demonstrating McCain’s powerful lack of judgement in selecting her to be his running mate. 

Barack Obama, it seems, is a good candidate with good oratory skills and a magnetic presence.  He seems to be genuinely intellectually curious and furthermore appears to be making decisions pragmatically rather than on the basis of ideology.  He has also demonstrated good judgement with the selection of Joe Biden, a genuine presidential contender on the world stage who strengthens Barack Obama’s weaknesses. Nonetheless, Barack Obama is of an African-American background (although clearly not a product of the country’s slavery history, being the son of a Kenyan) in a country that only relatively recently openly speculated whether a Catholic would be allowed to become President.  Barack appears to have run a fantastic campaign, but given that John Edwards has been shown to be a flawed candidate, Hillary supporters seem justified in being a little bitter that Hillary’s not at the top of the ticket.  Barack also cannot hide from the lack of experience, which the world must fervently hope can be addressed if he wins the Whitehouse, as it increasingly seems likely he will do.

Both remarkable candidates – one leaving his run a bit too late, the other starting it a little too early.  John McCain a little younger, without Sarah Palin and George W Bush to weigh him down, would be a fantastic president.  Barack Obama with a few years’ more experience would, combined with his current strengths, be an unstoppable candidate.  I do wonder in the case of Barack though whether, if he makes early errors, he will sabotage his long-term career. 

Is the US political system broken?

It most certainly is – see these flaws:

  • It takes eighteen months and at least $1 billion for both parties to run primary campaigns and presidential for some eighteen months to decide on two candidates.  The candidates that are selected have to be the ones with the deepest pockets, not necessarily those that are the best for the country. 
  • The candidates have to zig and zag during primaries to get the votes from people that vote in the primaries, although clearly this process appeals to registered voters of the relevant party – the true believers.  The process ends up selecting a candidate who appeals to the party base, and given the level of ennui and apathy these days such a candidate by definition will likely have trouble appealing to voters in the middle ground.
  • It’s a huge distraction to everyone involved.  In Australia, we have a system where, if we don’t like the leader, a party-room spill is called and by morning tea the next day (as was the case with Brendan Nelson) there’s a new leader.  None of this eighteen months palaver – you’re unhappy with the leader, you call the vote, and start in a new direction (or reaffirm the old one).  Eighteen months is far too long a process for people to be distracted.  Ask how effective in their roles Senator Barack Obama, Senator Joe Biden, Senator Hillary Clinton and Senator Joe McCain have been over the last eighteen months. 
  • You vote on the first Tuesday of November?  Clearly the founding fathers had no concept of a weekend (understandably) but who can take a day off work to vote on a Tuesday?  This alone biases the turnout (see next point).
  • Non-compulsory voting means that ennui and apathy win the day.  To win the popular vote, you need to get slightly more than half of the people who vote to vote for you.  In the last election, you needed to get 28% or so of the people to like you enough to vote for you.  Hardly a mandate when voting seems to be so difficult (people seem to wait 45 minutes minimum to vote, and it’s not uncommon to  wait four hours – e in Oz there would be lynchings).  To win you need to get enough people out of their couches and voting – which means your policies need to probably be divisive and clearly enunciated to get people in the streets.
  • Electoral colleges do not equal democracy.  Surely if you have more people voting for you across the country, it means you’re the president – you are there to represent the nation as a whole.  As it is – people focus on the ‘battleground states’ and the states with big voting allotments and the ones that are ‘in play’ – recalling that you need to pursue policies that motivate those people to come out and vote.  Policies will end up with unhealthy doses of pork rather than ones that are good for the nation.
  • Fixed four-year terms.  One letter:  W.  George W Bush has been a lame duck president for too long, apparently fixated on ideology and unwilling or unable to deal with the Democrats in congress.  He still has three months to go in his term.  Given that there has been eighteen months of politicking, and George has been effectively sidelined and ineffective in that time (since the Democrats took Congress in 2006), the largest most ‘democratic’ country in the world cannot afford to be asleep at the wheel in that time.
  • And another thing – voter fraud (ACORN anyone?), dodgy voter registration processes (Georgia throwing out newly registered voters on the basis of poor data matching with the result that a highly energising candidate who encourages people to vote who have never voted before is penalised), and dodgy tabulation machines (Florida?  I’m looking at you), pork barrelling with earmarks, riders and lobby groups (any law ever passsed by congress), and Supreme Court justices deciding who is the winner (2000 election).

