The Peoria Dispatch

This blog has always had a “Garden” page, but it was just that: one long page that allowed one set of comments.  That was not the best solution for the poster, reader, and especially commenter.  Version 2 is here!  When you click on the Garden page (top menu link), you’ll be taken to a completely separate blog.  You may not even realize you are on a separate blog, and that was by design.  This new format will allow Angela to more easily update everyone with all of the great work she does in the garden, and will allow commenters to write back on individual posts.

Enjoy.

(On a technical note, if you subscribe to this blog’s RSS feed, you’ll need to go to the Garden blog and subscribe to that one too.  They’re different feeds.)

I have always enjoyed the Google holiday/event logos.  Not only are they often very creative and artistic, but they highlight a wide variety of notable dates beyond usual holidays:  birthday/anniversary days of significant people, and landmark events of all types ranging from the well known to very geeky.  Some of my favorites appeared just last year:

Earth Day:

Large Hadron Collider activation (and the potential end of Earth):

Election Day:

Their artistic ability (or standards, for guest artists) has greatly improved over the years.  Here is their 2008 Halloween logo:

Compare that to their less impressive, cut-and-paste clip art effort from 1999:

They’ve definitely raised the bar, and I’ve come to expect high quality, clever logos from Google.  Which brings us to today, Valentine’s Day 2009:

Boy, they really spared no expense on this one!  Font-color = Red.  Wow.  And the kisses and hugs…  well my first reaction when I saw the logo was that Google.com had been hacked.  The X and O look like something found at a crime scene in “CSI”.  Not well done, especially for Valentine’s day.

Oh well, maybe next year.  I still like the holiday logo concept and Google’s minimalist style (as opposed to the fancy animations over at yahoo.com), but they showed their slack side today.

In addition to the headline-making layoffs recently announced, CAT and Peoria have received some other attention you may not be aware of:

• Obama’s Secretary of Transporation, Ray Lahood, most recently represented central Illinois (and Peoria) in congress.
• CAT CEO Jim Owens was added to Obama’s economic advisory board.
• Owens will appear on “60 Minutes” this coming Sunday, Feb 15th.  I’ve not seen this in the press, though it was announced internally.  Expect him to slam the “Buy American” provision of the stimulus bill.  I’ve seen him on CNBC a few times and he’s an effective speaker.  Try to catch this interview if you can.
• Obama will probably be in (East) Peoria on Thursday visiting a CAT plant.  We’re such a good backdrop for messages about the crumbling economy.

It would be neat to see Air Force One land in Peoria.  It’s been here a few times recently but I’ve never seen it myself.  Of course the schedule of the whole event is under wraps so I’ll probably miss it again.

Enough serious posts for one week…

Not only is the diesel sign nostalgic, it’s a hint.  Too hard?  Try a slightly easier version.

So far Obama hasn’t done anything to really irritate me, but the democratic congress has.  One of the smaller pieces of legislation they’ve prepared that is misguided involves the delay to Digital TV, or rather a delay to allowing analog TV to shut down.  It bothers me because it is indicative of waste, slowing society down to the slowest, and a lack of personal responsibility.

Start with the assertion that there are some in remote areas, possibly low income, that haven’t yet made the switch.  Why is that?  If they haven’t been watching TV and didn’t get the notices, they can continue to not watch TV once we’re all digital.  When they choose to watch again, they go buy the $40 box.  For those that do watch TV, they have either made the switch, don’t need to switch (i.e. have cable or satellite), or they’ve ignored the incessant warnings for the past two years.  This gets to personal responsibility.  If someone can’t, over two years, get around to forking out $40 to preserve their precious TV, then they should be allow to suffer a bit.  (At which point they’ll get off the couch and go buy the box.)

Congress seems to treat TV like it’s electricity or running water: an essential service.  Sorry, it’s not.  We watch a few hours a week tops and survive.  So on one side of the equation we’re worrying about lazy couch potatoes experiencing a minor inconvenience.  On the other side, you have all of the stations out there who are screaming to turn off their analog transmitters.  They’ve already had to upgrade to digital, yet they’re still paying the power and maintenance bills for their analog transmitter.  So faced with the opportunity to remove a substantial, real cost for a lot of business, congress is on the verge of pandering to the irresponsible.  I think this is the wrong decision

Of course this a is relatively small matter in all respects, but the issues surrounding it are indicative of much larger problems.  I’m disappointed and worried that progress (and efficiency) is being held up by slowing everyone down to the slowest among us.  We need to do much better to get out of our various messes.

Anyone who has watched the news this week probably noticed that CAT made some negative news by announcing massive layoffs (20,000 jobs) on Monday.  I’d say a lot of us expected some sort of cuts as part of the earnings announcement, but this was nonetheless a large number.  Much more surprising were the additional 2,200 layoffs announced on Friday.  This batch was targeted right at Illinois plants, including East Peoria and Decatur.  I find it very disturbing that CAT had to put out a second announcement so soon.  Surely they would have been better off announcing 22,000 cuts on Monday, so this Friday’s news indicates that situations are changing very rapidly, and/or CAT’s management of them is not well controlled.  Not good.

