AT&T said Thursday that it will cut about 12,000 jobs, or 4 percent of its workforce, due largely to “economic pressures.”

The layoffs are beginning to sound like a broken record (or MP3). AT&T said it wants to streamline its operations as its business morphs to one that’s largely dependent on wireless service (statement). AT&T added that it will add jobs in growth areas such as wireless, video and broadband. For many quarters, AT&T’s wireless and U-verse broadband service have shown growth as its once-core wireline business erodes.

AT&T also said that it will cut its 2009 capital spending budget from 2008 levels, but didn’t give specific guidance. In any case, AT&T’s cutbacks are likely to ding telecommunication equipment vendors. According to Morgan Stanley analyst Simon Flannery, AT&T is likely to spend $20 billion, or 16.1 percent of revenue, on capital expenses (click to enlarge chart).

In 2008, AT&T spent heavily to build out its 3G network to prepare for the iPhone and also faced expenses to restore service following hurricane season. Meanwhile, the cost cutting wasn’t a surprise to many analysts. Flannery wrote in October:

We expect AT&T to announce material cost cutting in coming weeks as an offshoot of the recent management reorganization. We believe there is still significant scope to trim opex and capex to deal with a tough macro-economic environment. About 40% of capex is related to growth initiatives.

The telecom giant said it will take a charge of $600 million in the fourth quarter for severance.

Well, I’m back. The second half of my trip was really lovely. I’m always taken aback by how lovely central Virginia is every time I go back. While I don’t care for iced tea, and smoking sections are unfortunate, central Virginia is really home to me.

It helps though that the area is just stunning. On the drive down through the rolling hills you just can’t help but notice how green and alive everything is. The breeze carries scents of flowers and honeysuckle, and the woods are filled with huge, wild dogwood trees filling the area with flowers. We saw lots of deer, little bunnies and many beautiful birds. Miraculously it is also a mild spring. It was sunny and in the 70s with very little humidity. It was paradise.

We were in Lynchburg, VA visiting my mom for Mother’s Day. She was doing quite well and is remaining active in her church. She is an elder at First Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) which is like no church I have been to in the bible belt. It’s liberal. There were many little things that make me think I might have ended up a more religious person than I am had I been exposed to a religion actually about love and compassion rather than moral superiority and hate for many others.

My mom took Ray and I out to some very neat restaurants including this one that was in what used to be a roadside store and is now a gourmet restaurant. It is about halfway between Lynchburg and Roanoke, which is really just the middle of nowhere. The only thing close by is the Appalachian trail and the Blue Ridge Parkway.

The rest of the time Ray and I got to feel more butch than normal doing little odds and ends around the house. I installed dimmers, fitted a new vent conduit onto a dryer, scraped and painted a mailbox and lots of other little things that I can’t really do on my own rental place.

Oh! I also got a PSP. For $200 no less. It’s used but the person that bought it and pretty much never used it got lots of accessories for it!

Anyways, it was good to see my mom, though I wish I lived closer to her. Now I just need Yahoo! to open up a big office on the east coast. I won’t hold my Breath though.

While traveling, I heard a lot about the 60th anniversary of the Allied victory in Europe. I think it is good and right to celebrate the destruction of an empire that harmed and warped so many. I do wonder though how clean our own hands were at the time. As Eddie Izzard joked:

Stalin killed 20 million of his own people, died in his bed. Hitler killed people next door. Stupid man. After a few years, we won’t stand for that!

We certainly were OK with isolationism and neutrality until the war became personal. I keep wondering how much moral outrage there was actually in the United States at the time about the Nazi eugenics program, and how much of the wartime sentiment boiled down to fear of a hegemonic Germany.

The source of my interest in this subject comes from a place pretty close to home. As I mentioned yesterday, I was traveling to where I grew up, Lynchburg, VA. Several years ago there was a documentary called “the Lynchburg Story” which tells the story of the The Lynchburg Colony for the Epileptic and Feebleminded. This was a state-sponsored eugenics program where 8,000 poor or illegitimate children were labeled as defective, then involuntarily sterilized and kept locked away from society. The children were frequently not permitted to be educated and were put to work doing jobs to bring in money for the institution (while being told that their work was their education).

