Kiger's Notebook

Newt's spawns offspring

It looks like good news is on the way for downtown Rochester workers (People with Mayo Clinic on their paychecks) that are fans of the food of small but popular downtown hang-out Newt's Bar.

The signs are there that the food and drink specialists behind Newt's, City Cafe, 300 First, Redwood Room, Culinary Market and other Rochester hot spots are cooking up a quick lunch offering – Newt's Express - in the skyway between the US Bank building and University Square.

I have a call into the Currie/Zubay families to find out more about what's on the menu. Hang tight.

Whiskey Creek is open

A wisp of smoke rose in the air Monday like a signal announcing the choice of a new pope.

Only this was a sign that a new south Rochester restaurant hit their target opening date.

Whiskey Creek Wood Fire Grill fired up things up Monday and if they are cooking along, if you are thinking about trying them out.

Thanks Kevin for reminding me to check it on.

With its replacement in place, The Ranch is now firmly in place in the Hall of Former Rochester Eateries, joining The Aviary, Romano's Mac Grill, Rico Mex, Camille's Cafe, Leo's Pizza Palace, The Metro, Avocados, Windy City, Double Click Coffee, TCBY, The Hangar, Let's Dish and others.

Elk Run's billion dollar man in Minn. Friday

G. Steven Burrill, the chief of Burrill & Co. that is investing $1 billion in the Elk Run bioscience campus by Pine Island, will be presenting the keynote talk at a regional bioscience conference in Worthington, Minn.

No word on what he is going to discuss, though the conference is focusing on "Linking Agricultural Bioscience to Human Health Bioscience." 

One of the conference sponsors is AgStar, the large agricultural financial services entity with a huge new facility near Rochester's airport.

It seems interesting that this major bioscience player is suddenly taking such an interest in Minnesota.

Sun, cloud and a Big Blue sky over layoffs

OK, this is a stew of IBM stuff that I think is tasty, but not fulfilling enough to serve on its own.

• The Star-Tribune newspaper posted an article Friday night that quote RAEDI chief Gary Smith as estimating the local IBM layoffs at 200.

That got me making some calls and rattling some cages at about 8:30 p.m. Friday. What I stirred up was basically that Smith was trying to say that he thought the Rochester IBM layoffs were minimal and would no hurt the local economy. The reporter asked him to define "minimal." Smith said 200 and that was the headline on the Strib's Web site for a few hours. By about 1 a.m. the estimate had faded away from the storty posting.

• While IBM reportedly laid off 5,000 workers last week at unspecified North American locations (Like say…Rochester), it also launched talks to possibly buy rival Sun Microsystems.

Here's some from a Business Week interview about this possible deal:

An IBM server vice president discussed IBM's strategy to tap into Sun Microsystems' customer base, in the wake of reports that IBM is in talks to buy the Santa Clara, Calif.-based server supplier.

IBM is rumored to be working toward a merger with Sun mostly due to the strength of Sun's server business. SPARC is Sun's chip architecture, while Solaris is Sun's operating system that runs on both SPARC chips and x86 processors from Intel and Advanced Micro Devices.
"Sun has a terrific installed base," Alex Yost, vice president IBM BladeCenter, said in a phone interview earlier this week in response to a question about Sun as a competitor.
Yost went on to say that IBM has an active business of migrating customers from Sun's SPARC architecture to x86-based servers. "I have a number of clients that are looking to go to Solaris on x86 or Linux on x86," he said. "That's very much something that we're actively doing."

• And an IBM is catching heat for its Cloud Computing plan.

A plan by IBM to launch an industry-wide 'open' cloud computing strategy has seemingly backfired amid accusations of closed deals. (That's how a Reuter's article started this weekend)

Google pulled out after signing up and Amazon said it would not get involved.

Microsoft criticised the plan, saying it was given two days to sign up to a "secret" manifesto with no input.

Some of those companies still backing the plan include CISCO, Sun, AT&T, Red Hat, SAP and AMD.

IBM would not comment over the Google change of heart but said it hoped Microsoft would reconsider and get involved in the Open Cloud Manifesto at some stage.

