PS

Good comment by somebody:

"Kimberly Wake Up"

As a reporter, if this is your attempt at research, then it is pathetic at best. There exists SERIOUS concerns about MyGallons. Where do I start?

First let's look at the found Steven Verona - filed for bankruptcy in 2000 and has a history of dubious business ventures. More importantly, NO material history of effective commodity risk management.

Second, the company currently has NO way to provide it's 'members' with a fuel card. He claims he will find a replacement card provider, but that takes months of work. he should shut down the site until he is ready. He is currently still accepting members and collecting $30-$40 in fees.

MyGallons is operating out of a 'virtual' office in Miami. The address of MyGallons on their site is 1221 Brickell Ave, Suite 900. Regus (the office leasing company) uses that address for those looking to have a "virtual" office with the benefits of a 'credible' address. Rent starts at $250/month. The operation may not even physically be at that address. Does that not raise another flag for you?

The US Bank/Voyager logos along with logos of Exxon, Sunoco, BP, Shell, etc have all been removed from his site in recent days. Hmmmm, why would that be you think??? That doesn't help those that signed up when those logos were present on the website launch.

The honorable thing to do is shut down the site until all the pieces are in place. Otherwise it IS misleading regardless of the defense MyGallons will list on their site or in the press. The currently have NO facility to provide it's members with a card - FACT. The list goes on Kimberly. MyGallons has an "F" rating for a reason.

Peter of ME

My Gallons Dot Com

Check it out, an idea my brother Forrest and his wife Linda came across:

http://mygallons.com/how_it_works.html

I think I would want to talk to someone who has taken the plunge. It's not $30 a year if you don't sign up for automatic funding... they can forget that, so that means $40 per year for me.

They say "virtually all" gas stations will accept the card. I'd like to hear from someone we trust who says in fact he hasn't had a problem with that.

Clearly, anyone who signed up last year would be looking brilliant now, and any hassles would be easy to blow off as unimportant. Signing up now is less clearly advantageous, but even if we had signed up earlier, that advantage would be gone [I think] by having spent the investment. It will be a crap shoot every time you try to decide how much money to lock into at the lower prices? Less than $500 might be a waste of time when $50, or $100, gets eaten up instantly? I'm using question marks because I haven't really gotten into those details.

testing, testing, 1, 2, 3

What Happened?

I started a big long post on the Fundamentalist Mormons, but have decided to make it a short one. I kept looking at what I wrote and just keep wanting to write it again, thinking I can't say what I want to say. One of my problems is I that I don't want to seem like I'm really sympathizing with the largely unsavory aspects of that community in any other way than to say that I can't stand to see even a despicable group's rights violated. And I don't believe it was necessary to do so in this case. I am capable of feeling differently; sometimes I lose my high and mighty notions. I certainly have been known to go around claiming the Gunn City Massacre is a model of how we ought to handle some of the scoundrels involved in some of these fiascos like the Sub-Prime scandal. I guess such a claim is a type of bluster that I don't really subscribe to. If you make me get "all serious" you could get me to disavow such things as rooting for Vigilante action. But if it seemed to me that a lot of wrongdoing was going on with the FLDS while they hid behind their rights, that could bother me too. Just the same, to my knowledge, no member of that Mormon community has been charged with anything since the raid, which hardly sounds right. So far this seems to have been the sole result: State of Texas Shells Out 14 Million Dollars after FLDS Raid .

Something that struck a lot of people were reports that the same Child Protection Agency that was so eager to take these kids, claiming they were mistreated, then basically began to mistreat them, albeit in a different way. Particularly poignant was the report that Texas Child Protection employees reacted to children crying for their mothers by following these kids around and taking notes. Of course the agency was totally overwhelmed, something that these kinds of agencies never seem to be able to foresee is going to happen. It does seem to me that the same agencies with people who are totally ready to sympathize with the plight of the families they are supposed to help have no concept of how impossible they themselves are making the situation.

Can a Greenie be a Safety Nazi? Maybe not!

