How awesome was that? Billy Joel is the man! And good for that kid standing up and taking a chance. He’s going to go far with that attitude – and a pretty amazing set of dancing fingers to match!

The other day I heard a song called “Fireflies” by an artist named Owl City. The song was sort of weird in that the lyrics almost didn’t make any sense. Some guy was singing about catching fireflies and keeping them in a jar – weird. Anyway, aside from lyrics that made me go, “hmmm…” the sound of the song was almost whimsical, if that adjective can be attributed to a song. I was intrigued and added the song to my Sirius XM alerts – meaning that whenever the song was played on any channel, my radio would beep and tell me which channel I could switch to in order to hear the song.

A few days went by and the radio didn’t beep “Fireflies,” but I was able to bring up the video on YouTube. It’s crazy. It’s a guy (who apparently calls himself “Owl City”) sitting in a room with a variety of light-up toys blinking on and off. Weird, but sort of funny.

The video was so crazy that I decided to listen to the entire Ocean Eyes album and I loved it. It’s really a type of electronic/emo sound, but the lyrics in the songs are so out there that I can’t help but enjoy it. The dude sings about going to the dentist! The dentist! Ha! Then there’s another song about him being a worm lowered into the ocean on a hook to have a party with his undersea friends.

What might be most interesting, though, is that I found this album to be incredibly calming when I listened to it. And that’s sort of funny to me because I generally hate the electronic/emo type of music. I don’t know – something about Owl City’s music just seems to calm down the rage a bit. It’s a nice change, actually. I found myself listening to the album as I was designing websites for Usable Web Solutions, LLC and it helped me to focus – very nice indeed.

So if you have a few extra bucks built-up on iTunes or if you have a few minutes and you can get over to YouTube, then I suggest listening to this guy. He’s pretty good and I think you’ll enjoy it.

As a shareholder, I’m completely in favor of Sirius XM raising their rates because I know that the company has a series of “financing events” coming up this year where billions in existing debt need to be refinanced. The company is working hard to strategically position itself for the coming years so that it is a streamlined company that continues to grow and generate revenue, but this has been a tricky process.

Towards the end of last year, many of the niche music channels that Sirius XM listeners grew accustomed to hearing were removed in favor of condensing the company’s offerings. This attempt to streamline its services by removing duplicate channels has generated mixed results. Some of the condensing made sense. For example, adding the 40’s on 4, 50’s on 5, 60’s on 6, 70’s on 7, 80’s on 8, and 90’s on 9 channels was the only logical move to make with the standard music channels. The same is true of the Sirius XM Love channel which plays love music all day. Having separate Sirius and XM channels for these standardized playlists is a waste of money.

On the other hand, when Sirius’ Back Spin Radio channel was replaced by XM’s Pop2K channel, the Back Spin fans went bonkers. Through a coordinated campaign, they successfully lobbied to get the Back Spin channel brought back to the Sirius XM line-up (fans of the Strobe channel did the same thing). Creating cost synergies makes sense, but so does listening to your fans.

Now, from my standpoint as a consumer of Sirius XM radio some of the pending price increases really piss me off. First, they are removing the free internet feed and adding a $3.00 monthly fee without increasing services. The company’s argument will be that they are upgrading the internet fee to the better, clearer 128k connection. Guess what? I don’t want the better connection! I’m perfectly okay with the lesser connection that I have now because it works fine!

My way around this fee, though, will be to NOT order the internet service and instead purchase a boombox for when I want to listen to Sirius XM in the house. Plus, with the boombox I can pause and rewind the radio because I’ll be using the unit that I have in my car. So take that!

Second, Sirius XM is increasing the additional account fee by $2.00 to $8.99 per additional account. In other words, if I have my master account paying $12.95 per month (that’s $13.86 per month with tax) and I want to add an additional radio to my account, instead of paying the $6.99 rate, I’ll now have to pay the $8.99 rate. For one extra radio, that brings my total monthly payment with tax to $23.48. If I was to throw in the internet radio on top of that, then my monthly payment with tax to $26.68. That’s too much for anyone to pay for a monthly convenience like satellite radio.

