Aimless Wandering

I could write a long post about how difficult the beginning of 2009 has already been for us, but I’ll let The Wife handle that.  But it’s safe to safe that the last day of 2008 and the first day of 2009 truely sucked.

So two months ago I broke down and created a Facebook account.  Believe it or not, I’m actually rather protective of my online privacy.  I know working on two blogs, regular appearances on one podcasts while producing and hosting a second, plus two Flikr streams doesn’t seem appear like I keep a lot of privacy online…  But leave me with my delusion ok?

Actually to try and protect some of my privacy, my profile isn’t hanging out there for all the world to see and much of it is hidden for the enjoyment of friends only.  Given how little I put in my profile it amazes me how much some people are willing to put in their profile, especially considering the poor record that Facebook has when it comes to privacy issues - anybody remember Beacon?  If anybody who’s a friend of me in Facebook wants my phone number or e-mail address they can ask me for it.  I’m just not keen on leaving it hanging out there for the world to see.

But the real dilemma I have with Facebook is regarding friends.  There’s A LOT of people on Facebook that I know - but just because I know them does that mean I want to friend them?  I don’t consider my Facebook account to be a vanity page, but rather as a way for me to keep in touch with past and current friends.  I know some folks who accept every friend request they get, but I don’t.  I’ve received a few that I have declined because I think Facebook recommended them even though I have no idea who they are.  But what about the folks I went to high school with?  There are a few folks that I hung out with that I sought out on Facebook and a few others who managed to find me.  But now there are folks who I never hung out with in high school who are trying to friend me up…  Most if not all of them were in the “popular” crowd, and few if any of them would even give me the time of day when we were in school yet now they’re coming to me to be my friend in Facebook.  Do I graciously accept their requests which make me look more popular, even though if it was 17 years ago and I was requesting to be their friend they’d probably say no?  Or do I ignore them since I didn’t get along with them back then and don’t really have much interest in them now.  Of course for a few of them, if I accept their request I get the opportunity to flaunt that unlike them I didn’t grow up to be an ignorant townie living in a run down single wide whose biggest aspiration is to some day move into a new double wide…

My favorite are the two requests that I haven’t answered yet.  I’m probably going to decline them, mainly because I don’t remember who they are.  I think I recognize the names, but I’ll be damned if I remember what they look like.

This afternoon I happened to have been watching MSNBC when the shuttle Endeavor landed.  For those not keeping score, the shuttle landed at Edwards AFB this afternoon due to bad weather in Florida.

Shuttle landings have become pretty routine, but at least a few of the cable channels pay attention when the shuttle comes in.  But it was pretty obvious that the anchor at MSNBC really had no clue about the shuttle program.

For those not in the know, landings at Edwards while not preferred used to be pretty common.  When the shuttle program first started Edwards was where the shuttle always landed.  It wasn’t until a few years after the program began that the runway at Kennedy Space Center was upgraded to accomodate the shuttle.  However the anchor kept trying to make a big deal over the fact that the runway was a little shorter and a little narrower than the one at KSC…  As if they don’t train to land at Edwards or the shuttle had NEVER landed at Edwards….

Is it foolishness or idiocy to be so anti-seatbelt that you’re willing to drive for an hour listening to the car bong at you than put on a a seatbelt?

Not just that but to refuse to even buckle the belt behind you to make the bong stop.

You Make The Call

Wow almost a month since the last post here.  It wasn’t intentional, but then again the only reason I started this site was to have an outlet to write stuff that I wanted to get out.  While the thought of having legions of followers would be cool - I’m neither disciplined enough nor opinionated enough to regularly get posts up which means I probably will never get legions of followers.  Plus I kinda lost my muse for a bit - at least when it came to long form writing.

It hasn’t helped that after coming back from our amazing trip to England I had a difficult few weeks - and that’s about all of the elaboration I’m willing to provide to the interwebz on that.

There have been a few cool things that have happened though.  First - I’ve been guaranteed a promotion next year.  I have no idea when it’s coming, but I do know it’s coming (weird I know), even better is that it’s a promotion I never thought I’d get when we moved out here.

