Monthly Archives: September 2009

Spying on people with too much money

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I spent the last two weeks freelancing in Boston on two shows the first at a Health care show at the Four Seasons Hotel and then at a the Intercontinental Hotel with Bank of America.

The Health care show was by Thomas Weisel Partners group ( the Forrester of Health care) and they had money to burn. The Show was very well done, organized and the AV support group I worked with was hi end or at least their drapery was. The speakers gave presentations about how well they are doing but many presentations included mentioning hundreds of millions in debt as if this was a good thing? I also wondered why none of the presenters seemed concerned that Health care is in the process of being overhauled.

Maybe they were being cocky, but they didn’t seem to think the reality of health care reform was genuine. I think I heard one mention Obama in 20 presentations. Also I have come to learn that you can leverage your million dollar debt to get more money, yes you heard that right. If you are millions in debt you can get loans to pay down that debt. Go figure and I thought carrying a 200.00 credit debt was risky.

The Second Show was for Mid Cap companies that showcased their performance for Bank of America and their investors. I was again surprised to hear about debt on the books in the Millions. There were companies that drill oil that were making money of course, why wouldn’t they? What about the lesser need for oil and gasoline as more hybrids, and EV’s hit the highways? What them worry? I just didn’t see any anticipation that anything is changing really. Debt is debt, we need oil so we drill for it and we will always need it.

Back in the 70’s we should have weened ourselves off oil imports and started making EV cars then. We didn’t do it then …. It seems to me that the companies with all the money also have all the debt, and if they need to pay their debt off we all lose. I am no financial analyst mind you but common sense tells me this economy hasn’t hit rock bottom yet.

Why I don’t see eye to eye with Lenscrafters repair policy

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I need glasses, for I spend way too much time looking at a video monitor editing at times,looking in a viewfinder, reading blogs, emails you get the picture. Anyway somebody recommended LensCrafters in Natick for glasses. I went got an eye exam and was given a pair of glasses that I had selected. When I tried the glasses (tri-focals) I could not get all three focal points to work. So they made a 2nd pair for me. This pair was not what I wanted but they said that these would be better for me.

I took their advice got them and they were better, unfortunately they broke recently. I took them back and looked to get them repaired. One of the nose pieces broke off.Because they broke at the frame level the frames needed replacement, but unfortunately the frames by Burberry were no longer available. Now I need to pay 50% for new frames but they will make the lenses. Even though the glasses were under warranty I still had to pay 50% for new frames for that old frame was no longer available. Does that make sense?

That’s great on paper but a large eye glass manufacturer can melt your glasses down and pour new ones much like a bottle is made in a manufacturing plant. The strange part is that I cannot keep the old broken glasses for that reason then they need the glass back to recycle.

I don’t see eye to eye with this what do you think?

Four Square 5 minutes of my life I just took back

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I am all for keeping in touch with friends as much as possible, but there has to be a cutoff point before you split the atom too finely. The cutoff point for me is Foursquare. Steve Garfield introduced this to me inadvertently and initially I was intrigued.

I guess if you still aspire to go out and drink at cool bars and clubs the novelty of this app and platform might never wear off. If you are a business person however you might want to grab back those few minutes when you need them most.

I joined Four Square and quickly became mayor of the Hynes convention Center and my office here at Brilliant Video Productions. I was at the Hynes for seven days strait so thats not such a stretch.

I see lots of my friends using it to show where they are drinking beer, and if I drank beer still I guess I would be more jazzed. I drink wine, and I don’t live in Boston proper. So I have two more reasons why not to be on Foursquare. For me, I will take back those 5 minutes daily however and put them to better use.