Third, I’m greatly concerned that Sirius XM is now finding ways to skirt around the government’s decree that it could not raise rates for the first three years it existed as a merged company. When approving the merger, the government said that basic rates could not be increased for three years. Well, if the basic internet rate was free, then isn’t charging $3.00 per month essentially raising the rate? And isn’t raising the additional radio rate by $2.00 per month essentially raising the rate? I don’t like it and I would imagine that other consumers won’t like this either.

And yet because of my daily commute and the amount of driving that I do, I still find the company well worth the $13.86 that I pay each month. But paying anything more than that? Well, frankly I don’t know if I could justify an additional expense for not getting an additional service.

However, as a committed shareholder I hope that you clicked on one of the links in this entry and purchased a product from Sirius XM! I truly think the company has great long-term potential – I just question whether squeezing more money out of its already committed subscriber base is the right way to realize additional income.

In MBA speak, the central cost driver of a college education is not health insurance, salaries, rising oil costs, or even costly academic journals. It is the four-year, 36-course structure that determines the cost of a college degree. This model, leading to annual tuitions and fees of $25,000 at public colleges and $50,000 at many private ones, crushes families with $100,000 to $200,000 in cost and debt.

Impossible to imagine the end of the bachelor’s degree packaged into four years? Most of us — households or other enterprises — from time to time take a look at the fundamentals of our budgets and ask, “Is there another way?” As an example, consider the bloodless iPod and MP3 revolution. What happened? A demographic cohort, people roughly 16 to 25 years old who wanted access to one song at a time in a form that could easily be shared among friends, revolted and created a new market when the music industry refused any modifications or price breaks.

Could something similar be brewing in higher education? Maybe a better question is whether something similar should be brewing in higher education?

I financed my own four-year degree and two-year graduate degree and saddled myself with $118,000 in student loan debt in the process. At this point in my life, I’m not bitching about the debt – it’s just a fact of life that I live with (and battle) everyday. Frankly, I think I’m doing pretty good in the battle considering that I started repaying these loans some two and a half years ago and thanks to extra payments against the principal amounts I’ve managed to lower my total amount owed to $105,000. Yeah, it’s still a disgusting number that has stifled my ability to do what other people my age are doing, but I’m making progress.

Since I received a Bachelor of the Arts Degree in English from my undergraduate institution I’ve often wondered about what a college degree really gets a person. Let’s face the facts – the world is built on networks, not on pieces of paper. It’s often a matter of who you know and how you know them that supersedes the competition of two equally qualified job candidates. Keeping this in mind, I’ve always considered my Bachelor’s Degree as my passport; in other words, I think that piece of paper is nothing more than a ticket to get on the train.

Going to college doesn’t “make” you smart. Getting a Master’s Degree didn’t “make” me smart. Sure, getting these two pieces of paper greatly increased my knowledge on a broad variety of subjects, but they didn’t create intelligence where it didn’t previously exist! I was always an excellent student and an eager learner. But high school kids don’t have the access to certain networks that college graduates have available to them.

As an Adjunct Professor at my local college, I encourage my students to take advantage of the opportunities that surround them. Become a member of a campus club, join a fraternity or sorority, take up your Professors on their offers to proofread your work or to stop in and have coffee with them during their office hours. I believe that the main purpose of going to college is to develop the types of networks that will get you ahead in life, not to keep your head stuck in a book. Granted, I do believe that college students have an obligation to be actively engaged in their education. However, the idea of what an “education” is needs to be broadened. English majors should be encouraged to take minors in Business or Information Technology. Those in the Business Department should look at minors in the Fine Arts or Art History.

This mixture of disciplines is not only good for the mind, but it vastly increases one’s social and (eventually) professional network. Unfortunately, not many average citizens can live the American Dream these days by simply obtaining a college degree and announcing to the job market that they’re ready to be employed. Let this be a suggestion to all of my college-age and high school-age readers – take advantage of your time on campus and build a diversified social network. Make the investment now and you’ll be glad that you did later.