Yep, turns out there are some things we should have known about the notion of saving the planet by buying hip light bulbs. I have to admit, it bugged me to see that roughly 100 watts was the highest equivalent that seemed to be out there for the new fluorescent bulbs. And you don't want anything to make you hesitate when you are paying extra. In the meantime, looks like we get to see a civil war between Safety Nazis and Tree Huggers.

The below is some highlights from:
http://www.wtopnews.com/?nid=97&sid=1403277

Is everybody going to be happy with what they see when using fluorescent bulbs?

Not unless there are some significant improvements over the fluorescent lights available in the marketplace today. The New York Times did a comparison of the quality of light from 21 bulbs, including 14 compact fluorescents. The results were not encouraging. They found that the response of the testing panel went the range from a collective groan to enthusiasm at what they saw.

Are there other concerns?

Yes, cleaning up breakage and recycling are challenges because of the mercury in fluorescent bulbs. Since the mercury can be a health hazard, you need to use care before cleaning up a broken bulb. Everyone, including pets, should leave the room, and don't let anyone walk through the breakage on the way out. Open the windows and let the room air out for at least 15 minutes before attempting to clean up the mess. Also, shut off the central heating or air conditioning system so you don't get residue in the ducts.

Recycling also is a challenge because you should not just place them in your regular trash. Unfortunately, at this point recycling can take some effort on the part of consumers [blah blah blah] [are you kidding me?]

Do Despicable People Have Rights?

Apologies in advance for what's possibly a too-controversial post for what basically is a friends-and-family blog. I'll keep it brief. But something that is going on is "really bothering me."

Reading and listening to TV and radio, I'm finding that not everybody agrees that what is going on in Texas with the Mormon Fundamentalists is a totally unacceptable violation of the civil rights of these people. The current line of thought for people who aren't bothered by it seems to be something like: "the DNA is going to nail a bunch of these men for underage sex and polygamy, so that's going to justify everything."

As far as what is actually wrong with this, maybe Ben Stein has said it best. (hyperlinked)

Those who think this is all OK seem to say that because they aren't child abusers themselves, there's no need to be concerned about the heavy handed tactics. This reminds me of the argument that we shouldn't mind giving up our rights to improve our security in this age of terrorism. Such people have said, they don't mind if the government listens to their phone calls, because they aren't doing anything illegal. And so on with other examples. I guess you could go down the entire Bill of Rights and say, what's there to worry about amongst us law abiding citizens? Search my house without a warrant, what do I have to hide anyway?

Wrong thinking! It does matter that we keep our rights, and that authorities respect "due process." No! you shouldn't say it's OK for the government to listen in without warrants on private conversations; maybe today you don't care but maybe tomorrow you'll wonder who is listening when you are complaining about the Government. And although I am someone who wonders if criminals get mollycoddled a little too much sometimes, I have to admit that even with the Miranda rights in place, some poor souls get railroaded anyway. New ability to use DNA evidence, as a matter of fact, has made it clear that some people must have been executed who were innocent. A lot of them got convicted on the basis of (notoriously unreliable) eyewitness evidence, but more than a few went down in a process of police interviewing that is becoming more and more discredited. So now is a time to relax standards for due process?

People are used to the police pretty much leaving law abiding citizens alone. I get this feeling it's hard to explain to many that this can change fast. A little taste of the "Officer Owens" - of an early post here - can make you understand fast that no sooner than certain people of that ilk get the message that it's time to give citizens of category X the business, you indeed will be getting the business. And the next thing you know, you find that same person thinks it is OK to misrepresent the facts in court (which happened BTW); after all, you are supposed to go down. Seems like, too, the further away from local government such messages get sent, the more radical the notions get about how to handle those of category X.

I can't say it any better than Ben Stein. Those people getting railroaded today on the basis of a crank call might be despicable as Hell in a multitude of aspects, but I want to say that anybody who can watch the videos of the state overreacting and just say, "it's OK, I don't like those people anyway," is somebody who is part of the problem instead of the solution. The right thing for us to be doing is to decry such things when we see them, and pray to God it won't spread to us next.

