Family Feud

Long time readers will know that one of my brothers is a Marine. As I understand it, the present tense is correct, once, always.

He read an article on FoxNews.com about a very brief interview with a Navy Seal and his lawyer about pending charges against the Seal and two others for assaulting an alleged terrorist they had apprehended.

My brother sent me the link and gave me his thoughts about the charges using the theme “you can’t handle the truth!” from the Nicholson/Cruise movie A Few Good Men.

Here’s his raw Email (published with his permission and encouragement) and then my quick response. Then I’ll write a bit more.

Him:

As I have said before Jack Nicholson is the real hero in the movie “A Few Good Men” not Tom Cruise. Some of you don’t understand the line that Jack said in the movie as he portrayed the USMC Lt. Colonel . What was that line you ask? “You can’t handle the truth”.

So why start with a reference to an old movie? Because a Navy Seal is on trial for giving a “fat lip” to a murdering coward. Remember the Fallujah incident of the American that was killed and then dragged around town, burned and then hung from a bridge while the citizens of that city celebrated? I remember. This guy and two other Seals captured the bastard that killed him and tortured his body in public. He is on trial because the guy has a fat lip. I am tired of this Political Correctness and ACLU crap that this country seems to think they must maintain. This country for the most part can’t handle the truth. They want safety but they won’t let those who do the job of ensuring it carry out the mission without oversight into things that they can’t understand and “can’t handle”. So what if the guy got a fat lip from a Navy Seal that captured him??? IMO he is lucky that is all he suffered. It is WAR people. Wake up. Let those that are trained do a job most of us don’t understand do it without reprisal.

Maybe it was the physical beatings that I took from my Marine Corps Drill Instructors that jade me to this. Maybe I understand more than some others do because of what I went thru. If you care to watch another movie, “Full Metal Jacket”. That is what I endured. I got regularly punched and knocked onto my ass from DI’s that had contempt for me. They screamed at me just inches from my face one minute and then whispered into my ear hate and contempt for my sorry ass the next minute. They told me I was not worthy to be a Marine in THEIR Corps. They told me softly and they told me loudly. They told me with pain. I proved them wrong. I took their words, their punishment and their pain. They told us that if we could not survive what they were dishing out in Boot Camp how would we ever survive being a POW in a time of war. How could we perform our mission under pressure?

Even if the guy did get punched who cares. I don’t.

Me:

I read the article and did a search for news reports. I can't find anything that sets out the facts of the incident. Without them, I don't know what he did, when he did it and what the specific charges are. If the bad guy got the injury during the apprehension, I don't think the Seal did anything wrong, probably. If the guy was in custody and restrained and the Seal was taking little vengeance, the Seal probably violated the [UCMJ]. Even if that's the case, it's understandable and I would hope he wouldn't get slapped too bad. That said, and this has nothing to do with me being liberal, everybody knows the rules of the game. For a poor analogy, if I'm speeding and get a ticket, it's no defense that the speed limit is too low or that everybody goes as fast as I was going. I broke the law and have to face the consequences.

Should the [UCMJ] be changed to allow a Seal to after the fact take out his anger on a terrorist? Probably not in my liberal view.

As to the "you can't..." Oh, I can take it. I know full well that a lot goes on in and around war that doesn't pass legal muster. It doesn't bother me too much; but, again, like the Nicholson character, the Seal, a CIA operative, you get caught, you know what's coming.

Finally as to how you were trained, as you know, that is for the most part a thing of the past. I think it should be. My proof: the military is turning out some pretty good Marines, soldiers, sailors and Seals with the new "kinder and gentler" training.

So, we have the visceral reactions of the hero (he is, he’s decorated) and the lawyer. Neither is sufficient.

What are the core issues?

First, we are at war whether we want to be or not. War is not pretty. There is truth to the broad defense of the warrior of “you can’t handle the truth!” There is also truth to the proposition that we should be “better” than our enemies. Is an eye for an eye the best answer?

