Chicago's bid for 2016 Olympics

An interesting development just transpired in Chicago's bid for 2016 Olympics. Mayor Daley had been reluctant to sign the contract with IOC. This provisioned that the host city will have full ownership of financial cost of sponsoring the summer Olympics. China had spent 13 bllion Yuan or close to $2B to finance the recent 08 Beijing Olympics.

AON is willing to underwrite the insurance to cover $500 million in the event the city's cost exceeds revenues accrued from hosting the games. Mayor Daley's was reluctant to stick the cost of the games to Chicago taxpayers. I am wondering however what is the premium or cost of this insurance policy? AON's policy will not be pro bono, it will come at a cost. However, this is a win/win situation for the city and 2016 bid team. The caveat is, how much policy is enough. The statisticians, demographers, consultants and forecasters better be accurate on their pessimistic, most likely, and optimistic forecasts, i.e., to ensure some semblance of accuracy on their sufficiency of insurance amount.

Not foreign to performance bonds and other insurance policies for vendors and contractors, this definitely is a development in the right direction for the city to move forward with the bid. Now if they can now convice all Chicago Aldermen, that the city taxpayers will not pay $1 in case the 2016 Olympics bleeds red ink, it is "all good."

CIT 1122 Routing Protocols

Yesterday was day #1 (or night #1) that is for the next class module leading to CCNA certification. I am taking this class at College of DuPage in Glen Ellyn, IL. This is 2nd of four classes--which hopefully will provide me the necessary body of knowledge and lab exercises to pass the Cert test. (The primary reason I am taking this is to gain some continuing education credits to maintain my PMP certification with PMI.org.)

The intent as well is to enable me to challenge and validate,
a) statements of work,
b) field QC for any IP-based hardware deployment,
c) validate Technical Support documentation,
d) and have a general understanding of Networking (TCP/IP) protocols.

Nonetheless, I am amazed at the caliber of students who have flocked back to school. (One was an electrical engineer in my cit 1121 class this past summer.) Primary reason is to "recession-proof" one's career. A majority of people have gone back to get their undergraduate, graduate or even post graduate degrees while we try to ride out this recession. Suffice to say that there will be a lot of (educated derelicts like me) very qualified, skilled, highly educated work force coming out of this recession.

Continental Express Flight 2816

I love following news about travel since I love traveling myself. I love learning new culture, different cuisines, and mostly I love discovering the history of a locale invariably tied to its Architectural style as well.

This incident occurred not too long ago. I would like to make this short and sweet since much has been written about this incident. Regardless that the Continental Regional Jet (operated by a Continental subsidiary or a "contractor" for lack of a better term) was not truly operated by Continental, or who is fully responsible for what transpired in stranding of flight 2816 in Rochester MN, I am amazed that common sense is thrown out the window all in the name of following protocol.

Some excerpts from msnbc.com: ..Airport manager Steve Leqve, however, insists passengers could have come into the airport at anytime. “The decision for that airplane to stay out on that ramp was strictly Continental’s dispatch’s,” he told reporters. “I can't explain why they made the decision to stay on the tarmac. If it was an airport manager’s decision, those people would not have sat on that plane longer than two hours.”

Which leads me to the following conclusion. Rules and protocols are formulated, and are in place to be followed by all "stakeholders." However, when comfort of "customers" are in jeopardy, I believe it was incumbent upon the dispatcher to allow the passengers to disembark from the plane and allow them to enter the airport. Did the dispatcher check on TSA rules about allowing the passengers in the airport since TSA agents had been gone for the night? That question remains to be answered. In sum, I believe customers always come first. Any decision made at any level, when impacting customers--can run counter to common practice or protocol. Those decisions have to be made, and if counter to some protocol--some exceptions have to be made. In the name of the customer.

NYT report: more homeowners being pushed to foreclosure

I think it is entirely wrong for cities and taxing districts to turn over unpaid or property taxes in arrears to third party collection agencies. These agencies obviously turn around and mark up or charge exorbitant surcharges (charging up to 18% interest) to financially strapped homeowners. From a larger perspective, it is shortsighted to gain (in the short term) the direly needed tax revenues. When more homes fall into foreclosures exacerbated by this flawed process, neighborhoods and homes go to disrepair, property values fall, and the vicious cycle becomes more widespread.

Dow closing today

So the market closed almost 200 points down today, reportedly the biggest pullback since a 50 % gain from March this year. The following is an excerpt on msnbc.com news today: "The biggest drag on spending is the high level of unemployment. Almost 7 million workers have lost their paychecks since the recession began. Unemployment benefits and stimulus tax cuts have helped, but confidence in the job market remains weak. That’s one reason the savings rate has jumped. Households are saving for a rainy day and trying to restore wealth lost to the housing market collapsed." Considering that 2/3rd (this is the last ratio I recall) of the US economy is domestic consumption, the increase in savings by US households has been sort of a double-edged sword effect on the US economy. If the US consumers are digging in (including us, although we do have a small home improvement project we are trying to finish, more on that later) and not spending money, then domestic consumption will stay low and the vicious cycle perpetuates. (I read as well that the world market is down as well regardless that Japan's GDP reportedly rose 3.7 this past quarter.) I try to be optimistic but I am not seeing the volume of projects come in comparable to previous years.

Update to this site

Starting today, I will be blogging about different aspects of our lives and not solely in project management. I will attempt to focus on technology that improve our quality of lift, but I may blog as well on some funny aspects or nuances I observe. I came across this article that Facebook may expand to other areas where it may compete with other big rivals, e.g., paypal and a rival of twitter. When something successful expands and tries to be a be-all and end-all solution to peoples' lives (the premise being that a lot of people spend hours on Facebook), this can be the start of a business enterprise' undoing. We do not have to look too far by looking at GM's business model. They had so many product lines and different (or seemingly different) brand names that consumers as a whole gets confused on what an enterprise is really selling. I am a big fan of Facebook. I do hope they do not loose focus on the premise why Facebook became hugely successful, starting from college campuses to a global phenomenon (including older age groups beyond college students).

http://tinyurl.com/kvxhs3