Land of Oz

Weird Dreams

This holiday has been pretty stressed out in many ways. The other night I had a pretty odd dream. As in most of my dreams, it goes in short, semi-related episodes. Here's what I can remember.

It started on a space station of some kind. There was a breech in one of the windows and my space suit was several rooms away contrary to SOP. I could feel the panic of not knowing if I could get to me suit before I suffocated. I did manage to get into a suit before the air was gone, but I don't think it was mine.

I was being interviewed for a job and the question of religion came up. I answered that I wasn't very religious and didn't believe in god. After the interview was over, I stayed worried that perhaps I would lose my job over these negative religious feelings.

Somehow I knew that earth had been surreptitiously invaded and "they" were among us. They being canine-people. (For some reason, dog never came to mind in this dream, only canine.) At one time, when I was in my office, one of them came in and leaned on my desk with dog paws believing I was in the know as to who they really were. It seemed they could mask themselves as human. One other time I was in a store when someone walked in. As soon as the stranger walked in all the other people in the store began to act like crazy dogs. I'm not quite sure why some times they would mask themselves as dogs and at other times as humans.

It turned out the religion question had been to determine my possible status as one who could be trusted to work with them. Making me a quisling of a sorts, I guess. The idea being that if I didn't believe in god, I wouldn't have quite too much trouble dealing with leadership who were doglike pagans, instead of human.

When I look at all the little bits, it seems that we were in space at this time and there was a secret invasion of canine appearing aliens who could mask themselves as humans and needed humans to do their work. It seemed I had no problem accepting that - which I suppose is good and bad - and became one of their loyal minions.

I can see some of the stress with the past weeks in this. Job security, new leadership of the country, religious holidays, emergency response and management, and noisy next door dogs all blend into this mess.

Labels: misc, religion

Web Sites

I spend a lot of time on the web, both at work and at home and I've come up with some stuff that really bugs me about sites. In fact, many times I'll just close the page if some of this stuff happens. If you're a site developer and happen to read this, you might take some hints. I hardly think I'm the only one who this stuff really bugs.

Noisy pages - I don't mind opting in for sound, but I really hate sound sneaking up on me.

Ads - for the most part I don't mind ads. I understand that for you to put stuff up I like, you need to get some advertising revenue. However, there are ads and there are ads. I really dislike those that cover a page and either don't go away, or are hard to close. I'll usually leave a page that has a noisy ad. I hate those extra ads that appear behind the browser. I guarantee I'll close every one before I read it. And if I do see the product, I'll do my best to never use it.

Multi-column articles longer than a monitor window. While this works in print, it doesn't work online. I hate to page down, then back up and back down again.

Wide formatted text pages that don't let me resize the browser. I like narrow columns to read and when I can't squish them down without having to scroll right, I get greatly irritated.

News videos - give me text to read. Online video is usually too slow, too small and too hard to listen to.

Graphic intensive pages - graphics are good until they slow your page so much it takes forever to load. Rather than watching all those little icons get replaced with images, I'll move on.

Dark text on dark backgrounds - I need contrast. It may look cool, but if I can't read it, I'm moving on. This happens a lot when a photo is used for a page background.

Too many links - while I understand web pages are supposed to be interactive some pages have so many links on them you end up launching ads by just trying to bring the window to the front.

Labels: computers, gripes

Bail Outs 2

Big Three

Hmmm, let me see if I understand this. A couple weeks ago the Big Three flew down to D.C. in their private jets to try to get money to rescue their companies. Congress said, "show us a plan."

One week later the Big Three is set to return to D.C. (not in private jets) with the plan. If it only takes a couple of weeks to figure out what is wrong, why didn't they do it last year - or the year before?

Banks

What exactly are the banks doing with their $700 billion or thereabouts? These are the folks who have been throwing money away to bad credit risks for years now. So suddenly we're going to trust them with $700B of our hard earned taxes?

