Viterra – Not Your Grandfather’s Window And Shutter Company

One thing you could always say about the Saskatchewan Wheat Pool – nobody else wanted the name;

I’ve already found an energy services company, a semi-conductor distributor, a window and shutter supplier and a pet food company with the same name. Yet another great moment in corporate rebranding.

14 Replies to “Viterra – Not Your Grandfather’s Window And Shutter Company”

Good thing the NDP were not involved in the rebranding process, could have ended up with something like: ! Wheat Pool.

Paul, I get the joke if it’s a programming one. Good one 🙂
I’ve been running a non-contest for a while now to have people come up with a name. No one guessed Viterra anyway.

They should have called it:
Agricore-Divided

They should have called it:
Calgary Swimming Pool.
(A little shot at the head office execs).

“November 30, 2006
How much do you think Mayo Schmidt makes?
The Notice of Annual Meeting has been sent to Saskatchewan Wheat Pool shareholders. The information on Executive Compensation makes interesting reading. Pool President and CEO Mayo Schmidt has a salary of $800,000 this year. The salary has stayed the same for the past three years, but other elements of his compensation have not. On top of the salary, Mayo Schmidt is getting a bonus of $560,000, which is actually down a little bit from last year. In the category of Other Annual Compensation, Schmidt is down to $37,000, only one-tenth of the amount in 2005. This is a tax equalization payment between Saskatchewan and California – a benefit that was discontinued in June. However, don’t feel too sorry for him. This year, for the first time, he received Restricted Share Units and Performance Share Units valued at more than $1.4 million. On top of that, before its restructuring Saskatchewan Wheat Pool had a long-term incentive plan based on achieving targets against the business plan. This category adds another $458,000 to overall compensation – double the amount paid last year. When you add it all up, Mayo Schmidt’s total compensation for being the Pool’s President and CEO – over $3.3 million. Last year, his compensation was a paltry $2 million. Who says there’s no money in the grain business? I’m Kevin Hursh.”
http://www.hursh.ca/2006_11_01_archive.asp

…and a ‘swiffer’ cleaning cloth sounding the same.

Saskboy, here’s a programming joke for you.
//
if (frustration threshold = ndp_sucks) {
goto = saskparty.com();
} else {
suck.it.up;
}
}
//

Was there not a Canadian who could’ve done the job? Why a guy from California?

Viterra: sounds like something you’d take for erectile dysfunction.

Hate to correct your syntax Paul, but
if (frustration threshold >= ndp_sucks)
Plus you could make NDP_SUCKS a constant, and set it to 0 🙂

hmmm…. you know, the grandfather of our party leader helped start the wheat pool… I wonder what that man might say about all of this.

Actually Saskboy, it’s part of a class, and you and I both know how much the NDP rallies against class structure. :0)
I could make it a function, but for some reason the NDP function breaks a smoothly operating script. It’s like it goes on strike or something. Upon deeper analysis, I find that my systems run much better without NDP programming involved in any way, shape or form.
I hope Brad Wall gets the opportunity to release Saskatchewan 2.0 very soon. There has been very little progress in the project Saskatchewan 1.0 (Tommy Douglas edition). All releases and contributions up to and including Roy Romanow 1.2a and Lorne Calvert RC2.0.0.7 have been buggy and irritating to many of us involved in the project.
It’s difficult to resist the pull to move over to the much better functioning, stable, and higher performing Alberta 7.2 (Red hot oil patch edition), but I see that project Saskatchewan could be just as great if only we get a change in lead developers. Not that Saskatchewan lacks solid source code, its just that current lead developers cannot find their @ss with both hands and allow this project to reach it’s true potential.
If worse comes to worse I guess the Saskatchewan project could be Forked, but why make the effort with the Election upgrade so close at hand. Once it is released, we’ll have an opportunity to voice our concerns and evaluate forking should results not be favorable.