Retrophisch

The End Times

Tony Woodlief never fails to amuse me in some fashion:

[T]his is what we have come to: a grown man, grooming his eyebrows in traffic, using his rear-view mirror. In Wichita.

Yeah, what he said

Tom’s thoughts on the National Anthem mirror my own.

The missus can regale you with many a tale of Super Bowl, college bowl, NASCAR, baseball, hockey, and other sports viewing wherein I severely critique the anthem singing because they fail in one of the ways Tom speaks of.

Look, we know you’re a good singer. Otherwise, you wouldn’t have been chosen in the first place. And if it’s a major sporting event, we know you’re a great singer.

(Or you’re just the flavor of the month, since we all know popularity doesn’t necessarily reflect impressive skill.)

(We do know that, right?)

Don’t Ban Incandescents

From the 02.26.07 edition of Red Herring magazine:

California’s proposed incandescent bulb ban (see “Could California Ban the Bulb?” RedHerring.com, February 1, 2007) is ridiculous! Fluorescent bulbs may last longer (not in my house) but you have to include the cost of the ballast and the starter in both energy to produce and additional expense of the fixture. When these and the additional cost of installation are included in the equation, plus fixture replacement costs due to poor reliability, the cost of fluorescent lighting is vastly more expensive than incandescent lighting. Incandescent lighting is also better for the health of our eyes and sanity as that endless flicker fatigues the eyes and drives people nuts!

Fluorescent bulbs are also considered hazardous waste. The energy costs to clean up or keep the environment clean are not worth the few bucks saved at the meter. This ban is not a good idea. Neither is Title 24, which bans incandescent sockets in new-home construction. People just change out the fluorescent fixtures to incandescent after the house has been inspected. Then the fixtures just end up in the dump. I for one will just buy my bulbs out of state and stock up.

The best way to reduce energy waste is to educate people and business to not waste it. Turn the lights off when not in use!

—Roger Smith, Bishop, California

With the mass, recent push for everyone to switch to fluorescent bulbs, I thought a contrarian point of view might be good for discussion.

Once again, we learn why they’re called analysts

So let me get this straight:

Apple sets new company records for revenue and profit, beats the Street’s estimates, and ships 28 percent more Macs and 50 percent more iPods than they did this time a year ago, but because a bunch of analysts don’t like future estimates, the stock price takes a dive?

No wonder monkeys do just as good a job at the stock market as analysts.

Doomed by the dish

So it’s the biggest college football weekend of the year.

And I’m missing all of it.

I am not doing so willingly.

Friday, we had some thunderstorms in the area. Nothing too bad, though the rain was intense at times, and we had a few lightning strikes here and there. But it’s rained much worse, and we’ve had lightning last longer.

Our DirecTV satellite dish system became inoperable at some point Friday afternoon. Two days later, still nothing. It would seem, after all the troubleshooting I’ve done, that the problem is the dish is out of alignment.

My bride thinks the disalignment began with the severe cold snap we got last month, which brought in some ice, and we lost the satellite signal for about a day. She thinks, and I can’t find any fault in her logic, the weight from whatever ice collected on the dish was enough to begin the process, and wind since has steadily moved it more until it’s just off enough that we’re getting nothing.

Except last night.

At midnight.

When we were turning in, and I just kicked on the satellite receiver for the heck of it.

This morning, nada. Nothing. Reset all three receivers. Zip. Zero. On startup, the receivers never get beyond 0% in receiving the satellite signal. I’ve checked cables on all the receivers. I checked the cables in the OnQ box upstairs. My friend Drew suggested I disconnect one of the satellite lines from the multiplexer in the OnQ box and hook it directly in to one of the receivers, to rule out the multiplexer as the problem.

So I lugged my JVC 13-inch television, and the attached receiver, from the study, upstairs to the OnQ box, and plugged it in directly. Still nothing.

So, having ruled out everything else, it has to be the dish itself.

This is what was determined yesterday afternoon, when, after 24 hours of no signal, I called DirecTV technical support. (Note: If you have to do this, never waste time with the first-line customer service reps. All of the ones I’ve spoken with have been pleasant, but they’ve got limited knowledge, and your best bet is to ask them to connect you to “second-tier tech support”, where more knowledgeable folks reside.) The tech rep I spoke with, after I explained to her everything I had done to that point, said it sounded like everything had been ruled out but the dish itself. So she scheduled a technician to come out to the house to get up on the roof to realign the dish.

Thursday.

Thursday.

Just in case you didn’t catch that, the tech is coming on Thursday.

Thursday, January 4th. After which there is only one bowl game of any significance, the BCS Championship Game.

So if I get to watch any of the big bowl games tomorrow, it will only be due to Brent’s generosity in inviting me over to his place. I’ll get to watch the bowl game I care about the most, LSU vs Notre Dame in the Sugar Bowl, over at Drew’s. (Which isn’t bad, since we all went to LSU, Drew and I were in ROTC together, and it’s always fun to watch the games with fellow alumni.) Still…Thursday?

Apparently the technicians don’t work on Sunday, and I can’t begrudge them a day off during the week. They’re not working on what is likely the second-biggest football day of the year (after Super Bowl Sunday, of course), since it’s New Year’s Day, and I can’t begrudge them having that day off, either. Likewise, no techs are being scheduled on Tuesday the 2d, as that’s the National Day of Mourning for President Ford. I can’t begrudge them that, either. And since Wednesday is the first day available after three straight days of unavailability, it’s booked solid when I called on Saturday afternoon. So I’m left with Thursday.

