Competing based on quality, price, and service

The other day I saw a sign in front of a house advertising the company that was putting the new coating on a house. The sign said "woman owned business". That kind of sign irks me because I'd hope that a company can compete on the quality of its product, the price, and the service it provides. I don't really care if a business is minority owned or woman owned; if two products or services were identical, maybe I'd go with a minority owned business, but why advertise this on a sign?

Years ago I read an article about a husband and wife company (the husband was African-American) who did work for the government. As a minority owned or woman owned business, they would have potentially been awarded more government contracts. The husband and wife would not shift ownership the 1 percent needed to qualify for either minority owned or woman owned. To me, that shows great ethics and I have a lot of respect for them.

While I'm ranting about this, it also reminds me of my #1 choice for colleges. I applied to Rice University and really wanted to go (not sure why now that I look back at it), but was denied admission because they "wanted more women in engineering". There are a few ways to interpret this; the first is that they gave women a head start on whatever scale they used or that if women had equal qualifications as men, the women would get the spots. I have no problems with the latter interpretation, but I really suspect the former. I ended up going to Harvey Mudd College which, at the time, was rated as the top engineering school in the country. I'm pretty sure that they didn't accept more women into the engineering program to even out the program as my class was 1/3 female.

I'm all about competing based on merits and if 2 companies or people have the same qualifications, use whatever method you want to decide who gets the job or position in college.

Erratic driving

On Saturday I was driving down interstate 8 and noticed in my rear view mirror, a car that was swerving across all the lanes. As the car was heading back towards the number 1 lane, I saw the logo on the side of the car. It was a CHP officer doing a traffic break.

I expected to see something in the road or an accident up ahead, but saw nothing except for some appliance on the side of the road with no one around. Why was the officer doing a traffic break? I don't know, maybe he was bored or his information was old. In any case, if you've never seen a traffic break, it's kind of odd the first time seeing the officer go across all the lanes of traffic.

Low tech, fancy sign

I'm at the Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport on my way back to San Diego and watched the Southwest gate agent change the sign at the gate for my flight. She slid part of the sign out of the way to reveal a small keyboard that she used to key in the flight information. The LED sign looked neat and I had presumed it was hooked to some central computer to update the status along with the monitors. Well, it isn't which potentially makes it inaccurate and frankly must be a pain to update when there are changes.

Traveling without a charger

This was my first trip traveling without a dedicated charger for my gadgets! While I've known for a long time that I could charge my Motorola RAZR through USB on my Mac (using my MotoCharger program), I didn't want to use it as I didn't want to have to remember to launch it (I don't like stuff running all the time that is only used every once in awhile).

For this trip, I found some USB charge only cables for my Pre and RAZR (the RAZR one I acquired almost on accident as it came with the Belkin portable surge strip I bought). I also got a small USB hub, so I plugged the hub into my Mac and then charged my devices from the hub. As my MacBook Pro puts out more than the minimum USB power, it can charge devices. In addition, several years back, the Macs were changed such that the USB ports remain powered when the Mac is asleep. So, at night, I plugged the Mac in, plugged in my devices and by morning, everything was all charged up and ready to go.

Now I have a different combination of things to carry when I travel; however, this combination serves multiple uses and only requires 1 power outlet which can sometimes be at a premium in a hotel or meeting room.