May 2008 Archives

I shouldn't be blogging this from work, but someone forwarded it to me and I have to, before I forget...

I've always love Gordon's shows. He makes for entertaining television, and it's clear from watching him in various shows (other than Hell's Kitchen that is) that -- to a certain extent at least -- there is a bit of a softee behind the loud, abusive, exterior.

One quote I absolutely loved, from a recent tvguide.com interview, which made me realize how much I like him?

TV Guide: What's your favorite comfort food?
Ramsay: In-N-Out burgers [an L.A. chain] -- I absolutely love them.

Oh, HELL YEAH. My boy Gordon likes himself some In-N-Out? I wish the TVGuide reporter had asked him what his favorite Secret Menu item was.....

On the train ride back and forth to work, I find myself watching a crapton of movies from Netflix. One movie I'd been meaning to watch for a while, and finally got around to on my commute home tonight, was Air Guitar Nation. Put simply, it's a documentary about two American competitors making their way to the World Air Guitar Championships.

Yeah, seriously. There is such a thing.

Now, along the course of the film, I come to genuinely want David "C-Diddy" Jung to win. Partly, because he's a seemingly genuine dude, but also because his signature song, which he consistently nails when all the stops must come out, is Play With Me, by Extreme (from the Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure Soundtrack).

That's mostly because that song is a killer air guitar track, as anyone who could see into my bedroom during my junior or senior year of high school could attest.

It may seem weird to watch a bunch of people "not playing any instruments", but it was surprisingly entertaining. There's all these performers, with their stage personae, and it all just works.

Seriously, you should get this DVD.

Refacing Government Tender

Some of my personal favorites: 300 Jackson and B00m h34d5h00t!!1! Lincoln (but that last might only be because I keep longing for Unreal Tournament's deep bass of "head-shot!" while playing Halo3).

So a bunch of my friends have been asking me what I think of the Yahoo/Microsoft situation, now that it's over.

As a former Yahoo...

I'm glad Microsoft didn't complete the acquisition. It would have been a bloodbath in multiple ways. The "suicide rate" as people who hate Microsoft with a passion jumped ship would be huge. Then there would have been the inevitable layoffs as competing products were culled, or HR departments were merged, or whatever.

Even my friends who are "unhappy" at Yahoo would not have been happier with their new Microsoft overlords.

Now, as a shareholder?

I have to agree with Bill Miller from Legg Mason (Yahoo's second-largest shareholder). He told the New York Times that if you're going to climb up on the grandstand and say your stock is worth $37.00 a share, and you're sitting on $2.3 Billion in cash reserves, then the absolute smart strategy is to buy back your stock from the market whenever the market is valuing it so far below what you think it's worth.

And if you're NOT buying it back, then how can you honestly say it's worth $37.00 a share?

And if it isn't really worth $37.00 a share, and that's why you're not even willing to pay $24.37 a share for it to buy it back from the open market, then why didn't you accept $33.00 a share for it from the potential buyer?

Shareholders don't care about whether or not people like their new corporate overlords, they care about stock performance.

If Yahoo starts snatching up a crapton of stock from the market, then IMHO, they're putting their money where their mouth is with regard to the stock valuation. If they don't, then that was just a crappy excuse for not selling out to Microsoft, and is an affront to their responsibilities to the shareholders.