the "That Really Bothers Me" blog

Egged On

2012-01-16T14:05:00.001-05:00

I've been able to get more of those eggs [see Dec 16th post]. Sue took a picture of one of them next to one of the pricey eggs from the store, free range or whatever it is they claim about them. Since blogger dot com sucks to the nth degree anymore and won't insert this, I will just post the URL:

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7013/6709507427_25926d94e5_m.jpg

Kepler

2011-12-21T09:00:00.001-05:00

Something I was watching said that not so long ago many astronomers felt it was possible that we would *never* discover planets around other stars, since it was doubtful telescopes could see them and doubtful that the kind of space travel needed to get closer would ever really be possible.

Perhaps before the Kepler telescope was put into orbit that notion had been disabused, and certainly is disabused now. Yet the way Kepler does it seems simple now. I guess there was doubt that it could really do this at some point. Finding earth size planets is in the news again. This image from wsj.com has a good explanation of how Kepler does it. The URL is http://si.wsj.net/public/resources/images/NA-BO635A_KEPLE_G_20111220174825.jpg. Or with a PC anyway you can right-click on the image and select "open in new window".

Egg Adventures

2011-12-16T16:30:00.000-05:00

This week was the week for the egg it seems. Two separate events.

While hunting in Caroline County VA I was going down a road seldom traveled and saw a new sign for "fresh eggs". It was a "why not" moment and I was able to get half a dozen, touted as maybe laid two days prior. Next morning Sue and I dined on some. It is my opinion that the fresher the egg the better it tastes when over easy, sunny side up, or soft boiled. We both tried some over easy. "Middle runny, white not" we used to joke in my youth, and I did indeed cook it no more than necessary to get all the white solidified. When served, we were rewarded with an astonishingly orange yolk that was very rich. I had to try a third egg for me which I did sunny side up, using the technique of sending some of the hot grease over the egg to cook the white enough. This was outstanding indeed as it increased the bacon flavor somewhat too. Yeah, I know, nobody is going to give us the award for avoiding fat and cholesterol. With home fries and biscuits and butter, we might have been at risk for the police breaking down the door to arrest us. Actually we forgot we had some cooked bacon we could have reheated, and just as well as I was not hungry again for a long time and almost didnt develop an appetite for dinner.

Honestly, by paying through the nose we have recently been some really good eggs at the store, that seem pretty fresh too. Supposed to be free range blah blah blah, I have my doubts but they *are* good. I have unhesitatingly cooked those over easy as well. These farm eggs were better tasting, I'd say not to the degree you felt it was a different species or that type of thing, although if compared to cheap-not-so-fresh eggs you might conclude that. Certainly they were different tasting, the richness was palpable. The shells were thicker! and no yokes broke, a problem we can have with these other good eggs we get [of course there could be sampling error with half a dozen]. For sure very cool to be able to get them at all! Those chickens get to scratch the dirt and eat bugs, you know, a key factor IMO for better eggs and chicken too [if I get to know the farmer maybe the discussion can turn to getting some chicken as well].

Event #2: The prices for these premium eggs vary quite a bit, and it's up there. $3 per dozen is not unusual, and some are over $5, which we don't want to pay even though both of us eat eggs for breakfast less often than once a week [Sue maybe once a month at best]. Of course they are used in cooking. Doing more of the shopping myself lately, I decided one day to try to figure out exactly what we have been paying, getting convinced that the Harris Teeter we shop at hadn't clearly priced them for some time. I got aggravated about that and actually took two different cartons to the cashier and asked her to price them. Sure enough, one was over $5 and it was not clearly marked so. Next visit I collared the manager, who has been seen a lot lately, and told him I had to have the cashier do that, since the department is so poorly tagged with prices. He said it would be fixed and thanked me. Well, next week I checked it out and if anything had been done, still the problem of the incorrectly marked eggs had persisted. To be exact, the tag said $3.19 per HD, and the smaller unit price was $3.19 per HD, even though IMO that is not proper unit pricing [what has been going on with unit pricing in all these stores is a disgrace, but I won't get into that here]. At the time I couldn't even figure out what it meant; 3.19 per hundred? Certainly not! Sue figured out it meant "half dozen" even though the sign was placed at the full carton area. But she wanted me to chill. Apparently she believes in my secret life I spend quite a bit of time tangling with security and police [I shouldn't have told her about Officer Owens I guess . If you have followed this blog you'll know about him and the traffic ticket]. I spotted the manager again, though, so there was no stopping me. I insisted we visit the egg department, and politely pointed out what was bothering me. He agreed that it was a mess as far as tagging and in fact gave us a free dozen of the $5 variety!

I guess our arteries are somewhat harder now but overall there is no denying that in the matter of eggs we have done quite well this week!

Most Interesting

2011-11-20T09:39:00.001-05:00

I finally looked these things up. The Most Interesting Man in the World. And Who in the Hell is the Lee Jeans Guy? You're welcome.

For some reason I like the former and the latter bugs the s**t out of me.

PS: Not clear from the preview the hyperlinking is working like it is supposed to. Or will look right. Grrrrrr. Here are the URLs,

http://www.seraphus.com/mike-rowe-spokesman-for-lee-jeans/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonathan_Goldsmith

The Two Day Bulb Change

2011-08-16T17:32:00.001-04:00

Who was the first guy to make an owner's manual that was not just for your model but a bunch of different models? Of course he got to keep his job for another 10 minutes while the bean counters explained to the bigshots how much money 3 cents per model adds up to when one owner's manual can be used for a bunch of different models. Never mind that this screws up the usefulness of them. If that guy is not burning in the hottest bottom ring of Hell I am going to be sorely disappointed.

What happens in the best scenario is for you to check on a certain problem, then discover you have to know your model number to see if the answer you found applies. But another unfortunate way this can be handled is that certain information is just left out altogether because it is too difficult to put all the variant this and that in the booklet. Recently this last caused me problems with my Honda and turned changing a bulb into a comedy of errors.

Changing bulbs in the Honda is a pain anyway. Get a load of this: to change the headlamp, the instructions say to turn the front wheel sharply and remove a panel in the wheel well. No kidding. When I had to change one I couldnt find this panel even using a flashlight. I gave up and took it to the mechanic, figuring he would have an easier time taking the wheel off. Instead one of them has a skinny hand and gets it changed without going through all that. Geez.

I should have learned my lesson from that, but in this latest fiasco we needed to get a brake light working. Since I don't need to go through the wheel well to do it, I figure, hey I can do this one. So a day off rolls around and I find the manual doesnt show where the brake lights are, but gives general location for all the rear bulbs. The problem with that is just how many bulbs there are back there in the modern car, a real jungle of bulbs and wires! I need Sue to help me locate exactly where this burned out bulb is, and she says we ought to wait till the Sun isnt shining [no garage]. But since the parts stores are only open at certain times, I just want to get it done. Turns out, though, the Sun shining on that glass makes it really hard to tell what bulbs are working. I find one bulb that isnt working and figure it is the brake light, since we eliminate it being the tail-light or the turn signal. At this point I don't even remember why the confusion got worse, but I realized *that* was wrong and changed a different bulb and started going crazy trying to figure out what bulb this is, pulled out into the trunk wires and all now, that won't light up for anything! I have about given up pressing on the brake or turn signal or the headlamp/tail-light switch when Sue finally says "try putting it into reverse." Bingo! The back up light is what it is, indeed. By this time so much confusion reigns that Sue and I agree I fixed the bad brake light. We go out that night and when I park, something tells me to check again now the Sun isnt interfering. Alas the brake light is *not* fixed, and my head hits the steering wheel with a thump.

Another day off comes around and Sue and I this time have located that damn brake light. This time I somehow spend a hunk of time fuming about how hard it is to get the bulb fixture in and out of where it goes, something that gave me no trouble before; meanwhile I have to figure out which one of two bulbs it is and also make sure it is working. By now I have learned you just leave them dangling inside the trunk so you can make sure they work before putting them in. But I take out the key bulb fixture and there is no bulb there! What?! Now I can tell you for sure I could get confused enough to have taken a bulb out and not replaced it, but there is no way in Hell I could have put back the bulb fixture with no bulb in it. There is just no way I would not notice there is no bulb! So I am 100% convinced there was no bulb all along. I had just had the car inspected, so I think what happened is one mechanic told the other a bulb was needed they didnt have, and they intended to tell me to go get one and they would put it in. [I love them for how they will pass your car anyway and get that over with]. This time, though, they forgot to tell me. It's the only thing I can figure! Finally though the bulb finally got replaced and after putting them back in the wrong slots and having to switch them back around, everything is working back there, I think. I am afraid to look.

Well, the whole story is actually funny, but if you know "them Williams boys" you know just how much the air turned blue while this nonsense was going on. I have to again ponder just how much easier this job would have been, though, if the owners manual had a schematic showing what bulbs go where! Surely if there is a Just God in Heaven the first guy to start screwing with those manuals is indeed burning in the hottest pit of Hell. I just have to believe so.

Perhaps the Republic is Doomed

2011-07-04T07:53:00.000-04:00

Nothing less than an account of how impossibly inept Congress really is.

Cars of Yesteryear

2011-07-01T16:19:00.000-04:00

Just had a conversation with someone about cars and the "old" days [not really so long ago] and thought I would share this while I remember. Pretty soon no one will even remember all this.

*Cars are much easier to start now. Used to be, you could have a darn good car the envy of everyone, but fact is you never knew if you were going to get it started or not. Today you turn the key without stepping on the gas and it's *varoom* no sweat. That was never the case with the cars of yesteryear, you always had to crank them, with just the right amount of gas and the choke set just so too. That engine would turn several times before it caught, and if it was cold or something maybe you couldn't get it started. The engine might flood, and if someone who was inexperienced tried to start the car it was touch and go. [Aggggh! You flooded the engine! Now you wore the battery down too!]

*As a matter of fact, back then you had better know what to do if the engine flooded. Either that or wait hours while it dried out.

*The way cars start so quickly now, that actually can be a different problem. With the old cars cranking away you got a test of the battery every time. If the battery was getting weak, the tail end of the cranking would clue you in. Now the cars just start instantly and you don't get warned the battery is going. One day you go out to start the car and you just hear a click from the dead battery, which gave up the ghost, no warning at all. This has happened to me a couple of times.

*Everything is easier about operating cars now. It isn't just convenience to have power steering and automatic transmission, it makes the difference for some people whether they would ever learn to drive or not. Dealing with manual transmission and unassisted steering meant, if you go back far enough, less women learned how to drive. The difference in the physical demand of it meant women who did learn would be pretty proud of themselves.

*Power brakes are better brakes, believe me.

*Cars run better now on this unleaded gas too. When it first came out, the engines were experimental or something, and a lot of the cars would be "pinging" all the time. You could get "dieseling" gas engines too, that got too hot and even when you shut off the engine it still ran! If you had manual transmission you killed it by putting it into gear, but if you had automatic and just put it into park this running of the engine could go on for a minute or so!

*There's probably some other things I've even forgotten. Power windows standard now makes a difference. In our '94 Dodge Truck the previous owner opted for roll down windows and that's OK until you need to roll down the window on the other side and you are the only one in the vehicle.

Just thought I'd share.

How Is a Tarantula Like an Elephant?

2011-06-06T07:48:00.001-04:00

In case anyone else would like to guess first, which you should do at Louise's blog [not here] [also do not click to open up this post] the answer is in the comments.

