Publix is the #4 Largest Private Company in the U.S.

Out of curiousity, I decided to look for the largest private companies in the U.S. and was a little surprised to find that Florida's own Publix is #4. I expected it might be in the top 100, but not the top 5. For those of you who don't know, Publix is Florida's #1 grocery store and they also have stores in Georgia, South Carolina, Alabama and Tennessee. In 2002 they made over $16billion in revenues and had a net income of $632million.

Celestia: A 3D Space Simulator

Here is another nifty program I came across in the emule content database. It's a really neat 3-D space simulator.

PDFCreator

I was browsing around the emule content database when I came across a really nifty program called PDFCreator. It allows you to generate your own PDF files by emulating a printer, so you can generate PDF files from virtually any program. This is quite a nice and free alternative to Adobe Acrobat. You can download it here.

Alan Greenspan's Speech

Alan Greenspan gave a speech today at the Greater Omaha Chamber of Commerce. I am very much in favor of free trade, even if it is partially responsible for Information Technology jobs moving overseas. In this article, Chairman Greenspan discusses this very issue and explains that education, not protectionism, is the solution to the problem. Competition benefits the consumer whether it comes from within our boarders or from abroad. In order to compete in the labor market, we must improve our education; not close our boarders.

If we close our boarders, we will eventually be forced to produce our own products which will ultimately raise prices. The reason we import certain products is because they can be produced cheaper overseas. The nations producing those products are the lowest cost producers and provide us with the cheapest product. When we become the sole producers of those products, the costs go up as well as the prices and the consumer pays the price. In any case, enough of my economic philosophy. Take a look at his speech; I found it to be quite good.

Flash Games by Apropo.ro

Here are a few fun Yeti games. Enjoy!

Google Zeitgeist

I was surfing around Google and I happend to come across the Google Zeitgeist. It is a rather interesting site which summarizes query statistics on Google. It is a rather interesting snapshot into popular culture and provides some cool info.

jsierra.net Officially Using Blogger

Well, it didn't take me long to make the decision and fortunately it was an easy transition. jsierra.net is now making use of Blogger. One of these days I'll have to import my old archives into Blogger. For now, you can view my old posts here. Wow, four posts in one day! That's without a doubt a record for me! Ain't Blogger great!?!?

The jsierra.net "Look and Feel"

I'm discovering that Blogger is quite a flexible tool. It allows you to modify the template it uses, which can really change the whole "look and feel" of your blog. With some very small tweaks, I was very easily able to modify my blog to look like jsierra.net. Blogger certainly is a very nice tool, and I would highly recommend it to anyone who would like to have their own blog. Perhaps if I do use this for jsierra.net, I will be inclined to update the site more frequently.

Google Deskbar

Someone told me about Google Deskbar today. This is a VERY nifty tool. Be sure to check it out.

The Blog is Born

Well, I decided to sign up for an account with blogger.com. I figure if it's involved with Google then it's gotta be good. It was pretty quick and easy to sign up. I like the fact that they have a feature that allows you to ftp (or sftp) the blog to a website. I think I may eventually use this to manage jsierra.net.