I don’t know what the Seal and his friends did, I still can’t find a media report that includes anything but reports of the reaction to the charges against them.

Beyond the timing of the offense, if there was an offense, that I seized on in my Email response, what is it that we should be telling our warriors? And let’s be realistic here. There are those among us, I’m included, that don’t want violence, guns, war. I want it all to “poof” go away. It isn’t going away for the most part because of the huge cultural differences between the “Western” nations and the “rogue” countries and groups. We can pull out of Iraq and Afghanistan tomorrow and we will be attacked at the next opportune moment.

So, again, what to do with a Seal that we need, that we have trained to have a hair trigger, that may have reacted (and it’s the wrong word) inappropriately? Or that flat violated the Uniform Code of Military Justice?

We’ve faced this issue for the life of our country. The old people start the war and the young go to fight it. Every now and again, the young’ns, having been wound up, screw it up.

I can’t help but revert to my legal background. If he attacked the guy when he didn’t need to, he has to face the consequences. That said, he was conditioned to react with violence, should we have a few more co-defendants, a bit older?

There’s more here that I’m having trouble articulating, feel free to weigh in.

Buckets and Thimbles

There are a number of news reports about Bill Gates not being the richest guy in the world any more. He’s been passed by a Mexican mogul named Slim (look for his picture and you’ll understand why his name tickles me.)

What struck me is not that Bill is now only number two (and that Warren Buffett has moved down to three on the Forbes Billionaires list). Rather it is the fact that all three billionaires' net worth went up, substantially, from last year:

Slim from $35 billion to $53.5 billion.

Gates from $40 billion to $53 billion.

Buffett from $37 billion to $47 billion.

I guess the Recession hasn’t hit everybody. From the Forbes.com article:

“In his annual shareholder letter Buffett wrote, ‘We've put a lot of money to work during the chaos of the last two years. When it's raining gold, reach for a bucket, not a thimble.’

Many plutocrats did just that. Indeed, last year's wealth wasteland has become a billionaire bonanza. Most of the richest people on the planet have seen their fortunes soar in the past year.”

I got to get me one of those buckets to replace my thimble.

In Praise of a Good Ol' Boy

I was hanging out after work today with Big Rick and my friend the cop. You saw the picture of the truck in the post below.

Neither Rick, nor the cop, are liberal, commie, pinkos like me; and, we all agreed on our Georgia Government’s decision to blatantly violate the law.

A year or so ago a young woman was murdered while hiking in the Georgia mountains. Her killer was arrested and confessed. He’s doing time.

Hustler Magazine made an Open Records Request for the crime scene photos, which show her nude and mutilated body. The head of the Georgia Bureau of Investigation said no, you want them, sue me.

Thing is, Hustler is legally entitled to the pictures. There are times when legal just doesn’t get it. This is one of them.

If the State loses in a trial court, I say appeal. If it loses there, keep up the appeals. If the end result is you have to comply, block out the body and start the process all over again.

Every now and again it’s a good thing that a good ol' boy says that ain’t right.

Where the Words, I Think, Add to the Picture

You don't get the full down hill tilt from the picture. I'm thinking about the physics of the situation - inches from the bumper of the car, put it in park, turn it off, open the door, rush to the bed of the truck, get the chunk of wood (click the picture if you want to see it a bit more clearly) and jam it in below the left rear tire of the car.

And the aftermath - it's in the parking lot of a bar. Run the above sentence in reverse after a few adult beverages.

Comcast is the Worst Internet Provider In the World, with apologies to Keith Olbermann. TWO UPDATES

Here’s how I spent part of the last hour. See below the transcript for the rest.

dave>
Comcast keeps taking over my search engine.

analyst Sonia has entered room

Sonia>
Hello Dave_, Thank you for contacting Comcast Live Chat Support. My name is Sonia. Please give me one moment to review your information.