And while I can’t begrudge the techs the above three days off, I’m still left with the feeling that this all stinks. The timing absolutely sucks. At no point did anyone from DirecTV say, “Gee, you’ve been a customer of ours for nearly a decade. Let’s see how soon we can get someone out there.” Which would of course have made me deliriously happy, but we can’t always get what we want, which is someone out right now to fix the problem.

Because the problem is about twenty feet up, on the roof of our second-story home with a steep, pitched roof, and I have no ladder taller than eight feet. And while I don’t fear heights, the prospect of getting on the steep, pitched roof while it’s as windy as it is today—provided I had a ladder taller than eight feet—isn’t very appealing.

I know what those of you who know me are probably thinking: Why don’t you have Verizon’s FiOS TV, anyway? You have the fiber optic for Internet and phone, why not for television, too?

A good question, certainly, and the answer is this: because earlier this year, midway through January and before FiOS TV was available, my bride placed an order with DirecTV for two of their new satellite receiver/DVR units, and this locked us in to a new, two-year contract with DirecTV. Even though we were long out of our original contract. That’s why we don’t have FiOS TV. (And please don’t think I blame my wife in any way. The receivers these new ones replaced were old, and sucked, and we wanted DVR capability in the study and bedroom.)

I’m seriously considering looking into what it would cost us to break that last year with DirecTV. I’ve been looking at TiVo units direct from TiVo, because, despite the company’s problems, their product is still the best DVR available, and all others pale in comparison. There may be a hefty cost for a switch now, but I’m wondering if it would be worth it to never again have to worry about being doomed by a unaligned dish.

Frustration at the P.O.

(With apologies to Eudora Welty.)

Since I began unloading some CDs on Amazon Marketplace, I’ve been spending more time than usual at my local post office. In an effort to maximize my profit margin, like a good little capitalist, I’ve been using my tax dollar-funded government mail service to ship the Marketplace-sold items.

The majority of these items have been CDs, which I pop in to a CD mailer—purchased in bulk at our local OfficeMax—then slap a postage label on to before depositing it in the outgoing mail slot within the post office. I haven’t stood in line to interact with a postal worker to mail any of these items, instead using my good friend, the Automated Postal Center. (If you’ve never used an APC, think of it as an ATM that instead of dispensing cash takes it, and in return weighs your letter or light package and spits out the proper postage.)

So, as I was saying, I’ve always used the APC, and never had to wait in line to get postage.

Until today.

On Saturday, while out with my sweet, I stopped by the post office with the full intent of using the APC and leaving the outgoing CD in the appropriate mail slot, and getting on with the rest of our evening.

Only the APC was unable to dispense the postage for this particular parcel.

Because it’s going to an APO.

I got a message on the APC’s screen stating it was unable to provide postage for APO addresses, and I would have to stand in the always-long line and wait to interact with a postal worker. Sigh…

Today, after dropping the little phisch off at school, I steeled myself and entered the doors of the post office. Looking forlornly at the Automated Postal Center, standing by itself, waiting to be used, which no one was, I shuffled to the back of the already-long line.

Then I noticed that of the four stations at the counter from which a postal worker should be interacting with the citizens that fund their always-in-the-red dysfunctional “business”, there was one worker.

Twenty-five minutes later—I was so glad I had the foresight to bring a magazine—I began my interaction with the aforementioned solo postal worker. She did not know why the APC was unable to handle postage for an APO address. No, there was nothing really special about the APO address which would negate the APC being able to to process postage for it. It was likely just a matter of someone somewhere not having gotten around to programming the APC to handle APO postage. (Or better yet, some management bureaucrat not having made the decision to provide postage for APO addresses through the APC.) No, the APO postage for first-class mail was not any more expensive than first-class mail to any where else in the country. (Every CD I’ve shipped individually has been US $1.35. Every one. Including this one.)

So a half hour out of my morning to get the same little sticky piece of postage from a human that I could have gotten in two minutes from the Automated Postal Center. I’m thinking of running the calculations to see if the half hour of my time was worth the profit-margin savings. Then again, that just might frustrate me more.

And Sony wonders why they’re losing to Samsung and Apple

We have a Sony DirecTV/Tivo unit my mother-in-law gave as a Christmas gift to us several years ago. In techno-age, it’s ready to retire and move to Florida, but it still does the job, and the TiVo interface is still light-years ahead of DirecTV’s own DVR receivers, of which we have two.

Some of the buttons on the Sony remote have stopped working, however, and it’s finally gotten to the point where we need a new remote. A trip to Sony’s web site reveals they no longer sell the remote (shocker, I know), but there is an online form with which you can inquire as to parts. So I fill it out, noting we have the DirecTV receiver/TiVo DVR combo unit, as well as putting in the only part numbers I’m able to find any where on the remote itself.

This was a month ago.

Today, I receive a reply from Sony. Therein, I’m told:

I think you might have model SVR2000. If this is it, the remote is rmtv303 (147603612) which is nla. Please go on www.yahoo.com and type in either the part number of the model number of the remote and do a search. There still should be internet distribuors that carry it.

Fine and dandy, this was along the lines of what I was expecting. Except the genius got the model number wrong, and the part number for the remote wrong. I only discovered this after doing exactly what is suggested above, running a Yahoo search. On one page which listed several remotes, I discovered another part number for a Sony TiVo remote, and it turned out to be the correct one.