Knows Everything?

2011-05-17T05:17:00.000-04:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQRlZw4Rad0

Photon Torpedo Hit Is My Guess

2011-05-12T07:41:00.000-04:00

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/04/15/meteor-in-wisconsin-iowa_n_539293.html

PS: sorry, blogger dot com has turned me into an idiot, can't seem to hyperlink right anymore. However, copy and paste should work.

Plenty of places in VA must overmatch GPS

2011-04-28T07:04:00.001-04:00

Just catching up on this myself

Walker approached county supervisors armed with photos of a truck jack-knifed, another in a ditch, another forced to back out onto busy South King's Highway, as well as pictures of broken trees, mangled fences and rutted lawns.

Virginia is the worst for having the name of a street or even main route having one name on one side of the intersection and another name on the other side. Guess which one you always pick up when you are unfamiliar with the area? And don't even get me started about Arlington Va.

edit: the below is a link in case it is hard to tell. But I am starting to think it is blogger dot com that screwed this business up.

http://washingtonexaminer.com/local/virginia/2011/04/faulty-gps-makes-va-neighborhood-truck-obstacle-course

Two to Check Out and Feel Humble

2011-03-03T15:04:00.001-05:00

http://www.flickr.com/photos/gsfc/5492781335/in/photostream/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/gsfc/5483193591/in/photostream/

Not sure hyperlink is working and other issues, but check it out.

PS: one is a video. Some scientists say we ain't seen nothing yet. Some day some flares may be bad enough to wipe out the power grid so bad it can't really be fixed fast enough to avoid some real devastation.

I missed this!

2011-02-23T11:38:00.000-05:00

This is one of the most delicious stories I have run into in a long time. Probably most of us saw these commercials.

Answer to Trivia Question

2011-02-14T13:44:00.005-05:00

obviously, don't look if you are still trying to guess.

The answer has been said to be this. Seems believable, but I guess I can't absolutely validate it. From Wikipedia.

World Population Trivia

2011-02-13T15:50:00.000-05:00

trivia question going around: what event in 1960 causes the shocking dip around 1960 at this census bureau chart?

http://www.census.gov/ipc/www/idb/worldpopchggraph.php

The Brain is Something

2011-02-06T07:15:00.000-05:00

Check this out .

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-lN8vWm3m0

Stuck in Traffic

2011-01-28T14:31:00.000-05:00

During the Great DC Area Snow Nightmare it did indeed take me 6 and a half hours to get home. I felt better about it once I heard some folks took as much as 13 hours to get home!

For what I was able to observe myself, the problem was 100% the people who were out there who had no business trying to drive in the snow. The conditions weren't that bad! It was snow, not freezing rain, in fact it was above freezing the whole time. Snow has sort of a grainy consistency, so in some ways it is like driving in sand. Once cars have driven on the snow, it packs down into an somewhat of an ice-like quality, but it is not ice, it still has a certain graininess. Yet even before there was much accumulation, cars ahead were stopping traffic because their tires would only spin on that. These people simply had cars or tires that were unequal to this mild challenge. This would usually be on a slight grade, but sometimes on no grade at all! Desperate to keep going, they would wind up in the middle of the road stopping traffic. I did not see one accident. Outside of sheer congestion, of course, there just seemed to be this one problem!

To tell you the truth, I didn't know you could even buy tires today that are so useless in the snow that even front-wheel drive vehicles would get stuck like that.

One can only hope these drivers now know and will all stay home next time.

New Razor Threatens Face of Arlington Resident

2010-12-24T07:14:00.000-05:00

There's no doubt that a person faces change in life. So naturally now being well into my Farthood I have to complain about the old days being better in various ways. Well, as a matter of fact, I don't think much about these modern razors we have today.

I can remember my Father saying he missed the old blued safety razor blades. In his day the most modern razor was called a safety razor, and it had the common sort of postage stamp sized flat razor blade that just dropped in, then you closed the top flaps so that only the edges of the razor were left. What he must have been talking about was steel razor blades that became unavailable when stainless steel blades came out. In what I guess will have to be a different blog post some day, I'm going to sound off against dubious quality stainless steel taking over steel too often in all kinds of things, but for now let's just say from dealing with knives it's easy for me to believe the old blued steel blades were better, just needing to be replaced more often.

I really wasn't expecting to decide at some point razors were going to be a source of such disappointment in my life as well, but sure enough it has. Razor makers went from using stainless steel safety razor blades to designs that used what almost could be called a wire strip of stainless steel. These were marketed as multi-bladed almost immediately, with the famous illustration that claimed the first row of blades pulled the whisker out so that the second cut it even shorter when it passed through. Granted, you can shave pretty quick with these devices, but probably not for this reason. Needing a razor some 30 odd years ago, I wound up with the Gillette Atra, and I distinctly remember it was free, attached to a shaving cream can. There's no doubt that the idea is to get the razors out there to the public at a loss, then clean up on selling the blades at a huge profit.

I liked the Atra OK, and might concede it was possibly at least faster and somewhat safer than the old safety razors. Unfortunately it became impossible to buy the blades without getting this idiotic strip on them that ooze some kind of lubricant that is supposed to make shaving easier. I've always hated that stuff, as it doesn't work at all and makes it hard to grab your facial skin for what for me is a necessary tug to splay out the beard at an angle so that a second swipe in the opposite direction of the first can finish off what's left (notably this does not happen as in the famous illustration but requires this step)

Fortunately, you can wash this lubricant off, and I just got used to having to do this when I had to give up on the Atra. The old razor wouldn't grab the blade cartridge anymore. Time for a new razor, and again I already had one I got free; I think it was also attached to a shaving cream can. I decided not to try to get another Atra as I have to believe new blades will not be available some day soon. So anyway I needed to rob a liquor store so I could buy some blades for the new contraption: a Gillette Mach3. From the name I guess we are to imagine we can shave at 3 times the speed of sound. This monster takes the idea of multiple blades further, using 3 rows, without question decreasing the safety of it. I also do not believe it shaves a lick better than 2 row systems like the Atra, reinforcing my belief that the claim that whisker get pulled out to be cut shorter by following blades is a canard. And of course it is impossible to buy blades without the lubricating strip. Worst of all, I can't as safely or as effectively shave the mustache area, the menacing 3 rows can't seem to be arranged safely for this, and I'm finding myself getting nicks there. As a compromise I shave with the Mach3 except for above the lip where I use a disposable 2 row razor. Sue has noticed I seem to be trying to grow a mustache! Maybe the next time you see me I'll have grown one out of desperation.

If you click on the link above, you'll see a section that says this:

"The latest razor introduced by Gillette is the Gillette Fusion brand shaving system, which utilizes a five-blade cartridge razor with an additional single blade for trimming."

What the hell is that thing? Entirely too scary to contemplate! These young whippersnappers in the razor business are just screwing everything up! Some day I'm going to have to use one of those things? I hope not, I'm starting to think I've got to find ye olde straight razor and learn how to strop it!

New Tires

2010-11-17T05:51:00.000-05:00

In my life I have had more trouble with auto mechanics trying to cheat me than in any other business I conduct.

I got two more tires this week for the Honda. I had to make sure, though, that I got it somewhere else than Sears. That's a shame in a way, as I will explain.

So here is the whole story. Like most guys, tires became a subject of interest for me fairly early on. When you are a young man on your own, certain things about owning a car just come as a shock. As a teenager, you realize you can't even afford to put in the gas. When you get older than that, you realize you can't afford the insurance, not for what younger males get stung with. And the tires! buying the tires can kill a guy. So actually I became rather good at identifying good used tires. Brother Forrest actually asked me to check out what I could pick up for his cars when it happened I had some free time for that. It didn't bother me to pick up a pair that were in good shape, but that didn't have all that much tread [for my own use]. 10-15 thousand miles is a good 10-15 thousand miles at the right price. Once I picked up something like that and the mechanic who was going to put them on said he just threw away better tires than that! That I went and got those discarded tires out of the dumpster is a favorite story of Forrest's in fact. Well, in those days I was sometimes broke. But I knew what to look for, and my point is I know my used tires!

Back in September I ruined a tire running over a piece of jagged metal, and bought two new tires, as it is best to buy them in pairs. The salesman at Sears was bound and determined to sell me four tires, though, and proceeded to dishonestly represent the situation and scare me into buying four. He was the type of salesman that is a disgrace to the profession, caring nothing about the customer but caring bigtime about his short term earnings. First thing he does is point to some aging on the sidewall and claim it was a sign that the tires were on their last legs. This was to dispel any notion that the mostly sufficient tread would mean the tires are still good for some more miles. Little did he know I was a used tire connoisseur! Those tires were fine, and if there is anything wrong with the sidewall, it would be road damage or the telltale sign that the tires had been sitting flat with the weight of the car on them for a period of time. Furthermore he had a cock and bull story about how he wasn't a salesman, but a mechanic just helping out for the day. Unfortunately it developed that he had to assist the other salespeople with this and that, his competence exposing this lie. He probably was in management, teaching the other salespeople to lie and claim, as a purported mechanic, he wasn't trying to sell me something for the commission. Not that he perhaps wasn't indeed originally a mechanic, their training does seem to revolve around how to artificially drive up the price of repairs. The guy was unbelievable, actually, really making wild claims that I was no more than going to go out of the parking lot than have blowouts on those tires. He just wouldn't quit with it. I'd like to think he couldn't make his balloon payment on his sub-prime mortgage that month because of holdouts like me!

The shame of it all is that I had come to pretty much want Sears to be the place I bought my tires. I had gone through local retailers "Merchants Tire" and a place I think is now called "NTB". The problem with those places was that you could get good service one time, then the next time you went back it was all new people and you would get lousy service. The Sears place, though, seemed consistently good. Then I ran into this guy. Of course I couldn't get what he said totally out of my mind, which included a claim that tires simply get old and have to be changed purely for that reason. I checked this out online and sure enough you can find some not too convincing, clearly very conservative claims that tires ought to be changed every 6 years even if they have good tread. That age was approaching on these tires, and I felt I couldn't take a chance I'd regret not getting new tires, what with Sue also driving the car.

So I just got two new tires. Took it to a mechanic I trust and definitely paid a little more. But it was damn important to me that Sears not get the business. I'd like to think the younger person at that shop said, "hey these middle-aged guys throw away perfectly good tires!" and put them on his own car. That would bring a smile to my face.

2010-11-15T10:12:00.000-05:00

It's been too long since my last post. I have been spending more time at work, where I never have liked to work on a blog. Perhaps this sounds odd, but the extra concentration means I don't like to be interrupted, while, on the contrary, now especially I need to be ready to drop anything and exploit opportunities.

I've got a couple of posts I am working on. The one on salt is taking a long time, maybe it ought to be two posts. And I need to post about buying tires, perhaps I can get that out soon. I don't think I am going to post about Fantasy Football though [g].

Some Kids Had All the Fun

2010-09-01T09:09:00.002-04:00

I think the only reason my parents didnt get one of these for me or one of my brothers was that it cost too much.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aMqd5EQXD-g

Gaming the System with Credit Cards

2010-08-14T16:47:00.003-04:00

This is not about trying to get cash back on your credit cards, although we do that on some cards and there is plenty to commend that. We sometimes make out better on that than other times, and I notice it is hard to follow how the rewards are earned on some of the better paying cards. Right now they aren't kicking in so much, as can be expected.