Sonia>
Hello, Dave!

Sonia>
Thank you so much for patiently waiting on the queue. How's your day so far?

Dave_>
Fine, I just was online with s tech named Kathleene, I have Firefox set to use Google to give suggestions if I type a bad URL. For some reason you have decided to redirect me to customer.comcast.com (which gives lousy results). Kathleene had me delete Recent History which took me back to Google; but, you took it over again. I don't want that, how do I get rid of you?

Sonia>
Oh I see.

Sonia>
I sincerely apologize for the inconvenience this might have been causing you.

Sonia>
No problem!

Sonia>
I would be very glad to assist you on that.

Sonia>
Dave, all you need to do is to turn off the Domain Helper.

Sonia>
Kindly log-in to http://dns-opt-out.comcast.net .

Sonia>
You will need to log-in using the primary username of your account.

Dave_>
If that works fine; but, why did you opt me into it without my asking? Very annoying.

Sonia>
That's by default, Dave. That's why you have an option to deactivate the service/feature if you want to.

Dave_>
Again, bad business. I would like the option to opt in rather than having wasted the last half hour trying to get rid of it. Thank you for your help, assuming it works

Sonia>
It will surely work, Dave. Once you deactivate the service, it will be fully deactivated within 24 hours.

Sonia>
The technicians who will be working on this will send you a confirmation email confirming the successful process.

Sonia>
Then when you receive the email, reset your modem so the changes will fully take effect.

Dave_>
Are you telling me that you took over my computer and won't give it back for a day? Check out the raging post I'm about to write about this foolishness at ratherthanworking.blogspot.com. And now you tell me I have to reset my modem? This is garbage. I know I shouldn't bother you with this as you aren't in charge; but, this is really outrageous.

Sonia>
Dave, I understand how you feel regarding this issue. As I said, within 24 hours, not the whole 24 hours. As soon as you deactivate this feature from your account online, the account technicians who are in charge of this will be working on this right away, then they will send you a confirmation email once the process is completed in the system. The modem reset will refresh your connection from the system so the changes will fully take effect.

Sonia>
I apologize if these steps was not directly given to you by the previous analyst so you should have saved some time troubleshooting the other way.

Dave_>
I fully understand, still totally wrong on Comcast's part to take over the computer and make me go through all this. It isn't the first tech's fault, it is your employer's fault. It may be time to go elsewhere.

Sonia>
I understand, Dave. Are you able to log-in to turn off the feature?

Dave_>
I'll stop with you and do that. If it doesn't work, I'll be back. You really ought to tell a "power that be" that this is a bad policy. People don't like their computers being taken over and then being forced to "opt out." Leaving now.

And the “Thank you for your help, assuming it works?” It didn’t. I logged in, gave my user name and password – no access to “Domain Helper,” I get an endless loop asking me to log in again. I’m tired of this for now. I’ll harass them tomorrow while I’m sitting at the car dealer in the morning while they check out why my check engine light and electronic stability control not working light came on about 4,000 miles before the warranty expires.

TO THE RAMPARTS! DUMP COMCAST!

It seems I’m not a happy consumer at the moment.

UPDATE:

I'm at the car dealer waiting to hear what my next problem's solution is. I went online and found a Comcast blog dealing with its roll out of the Domain Helper "feature." Someone named Scott McNulty with Comcast extolled the virtues of the fact that Comcast unilaterally has hijacked all of its customers' browsers, re-directing any mistyping of a URL to its DNS server which gives you Yahoo search alternatives to your misspelled URL and, surprise, Ads!

I spent some time reading customers' comments on the hijacking and found not a one that was happy. The majority were as irate as I was in the transcript above. Another "surprise," most had the same problems I had - you couldn't get rid of the "service." But, one unhappy customer noted that Google has a free DNS server service. I am now the pround custodian of an "8.8.8.8" route to the Internet, having end run the bastards at Comcast.

