Here's an interesitng link on the H1B controversy Debunking the Myth of a Desperate Software Labor Shortage. This is a paper from Dr. Norman Matloff from UC Davis, who testified for the U.S. House Judiciary Committee Subcommittee on Immigration.

I think he's right. Two years ago, I worked for the CIO in an international shipping firm. During my time there, I produced a presentation for my boss to give to the Singapore Board of Development. My company had wanted to open a major IT office in Singapore, because the government of Singapore gives businesses tax credits. This means they're basically paying for the development cost of half your office. It's a good deal for companies, and business like Compaq have taken advantage of Singapore's generosity.

Part of my presentation focused on the fact that we would be outsourcing over 50% of our software development to Singapore. Singapore would benefit because my company would train these budding Singaporean software developers. Software development in Singapore would be cheaper overall despite the initial expense of training, because my company could hire developers for dirt cheap, compared to hiring costs for US contractors and full-time employees. My boss said it was such a good deal, and would benefit our company because we could save so much money, and also benefit Singapore because their people would be trained for free. The presentation went really well, but I left before the deal with Singapore was finalized.

I sort of thought at the time I was creating the presentation, that it would be bad for US workers, but at the same time it would be great for my company's coffers, and therefore indirectly benefitting me since the company was traded on Nasdaq. Is it bad for companies to do this? I don't know. Wall Street always rewards companies with lower operating costs by an increase in stock price.

It's a slippery slope for any company. You need to lower costs for your share prices to rise, and one way to lower costs is to move work overseas. What's a company to do? The employees benefit when the stock prices go up. The other way to get your share price to go up is to increase revenue, but that's much harder to do compared to lowering operating costs. Either way they go, companies lose. And most companies prefer to do things the easy way, and like that their stock prices are high.

Is it any wonder that H1B's are so popular, and that IT software development jobs are slowly being shifted out of the US?

I've been looking at my calorie total, and I've been gradually eating less and less every week. I'm not sure this is a good idea, and it makes me wonder if my weight loss is slowing because my body is in major starvation mode. I only lost 1 pound last week, and it looks like I'm only going to lose a pound this week as well.

In week 1 of my new eating plan, I ate a total of 11,814 calories. I'm at week 7 now, and my calorie total for the week is 10,044. I went from an average of eating 1,688 calories a day in week 1 to 1,435 calories a day. And what's really weird is, I don't feel like I'm starving or eating less than I did before. The only difference is I don't have any days where I really went over my calorie total anymore. I read somewhere once that if you eat too few calories your body goes into starvation mode. In starvation mode, you get colder and your immune system is weakened, and you end up getting more colds. Is this what's happening with me?

I think I'm going to have to experiment with this theory and try to eat more next week. I want to lose weight, but I want to do it the right way so I don't trigger my body to go into mass starvation mode. The thought of having a cold every month is just wigging me out, since I hardly ever get colds. Being sick is so miserable. I think being sick and ill all the time puts a major stress on your body and ages you. Look at anybody you know who's been through a major illness, and you'll see that the illness completely aged them. The formerly sick also never seem to recover their youthfulness either. My skin crawls at the thought.

I've been so lucky to have been blessed in my adulthood with good health. I was an asthmatic sickly chid, who was allergic to everything. In junior high when puberty kicked in, my asthma and my allergies disappeared and I've been pretty healthy ever since. I'm definitely going to have to experiment with adding more calories into my diet. My body never seems to work like anyone else's, so it does seem possible that I'm not eating enough calories even though I now weigh 13 pounds less than when I first started. I could try it for a week to see what happens. The worse thing that could happen is I gain a couple of pounds back, but at least then I'll know that my weight loss is normal and not plateauing or slowing down.

I'm just so bummed out though, because I expected to have a 2 pound weight loss per week. I thought I would be at my goal weight by December or January. If I only lose 1 pound a week, I won't be at my preferred weight until April of next year, and that seems like such a long, long time away. I think the truth is, I'm going to have to resign myself to the fact that I'll be eating this way for the rest of my life or at least until my weight stabilizes and stays where I want it to stay, without much thought or effort on my part. But how long is that going to take? I saw a dieting site from a woman who says she's still vigilant about her eating, even though she's been at her goal weight for 3 years now. One would think one could get to a point of equilibrium where your weight would stay the same without constantly watching it. But not according to this woman.

Maybe it's true what they say in those 12 step groups. You have to take one day a time. If you look too far ahead into the future, you'll freak out because the future just seems so overwhelming. I mean it's not exactly a pleasant thought to me that I'll be inputting everything I eat into an excel worksheet for the rest of my life. I'm not that anal after all. But I can do it, I can deal with it, I can tolerate and put up with it, if I just think of it as something that I have to do today. Is this what alcoholics go through?

The The Sun UK had an interesting called Blondes Die Out by 2202. Scientists are predicting that natural blondes will become extinct by 2202, because men are dating "bottle" blondes instead of natural blongdes. The gene for blonde hair is a recessive gene and both parents have to have the gene to produce blonde babies. Since it's "bottle blondes" are preferred by men over the natural blondes, the blonde gene is dying out.

Then the Sun had a hilarious section called Save Our Blondes. The Sun is conducting a campaign for men to date natural blondes. There's a fact file on blondes which gives everything from migration patterns, mating call, feeding habits, natural habitat, etc. It's very, very funny!

I've always wanted to be blonde just for a day, to see what it's like. All my blonde friends tell me that men treat them like they're dumb, even though they're not, and that being treated that way by practically every man is not a fun experience. Still I wouldn't mind knowing what it's like to walk into a room and have every man whip his head around to look at me, since I've seen that happen with my pretty blonde friends. They hate it, but then again they're used to it. It's not the kind of thing that has ever happend to me, and I think it would be fun just for a day. Maybe.

I researched how much Pay it Forward grossed domestically and it didn't do too bad. Pay it Forward was ranked # 77 in 2000 out of about 300 movies, and grossed about $35 million.

Perhaps that's a good goal to have for a movie, rank in the top 100 for year, and make back the amount of money you spent on the movie and have some profit. I don't think that Pay it Forward had a big budget for production, but probably had a large budget for the movie star salary. Helen Hunt was commanding $ 1 million per episode for Mad about You. Heaven only knows that Kevin Spacey and Haley Joel Osment are commanding for salaries.