McCain’s Airbus ties-not pretty

At least seven top McCain advisers and fundraisers – Thomas Loeffler, Susan Nelson, John Green, Kirsten Chadwick, Kirk Blalock, Aleix Jarvis and William Ball III – have all lobbied for EADS, the parent company of European airplane manufacturer Airbus.

The Air Force and Boeing have dirty hands too-remember Darlene Druyun and Michael Sears?  Of course the White House and Donald Rumsfeld were involved in the original deal.

I’m pretty unhappy with the lack of professionalism shown by many current military “leaders”.  Between this deal, the Pat Tillman story, and the mess at Guantanamo, we’ve seen political-grade leadership from our senior military.  We all should expect better from them. 

I say outsource the tanker deal to the Japanese and be done with it.

A modest proposal for dealing with deceased African officials

You’re not an official member of the Internet community unless you’ve received one of those letters offering you millions of dollars for helping the widow of some dead African official transfer tens of millions of dollars out of an unused bank account.

These “advance payment” scams require the victim to put up thousands of dollars in good-faith money.  The victim sends the money, or delivers it in person to Nigeria, and the money (as well as the widow) vanishes.  Only the feeling of suckerness remains.  They’re know as “4-1-9″ scams, the 4-1-9 referring to the section of the “Nigerian Penal Code” dealing with these scams.  My fingers are laughing whenever I type “Nigerian Penal Code” ’cause the NPC is written on the back of a Post-It, legibly, and with both full details and an FAQ.

Here’s my proposal: when you get one of those letters, answer it.  Play along and ask questions but don’t reveal any…and I mean by-God any…personal information.  The scammers will end up spending most of their time working on dead-end leads and the likelihood of the scammer finding a real victim (somebody that actually buys their twaddle) will decrease dramatically.

When the scammers change tactics, so will we.  What are they going to do–have Bill O’Reilly send Fox News Security after us?  Damn, my fingers are laughing again…

You don’t have a better day than…

…your first day as a Blue Badge, a.k.a. a full-time Microsoft employee.

Yes, that would be me.  After almost 34 years in IBM’s midrange environment, starting as a system engineer in IBM’s General Systems Division, I’m turning the page.  IBM was one career bookend; Microsoft is the other.

Microsoft is 88,500 smart, driven, and focused people working to change the world through information technology.  In my new position as a Senior Solution Manager, I’ll be working on big projects with huge paybacks.  The challanges and opportunities are enormous-but so are the rewards.  I’m dying to get going!