It's another pretty day in Atlanta with a projected high in the low sixties. And, I must be living right - I just saw them pull my car up outside. Nothing too bad could have happened in forty minutes.

SECOND UPDATE:

I've got to say that after the fact, Comcast does respond, quickly and in force. When I got to the office from the dealer (O2 sensor went bad for the second time) I had an Email from a guy in their corporate complaint office that was quite apologetic, though still defending their hijacking as a "service." I responded in a bit more detail about what bothered me. About 15 minutes ago I got a response to that from someone else in the same office with another apology and as you can see below in the comments, yet another response, with another apology and offer of help.

I suppose the quick, multiple apologies, coupled with each of my correspondents saying they were going to pass my complaints on to the people that make these (to my mind stupid) decisions is about as much as I can ask beyond getting the couple hours of my life back. And, since Clapton, not Comcast, is God, I guess that isn't in the cards.

It's 70 degrees here in Atlanta

Blue skies. That's it, other than I'm quite pleased even though it is Monday.

With Apologies to Jim Donahue

Jim writes The Velvet Blog, see Recommended side bar. Jim doesn’t like Cablevision, one of the main TV providers on the East Coast.

His hated provider is in a battle this weekend with Disney, the owner of ABC, the broadcaster of the Oscars later tonight. Last I knew, Jim isn’t going to see the Oscars unless he hooks up an antenna.

But, I read something this afternoon about Cablevision and Senator Kerry wanting to arbitrate the dispute. That is stupid. Disney/ABC wants more money for what it provides to Cablevision. Cablevision doesn’t want to pay more money. Both equally reasonable or unreasonable depending on which of them you are. As a Cablevision customer, I’d root for your provider in the long run, the other side in the short run (now a couple of hours).

Arbitration? Just what is an arbitrator going to decide? There isn’t any law to be applied. One side wants to pay less, the other side wants more paid. Both perfectly acceptable outcomes.

How dare that mean Disney cut off it’s programming to the Cablevision subscribers! Were I the evil Michael Isner, I think the president of Disney, I’d do exactly the same thing at exactly the same time, when I had leverage. Were I running Cablevision, I’d be demonizing Mickey Mouse for his evil manipulation of the Oscars. Damn the little rat!

Business, pure and simple.

Postettes

Some little things, nothing of any consequence.

I really should read recipes more thoroughly before I start them at 5:30 p.m. expecting to eat by now, (7:30 p.m.). I am now “cooling completely” the combined tomato and béchamel sauce for the lasagna that may start baking in say 45 minutes. I wonder if they sell home blast chillers. And, just why do I have to do this to something that's going in a pan with noodles, spinach, ground chuck and cheese and then is going into a hot oven?

From NYTimes.com:

“Perhaps concerned that his repeated suggestions that the Holocaust might not have happened have become less shocking over time, Iran’s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad upped the ante on Saturday, telling intelligence officials in Tehran that the destruction of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001 was staged.”

I know it’s for home consumption; but, just how is it that you deal with someone like this? I’m thinking you don’t, you just marginalize the country as best you can.

I hope marginalizing Iran doesn’t cost too much, I saw a headline that says all the stuff we’ve been doing over the past 18 months is going to cost something like 7 or 8 trillion bucks.

Do you want a car that has “go kart handling?” Whenever I hear a Mini Cooper ad that boasts that, I think I want a bit more for six figures, including a size that doesn’t look like it was designed for the clowns at the circus to pile out of.

This being Oscar weekend, I have Hurt Locker and District 9 on Netflix. Maybe it’s time to finish this and watch one while the lasagna sauce “completely cools.”

It’s going to be in the low to mid sixties tomorrow here in the Peach State. My tee time is Noon.

Think it’s ok to throw a few cubes of ice in the pot?

Clean Slate

They’ll break my heart in a couple of months, but right now, like every other baseball fan in the country I know my team, the Atlanta Braves, is set to go all the way.

