East Meets West – Podcast

I'm on episode 44 and I try to play the clip backwards to try to find out what Roger which made Tom stop and edit that fragment. Even though what Roger said wasn't family friendly but listening you guys backward sure is funny as hack.

keep up the good work for indeterminate length.

Allen From Taiwan

Oops haha I didn't read your whole comment thoroughly, SoCalJess... I said some of the same things in mine, sorry.

This is a bit un-related to the podcast, but an article about an interesting magazine appeared in my Google Reader. It's called East West magazine and can be found at: http://www.eastwestmagazine.com/ . It's seems to be "Cosmo for Asian Women", but I thought it was interesting that the title is so close to the name of Tom and Roger's podcast. Maybe you guys should file for trademark violation and assert your place in the culture of ownership!

Dear Tom and Roger
I'm Allen from Taiwan
I really enjoy your discussions on random topics and your combine intellect just blows me away.

I was going to hold off on commenting until I listen to all the episodes (currently on 40 on my second week). Atlas, I couldn't hold off any longer after episode 40 where Tom talked about his trip to Vancouver, Canada. I immigrated to Canada during elementary school with my family and I'm back to Taiwan for College. Canada is really a great place to be and I really regret leaving. Currently, I working my way to get accept to Canadian College for a master degree and hopefully will never have to leave again.

Next time when you visit Canada you could try a little place called WhiteRock. WhiteRock has a nice long beach and great scenery for city folks who want to get away and relax and there are quite a few restaurants along the sea shore. And sure enough, as the name implies, there is a great big white rock on the beach, you guys might want to check it out. (I think you can see it on google map/earth).

Hope you guys could carry on with indetermine length like buzz out loud.

Allen

I agree with you SoCalJess in that the differing opinions make the show interesting. I wasn't trying to imply that there should be no arguments or disagreements in the show, I just think that unnecessary, unkind remarks are not conducive to the general positive atmosphere of the podcast. I think Roger is man of high caliber, and indeed, man enough to handle having his points of view challenged. Overreacting, I felt maybe too strongly that he was being unjustly picked on for stating the impression he got. I will indeed try to… Chillax.

Wow, I’ve been requested ;) @yet another Steve, I shall rant a bit, just for you.
Middle management is the worst possible position to have in a company, in any industry. I’ve been there and I’m so done with that. While the pay scale is a good bit higher, you get the worst hours and you have to pick up for the lousy workers’ slack. The middle management gets to take the blame for the mistakes other people make, yet the upper management treats them like grunts. The middle managers know every in and out of the company, can sympathize with the other co-workers, and often they have to train upper management, yet they aren’t given near the benefits, pay, or credit they deserve. They should invent middle management bots to deal with the all the messes everyone leaves behind.

@ Richard
In this era of instant gratification, many kids don’t value or appreciate time and how it works. Many young ones get whatever they want the moment they want it. This has engrained the thought in their heads that they don’t have to work to get what they want, or that they can do whatever they want and still get paid for it. It‘s like they have this sense of entitlement, and when they don‘t get their way, they whine and say, “I‘ll just get another job, a better one!” I do know many kids where I work, and the majority of them are as lazy as a hound. Many of those kids can be smart as a whip, but without any motivation that whip becomes more like a wet noodle. They are always, however, offset by those who give 110% and who, subsequently, give all of us a glimmer of hope for the future. Let’s hope that the next generation coming up will have learned the value of work ethic, and for goodness sake let’s throw in some manners, please!?

@ Richard Finucane – As an almost fortysomething, I’ve had my decent share of generational conflicts in the workplace, from the light hearted pop culture banter to differing management style. My Gen X colleagues have encountered similarities with respect to varying working values per generation as well. Though not all twentysometings today have a lack of enthusiasm at doing grunt work or starting from the bottom, from what I’ve gauged from other Gen X professionals, the generational difference that twentysomethings today come into their first professional job with a sense entitlement and a need of instant gratification (hence no grunt work for the newby) is pretty common. I think this generational work value derives from the fact that these twentysomethings are the first generation whose formative years were influenced greatly from an user-friendly Internet (no, electronic newsgroups from the eighties don’t count guys), as well as cultural role models shifting toward supermodels, porn stars, rap starts. A common encounter that concerns me a lot with this generation is the “cut & paste” attitude in writing with indifference to properly citing sources.

@All Rant-&-Ravers - An all-out debate or rant in its truest form extracts emotional, biased, and conscientious opinions before two or more participants with contradictory opinions and values. Right and wrong will be argued and of course, confrontational claims come with the territory. Like Tom mentioned, it would be a boring exchange if it were all a love fest on EMW. I understand that opinions derive from an individual’s way of life and they certainly have the right to live and express themselves by these opinions and values. But if an individual makes bigoted remarks (let’s say a white supremacist or a sexist bureaucrat) and takes it to a larger audience, then I think it’s crucial to bring forth a debate to show the wrong in their statements of prejudice. End all, I think Roger is pretty man enough to be called wrong before his Podcast pals. Chillax all!

BTW, what ever happened to ArgueCon you two?

Regarding job satisfaction...