Eugenics was a fad at the time that swept most of the country. It was apparently common-place to have “fittest family” competitions at the county fairs showing convoluted, meaningless pedigrees. Fitness in eugenics was a pseudo-science where everything was thought to be genetic. Having an unwed mother or unemployed parent was considered to be evidence of your own defects since such behaviors were considered hereditary. Things like family tendencies towards civic leadership were also considered inherited traits, but of course these made you “more fit.” Below is the pedigree for Carrie Buck, the Virginia Colony’s first involuntary sterilization.

The reason this is relevant to a discussion of World War II is that the eugenics laws of the United States (upheld as constitutional by a 8-1 supreme court decision) were the model for the Nazi Sterilization laws that led to the Holocaust in Europe. According to the documentary, the facility near Lynchburg even received a personal letter of commendation from Adolph Hitler for their work in the field. This made me realize I had a significant gap in my knowledge about American foreign and domestic policy from the 30s. For instance, it occurs to me that we still had diplomatic relations with Germany during this time. Were there really Nazi flags flying in the United States from Germany’s consulates and embassy for seven years??

Like all such things, it is comforting to obscure these events behind the veil of history, and highlight the benefits that came from war after the fact. Was the US Civil War about taxation, slavery, or heritage? I don’t know, but my history classes certainly suggested that slavery was not the prime motivation. I suppose to each person of the time the reasons were their own. I would have to imagine the same holds true for WWII. Some must have been in favor of eugenics, and others (and I hope many) found it repugnant.

Regardless, it is important to note that the US was instrumental in ending the Holocaust. However, it is equally important to remember what happened at home. Anyone have a guess as to when the sterilization program in Virginia was canceled? 1950? nope. Surely by the sixties during the civil rights movement? Uh-uh. Sterilization continued until 1972. Involuntary sterilization laws continued on the books until 1979. Across the United States, it is estimated that 40,000-60,000 people were sterilized against their will.

While celebration for the end of pain is good, to learn the most from our history it is equally important to keep our own atrocities in the forefront of our minds. Growing up miles from the colony’s site, I had never heard of it. This is simply not part of Lynchburg’s history anymore. When even intelligent people like Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. can be caught in this fervor, we must not hide our shame, but instead places like the colony must become beacons reminding us of the dangers of valuing some life more than others, and of perverting science to the whims of politics and social bigotry.

We just got a painting by Peter Hoffer which was delivered yesterday (picture above). He does some very interesting landscapes but with several non-traditional elements. As you can see in the picture above, the landscape is a barren, but with a single tree in a broad field. Having solitary elements in large piece seems to be a common form in his work.

The painting is oil on board, but after painting he has deconstructed the painting by causing the paints to run and actually scratching the surface. While I’m not always a fan of deconstruction, the part that I do like is that he then coated the painting in a high gloss seal making it very shiny and sleek. I really do like the contrast that it provides.

You can’t really see the scratches in the picture above but they are fairly prominent. The painting is actually eight feet wide! This is going to lead to the interesting challenge of actually getting this up onto the wall. The extra-special reason for mentioning this painting is that it puts something on the last of our empty walls! After ten years together, Ray and I have finally started finding common ground in our tastes to start making our apartment a home

If you would like to see other works by Peter Hoffer, take a look at the Bau-Xi Gallery site.

Anyone else get that charming German spam that has been going around this weekend (apparently a similar one exploded about a year ago)? I did, at both home and work. Unfortunately, the spam used my address as one of the sets fakes. This spam is from the Sober worm, a form of email virus where computers that are infected start sending off the spam. By using someone else’s email as the spoofed from address any bouncing email will just go to the spoofed email account and not the infected person. (fix the mail protocols!)For anyone at radio station KMPS 94.1 FM, I swear it wasn’t me. I don’t even speak German. As recent conversations would suggest, my Spanish is rusty and my English is iffy. If all of it just got caught by your spam filters and you saw nothing, nevermind. But, could you play something twangy for me while you are at it?

If you’d like to see what it is about, try reading this Washington Post Article.

Also on the spam front, I am happy to say that Word Press is doing quite well. so far, all of the real comments have gone through and all of the spam ones have gone to moderation. Strangely, the vast majority of my spam is going to the same post. Wacky.

It’s real. I made firefox my default browser. I removed the IE icon from my quick launch bar and moved the IE icon on the desktop to a strange place. I’m going cold turkey for the fiery fox.

