Aimless Wandering

Ok, so not really road rage, but there are parts of my commute that really aggravate me.

 Now, those of you with really long and arduous commutes probably have no sympathy for me.  Heck until we moved out here, I probably wouldn’t have any sympathy for the annoyances of my commute.  I mean how bad could it be, 20 to 25 minutes along a mostly 2 lane (one in either direction) road.  Plus there’s really no traffic to speak of pretty much ever.  So you wonder, how could I get upset with a cake commute like that.

Well as we head out of town along the road through the farms, the speed limit gets progressively faster.  It starts at 25, moves to 30, then 35, 40, 45, and then you reach a sign that says “End 45MPH Zone.”  That’s it.  Nothing else.  Coming home we have the exact opposite, depending on where you join the road, there’s no posted speed limit until you hit the 45MPH zone and then it decreases incrementally down to 25MPH as you approach town.

  Now, it is posted throughout the county, and may even be a state law, that the speed limit is 55MPH on all roads unless otherwise posted.  That means that when you encounter the “End 45 MPH Zone” sign you should speed up to 55MPH (maybe 60 shhh…). 

Unfortunately either many drivers just get easily spooked by the two lane road they’re driving, don’t understand the law or whatever, but instead insist on driving this road at 10MPH or more BELOW the speed limit!  It would be fine if you could pass these people, however on this particular 7 mile stretch of road, there’s only 3 passing zones and traffic is often too heavy to safely pass.  It’s quite frustrating to be stuck in a line of 10 cars behind some goober in a beat up Aerostar who insists on driving 30 in a 55 zone….

One of my favorites though will be the folks who do 50 all the way into town…  Driving slower than the speed limit as we reach town, and then speeding anywhere from 5 to 20 miles ABOVE the speed limit as we go through town…

I know, lame compared to folks who spend 45 minutes in bumper to bumper traffic on a freeway every day…

So, Business 2.0 released their list of the 101 Dumbest Moments in Business for 2006.  While I don’t normally ready Business 2.0 the keyword Stupid tends to get my attention.  I don’t remember all of the stories that they mention, but a few are definately worth a chuckle or two…

Take for example Number 2.  Northwest Airlines  (which by the way is one of my least favorite airlines) in preparation for laying off a few thousand ground workers releases a handy dandy pamphlet called “101 Ways to Save Money.”  Among the suggestions for saving a few bucks - Dumpster Diving, about which it says you shouldn’t “be shy about pulling things you like out of the trash;” then there’s the suggestion to make your own baby food, and using shredded news paper as kitty litter.  The pamphlet even offers some dating advice recommending long walks in the wood as a low cost dating alternative…

Greece lays claim to Number 39, which I think should have been higher up on the list.  In September the nation revised it’s GDP since 2000, raising it up by an incredible 25%.  What caused the incredible jump?  Why the Greek’s decided to include  activities like prostitution and money laundering when it calculated the GDP…

There’s Number 5 which comes all the way from Kazakhstan.  You know Kazakhstan, they’re the nation “featured” in the Borat skits and movies.  The Kazakhs decided to issue new paper currency this year, but there was one minor problem with the new bills…  They spelled the word “bank” wrong!

How about Cablevision, who was granting stock options to a dead guy!

I’ve got more highlights…

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So I consider myself a veteran traveller. While I don’t have a lot of stamps in my passport and I’m not a super-multi-platinum-million-mile frequent flier, I have spent enough time in the air that I did make it past the default level of my preferred airline’s frequent flier program. Heck, on the Washington-Atlanta route I used to fly a lot I actually had a flight attendent stop me because she thought she recognized me from another flight that she regularly worked… I’d never been on that route… but still, I’ve spent quite a bit of time in knee basher class…

One of my favorite airlines is Virgin Atlantic, I’ve had some very good experiences on them and they were hands down better than any US domestic airline I’ve ever flown. So when I heard that they were working to get US investors to fund and manage a US airline (in particular a low cost US airline) that would conform to the Virgin Atlantic style and would be known as Virgin America, it caught my eye. The catch though is that Virgin Atlantic is a British company, and US law prohibits foreign ownership airlines offering domestic service in the US. So Virgin came up with this business plan to meet the US rules…

The major domestic carriers have been up in arms regarding the possibility of the new airline. They claim that the US domestic market is too saturated as it is. Plus given the poor financial health of the US carriers, it’s understandable that they really don’t want any more competition to enter the field. As a result of the US carriers lobbying the DOT, Virgin America was denied it’s airline application. Virgin America is appealing the decision, and has created a website: letvafly.com which talks more about the process and just what’s going on.

