Land of Oz

Do you tap your feet?

CBS News:"Roll Call, citing the report, said Sgt. Dave Karsnia made the arrest [of Idaho Senator Larry Craig] after an encounter in which he was seated in a stall next to a stall occupied by Craig. Karsnia described Craig tapping his foot, which Karsnia said he 'recognized as a signal used by persons wishing to engage in lewd conduct.'"

Be warned. No tapping of feet in America. We have fought the Muslim religious fanatics and they have won. If you are sitting in the john you'd better make sure you aren't listening to your iPod and tapping your feet. You can be arrested. Heaven help you if you clap along with the music. I enjoyed the movie Tap with Gregory Hines a couple of months ago - what does that say about me?

Labels: crime, government

Cost of Stuff

I recently had to buy a new battery for one of our car remotes. It's a pretty typical battery, a 2016 button cell. I can't quite figure out why there's such a range of prices for the exact same item.

Radio Shack $4.99 ea.

Sears $3.99 ea.

Staples $2.99 ea.

Target $4.39 pair.
Except for the privately labeled Radio Shack battery, they are all the same brand. I wouldn't be surprised if under the Radio Shack label, the battery is the same either. I ended up buying them at Target along with a bottle of Target branded aspirin - which was cheaper than the national brand version unlike the battery prices at Radio Shack.

Which also brings to mind gas price changes. This seems to be the only commodity sold to the general public where the price changes almost hourly. I can't figure out why the gas I bought yesterday at $2.899 suddenly goes up to $.3069 today. And why the 9/10 of a cent that gasoline is sold by? Back when it was $0.329 a gallon, the sneaky 9/10 of a cent was a fairly significant "hidden" addition to the total cost of a gallon of gas. Now when it's $3.299 a gallon, the 9/10 of a cent is just annoying.

I can't but wonder how long before everything else changes price like gasoline does. You could buy a Big Mac yesterday at $2.10 but tomorrow, it will cost you $2.25, and two days later be back down to $2.07 and 9/10 of a cent.

Labels: gripes, scams

// posted by Jim-of-oz @ 8/28/2007 05:42:00 PM

Saginaw's Water

There was an article in today's Saginaw News about the fact that Saginaw needs an upgrade in its water system. Right now, the water quality is pretty good - at least it tastes pretty good. It's better than a lot of places I've been to. But, lke a lot of the USofA infrastructure, it's old - some pipes are over 100 years old.

The Public Works director was interviewed about it in the paper. What scares me is that he has brags about still using a VCR, and has actually heard of DVD players going for $100. It's nice to know that the person responsible for putting our water system into the future is so firmly stuck in the past. A quick check at Best Buy shows four players under $50.

Labels: government, gripes

Where to Eat?

Did you ever have one of those nights where you can't figure out where you want to eat? Tonight I had planned to stop at the Jade Garden which is probably my favorite Chinese restaurant in town for some Chicken Curry with Rice Noodles. Naturally it was closed. Once your main plan is closed, it sometimes gets hard. OK, then Macdonalds I figured. I got near it and decided I wasn't quite ready for the grease.

I went further on and decided to turn right on Davenport and head to Tim Hortons or maybe Wendy's. I only got two blocks and then went back on Bay to go another Chinese place downtown for takeout. But then I wasn't ready for the portion size and didn't feel like eating at home, so I decided to see if the Firehouse Nine felt OK. It didn't and I went past it and then headed back up Court to return to Tim Hortons. On the way I thought I might head for the Old Towne Drive In instead, but again the grease made me forget that. I also was thinking about frying up some egg noodles and breadcrumbs, like I had originally thought before I left work, but that didn't seem right either.

I finally made a U-turn on Court and returned to Papa Johns pizza where I ordered a small veggie pizza. I brought that back home and ate while I finished my Animated Batman DVD and had some watermelon for dessert. I'm wishing now I had stopped someplace else to eat, but I'm not sure where.

Labels: food

Dead

Being an ex-GI, I read with sorrow and outrage about how many of our troops are getting killed and wounded in Iraq and Afghanistan. You read online and on paper about the 3 - 4 and more GIs who are getting killed seemingly each day. Occasionally you'll see higher numbers - 14 in crash here, 8 in an attack there. It adds up. Something like 3600 dead as of now, and no one really wants to admit how many wounded - but I'm guessing 20,000 - 30,000 (based on a 1 in 7 survival rate). That's a lot of blood.

I think most people, at least those who don't still believe Saddam planned and executed 9/11, realize that we got into Iraq based on lies. We haven't found any so-called weapons of mass destruction and the terrorists are still running around blowing stuff up. However, gasoline is still cheap in the USofA, so I guess that reason has been fulfilled. The trouble is, like Brer Rabbit, we're stuck in that crappy mess. Getting out isn't going to help Iraq - it'll decline to even greater levels of violence and eventually the fundamentalists will take over and the country will be worse off than it is now. We can't stay either, since we're not going to fix thousands of years of sectarian violence with Big Macs, M-16s and Stryker APCs.