Angela and I both still have our jobs.  Based on what has been told to us, we’re hopefully that we’ll escape being laid off.  But there are still a lot of actual cuts to occur to meet the 20,000 number, and they could definitely hit either of us.  So all we can do is hope for the best on that front.

As part of the 20,000, CAT offered a buyout program that roughly 2,600 people signed up for.  Their last day was Friday.  It was very sad to see people we know heading out the door en masse.  Yes they were doing it on their own accord and with some financial benefit, but it was still a somber day.  First, a lot of good people left.  Very experienced people retired, and very ambitious people used it as an opportunity to try something new in life.  I wish them all well.  But it also was a visible reminder of the weakened state of CAT (and Peoria, the economy, etc.)

Another big news story this week concerned Wall St. bonuses.  I find the large bonuses paid to bankers of failed banks very annoying like everyone else, but this story struck a really negative chord with me this week, being juxtaposed with CAT layoffs.  Let’s do the math:

$18.4 Billion (reported sum of bankers’ bonuses)
÷ 22,000 (CAT jobs lost this week)
——————-
$836k

So, with the dodgy bonus kitty, we could have paid all of the departing CAT employees over $41k / year for the next 20 years.  What the hell is wrong with this picture?  I normally don’t get too wound up over executive pay, but this situation is offensive, and made much worse given that these companies are on the Federal dole.  I think I actually agree with the core of Claire McCaskill’s idea, but I doubt it will happen.

There is nothing like sharing dinner among friends on the night before CNY.   Jim and I had Karl, Kai Mei, Kipp and Beth,  Anh and Jim, Robbie and Kim over for a hot pot dinner.   What’s a hot pot you say???  Well, some might call it a firepot (that’s probably direct translation from Chinese, i’m not real sure).  The traditional hot pot is basically a pot with two levels.  The top level is where the broth goes and the bottom level has an opening where you would put red hot coals.    Well as you will see from my picture below, ours is made of a hotplate and a Cuisinart aluminium pot .

What we do with the hot pot is basically put fresh food into the boiling broth.  Once it’s cooked, everyone dishes out their food with a little net to their bowl.  Traditional broth consist of pork broth with winter melon but ours is Thai Tom Yum soup with lemon grass.   Among the ingredients that we had were beef, mushrooms (oyster, straw, button), nappa cabbage, shrimp,  fishballs, squidballs, etc.   Those of you with gutter mind…..  fishballs are basically made out of fish fillets, tapioca flour, salt and spices.  The ingredients for the fishballs are mixed together, rolled into balls and steamed.

Anh brought over her delicious spring rolls and they were yummy appetizers.  The kids ate a whole lot of spring rolls and pot stickers while chugging down milk and orange juice.   Wished we had taken a picture of that but we missed it.

We did prepare a few cheese and crackers for the faint hearted who are not familiar with scary looking food .

Dearest Friends ,

We wish you a very Happy Chinese New Year.   May the year of  Ox bring you and your family  joy  and happiness.

Love,

Angela & Jim

Original holiday card. (The music playing on every page load has gotten old!)

Hello all,

I just wanted to share a picture of my nephew with you.   He is about 4 1/2 months old.  His name is Ivan Liong Wen Chiat.  (Liong is the last name).  I don’t think he cares to have the SLR camera pointed at him yet .   Ivan here loves to be held and carried around.  He is the first grandchild for both my mom and Chian Min’s parents,  so he gets a whole lot of  tender loving care (TLC).

It is Saturday morning (9am) and the temperature outside is 29.5F or -1.4C. All the leaves from our Maple and Ash trees have fallen to the ground. I’m wondering if we are still up to raking up the last of the leaves this weekend. I have just finished talking to a friend of mine from India; she was my guide when I was there in 2006 and we have kept in touch since.

Next week is Thanksgiving weekend, we are foregoing turkey this year for ham. I’m also going to have to dig up my pumpkin pie recipe. This reminds me of the year I made pumpkin pie in NZ. Just FYI, pumpkin puree comes conveniently in a can here but pumpkin puree in NZ is “pumpkin” the fruit. I had to make puree from it. Funny, I’m sure it’s all natural to many ladies out there on how to make puree, but it wasn’t for me. I had a laptop open with step by step instructions. I broke a sieve in the process, almost chop my fingers off (these are not the cute pumpkin you see during Halloween. If this pumpkin drops on your head, I’m positive you’ll suffer a concussion). The process involves, cutting the pumpkin into pieces, bake them and then mash the pieces through a sieve. It was funny how involve it became compared to opening a can .

Pumpkin in NZ

Pumpkin in US

Both are 100% pumpkin puree

Personally, I prefer the pumkin in the can for baking (yes, I’m sure Martha Stewart frowns upon it). It’s much more convenient and shortens the time it takes to make pumpkin bread or pie.  As for roast pumpkin, that will of course require a fresh pumpkin.  It’s kind of difficult to reform pumpkin pieces after it’s been mashed to a pulp .