Seeing that 70% of the visitors to this site are firefox users, I guess more people are wondering why I am so late to the party. For the last three years as I’ve been working on IMVs. Because these rely on IE I refused to use any other browser than IE 6.0. I wanted to feel any pain that happens in general with IE so that I would know to keep tabs on it in IMVs.

By and large, I am fine so far. The cookie and bookmark imports are good. Running my local Flash files is nice. The install was OK, though I would have preferred that it had given me more notice that the custom install had the DOM explorer. There may be an in-program installer, but I couldn’t find it so I had to re-install.

Going to sites has been for the most part painless with the odd exception of run-on long links that forget to wrap, and a few rendering issues. Making pages has been a bit more painful than I’d like to admit. I’ve been very much in IE so I’ve taken to using more IE specific things. I’m also much more into Flash, and find HTML that quaint technology that often holds my Flash files but is otherwise a bit too wacky with all of its cross-browser, cross-platform issues. This is a bug for me though, not Firefox. I’m guessing it won’t be a deferred bug, but I think it is a P3 right now.

If anyone wants to give me any pointers towards fun xul and greaseMonkey applications (no thanks on the thunderbird), I would appreciate it. More than that, can anyone tell me if you can embed Flash in xul? I don’t really know enough about it yet to even know if that is a naive question.

Last night we received and hung a new painting, Orientation Beta, by Bratsa Bonifacho. Over the years his style has varied quite a bit, but his latest trend has had me captivated. When Ray and I went up to Seattle to see some paintings by Dale Chihuly, I think I spent as much time staring at some of Bonifacho’s paintings from his “Habitat Pixel” series.

The Habitat Pixel series is his view of technology, language, and security. This snippet from the gallery says it better:

Bonifacho’s newest works expand his interest in technological advancements. Habitat Pixel moves forward to deal with the negative side of these advancements, such as threats to personal security, deconstruction of language, or on a large scale the demise of economic systems. In the simplest terms, Bonifacho imitates the effects of computer viruses and worms by scrambling letters and messages in his paintings. His works are heavily textured, and deep with layers of vivid colour.

When technology meets language art and some very bold colors, I’m there! Since seeing his work a year ago, I found that I kept thinking about it. When I got a gallery mailing about an upcoming new exhibit by Bonifacho I was very, very excited. Here are some more paintings by Bonifacho from the exhibit.

Oh! and if you are a Sci Fi Geek and watching the 4400, in season one when they are having a reception for the taken at the rich guy’s planned community, There is a Bonifacho painting hanging in the background.

Tonight I am going to be visited by a young co-worker of the tooth fairy who will see my agedness, call me an “old person” and kick my butt out of the twenties and move me into the decrepitude of my third decade. Or so goes the story from several post-30 friends anyways.

Yes, tomorrow I am 30. The number is big and round so of course it has meaning! What that meaning is, I will have to let you know tomorrow.

So what do I do with my last day of my advertising-study-demographically-granted youth? Well, so far I’ve cleaned out my youthful email, awaiting my already old email, I ordered new business cards (Fittingly the Y! business card changed to a bland design. :)), I wore my Flash Gordon shirt (my older friends tell me I won’t be moving fast from now on), and I am finishing my plans for my birthday party tomorrow.

Yes, the party is the real point of the post. For the first time in my adult life I am having a real birthday party! I actually like birthdays, and it is a better than average reason for having friends over. If you are in the Bay Area and want to come, be sure to email me!

Also, in celebration of the Messenger Beta release, my old team is going to see Star Wars en masse and they have kindly invited me to go with them! As the Star Wars movies have had the habit of coming out on my birthday, I choose to see the series as a parable for my youth.

For a few years, despite bad acting and my innate curmudgeonness, I have stayed young. From what I have heard about episode III though, my youth may be coming to a halt and I may be going over to the dark side. While the extra powers look cool and exciting, the whole wrinkly emperor thing isn’t as appealing. I guess I will have to watch the epic struggle of my aging play out on the screen (I’m sure that is what all the other patrons are thinking too).

Maybe I too can digitally enhance and revise the inner-yoda of my youth one day. I guess we shall see. Perhaps that will be for episode 40 in 2015.