You know, the current US domestic carriers may be right. The US domestic airline market may be saturated. But here’s the thing, I’m not happy with the state of the US airline market. The legacy US carriers continue to cut back on passenger services in an attempt to make a profit and stay alive, that’s why the airlines are now selling us food. United has announced that they are dropping in flight snacks altogether on many of it’s domestic flights. Pillows? Ok they may have sucked, but still don’t waste your time on many domestic flights trying to find one… So to have an upstart come in that wants me to be comfortable in-flight doesn’t sound like a bad idea. To me it doesn’t sound so bad if an upstart new airline wanted to enter the “saturated” US market and give me a civilized flying option. I wouldn’t weep for the legacy carriers who are looking for things to take away from my in flight experience if they got clobbered by an upstart like Virgin America or even JetBlue…

Personally, I’m tired of airlines looking to see how uncomfortable they can make us and still pay for the privledge of flying with them. I’m tired of that feeling of dread I get when I prepare to board some airline’s flights because their cabin staff is surly and the in-flight service is non-existant (Northwest Airlines I’m looking at YOU!!!).

Why am I interested in what Virgin America wants to offer US travelers? Click “more” to check it out. Either way, head over to letvafly.com and show your support!
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So now that some of the initial hubub for the Apple iPhone has died done I’ve been pondering the iPhone. It’s definately a drool worthy device, and I’m very interested in it. But there are a few things that right now would prevent me from running out to get it:

As much as this phone still has quite a bit of time before it comes out of development, with all that this phone can do I’m also a little concerned about the first generation of the iPhone. I’m not sure I want the first generation iPhone because of this. Plus, I’d be surprised if gen 2 of the iPhone didn’t include 3G data…

Dear Prospective Comment Spammer,
If you take a few seconds to peek around this site (or the Cruise Planners site, or even the wife’s site) you’ll notice that while I don’t have many comments, I also don’t have a single piece of comment spam. Save yourself the trouble and go somewhere else because you’re crap isn’t welcome here…

For the sleaze who’s starting your spam with “Please don’t delete I need money bad” I’m still not going to let your garbage through. Unless you plan on giving me 98% of the money you make from your comment spamming efforts, I don’t want to know from you. I need money too, but why should I let you use MY site to make money for you?

Oh, and while I like people visiting this site, not everyone is welcome. As other spammers have discovered, I’m not afraid to block your access to my site.

Consider yourself warned…

So after being shown with lots of small words and big pictures that the $10,000 car with the 20% interest rate that would cost MORE a month than the car he just had repossesed was a monumentally bad idea. PLUS being provided with a list of several other options that made significantly more financial sense… Mr. Dumber Than a Box of Rocks goes out and gets the $10,000 car!!!!

I’m done with this moron., there’s a point where there’s just nothing more you can do. Thankfully I should be rid of him in about 36 hours, at which point people who get paid much more than me can decide just what to do with this bozo…

In the meantime I’ve decided to launch a campaign that will insure that all of the bathrooms on campus are spotless and adhere to the highest sanitary and cleanliness standards. You know, I’ve tried, but I just can’t think of anybody who could possibly be a better candidate to spearhead this program than Mr. Dumber Than a Box of Rocks. Now this cleanliness and sanitation initiative my only last for the next 36 hours…. but I’m ok with that.

So I’ve got a problem child who works for me. He’s been working for me for the last two months, and hopefully will be gone within the next two weeks. As the wife knows, he’s been a constant source of frustation for me since he started working for me.

He’s given us some doozies in the last two months, and some day many years from now maybe I’ll write about them… But today… today has just pushed me. I REALLY want to pull him into my office, close the door, and scream at him until his hair turns white, but well that would be unprofessional. So instead I’ll vent about it here on the net, because that’s just SO much more professional!

A little background on problem child, last week his car was repossessed and he lives a good 15 miles away from work. He claims that he had no warning what so ever, and that he just got up in the morning and the car was gone. Yeah ok, sure… He also tells me that he has been a month behind on his payments for the past 6 months or so, but that he had spoken to the bank and it was “ok”. Oh wait, it gets better…

He calls the bank to try and figure this out and is told that he was actually 3 payments behind, which he “guaranteed” wasn’t possible. I quickly told him that his “guarantee” wasn’t worth spit since the last time he guaranteed something to me he was so incredibly wrong it was mind boggling. It turns out that he was in fact 3 payments late because “I guess my wife missed two payments and didn’t tell me.” Gee, you think! He actually managed to tell me this with a straight face too!