It all adds up to a broken political system which ends up with broken political candidates and a broken world view.  The US will not retrieve itself from the poor situation it is in without addressing these flaws.  The financial system that has now earned its own three-letter acronym (‘GFC’ standing for ‘global financial crisis’) is a direct result of this broken political system. 

That is all.

Kate Moss is a cocaine-hoovering trollop on a catwalk

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One of the fun things I do regularly is Rostrum – a public speaking club. The other night we had a balloon debate and at the last minute I was drafted in.

A balloon debate is where there are three people in a leaking hot air balloon who are arguing over a single parachute. The audience has to decide who gets the parachute based on a three-minute speech, and a 1-minute rebuttal, from each of the people in the balloon.

In this case I was Angelina Jolie, as the scheduled speaker was unable to make the meeting.

Anyway, I was Angelina Jolie, and I was competing with Kate Moss and David Beckham for the parachute. In the course of discussion I may have described Kate Moss as a cocaine-hoovering trollop on a catwalk, and said that David Beckham was washed up with a dicky knee.

Both of which I am sure is true.

In the middle of the speech, two guests came into our meeting, just as I was describing how, as Angelina Jolie I was ‘up for it – you know what I mean boys’. Complete with a lusty wink, patched jeans, and a fat-lipped smile. To this day I’m not entirely sure that our guests knew exactly what was going on :).

It was a lot of fun, and Angelina Jolie won the debate. Yay me!

Session Review – AIFRS and beyond: contentious and emerging issues in accounting standards

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I had the honour of chairing Richard Wanstall’s session today at the Brisbane Convention Centre on the topic of AIFRS. Richard is the lead partner for the Accounting Advisory Services Group for Deloitte, and addressed the following issues in his presentation today:

The agenda addressed included the following:

  • Current changes in financial reporting
  • Impact of new standards in 2008
  • Lessons learnt from June 2008
  • On the horizon
  • Over the horizon

I liked how Richard distinguished between what’s ‘on’ the horizon and what’s ‘over’ it!

Richard did have a lot of references to standards I haven’t looked at in years, so I was not able to follow all of it (my fault, not his!), but it was interesting to hear that the Australian version of IFRS seems to be moving back towards the IFRS Standard (a little, anyway) and that the Australian version is being modified so that we are really ending up with multiple GAAPs depending on the type of entity (e.g. not-for-profits etc).

I must admit that I am also a little concerned to hear that IASB are thinking of extending IFRS to SME’s in some way. I can’t believe that that’s going to reduce compliance costs for anyone. Not, I am sure, that that was the point.

The ‘lessons learned’ part of the presentation detailing key misunderstandings of IFRS was very valuable, as were the ‘on the horizon’ and ‘over the horizon’ sections. I think these last two sections suffered a little as Richard was running out of time. Also they don’t consider the presenters when they go and have economic crises – Richard’s slides were still referencing interest rate increases (which since about last week we now seem to think are off our agenda). In the current environment it seems your slides will be out of date by morning tea!

As for the over-the-horizon issues, I was stunned to hear of potential modifications to lease agreements (bring operating leases onto the balance sheet? Sacrilege!).

As for the overall session, the facilities are excellent as is to be expected at the Brisbane Convention Centre, and the audience was very good. I thought the Chair was a bit ordinary – seemed to think he was funny and forgot to introduce himself (I can say that, as I was the chair!) :).