I can prove it:

We have five starting pitchers that based on past performance could be the best rotation in baseball. In games so far they haven’t given up a run in the Grapefruit League. (Of course you have to do a bit of cherry picking of their performances, shake well and hope they all have career years. Then too, one is coming off ligament surgery; I’m sure that won’t be a problem.)

We are deep, deep in the bullpen. (This is leavened by the fact that our new set-up guy and closer are over 40 and the closer is coming off ligament surgery.)

We have a new first baseman that is something like 6’6” and has hit a ton over the years. (Did I mention he’s coming off….)

Chipper Jones, our third baseman is a shoo-in for the Hall of Fame. (He can’t have another abysmal year like 2009 – it just isn’t possible – he’ll return to All Star form, I’m sure.)

Our 2009 blue-collar outfield is going to out perform itself, aided by a 20 year old future superstar right fielder who’s played about ten games above the AA level.

And the rest of the team that I haven’t mentioned is solid (they really are).

So this could be the year we return to glory. Or not. I’m betting on the under.

Depending on your job, take your kid to work day is not always a good idea

My dad was a butcher. I never handled the knives or the slicer. I was allowed to empty the trash and mop the floor. I also got to return the “this number next” plastic cards from the wall to the hanger thing on the top of the meat case (for you youngin’s that is the predecessor of the little piece of paper with a number on it that you pull out of a dispenser).

I haven’t read more than the headlines; but, apparently an on duty air traffic controller let his son talk to pilots over the tower radio. The controller and his boss are suspended. I imagine there was no real danger. Still.

Pizza

This is a comment whore post.

I’m surfing and watching a Travel Channel show on pizza around the country.

The best pizza: not as thin as New York, not Chicago deep dish. Spicy. More than an average amount of tomato sauce. A good amount of cheese, your choice among the traditional. Best with tomato sauce, then toppings, then cheese on top. Toppings? No California stuff, chocolate or other dessert things. Beyond tomato, some onion and if you want peppers OK, but that’s it for vegetables. Mushrooms are a must. The basic fatty meats are a good idea: Italian sausage, pepperoni, bacon of some sort, hamburger if you like. It needs to be bubbling hot, reheated is acceptable but not recommended. Cold doesn’t get it (sorry Pos).

OxHaDe. HaDeOx. DeOxHa. DeHaOx, HaOxDe, OxDeHa

I think that’s all the permutations. And I think my point is that the three leading candidates for the Republican nomination for Georgia’s next Governor are toxic chemicals, best buried away where they can't poison anyone:

John Oxendine, our current Insurance Commissioner, openly extorts money from insurance companies and their employees and threatens other politicians with public outing of their connections to people that he may investigate. He then goes hunting on land owned by insurance executives and his son shoots someone a‘la Dick Cheney. He takes shots at the next two in the list for resigning their current positions to campaign (in Georgia, if you are a state official you can’t solicit money during the legislative session, he doesn’t need it because he’s way ahead in extorted money).

Karen Handel, recently our Secretary of State, who never saw a non-Republican that she thought wasn’t an illegal immigrant. Georgia has the distinction of having to have all of its voting laws and plans pre-approved by the Justice Department due to past shall we say past racially discriminatory indiscretions. Ms. Handel has been shot down by the Feds, I think, three times now on plans to inhibit minority voting by ID schemes.

U.S. Rep. Nathan Deal (until yesterday when he resigned to campaign) used to be a Democrat (which really isn’t a Democrat in Georgia) until he found it more useful to be a Republican back in the early nineties after he got to Congress. He thinks it’s a good idea to have the President once and for all put this Birther stuff to bed by publishing his birth certificate, not that he thinks he’s a godless, commie, bastard foreigner mind you. He also has defended threatening the state’s director of the Department of Revenue because the latter thought that it might be a good idea to add to the number of body shops that could certify that a total loss car had been properly repaired so as to get a rebuilt title beyond those owned by Rep. Deal (from which he’s been making about $150K a year) because his partner in the deal is also his constituent and it’s his job to represent his constituents’ interests, or something equally as silly that I can’t quite remember. (I checked, that is a sentence.)

