I am really curious where the world is heading. As I look at what is happening around me, I just can't seem to put my hands around it. A friend of mine was asking the other day what his kids will do for jobs in 15-20 years. With offshoring being the "big" thing, what will be available for his kids and even what will he be doing. IBM announced a little while back that they are offshoring one of their divisions 100% to India. I just don't see this working. Sometimes I can understand the idea of corporations cutting their costs to be more effective, but I don't see why the US government would support this. It sends jobs out of the country reducing the tax basis and it could put additional strain on the unemployment system. When send money out of the country in hopes that those who receive it will spend more on US goods and services--but does it really happen. I work with people in India and in Brazil and none of those people seem to want US manaufactured goods. When some of the Indians on the team came to the US, they did buy a lot of electronics made in the far east, but only a few of the team was able to come over. It is too expensive to have Indians come to the states, it is far more cost effective to send Americans to India. This is also true with Brazil.

I am just not getting the benefit of a global economy and it kind of scares me that the corporations are creating and controlling the global economy. With the PACs and all, it even seems like the corporations are controlling the government to get what they want which is not always what is best for the American people, in my opinion.

We have seen so many things go to cheaper locations acroos the globe. At first it was manufacturing. We were told these were mindless tasks that could be performed cheaper in other locations freeing the Americans to do more creative functions. But now they are outsourcing IT. At first it was the monotonous coding parts and the coprorations created coding factories along the lines of manufacturing. Now it is the creative pieces of analysis and design that were supposed to be reserved for Americans. Now I am hearing about medical advances to allow doctors in other countries to diagnose problems. There was even a story about students in the US getting academic tutoring over the web from tutors in India.

Where does it end and where does it leave those of us in the US? What will happen to the American dream when no jobs are available in the US?

I still have the iPod and I am actually enjoying it. I am not sure how I am going to fill up the 60GB. My computer doesn't have that much available storage to have a copy of what is on the iPod. I found a kind of cool video podcast called Brickmovie. It has short films made with Legos. Some of them are better than others.

One of the things I had ordered from Lego was the Star Wars video game for the PC. Unfortunately, my computer wouldn't play it. I tried my work computer and was finally able to get it to load using some thrid party software that emulated the pixel shader functionality that is on a lot of the newer video cards made for gaming. It had some problems with slow down and since it was my work computer I ended up uninstalling it. Since then I have been thinking about buiying a used Gamecube or PS2 to play the game.

The new DND campaign is going well so far. We really haven't done that much yet, but we have are all still alive. I am playing an elf wizard which is new for me. I generally play a rogue or cleric. I also often seem to play a halfing or gnome or something kind of small. It is challenging to play a wizard. With the cleric I just picked what spells I wanted to pray for, for a wizard I have to choose wisely since I can only use those spells in my spellbook. There are some really cool spells in Races of the Dragon, namely Power Word Pain. I need to get a copy of the book, so that I can use the spell.

Work has been disappointing at best. I struggle to stay awake most of the time. I think I might really be depressed this time. I just can't seem to stay focussed. I am trying to get more involved in the project, but it is really hard to work on something you just don't believe in.