It is also not about credit card "surfing", where you go from one card to another looking for zero or low interest rates. That might be a good way to game the system, but you have to be on top of the fine print I'm sure, and that's not for me. I also have to wonder what such activity looks like on your credit report.

My 'gaming it' is about avoiding interest and maximizing the time you have to pay. I have to say almost no one seems to agree that the latter is of much importance, truly a notion not to be confirmed in personal discussion nor in articles online or otherwise. Nonetheless I happen to believe it is one of the best ways to game the system. I will have to admit that perhaps the satisfaction comes only from knowing they don't intend for you to use your cards this way. Certainly for now there is no way to earn significant interest on the "float".

The idea for this for me came from noticing that sometimes we would only have a couple of weeks to pay for some purchases, it was all about the timing. So once I had more than one card I started to be a little more careful about making sure the billing wasn't almost due on a certain card when I used it. Later I just waited till I got the bill in the mail, then I knew that it was the best time to use that particular card. Then I found myself marking on a calender when the account statement was supposed to come out, and either calling the number on the back of the card or going online to confirm it, then switching to that card even before the statement was received in the mail.

It must be pointed out that this is all fairly pointless unless you pay off the statement in full, not using the revolving payment program, and paying no interest. Since I believe it is important to avoid these charges, I highly recommend life without credit card interest. If you live that life, or would like a reward for doing so already, then I highly recommend anyone maximize also the time for payment.

I checked recently and found out that it works even better than I thought. In the best timed purchases we get about 7 and a half weeks to pay, and for the worst timing, not less than 4 weeks to pay. The satisfaction I get from knowing that 7+ weeks was never intended is immense and makes up for the necessary evil of having to have these cards. And, yes, sometimes we get cash back too to top it off.

To do this, you want to have two cards and have different dates for when the statement comes out, by two weeks. The card companies will accommodate requests for the time of the month you want your payment, you know, but be aware these are two different things, payment date and statement date. I think you would confuse them if you tried to get a certain statement date, better to request a different payment date, in order to change the statement date as well.

So you've done it. You can wait for the statements to come in the mail if you think that is a more sane approach, but online calenders now will email you. Then the mailed statement backs it all up as a reminder. And if life has you to busy to fool with it all, you can just drop the practice anytime. When you notice you are paying for a purchase you just made, though, believe me you will be thinking about going back to it.

IMO this is enormously beneficial for large purchases, as it allows a little planning on how you want to pay for it.

Well that's how I "game the system". You could go a little more crazy and game it with three cards that have statement dates 10 days apart, but I think we can agree there might be a limit to sanely managing the whole business.

Hating Your Car

2010-07-29T14:38:00.010-04:00

There's an ad we've seen where a couple of people are shown muttering and then yelling about how they hate their cars, and are so ready to buy a new car. Clearly the car manufacturer is hoping this will resonate with a lot of folks and spur them to buy a new car.

I have to say, I have held on to some cars until they were real clunkers, but I never hated any of my cars, and can't relate. This in spite of the fact that in many ways I am just not the sometimes seen male infatuated with cars. They also fail as status symbols for me, I'm afraid those out there trying to impress with that are falling flat with me. If I am not in the market for a car, I even start to ignore the new models until I am back in the market for one. Most remarkably of all, I tend to fail to notice what cars my fellow employees are driving, and sometimes have to sheepishly admit to someone I couldn't pick out their car from the lot!

So I'm not that interested in cars, but this does not mean I don't like to drive. And I do sort of bond to my own car once I own it, even if everybody else might think it's not much. So I never hated one, and instead always felt kind of sad to part with one due to what it was costing to keep repairing. All this got me to trying to remember each and every car I ever owned, something I have been musing about for a couple of months, realizing I was having trouble remembering all these cars! I started to make a mental list, and it was bugging me to think of the ones missing in that list. I actually woke up from a dream the other night in which one of the cars I had forgotten about was featured somehow in that dream. I can't remember a single detail of the dream except that when I woke up I knew that the car, in the dream by name, an Olds Cutlass Supreme, was one of the cars I couldn't come up with in that mental list! Further thought had me realize it was actually a similar car, the Cutlass Calais. Thanks to what we can do online, further thought and research has me now with the full list. I realize I am starting to lose folks on this, but of course I must now show that list starting about 1976. Here is what I can remember in order of purchase date [largely not known]. All bought used unless noted as new.

*Datsun 510, from a Rolls Royce dealer. Must be a story there for the former owner?

*Dodge Aspen station wagon *new* At the time this type of car was useful for my work. Generally the purchase was greeted with great puzzlement.

*Dodge Polara, from the neighbor in Youngstown Ohio. Purchased in a bad trade. This bad trade was forced on me by being broke, nobody was scamming me. Car ran great if you constantly checked and topped off all the fluids all the time, and I mean them all, including the brake fluid. Some of you may remember the glass-pack muffler.

*Dodge Aries. I always called it the K Car. Bought from man who placed an ad, northern VA resident. It was custom in that it had manual transmission.

*Dodge Dart Swinger V8. Lotty's car that Forrest and Linda wound up with, then sold to me. I am more struck now than I was then by what this car was, Candy Red, V8 and all, and who first bought it and that whole picture! Darts were designed to be V6, and the V8 crammed into it somehow wore out the alternator, which had to be replaced every 6 months.

*Oldsmobile Cutlass Calais. Bought from a Maryland Af/A woman who inherited it from her deceased Mother and placed an ad. Kind of an odd car to own for me in a way, but it was a great deal.

*1993 Ford Taurus, from Sue's friend Cheryl, first car on the list that I can be sure of the year of manufacture.

*1994 Dodge Dakota pickup truck, bought from Sylvester Kyle, still own it. 113k miles (I think) and going strong.

*2005 Honda Accord *new* still own it. Very low mileage, 31k I think. Ruined a tire last week, and the tire salesman says I am looking at replacing tires before the tread wears out, tires are just too old. Not why the tire got ruined, though, that was a road hazard. But I bought two tires so the process of replacement has begun. This isn't making me hate the car [g].

And didn't hate any of the others, although there are more maintenance headache stories that could be told!

The Nuclear Option and Other Thoughts on Credit Cards

2010-06-16T08:28:00.007-04:00

I have to admit that the recent reforms forced on the credit card companies is a good thing, the word for what they had been up to is gouging, nothing more or less. Most distasteful of all, these things were all directed at the vulnerable type of person, who got into trouble with the cards. Once that happened, it was open season on the poor saps [and I say that as someone who has been a sap in my day]. Unfortunately, it turns out that this was a great part of the profitability of that type of business, actually part of the reason investment in financial stocks have suffered recently it seems. Better keep an eye out for how they might be maneuvering to get some of those profits back, I say.

So yay! for the reforms, pretty heart-wrenching to know personally someone getting clobbered and to see what they have to go through. But to tell you the truth, if I was being selfish, I'd be for the old system, not being a target myself. What the reforms actually mean to me is nothing, I don't care about any of them personally. Furthermore, the things that do irritate me about these outfits is going untouched.

So what are these things? A#1, I resent totally and absolutely the fact that in order to function fully in this society, you must have credit cards. You can't properly and conveniently buy airline tickets, items on the internet, etc., but especially can't make hotel reservations and rent a car without these things. Apparently we can expect this to get worse if the ideas from some quarters prevail. I'd actually prefer to live my life without them, and trust me, the cost of living goes down when you pull out hard earned cash for everything, as anybody sure thinks twice.

And there is a host of other BS practices that are going to be allowed to go on unchecked. Such as continuous unsolicited offers for more cards, just rope to hang yourself if you don't use these cards properly.

Such as offering "no payment this month". Ever get one of those offers? Of course this is an attempt to lure you into paying interest. They may only send those to those of us who pay off the bills every month.

Such as sending checks to use in the mail, unsolicited. It is my firm opinion that this is an attempt to get you to think this is just another usual way to use your credit card. Full disclosure that you are dipping into the high cost cash option, in my experience, is lacking or written in gobbledygook. Seeming indications that it is not cashing out are not to be trusted IMO. You could get cash with that check, couldn't you? That should be all the thinking you need to do on that.

Such as constantly trying to get you to sign up for protection on your cards. Seems to me this protects them, not you. You have the limited liability of $50. In a related matter, in my line of work, I used to constantly have American Express users get denied when larger purchases were involved. The irritated customer would have to call this card company so they would know that it was a proper and legitimate charge. The customer would be told that this was to protect the consumer. Of course, it was only to protect American Express. This practice would sometimes freak a customer out and you'd lose the sale. I have never forgiven that outfit for this, although in the last few years it seems to have stopped.

Such as dazzling offers in the mail for things I care nothing about. You can get a card that will say "you are some kind of hot shit" when people see it! Sure. BTW there are credit card websites where people get together to talk about the cards. I've lost the links, but apparently typically it's all about who has the flashiest card, the most perks, and the highest limits. Yawn.

Such as being transferred to an operator who tries to sell you something when you are just trying to activate a card. I've had some ugly experiences with this, getting my jollies first by asking them why it would be that they have to ask me who I am. It finally occurred to me that you have activated the card using the automated system (they don't want employees in that!) and when you realize you are being transferred to talk to someone, it's just time to hang up.

Such as bad service when you have a problem. It just should not be the case that you would have trouble getting through to a human being! Yet it is often so, I've run into things like being asked for a security phrase when I never set one up! Not to mention plain old ridiculously complex phone trees to wade through, causing you to have to go nuclear to get service.

You see, I'm not crazy enough to want to go through all this baloney if I could get it out of my life. But I can't, you must have these horrid things.

BTW did you hear what happened when the Soviet Union collapsed? Former bureaucrats of that system said the dossiers they supposedly on all their citizens were about totally non-existent except for special cases. What was impressive, they said, was the credit card histories kept on all the citizens of the west. Now that was something the Communist secret police really envied!!

Bottom line, I resent this system, this necessary evil. I get even by gaming the system. That will be a future post.

Oh, yeah, I promised to say what going nuclear is. What you want to do is find and call the number that is for lost and stolen cards. You'll get an operator right away, no phone tree to navigate. Ummm, before you sign up to "protect" your credit cards, guess what this shows about who is actually liable for unauthorized charges?

Unacceptable Practices That Go On Anyway

2010-05-20T11:27:00.002-04:00

It struck me today that Americans are putting up with some ridiculous practices by business today, and I can hardly believe there hasn't been a revolt. Two I thought about today:

*The ubiquitous phone tree you get when calling for service, that all companies seem to be using now. Even small companies who clearly need to establish that they are 'all about service' sometimes use them, which really makes me shake my head. The odious practice of never offering to connect you to an operator seems to be growing as well. Yeah, I know you can surf around on the internet and try to find how to defeat these trees, sometimes just by hitting zero, but I do not think we should have to do that if zero doesnt work. And don't get me started on the systems that make you say words without an option to hit a number instead.

*Parking garages that charge to park but do not have attendants. I can't believe it is coming to this, and brother I am totally against it. I feel I have had at least one close call where I hadn't somehow satisfied the system that would open the gate and lucked out getting an attendant anyway. And at Union Station, we were surprised recently to find that there was a screwy method of paying to get out with no attendant in sight. I noticed every person in line to pay at this machine had a look of horror on their face, wondering what kind of hell they were about to go through if, say, their credit card wouldnt work when swiped .