For the record, the SVR2000 is the Sony TiVo DVR; it is not the DirecTV receiver/TiVo combo. That is model SAT-T60. The remote part number for the SAT-T60 is RM-Y809. I found a new one for $55, with a 30-day, money-back guarantee (yay, Yahoo!). This is future reference for myself, as well as help for anyone else who may find themselves in a similar situation.

I just think it shows very bad form for a Sony employee to, (a) take a month to respond, and (b) when finally responding, providing the wrong information. I was very explicit in noting that we had the DirecTV receiver/TiVo combo, and not the TiVo-only SVR2000.

Sony has rested on its laurels, and formerly well-deserved reputation, for too long, and it continues to result in products no one are buying, and poor customer service after the fact.

Do you know what sucks?

Having a quarter bottle of picante sauce in the fridge, plus an unopened bottle in the pantry, and not a single tortilla chip any where in the house.

The Anti-Semitism Story No One’s Talking About

Jeff Jacoby has a great piece on he disparity in reporting regarding Mel Gibson’s drunken racial slurs, and Naveed Haq’s murderous rampage at a Jewish center in Seattle. The latter is yet another example, as Jacoby points out, noting other such type attacks which have taken place over the past few years, of members of the “Religion of Peace” suddenly developing “Sudden Jihad Syndrome”.

A Christian, who is such a rabid anti-abortionist that he begins killing doctors who perform the operation, is news fodder for weeks. But if a Muslim walks up to the counter of the Israeli-owned airline El Al, killing two people as he sprays the ticket area with bullets, it’s quickly swept under the proverbial rug. What is the media’s reluctance to point out what we know to be true: that the so-called “Religion of Peace” shows, day in and day out by the behavior of its adherents, that it is anything but.

Miscellany

If only I had room in any of my bathrooms for one of these.

Just when you think there might be some hope in this world that the tide of sexual immorality would take a turn for the better, something like the Shame On You Kit pops up. How about never putting yourself in the situation to have to have a “Shame On You Kit”?

As a satisfied customer, I highly recommend KnowledgeNews, which today had a bit on the differences between viruses and bacteria. I loved this analogy:

Imagine it this way. If just one of the 10 to 100 trillion cells in your body were the size of a baseball park, the average bacterium would be the size of the pitcher’s mound. The average virus would be the size of the baseball.

Miscellany

As is so often the case with video or film, the music totally makes the FedEx pilots drive around thunderstorm short film.

I sincerely hope JPMorgan Chase & Co. realize they just flushed $150 million.

This may have been posited elsewhere, but I think when the Power Mac G5 replacement ships, it will simply be called “Mac Pro”. You have the Pro designation separating the portable models, and they’re not going to call a tower/desktop without a built-in monitor “iMac Pro”. Apple will still want to differentiate the line from the consumer series, so it will just be Mac Pro.

You boys are kidding, right?

Look, I’m just as much of a word nerd as Jim, Erik, or John, but gentlemen, with all due respect, this has to be the dumbest idea for a boycott I’ve heard in a while.

Besides, I get better customer service from Walgreens than I do from CVS, so I’ll pass on this particular boycott.

“We don’t anticipate any management mistakes.”

Given my personal experience working for Verizon, and continuously hearing stories from my friends who are still employed there, this rings so true.

The latest on mobile phone manners

Tony Long:

Look, the world is not your personal playground. Do not share with us your musical tastes; do not share with us your latest wheelings and dealings. In public places, you have an obligation to hold up your end of the implied social contract by not imposing yourself on those around you. This is crucial to a civilized society and just because technology allows you to act like a braying ass in public doesn’t mean you should do it. Quite the contrary, in fact. You need to be more aware of your surroundings than ever.

I particularly liked one suggestion:

Ditch the ring tone and put the phone on vibrate. The only person who cares about an incoming call on your phone is you. Don’t worry, you’ll feel it. (It feels go-o-o-od.) Most ring tones are not only intrusive, they’re inane.

One feature I like on my phone, and I’m sure it’s on most new phones, is the option to have it simultaneously vibrate and ring. My phone vibrates first, then starts the ring tone, so I can usually nab it when only the first couple of notes are playing. It’s also dead simple to change from “Vibe & Ring” to “Vibrate” when the situation demands (church, movies, restaurants).

The fact that most ring tones are inane is why I roll my own. My “standard” ring tone is the opening twenty-two seconds of The Who’s “Baba O’Riley”. When strangers hear it, I always get a knowing smile, or a quizzical look that says, I know that melody, but I can’t quite place it… It’s certainly unique, and I won’t confuse it with anyone else’s ring.

Which brings me to my own mobile phone usage tip: change your ring tone from whatever the default is. (If you can; I realize older phones still in use may not have that option.) I don’t know why, but I find it irritating when the default Moto or Nokia ring tone goes off. Find something else. Please.

Every rose has its thorn

If Tiff is feeling old, then I must be positively ancient.

Speaking of depressing age news, I have noted that I am now in another, less desirable demographic, what with the birthday last month.

Previously, when filling out surveys and such, I could confidently click on the age demographic buttons for 25-34, or 26-34, or however they broke it down. Now, it seems every single age demographic mapping I would fall in to is listed as 35-50. Fifty?