Turns out to get the car back the bank wants $12,000, since he gets about $1,200 a month and lives paycheck to paycheck, he’s obviously not going to come up with $12,000 and he tells the bank to keep the car…

Ok, so now the genius goes car shopping. He’s got a wife and two kids, a 15 mile commute, no car, and mass transit doesn’t operate where he needs to go, so he needs some kind of transportation… The in-laws are offering them a $2k loan, so at least he has that going for him. Supposedly the only car he can find will cost him over $10,000 and the dealer wants to charge him 20% interest on a 3 year loan! As bad as that is, there’s more… The payments on the car he had repossessed were $240 a month, the loan on this car will cost him….

wait for it….

$350 A MONTH!!!! AND THE IDIOT THINKS THIS IS A GOOD IDEA!!!! HELLO!!!!! You couldn’t pay the loan on your last car so your going to get another car and pay EVEN MORE MONEY FOR IT!!!

Not only that, but the fool actually tells us that he can’t find any other car. 10 minutes on Craigs List and we found 7 cars in the area that probably run well for UNDER $1,000. Even worse, we had to show him the math proving to him that THIS was a better deal than the one we was about to enter in to!!!!

URRRRGGGGGG!!!!!!!!!

So, in one fell swoop Steve Jobs today announced a device that essentially embodied EVERY single iPod related rumor from the past year…

Lesse, widescreen… check. Touchscreen interface… check. phone… check. WiFI… check. Today at the Macworld keynote, the Apple iPhone was announced. The device actually breaks Apple’s normal pattern of a device becomming available within days of it’s announcement. Because it still needs to get FCC approval, the iPhone won’t hit the market until June. Since the FCC publishes the details on the devices that are submitted to them for approval there was no way that Apple could have kept the iPhone secret once it went to the FCC.

The iPhone looks to be an extremely impressive device. The only thing that doesn’t impress me is it’s data connectivity. For cellular data, the iPhone uses Cingular’s EDGE network which isn’t all that fast. One the other hand the Cingular Blackjack uses the 3G/HSDPA which is very fast, the same with the Motorola Q which uses Verizon’s WirelessBroadband service. I’m extremely hopefully that the iPhone will see an upgrade soon.

I’ve also got to wonder if we’ll be seeing a new iPod with many of the new features that were introduced (or will be introduced) in the iPhone. Personally, if I was in the market for an iPod, I’d wait two or three months. It just wouldn’t surprise me if there was word of one of Steve Job’s “One More Thing” press events scheduled for a few months from now…

So I’m poking around on Digg because the podcast is now listed over there (hey, every little bit helps right?) and stumble across an article that looks interesting. Now, I don’t go to Digg that often, well pretty much ever, so I don’t know of all of the little shenanigans that go on over there. The article that caught my eye was listed on the front page of the site which meant that it was popular and had been “dugg” by visitors.

It was an article that was posted on a blogger blog, and out of curiosity I thought I would take a look around the blog to see if there was anything else worth reading. There wasn’t. It’s not that the other articles on the blog sucked… there were NO other articles on the entire blog. One post about the possible Apple phone on some blogger blog managed to get the attention of the Digg populace and is now drawing traffic…

It just bothers me that some random post on a site with 0 credibility, because well how can you be credible when you only have one post, can catch the attention of the web community enough to get prominent placement on a heavily trafficked site like Digg.

Apparently there’s a new trend in dining that’s making it’s way around the world, “blacked out” restaurants. The dining area is pitch black, you literally can’t see what you’re eating and to facilitate the servers delivering your food the wait staff wear night vision goggles. Light producing devices (phones, watches, flashlights etc…) are prohibited in the dining area, however the foyer is well lit and while waiting in the foyer you’ll review the menu and place your order.

The theory behind dining in the dark is that if you can’t see, then your other senses will become a bit more sensitive. This will allow you to not only enjoy the taste and smell of your food , but should also increase your focus on the conversation and your meal.

I have a problem with this concept though, presentation is an important part of the dining experience. This is even more true in finer eating establishments, but this takes away that element. Not only that, but if you can’t see then how do you know where your knife is? Or how much is left on your plate? Better yet, how do you know if you’re keeping your food ON your plate?

Oh, and if for some reason nature calls while in the blacked out dining area…. Raise your hand and somebody will come and lead you to the bathroom, which by the way is lit