Happy New Year

2006 was probably the worst year of my life so far... good thing there's only one hour left.

I hope 2007 will be better.

Overtime gives prison guards fat salary

SACRAMENTO, Calif. - About 6,000 California corrections officers earned more than $100,000 in the last fiscal year thanks to overtime work in the strained prison system, and one brought in more than a quarter of a million.

Overtime added $220 million to the $453 million base pay for those prison workers, the Los Angeles Times reported Saturday. More than 900 of them earned $50,000 or more in overtime alone.

Rest of story...

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I wouldn't want to work as a prison guard but $100k/year is a lot of money. I think whoever is managing this should be fired; there is no excuse for so much overtime pay. They could have hired 50% more staff with the extra money.

Bugatti Veyron

Our company's CTO (Chief Toy Officer) drove in his new Bugatti Veyron this morning. I wonder if he traded in any of his other 20+ cars; he also owns a Rolls-Royce Phantom and a Jaguar XJ220. I heard from Leon's uncle that one of Kingston's owners got his Veryon as well. That's two of them within 15 minutes of each other!


16-cylinder...


1000hp...


€1.1M ($1.4M)

I heard security redirected one of their cameras away from our building so they can keep an eye on the Veyron. You can get a really nice house for $1.4M, even in South Orange County. I was in the Saleen store at Irvine Spectrum earlier this week with a co-worker and they had a S7 on display. It probably has about 95% of the performance of the Veyron but only costs ~$600k and looks more like a supercar.

GPS

Recalculating...

Clippers vs. Rockets

I went to a Clippers game at the Staples Center this afternoon. A co-worker's brother got some tickets from his work; they were 4 rows up from the floor ($175 face value). Even though the Clippers lost by 5 points, it was a pretty close game. I forgot to bring my camera so I had to use the Treo to take pictures.


Tall Chinese guy


Yao Min shooting a free throw (he was 8 for 9). Why can't Shaq make these?


Cheerleaders

Ice Carving

Ice carving for the Ops Christmas Party. There were two plastic tubes embedded in the ice for the bartender to pour martinis but the drinks kept freezing and blocking the tube. Maybe the drinks need more alcohol. Cost of the ice carving was ~$1,300.

Reply All

As part of this stock option backdating issue, our company has not been able to issue new options or shares, and also had to cancel our ESPP purchase this quarter. For some of us, this means we lost the chance to purchase stock at ~$15; our current stock price is ~$33. To compensate, the company decided yesterday to give employees cash/equity to make up the lost opportunity cost, which I think is generous since they were not obligated to do so.

So anyway, Shareholder Services sent out a company-wide message letting us know some details. One thing I tell new hires is to beware of the recipient list when you hit Reply All since the total-company list has a lot of names. As expected, our email inboxes are filling up with people's questions/comments, and other people telling them not to Reply All. The best email so far was a software engineer who commented on long-term vs. short-term tax implications. I think his comment is wrong (ESPP gains count as W2 wages so there's no holding period tax impact) and of course, he sent it out to 5,000+ people.

Corporate Planning

Monday night was the annual Corporate Planning department dinner. The group no longer exists at Ingram Micro but we still meet each year for either lunch or dinner around Christmas and exchange gifts. This time it was at TGI Fridays in Costa Mesa. The dinner started at 5:30pm and we didn't get out of there until after 10pm, listening to new stories and re-telling old ones. This year 11 people showed up and about 1/2 are still at Ingram Micro.


First pick at Christmas gifts

Ingram Micro was my first job after MBA school. I spent about 4 years there, starting as a Financial Analyst 1 (which I didn't know was lower then a "Financial Analyst") and left as a Finance Manager in IT. Everyone put in a lot of hours, especially when we were all in the same department but I learned a lot and it was mostly fun as well. I get the sense that Ingram Micro is a totally different place (for the worse) and those that are still there from the old days are scattered across several departments now.

UCLA-USC

The UCLA-USC football game starts in about an hour. I just hope UCLA doesn't get embarassed like last year. The spread was 13.5 yesterday; I'll be happy if they just beat that.

Oh well, at least the basketball team is currently ranked #1.

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OMG! UCLA beats USC 13-9! Breaks a 7-0 losing streaking to USC and knocks them out of the National Championship game. Crazy!