Modern Times at the Store

I've felt a blog coming on about "modern times and the shopping experience" for a long time, and finally something has happened to get me motivated enough to write about it. It's going to be hard to keep this brief as there sure is a long list of things "that really bother me" about the various stores we've been shopping at. This'll take more than one post.

What really bothers me? It's not just about high prices. But that too - like onions that nearly cost a dollar and apples that cost more than two - but what else is new? I'm striving, though, to avoid being like my father, who I remember remarking, when he himself was middle aged, that elderly people live in a world with a skewed evaluation of what things are worth, going back mentally to all the old prices of their younger days and tending to be unable to comprehend just how much the dollar had changed in value. Dad seemed to say (like I'm saying now) that he "wasn't going to be like that." Yet he was unable to avoid this fate when he got to be in his 80's, generating some family stories about various things he said and did. He did develop a form of dementia, I should note; but are we all doomed to wind up living in the past when it comes to the dollar?

Outside of inflation, though, I find myself getting quite aggravated shopping, especially at the grocery store. Things have changed. Not so long ago, we'd be able to go to a single store and get all of our shopping done at once. Now, though, it takes a trip to at least two different grocers, and not because we are too picky; stores are perfectly capable of being out of staples. You can't get these stores to admit it, but a large part of the problem seems to be computerized inventory control. Sometimes it seems clear someone has been assigned to check out the shelf stock the old fashioned way, but this never lasts long. It seems clear when this is just being done by computer; you have the phenomenon now of finding empty shelf space one day, going back for the next few months and discovering it still empty. A sample of the things that have been missing for months from certain shelves that I have noticed include cranberry juice, lime juice, black peppercorns, tomato soup, lard, specialty brands generally, and club soda; in some cases what was missing was the most popular size container.

The reactions of the store employees has been very interesting. In modern times, the idea is to provide lip service, while doing nothing to actually correct a problem. One employee told Sue that she wasn't finding black peppercorns because of the difficulties the neighborhood was causing as far as when they were allowed to empty trucks. Supposedly this problem was causing the peppercorns to be missing from the shelf for months on end. Another employee, told that lime juice in an economical size had been missing every time we checked, reacted by getting temporary approval to reprice the smaller size if we bought several. I'm sure that guy went home and told his wife that he was proud of how he solved this problem for us. But really, he didn't do what I would want him to do, and that is to make sure in future that the proper size was going to be there so that we didn't have to stop and try to find an assistant manager or somebody every time we needed the item. After all, he didn't deny it was supposed to be available, but as the weeks went by I saw that nothing had been done to correct the stocking error. When we stated we felt computerized stocking was the problem, oddly these employees tended to deny it.

Now I do have a slight sympathy for those trying to use computers for stocking, humans are not perfect either. My own experience with it is that you tend to overstock certain items, especially popular ones, fearing a loss of profit and wanting to avoid that reputation of being out of essential items. I've screwed it up in my day, and I've seen others do worse; company Buyers can absolutely put a company out of business with their mistakes. We once had a neighbor who could explain what happens when computerized stocking goes bad, though, and it's not all the machine's fault. We went over the missing cranberry juice phenomenon with this neighbor, and I complained the shelves were full of a dazzling array of choices, cranberry juice, cran-apple, cran-grape, cran-apple lite, low fat low salt cran-lemon, high-fiber sugar free cran-mango-soy that doesn't harm the environment, etc., yet the plain regular cranberry juice was not to be found. He concurred, saying his job was to try to make these very systems work, so he would find some guy doing inventory at the cranberry juice aisle grouping all these different choices together as just cranberry juice "because they are all the same price." Well, now of course the computer thinks the store is jam packed with regular juice and desperately needs to order all the other items, being absolutely out of them. I've even become convinced that some items vanish completely, never to be seen again, because some computer notes that the very product that supposedly is vastly overstocked also never sells!

It would seem to be true that buying the items, which all get bar-coded, has no effect on stocking decisions. And all these choices have another irritating effect: it's too darn easy to grab the wrong item, wanting the regular version and accidentally picking up the "lite" version or whatever. Anyway, we are finding ourselves having to go to more than one store these days, we just accept it as a fact. So shopping is a lot more involved, and burns up a lot more time and gas, than it used to. Al Gore call your office.

