alt.larryanderson.org

Legendary newsman Walter Cronkite, the very personification of trustworthy journalism, the man who was the news to my generation as we were growing up, the man who narrated the events surrounding the assassination of President Kennedy, the Apollo launches, the war in Vietnam, the Watergate scandal, and the Iran hostage crisis, has signed off for good.

And that’s the way it is, Friday, July 17, 2009…

Nobody likes to think about them, nobody likes to talk about them, but they’re something all too common these days: layoffs. Today we got a reminder of that at my office, as the axes swung due to a company-wide reduction in force.

Up until this point, most of the departures from my workplace have been either due to redundancy as a result of the corporate takeover four years ago, the aftereffect of canceled projects, or cost-cutting by outsourcing work or moving it to different offices. Some were temporary employees whose assignments were no longer justifiable. In a few select cases, there have been retirements made possible by the aforementioned corporate takeover—for those individuals who had been made partners in the firm, it was a very profitable sale.

Today was different. The losses were much more evenly distributed. The ax felled both recent hires and long-term employees, in a variety of positions.  Some will be missed; some were long past their sell-by date. We lost one notorious time-server who was more noted for checking email, creating useless forms, playing solitaire, and eating ice cream than for doing any actual productive work, but we also lost some very solid people.  One had a law degree and was studying for the bar, and was just a few months shy of being fully vested in the retirement plan. Another was a married mother of two, whose job provided her family with health insurance, while yet another was the only truly bilingual Spanish-speaker in the office. They will be missed more than I can say.

Those of us who are left occupy only a small portion of an office designed to hold at least eight times as many people, sixteen times as many if you count the second shift that has been abolished. I half-expect to hear the wind whistling through the cubicles, while tumbleweeds blow by.  As it is, I feel a bit like a survivor of a shipwreck, gazing upon the half-submerged hull lodged just offshore, wondering why I survived and when my time will come.  It is good to be employed; it is sad to know that one’s continued employment comes at such a terrific cost to others.  And we wait for the ax to swing yet again.

This is of limited interest to anyone except me, but after discovering that I had made it to the first page of results for this Google search, I thought I’d see what happened when I performed the same search on Yahoo! and on Microsoft’s new search engine, Bing.

Much to my great surprise, this blog showed up as the sixth result on Yahoo!, and as the eighth result on Bing. Even more surprising to me, when I left off the quotes, this site dropped to seventh on Yahoo!, but rose to second place on Bing.

You know, I’m a Google-loving Apple guy, but suddenly I’m feeling a lot warmer towards Bing. :-)

A small milestone—this page made the first page of results on a Google search for “Larry Anderson,” a miracle for a common name like mine. And there was much rejoicing!

The flip side of border enforcement:  http://tr.im/rWEv

The Gem, for those who think the Smart Fortwo is just too big.

This is pure freaking genius…

I’m beginning to think there’s a wormhole somewhere around Ventura that leads directly to central Europe in the 1930s. First, about a week ago, I saw a Zeppelin (not a blimp—an actual, honest-to-God modern Zeppelin) as it traveled down the California coast from the Bay Area to Los Angeles for the July 4th weekend.

Then, today, I saw a rare prewar Tatra T87 as it merged onto US 101 in Ventura. For the automotive non-geeks, the T87 was an aerodynamic sedan built in Czechoslovakia before the war that featured a rear-mounted, air-cooled V-8 engine and a prominent dorsal fin along the rear (you can see another photo here). To my eye, it’s a beautiful example of Streamline Moderne automotive architecture, but you may have a different opinion—I like Citroëns and Saabs too, so my taste is somewhat, um, eclectic.

Anyway, I’m almost afraid what’s going to appear around here next. If I see a formation of Messerschmitts, I’m outta here. :-)