Granted, we do grow to be more like our parents the older we get, but from a pop culture standpoint, I can tell you I have little in common with my fifty-something parents. (No, I do not use the term “fifty-something” because I have no idea how old my parents are. I know exactly how old they are, but because they are not the same age, I thought the more generic “fifty-something” was more appropriate.)

For the record, Tiff, I’ve seen the same commercial, and come to the same realization. It’s nice to know another closet metal-head is out there.

Hot Potato

Is it not enough that as the father of a two year-old, I already hear “Hot Potato” by The Wiggles in my sleep, that now Special K has to use it for their idiotic diet commercials?

Dear Papa John’s

Normally, when we order out for fast-food pizza, we order from a Papa John’s franchise. We usually order a thin-crust pizza of some type.

Tonight, we decided to try the Papa’s Perfect Pan, the subject of much advertising of late.

We will not be ordering this particular pizza again.

What kind of pans are you running through that oven? When it comes to fast-food pizza, this version of the Pan Pizza can’t hold a candle to Pizza Hut’s venerable pan-style pizza. Not only in terms of taste, but for me, the latter evokes memories of college, and my comrades from ROTC, as a personal pan pizza and the salad bar, coupled with the largest iced tea possible, was our after-drill meal on Thursdays. Good stuff, and good pizza. For fast-food pizza, that is.

Papa, you’ve got something to learn from the Hut in this area.

Today’s miscellany

Yeah, it’s been up a few days, but I’m just getting to it, okay? John Gruber has come around, much as I have recently, to the notion of PowerBook-as-main/only-system, a concept Lee has been a proponent of for some time. John also has an in-depth review of the latest 15-inch PowerBook, outfitted just as I would like, with his usual attention to detail.

It’s Monday evening, and I’m still sore from the neighborhood tree planting from Saturday morning. Eleven ten-gallon trees to go in the neighborhood’s greenbelt area. Seventy homes, with an average of two adults per home. Seven people showed up, including myself. Yeah.

An interesting tip I picked up from No Plot? No Problem! shows an innovative use for all that spam that gets collected for me. This one writer keeps a list of names that show up in the From field of spam e-mails, so she always has a pool of character names to pull from. I really like this, since usually when I’m working on fiction, I can come up with two or three good character names, then I start really pulling stuff out of bodily orifices. A simple text document in BBEdit now has 305 names, one per line, and the built-in Kill Duplicates filter ensures I don’t have the same name twice.

VZW needs a new ad agency

Am I the only one that thinks the new “It’s the network” series of commercials for Verizon Wireless are actually more annoying than the old “Can you hear me now?” commercials?

Update: Okay, I am forced to admit to a redeeming quality of these commercials. Tom’s passionate defense of them as funny via IM made me laugh. “Perhaps goth angst doesn’t translate to Texan” has to be the IM quote of the day.

Go to vote, get a ticket

Alternative title: My Moron Moment of the Day

Of course, I have no one to blame but myself.

Each election cycle, Denton County, in its infinite wisdom, changes the polling place for our precinct, and apparently for all precincts in the county. This election was no different. So after finding out we would be voting at Bridlewood Elementary, I set off to vote.

I have passed by the Bridlewood development several times, but have never been inside. There is a golf club as part of the development, and part of the fairway parallels Bridlewood Boulevard. I followed my Yahoo! Maps directions, and turned off the main road to get to the school. After navigating a couple of turns, I find myself on Remington Park Drive, the street the school is on. I’m doing about 30, and slow to 20 when I hit the school zone, which starts near the top of a rise. As I begin to crest the rise, I see the school on my left, and a red sign with “Vote Here” in black and a large white arrow directing me in to the school’s parking lot. I come down the rise, put on my blinker, and turn left in to the school parking lot. Then I hear the “Whoop!” of the motorcycle’s cop siren. He does a single blast, and that’s enough to get my attention.

I pull over to one side of the aisle I’m on, wondering what I’m getting stopped for. It couldn’t be the school zone speed limit. I was doing twenty. I know I was doing twenty, because I’m fastidious about keeping it at twenty while in a school zone. Did I bump up to 22, maybe, coming down the rise? He’s going to give me a citation for that? These are the thoughts running through my head as he walks up to the window.

Driver’s license, insurance, I hand them over. He checks to make sure the insurance is current and hands the paper back. Then he asks if I know why he stopped me, and I tell him, no, I don’t. “You missed a stop sign back there, Mr. Turner.”

I did what?

Yep, never saw it. Sure enough, as I was leaving the school after I voted, there it was. Just on the down slope of that rise. I allowed my attention to laser-focus on the school and that “Vote Here” sign, and I totally missed the stop sign. (Stupid developer, putting a cul-de-sac right there in the middle of a down slope…)

So now I get to do the payment + defensive driving course (hopefully I can do the video version) thing, to keep this off my record and from affecting my insurance. It’s not good to be unemployed and broke, and have to cough up money because you were stupid. So again, totally my fault for not paying attention, and this voting experience could have been better.

On the totally geeky side of things, the officer had a handheld computer which allowed him to scan in my license info—thanks to the handy magnetic strip on the back—then punch in the violation, then I signed on the screen a la signing for a package from UPS or FedEx. He punched another button, and a paper version of the citation rolled out of the top. Nice to see the Town saving a little money by doing away with cases of duplicate/triplicate citations. I’m sure there’s a time savings, too, for the officer when he turns in the citations at the end of his shift. If I had to get a ticket, pretty nifty way to have done so.