The company I was working for during my apprenticeship in Germany was horrible and I hated it. Too bad I couldn't just up and leave, as my parents would've killed me. After those three long years I found a job in Ireland doing tech support for Gateway computers, after they had already pulled out of the European market. It was an incredibly well paying job (Ireland also has near zero taxes, paid less than 50 EUR per month), but it was flat out boring after the first month, since almost nobody owned any Gateways.

I stayed about 5 months until I found virtually the same position at Sony Computers in the Netherlands. And even though I got paid 350 EUR less there, I had a blast for a good two years. Something to do, great team to work with and an excellent country to live in.

Fast forward a year and a half (really didn't do much during that time ;-3) and I'm now the CTO at a tiny company in Tokyo. Since the yen is so weak and the living situation so different the salary is hardly comparable, but it's certainly not higher than before. I am staying because of the job satisfaction though.

/rant

PS: re: previous episode: Upon boot the BIOS executes whatever is in the first sector of the first track of the hard disk. So to resolve your discussion: That track is and stays unencrypted and a small piece of code is placed in it, which upon boot will ask you for your password, which will then generate the key to make your drive decryptable/readable and subsequently initiate the normal boot process. Storing the password and/or key somewhere would be nonsense!

//rant

re: CompUSA
It seemed to me that as CompUSA started carrying more 'normal' electronics items (like HDTVs, DVD players) that Best Buy & Circuit City started carrying more esoteric computer items. It seems that nowadays you can find most of what you need at one of those two places, and if it's obscure, buy it online elsewhere.

Before online shopping got so prevalent, Radio Shack and CompUSA had all kinds of quirky items. But as people started buying more and more online, Radio Shack turned into a cell phone and odd gadget outlet and CompUSA couldn't figure out what to stock in the store.

In recent years I noticed that more often than not, I found empty shelf space for something specific I was looking for at CompUSA, and stacks of weird items. Or I'd see what I thought was the thing I want, only to find out that they ran out of stock and put something else (like a slower video card from the same vendor) in it's shelf space.

When I was at Staples a few years back and we were out of stock, I'd check the computer to see what other stores had it BEFORE the customers started asking. I knew a few good guys at each neighboring store and I could call them (and vice-versa) to track down something for a customer. And guess what, people started appreciating this and asking for me when they needed something else. I like gadgets, i'm into computers and tech, so for me it was fun. You're not going to find many scotch tape or manila folder enthusiasts out there, but for some things, you should be able to draw in people who like the thing they're selling.

Tom, they seemed to care when I went there. They cared about pushing the damn extended warranties. When you showed you didn't care about that, it seemed they stopped caring about the customer.

(Yes, I had bad 'warranty - no thank you' experiences there, and when someone gave me the hint that they weren't interested in buying one, i dropped it. I hate pushy salesmen, even the ones I worked with.)

re: Jo
More Rants!

CoolB's Crazy Comments
1: I'm not a big fan of Best Buy, had really bad customer service there once. I know it's not fair to base my opinion of the entire store on just one experience/employee, but it just turned me off to them.
2: I know it also has something to do with attitude, but I'd prefer a clerk told me they didn't know instead of just trying to sound like they did. Of course then the next step should be them finding out the answer.
3: I'll actually shop at a store that's a little more expensive if they have better customer service. I'm also very loyal to certain local stores if I'm treated right.
4: Another downside of employees conversing with each other is bad attitudes can spread that way. I know it's not always the case but I've seen it happen.
5: I really dislike it when someone thinks you're foolish because you don;t share their opinion, or don;t do things the way they would.
6: And lastly, I thought the point of East Meets West was to help along Tom's goal of being the Leo Laporte of CNet. I mean there's Buzz Out Loud, The Real Deal, CNet Live, CNet Top 5, East Meets West and Sword and Laser. When does he have time to sleep?

I was curious if anyone identifying with the comments about lack of enthusiasm on the part of employees seems to trend generationally, most notably amongst “Generation Y.” This brought to mind an article I read about the efforts UPS has had to go through to train and retain its twentysomething employees. http://tinyurl.com/28gz6y

The article shows the adjustments UPS has had to make in its core training philosophy of “human engineering” for a generation that has, to this point, demonstrated a very transient attitude toward the job market.

To me, at least, this (insert Napoleon Dynamite accent here) “gosh, you’re gonna actually make me work?” attitude is really prevalent in this age group, and I’ve yet to pin point why I want to smack them around so badly for it. I understand job dissatisfaction runs up and down the age brackets, but I was wondering about others opinions about this up coming generations work ethic. For the record, I don’t for a second believe that there are not highly motivated, creative, talented, or courteous twentysomethings, just that their outlook where careers are concerned is markedly different than us old fogey Gen-Xers.

Aww I'm sorry, Tom, I actually wasn't ranting against you... or anyone in particular really. I read another listener's comment and got to thinking about opinions and that inspired the rant . I'm sorry if I sounded mean, it certainly wasn't intended that way. I truly enjoy listening to both of you, great show!

Ps. I could really rant about middle management, but I think I should just refrain this time ;)

oops! Missed that one. The last ID3 tags from Audacity must have been Real Deal. Sorry for the confusion. Hope I don't get sued.

Artist for this episode was "CNET.com" in the ID3 tags. *Gasp.*