We’ve also got some guy named McBerry running who says he isn’t a racist but says that 1850 was the best year Georgia has ever had and thinks we all ought to pay more attention to the Tenth Amendment.

And some of you think I’m crazy for not being a Republican.

Back to the Basics

I’ve mentioned over the years that I practice a boring offshoot of law – most of my clients are in some way involved in the construction business. Most of what I do concerns contracts, statutes and regulations, their drafting, interpretation and arguing about.

Over the years I’ve learned that something I learned in grade school is of great help in figuring out what an insurance or government contract “means.” Diagramming. If you are old enough, you remember writing a sentence and drawing lines to show nouns, verbs, etc. The same concept works for contracts.

My exercise this morning and the early part of the afternoon was to take a contract, an incorporated regulatory clause, a set of drawings and a set of technical specifications, all of which conflicted, in substance and as to method for resolving conflicts in the provisions. The answer is worth some significant bucks.

So, I took out a piece of paper and divided it into four columns, one for each type of document, and put the conflicting provisions next to each other. Then I applied each of the conflicting methods of interpretation to the substantive conflicts, wending my way through the maze.

One path through is good for my client, the other, not so much.

To provide a bookend to my antiquated method of the practice of law, I actually have to go to a law library and root through real, live books because the legal rules for choosing which rules of interpretation to use (your head hurt yet? mine does) are in and of themselves esoteric and not to be found in the online resources I have. I hope I remember how to use a card catalogue, though that is online.

Advertising is Expensive

I have two email addresses that are hosted by a Go Daddy reseller. The reseller ceded its accounts to another reseller that I can’t find anything positive about on Google, and found a bit of negative stuff.

So, I went to the source, Go Daddy. Clicking the Google paid link at the top of the search results that says “$1.99,” takes me to a Go Daddy Site that has that price for 3 months if you sign up for much longer. The cheapest price, if I sign up for three years, is $4.24 a month per address.

I’m currently paying, and the renewal is, $9.99 a YEAR for each address.

That’s a lot of expensive cleavage I’ve seen on the TV ads.

I guess I’ll go with the unknown. Sorry Danica.

Cross-pollination

A lot of the blogs I read are publishing less often over the past few months.

I know that I could go to your places and forage among your favorites or whatever you call them.

But, I’m lazy: give me some links in the comments of places you frequent.

A Question We Need to Answer

I’m not at all sure where we are on insurance reform after the photo op earlier this week. The only thing I took away from the “summit” was that President Obama was unkind to Senator McCain.

I’m about to delve into a subject that I’m not qualified to write about; but, what else is new?

Insurance simply put is people joining together, pooling money to protect themselves against a contingency that they expect would cost them more than their contribution to the pool than if they incurred the risk on their own. Well, not so simply put.

You can arguably reduce health care cost by culling people of higher risk and those that can’t pay the going rate; but, if you do, you really only transfer cost to public health, Medicare and Medicaid budgets. Those in good health and those with disposable income still pay the cost of health care for those in poor health and those without enough money.

Who is in the pool that is sharing the risk?

Unless we want to decide as a society that only those that can afford to care for their own health should be afforded care, we are left with some paying more than others. Think it through, I pay more than some and less than some for roads, police, fire protection and so on. The question becomes is health care a necessary societal cost. If it isn’t, we can quit talking about it. Let it go as it is with many getting inadequate care at a high and rising cost to all of us. Or, quit funding health care to those that can’t pay and see where that leads.

If you take health care for the country’s population as a societal necessity, the best way to provide the most care for the least cost is to make everyone participate and use economy of scale and regulation to keep cost in line.