And you built it that way why?

It rains nine months out of the year in Seattle. So why oh why would you replace an aging dome with an open-air stadium? Collective stupidity?

Why stock analysts are worthless

(Alternative title: There’s an reason the word “anal” is in “analyst”)

Apple quadruples its profit, but the stock takes a ten percent-plus dive because the company “missed” the number of iPod sales stock analysts —who are not employees of Apple, do not sit on the Board of Directors, and who are not Apple executives— said they thought the company should have sold? They sold 6.4 million iPods in a three months. How many Rios did Creative sell in the last three months? Oh, that’s right, they canned that music player.

Hold on, it gets better.

Those same analysts, who are poo-pooing Apple for failing to sell as many iPods as the analysts thought they should have sold, seem to think Delphi is a good buy. No wonder monkeys are just as good at the stock market as these guys.

[With thanks to John Gruber, and Matt Deatherage and W.R. Wing on the MacJournals-Talk list.]

So we’re even rewriting sports history right now

Attention Steve Levy and the rest of ESPN’s anchors:

USC did not win the national championship in 2003.

USC did not win the national championship in 2003.

USC did

not

win

the national championship in 2003.

The Trojans did not play in the BCS national championship game for the 2003 season. The BCS was created to determine a single national champion. For 2003, that national champion is LSU.

USC is not a two-time defending national champion. If you continue to insist they are, then I expect you to also refer to Auburn as a current defending national champion.

I’m thinking Cluetrain should be required reading for the Authors Guild

Note to self: do not join the clueless Authors Guild.

I echo Gruber’s sentiments regarding the decision of the Authors Guild to sue Google over Google Print. For one, an author can choose to exclude his work in a fairly simple process. Second, as an aspiring author, were I to publish a book, I would love to see it read by as many people as possible. If Google Print helped me accomplish that, so much the better.

And yet a part of me still misses corporate America

My employed friends almost daily remind me of the travails of life in corporate America. I’d still like a job, thanks.

Do I look like a narcissistic metrosexual to you?

An unsolicited copy of the premier issue of Men’s Vogue arrived in the daily post.

What.

The.

Hell.

???

The mattress scam

The time has come. We made the decision to transition our two year-old to a “big boy bed.” Not an actual bed with a frame and headboard, mind you; we’re just throwing the mattress on top of the box springs on the floor. Parental common sense: it’s fewer inches they will fall when they roll themselves off the edge. Parental common sense, part deux: it’s shoved in to the corner, cutting the number of edges available for rolling off in half.

So we took advantage of the Labor Day sales this holiday weekend and went mattress shopping. I thought I would pass along some helpful hints, should you find yourself in this situation. (Which you will, eventually, unless you enjoy self-induced spine curvature because you’re still sleeping on the mattress you took to college with you nearly twenty years ago.)

Forget comparison shopping. Mattress stores will sell the same brands, but it will be impossible for you to compare models. Why? Because the mattress manufacturers and retailers are sadists, that’s why.

Manufacturer X has a nice medium-range mattress, which is in demand by three different retailers. So Manufacturer X has three separate tags identifying this mattress for Retailers 1, 2, and 3. Therefore, when you are in Retailer 2, and looking at Mattress X2, you have no idea it’s the exact same mattress as the X1 you saw at Retailer 1. And so on. So forget comparison shopping.

Throw the price guarantee back in their face. All three of the retailers whose doors we darkened offered some form of a price guarantee: matching, 110% of the difference, etc. It’s totally laughable, because of the lack of comparison-shopping ability consumers have when it comes to mattresses. They know you’re not going to find the Sealy Posturepedic X95J Super Sleeper any where else, because it’s not called the X95J Super Sleeper any where else. It will be called the F4 Dream Cushion, have a different fabric covering it, and you’ll be none the wiser.

So when the sales person mentions the price guarantee while you’re browsing, you can laugh and tell him he is full of it.

Hire a babysitter. I’m sure a neighbor would’ve been happy to watch our son for a couple of hours, but I didn’t think about this until after the fact. Consumer Reports recommends lying on a mattress in the store for 15 minutes to get a definitive feel for its comfort. Obviously the anal-retentives at CR have never gone mattress shopping with their Thomas the Tank Engine-obsessed two year-old in tow. One is unable to lie on a mattress for 15 seconds as the aforementioned two year-old tears up and down the aisles, running his Thomas and Percy trains over the mattresses as he goes.

In the end, buying a mattress is still a gut call. We didn’t want to go cheap, but we didn’t want to spend a grand on a set, either. We were looking for something in the middle, that would get him to his teenage years. Hopefully, we have succeeded.

Further proof Alec Baldwin sucks

George Carlin is a better narrator for Thomas the Tank Engine.

Are you kidding? Dracula?

Nothing proves more how the mainstream media has gone off their collective rocker than the fact that this week, ABC’s 20/20 is devoted to the myth of Dracula.

This is science fiction?

Since when does Liar, Liar qualify as science fiction? I just saw an advertisement on SciFi declaring they will be showing it next week. I didn’t realize they were so desperate for time fillers…

The NCAA Football Championship BS has already begun

No, that is not a typo in the title. I mean “BS,” not “BCS,” though some would argue they have become one and the same.