• If you made it this far, I have one last thing in reference to the mysterious, invisible layoffs. Here's some from a couple messages I recently got from a person who describes himself as a retired IBMer.

I have kept up with the story about IBM layoff's in the paper and on the news, I worked for IBM for 35 years and thought this seemed strange, so I called a couple areas I worked in and talked to friends in those areas and neither knew of any one being laid off. 

It really only matters to those being laid off and their famlies, why do you want to make such a big bad story about a good community company. They have always put millions back into the community without most knowing about it.  

I responded back with my explanation of why I believe IBM layoffs might be of interest to all of my readers. This is what was sent back to me

The real number is only important to the ones leaving, I still don't know of one person leaving in the last cut.  I still believe a union guy is behind this.

What do you think? Is the media picking on IBM? Does no one but the people laid off care about the total numbers? 

Roch's White Castle hassle

Don’t be steamed Slyder fans, but  Rochester’s hunger for a White Castle hamburger joint may stay unfulfilled longer than previously predicted.

For many years, the mini hamburger maker has shown hot interest at opening in the Med City.

And yet the project has been repeatedly delayed.

In August, the word was that it could bomb Rochester bellies by 2010.

Uh...maybe not now.

“We still have the interest,” says Ken Wilhelm, a Twin Cities knight in White Castle’s service. “Unfortunately with the dollars in the economy the way they are, opening in Rochester is not at the top of the list.”

So when?

“Uh, maybe 2010 or probably 2011.”

BluH20 washing over downtown Roch. skyway

Things keep a moving and changing around in Rochester, downtown and all around town.

My current example?

The skyway along the Radisson/Doubletree Plaza Hotel that to leads across Broadway to the University Square Mall is changing once again.

When I first rolled into Rochester, that area was dominated by McCormick's Bar with an moderately dim skyway next to it.

A part of that space later turned into the Metro followed by brighter skyway lights and white tile instead of the previous brown hazy atmosphere.

Now another splash of color is hitting the skyway - The BluH2O Salon. That's what the former Metro/ McCormick's space is being transformed into.

Comings & goings in N.W. Roch.

Cruising around the Northwest Plaza on Rochester's 55th Street  - the north Wal-Mart - I saw some interesting stuff.

First, Chris Popp is mostly right. The party is over at Party City in the strip center that includes Gander Mountain and Buffalo Wild Wings.

Well, over might be too much.

The party is just on the move. Party America, the..uh..paty store I guess, closed Thursday and it is being blended in with Factory Card Outlet in the TJ Maxx Plaza on Salem Road. 

The new name?

Factory Card & Party Outlet.  Uh....OK. Party on.

A little ways north of the empty party store, PetCo is really partying along on its massive new store that will house the pet supplies retailer when the current northwest Rochester store moves from its U.S. 52 North frontage road

Mayo Clinic + retired NFL linemen = medical study

This has no business link and it is , but I can help but point it out.

A Mayo Clinic did a series of studies on retired NFL lineman. I'm sure targeting such a specific group is advantage for the science, but it makes for an eye-catching headline.

Here's some from the study:

Sleep disordered breathing, also known as sleep apnea, is highly prevalent among retired National Football League (NFL) players, and particularly in linemen, according to Mayo Clinic research. This study, involving 167 players, adds to the growing body of research examining the relationship between sleep apnea and heart disease, the investigators say.

The study will be presented Tuesday, March 31, 2009 at 9:30 a.m. EDT at the American College of Cardiology Annual Scientific Session in Orlando (1048-86). The research was conducted in collaboration with the Living Heart Foundation

The Mayo data showed that 60 percent of linemen, average age of 54, had sleep disordered breathing (SDB), as defined by having at least 10 sleep-related breathing disorder episodes, such as pauses in breathing, per hour. Linemen had an average of 18.1 episodes per hour. The monitoring of breathing at night was conducted while the retired players slept at home. In addition, researchers discovered that age and obesity (measured by the body mass index, which corrects the weight for a person's height) were significantly associated with sleep disordered breathing. Linemen had an average BMI of 34.2; a BMI of 30 or more is considered obese.