A big “Thank you!” to the fine people that make NyQuil and DayQuil. For the 5th or 6th time this spring I have a cold or flu. This really bites. I almost never get sick otherwise but I seem to be catching every cold that has gone through the office. I have survived this spring through liberal dosage of both of these medicines.

A couple of amusing things though. Check out Vicks’s website. Is this the NyQuil talking or is there seriously a map of the world AND a dropdown to choose your country BETWEEN TWO COUNTRIES?? The two dots just sitting there is pretty funny. And just why is the Dutch site so much better than ours?

Oh yeah, the Dutch site seems to indicate that they make something that tastes good. I’ve never had a good-tasting Vicks product. Ummm… Have you ever tried the green NyQuil? How about we take a bit of that good-tasting pleasure and trot it on over to America. Looking at the pictures on the site, the pleasure is to the orgasmic level. They clearly have some to share!

I know the Dutch like their drugs and all, but man, somebody was on a major trip when making the dutch version of the site. Clicking random pages I ended up at this page which should really not be visited while partaking of any Vicks product. it is just too strange (and a creepy use of Flash). If you are using Firefox, click here. The site shows a jpg instead of the Flash if you aren’t using IE.

Also, from two versions of the flu ago which coincided with Flash Forward SF, my apologies to the people that I may have run into stepped on, tripped over etc. when fleeing the search engine optimization session. Seeing that there is a decent chance that someone out there is reading the blog, I figured I should offer the apology just in case

Also, a big thanks to our President on the whole flu shot thing. For the first time in probably ten years I didn’t get a flu shot. These were the first three flus I’ve had in that time. I’m sure I’m not alone. I wonder what the actual national loss is due to lost productivity for those that normally would have been healthy this year.

I’m looking for a word that has the complexity of “schadenfreude” but is about how you might be thankful or grateful for something but at the same time annoyed, angered, or saddened by it at the same time. Anyone have a good word in English or another language?

Anger:

For the fifth or sixth time in our ten year marriage (yes, I am married), Ray and I repeated a ritual. We got up early, printed out some forms and went on a scavenger hunt looking for a notary public to witness our domestic partnership. Its just a form like the many forms before it where we have to meet some awkward definition of what the state or a corporation feels makes a domestic partnership. As always, we confirmed our relationship standing in a UPS store half-awake with a stranger taking our fingerprints. That really isn’t my idea of romance.

On these forms (pdf) there is generally a list where you must meet x requirements. You always have to have the same address and you have to be “in a caring relationship.” The rest of the rules are pretty fluid, but one form the list was so specific we didn’t qualify! The requirements were all about the finances of our relationship. We had to own a car together, own a home together (lease doesn’t count), or have a joint checking. We each happen to own our own car, we rent an apartment, and for organizational purposes we maintain separate accounts. If I can’t show my love for Ray by having a civil marriage, putting him on my MasterCard is a close second, no?

Beyond the absurdity are the limits these affidavits place on our relationship. For straight couples the definition of marriage after the civil registration is largely a matter of mutual consent and personal morality. For us, if we want to get the benefits of togetherness we have to accept certain requirements imposed by corporations.

• Should we invalidate straight marriages when work makes couples live apart temporarily?
• Why isn’t our relationship valid in many cases until we have lived together for certain amounts of time?
• Do straight people have to sign an affidavit about their monogamy when getting health insurance for their spouse?
• Why do we have to maintain common accounts when we can’t file taxes jointly (even when married)?

Thankfulness:

I don’t want to be completely negative about this. I deeply appreciate Yahoo!’s offering full domestic partner benefits at the same level as legal spouses. The process for proof was far easier and a bit more dignified than anywhere I have worked before.

In fact, the three places I have worked in the SF Bay area have offered domestic partner benefits at some level. The most interesting of these was Enluminent/eStudio. At the time I was hired, I believe I was their first gay employee. As one way of sizing up a prospective company, I always ask about partner benefits in my interview. They had either already given it thought or it was such a no-brainer that they immediately decided to cover it. Either way, I am grateful.

I am eternally thankful for Mayor Gavin Newsom’s support for gay marriage last year. It meant a lot to us, but also to my family and friends that evenly briefly we were actually married. The picture at the top of the post is the spot in San Francisco City Hall where we were actually married.

I am also thankful (mostly) for State Domestic Partner laws. It is less than we deserve but more than we had.