I mention this because a few moments ago I flipped on the idiot box to channel surf while relaxing for a few minutes. The satellite receiver had been left on NBC, which is showing the AVP Nissan Manhattan Beach Open, the women’s final, to be specific. They were just coming back from commercial, and noted that in attendance was a large portion of the USC Trojan football team. Then there was the magical BS moment:

“It’s hard enough for a team to win a national title, much less three, which no team has ever done before…” said spokesbabe to Trojan quarterback Matt Leinart.

She was, of course, referring to the fact that USC is ranked #1 in the pre-season polls, and the Trojans will be the frontrunners for another national title in NCAA football. She is, of course, wrong, as is any other sports broadcaster, to suggest that USC may become the first team to win three in a row.

USC did not win the national championship in 2003.

Let me say that again, for the many Trojan worshippers out there, including those infesting sports broadcasting.

USC did not win the national championship in 2003.

That honor went to LSU, which defeated Oklahoma in the Sugar Bowl to win the BCS National Championship.

The whole point of the BCS, despite its myriad shortcomings, is to have a clear national champion at the end of the college football season. The whole point of the BCS is that there will no longer be a shared national title. One champion. One.

LSU was the national championship team for 2003. USC was the national championship team for 2004. USC will not become the first team to win three national titles in a row, should they prevail in 2005.

Was USC denied this opportunity, by virtue of Oklahoma being ranked higher in the standings at the end of the year, and getting the shot against LSU in the Sugar Bowl? Undoubtedly. Just as Auburn was denied the opportunity of a national title by virtue of Oklahoma being ranked higher at the end of the 2004 season. Chalk it up to a bias toward Oklahoma in the poll voters. (I note with amusement that now, having gotten it wrong two years in a row, Oklahoma doesn’t even break the Top 5 in any of the preseason polls.)

I’ve said it before and it bears repeating: If USC and its worshippers want LSU to share the national title with them for 2003, then USC must share the 2004 title with Auburn. Leinart and Co. will be going for their second title in a row this year, not their third.

What should they do with the company, Michael?

The company Michael Dell said should be sold off and the money given to its shareholders is kicking his butt:

Overall customer satisfaction with the PC industry is unchanged from a year ago at 74, but changes within the industry give Apple a commanding lead. The PC maker maintains big improvements from 2003 and 2004, holding at 81 for a second year. Apple’s sales are up 33%, net income has grown 300% and its stock price has nearly tripled over the past year. A slew of product innovations and an emphasis on digital technologies and customer service have been very successful for Apple with a high degree of customer loyalty as a result.

Dell is a different story. Based on a strategy of mass customization, the #1 PC maker worldwide has been a leader in customer satisfaction for several years. This quarter, it suffers a sharp drop in ACSI, down 6% to 74. Customer service in particular has become a problem, and service quality lags not only Apple but also the rest of the industry. Customer complaints are up significantly with long wait-times and difficulties with Dell’s call-center abound. Still, competitive pricing as a result of Dell’s direct-sales business model keeps overall customer satisfaction slightly above other competitors, with the exception of Apple. Whether Dell’s declining satisfaction will have a negative impact on the company’s stock performance remains to be seen; however, ACSI history has shown that changes in customer satisfaction often signal similar changes in future financial performance. Apple’s stock price is up 35% for the year-to-date, whereas Dell’s is flat.

[Via MacInTouch, emphasis in quoted text added. —R]

FedEx follies

I am attempting to return a product to a manufacturer. I have reviewed the product for publication, and the company would like it back. The company in question has graciously allowed me to ship the product back to them using their FedEx account. They asked I ship it ground, to minimize the expense. I have no problem with that. Then things got interesting.

I can’t simply ask FedEx for a pickup at my residence, because it seems they require the pickup to be from the account holder’s address, which in this case is in California. I’m in Texas. So you can see problem #1.

So I looked up the nearest FedEx Ground shipping locations from my home. Look at that, there’s about half a dozen in the Town of Flower Mound. After hitting about three of them, I learned this little tidbit: FedEx does not provide these third-party providers with airbills (ground bills?) for Ground shipping. To ship Ground from these third-party shippers, it has to be on their assigned FedEx account, for which they already have plenty of pre-printed bar-coded stickers, courtesy of FedEx. These shippers are not equipped to ship in the method I require, from me to the company, on the company’s dime. Now you can see problem #2.

This morning I had a doctor’s appointment on the other side of the city. No problemo, I pondered, I’ll bring the box with me, and I’ll stop by the main FedEx site on the grounds of DFW International. It’s on the way home. I arrived at 10:19 AM. Problem #3: The customer service desk doesn’t open until noon.

In the past, I’ve always been quite pleased with the level of customer service I’ve gotten from FedEx, but it is ridiculous how hard they’re making it to ship this product back to its manufacturer.

My wife is looking into getting a bill of lading for FedEx Ground from her company’s mail room. Should that fail, it means another drive out to the airport for me tomorrow. After noon, of course.

Pinkie D’s

Anyone else out there annoyed by the pinkie commercials being run by McDonald’s for their new “premium” chicken sandwiches? Does anyone actually eat sandwiches or burgers that way?

How, exactly, am I supposed to obtain experience if…?

Earlier today, I applied for an IT&S Manager position with a local hospital. Late this afternoon, I received a reply:

Christopher,

I appreciate your quick response. The hospital insists that all candidates have a healthcare background in a hospital setting.

I am sure that your experience and background will generate interest in the IT industry. Unfortunately, I am unable to assist you, being focused entirely in the healthcare industry.