Mom and Pop

Where does Mom and Pop and their little snack shop fall in this meeting of the financial minds? Do they get a piece of the unknown trillions of dollars we're tossing around lately? Or do they just watch their livelihood get sold for pennies on the dollar?

Me

Yeah, me. OK, so I'm greedy. Do I get any benefits out of this trillion dollar fiasco? I'm one of those idiots who's lived within their means for the past few years. Will I have anything to show except for a drained retirement savings account and a house I can't even sell for what I owe on it?

Labels: government, scams

Neighbors

We got a new neighbor who moved in a couple of months ago. He's really not a bad sort, but he does a lot of stupid things that really don't fit in the neighborhood. The house he bought (at nearly list) had one of the best lawns in the area - now it looks like a hayfield. He has this huge riding lawn mower, waits for the grass to get high, then scalps it down and leaves the cut stuff sitting there. There was one pile about 8" high and 8' long in his driveway for a month.

As soon as he moved in he put in a fence. Naturally for the three (large) dogs he has. I've had more than a few evenings ruined by his beasts barking for hours on end. While the stupid dogs could be worse, I shouldn't have to plan my outside time around his. And one dog pretty regularly runs loose. We've planted some shrubs to hopefully block the view of his fence and yard and dogs.

He has two cats that spend more time pooping and peeing in my yard than they do in his yard. And they love checking out my bird feeders. I keep hoping one of my other neighbors will shoot them.

He rarely sorts his trash for recycling. Our area had a cut in trash fees last year because so many people do recycle.

He parks his car in his back yard. He's got a pretty nice set of ruts across the front yard (not that he cares about his yard) where he pulls it in.

His kids keeps their car in the street where the snowplows have to work around them.

The last time he plowed his driveway, he scalped about a two-three square foot of sod up and has never put it back down. Of course this week we had a new snow that buried his sod and he doesn't seem to shovel his drive.

Another new neighbor on the other side of me told me, "I'm glad you live between him and me." One of the older neighbors across the street mentioned she couldn't understand why they moved here.

This guy has cars in his backyard, his yard looks a mess, he parks just about anywhere and he has three dogs who bark too often and snarl quite viciously when I walk past their fence. While we do live somewhat in the country, it's still a subdivision. This guy should have bought some house farther out in the boondocks where he could be the unthinking slob he strives to be.

Labels: freedom, gripes, michigan

Bail outs

The buzzword for this month is bail out. One meaning is when you leap out of a dying vehicle before it smashes into a million bits. Another meaning is to remove slimy bilge water hopefully fast enough so the boat doesn't sink. One more is paying money so some crook (OK, alleged crook) can walk free. I wonder which fits the banks and automotive industries.

What I really wonder is why them and not the local businesses that are going down the tubes faster than sign-makers can put up "out of business" signs. Has anyone done a cost analysis to see if giving $500 billion to a couple of big banks saves more jobs than giving $50,000 to Mom and Pop to save their coffee shop? And why does a CEO need to be coerced into taking a pay cut from $25 million annually to show he's determined to rescue the business he led into the red?

I'd like to know how much of this banker and auto money has filtered down to the people it's supposed to help. I have a house I can't sell that's worth much less than I paid and somewhat less than I owe (so, yes, I'm better off than some). It's a nice older 1600 sq. ft. home with central air, new siding and a two car garage and no one can come up with $45,000 to buy it. Sorry Mr. CEO, but that fact you feel $25 million a year is just barely enough to put a kid through college doesn't impress me much. How do you manage to spend $25M a year anyway? I realize you have business entertainment expenses and security issues, but my god man, $25M worth?

Don't get me wrong. I'm not asking for a handout right now. I'm doing OK. But I'd really like someone else to get some help so they can buy my house, raise a family, and even send their kid to college - and I'm sure they could manage it on a lot less than $25M.