Richard’s session was very informative and helpful, and Richard clearly knows his stuff. These days, I think I’m doing pretty well if I remember what IASB stands for.

I think the session was hampered by the fact that slides weren’t provided prior to the session (apparently they’re coming), and I think this is particularly helpful if you have a great deal of technical detail to talk to. Something for me to remember next time my sldies are running late.

I do think there was a great deal of information that was provided as a list of changes; I think that as a result of not having slides provided to the audience Richard was compelled to give us an opportunity to absorb the information presented. As a consequence, we didn’t get to hear as much from Richard as to what the implications of the changes actually were – Richard has a lot to add in that space and I think we simply ran out of time.

I liked how Richard was able to answer the only question I could come up with – whether there was an impact on accounting information systems, and Richard was straight onto that one immediately. I hope that made some members of the audience sit up and think about what these AIFRS changes might mean for their accounting systems.

A good session, well worthwhile attending. Richard’s a good presenter and knowing how much time it takes to put those slides together, I know that a lot of work went into preparing for this presentation. Very much appreciated, and I certainly got something out of this very valuable session.

I have some photos of the venue but this computer in the presenter’s room doesn’t have an SD card reader so I’ll add them later. 

Social networking and recruitment of GenY?

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I was asked over at the CPA Congress community:

Are you in the main, referring to Gen-Y/Z recruitment? Is it assumed that social networking sites are less relevant to the GenXers and boomers?

Also, i am of the view that it takes a multitude of factors to retain Gen-Y. Is it even possible to retain the bulk of Gen Y’s for a long stint?

If employers start allowing specific down-time for employees to surf the net etc, does this breed resentment in the workforce that do not utilise social networking websites? I.e. similar to employees that go for their hourly cigarette break.

My response?  The session on Thursday will be touching on recruitment and leveraging social networking sites.  The focus mostly tends to be on GenY, and leveraging with people you know (six degrees of Kevin Bacon if you know what you mean) to get ‘better’ staff. 

I think it is assumed that social networking sites are less relevant to GenXers and boomers.  There is a certain amount of truth to this in that they tend not to use it – but I think particularly LinkedIn does have impact amongst GenXers and some babyboomers.  I am really finding myself drawn to the Twitter community at the moment as it tends to be more active and has less ‘fluff’ and more potential for conversations.  But you can become addicted easily to it.

I understand incidentally that LinkedIn has become very active with people looking for new jobs in the current financial meltdown. 

I’m not an HR expert but those that I know would agree with you definitely that it takes a multitude of factors to retain GenY – just as it does for anyone.  I do ask myself whether you need to hoard every GenY you come across 🙂 – sometimes people moving on is constructive (i.e. functional turnover rather than dysfunctional turnover).  The way it seems to keep GenY is to offer them interesting roles, change and opportunities to learn.  As well as access to Facebook and plenty of money :).  The current economic crisis may change that. 

I might add that such humble approaches work for GenXers too :).  Regarding retaining ‘the bulk’ of GenY  – for some industries it is possible, but I’d ask whether it is actually a positive thing to do (i.e. keep the ‘bulk’ for a long stint).  I think we’ve always had this problem, but ‘churn and burn’ isn’t as effective, as there just aren’t as many GenY’s as there were GenXers when I graduated 17 years ago. 

Regarding specific down-time for employees to surf the net – I imagine it does breed resentment.  So, though, does asking people to work weekends and late nights at the expense of family life and friends – it’s quid pro quo I think on that one.  I wouldn’t advocate specific down-time – a Facebook-break – but I’m pretty old-fashioned. 

I would say that it is probably like getting a personal phone call at work – you don’t worry if it isn’t too much, but if a person spent hours on it to affect their effectiveness, you’d have to pull their horns in. 

Anyone else’s thoughts on this matter?  These are my grab-bag response to this issue – I may have missed something or get something wrong.  It’s been known to happen.

Thanks:  Micheal Axelsen