Good luck,

Name removed

Now, this is for an IT position, mind you. So they want their IT people to have a background in the healthcare industry. I can understand that. It makes sense to a degree.

However, and someone correct me if they know of some cloning procedure to which the rest of us are not privy: people are not born with, nor enter the workforce, with any particular experience whatsoever. For me to obtain a “healthcare background,”it stands to reason that someone has to take a chance and give me a shot, does it not? It’s the age-old catch-22:

“We’re looking for someone with experience in this area.” “How am I supposed to gain experience in this area unless someone gives me a chance at it?”

It’s not like I can up and start my own hospital tomorrow to gain a “healthcare background.”

Geldof and friends miss the mark

I am quite proud to say I did not watch a single second of the incredibly vapid, colossal waste of time and public airwaves that was Live 8. Rick Moran, on the other hand, did watch it, and gets what Geldof and crew do not:

The idea that “raising awareness” of Africa’s plight will save starving children is absurd. In order to save those children, you don’t have to snap your fingers, what you need is wholesale regime changes in 2 dozen or more countries where governments use starvation as the weapon of choice against rebelious populations. Africa’s problem is not lack of food. It is not a lack of arable land, or water resources, or agricultural know-how (they’ve been farming in Africa since before the Egyptians got themselves organized). At bottom, Africa’s problem is, well, Africans. Embracing the socialist doctrines of the old Soviet Union and Cuba during the 1970’s and 80’s, the grandiose schemes and huge development projects undertaken with some of the $220 billion in western aid that has gone to the continent since the 1960’s proved to be boondoggles of the first magnitude.

Dam building for electricity that nobody needs or can use is just one small example. What isn’t known and probably can never be calculated is the out and out theivery of aid funds by African leaders, their families, their extended families, their cronies, and the western companies who are forced into kickback schemes in order to win contracts with this human daisy chain of graft and corruption.

[…]

Which makes Live 8 about as relevant to helping solve Africa’s problems as the activities of the masked anarchists who are gleefully running around Edinburgh smashing windows and torching automobiles as if to prove the efficacy of corporal punishment denied them when they were children.

All something like Live 8 does is alleviate whatever guilt those who organize and participate may be feeling about the problem. Personally, I’m making a difference in Africa, one child at a time. His name is Emmanuel, he lives in Tanzania, and though he is five years older, he shares a birthday with my son.

I don’t share this to get a pat on the back; I share it to say you don’t need a bunch of celebs cavorting on stage, “raising awareness,” to personally make a difference. Not to mention that Geldof and crew would never tell you about Compassion, World Vision, the Barnabas Fund, Mercy Ships, or myriad other organizations which have been making a difference for years.

How many meals could be provided, through organizations already on the ground, by the multi-carat diamond necklace Madonna was wearing, if she weren’t so busy flipping off the world? Angelina Jolie aside, when was the last time any of these spoiled celebrity brats spent time helping in a refugee camp? They are the ones with the supposed influence, and certainly the funds, and the best they can come up with is a concert to “raise awareness”? Let’s see Geldof, Madonna, McCartney, and the rest put their money where their mouths are.

[A wave of the fin to Jeff for pointing to Rick’s post.]

About Lance

I am pretty ambivalent with regard to Lance Armstrong. Like a majority of Americans, I’m not a gearhead, unlike my pal Dan (who needs a new blog title). I did cheer for Armstrong when he battled back from cancer to win the Tour de France. I booed him over essentially choosing his career over his family. Like the large majority of professional athletes, Armstrong is nothing more than someone you can admire for his professional achievements, but should be avoided for pretty much anything else. Via the aforementioned Dan, an interview with the latest Armstrong biographer, Dan Coyle, confirms this:

VN: What is your personal take on Lance Armstrong?

DC: As his teammate Jonathan Vaughters once told me, there’s a pattern with Lance: he gets close to people, and inevitably something goes haywire. I must admit, the closer I got to him, the less I found myself admiring him. Now that I have distance again, I find myself admiring him more. Let me put it this way - he is a good hero for my 10-year old son, but I wouldn’t necessarily want him to date my daughter.

VN: One former teammate once described him as “one of the unhappiest men I’ve met.” Do you think Lance Armstrong is happy?

DC: He is more driven than happy. As Floyd Landis puts it in the book, “Lance doesn’t want to be hugged, he wants to kick everybody’s ass.”

Armstrong may not want to psychoanalyze himself, but I’d be happy to do so. From the myriad things I’ve read here and there about him, I would say Lance is a poster child for why involved fathers, or father-figures, mentors, are so important in a child’s life. In some ways, Lance is scared to love because he didn’t get that love only a father can provide. He has a void in his heart that he has only been able to fill with his desire to dominate and win in the sport of cycling.

Personally, I think I’d rather be around someone who’s happy.

When editing goes wrong

One of the local semi-independent stations is showing Ronin this evening. Now, being one of my favorite action movies, because it is a thinking-man’s action movie and not a mindless blood and gore fest, I figured I would keep it on while I languished away the hours working on my wife’s XP box. (Bad, XP, bad!) Those of you who haven’t seen the movie can skip the rest, because I’m going to talk about a specific plot point, and it contains kinda-sorta spoiler info.