Today I was treated to various phone trees with a credit card problem. Stay tuned for a post about how to be prepared to use the Nuclear Option when dealing with those folks.

"Reports from the US say Mr Shahzad recently returned from a five-month visit to Pakistan. "

2010-05-04T06:27:00.004-04:00

What an enormous Red Flag it is when these people go back to their countries. Each and every one of them gets recruited by their radical elements it seems.

Why are we making citizens of people from countries where they hate us anyway? Diversity Freak Elites ought to be hanged!

See the link of course. Un-American as it may seem to be, we have to be immensely stupid not to be following up on each and every person traveling to these countries. And, yes, especially for those born there and, yes, especially if Muslim. Sorry.

"Reports from the US say Mr Shahzad recently returned from a five-month visit to Pakistan. "

It's Eyjafjallajökull, OK!!!

2010-04-20T06:40:00.006-04:00

Sue and I noticed when it was the Philippines, you heard about "Pinatubo", but now it's just the "Iceland Volcano", not Eyjafjallajökull.

BTW the pronunciation provided here is much appreciated. It's not that hard once you've heard it, but, Icelanders excepted I'm sure, it's impossible to go by the spelling.

Starting to see Obamacare Information

2010-03-27T09:40:00.000-04:00

Pilosi said we should just pass this thing and figure out later what we did. Looks like that is starting.

Good News For California Amongst the Bad

2010-03-12T09:52:00.002-05:00

No doubt the price of a tomato at the stores will soon be shocking. Frozen tomatoes in Florida merely prove global warming though of course, to some folks. Maybe California will avoid general default on its bonds with a boost in these prices. Looks like a 5-fold price increase may be possible. LINK

Apparently the Downside is Exaggerated

2010-03-03T11:50:00.002-05:00

The downside of cancelling credit cards is supposed to be that it can hurt your credit rating, but my opinion has been that it is something to do fearlessly with perhaps only some caution if you are about to apply for new credit somewhere. Finally here is an article that says much the same. Note that they don't say it is a complete myth, however.

Sue and I are on guard for shenanigans, like all of a sudden an annual fee.

Not a Bushie but...

2010-02-19T10:00:00.001-05:00

http://www.snopes.com/politics/bush/house.asp

Good thing Hawaii has mountains

2010-02-12T10:10:00.001-05:00

Check this out. Hopefully the link hyperlinks, had a prob. last time.

Boy Are We Dumb

2010-01-25T09:58:00.006-05:00

" [The underwear bomber] spoke openly about what he'd done and why, and provided valuable intelligence...But when they read him his legal rights nearly 10 hours after the incident, he went silent. "

I'm starting to feel sorry for those East Coast Nazi Sabateurs now, clearly they had rights we violated.

from

http://www.breitbart.com/print.php?id=D9DEACHG0&show_article=1

Object Lesson

2010-01-17T14:48:00.002-05:00

I think it is best not to really know what goes on with "helping the homeless" etc, etc, etc. Every once in a while you get a glimpse of the ugly side of it.

I'm not saying to quit giving, I'm saying it comes with the territory and you can't think about it if you are going to try to help people.

Sue and I will give something to some organization to help Haiti. But we got treated to watching a reporter go in to Port-Au-Prince, and he was talking about how riots could break out easily. He finally showed some irate guy they were having to deal with, and it turned out he was vigorously objecting to the MRE's being past expiration date. Turned out he was wrong. But what the hell was he doing? People are starving to death and he's going ape over the expiration date? The reporter didn't seem to see the irony, at least it wasn't in the report.

Clearly this guy was just some trouble-maker with God knows what motivation. Another case, no doubt, of the help not going where it was needed. I am quite convinced he himself did not actually need anything to eat, perhaps just had some plan to profit from getting the supplies.

*Sigh*

Yep, best just not to know what really goes on.

This One Hits Home

2010-01-08T11:55:00.003-05:00

You have to stay to the end on this you-tube chuckle.

Follow Up Post

2009-11-29T07:19:00.003-05:00

Regarding the last topic, here's another good article. One quote:

"...climate change seems tailor-made to be a low priority for most people. The threat is distant in both time and space. It is difficult to visualize. And it is difficult to identify a clearly defined enemy."

Warm-Mongering

2009-11-28T13:08:00.004-05:00

I don't agree with absolutely everything Mark Steyn has to say here, but anyone that politicizes Science, I say call them out. And I like his term "warm-mongering".

WedMd on the Flu Shot

2009-11-14T10:17:00.002-05:00

Pretty honest, compared to most I've seen.

OH, The Swine!!

2009-11-12T08:07:00.005-05:00

Did I have just get over the swine flu? I guess the answer has to be maybe not, supposedly when you have flu symptoms "at most half, and perhaps as few as 7 or 8 percent, of such cases are actually caused by an influenza virus in any given year". I have to tell you, though, if it wasn't at least the regular flu I got, whatever else that was, was some kind of powerful something. I haven't been that knocked out for that long since I was a child! And I saw or heard more than one reasonably reliable source say if you had the flu in our area, it was probably H1N1 as it really is the only thing going around. So who knows.

What's interesting to me is the fact that had I wanted to get a vaccination, I couldn't have. People are getting in line for it and getting turned away, finding that there isn't enough vaccine and only high-risk individuals (and financial fat-cats) will actually get a shot. You know, it is just the history of that whole business of flu shots: nothing but problems. Some of these problems are soon forgotten seems to me. I distinctly remember a couple of years ago when no U.S. company would make the vaccine and the British company that was supposed to make it screwed it up. Of course the problem was the politicians were trying to control the costs while simultaneously denying proper protection from liability that the vaccine makers wanted. And brother there is liability. People simply will die or otherwise get really horrible complications from getting the shots, sometimes in great enough numbers to be a financial disaster for that vaccine maker if held liable. This was the fiasco that resulted from the 1976 Gerald Ford swine flu vaccination drive. I don't know if the vaccine maker was liable or the government was liable, but in any case the topper for that year was that supposedly only one unvaccinated person died from the swine flu .

A doctor now no doubt banned from the media came on a local radio station about five years ago and said he didn't recommend getting flu shots except for the elderly, infants, or other high risk groups. His reasoning was that for healthy people there is almost zero risk of dying or getting complications, but there was a certain risk from getting a flu shot, and that risk is unknown for each year until, well, the results are in! Furthermore, there is a pretty high chance that you are not getting vaccinated for the strain that is actually going to go around.

Anymore, though, we are not hearing these voices. The regular media seems to be cooperating with the notion that, again, we can't handle the truth, and the truth is the flu shots must be given to everyone possible so the vaccine maker can sell them and also so that there is a theoretical wall of immunity out there amongst those who don't actually need it so that the high risk groups are more protected. It is my civic duty to get the flu shot?

So as not to paint the picture that the government's vaccination drives are wholly useless, I'll give them credit for trying to protect the vulnerable. And, yes, maybe when something more dangerous like H1N1 is becoming epidemic, maybe it is time for all of us to get that flu shot (oh if there weren't all those problems!) I have to confess that the idea of getting in an interminable line to get one may keep me in the uncooperative citizen category forevermore. But unfortunately, it is quite possible all this is misplaced effort anyway. A recent Atlantic Magazine article really lays out the case (the quote above is from that article)

I'd like to hear any other opinions.

Starting to Look Like There Was No Excuse For This

2009-11-10T11:17:00.003-05:00

You have to remember I think the Immigration Act of 1924 was a good law. Sorry.

LINK

Didn't Know We Already Set a Record

2009-10-30T13:28:00.004-04:00

It's a record.

The link from the beginning

It's Just Me

2009-10-14T13:58:00.003-04:00

The idea that these types of shows are proliferating even though competely fraudulent bothers me to no end. I guess it's just me.

Jon Stewart on not meeting with the Dalai Lama

2009-10-12T13:54:00.003-04:00

good puns: "Hell No, Dalai!" and "Obama Lama Ding Dong"

warning: Daily Show can be pretty gross, this clip pushes the envelope when "reporting" on how he supposedly reacted.

http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/wed-october-7-2009/hell-no--dalai

This Got Downplayed

2009-09-29T11:24:00.000-04:00

Rightly so I suppose. Gives pause.

http://cidrapbusiness.net/cidrap/content/bt/tularemia/news/oct0305tularemia.html

Financial Advisors Are Getting New Scrutiny

2009-09-26T08:00:00.004-04:00

I have long suspected it was true that financial advisors are to be avoided for the most part, as it is claimed here. The article's writer seems to also not really needed confirmation that "on the whole, investors who use a financial adviser tend to underperform do-it-yourselfers."

Furthermore:

"Advisors actually tend to lower returns, raise portfolio risk, increase the probabilities of losses, and increase trading frequency and portfolio turnover relative to what account owners of given characteristics tend to achieve on their own "

"... the advisers in the study suffered from the same biases that often make lay people such poor investors. They chased hot stocks and dumped ones that cooled off. Because they thought their job was to outperform the market, they felt a compulsion to do something — anything — when the right move was to stay put. Sprinkle fees and commissions on top — some of which reward advisers for being active traders"

Seems to me that the typical investor might go through these phases:

When inexperienced and doing it on their own, a new investor indeed makes just these same errors as above.
Additionally, a young investor often finds he is forced to make terrible decisions by default: buying stocks when the economy is good and selling stocks when the economy is bad, due to the effect a bad economy has on the funds available to invest.
At some point the survivors of this pummeling try to get some help. Now it is the turn of the professionals, 99% of them?, to screw up just as outlined above.
Veteran investors now make a decision. They either learn how to find a good advisor or an advisor who will follow instructions, learn how to do it themselves properly, or seek out shelter in super-safe investing. If they seek out shelter in the form of just trying to find someone who they can turn it all over to, letting go completely, well, meet Bernie Madoff.

This Was Interesting

2009-09-15T09:20:00.002-04:00

The changes in cost of housing seems to be the biggy for us.

http://cgi.money.cnn.com/tools/costofliving/costofliving.html

"state officials, who came over, did tests, and told her to have the room cleaned by a hazardous waste crew - to the tune of over $2,000"

2009-09-03T16:55:00.004-04:00

This fluorescent bulb business, I don't know, I have some sympathy for it but some things about are sure bugging me. We have lamps that the new bulbs don't seem to fit. I'm thinking about hording the old bulbs, certainly I will for those lamps. But the lady who was dumb enough to call the state in, well, she just never heard the old cynical ditty "I'm here from the government and I'm here to 'help you', ha ha ha."

OK this is in bad taste, sorry.

2009-08-26T10:00:00.002-04:00

But the reaction of the chimp at the end of it is priceless!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_qwgArt7rvI

But They Always Say Satisfaction Guaranteed!!

2009-08-24T11:28:00.002-04:00

http://www.businessinsider.com/the-most-ridiculous-as-seen-on-tv-gadgets-2009-8#neckline-slimmer-1

Redskins fans!

2009-08-22T13:55:00.003-04:00

Harking back to the good old days and the Hogs, I got a player recruited now who knows how to tackle!!

Soon: Self Realization for Computers and the End of Times

2009-08-12T06:44:00.009-04:00

Something has been bugging me about my Yahoo email. Somehow I got selected to go into some kind of social network and the durn thing wouldn't let me go till I sort of completed a certain process and got to a certain point. I immediately turned everything off that would reach out to everybody else, not being part of the up and coming generation that wants everybody to know every detail of everything that should be private with all this Facebook, Twitter, etc. [I probably just showed how out of touch I am by not naming what the current craze is].