The real losers are in Iraq. We can leave and go home. The Iraqis are home. While we've had 30,000 dead and wounded, just how many do you think they've had. Nobody's been keeping an accurate body count - most people don't even care. The Iraqis are some faceless people who were under Saddam and are now free - free of food, free of water, free of electricity and free of freedom in general. However since every time we see 4 or 5 GIs blown in the news, that's usually followed by 40 - 50 Iraqis. That's ten to one - that means 300,000 - 400,000 dead and wounded?

That's what really sucks.

Labels: government, military

What Was He Thinking?

Here's my nominee for the 2007 What Was He Thinking competition. Here's a guy who gave up a $110 million career so he could win a few $50,000 dog fighting awards. There are a lot of folks this year who have been showing little common sense, from pandering politicians, to money-grubbing CEOs to drunk, disorderly and dumb celebrities, but Mr. Vick seems have taken the cake.
And for all of you who said he should get the benefit of the doubt, oops. I don't think there's much question about his guilt now.

Labels: celebs, crime

Fame and Peons

Here's a CNN story I read today about an accident in Germany. It had to do with the film crew in Tom Cruise's film about the Hitler assassination attempt in World War 2. I guess while a truck was rounding a corner, a side broke and eleven people went tumbling onto the road. My understanding was that several had to go to hospital with severe, though not life threatening injuries. What gets me is the way the accident was reported, "'We have no findings to suggest anyone famous was involved in the accident,' said a police spokesman, ... Eleven people were injured when they fell off the back of a truck during the shooting of Tom Cruise's latest film in Berlin..."

It's as if, if you're not famous, you don't count. Eleven peons get injured, and it's like, so what, nobody famous was involved. Just think what kind of news report there would have been if Tom got his pinky hurt. There would have been reporters from all over the county camped outside the hospital. CNN would have around the clock the coverage and Inside Edition would be crapping their pants with excitement. As it is, who cares - nobody famous - go on with life. Stupid celebrities.

Labels: gripes, movies

Old Stuff

I spent an interesting afternoon today at an old time tractor show. This year was pretty cool since they had several steam traction engines running around. They'd spend some time running a sawmill then run around the show for awhile. Big, noisy, greasy hulking brutes. Very cool.

What I couldn't help but wonder at was while looking over the assorted collection of tractors and related equipment dating back to the turn of the previous century was how open and simple everything was. Manufacturers back then expected you to look out for yourselves. If you couldn't keep you fingers out of the gears, then you probably didn't really need them. There were tappets and valve trains sitting out in the open right on the operators platform. While I'm not saying no safety in mind was right, we certainly have gone overboard.

I'm trying to imagine a lawyer back in 1923 trying to sue a tractor company because some farmer got burned on firebox. Can you see anyone even thinking about suing a restaurant because the coffee was too hot back in 1933? I think there was more than a little Darwinian selection going on back then. If you were too stupid to survive, you didn't. Now if you're too stupid you can hire a lawyer to make you rich.

Labels: gripes, oldies

Cheap Stuff

Unless you've been hiding in a cave recently you've probably read a lot about product recalls, primarily, but not only, from China. (For example, Nokia has been stuck with 46 million bum batteries from Japan's Matsushita.)

The problem for the most part is us. If we weren't so willing (and desperate) to buy cheap the manufacturers wouldn't be so inclined to cut corners. Why do you think places like Wal Mart have such low prices. It certainly isn't because they put quality on a pedestal. And in fact you can't really blame them. Given the choice between a $10 toy truck and a $2 toy truck most people are going to spend the 2 bucks.

You can't really blame China completely either. Wal Mart puts the squeeze on the manufacture to cut cost as much as possible. That half-cent difference between lead based paint and non-toxic latex doesn't sound like much, but over the run of a few million bilious green plastic frogs, it adds up.

So if you want safer/better stuff think about what you're buying. A couple of years ago, I spent around $15 for a 7 piece drill set (from China) which I thought at the time wasn't too bad a price. They worked adequately. A little rough, but they made holes. Over the next couple of years I learned a bit more about wood and then spent $45 for the exact same size set of drills. Made in USA and modified in Canada and they are so much better than the $15 set. Bottom line is that you get what you pay for, whether it's a $15 set of drills or a $2 blue bunny bus. There's a reason it's cheap.

Labels: gripes, scams

Klingons or Orkans?

I have a my.yahoo page set up to show various news headlines. Today, I noticed the following list under CNN:Unfortunately it was an editorial about allowing illegal terrestrial aliens into the military rather than the much more interesting prospect of illegal (or legal) extraterrestrials. I think Mork would probably fit into the USAF - probably at an upper staff level someplace, while the Marines might be more happy with Worf as a DI.

Labels: government, military

Chinese Steamed Buns

You may remember awhile back about a big news story about steamed buns in China being made from cardboard. Fox News among many others ran it. I guess a week or so later, there were more stories, this time about the Chinese reporter who ran the story accused and arrested over the fact that the whole cardboard food story was all a fake. Even Wikipedia has an entry about the fake story.