I realize there’s a lot of editing that has to go in to a film like this, to put it on non-cable television during “family hours” on the weekend. In addition to filtering out the curse words, and especially bloody scenes, the broadcasters have to be concerned with a time factor as well, mostly so they can get enough advertising in to cover the cost of showing the movie. I can appreciate all of this.

But then they go and cut what I consider a central tenant of the movie. Maybe it’s because I am a fan of this film, and have seen it a few times. Maybe persons who have never seen it before won’t miss the scene because they don’t know to miss it.

The scene I’m referring to is at Jean-Pierre’s, where Vincent (Jean Reno) takes Sam (Robert De Niro) after the latter has been shot. While recovering, Sam watches as Jean-Pierre paints miniature samurai warriors for a diorama he has created. His hobby, as he explains to Sam. We see Jean-Pierre put the latest dry figure on to the diorama, and we cut to the next scene.

They completely cut out the rest of the scene with Jean-Pierre, who explains to Sam about the 47 Ronin, and what ronin were: masterless samurai. The 47 Ronin were despondent over failing their master, who was killed by a rival warlord. So, in time, they gave their lives in an attempt to kill the rival. The term ronin in the case of the movie is supposed to refer to agents who have left the fold of their respective agency, like Sam. I always thought this scene was rather important, as it goes a long way toward explaining the title of the film, even if not directly. It’s a shame it was cut for the television broadcast.

Shapiro’s latest

Ben Shapiro:

Social liberalism seeks to promote a “live and let live” society wherein all types of deviant behavior is tolerated and accepted. Those on the left have thrust their notion of a “civilized,” amoral society upon all of us. The fact of the matter is that “live and let live” directly contradicts the notion of communal society; we all have to abide by certain rules to live together. An amoral society minimizes the rules under which we live together; any change in those rules is bound to affect all of us.

And it has. By discarding traditional morality in favor of amoralism, we have catered to the lowest common denominator.

[…]

We have successfully defined deviancy down; the deviant is now considered normal. Meanwhile, we have defined deviancy up; the normal is now considered deviant. And the effects upon my generation — the porn generation — have been disastrous. We are apathetic about morality, and that apathy translates into nihilism and narcissism — and in the end, into generational self-destruction. Like it or not, the porn generation is the future of this country.

Do we really care?

It is a sad, sad, sad indictment of our American culture when the trial verdict of a washed-up has-been, who hasn’t put out a decent record in more than a decade, is the top news story of the day.

Reaction to offense: Muslim vs Christian

I’m sorry for another post from Best of the Web, but Taranto and company are simply on today:

Still, by way of comparison, recall that three years ago Palestinian Arab terrorists occupied the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem. Priests reported that “gunmen tore up Bibles for toilet paper,” according to the Daily Camera of Boulder, Colo. The Chicago Tribune noted after the siege that “altars had been turned into cooking and eating tables, a sacrilege to the religious faithful.”

Christians in the U.S. responded by declining to riot and refraining from killing anyone. They had the same response 15 or so years ago when the National Endowment for the Arts was subsidizing the scatological desecration of a crucifix and other Christian symbols. This should also put to rest the oft-heard calumny that America’s “religious right” is somehow a Christian equivalent of our jihadi enemies.

This goes hand-in-hand with what Jeff has been saying.

PETA’s Dirty Secret

PETA kills animals.

I’m shocked, I tell you. Shocked!

About that overvalued Euro…

Bruce Bawer:

…[A] study by a Swedish research organization, Timbro, which compared the gross domestic products of the 15 European Union members (before the 2004 expansion) with those of the 50 American states and the District of Columbia.

[…]

After adjusting the figures for the different purchasing powers of the dollar and euro, the only European country whose economic output per person was greater than the United States average was the tiny tax haven of Luxembourg, which ranked third, just behind Delaware and slightly ahead of Connecticut.

[…]

If the E.U. was treated as a single American state, it would rank fifth from the bottom, topping only Arkansas, Montana, West Virginia and Mississippi. In short, while Scandinavians are constantly told how much better they have it than Americans, Timbro’s statistics suggest otherwise.

[Via Political Diary.]

Closing the book on the metrosexual revolution

Thank God.

Doug Giles:

Now, for all you Backstreet Boys who are wondering if, if, you are one of these metrosexual males from whom women, men and small animals are running, I’ve concocted a little test to help you shed your proclivities toward abnormality and begin to saddle up and ride in a more masculine direction. Are you ready? If you start to hyper-ventilate, just take a break and control your breathing. Here we go.

Now did you think I was going to ruin it by posting Doug’s test? That’s why the article is hyper-linked, for crying out loud. Go. Click. Read. Laugh.

What would we do without stock analysts?

Today’s MDJ provides good background information on Apple’s quarterly financial conference call coming later this afternoon. Matt & Company’s analysis of the stock “analyst” situation is spot on:

If Apple beats its own estimates by 10%, those results are merely “in line with analyst expectations.” If Apple’s estimates were spot on, then the company didn’t live up to those “analyst expectations.” In a sane world, the market would punish the analysts for missing their forecast, but that’s not where we live. The analysts would blame Apple, not themselves, and issue feverish research notes accusing the company of “underperforming” and “bursting its bubble.” The stock price, in turn, would summarily fall.

[Emphasis added. —R]

So like many segments of our society, the “analysts” will play the blame game if Apple’s figures don’t match up with theirs. It’s not their fault their projections were wrong; it’s Apple’s fault for failing to meet the analysts’ expectations, even if Apple’s figures fall in line with Apple&