Steve Makes a Good Case

In today’s Washington Post, AOL founder Steve Case eloquently argues that Time Warner should split into four companies. He writes that in early 2002: “I proposed to the company’s board that it was time to ‘liberate’ and split the conglomerate into four freestanding companies—Time Warner Cable, Time Warner Entertainment, Time Inc. and AOL—each with its own strategy, stock, balance sheet, management team, and board.”

He contends that the four units would “benefit from the separation” and “that other parts of Time Warner would achieve similar results if set free from the conglomerate. Time Warner has proven to be too big, too complex, too conflicted and too slow-moving—in other words, too much like a classic conglomerate—to seize new opportunities”. He sees big potential from separation, and I can’t disagree.

Money by Joe WilcoxDec 10, 20058:17 pm

Pop!

The Dec. 19, 2005, Business Week piles on more worrisome indications that the housing bubble is deflating. The story focuses on Loudon County, Va., once one of the hottest real estate markets in the country that is now cooling off. As sales slow, sellers are cutting prices. According to Business Week, “From August to October, the median sales price for houses dropped from $506,100 to $480,000”. I expect falling selling prices and rising days on the market to be the norm in most housing markets, if not now within a short time.

I first blogged on the housing bubble in August, a year after I started warning people trouble was coming. Coincidentally, not a week following the post, a good friend asked me about real estate as an investment. She had come into inheritance money and looked to help another friend, who had been successfully speculating on houses in Pennsylvania. I strongly recommended against real estate as an investment. I hope she took the advice.

Critters by Joe WilcoxDec 9, 20058:08 pm

Bun Bun Backyard

I like the way these photos capture some of Bun Bun’s character. The rabbit is one of two that my daughter cares for. Bun Bun (not her real name) stays in my basement office. Little Bun […]

Society by Joe WilcoxDec 8, 200510:50 pm

Remembering Lennon

December 8, 1980, I was volunteer fundraising in New York City. I beat the street until late and beat to bed around midnight. I lived in a group house a few blocks south of Columbia University on the Upper West Side.

I crawled out of bed around 8:30 a.m. on the 9th, a Tuesday. I recall bouncing down the stairs, laughing as I moved along. In those days, I was skinny and bushy blonde and always bubbling optimism. To a fault. I drove people nuts with my energy and enthusiasm.

Apple by Joe WilcoxDec 7, 20057:12 pm

My First Mac

It’s December and time to remember buying my first Mac. As a long-time Windows PC bigot I used to persecute the heck out of my wife and her coworkers. In the early 1990s, we worked at the same magazine, she as a graphic designer and I as an editor. I would tease the graphic designers, with great delight, about their Macs. I recall reading a University of Delaware study that found Mac users to be 40 percent less productive than PC users. Oh, how I taunted the graphic designers with that information!

So it was with strange compulsion I walked out of a CompUSA in early December 1998 carting an iMac (and free 13-inch color TV, which my daughter uses today). The iMac’s alluring design and blue cool color (OK, more like teal) won over my curiosity.

Photo by Joe WilcoxDec 6, 20058:30 pm

Snow Heart

The overnight snow was a bust, just 10 cm as measured on my porch. So, I’ll remember another snow day, in March 1999, when my wife and daughter made a snow heart for me in the […]

Pulp Media by Joe WilcoxDec 4, 20058:26 pm

‘The Edukators’

My 2005 work schedule has been brutal, with too few cultural breaks but DVDs. Catching movies on DVD puts me about six months behind showings, as was typical this weekend when I watched “The Edukators.” I give the the film high recommendation.

I immediately identified with the main characters, but not their captive, even though he and I are close in age. While I make quite a bit more money than the three protagonists, I can’t even relate to the lavish lifestyle of their antagonists. Like the three Edukators, I am highly critical of the truly wealthy, even though I would easily qualify, based on income, as a bourgeois. I live in a humble home (rented) and drive an old Volvo (dented and purchased quite used). My wife shops at thrift stores and we give more than 10 percent of yearly income to church, charity, people in need, or friends.

Critters by Joe WilcoxDec 3, 20051:20 pm

Where Do They Go?

Every few nights I come down into my basement office—oh, about a half our after the lights go out—and kill crickets. Those pesky varmints are a real pain.

Occasionally, though, I’ll catch one about before the lights have gone out and kill it. Last night, like other times when I squashed one, I was too lazy to clean it up. Like other times, the cricket carcass disappeared overnight.

Living by Joe WilcoxDec 2, 20058:07 pm

The Right Choice

My wife hauls me off to church every Sunday (and that’s not a bad thing). I teach Sunday school, which gets me out of the service. But last week, older kids organized a scavenger hunt for fourth through sixth graders (I teach the middleschoolers), so I had opportunity to sit in the service. Lucky, too.

The pastor announced she would step down at the end of December. After two-and-a-half years, she felt it was time to make room for new blood and a new way of doing things. I thought: “This is how it’s supposed to be”.

Pulp Media by Joe WilcoxNov 30, 20057:43 pm

November Netflix Rentals (2005)

As I’ve said before, movie choices reflect something about a person’s character. My November movie rentals (not including those for my wife or daughter): 11/28/05, Nina’s Tragedies 11/28/05, March of the Penguins 11/28/05, Friday Night […]

Pulp Media by Joe WilcoxNov 26, 20058:02 pm

‘Walk the Line’

I am not much of a country music fan. My mother predicted that when I grew older, my tastes would grow more country. That simply never happened. Today’s playlist included songs by Arcade Fire, Jack’s Mannequin, Nelly Furtado, Something Corporate, Snow Patrol, Simple Plan, and Sum 41. No country.

But I do like good movies, even about country music singers, particularly when the actors do their own singing (no lip syncing, please). Country singer Johnny Cash did cover songs spanning many genres, even if he put his own twang on them. So I couldn’t resist “Walk the Line“, which I watched this evening. The star performances make the show.

Microsoft by Joe WilcoxNov 25, 20059:43 pm

Just Add ‘i’

Late this afternoon, my daughter yelled to me from another room, “Dad, dad. I figured out what Microsoft means. You’ve got to come see this. Micro. Soft”.

We had just returned from Black Friday shopping, an exercise taken for purely academic purposes. My daughter wanted to see all the Black Friday sales and shoppers, more for the thrill of it. Typically, it’s a banned shopping day in our household. I mean, what nutcase gets up to shop at 5 a.m.? Lots of people that I know. One friend hit the Wal-Mart in Fredericksburg, Va., and she still didn’t get the item she wanted. Another friend started shopping at 5 a.m., but online, spending $350 at CompUSA on rebate items. Geez. Get a life.