I’m also really excited that db has asked me to play a bigger role on White Roof Radio.  Over the next few weeks I’ll be filling in for one of the regular presenters.  For the few readers who don’t know what White Roof is, it’s one of the most popular automotive podcasts on the internet.  We’ve met db and Todd not long after moving out out here and I’ve been on the show a few times even The Wife has been on a few of the event shows.  Now it looks like I will be filling in a bit more often, I’m not replacing anybody just pinch hitting.

Thanks to yet another crash of Coppermine over at www.mycruiseplanner.net I’ve taken a second look at Flickr.  When I first looked at Flickr a few years ago I was instantly turned off.  At the time it looked like nothing more than a wasteland of crummy camphone pictures, however I’ve been pleasantly surprised at the quality of pictures now collected there.  As a result I created an account for the business and put up the pictures from the UK trip as well as the pictures I took from my trip on the USCGC Eagle back in August.  I’m hoping there’s a way I can integrate the photostream on flickr with the mycruiseplanner.net site but for the mean time I’m happy to just have repository that appears reliable.  Of course, I’ve been bitten by online photo sites going under and taking my pictures with them before so I’m still a bit leary of third party hosts.  But for now I’m not too concerned…

So we’re back from 14 days in the UK.  In all that time I noticed two things that we didn’t see -

First, despite the UK’s strict hands-free laws that have been around for a few years I didn’t see a single person wandering around with a Bluetooth headset in their ear - in particular headsets that they weren’t using.  I saw a few folks with them while they were driving, but nobody was just wandering around the streets with a Bluetooth headset stuck in their ear.  There were lots of folks using mobile phones, texting etc… but almost not headsets.  Maybe the Brits have realized how stupid people look when the have a Bluetooth headset in their ear and aren’t talking in to it….

The other thing I didn’t see - commercials for cars.  There were billboards for cars, and one channel had short bumpers for a car as they came back from commercial breaks, but there were no 30 second spots for any car companies.  Also, unlike in the US I didn’t see any commercials for cellphone companies, there were lots of ads on buses but nothing on TV.

I kinda liked what I saw over there….

So you think you’re safe.  You’ve got your name on the FTC’s Do Not Call List and you’ve told the few rogue fundraisers to put your number on the Do Not Call List.  So you should be safe from most of the crap the telemarks try to push. 

Except there’s now a new scam - and it may be legal.

I’ve been getting A LOT of calls lately from auto-dialers.  Those are the stupid machines that telemarks use to dial a number and play a recorded message when you pick up.  Somewhere in the message you’re told to press 1 to continue where you’re transferred to a human.  The telemarks are arguing that when you press that button to speak to a human you have taken a positive action to initiate contact with them and establish a business relationship with them.  According to the law once you have a “business relationship” with the company in question, they don’t have to respect that you’re on the Do Not Call List and can pester and annoy you.

There’s an evil little Catch-22 here.  The auto-dialer messages don’t give you enough information to find out who they are to report them which means you have to initiate contact with a human.  Once you initiate contact with a human you’ve supposedly established your business relationship.  BUT, if you press the operator to tell you what company they work for or try to get the information needed to report them - they hang up.

On the other hand if you just hang up on the autodialer without trying to collect that information then the autodialer will just pester you every few days.

Now I really wish I could keep it together long enough to try something like this…

Apparently I missed the notice that today was the day that all of the local annoying people were supposed to come to Costco.  Either that or most of the people who live around here are annoying - which of course is a distinct possibility as well.  It is due to my latest run in with annoying people that I feel that I must remind folks proper gas station etiquette.

First - People, gas pumps are not hard to operate.  Yes the newest ones have lots of buttons on them - many of them you will never need to press - but if you read the little display screen the gas pump will tell you what to do.  When the little display says insert card - that’s really what the pump wants you to do, that message isn’t the signal to scratch your ass and stare at the pump.

Things that aren’t a bad idea to do while the gas pump is running-

1. Put your wallet away
2. Clean your windshield
3. Check your oil
4. Walk around your car and inspect it for cleanliness or safety hazards.
5. Take the trash out of your car
6. Watch the clouds drift by

It’s ok if your handling 2-5 when the pump stops and you finish those before attending to the pump again.  They’re important tasks and your fellow motorists understand the need to complete them.  However, starting those tasks after the pump has stopped and people are waiting - well that’s just rude.