This isn't what set me off enough to do a post, so stay tuned.

A Vote for Ron Paul

I can definitely be a one-issue voter. I can remember somebody saying when Gilmore was running for Governor of Virginia: "tsk, tsk, it's awful that people voters can be one-issue-voters and elect Gilmore because he's promising to end the 'car tax' " I immediately responded, "yeah, well that's me, I hate that tax!"

Now I'm absolutely all wound up again and brother I had to vote for Ron Paul and yessir yabetcha it's a one issue thing again!

What burning issue has me riled up? The tax man cometh, and I was reminded yet again that the tax code does not allow people to deduct medical expenses unless they are enormous: the first 7.5% of your income. I think this is outrageously wrong, personally. It certainly flies in the face of the modern notion as to what a person should have to pay out of his own pocket for health care [i.e. as close to absolutely nothing as possible]. But think about it - it does fit perfectly with the government's notions about personal health care expenses, which is that those personal expenses can cost next to nothing as long as part of the payments go to support the Bureaucracies they have created.

Last year our family had some dental expenses, and we didn't want to wait to cover these unexpected expenses by setting up a Flex plan. There really are a lot of problems with these Flex programs, the major problem being it is too hard to predict what your uncovered medical expenses are going to be. Yet you have to able to do this perfectly in advance or any excess money you set aside actually can be taken from you. Dental expenses are a good example of what Flex plans are not good for as they often arise on an emergency basis and often are not in the nature of something that can reasonably be postponed. So yet again I'm thinking, maybe we'll be able to take it off our taxes, but oh no, the amount would have to be far greater than it is and we just have to eat these expenses. Thanks a lot US tax code!

So how does this lead me to vote for Ron Paul in the Virginia primary? Let me explain.

I decided I needed to finally bone up on how each candidate stood on the issue of health care. Then by golly I could vote for the guy who represented my views the best! Each candidate's website has a section for "issues, " so, it was pretty easy to do. It was interesting to read between the lines.

For example, looks to me like the issue of Universal Health Care has become urgent for some reasons I didn't know about. Turns out one of the things breaking the bank for Medicaid is that people who wind up on it are usually uninsured, then when they have health problems they really sock it to the government. To be put in this position is like allowing a person to drive around without car insurance, wait until they get into an accident, then go get whatever insurance they need and use it to cover them for the accident they just had. Of course private insurance isn't done that way. In fact one of the notorious techniques they have to control costs, canceling that insurance after paying off, is unavailable to the government. Seems that policy wonks have really decided this situation has to go, believing that it's going to be possible to collect some kind of payments out of most of these same people while they are healthy. Supporting Universal Health Care, then, is win-win for these candidates, as the policy wonks are going to be in support of what they say while they get to look like what they care about is all the poor people.

It was also asserted by Obama that three quarters of health care costs today are generated by people with chronic problems like diabetes and heart disease. I didn't know that either; and man that has to be clobbering Medicaid now.

So anyway I went through all the candidate's positions on health care and most of them weren't really saying what I want to hear. For one thing, one of the things that is really wrong with our system IMO seems to be only mentioned by Huckabee. He points out that the employer based insurance that predominates is a flawed thing that came about "as a way around World War II wage-and-price controls." I'd like all the candidates to home in on this, and I'm ready to rant about it, but am going to save that for another post.

When I got to Ron Paul things frankly weren't much better but I have to give him credit for saying one thing I wanted to hear: he says he's for "making all medical expenses tax deductible." Hooray! Mr. one-issue, Yours Truly, zoomed to the polling station and gave Paul the honors.

I suppose I have to let you know that I often just do a "protest vote" and really this was one of those times. If Paul had any chance at all, I'd have to reconsider really voting for him. But as it was, it felt really good!

PS: while researching positions I came across a set of really, really idiotic stuff from so-called experts. Some moron is actually quoted as saying a good idea is to eliminate health insurance altogether [#7]. Now I'm as ready to listen to varied opinions as anybody, but that has to be the stupidest thing ever said when it comes to ideas about fixing health care. The other dolts are not much better. God save us from experts!