Sorry to some of you; but, that is universal health care, public option, whatever you want to call it. You can start from the private side if you want with regulation of coverage availability and scope and cost of coverage; but, you get to the same point.

The private sector can do what it is doing now. It won’t provide health care that extends to our entire population, indeed, it won’t provide health care for those that now have it at a cost that we can afford over time.

It’s time to be honest. Do we want real insurance or not?

Which path?

I got two calls this morning, from two different executives with the same client.

The first discussed an ongoing lack of response from a federal agency on an application. “Is there any way I can force these people to do what they were supposed to do months ago?”

The answer is maybe; but, my response was to suggest that I write a very low-key letter that outlined the application process with the dates of all of the activity to the highest level person involved and asked if there was anything I could do to speed the process along, advising I’d be calling the person in a week or so.

That’s probably enough to get the person off the person’s ass. If not, a copy of the letter a level up may well work. If not then, it’s time for law stuff.

My second call was for advice on how to do something that probably can’t be done given the law concerning the issue. We talked about the options given that reality and came up with something that we can do that will almost certainly give the same result without the bad legal results.

In both matters, I could have charged ahead, threatening and bullying, charging more money for my scorched earth campaign. Then too, over time, I wouldn’t have the client and I wouldn’t have been doing my job. And I wouldn’t have enjoyed what I was doing.

Good lawyering, business and karma?

Down Home Justice

Just before the first of the year there was a party up in the northern Atlanta suburbs. Some kids got arrested for drinking.

As it turns out the party was at the home of a lawyer who is (temporarily, of her own choice, not) a magistrate judge. Attending were other local legal luminaries including people from the local solicitor’s office, the people that prosecute such under age drinking.

According to the police report the lawyer/magistrate threatened the responding police with her connections and said that it was better that the juveniles were drinking at her home that out on the roads.

So, soon after the affair, she undertook the representation of one of the underage drinkers and worked out the following plea arrangement with the solicitor’s office before the police report had been completed: $150 fee, alcohol counseling and a 150 hours of baseball practice with the college baseball team that he was a member of as community service, with expungement of the matter after completion of the requirements of the sentence.

When questioned by the Atlanta Journal Constitution reporter, the solicitor allowed as how he might change some of his policies in future cases.

I've changed my mind about what I think about Tiger

My last post kind of took the view that we all imbue Tiger with our viewpoints. He's good, bad or indifferent depending on what we bring to the equation. My unstated conclusion was that I don't care what he's done, it's none of my business. I've changed my mind.

I’ve had a really nice weekend. I played golf yesterday, poorly, with Bill. I don’t think I’ve mentioned him here. Bill is just a guy; but, I know him on golf courses. The great majority of the people you meet on a golf course live up to the venue. What that means is that you do things the way you are supposed to do them. You follow the rules, stupid as they often are. You keep your own score and tell it to your partner (honestly, even though you were off in the woods and a bear or the Pope wouldn’t know how many times you flailed at the ball).

(As an aside and a discussion of the etiquette and attraction of golf, do a word search on the blog for “Sergio.” I wrote a post early on here about a day at the same golf course that I found the people I’m going to talk about today.)

Back to Bill. Neither he nor I are Tiger. I can write this as he won’t care if I do and he isn’t going to read it anyway. But here’s one of the things about golf. Bill has a blind eye and he’s had a stroke. To look at him he’s not much (that’s OK for me to say, he says it). But, he’s learned to take what he’s got and play pretty good golf. Think about it. You are going to try to put a golf ball in a hole that’s forty or fifty feet away, up, down and sideways, and you have no depth perception. You decide where to aim based on your experience there the times before. You don’t boom any shots at anytime because there’s that half of your body that doesn’t work too well; but, you do well enough by using what you’ve got to get it to where you can use what you’ve got again.

And here’s another thing about golf. We often get paired up with someone else or a couple of people. No one ever says a word or looks askance.

