CABL Forum - Re:A hopefully inspiring, and perhaps indirectly related, thought for all in 2002!

It's not just in the MSO's, in the past 10 to 15 years the quality of work being done and the availability of knowledgable people has taken a nosedive. It surprises me how many people there are that really don't know how to build good looking and functioning plant but think they should be paid top dollar.

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> It's a crying shame that people with some level of independent intelligence such as yourself have been driven from this industry by the inept and ignorant. I continue to fight the uphill battle against the greedy quick fixers who have infused this industry. They march on with the mentality that they will do a patchwork upgrade and then pawn the rat's nest off on some sucker through a quick sale of the "freshly rebuilt and modern" system. It all comes down to one thing: somebody trying to get something for nothing. The green monster that is ruining this country. Greed. Jealousy. And the willingness to do your fellow man wrong in order to obtain material wealth for yourself. This is a cancer which has metastisized itself in this industry to the point that the patient is in critical condition in the ICU of the telecommunications world, on life support. Money isn't free, folks. It's hard working people who create progress, not a bunch of monkeys freshly graduated from university X sitting behind their computers with walls full of worthless certificates of "higher learning". Most of them wouldn't be able to feed themselves if all the high end restaurants went out of business. For all the dawgs that care about this industry and the living that it can provide for the man or woman who wants to bust his ass and create quality for a fair price, I beg: PLEASE don't accept the crap prices and work a no profit deal so that you can keep paying your truck payments. As long as there are people that will do it for less and less, you will never be able to build your business in this industry and the greedy ones will continue to play you against one another. Pull your head in for awhile and let all those incompetents fail! Then when nothing is getting done or it's been done four times incorrectly, someone is going to offer the competent a professional worthy wage. Okay, I'm getting off my stump now. I apologize for my ranting, I'm just so frustrated by the loss of a quality industry to the weak, shortsighted and corrupted.
>>I must first confess that I have absolutely no idea who Ellen Filipiac is but I will add that, with occasional notable exceptions, in the CATV industry it never seems to make much of a difference a) how unqualified or incompetent the people at the top levels really are, b) how poorly the stock of the organization fares as a direct result (A.T.& T. has been a textbook example of this), c) how badly they treat their customers out of sheer arrogance and how dissatisfied and ultimately angry that "bread and butter" base eventually becomes, d) how obvious it is to everyone involved that either blatant favoritism, or outright corruption, is the rule of the day, or e) how committed the mid-level managers originally are because, over the course of time, they either get converted to "the dark side" or labeled as "malcontents" and are subsequently phased out. After two decades in the business I have arrived at the inescapable conclusion that telecommunication monopolies are like kingdoms in that they who rule are, by assumed privilege, always considered correct simply because they say so. Although Europe's feudal system ultimately collapsed of it's own rather gross weight, accompanied by various bloody revolutions and occasional beheadings, the potential of many loyal serfs and peasants was forever lost. Remember your history lessons in that the formerly loyal subjects of the Crown of England rebelled not because of King George himself or the monarchial system, rather it was directly attributable to the corruption and ineffective management of his various administrators here in the New World. Odd as it may seem, we owe our democratic freedom to a bunch of greedy and foolish idiots. The modern version of that parable would be any of us who have been basically driven out of cable, only to accidentally discover a more rewarding career. But, getting to the point of my little tirade, in every occurrence of the collapse of the so called ruling class (another lesson which CATV has brought home to me is that having true class has absolutely NOTHING to do with ruling) there were those alert individuals who sorted through the flotsam and jetsam and picked up bits and pieces of debris which they very cleverly saw value in...on that subject Classic Communications stock is now down to the pithy amount of $0.035 per share. Do you think that they will close their doors and go out of business forever or will they be acquired by ________, thereby giving this potentially undervalued penny stock a huge boost? Visit their website and check out the financials, analysis and news releases on your favorite web based tracking service and draw your own conclusion. If you were financially injured as a direct result of their operational collapse and subsequent Chapter 11 proceedings maybe a few less beers, or meals out, could yield a decent return and defray some or all of your losses. Of course, there are no guarantees... This is merely one example of a potential opportunity buried in an otherwise disastrous mess. For your own success in 2002 anticipate the inevitable idiocy from above and strive to make personal choices which will most benefit yourself and your family. Avoid the natural temptation to criticize others for seeking other viable alternatives (a troubling number of contributors to this otherwise wonderful forum do, at times, tend to sound like Jerry Springer wannabes) and instead applaud them for their individual initiative in refusing to accept things the way that they sadly have become. In the process we all just might have our own version of The Boston Tea Party in that we no longer give credibility to assholes! (After all of that elegant prose can you believe that I am debasing it with profanity...oh well, I guess once a Dawg always a Dawg!)
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>>>You are correct about Atlanta. I was there as well. I am a bit surprised that AT&T took her back. I understand she left to join a new start up at the time, although I'm not sure.
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>>>>She's an old Continental player and well connected to the new AT&T regime, Ron Cooper, Bill Schleyer & Kevin Casey - I was with MediaOne, Atlanta when she was first brought in from Jacksonville, Fl. What a CF, it ended up being an absolute blood bath akin to a war zone...I've been told that region is still reeling from her presence.
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>>>>>Have you heard the Ellen is back with AT&T in the Florida market again. This should make for some interresting events.
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Re:A hopefully inspiring, and perhaps indirectly related, thought for all in 2002!