Our Currency WILL Hit “Rock Bottom”
Welcome to America, the land of an under performing and increasingly irrelevant currency, the American Dollar. As of today, a Canadian dollar is worth $1.0685 US, which means our friends in the Great White North have a great advantage on American vacations, shopping and more. What was once a luxury for us, is now being enjoyed by others at our expense.
Quickly, our currency is becoming the laughing stock of the world’s markets. It is also a strong indication that we’re heading toward turbulent times in the American economy — IF we don’t act fast, that is.
We are a nation of 300 Million strong, yet have one of the poorest performing currencies to date. Is America becoming irrelevant? Are we losing our image as the “Land of Opportunity?” Sure, we might have more wealth than anywhere in the world, but it won’t matter much if our currency continues its erosion towards worthlessness.
Is there a short-term solution? Highly unlikely. Long-term? Sure, but at a GREAT cost. We are no longer immune, America. Welcome to the beginning of real pain.
Reality Check, America
For many years, I’ve attempted to understand our people and society. I’ve turned over every stone, asked many questions and read many materials over the years for answers. At 28, I’m still at a loss and I’m not confident that I’ll ever understand.
The greatest source of frustration in my life has always been the analytical side of me. I have to understand anything which poses itself as a challenge and attempt to reach a resolution. Unfortunately, this doesn’t work so easily for social constructs and people.
Thus, with all I’ve learned and presently understand, nothing amuses me more than to live in a society which is:
1. Hypocritical
2. Immoral
3. Prejudice
4. Materialistic
5. Greedy
6. Isolated
7. Judgmental
Before we throw stones upon another (such as President Bush, as an example), I’d like to recommend your nearest mirror for a self-check.
5 Reasons Why You Shouldn’t Hire Me
While most people are busy e-mailing and faxing their resumes, looking for upgrades to their existing careers, or searching for change because of a mundane and dead-end job, I do the exact opposite when it comes to a job search: Nothing.
April 2005 was the last time I officially worked for “Corporate America.” I haven’t looked back since, although there have been several times where I’ve been tempted to find a “bridge” job — A temporary gig to stay afloat financially until my own projects took off. The most recent time was just a month ago, when I called Schneider National about driver opportunities here in Colorado.
During the call, I was kind of excited, as I’d considered driving a truck several times before just for the sake of travel and being somewhat independent of micro-managers and a boring cubicle. Unfortunately, my excitement died rather quickly when the representative told me there were no OTR (over-the-road) opportunities in the West — The only thing available were dedicated runs (Read: Corporate gopher.) I swiftly declined to be interviewed and hung up.
After that call, the idea of working another corporate gig was erased from my memory. Thus, I offer 5 reasons why no one should consider hiring me:
1. I don’t take direction well — I enjoy doing things my way. I don’t need a constipated manager who’s obsessed with pleasing his superiors hovering over my shoulder and telling me how to do my job using skills I was hired for.
2. I’ve never liked a job — Working for a corporate conglomerate is like taking a bag of Ex-Lax. It’s that painful.
3. I bore easily — Most jobs are not stimulating, as they consist of the same routine everyday. There’s nothing fun about waking up, commuting to the office and working with the same people — on the same tasks — all the time. It’s one reason why I’ve only held two permanent jobs in my life — Everything else was contract.
4. I don’t like managers — I don’t need to be “managed” by anyone.
5. I’m independent — I don’t share the typical values of most employees in life and work. Therefore, I’d be wasting my time by attempting to work with most people in any field today. I am not one to force unity in any work environment, for I know there’s a serious disconnect between most employees.
10 Thoughts — Just For The Music Industry
1. Your existence is slowly coming to an end
2. Your sales are declining
3. Fewer people are buying albums
4. Concerts are becoming more lucrative than album sales
5. You’ve resorted to shaming and bullying tactics to protect your existence — which are backfiring
6. You’ve alienated fans and friends alike of those artists you represent
7. You must do your homework before chasing the innocent and those who support your industry
8. It’s too late to embrace the digital world
9. The CD will be replaced in the next five years — if that long
10. Egos and titles never win in the end
Google Analytics: The Numbers Are Missing
Google Analytics is a great tool. I use it for several sites. The in-depth information provided by this world-class service is priceless. Wonderful graphs, deep information mining and ease of use make it a wonderful platform for analytics and statistics for web sites.
However, because Analytics uses JavaScript, there’s a world of missed opportunity. For the past year, I took the numbers provided by Analytics and StatCounter literally. I assumed that my site only received 300-600 pageviews a day — excluding several stories which brought much traffic and attention to my site.
Well, I’ve been living a lie. Both Google Analytics and StatCounter weren’t showing me the entire picture. So, last month, I started paying more attention to my web server’s log and installed several stat tools on WordPress. I was blown away.
On a typical day, I receive thousands of pageviews. Just this past Friday, almost 4,000 unique readers (representing more than 12,000 pageviews) visited my site to read articles about Erin Burnett alone. Suffice to say, I was overjoyed by the new numbers, although I suspected that my site was doing much better than Google and other JavaScript tools were showing.
For the month of June, ronaldlewis.com saw more than 100,000 pageviews. Google, nor StatCounter, are showing numbers anywhere near this amount.
So, here’s a word of advice: Don’t take the numbers provided by Google and StatCounter literally. You are cheating yourself of the real, hardcore numbers. However, I would recommend that bloggers and web site owners continue to use these JavaScript based tools for analytics purposes. While they may not tell the whole story, they are still good to keep around.