Money

Karaoke is a funny thing. I've been afflicted with the "Money" craze lately. It's awesome. I've done a little research on the subject, and figured out lots of things. First, I'm going to start with some background information about my new favorite movie, then move on to my analysis of the plot and the stars themselves.

The song they're singing is called "Money" and it's by Wax. It's track 5 on her second album, also titled "Money." That, itself, is a cover of an older song called "Hello, Mr. Monkey" by Arabesque. It's from the 70s. It sounds like it's from the 70s. Email me if you want the Arabesque song. Email me if you have the Wax mp3. I can't find it anywhere. I know one of you Korean people out there has it.

Now, on to the movie. I'm not an expert on Karaoke, but the production seems pretty nice doesn't it? The backgrounds are cool and somebody uses a little echo effect on their voices and laughter. The fun really begins when Chubby yells "money" for the first time. About 30 seconds into the movie, she starts to get her dance on, too. She does this Chris Tucker-like dance that she expands on later. Around 1:30 Chubby sticks her tongue out. Then, not 15 seconds later, she goes into this bizarre yelling thing. I really, really want to get the Wax mp3 so I can hear how that part sounds on the CD. When she starts her yelling, Skinny goes down. There's another time that she falls, but I can't remember where. She's obviously embarrassed. Chubby manages to get though it, although just barely. A little after 2 minutes, Chubby starts doing what was instantly a classic in my book. She does this weird-ass thing where she hits her hand with her fist, then brings it up to her forehead over and over, quickly. Sometimes this is punctuated by this little finger wiggling thing. At 3 minutes she begins to hack up some phlegm but thinks better of it. Skinny goes down again at 2:30 from laughter. They miss a couple lines of words at this point. But skinny makes an excellent recovery, and does her best singing in the next few lines. At 2:40, when Chubby comes back in, she seems serious about the singing. For once, they sound good together. It also makes the video 100 times better, because it makes it more real. If you haven't noticed, I consider this the climax. Then, to make sure you remember that she's funny, Chubby pulls a Mary Catherine Gallagher, sniffs her armpit, and smells her fingers.

I hope I have answered a few questions about this quirky video. But I have questions of my own! Why does she yell? What are all those weird dances? Why are they dressed so warmly (presumably indoors)? Also, and this takes a good eye to notice, but I think there is a screen on which the two girls can see themselves. Sometimes when Skinny starts cracking up, it looks like she's seeing Chubby on a monitor. Anyone else see what I'm talking about? The monitor would be down and to the left of the camera, from the viewer's POV.

Note: Although I claimed that this was my favorite movie, the Unit 1 prostitute video, and "Ahhh! You scared me!" are still up real high on the list as well.

The BCG

First up is the BCG. No girls, I did not misspell BCBG. So, some time ago, one of my professors told us how the Boston Consulting Group got famous by essentially telling companies to embark on lots of projects, even if the ROI might not be there, because the benefits of learning how to do the project would more than make up for minor profit shortfalls. Anyway, I learned this juicy tidbit in class, and then stopped thinking about it forever. Or so I thought.

Then the other day I was reading slashdot, and I found this article about GNU/Linux and Open-source software / Free software (OSS/FS). The section on TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) is what piqued my interest. Notice how a company can save a gazillion dollars by buying Redhat for $76 (or downloading it for free), instead of purchasing licenses for Windows at approximately one $unbornchild per computer.

My reaction was, "Yeah, but all these IT fools at random places are dumb. They could never manage real Linux servers." They might have an equal amount of downtime with either solution, but at least they could get the Exchange server running. I used to work at the Medical Board of CA, where it takes 20 IT staff to replace a hard drive. I was trying to imagine them migrating hundreds of users over to anything. Then I was thinking about how what they really need is training classes.

Total Cost of Ownership --> Technical Training. Then it donned on me. They could use all the money they were going to save on servers and licenses for said classes. There are lots of comprehensive, 1 week courses out there on Linux server administration and setup for about $2,000. So let's say a company has 400 users, and an IT staff of about 20. If each of them went to 100 hours of classes, that would be something like $120,000. Well, if you would truly save $280,000+ with a OSS/FS solution it might well be worth it - even if you had to pay for lots of training. Not only would you still be saving big bucks, but your IT staff are going to be learning a lot about a real OS at the same time. Three full weeks of training each for 20 people is a lot of classroom time - probably more than most IT depts. do in a whole year for all purposes combined.

Now this is even better than what the BCG is preaching, because it sounds like the ROI could be quick (like 1-2 years), AND a company could be increasing their stock of human capital at the same time.

Just another reason why we should all learn to use the command line.