A little background: Science Fiction has had a constant theme that computers were going to take over the world one day, and I just realized recently just how far back it goes. There is a really corny movie from the 50's that has a robot named Robby the Robot, and in this movie [studying the plots I am guessing it is 1957's The Invisible Boy] a Supercomputer [that controls Robby] is so powerful that it achieves "self realization", becomes evil, and has to be destroyed or somesuch. I was astonished to see that plot, it surely showed that Science Fiction writers went into deep distrust of computers right from the get-go. This theme certainly was repeated as late as the "Terminator" movies, where the Defense Department computers become very powerful and finally also get to the point of "self realization" and become evil. And also in the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey, which had a computer with too much ambition as well. This brings me back around to Yahoo email.

In the movie 2001, Hal the computer is getting snipped to death by Dave, and keeps asking "what are you doing, Dave?" in a very memorable manner. This can be imitated and the name of someone else substituted. When you do this, seems to me it always has an eerie affect for anyone who has seen the movie.

So, Yahoo email? Well it turns out that my new homepage cannot be avoided. I usually like to bookmark the inbox and skip all the baloney, but when I try this now, it doesnt really work right. Definitely "Hal" doesn't like that. So I have to constantly go to the home page. And what do I see? Check it out above, "what are you doing right now?" it constantly asks. This is really starting to give me the creeps!

All I can say is, should you see my blog go dark for too long a period, you better check on me. After publishing this post, I am going to be checking my email with a pair of snips ready to go, I'll tell you that!

Forrest's New Gun

2009-08-06T08:07:00.001-04:00

We now have a video of Forrest's new Shotgun.

Deja Vu

2009-07-28T06:12:00.004-04:00

Deja Vu for me, anyway, having had the bitter experience of losing money investing in alternative energy way back in something like 1976 or so. A rare article [they were rare back then too] is sadly doing reality checks.

Some highlights:

"[In Spain]... soaring electricity prices forced other businesses to cut 2.2 jobs for every "green" job created... Spain's unemployment rate is now 17% and rising."

"... turbines that Downing Street intends to install over the next decade will be manufactured — not in Britain, but in Germany, Denmark and China, where coal still powers steel mills and factories."

"Austin's GreenChoice program cannot find buyers for electricity generated entirely from wind and solar power. After seven months, 99% of its most recent electricity offering remains unsold, as Austin's renewable electricity now costs three times more than standard electricity."

Open Letter to the Beer Activist

2009-07-26T07:56:00.001-04:00

His blog is one of the links you see in "other blogs".

>>>>

Great blog, enjoy keeping up with it!

The "Activist" part of your blog name keeps attracting my attention. I have a little story to tell you, and you have to let me know if I am crazy.

I no longer drink very much of Old Dominion's products. I am not thrilled with the idea of the current owners, yet I was willing to stick with one of my favorite breweries anyway. But something happened that I can find absolutely no one talking about (could be I am just missing such talk of course).

An impressive percentage of my microbrew consumption outside of the home occurs at a couple of local "Hard Times" restaurants. And one of my pretty reliable choices was the "Hard Times Select", chosen by that restaurant chain to be their House Beer. It was acknowledged to be a product of Old Dominion's, and was pretty well known to just be the Old Dominion Lager relabeled. Well, indeed just after the change of ownership at Old Dominion I went into Hard Times, chose the Hard Times Select and (I want to assure you uninfluenced by any suspicions, it was the last thing on my mind) and I find myself tasting a beer that just screamed that it was exactly the kind of beer I don't like. I started complaining to the bartender that the brew had changed, that it was more like a "Bud Light" than anything. The barkeep seemed to know nothing about any change. I was furious with the restaurant, thinking they had chosen some light beer to replace the Dominion Lager, which at last check still claimed to be brewed the same way as always.

A few weeks after this, I brought some beer to a gathering, and some of it was Old Dominion Lager. To my surprise, one of the other guys started saying the beer wasn't worth drinking. He was familiar with it and thought I had picked up a bad batch. I tried one, and sure enough it was another batch seeming that it wanted to imitate Bud Light.

Of course now a light was coming on. It wasn't Hard Times that changed but the brewery, I was now thinking. I went to a beer store and picked up some more with the same result. And have tried since with the same result. The beer has changed! Unacknowledged by the brewery. This to me is outrageous!

I want to emphasize that my discovery was not being influenced by any suspicion, in fact I was unwilling to believe such a thing would be underfoot unless I would have heard about it. In the meantime I have held off writing to anyone about it, hoping to run into a friend who had saved some old bottles of the Old D. Lager so that the new and the old could be directly compared. No such luck.

This means, of course, that for me to assert this to someone relies on that person being able to remember what the old brew was like. I was really hoping to find some blogs talking about this surreptitious change. I can hardly be sure I haven't missed such, but did a Google blog search just now with no luck. Quite the opposite, for example:

http://beerlicious.net/2009/02/old-dominion-lager-chicken-fajitas/

And that search brought op a beer activist posting of yours, talking about the move to Dover. No mention of the dastardly recipe change for the Lager.

Well, you'll have to tell me if I am crazy. If this is the first you've heard of it, it probably means I am. Nonetheless, I couldn't live with myself if I didn't try to reach *somebody* I respect and demand to know "say it ain't so", say those brewers wouldn't do such a despicable thing. Old Dominion Lager, the fine and admirable Dortmunder style, changed into Bud Light and nobody notices!!

I am only recently up to date about the move to Dover. To me this only means I feel very little allegiance as far as "local brewery" goes, and if I am right about this let's CALL THEM OUT.

Thanks in advance for your consideration,
Carl Williams
Arlington, VA

Breaking New Ground

2009-07-25T12:39:00.004-04:00

First line in both Senate and House versions of current Health Reform proposals gives me a problem:

"Require all individuals to have health insurance."

Unconstitutional IMO. Would be only thing of its kind I can think of.

http://www.kff.org/healthreform/upload/healthreform_tri_full.pdf

Stumbling Across Things Disturbing

2009-07-21T13:02:00.004-04:00

I find it slightly disturbing that this could have been a comet?

I added the image in case the link doesnt always work.

text says:

Photos From the Final Frontier

The recently refurbished Hubble Space Telescope is back and apparently better than ever. NASA scientists interrupted the final testing and adjustments of the telescope to release the first photos from Hubble since its upgrade in May. The photo shown here captures the mark on Jupiter thought to have been made recently by a comet or meteoroid. This photo, taken July 23, was snapped with the telescope's new camera, the Wide Field Camera 3.
(NASA)

Lenny Dykstra as Investing Genius Part II

2009-07-19T08:52:00.008-04:00

My observation that funds that are able to produce fantastic profits are in fact based on leverage in some manner is holding up. Another such story now with Dykstra.

Some highlights:

'[Dykstra's method] is nothing but a leveraged bet on the market, even if you only select the most conservative, well-managed companies. If the market goes down 30%, you're broke. If it goes up 30%, you're rich."

"Dykstra has claimed that his system had picked 99 winners to just 1 loser, but ... Dykstra was sitting with lots of potential money-losers that he wasn't counting as bad bets-sort of like not adding up the losses on stocks you've purchased unless you sell them."

"He ... stiffed his mother for $23,000 after using her card."

"These kinds of stories don't occur occasionally or cyclically, but are ever-present. Even as Lenny crashes into bankruptcy and our financial system struggles to recover from the bubble, some people right now are eagerly buying into the next set of implausible stories ... No amount of new regulation or oversight will protect them, because there's no legislating against gullibility and the apparently overwhelming desire for a quick score."

The Daily Show was able to blast Cramer, showing a video of him praising Dykstra as being brilliant. I think there was a business association with Cramer and Dykstra, actually.

We Are Being Invaded

2009-06-27T11:14:00.003-04:00

I guess I greatly admire this sort of activity, but fear for the worst. Interesting story on weapons that are used. Sounds like Canadian forests are really getting it!

If the weather and other circumstances permit, I will let you know how it goes for huckleberry hunting with a possible look at what I can find out about wineberries.

Men, relish this, Ladies, get mad!

2009-06-27T10:24:00.002-04:00

then go to this.

“silver crime”

2009-06-24T12:59:00.003-04:00

If you saw the Daily Show recently, you got some yucks about Senior Citizens on the attack. But maybe it ain't funny!

Barney gets Touchy

2009-06-12T16:10:00.004-04:00

I think the Daily Show etc will be covering this little dust-up. Not exactly sure why Frank got so touchy, maybe because these CNBC folks seem to be showing a bias. Although I have my beefs about Frank, I found myself agreeing with him and then thinking, yep, he went off the rails.

I can tell you I pretty much reflexively vote for shareholder proposals when I see them, but don't get the feeling they go anywhere.

Art of a Killer

2009-06-11T06:52:00.003-04:00

The guy who killed the guard at the Holocaust Museum was an artist, a painter. Website shows one picture.

I'm guessing non-smoker & vegetarian too ala Schicklgruber.

Ha! Back Off Carl-Bashers!!

2009-06-08T10:59:00.003-04:00

Turns out Lard is making a comeback. So those who have called me a lard-monger need to give it a rest!

One thing though: Crisco now claims to be trans-fat free. From their FAQ section at their website:

Are all Crisco shortening products now trans fat free?

All Crisco shortening products now have 0g trans fat per serving for a more healthful option.

A phishing danger I was unaware of

2009-06-06T09:32:00.001-04:00

Suggestion from yahoo, after warning that miscellaneous pop-ups should be viewed with great suspicion:

Do NOT click any button in these pop-ups, such as a "Close" or "No" button, or the "Close" box that may appear in the upper-right corner of the pop-up. Doing this might install a virus or other malicious software on your computer. To safely close a pop-up ad, press Ctrl-W (if you're using a Windows computer) or Command-W (on a Mac computer).

I'm leaving! No, Really! I'm leaving!!

2009-05-30T14:01:00.002-04:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MPdLtRexwqw

Lincolnitis

2009-05-27T09:27:00.003-04:00

Am I getting obsessed by Lincoln, like a lot of people? Well, I don't think so, but if you are a Civil War buff you run the risk. Certainly my interest has increased recently after going to that play, and some other pretty good stuff that has been on the History Channel.

And I really enjoyed this program on bookTV which explored Lincoln and Shakespeare.

No Movie for Old Men?

2009-05-21T18:20:00.005-04:00

In spite of the fact our friends Matt and Marsha did not like/couldn't recommend the movie No Country for Old Men I found a copy that was selling at a discount and decided to watch it.

Well, I can certainly see why somebody would really be put off by the movie. It has too much violence for my taste. The violence is gratuitous; I just did not feel we needed to see that many people get killed, shot, etc. even if it was part of the story. You can have characters get knocked off without seeing their brains shooting across the screen every time [ironically, there were so many people getting killed sometimes we didn't see it and there was still too much of it!] And what I mean it is just too much to watch for what's good for the soul. Yep, I mean children should not watch this movie, but neither should teenagers, and for that matter, neither should somebody my age or any age. It's just not good for anybody to start to ingest that much nastiness.

