Roger Wehbe

No industry is really recession proof… case and point:

But Harold Vogel, head of Vogel Capital Management, argued that a prolonged recession would challenge even those categories once considered recession-proof, saying: “If you lose your house, you don’t need your cable subscription”. Full Story

Granted some are more resistant to a recession… such as food and basic clothing…. and for mild recessions even alternative marketing such as Social Media Optimization will do better than print and TV (as the costs are lower and the ROI is measurable) but there comes a point when no industry is really ’safe’.

As the credit card bills start showing up from 4 dollar a gallon gas and people start shopping for their oil tank for heating oil…. the signs point to a very cold winter.

this dude is my freaking hero…  he fought the fact that Vista comes installed with his machine.. wanted to install linux.. Got HP to send him a 200 dollar check.

I really.. really hope HP has the phones manned… because there is going to be a flood of calls….

Security people are often the black-and-white kind of people that I can't
stand. I think the OpenBSD crowd is a bunch of masturbating monkeys, in
that they make such a big deal about concentrating on security to the
point where they pretty much admit that nothing else matters to them.

Full Story

Classic!!!

The New Insurgency Mod is out for Half-Life 2. Came out this morning… pretty amazing stuff…… you can download it here

This is the game of the year as far as I am concerned… off to do battle.

Sometime in October going into the winter I won’t even feel safe going to the supermarket… because who knows what will happen when I come out with my ethanol induced price inflated corn to find my dollar depressed 20 gallon tank of $4 dollar a gallon gas gone.

This isn’t about 12 dollar lawn mower fill ups.. or even Starbucks laying off 12,000 people and shutting down 600 brand new stores.

This is about a big problem that is about to hit us.. and hit us in a big way.

In perhaps the worst news ever.. One of the biggest growth industries has been locking gas caps.. as thieves are sucking gas right out of your gas tank. Since popular posts on Digg regarding ‘how to steal gas’ from a car are becoming more regular and a wave of crime regarding theft of gas directly from cars is becoming more and more clearly the future. I ran out and invested in a locking gas cap… guess what people.. I had to visit 3 stores to find one… because the first 2 were sold out.

Locking gas caps.. a growth industry.. That is the sorry state of affairs that we are in, and it’s only going to get worse.. really worse.

See this winter you are going to see $5 dollar a gallon heating oil hit many North Eastern residents (New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania) and New England.. that means a $2,000 dollar fill up for heating oil. This is on top of their $5,000 dollar credit card with mostly $4 dollar a gallon gas charges, $150-$200 a week grocery bills and $1,000 dollar a month mortgage or rent.

Those charges alone outweigh the monthly income of an average family. This is going to be an economic disaster. I don’t even want to address the true definition of bad timing as rate increases for Pennsylvania for electricity are about to hit.. (that’s going up 60% to 130% for each individual in the state)

These people are not buying Wii’s … they are buying heat, food, shelter and transportation to a job to pay for the heat, food and shelter… and in about 90 days many of them are about to face bankruptcy.

Try to paint any picture you want… the truth is that this is going to be one very cold winter.

Sony is stating that we need IE and Flash to view their site.

Internet Explorer 5+ and Flash Player 8+ required for optimal experience.

Think I am kidding? Look here

Enjoy the BS…. low and behold this thing does crash my Ubuntu Machine a few times trying to view it… like who builds a website for IE only?

In 48 hours if you want a new Dell with Windows XP prepare for a $99 downgrade cost. My bet this strategy was designed by their Advertising Agency, Enfatico, Dell’s 4.5 billion dollar hand off to WPP.. The reason I said this had to of come from their advertising agency is because no human with any understanding of the market place would put this into effect.

They want us to pay $99 dollars to downgrade to XP from Vista… and I use the word ‘downgrade’ loosely. So instead of the $99 downgrade option, I suggest the free upgrade to Ubuntu.

In other news - a nasty rumor has been circulating that there was a bombing on Iran’s nuclear sites.. this has been denied by both Iran, Israel and the US.

Another kicker for the day, it appears that Google is launching an ad agency killer...

and.. C|Net finally updated there site after 10 years.