PS

I meant to include this link on the last blog. This has to be the ultimate !!

http://www.thudguard.com/


more post-script:
another dubious TV show on the supernatural has hit the airwaves. I am glad to say I have not watched it, but it sounds just as bad or even worse than "Ghost Hunters".

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

Eggnog and Other Dangers of Modern Life

We see above a picture I scanned from a newspaper showing kindergartners at a local school digging into some kind of "rock" constructed from flour, searching for hidden treasure it seems. I got a big kick out of the idea they needed to be wearing eye protection.

One thing Sue keeps saying is "How did we as kids ever survive?" Surely the kinds of risks our parents exposed us to just letting us go outside to play would peg them today as child abusers. How exactly did we ever develop into a society where our kids must live in a risk-free world? Who decided this and how did society become so intense about enforcing this notion?

Certainly one of the culprits is our Tort system. You have to expect defensive behavior in a world where anyone might sue anyone for anything, no matter how ridiculous. As a consequence, some of the warning labels and disclaimers you see can be quite hilarious. One of my favorite disclaimers is in a commercial that shows an SUV driving into a volcano and subsequently getting blown out of it, landing miles away. "Do not attempt" it advises.

Michigan Lawsuit Abuse Watch certainly has some good ones on warning labels; after all the humorous examples it goes on to say "Predatory lawyers know they can file ridiculous lawsuits against innocent product makers and blackmail them into cash settlements..." But what amazes me is that it seemingly proves effective to use the warning labels and disclaimers in the first place. Sometimes I see some disclaimer flashed on the screen in tiny writing, and for an impossibly short period of time. Is it really true that anyone trying to sue some company that does that would just hear the judge say, "yes, it was too tiny to read and shown too briefly to read, but that was all that was required by the law and therefore you lose your lawsuit."

The law is an ass, they say. An ass that does not care how ridiculous it looks, it would seem. I remember watching a program that had a bunch of lawyers on it and one of them criticized the lawsuit that the lady had against McDonalds for making their coffee too hot to pour on your crotch. One of the other lawyers spoke up and said something like "actually I was involved in this and you know if you learn the details you find the lady had a good case, McDonalds had been warned before and blah blah blah." I guess it is probably true, that if you were involved and you buried yourself only in the legal issues, anyone who was willing to look at it only from that perspective possibly could be convinced of this.

And then there is the phenomenon of not having a warning label where one would be advisable. Take the recent case of popular little seats made to put a baby in; apparently the manufacturer suggested the kid was not able to get out of the seat and parents were using it to put the child aside so it did not have to be watched. And they would put child and seat on the tops of tables and counters [the company had literature showing this usage]. Of course there have been several incidents of severe injuries as the kid and seat topple off together to hit the floor. Well, I have little sympathy for that company [or for the dumb parents either].

I was hoping I would be able to tell you the results of an experiment I undertook. The white 7 gallon buckets that are used for my homebrewing hobby carry a big warning label that a child could fall into the bucket and drown. It occurred to me that possibly this was something that has never happened except in crazy circumstances, since under normal circumstances a child unable to get out of the bucket would also not be able to get into it. So I had Google email me every time it had a news story involving the words "drown" and "bucket" or "pail." I decided the experiment failed as there was a long period with no emails [something wasn't working] and too many stories where it wasn't clear what happened. I also decided that possibly incidents wouldn't always make the news. I wound up with just a few stories on buckets, and only one was clearly a case of drowning in a bucket similar to what I use for homebrewing [one that drywall paste comes in]. But no details of how it happened. I sure got emailed a lot of tragic stuff. Vast quantities of children drown in swimming pools and bathtubs, with an eerie constant factor being that toddlers do so silently and without much struggle, theoretically not quite realizing what is happening. There were several stories worldwide of children drowning in mop buckets, one kid also drowned in a bucket that her mother had vomited in [ugh!]. As I remember they threw the book at that poor lady. But 90% of the articles Google sent were public-service type warning that children could drown in such buckets! Nonetheless it was a failed but interesting experiment.

[bad link edited out]