Moment of Silence

Former Clemson University President and 2 time football letterman Walter T. Cox passed away Wednesday. This link will take you to the details via the Clemson News page where all the details can be found. Many of you are familiar with the name as the plaza area we routinely pass through outside of Johnstone A and the Student Union is named in his honor.

Welcome to....

Toronto, Birmingham, or New Mexico? Wow, sounds great! Oh yeah, we are going to continue to welcome folks to Houston, but we haven't figured out what we are calling this new/replacement bowl game. The above have all been approved by some Bowl Liscensing Committee to host during the following post season. This, on top of the added BCS game in Arizona and all the bowls I can't keep straight anyway as they all go by their corporate sponsor names instead of their traditional tag (It will always be the Peach Bowl damnit). My math isn't too sharp today but I counted about 32 games for the post season. That means 64 teams get to travel. No less than a third of them will lose money (ala Tiger to the Humanitarian) in this venture. More than a couple won't be able to pull a fan base large enough to see their share of tickets for the event, even if it is in a decent place. Toronto? Are we prepping some Sunbelt talent for the CFL? New Mexico, package in a January ski trip to Taos and I may consider it, or not. Can you say watered down? I didn't even think their were enough teams with winning or .500 records to fill that many slots. I think starting this year, I will not ackowledge any bowl that can't be played after Christmas Day and start whittling them down from there on merit of existence.

Class Post VII (The END)

Well, Verizon has been a complete bust as far as being a news maker over the past 6 weeks or so. They did decide to sue Vonage, the internet long distance provider whose stock has floundered since it's IPO release. News of the lawsuit coupled with other factors has the Vonage stock tradings below $10. It IPO'ed at $17. The base of hte suit is patent infringement as confirmed last Monday.
Otherwise, Verizon is plugging along with little coming out abotu he NSA case hitting major headlines. I'm sure there is some other blog talk but unless it hits the big boards, I'm not really paying attention as it is probably hearsay or speculation though some good juice occassionaly does sneak out.
At this time I'm signing off as far as posting about Verizon for class. As it did spark my interest some future post may arrive if something really major hits but nothing on a regular basis. To those who found this blog via class, feel free to keep tuning in and feel free to comment. My antics can often be found here and the comments usually invoke a laugh. This class ahs slowed some things down but as it is my final hurrah in the MBA program posting may gain some interest and hopefully some humor as I get to pay attention more to the things outside of a text book. It should get good when they involve filling in the blanks that I can't seem to remember. As for the normal readership, you know what to expect out of me.

Class Post VI

This post is a little random but does relate. The reason I began focusing on Verizon was the whole NSA mess that I thought was going to hit the fan with wire tapping and phone records. Needless to say, all the three letter agencies in Washington have made it "disappear." Well, at least until today. Talk about the media flare up over the wire taps will probably resurface with the announcement the government has also been monitoring bank accounts. In the wake of 9/11 and the fact that we can pretty much target knuckleheads in our country who are up to no good (see recent events in Miami) this doesn't surprise me. It's not like you and I have much to worry about....unless the IRS has a reason to be not happy with you. Anyway, I think it is good anti-terrorism practice and the reality of it is we are protecting ourselves and until the media reports these things, we aren't any worse for them or even affected. I'm guessing the banks will get to share the scrutiny Verizon and the other telecom folks have but don't expectto hear much about it for a while. At least once the new wears off.

Class Post V

Verizon Communications announced a major agreement to help bring Public Television to digital programming. That's right, now you get Big Bird and the Seasame Street gang in all their colorful glory. I will admit programs like Nova and some of the other nature based programming will be pretty cool in HD. The big deal with this is the fact that prior to the agreement. those people on Verizon's FiOS fiber optic TV service did not have access to these channells and their programing. Though it doesn't do anything for folks in the Carolinas, large markets in FL, MD, NY, TX, CA, and MA do have the 400 channel cable option. This is a major achievment if you are a big Public Television supporter. Honestly, I can't say that this would affect my desire to pick up the cable package since my days of Seasame Street are over and I was too old to get hit with the Barney craze. Now if Ken Burns updates The Civil War documentary with some cool effects suitable for HD, I would be excited. For the parents out there, I hope this helps you in some way.

Class Post IV

In an article posted at CNNMoney there is an interesting run down of "Old School" companies (Verizon falls under this as they are a conglomerate of formerly established firms) that are freezing their pension plans. Many of these are a direct effect of issues being encountered both on their bottom lines as well as what is being seen across their industries. In a big surprise, IBM froze their plan. Both Verizon and IBM are increasingly competing with tech stars that never adopted the tradition pension or benfits plans, keeping thier cost down. Also with the addition of foreign competition that already competes at lower marginal costs, companies like Verizon have no choice if they want to keep costs down and compete over the long haul. This occurence with the likes of GM, and the airlines is no surprise as they have been hurting for a while. Seeing it in "healthy companies" come as a surprise to many but shouldn't. If you are with these firms, consider yourself lucky. At least your parent company is having the foresight to do something now instead of waiting until it's to late (Delphi, UAL, Delta...)

CLASS POST III

As I mentioned in class, the newsi n hte Verizon/NSA fiasco is there is no news to report. I have been tryingto keep up with this and other thna the initial flurry not much has been said. I expected this to drag out as the government is involved but nothing has happened at all in the past couple weeks it seems. For those who know Verizon only has one of the main names in cell phone service/coverage here is a quick snapshot at some corporate info so you can realize how big they are.
Headquartered in Bedminster, NJ, Verizon Wireless is a joint venture of Verizon Communications (NYSE:VZ) and Vodafone (NYSE and LSE: VOD).
Customers
53 Million
Employees
56,000
Annual Revenue
$32.3 Billion

This info is straight from the home page found here.
What you see aboveis jsut he Verizon Wirelss info. Verizon Communications is much bigger. Their numbers are here

Updates, sorta

So another week has come and gone and I have not had much to say. Work is staying busy and class is on a compacted schedule so things are moving along and I'm just happy to keep up. Along with the crazy schedule has come little progress on the dating scene. Last Thursday night happened and was nice. An agreement that schedules suck and neither party (her more so than me honestly) has the ability to fully invest in it so we were just going to keep doing whatever it is we are doing. Buffett concert came around Sunday, TRAINWRECK. She was there, the Margarita's were too strong, I drank most of those, then it started raining. Dark, cold rain, all parties overly drunk. One big mess. All parties made it home by the grace of god. She had carpooled up with friends from her side of town. Since then, I have talked to her all of about 5 or 10 minutes. The mess of the concert has supposedly been forgiven/deemed not a big deal but her schedule has prevented any further visits and I have the gut feeling that things aren't ok. At this point, I'm going to just go with it, let her make a call on what happens next and start moving on and seeing what else is out there until she figures out what she wants and if I'm part of that equation.