Thinking aloud: Azure, AWS, DevOps, cars and opinion from Alex Neihaus

  • Federal judge to Charles Schwab: pound sand

    It’s no secret I’m angry at Charles Schwab (here and here). And they don’t like me back. In fact, they’ve “fired me,” sending me a letter terminating my accounts with them in February. (What was it, guys? The blog posts? The Boston Globe story? Did I offend you by insisting that you send me written…

  • Dear Martha Coakley: maybe now that you want my vote, you’ll respond to my letter about “accountability”

    I’ve really had my fill. I’m up to here (picture my hand patting my chest just below my neck) with the claims Martha Coakley is making about bringing “real accountability back to Wall Street and Washington.” The Attorney General is talking, in part, about the settlements she negotiated in the auction rate security scandal. Watch the ad she’s…

  • HP machines are far from color blind

    I first heard about this YouTube video on Consumer Reports. As you watch this, note the humor with which the black worker describes the racist HP laptop. I, for one, wouldn’t have been so level-headed if, say, the HP laptop ignored Jewish faces with big noses. The one thing you gotta ask yourself is what…

  • Hungry? Check out seasonalfeast.com

    I love to eat. I can’t cook. Even microwaved Velveeta on Ritz is well beyond my gastronomic capabilities. I am quite content to sit at home all day Sunday, watch football all day and consume embarrassingly large quantities of things the FDA has no labeling standards for. Still, I have a lot of respect for…

  • Bank of America marketing: how to lose customers on a grand scale

    Well, growing a business ethically continues to defy Bank of America. First, it duped shareholders by concealing girnormous losses at Merrill-Lynch last year — then it agreed to paying ML’s brokers astronomical bonuses, all apparently in exchange for an extra $50B in TARP funding. Next, it pissed off a Federal judge who wouldn’t let BofA…

  • Dear Michael Steele and the Republican Party: Please leave me alone

    Dear Chairman Steele, Last November, I made a $25 contribution to your party’s candidate. I also made a $25 contribution to the Obama campaign. Then, I wasn’t sure who would have been the better president. Now, after months and months of non-stop invective from you and your party against President Obama, I am sure I…

  • Guess what I am doing at Oracle OpenWorld next week in San Francisco

    Those of you who know me may remember Revit’s 2001’s “shelf present” or 2002’s infamous treadmill pr stunts. If you do, you won’t be in the least surprised to see images of the front and back of a card actors in prison uniforms are going to be handing out next week at Oracle OpenWorld in…

  • Choose one: New FTC blog post guidelines a) protect you b) kill free speech

    Well, this is one of those times when the government acts and you get to chose your reaction. On the one hand, the emergence of the ‘net as the definitive source of reviews for everything from software to celery has become a bonanza for the shills of the world who review products for filthy lucre…

  • GM: May the Most Misleading Car Company Lose

    OK, so we’ve all been reading about how the “new” GM is going to put customers first. And how the “new” GM isn’t building drek like my 1973 Chevy Vega (which came with a free case of oil in the hatch) and my 1986 NUMMI-built Chevy No-Go…er…Nova…which was designed to stall whenever the accelerator was…

  • You drive, you text…you die. Just try not to kill me, too

    Every day for nearly 17 years I’ve commuted on the Mass Pike between my home and workplaces in Cambridge, Boston, Burlington and, now, Waltham. Drivers on the Pike have long been deserving of the appellation “Masshole” — you can’t believe what I’ve seen people doing. They eat, they sing, they use bedpans, they trim their…

  • Charles Schwab’s lies are (finally) gonna land it in court

    It felt so good to unload two weeks ago on Charles Schwab for lying about the safety and liquidity of auction-rate securities they sold me. Blogging as catharsis is underrated, especially if you have as much tied up as I do in these now illiquid ARSs. As I pointed out in my previous post, just…

  • NY AG to pwn Charles Schwab; get me and thousands of other dupes our pound of flesh

    The short version of a long story is that Charles Schwab sold me auction-rate securities, promising liquidity, then stonewalled me when the market disappeared for the ARSs. Meanwhile, every other firm on the planet — and I mean every one — made their clients whole. Goldman Sachs, the auction agent for the ARSs I bought:…