You must be the life of every party you attend :-)

Sorry to say, but in my 25 years of working, there was only one company where the HR department wasn't populated by useless morons

Bingo. And that's why my company recently instituted a hiring freeze and yet another cost containment initiative. They're making billions but act as if they are about to go bankrupt. The shareholders (I.e. large investment houses like Goldman Sachs) are demanding that share price go up and the company will do anything in its power to comply.

Your worldview is constrained, isn't it?

I heartily agree that unions have helped with "safer working conditions, weekends, paid vacations, sick leave, and a host of other things ". However, they have also failed miserably when it comes to things like nonsensical work rules, seniority, and protecting useless workers.

The one example I can give is my first job (which was a union posiiton). There was a guy who used to hide in the toilet to read the paper or sleep. There was another guy who ran a vitamin supplements business from his desk. They were useless workers and yet every year we got the same pay raise. Management (also useless) tried to get rid of them several times, but the union reps always managed to save them.

In an ideal world, I would like to have the benefits that unions have brought without the the soul sucking lowest common denominator mentality that holds back conscientious workers.

Problem is, the IT people who I know do not want to move things to the cloud unless it really makes sense (like spam filtering for instance). The pressure is coming from the C-level management. Some idiot from Gartner told them it's the next big trend and BINGO, we're moving as much as we can to the cloud. No amount of argument, convincing, managing up, etc will change the trajectory of the decision.

In my 15 years of working in the IT world in three different companies , upper management has NEVER listened to it's own people. They always hire outside consultants to tell them what to do, and this is what C-level people are being told what to do these days.

I don't have one, but cars with push button start may be different in that department.

Another example of their drive to get their products entrenched:

My company is looking to go away from our current antivirus product to Forefront. We don't use SCCM. According to Microsoft, you need SCCM to manage Forefront. So, we are expected to dump our current inventory/software deployment system and set up an SCCM infrastructure just to use their antivirus product.

Brilliant.

I've never flown first class, so I wouldn't know :-(

Also, although service was better, I'll be the first to admit the experience wasn't without fault. The major negative back then was smoking. They had smoking sections, but what was the point? The planes always stank of cigarettes.

I flew internationally several times in the 1970's The service was way way better and the flight attendants were way better looking. Food? You got a menu at the beginning of the flight to choose from two entrees. Your food came on ceramic plates with stainless steel cutlery.

Agreed, that is needlessly extreme.

The one I got is a 60-watt equivalent. I forget how much I paid, probably around $25 or so. I'm not necessarily a fanboy, but I was curious about the new technology and bought it on a whim. As I said, the light quality is very good, but I'm not about to replace all the bulbs in my house at that price point.

If I had mod points, I would have gladly awarded the Funny you were seeking....

Did the law specifically outlaw incandescents? I don't think so. As I understand it, the law mandates higher efficiency. And you know what? I can now buy incandescents that put out more lumens per watt than previous generaiton bulbs. In my house I use each type of bulb as is appropriate. Philips Halogena for the kitchen floodlights, Philips higher efficiency incandescents in the bathroom, CFL's in most table lamps, and one LED bulb to try on one high use table lamp.

Your semi-rant smells of mindless talking point repetition.

I agree that older LED's sucked big time. However, I recently purchased a Philips LED bulb and it is leagues ahead of any CFL. Pretty much indistinguishable from a standard incandescent.