I watched it today by myself when I had a chance so Sue wouldn't have to leave the room. I'd say Sue would hate this movie, but then again she liked and recommended Pulp Fiction , a movie I disliked because of the gratuitous violence and the fact it was just generally a sordid story I didn't want attached to my soul either. It was so bad I charge it was guilty of the trivialization of evil, as it sort of had a silly element as well. I had similar problems, then, with No Country for Old Men.

But I liked the movie, overall! Perhaps on the wrong day I would have hated it. As it was, it struck me that the suspense of "what is going to happen next" was just masterful, this was on-the-edge-of-your-seat stuff indeed. And the movie [unlike Pulp F.] had an undeniable pertinence for today, now that we are seeing the current violence about drugs in Mexico and the border area. I also have the criticism that it had an element of the supernatural villain that bugs me a little; the evil guy that can't get caught, always has a leg up on everybody, etc. They actually referred to the guy as a ghost. On the other hand, John Wayne syndrome was banished from the movie entirely; the good guys were not superhuman, and when one of them seemed to be taking on the John Wayne role he was sooner or later shown to be quite fallible. I have gotten to like this in a movie. I didn't like the ending, which was handled in such a way as if to suggest they had just run out of money and had to quit filming, so that was the end! This left the status of several characters in the lurch. The Coen brothers can be irritating in a number of ways, I almost never forgave them for lying by claiming at the beginning of Fargo that it was a "true story." I refused to watch any more of their movies for years and probably it took O Brother Where Art Thou for them to redeem themselves with me. On this day at least, though, I can say I liked the movie. Overall.

PS: here was Marsha's comment on the movie from over a year ago:

No Country for Old Men - Let me emphasize that we hated, yes hated, this movie. It was violent and pointless. Tommy Lee Jones was in it and I am starting to sense a pattern here. The story was inconclusive and frankly not all that compelling. Call me crazy but I like a good story. There was nothing here worth caring about.

She gave it a "D". Link.

PSS: If you want to see a movie that rejects the John Wayne thing, see Ulee's Gold (1997)

Email to Mr. Felten

2009-05-17T08:05:00.003-04:00

Here's an email to Eric Felten, who writes a weekly article on cocktails for the Wall Street Journal. In the past I've emailed him and seen him use some of the material, so I am curious to see if that will happen again; if he does I'll try to post it. It is pretty amazing how he can keep that column interesting, largely the trick is knowing all the history I guess. Anyway here is what I sent him.x

Dear Mr. Felten,

We continue to enjoy your columns, continually amazed how you never seem to fail to make a topic interesting, even when pretty sure we won't pursue the featured libations.

We have noticed you don't necessarily note much about seasonal things, and this is in contrast to our own lives; following and respecting the concept of seasons is something we still do now in this age of all things being available 'year round'. As an example, even though oysters can still be found in August, we eschew them; not so much because we don't think they are safe, as might have been a concern a few decades back, but because it just seems we enjoy things more if we consider them to have seasons, making it a treat. And, yes, usually prices come down as well when things are locally in season. Crabs, not oysters, are what we think of in August! The concept of seasons hasn't died (and we hope to find some strawberries today at a possible peak in flavor and low point in price).

But to get back on topic, here in Northern Virginia our mint has come in and this time for sure it is a bumper crop what with all the rain we have been getting. We are certainly delving right in and serving up cocktails that feature mint, mindful of a tactic to benefit from and fight directly the dreariness of these recent days. Mint Juleps today and yesterday Mojitos; life is good! In several months of course the cold weather finally comes in, and the mint will be waning and unattractive; it'll be time to announce our little celebration of "the Last of the Mojitos"! Another season will be ended but all the more joy for the day when the mint returns, having suffered the wait. I'd say having your own mint is somewhat similar to getting home grown tomatoes, what you can get in the store could never measure up.

In the matter of Mojito construction (likely we first heard of them from you), our current recipe got altered by accident. An accidental addition of about 1/4 ounce of blood orange bitters turned out to add a bonus in flavor, and we never make them without that now.

Perhaps other drinks feature mint, don't know. Just passing some thoughts along and looking forward to your next column.

Carl Williams
Arlington, VA

Little Boy Crying Wolf?

2009-05-05T13:55:00.004-04:00

From the article in the below link:

In the matter of swine flu -- and the single dumbest response to it yet -- first prize was about to go to the government of Egypt, which last week ordered a cull of the country's estimated 400,000 pigs ...

[There] is a legion of heavily credentialed panic proliferators.... the people whose terrifying forecasts you last heard during the avian flu panic of 2005 (deaths to date: 257, according to the World Health Organization) and the SARS panic of 2002-2003 (774 deaths). By contrast, garden-variety flus typically kill upwards of 30,000 Americans a year.
... science writer Wendy Orent has pointed out in the New Republic, "only the precise conditions of World War I's Western Front -- a true disease factory -- could have created a flu as virulent as the one responsible for the 1918 pandemic. . . . The virus didn't need to keep people well enough to walk about -- fresh victims were close at hand."
Sure enough, no flu pandemic has been even remotely comparable: The worst was the Asian flu of 1957-58, which killed an estimated two million people, including 70,000 in the U.S. (or about twice the annual average.)
... trend lines indicate we are better equipped than ever to minimize the effects of a pandemic.

Why? Because wealthier people tend to be healthier people, and because wealthier societies have more to invest in medicine and research, and because a higher standard of living tends to correlate with more personal space. Also, because globalization means information sharing across boundaries, and rapid adoption of best practices, and greater transparency.

LINK

Modern Conundrums

2009-04-30T14:57:00.001-04:00

Looks like I will not be able to resolve a conflict between not wanting to join in with the modern"throw-away" society and not wanting to waste money. I have a really great pocket size Leatherman-type tool that someone gave me; one of the things that folds away is a tiny flashlight. The guy who gave it to me bought a dozen or so real cheap, and it's clear now what the reason might be: after practically no use at all the flashlight no longer works! To make a long story short, went to Radio Shack [which btw always seems to have any battery you can dream up] and discovered that to replace the 4 tiny batteries inside, it would cost me $20. I can buy a new tool for $10 at a hardware store.

Modern times indeed. I can't make myself into a fool that would buy batteries that cost more than a new tool, nor can I make myself buy a new tool when I have a perfectly good old one that just needs batteries.

*Sigh*

Whatever Happened to Epidemics

2009-04-28T06:05:00.003-04:00

The buzzword now seems to be Pandemic, not just amongst the media but also at WHO. Seems to me there should be an Epidemic stage before there is a Pandemic stage, so this has me wondering if WHO is into fear-mongering too.

Cuddly Things

2009-04-13T09:50:00.002-04:00

http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/AroundTheWorld/story?id=7320751&page=1

Ponzi Schemes Popping Up All Over

2009-04-11T10:15:00.004-04:00

Current conditions are sure smoking out Ponzi schemes. The Dreier case is pretty interesting, but pretty involved. Amazingly brazen. A link to an article is below.

From the article:

There is an unfortunate optical illusion - a variant on the Doppler effect - that besets all frauds. It's unfortunate, because it has the effect of exacerbating the pecuniary losses that fraud victims endure, by unfairly leaving them, like many rape victims, irrationally ashamed of themselves.
The Doppler principle we posit holds that as a victim approaches a swindler, he sees nothing but green lights. But as soon as he realizes that his money is gone, he spins around and beholds, as if by magic, bright red flags as far as the eye can see

Marc Dreier

The Ultimate Leading Indicator Still Lagging

2009-04-09T12:07:00.005-04:00

Whenever I hear someone lamenting poor service directly related to ill-suited or poorly trained employees, I think: "nope, so far this recession hasn't impressed me." Maybe this is just a local effect, but what I expect to see if things get really bad is people who don't deserve to have jobs being replaced by more qualified people. Not much sign of that yet in our area let me tell you.

Bear in mind, because of my line of work, I react to customer service very mercurially, going from Mr. Tolerant [sympathizing with someone having to deal with the public] to Mr. Irate [outraged from close knowledge about how you are supposed to act].

Another personal incident today to report; our local Bradlee Shopping Center has managed to post a 6th store that I avoid as much as I possibly can. This is a shame because the shopping center is very close to our house [altho a 7th reason I avoid it is the awful experience of trying to park there].

Lemme see:

*The Post Office did not have a certain type of permit I needed; long story but bottom line is you have to wonder what other thing it is they don't have. First class stamps?
Category: avoid to keep from wasting time.

*The Hallmark store, huge for such a place, is full of junk and doesn't have good cards.
Category: avoid to keep from wasting time.

*The Giant grocery consistently does not have certain staples, capable of running out of eggs and things like that. Once I was going to have to wait to check out so that an employee could hold up the line and go and argue with her boss about whether her company debit card should have zero funds or not. I walked out.
Category: avoid to keep from wasting time.

*The ABC liquor store overcharged me, and when, belatedly realizing the error, I went back with my receipt, wouldn't fix it.
Category: avoid to keep from being overcharged.

*The Gourmet Wine, etc, shop stepped all over our interest in a little program they had to special order oysters, reacting to questions about it like W.C. Fields with a child: "go away, boy, you bother me." At some point he shoved his business card at us. I'm not sure what he was thinking but he couldn't have been totally unaware that we would take this as further avoidance. He was the owner.
Category: Some people run their own business because no one would ever hire them. No one should shop with them either, certainly I don't.

*The new incident: I stopped at the pet store today to pick up an item Sue wanted for our cat. What I picked out possibly wasn't the right thing, so I asked the clerk if I could return it if my wife didn't like it. This sixteen-looking person said "OK" but I noticed she acted odd about it, a neck wag or something, so I asked what the store's return policy was. She said they didn't have one. I replied "you just said 'OK' " but got another inappropriate gesture. It occurred to me she didn't know what a return policy was, since it is not possible that the store doesn't have one. I'm picturing that if she isn't there when I returned, someone is going to give me a hard time trying to return a purchase. Still trying to be nice, I suggested the manager would be the one to know. She claimed to be a manager and at that point actually said "what can I help you with?" as if she had no memory of the last 2 minutes. It was time to leave.
Category: do not expect sanity at this store unless the recession continues and other people are hired. Surely this person would not have a job if management, which could not possibly include her in any meaningful way, had any choices whatsoever about who they might hire.

Well, in as much as I'm trying to save the planet, I'm afraid I'm burning up plenty of fossil fuels avoiding our local little shopping center. I'm sorry but some sacrifices are beyond what I can do, life is too short to shop at Bradlee Shopping Center.

Eisenhower saw it coming

2009-04-02T08:17:00.002-04:00

Usually my nephew Aaron is all over this kind of thing, must have caught him napping this time?

Derivates Primer

2009-03-22T11:11:00.004-04:00

Every once in a while, you see an acknowledgement that the secret way in which fantastic returns can be had with derivatives really revolves around the practice of borrowing money to invest, in some fashion or other.

Slam Backfires with Me

2009-03-17T10:26:00.003-04:00

Obama fans, I don't recommend you check out this link. Obama disparagers: it's not that good, you can skip it too. Furthermore, it is a mix of humorous and serious slams. Should be one or the other. And, actually, I don't know why he is being slammed for saying,

“I did think it might be useful to point out that it wasn’t under me that we started buying a bunch of shares of banks. It wasn’t on my watch. And it wasn’t on my watch that we passed a massive new entitlement — the prescription drug plan — without a source of funding. And so I think it’s important just to note when you start hearing folks throw these words around that we’ve actually been operating in a way that has been entirely consistent with free-market principles and that some of the same folks who are throwing the word ’socialist’ around can’t say the same.”