Dr. Virend Somers, a Mayo Clinic cardiologist who helped guide the study, noted that the prevalence of sleep apnea and obesity was higher than expected, and serves as a warning that athletes need to monitor their weight and health carefully when they retire, a time when physical activity levels may begin to decline abruptly. While more research is needed to uncover the link between sleep disorders and heart disease, there is evidence that sleep apnea may be a cause of high blood pressure, which is a risk factor for heart disease, he says.

For all other study participants (average age of 53), who played other positions, 46 percent had sleep apnea with an average of 13.4 sleep-related disorder episodes per hour. The average BMI was 30.5.

In addition, 45 percent of the linemen and 32 percent of nonlinemen reported having high blood pressure. "High blood pressure is another risk factor for cardiac disease, and may be linked to both obesity and sleep apnea," Dr. Somers says.

Previous research by various institutions and investigators in recent years, much of which has been assisted by the Living Heart Foundation, showed concerning health trends for retired NFL players:

• Retired NFL players are more prone to obesity and obstructive sleep apnea than the general population.

• Retired NFL players have an increased rate of metabolic syndrome, a condition increasingly linked to excess weight and lack of activity, which can lead to type 2 diabetes.

• Higher mortality is reported in linemen, as compared to people in the general population of the same age who are not professional football players. Research is needed to determine the causes. .

IBM - Silent but deadly when it comes to layoffs

It is not clear if Rochester operations were hit by today’s reported IBM layoffs, which inside sources say could tally up to 5,000 employees nationwide.

IBM did confirm layoffs were occurring in North America today, but nothing else.

“We are not communicating locations or the number of jobs as a result of this action,” IBM stated in a national press release.

However, Lee Conrad, national coordinator of a pro-union IBM group in Endicott, N.Y., said that his information from workers was that layoffs were happening throughout today in such divisions as Application Services, Global Business Services and Global Technology.

“We expect more cuts to happen throughout the day in some other units and we expect that by end of the day between 4,000 to 5,000 people will be notified of their job loss,” he said.

If accurate, those cuts would affect about 4 percent of IBM’s U.S.-based work force, which totaled 115,000 at the end of 2008.

Conrad cited this layoff as evidence of IBM’s movement of workers to outside the U.S., or “offshoring.”

“IBM’s U.S. worker population has been decreasing for the past three years,” he said. “That along with where they are hiring now is a sign to us that IBM is abandoning the U.S.”

In 2006, IBM had 127,000 U.S. employees. That dropped to 121,000 in 2007 and to 115,000 in 2008, according to IBM’s annual report.

This morning, IBM announced that 4,200 employees were working in Rochester, where it does computer manufacturing and design, as of Dec. 31, 2008. 

That shows a drop of 200 workers from 2007, the first decline in Rochester since 2004.

The population held steady at 4,400 from 2004 to 2007. It was at 4,500 in 2003, and 4,600 in 2002 and 5,000 in 2000.

Unlike many other tech companies that have recently announced layoffs, IBM has managed to become more profitable despite the recession. IBM’s cost-cutting, global footprint, and focus on services and software, which are often more lucrative than hardware, are key reasons. IBM’s net income was up 18 percent last year, to $12.3 billion.

In January, Armonk, N.Y.-based IBM cut thousands of U.S. jobs in sales, software and hardware, including some in Rochester. IBM didn’t give the precise number, saying it fell below an amount that would require disclosure.

Wade to stay put

It's official. 

John Wade is staying in the driver’s seat at the Rochester Area Chamber of Commerce.

This morning, Wade announced his plan to rescind the resignation he submitted in mid-January. The board agreed to allow him to stay on as president and gave Wade a round of applause.

Wade, Citing the urging of many chamber members and how the national economic downturn has intensified since January, Wade said he decided to stay to help steer a number of economic initiatives.

“Many felt at this time, it would be best if I stayed on the bridge for a while longer,” he said. ”The decision (to stay) ultimately was an easy one.”

When he announced his resignation in January, he said he was looking  “at a couple different opportunities” in Rochester.

Other than saying the opportunities still exist and he decided to forgo them, Wade would not comment specifically on what those opportunities are.