Oh, and while it’s great that you’re willing to pull ahead to the next pump if somebody is using the pump closest to you, if while pulling up to that pump you decide to back up so close to the vehicle at the other pump that they can’t get past you - again rude.  Even more so if when you pulled around the other vehicle that driver was getting in their car to pull out and get out of your way….

So I’m watching the Hurricane Gustav coverage on MSNBC and Kerry Sanders has located some folks wandering around Houma LA.

So he asks them “This area is under mandatory evacuation, what part of mandatory didn’t you guys understand?”

The unnamed interviewee’s response: “We were stupid.”

3 words that are so smart and so dumb all at once!

I’m amazed at how shallow and unthinking people can be, and yesterday’s VP announcement by John McCain demonstated it pretty well to me.

I was at work and had the news on when the announcement came accross and within an hour or two at least three people walked in to our lab and said that they were Hillary supporters but now that McCain had selected a woman they were leaning towards McCain.  Two of the folks who said this were women and one was a man.  I can only assume that these folks felt this way because they hadn’t thought anything through because voting for McCain/Palin when you were a Clinton support makes no sense.

If you look at Palin’s experience and her stance on every major issue, the only thing that Gov Palin brings to the ticket that would appeal to Hillary Clinton supporters is a skirt.  Pretty much everything that Gov Palin stands for is diametrically opposite what Hillary Clinton stands for.

I applaud John McCain for selecting a woman, honestly I think it was a bold proactive statement and if nothing else guaranteed that this election was going to lead to either an African-American an a woman elected to the highest US Political office ever.  History is made at every election, but McCain’s selection has guaranteed that this election will have a legacy all it’s own.

From the why we deserve crummy politicians department were a few of the statements I heard on MSNBC after the McCain announcement:

Much was made of the fact that Gov Palin is just a hockey mom.  Not of her politics or anything but that she’s a hockey mom.  There was at least one person that MSNBC spoke to that breathlessly gushed over how she was a hockey mom “just like her.”

Even worse, at least one person whipped out the “we think she’s somebody that we’d like to sit down and have a beer with.”  Because you know THAT reason right there, THAT’s the way to pick a political candidate.  I get that the image a canadidate projects on TV goes a long way towards the success of their campaign, but the whole beer thing - haven’t we learned our lesson on that one?  While yes, the last Presidential candidate who appealed to Americans as somebody who’d drink with them did win the election (twice) he was actually a recovering alcoholic who (in theory at least) won’t sit down to have a drink with anybody.  And I won’t even get in to his frat boy style of relationship management and leadership style.

I know the Olympics have been over for almost a week and I’m just now commenting on it - I wanted to make sure I had plenty of time to digest my thoughts.

First off - why was NBC unable to remove the LIVE bug at the top of the screen on all of their broadcasts - in particular the ones to the West Coast?  With the 12+ hour time difference it was very obvious that many of these events weren’t live on the West Coast but NBC left the stupid bug up there and rarely mentioned that they weren’t live.  Just as irritating - the closing ceremony was aired on the West Coast almost 24 hours after it took place…

Prime time sports?  So swimming, gymnastics and track and field are enough of a draw to be shown in prime time, but aren’t a big enough draw to air other than during the Olympics?  Yes, gymnastics does occasionally air at other times but I can’t remember the last time I saw swimming or diving outside of the Olympics prime time or otherwise.  Same with cycling and several other events.  Anybody remember ABC’s Wide World of Sports?  If nothing else it meant that the networks occasionally covered some of those sports that actually are part of the Olympics.  I mean if the Olympics are such a big deal to Americans why don’t we watch anything other than NASCAR, football, basketball and baseball?

I know if you watch one of ESPNs 18 channels you can see other sports and occasionally some of the networks air the X-Games or bull riding but it’s extremely rare. 

Speaking of an Olympic Hangover, for all that we heard about how these games were an attempt to booster and change the image of China to the world - how much of what China did will last more than 8 to 12 months?  There were already reports that parts of Beijing had essentially become Potemkin Villages of sorts with fake facades being hung and neighborhoods cleared in order to present the right image.  So how many of the improvements will remain 6 to 12 months from now?  How much of what China did was intended to only last for the short period that the eye of the world would be upon them and will soon rust and crumble?