She must be busy

I finally got an appointment to get a haircut. I was a little concerned. I wanted one before I left for Williamsburg Tuesday and I was starting to run out of time. But my official person finally answered the phone and I have an appointment at 4:30. And yes I have a woman cut my hair normally. I only allow women and gay men to cut my hair.

Remember when I bored everyone to tears talking about stocks yesterday. Remember I said CDW reported earnings today. I wish they hadn't. They missed by a nickel and so are currently down by 7.5%. How sad.

I can't remember if I mentioned that Google is coming to my hometown. But now I have. Apparently they're going to build a data center/server farm mainly because since most of the furniture companies have left, these huge power grids are empty and quite cheap. Everyone is getting excited because Google is going to save Lenoir. They could help. But there are a few problems.

1. My grandfather told me that the county government has basically given too much of. I haven't seen the numbers so I can't make a judgement that would be valuable at this time...(and on another note if the MySpace song I'm listening to doesn't stop skipping, I'm going to shoot the computer)...but I wouldn't be surprised. it seems local governments always give ridiculous tax incentives to companies because they're so desperate to bring in additional revenues. I mean granted even at discounted rates they're getting more then they were before. But you also have to take into account the property tax rates of the land that was sold of which the houses were recently burned down. So I'd have to at least see some numbers or let someone who has calculate them and listen to their conclusion.

2. Google is also not singlehandedly going to save Lenoir and Caldwell County. I think it's bringing 200 jobs which is nice. But thousands have lost their jobs just from Broyhill closures in the past couple of years. So it helps but not a tremendous amount. Or does it? This is for a data center /server farm job. I'm not totally familiar with what goes on at these. I understand it's mainly to help the internet and the company's sites run smoothly with thousands upon thousands of computers. These are jobs that require a lot of technical know-how if I'm not mistaken. I looked at the qualifications for a few of the jobs on Google's website yesterday. I'm definitely not qualified and I have an economics degree. And since the Hickory-Lenoir-Morganton metro is in the bottom five of the 200 largest metro areas in Educational Attainment according to Forbes, I would venture to guess that not many in this area do meet the qualifications. Keep in mind, the furniture companies used to come into the high schools of this area and tell them not to bother going to college that they could just come to the furniture factories and work and make a living. 10.4% of this county aged 25 or older has a college degree. Compare that to the city of Raleigh which is over 50%. The rate in the U.S. is over 27%. So this county doesn't stack up well. Finally, Google gets 1300 resumes a day. That means they have to reject 99.5% of them. I'm not saying people from this county can't get jobs at this server farm. But they're competing with a hell of a lot of people.