What I find interesting is that a lot of Chinese don't believe the reporter was arrested for faking the story, but in actuality was arrested because the story was true and the Chinese government was less than thrilled with the publicity as they ramp up for the 2008 Olympics - the Chinese government being the kind and considerate folks that they are. Some of my Chinese friends actually thought I was pretty guillable for buying the idea that the Chinese government arrested the reporter for telling lies rather than arresting him for telling the truth the government really wouldn't like to hear right now.

Labels: food, government

COs

Conscientious Objector, that's what CO stands for. Here's an article, pretty favourable, in the Christian Science Monitor about a convicted deserter. I'd like to make my thoughts plain on this subject. The debate over CO status seems to be becoming more common especially as the Iraq mess gets worse and worse.

I'm kind of a hardass on this subject. Many years ago when people were drafted against their wishes into the military, I could understand this. Even today, if a person makes this decision during their initial signup I can understand. If a person decides they don't want to shoot or blowup people yet still want to serve their country in some non-combatant way, more power to them.

What I don't like are those who enlist, go to war, then after getting shot at, decide whoops, I goofed - I don't like to be shot at or shoot at. Is it really that hard to see that being in the military, especially the army or marines, means shooting at or being shot at? Do people really go into the military with so little thought? The days of getting drunk and waking up in boot camp are long gone - gone the way of P-38s and C-rats. Are the young people of today so stupid as to have no idea of what the military is about? Don't they watch TV, browse the net, read (gasp) a magazine or newspaper?

Can they really be surprised to find out they have to shoot people - or inturn get shot at? Honestly, I know kids can be stupid, but just how stupid can kids be? And this guy in question is almost 30 with two kids and a wife. And as far as GIs talking lewdly about Iraqi females - they will talk lewdly about any female. I've been out of the service for over 10 years, but I don't see the basic human nature changing much. It's still a place for a certain amount of crudity and lack of culture. I was in the air force, and even there enlisted cultural standards weren't much and the army is far behind. This doesn't apply to everyone of course, but I really don't think I'd be amiss applying it to most of the enlisted ranks.

You volunteered and unless you're a certified mental midget, the dark side of war making shouldn't be that much of a surprise. The worst is worse than you can imagine, but you should be able to imagine - or at least notice - that the business of the military is to kill others before they kill you. Otherwise it'd be the cub scouts.

Labels: government, gripes, military

Weather Forecasters?

Here are two news articles that came up in my yahoo.com home page today.

Forecasters see less active hurricane season

Atlantic hurricane season will be above-normal: experts

Any bets as to who will be correct?

Labels: tech

Noise

Here's an article about people complaining about noise. While mostly about the noise from an iPod's earphones, it also touches on iPod listeners singing along with their iPod. The following quote is what really got to me:

"Did anyone ever complain about the noise coming from a Walkman or a CD player?" he [Leander Kahney, managing editor of Wired magazine's Web site] said. "Unless you're in a quiet environment, you're really gonna have to strain to hear any kind of noise from somebody else's iPod."

Our world, he said, has become freakishly quiet. "It's not noise pollution — it's noise absence. And I find it almost more disturbing and upsetting than I did loud noise. It's sort of unnatural."

Where on earth does this guy live? I live in what I've considered a relatively quiet residential neighborhood, but it is still filled with loud speeding vehicles with bad exhausts, cars with audio units that you can hear blocks away with that annoying boing-rattle of cheap bass speaker units. Not to mention year-round and round-the-clock sirens, helicopters and fireworks. There's the one idiot neighbor who warms his loud car up every cold morning at 7:15 - 7:30 a.m. and another one who never fails to honk his horn, not once of course, for his ride pickup at 6 a.m. And did I mention the next door neighbor with their garage band and the house on the other side of the block that like to entertain the entire block with their musical racket? For awhile, people in the next block were calling the police to complain about the noise level from the house next door to me. Thankfully, one of house inhabitants got hauled off in an ambulance last year (disposition unknown) and it's been relatively (only loud a couple times a month at 2 a.m. now) quiet ever since.

I sit in my cubicle at work and listen to the ever-present growl of the air handling system, loud chattering employees in the next aisle and people holding conference calls with her speaker phone two cubicles away. And when the growl of the air conditioning dies, as it too often does, the apparent level of chatter and noise goes up a couple more notches.

I guess Wired magazine must have some special high-tech quiet zone that Mr. Kahney lives in, because I sure haven't noticed it. Yes, today there isn't the clump of horses hooves, or the rattle of milk cans in the morning and the train tracks a block away were removed several years ago. The growls of bears and howls of wolves have also gone away as well as the steam boats on the river and the clang of the street car three blocks away. But somehow, I don't think they added up to one addled adolescent with a 300 watt stereo system and 15 inch speakers in their car.

Labels: apple, driving, gripes, tech