Chevrolet Paying It All Back

Chevrolet, as a part of General Motors, as everyone knows, took a government loan a couple of summers ago to try to get the American auto industry back on its feet, mainly GM. They say that they are working hard to pay the taxpayers back but I'm not sure if they are. After working at a Chevy dealership during the whole filing bankruptcy thing I think it didn't help anything. We had terrible sales before and only slightly better sales after. (I worked at one of the number one grossing Chevy dealers in the Midwest, Kenny Kent Chevrolet.) One of the only reasons sales went up at all after the bailout was because of crazy incentives that sold new cars under invoice making little to no money for Chevy. But they are working hard to pay back taxpayers that bailed them out of bankruptcy?? How does that work? Anyway, they need to do more in terms of paying back society. I think that they are on the right track with the release of the Volt and I know that since I left Kenny Kent sales have been slowly but steadily improving. Good luck Chevy/GM, we're waiting on what was promised.

To Comment or Not to Comment?

Comment sections on websites are full of people just looking to bring others down and feel better about themselves. Every site that I frequent it seems as though the first post is always someone who simply wants the personal satisfaction of being the first to comment on a particular happening. Most do so by simply commenting "FIRST", giving no real insight on the subject and essentially setting the comment section up for failure. After the "FIRST" guy everyone is usually arguing over something that isn't important or relevant to the topic at hand. The fact of the matter is that no one ever admits defeat in an online battle of whits because you don't have to. Chances are that you will never meet the guy or girl you're arguing with so why back down, insult them until your little heart is content. It's quite ridiculous. Sure some people have good things to contribute but overall comment boxes are used by dumb asses trying to one up each other. That's just my two cents though.

Everyone is a Journalist??

On dictionary.com a journalist is defined as any person whose occupation is journalism. Hang on a second! Your profession has to be journalism to be considered a journalist? That's crazy. So according to that crude definition, the staff of the Exponent are not considered journalist. If I were to define journalist I would simply say anyone who reports the news, ANYONE! Dan Gillmor seems to agree in his column. He says that people who create media and distribute it could be considered a journalist. I don't take that to mean that he considers anyone a professional journalist, meaning not a journalist by occupation. But I definitely see where he's going with it. I did some photo coverage, see post below, of a car event over the summer and before taking this class I wouldn't have considered myself a journalist but now I see the term is a general one. So individuals like Jamal Albarghouti and myself are definitely amateur journalists.

Screw the economy I'm buying an Import car

I enjoy everything about import cars...Everything! I own a 1995 Acura Integra that I like to "tinker" with. My car started out like this about a year and a half ago and now I have transformed it, with some help, into this (scroll though to see the progress.) It's not the coolest fastest thing out there but its fun to drive and I like making it more and more "mine" everyday. I have big plans for it for the future but only time and money will tell how it turns out.

Anyway this is a video I put together from photos that I took at Import Alliance, a car show in Nashville Tennessee, over the summer. It is my second time to this show and surely not my last. The video got severely downgraded in quality when I put it on youtube but it started as High Def in iMovie. Enough rambling here's the video.

You can find me in St. Louie....

The STL Today website is set up in a fairly simple manner with tabs for different areas of interests. However it has TONS of ads. They are everywhere and come of them take over the screen when you roll your mouse over them. Also there is a lot to look at on the homepage alone. I feel as though I could stay there and find out everything I need to know. So that raises the question, "What is the point of the tab?" My advise to you St. Louis Today, keep it simple, take advantage of your features (tabs in particular), and easy on the interactive ads (no one likes them.) It's not as bad as I make it sound but somewhat busy. Slow your roll and go and make the eyes flow down the page.

I chose this piece about the some of the technologies being implemented in the Gulf of Mexico oil spill clean up. I try to follow the updates on the spill mainly because my family goes to the gulf almost every summer for family vacation and with the oil spill my dad decided this year that it wasn't the place to be. The spill really hit home for me even though I live so far away from the gulf, I still feel that it was right in my backyard. I hate seeing all of the wildlife being destroyed because someone wanted cheaper oil. I agree that we need to find some way of lessening our involvement in foreign oil but there has to be some boundaries. Causing the greatest natural disaster in United States history is far outside what I would consider reasonable boundaries. As my old basketball coach used to say, "Find a way to win, and win fair." Killing wildlife isn't fair. So BP just find a way to win and do it right.