About the prescription drug plan: I remember thinking it was unfunded, something that absolutely no one at the time, politician or journalist, seemed to be talking about. Folks, that had a lot to do with Bush getting elected; running on that campaign promise was brilliant from a political strategy point of view indeed. Fact is, it was a betrayal of a certain degree of fiscal honesty that had been established. And fact is, Obama was making sense when he made this statement.

PSS

2009-03-08T19:13:00.005-04:00

Someone found the lines and I now have them:

Credit to Prof. Prokopovicz, author of Did Lincoln Own Slaves? and Other Frequently Asked Questions about Abraham Lincoln, for finding them:

Act IV, scene ii. King Henry is talking with two soldiers (John Bates and Michael Williams) the night before Agincourt. They don't recognize him in the darkness. Henry points out that the king's cause is just.

WILLIAMS That's more than we know.

BATES Ay, or more than we should seek after; for we know enough, if we know we are the kings subjects: if his cause be wrong, our obedience to the king wipes the crime of it out of us.

WILLIAMS But if the cause be not good, the king himself hath a heavy reckoning to make, when all those legs and arms and heads, chopped off in battle, shall join together at the latter day and cry all 'We died at such a place;' some swearing, some crying for a surgeon, some upon their wives left poor behind them, some upon the debts they owe, some upon their children rawly left. I am afeard there are few die well that die in a battle; for how can they charitably dispose of any thing, when blood is their argument? Now, if these men do not die well, it will be a black matter for the king that led them to it; whom to disobey were against all proportion of subjection.

The reviewer mistakenly attributes this speech to Henry. It does however make sense that Lincoln would be keenly aware of this scene, as the responsibility of command bore heavily on him.

Blackened Heavens

2009-03-08T12:43:00.007-04:00

I have promised a few folks a review for the new play, The Heavens Are Hung In Black by James Still. Here 'tis.

My brother Forrest and his wife Linda accompanied Sue and me. They've really got Ford's Theater fixed up nicely with the new renovation, evidently adding some space from what must have been taken from a nearby area to make a nice lobby, new bathrooms, etc., in addition to fixing up the old interior. The stage, though, still admirably had the original (quite stained) hardwood flooring. BTW Sue only agreed to go in and take her seat after Forrest promised not to jump over the rail of the balcony yelling sic semper tyrannis! if it turned out the play was a polemic against the South.

All kidding aside, I too was a bit concerned that the playwright would just be some dufus endowed with a shaky Pop History notion of the war, and proceed to show all he knew about it was that Northerners were supposed to be the good guys and Southerners the bad guys. But everyone seemed to enjoy the show with agreement that the author and the production took great pains to be quite authentic, willing to show even a bit of clay feet peeking out beneath old Abe. Overall, the evidently intended purpose of creating a sympathetic character who was having a terrible year was pulled off quite nicely.

It impressed me that the production was so concerned about getting the details right, bearing in mind I'm not an expert on Lincoln and furthermore apparently loaned out a Q&A type book on Lincoln which I planned to use to check out some facts. But I am well read enough on the Civil War to pick up pretty quickly any egregious errors or at least raise an eyebrow if something didn't seem quite right. For example, I believe they got Lincoln's voice right, it was a bit squeaky and unimpressive overall; I'm pretty sure that is supposed to be right. Furthermore, Lincoln definitely comes off somewhat as an Illinois/Indiana/Kentucky backwoodsman in his mannerisms, an idea about authenticity that could easily have been discarded. The show, though, just seemed to be about nailing these things down well.

Now all this is in spite of the fact that the program guide advises that the play is "an historical fiction ... [that has] stretched, rearranged, or even changed some of the facts." So I couldn't argue with anyone who might object in some way to this particular portrayal of Lincoln, but would just say that surely we have to grant the license to do so and accept that pretty standard method, if such a play is to be possible at all. Again, I for one did not come away shaking my head at any fictions, but instead was impressed by the overall seeming accuracy of the portrayal. The idea for the play is that this year probably was extremely difficult for Lincoln. He loses his son Willy to disease, having to simultaneously deal with the effect this loss has on his wife. And the war is not going well. Lincoln interacts with a whole host of characters, dead or alive. Stanton, Chase, Jeff Davis, to name a few. John Brown has several appearances; the vehicle for including such as Brown (or Jeff Davis for that matter) is to have them show up in what would appear to be either while Lincoln was dreaming or in reveries of near-madness brought on by lack of sleep and anxiety. Lincoln in fact is shown to have trouble distinguishing between what is real and what is not in such moments; he meets an old Springfield friend while out on one walk in the middle of the night and later tells someone about his amazement at meeting him, only to be told the man had died some time ago. Now I don't know if I've heard any stories that old Abe was getting that crazy in those days! But this type of play, reminiscent maybe of ghosts appearing in Shakespeare or Dickens, has always been a type I like and this one carries it off quite successfully in my opinion. I'd say there is an excellent chance the play will be shown in other venues, perhaps even on TV.

Certainly we were interested in the play as "Civil War Buffs", and found it satisfactory from that point of view. Authenticity sufficed, and such buffs as ourselves just like running into and identifying the various characters too. We ran into one mystery none could solve: in the first act, set in late Spring 1862, Lincoln rails about McClellan (who takes a real beating in this play) failing to cross the Potomac because pontoon boats turned out to be constructed too large to get up the C&O Canal. An internet search turned up this. McClellan describes a failed operation whose purpose was " ... to open the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad by crossing the river in force at Harper's Ferry" It's certainly easy to believe McClellan placed little priority in this from what we know now, and a good vehicle for showing how Lincoln was getting so frustrated with that general. I would judge this to have been the most obscure item brought out in the play.

Everything else is pretty well known, certainly to Civil War buffs. I was pleased to see that the production did not try to change facts about the reality of what the conflict was about. Nor was any decision made to shirk from the reality of Slavery's role. It was a nice balance. Above all, it was surprising and satisfying to see Lincoln voice the opinions he had in those days about Abolition and Racial Equality. Lincoln, Stanton, and Chase have various debates during his reveries that quite frankly express concern about what to do with newly emancipated slaves, and Lincoln flatly expresses to Hay that he is quite mistaken if he thinks the new president's opinions against Slavery mean that he is for Equality of the Races. John Brown, Stephen Douglas, and Dred Scott have some success pointing out contradictions in some of the stands he has tried to take. And we didn't see ordinary Northerners pop in and claim the populace was all for Negro suffrage North and South all along, etc., what was he waiting for? just these other well known characters we knew had those kind of thoughts radical for their day.

The most poignant moment for me was when Lincoln shows up at a Shakespeare play's rehearsal that Edwin Booth was doing with some other actors. Sue thinks it was Henry V. Lincoln surprises the other actors by knowing some of the lines. The actors all fall silent in surprise as he then does a Soliloquy: the lines are those of a King who ponders the terrible effects of war on people, the death and destruction, and ends by declaring that any King who wages war had best be able to justify to those dead and their families that a just cause was involved. Of course I don't have the exact lines and couldn't find exactly this in searching an online version of Henry V. I might have missed it of course, and it is also possible the lines were Lincoln improvising, but in any case it was quite effective and touching.

Bottom line: all Civil War Buffs or Lincoln Admirers see this play if you ever get a chance.

Apologies to RSS folks, I don't seem to be able to put stuff out without going back and doing fixes.

Attn Nieces and Nephews

2009-03-04T11:38:00.002-05:00

You are hereby notified that I have made arrangements for my bill collectors to contact you in the case of my departure. Information you need here.

OK, Cancelling My Plans to Buy A Laptop

2009-03-02T14:16:00.002-05:00

A video. Just when you think it's getting boring, stay tuned.

LINK

It says:

We intentionally created conditions in which the Li-ON battery pack would explode inside a generic portable. The results are dramatic. There are numerous conditions where these fires can occur in real life. Faulty battery packs (driving the recalls), faulty protection circuits inside the PC, exposure to excessive heat, and blunt force are some of the major ways that this could happen to you.

Buffet's Newsletter

2009-03-01T09:06:00.004-05:00

I got a kick out of these remarks from that newsletter to his clients:

Mr. Buffett was just as scathing on the subject of derivatives, which he had likened to weapons of mass destruction long before they started eviscerating the balance sheets of banks around the world.

In his letter, Mr. Buffett explained that the danger of derivatives was not merely the difficulty in assessing their value; rather, it was the “web of mutual dependence” they create among financial institutions. Derivatives contracts keep various parties entangled for years, which, as he vividly explained, can create real hazards once those assets start deteriorating. “Participants seeking to dodge troubles face the same problem as someone seeking to avoid venereal disease,” he wrote. “It’s not just whom you sleep with, but also whom they are sleeping with."

Source Link

PS: from the link within the block quote:

Throughout the 1990s, some argued that derivatives had become so vast, intertwined and inscrutable that they required federal oversight to protect the financial system. But the financial industry lobbied heavily against such measures, and won backing from important figures, including Alan Greenspan, chairman of the Federal Reserve from 1987 to early 2006.

Something To Read If You Want to Get Ticked Off

2009-02-28T06:56:00.002-05:00

It makes me plenty mad to hear some pundit claim that the current fiasco was completely avoidable. I am surely ready to buy the idea that it was largely avoidable.

And to hear things like the insanity of

"former Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin’s $100 million-plus bonuses (while he was busy sowing the seeds of Citigroup’s destruction, with risky derivatives"

Whenever Rubin came on TV in years past he came off like somebody else entirely, I'm not so sure I didn't hear him come up with some Marxist stuff.

Stocks Just Doing Their Thing?

2009-02-25T06:48:00.011-05:00

This recession this time just seems to astonish everybody including the experts. If you own stocks, the body blows you have to take in a week like this are just devastating. Some pundits are even questioning whether "buy and hold" is dead.

I've come across an interactive chart that's proving interesting. By using the scroll bar that comes on a computer mouse and positioning it in the white space above the blue line you can get the chart to show various historic ranges of the DOW. When you quit scrolling and just move the mouse to where the left side expanded to, it gives you an historic figure for that index. [BTW I just realized when writing a post today, you have to try not to use a sentence that uses the plural of 'mouse' or you run into the quandary of "is it 'mice' or 'mouses' when it comes to computers?]

Although I was a stock purchaser as far back as 1976 or so when I got stocks through a company purchase plan [buying their stocks], I don't really consider myself to have been a stock market investor until around 1992. I continued to dilly dally with stocks before then, but I knew very little about how to go about it; I was really just a gambler in stocks, and a piker at that. And doing it in the perfect manner to assure that overall I would fail to see a profit: buying when I had money and selling when things were tight. That is a prescription for 'buying high and selling low' I came to realize, as of course I tended to have money when the economy was good and needed it back when the economy was bad.

Anyway, in the age of IRA's and when I seemed to have enough put away in bank savings to be able to invest in a recommended "buy and hold" manner, I also came across a very interesting claim. This claim probably derived from something factual but gets repeated here and there in a manner without citing sources, so there are different versions, but basically it goes like this:

*stocks lose value very frequently in 5 year time periods.
*10 yr time periods are less risky but sometimes stocks do lose money in such periods.
*there is no 15 yr time period in which stocks lost money.
*there is no 20 yr time period in which stocks didn't outperform any and all other investments, including any period around the Great Depression.

