Sekiur My Thoughts

Circuit City’s stock has been going down hill a little over two years now faces having to close many of its stores or bankruptcy.

In April 2007, when Circuit City’s stock was at almost $20 per share, the AP attributed Circuit City’s struggles to “Customer Service.”

Earlier this year in April, Blockbuster offered to buy out Circuit City for $1 billion or $6 to $8 a share. Big mistake in hindsight when the stock is trading today at $0.30.

In June 2006, Philip J. Schoonover joined Circuit City as Chairman of the Board of Circuit City Stores, Inc., single-handedly bringing down the company stock by 99% – over the past 108 weeks, resigning September, 22, 2008.

What’s really ironic is that Schoonover had come from Best Buy Stores, Inc., leaving as the Executive Vice President of Customer Segments.

Although Best Buy will benefit from this, they better learn from Circuit City’s lack of customer service and avoid at all costs incidents like this one, where a customer after buying an article online and going to the store to pick it up, was faced with what can only be viewed an poor customer service and now a PR nightmare for Best Buy.

Cerro Negro is a strategic association formed by the state oil company of Venezuela, PDVSA (42 percent), ExxonMobil (42 percent) and Veba Oel of Germany (16 percent). Operadora Cerro Negro S.A., an ExxonMobil subsidiary, operates the project.

The complex can process 120,000 barrels of heavy crude oil a day, which it converts to 108,000 barrels of upgraded crude.

Initially produced in the Cerro Negro field as 8.6-degree API extra-heavy crude, the oil is diluted with naptha and transported by pipeline 190 miles to the port of Jose. The upgrader complex then converts the mixture into a 16-degree API crude oil.

Description of the process:

The Cerro Negro Upgrader complex consists of new facilities destined to improve the quality of crude initially produced in the Cerro Negro field as 8.3-degree API extra-heavy crude, in Synthetic Crude Oil (SCO) of approximately 16-degree API. In order to improve the quality of crude the Cerro Negro complex uses the technology of slowed down cokification and the water treatment of the naphtha originating from the coker. The plant is designed to produce around 18495 tons per day of Synthetic Crude Oil (SCO), from the heavy Cerro Negro crude of 8.3-degree API. In production wells, the heavy crude must be diluted with naphtha, with the purpose of reducing its viscosity and to easily transport it through the pipe line towards the improvement plant. The upgrader complex consists of several units of process required to turn Diluted Crude Oil (DCO) into Synthetic Crude Oil (SCO). In addition to the units of processes required for the crude improvement of the heavy oil, there are other units or facilities such as: industrial services (steam, water cooling, etc.), storage of raw material and products, and 190 miles of pipeline in order to deliver to the port of Jose, which are necessary for the total integration of the upgrader complex in the production of the Cerro Negro crude.

General Diagram of the Process is described:

List of crude oil products

Contrary to the popular belief that is not possible to log SMS messages on a Blackberry, here are instructions on how to do just that.

Although SMS messages really do not touch the Blackberry Entreprise Server (BES) when they are sent or received, its possible to get the BES to synchronize all SMS and PIN’s to the server and thus allowing these to be logged as of version 4.1.

To modify the settings for PIN and SMS message logging, complete the following steps:

1. Open BlackBerry Manager and select the BlackBerry Enterprise Server to be modified.
2. Select the Server Configuration tab and click Edit Properties.
3. Click Sync Server.
4. Double-click Audit Root Directory.
5. To save the log files, type the file path where the files are to be saved and click OK.
6. In the left pane, click BlackBerry Domain.
7. Select the Global tab and click Edit Properties.
8. Click IT Policy.
9. In the IT Policy Administration section, double-click IT Policies.
10. Select one of the policies in the list.
11. Click Properties > PIM Sync Policy Group.
12. To monitor SMS or BlackBerry smartphone PIN messages, complete the steps in the following table.
    1. Click Disable SMS Messages Wireless Sync.
    2. In the drop-down list, select False.
    3. Click Disable PIN Messages Wireless Sync.
    4. In the drop-down list, select False.
13. Click OK to close the open windows.
14. Restart the BlackBerry Synchronization Service.