Labels: government, gripes

Best Buy

Caution - anti-rant here. Commercial endorsement possible. As much as I complain about lousy service, I figure it's only right that I mention good service. We recently bought a Nikon L18 camera at Best Buy, which in itself is kind of interesting. (It lists for $130 and we thought about it, it went down to $120 and I seriously considered it, then it was $100 and I bought it - and it's back up to $130 now.)

This weekend I tried the macro option to take some photos of some toys I'm building. While in macro mode, it made a grinding noise while it tried to focus. I tried a few times and it continued. Now I really, really hate to return stuff so I almost decided to keep it as is. But, I finally decided to do the exchange thing back at Best Buy.

I go to the Customer Service counter and stand in line (it is Xmas shopping season after all) and read my Palm Z22 (bought at Best Buy) while I wait. Finally I get to the register and the woman checks it out, confirms the noise and calls back to the camera department to let them know I'll be back there for an exchange. Wow - no muss, no fuss. Of course when I did arrive at the camera department the woman working there was absolutely clueless about what I was trying to do. Luckily someone else showed up and let her know what to do (get me a new camera).

A few minutes later I was heading out the door with a new camera and a smile. I have to admit that Best Buy has been absolutely great about returns so far. I really hate to return stuff, but Best Buy as been really nice about it. From this broken camera to a good, but unwanted iPod, they accepted things with no fees and no hassles. I know I rant about the noise in the store and the ofttimes clueslessness of their employees, but their return process is first rate.

Labels: rave, tech

Auto Bailout

Here's some random thoughts about the automotive industry bailout. Not all are my independent ideas, but here's my thinking:

It's not an automobile industry bailout, it's a Detroit automobile industry bailout. There is a difference.

The business plan of Chrysler, GM, and Ford is broke and throwing more money after bad isn't going to fix it.

I read somewhere that GM is something like $60 billion in debt now - what good is a &25B loan going to do?

Even if they don't have that debt, GM and Ford are burning through a few billion a month. $25B will last them until roughly April when they'll be broke again.

I know the UAW workers will be hurt - but no matter what happens, bailout or no bailout, the UAW is going to be hurt. Hundreds of thousands of workers are losing their jobs every month in an assortment of industries (DHL just laid off 10K) and nobody helped them out.

GM needs to consolidate and trim their brands. Do we really need Buick, Cadillac, Chevrolet, Daewoo, GMC, Holden, HUMMER, Opel, Pontiac, Saab, Saturn and Vauxhall? I'm guessing way over half of those vehicles are basically the same anyway.

The USofA needs to push mass-transit and smaller, more energy-efficient vehicles and should look at tax breaks and other monetary incentives to the public for using them.

So you know what? I have no idea what to do with the so-called Big 3 that isn't going to hurt a lot of people very badly.

And just as an aside, retirement is no longer something to really look forward to. The cost of everything is skyrocketing, any financial savings plans are dying and pensions are being modified into non-existence and jobs are paying less and less. The houses that could have been a pension fund are worth poop and no one has the money to buy it from you even if you could sell it to supplement the savings that went down in flames along with the house equity.

Labels: government, gripes

VA

I gripe an awful lot here, but once in awhile I do give an attaboy. I'd like to give one to the Veterans Affairs hospital in Saginaw (Aleda E. Lutz VA Medical Center). While I normally use a civilian doctor - mostly just annual checkups - I have used this VA hospital off and on over the years. When I first retired here, I was going to school and used the hospital for a few health odds and ends. Some eye stuff, a heart workup and some other problems. I never had any less that excellent care from everyone here.

The last couple of months brought me to the VA again. A few weeks ago, I managed to put a 2" brad through my finger with an air gun. Luckily it missed all the important stuff and healed pretty much on its own. I did however head down the VA emergency room to have it looked at where I got a tetanus shot. I was seen quickly and professionally. Today I went down for a flu shot. When I arrived there was a sign saying they were on lunch until 12:30 which was another 30 minutes. The welcome desk made a call, and directed me down to another office where I quickly (and painlessly!!! - really!) got my flu shot.

This place really does good work.

Labels: government, michigan