Now I have come to realize that these claims do make some assumptions:

*this assumes you bought stocks in a recommended manner such as systematic purchasing [that creates the benefit of cost averaging].

*to test this there is an assumption you aren't trying to pick out a single stock purchased on, say, the day before the stock market crashed in '29, but a diversified range bought over time.

*the rule assumes we aren't looking at absolute buy and hold, but managed investments. In other words, if you own a mutual fund share, or just look at the historic DOW, these are things that have been managed. The dogs got ditched, and newer more profitable companies are now in the mix.

So, I started to wonder if the above tool [see link] isn't a way to kind of check this out? This week is a good time to try, the market took a dive and if anything it seems to me this is a harsh measure as it mimics buying stocks on just one day and taking a specially selected snapshot to make the comparison look bad. Or perhaps someone can tell me why this doesn't work as a way to test the rule.

In any case, I proceed with the scrolling and find that the comparison with a year or two ago shows horrible losses in the 40% range. If I go back 5 years I still get a horrid 30% or so bombshell. Going back 12 years to March 19th 1997 I get a $7200 DOW figure, about where it is now. The 15 year-ago period, which was pretty stable for weeks, is at around 3800 for the DOW. It certainly does seem unlikely we could drop to that.

Twenty years? Dow was at about 2000 points. Could you make a case that this roughly 400% increase over our current horrid snapshot is better return than any and all other investments for that period? Real estate, which I dislike investing in except for my own home, perhaps did better, but it is a complicated calculation what with all the expenses involved with owning property. You get the snapshot phenomenon with Real Estate, too.

I'd say it's pretty remarkable how the rule has held up even with the current snapshot. Certainly the 15 yr rule has held up and looks safe, something I have counted on very heavily [and 15 years ago is about the time I really started investing in stocks too]. The 20 year rule can make a case although I am less sure about that. I'll bet it is better than if you had invested in gold, though.

Well, am I all wet?

A Collection

2009-02-22T15:59:00.003-05:00

Especially hilarious or incredibly brazen email spam I have collected over the years. The Chase Credit card is probably legitimate but an example of a company that sends out their, well, spam alright, that looks like it came from Nigeria. You can click on the image to get a larger size.

Note to RSS folks, I had to re-do this, one item didn't belong in the folder!

claim: Men have experienced 82 percent of the recession's job losses

2009-02-21T07:28:00.003-05:00

Quite interesting article. I was definitely hearing news that "job growth for men" had been a problem area even during overall recent economic growth prior to the crash. Makes you wonder if it wasn't one of the signs of an imminent problem.

The author doesn't provide a source for the 82 percent statistic.

sigh

2009-02-13T15:54:00.003-05:00

Sue alerted me to the news that a court has ruled on current autism cases. WSJ has a good article, and it's also in their health blog. Sometimes I think the "comments" sections are a real glimpse at just how nutty so many people are. The first commenter in the health blog says

"I think part (if not all) of the Autism Epidemic is caused by the SIDS Back to Sleep campaign" [having kids sleep on their backs].

OK, let's ignore the article and immediately jump on a chance to bore everybody with our own stupid agenda!

I am definitely growing into a someone who really is starting to worry that the average guy now is just a nut.

Whodathunkit?

2009-02-11T06:41:00.002-05:00

Blow your nose the right way!

And You Thought This Was 19th Century Stuff

2009-02-07T10:22:00.002-05:00

A new Nullificatin Crisis! All old Unreconstructed Rebels call your office! you may be moving to New Hampshire!

Nothing to Worry About!

2009-02-04T13:09:00.004-05:00

I'm hearing stories that it's just unfortunate that the compensation for Wall Street Fat Cats is called "bonuses" when it's actually just delayed compensation, albeit based on performance. Furthermore, from this article,

"The $18 billion sum was down 40 percent from a year ago, and it was paid to 160,000 people. Most of them earned less than the average of $112,500 apiece."

Well, OK then, with Obama's cap at $500,000, the people I would care about have nothing to worry about. And the ones making millions can tough it out or forget coming to the public trough.

Fraud Update

2009-01-28T09:51:00.002-05:00

Chase gave me no trouble at all, issued a new card with next day delivery free, and I just need to sign something they are sending verifying it is fraud.

It seemed to be helpful to mention that if you "google" the name showing on the fraudulent card, immediately forums come up that verify other people have had the same problem.

Sexting is the New Thing?

2009-01-27T13:03:00.001-05:00

I guess I'll have to risk sounding like an impossible old goober, but I have to tell you that sometimes you just see things with up and coming generations that makes you say, "you know, they are just a different breed." This business of girls sending other people pictures of themselves nude, using their cell phones, just puzzles the heck out of me.

This story is making the rounds now. Occasionally, I also have heard of guys cracking up in their cars on the highway after their girlfriends just sent them pictures of their bare breasts. That's funny. The problem is, of course, too many times they break up and, oops, those pictures are out there! It can get legally complicated when the girl is underage. There was a case in Pennsylvania not too long ago where the state police wanted to teach all the guys that all of a sudden had pictures of an underage girl a lesson: threats of charges of child pornography trafficking started to get tossed around, and at the very least these high school students were told they had to get rid of the pictures. At some point someone had to tell the cops the pictures were out there in cyberspace and probably every computer in Hong Kong had the pictures.

Apparently, again, the girls in the above link just didn't quite understand something like this could happen! Yet they were sending the pictures to everybody! Back in my teenage days, there were some wild girls around, but none of them thought they could start passing polaroid pictures of themselves around and not worry about it. A different breed out there today, no doubt about it.

Fraud Dept.

2009-01-26T16:53:00.003-05:00

This one showed up on one of my credit cards. I suspect fraud and am checking it out. In the link, you see people are advising to monitor activity for other fraudulent charges on any card this comes up on.

I emailed an alert out to all, in case this is widespread. I am buying 100% the idea that this little charge tests whether your card is for real or not to the criminal.

I'll tell you what is making me plenty mad so far: this dates that are posted on the Forum start last December, yet, clearly, the credit card companies cheerfully continue to allow charges to go through. Grrrrrrrrrrrrrr!

Three Tests in One!

2009-01-24T22:09:00.001-05:00

OK, you can test yourself here for three things simultaneously:

*Whether you would like musicals or not.
*Whether you would want to be a salesperson or not.
*Whether you would like barbershop singing or not.

The Link

Anybody seen the old movie "Hospital" ?

2009-01-24T12:51:00.002-05:00

Can't resist posting this one. Sorry for the string of "hey check it out" posts, I keep planning a real post soon.

Interesting, in light of current events

2009-01-15T12:33:00.004-05:00

Some wikepedia writer wrote this:

"Milton Friedman's monumental A Monetary History of the United States, co-written with Anna Schwartz, makes the now standard interpretation of what made the "great contraction" so severe. It was not the downturn in the business cycle, trade protectionism or the 1929 stock market crash that plunged the country into deep depression. It was the collapse of the banking system during three waves of panics over the 1930-33 period.^[39]"

LINK

Carry an Umbrella if on Wall Street?

2009-01-14T12:31:00.003-05:00

There have been a bunch of suicides with financial people, not necessarily from Wall Street [and not just affected-by-Madoff]. A baker's dozen so far. Seems like I've heard that it was kind of a myth stock brokers jumped off buildings in 1929. Now I wonder.

1 Adolf Merckle, industrialist
2 Steven Good, real estate executive
3 René-Thierry Magon de La Villehuchet, investor
4 Eric Von der Porten, fund manager
5 Alex W. Widmer, banker
6 Choi Seong-guk, asset manager
7 Joseph A. Luizzi, futures trader
8 Karthik Rajaram, entrepreneur
10 Edwin Rachleff, stock broker
11 Scott Coles, mortgage executive
12 Barry Fox, financial analyst
13 Walter Buczynski, mortgage executive

LINK

Oh, Pulease!!

2009-01-06T09:55:00.002-05:00

I am starting to think that the people who have predicted the Safety Nazis will be able to succeed in banning smoking absolutely everywhere, including the privacy of one's own home, may be correct. The latest.

A New Bag Lady

2009-01-02T13:14:00.002-05:00

She calls herself here.

PS: corrected the link to start with page one.

OK, now I know what to bet on

2009-01-02T12:09:00.002-05:00

I'm going to find Centenarians, who probably feel pretty lucky, and bet them they don't make it to be Supercentenarians. [definition of the latter is someone making it to age 110]. I'll give 'em 110 to one odds. *diabolical laughter*.

"Assuming that there are 300 million U.S. Citizens, the chances of someone becoming a centenarian is 1:4 thousand (~80,000 US centenarians today); on the other hand, the chances of someone becoming a Supercentenarian is only 1:4 million."

the "That Really Bothers Me" blog

Egged On

Kepler

Egg Adventures

Most Interesting

The Two Day Bulb Change

Perhaps the Republic is Doomed

Cars of Yesteryear

How Is a Tarantula Like an Elephant?

Knows Everything?

Photon Torpedo Hit Is My Guess

Plenty of places in VA must overmatch GPS

Two to Check Out and Feel Humble

I missed this!

Answer to Trivia Question

World Population Trivia

The Brain is Something

Stuck in Traffic

New Razor Threatens Face of Arlington Resident

New Tires

Some Kids Had All the Fun

Gaming the System with Credit Cards

Hating Your Car

The Nuclear Option and Other Thoughts on Credit Cards

Unacceptable Practices That Go On Anyway

"Reports from the US say Mr Shahzad recently returned from a five-month visit to Pakistan. "

It's Eyjafjallajökull, OK!!!

Starting to see Obamacare Information

Good News For California Amongst the Bad

Apparently the Downside is Exaggerated

Not a Bushie but...

Good thing Hawaii has mountains

Boy Are We Dumb

Object Lesson

This One Hits Home

Follow Up Post

Warm-Mongering

WedMd on the Flu Shot

OH, The Swine!!

Starting to Look Like There Was No Excuse For This

Didn't Know We Already Set a Record

It's Just Me

Jon Stewart on not meeting with the Dalai Lama

This Got Downplayed

Financial Advisors Are Getting New Scrutiny

This Was Interesting

"state officials, who came over, did tests, and told her to have the room cleaned by a hazardous waste crew - to the tune of over $2,000"

OK this is in bad taste, sorry.

But They Always Say Satisfaction Guaranteed!!

Redskins fans!

Soon: Self Realization for Computers and the End of Times

Forrest's New Gun

Deja Vu

Open Letter to the Beer Activist

Breaking New Ground

Stumbling Across Things Disturbing

Photos From the Final Frontier

Lenny Dykstra as Investing Genius Part II

We Are Being Invaded

Men, relish this, Ladies, get mad!

“silver crime”

Barney gets Touchy

Art of a Killer

Ha! Back Off Carl-Bashers!!

Are all Crisco shortening products now trans fat free?

A phishing danger I was unaware of

I'm leaving! No, Really! I'm leaving!!

Lincolnitis

No Movie for Old Men?

Email to Mr. Felten

Little Boy Crying Wolf?

Modern Conundrums

Whatever Happened to Epidemics

Cuddly Things

Ponzi Schemes Popping Up All Over

The Ultimate Leading Indicator Still Lagging

Eisenhower saw it coming

Derivates Primer

Slam Backfires with Me

PSS

sigh