Golfers have a thing about “giving” a putt that’s a foot or so from the hole. I watch out for that because they also have a thing about picking it up and tossing it to the recipient of their conceded putt. Bill can’t catch one of those given his vision; so, I’m vigilant. If his ball's close and I see a new friend about to…, I quietly mention that they should hand him the ball.

Back to today and my new thoughts about Tiger.

Bill and I played again today, the weather here is wonderful. It hit about sixty-five. The course was slow. We were playing by ourselves behind foursomes and the going was as much stop as go.

Steve was following us. Driven by his mother and caddied by his sister (she’s five and will be six in December. She had a Barbie umbrella that gave her a certain elan, though she doesn't say much. His Mom is thirty-three but don’t tell anyone, you learn a lot when you get Steve talking). Steve’s eight. He’ll be “nine this October 16th.” On the tenth hole, the ranger asked if we’d play with Steve to slow us down and speed him up (there’s a logical basis for that that I won’t explain). We agreed and introduced ourselves.

Steve’s Mom never left the cart; but, she had an eagle eye on him. He knew the rules. On one hole he started to line up his chip even though he wasn’t the furthest away from the hole. His mother hissed “Steve” from the cart. You see he’s a kid, and he’s a guy, and he instinctively played ready golf because Bill had a bit of a walk to get to his chip from a bit further off the green. In a casual round, it was right for him to shoot while Bill was walking. He knew it and gave me a rueful look and his Mother a little kid grimace. Busted but not totally legit. He also backed off his shot and waited for Bill.

Finally to Steve and Tiger. Steve’s a black kid. He was wearing perfectly creased black slacks, a white golf shirt and a black Nike cap. He did everything the way Tiger does, down to the stooping behind a putt and cupping his hands around the visor of his cap to focus on the break of the putt. The Tiger fist pump after a made putt.

I’d hate for all his Mom’s work at teaching what’s wonderful about the game and his obvious love of the game to be harmed (at eight, soon to be nine, despite his playing the game as a gentleman as he should, he couldn't resist running and skipping between shots).

Kids also emulate adults beyond the visor cupping – he saw the way I putt and for a change, I wasn’t too bad. A couple of holes later he was mimicking a set up rhythm I use.

Me and Tiger for role models. Jeez.

So, Tiger owes it to Steve not to fuck up publicly again. Not too elegant a way to end this; but, that’s what I think.

So, did you see your Tiger?

Since I have an Internet presence, I guess I have to weigh in on the latest number of minutes to fascinate us – thirteen and a half.

You’ve got to hand it to him, he said nothing, reading a speech all of which had been leaked, managed to get boycotted by a golf writers’ group finally bold enough due to his troubles to call him out on his controlling ways, replayed on every media outlet in the western world and dissected by every pundit and writer, boycotting or not, paid and or not, with access to a computer and a website.

The phrase empty vessel comes to mind, augmented by the video of his too large collar, filled by paean and pan.

High of Sixty

Need I say more than I have a 11:50 a.m. tee time tomorrow and another one on Sunday at the same time when the high is sixty-three.

Let me see if I've got this straight

I've been hearing for a long time now that banks aren't lending any money. They got all the bailout money and used it to to buy good (versus the bad that they had) assets.

So today, the Federal Reserve raised the discount rate, the rate it charges banks - the folks that aren't loaning any money.

Yeah, I'm sure I'm stupid, I'm sure I'm missing something.

Banks aren't lending, so to get them to lend, increase the rate they pay for the money they lend out, except they aren't lending it.

Feel free to leave any wisdom on the issue that you may have in the comments.

Both Too Much UPDATED

AppleInsider.com says that NYTimes.com is mulling over a charge of between $10 to $20 a month for its product when it goes behind some sort of pay wall.

I very much doubt that I'd pay anywhere near that much, even if it is one of the gold standards, especially given all of the other pretty good sources of news out there. That much total a month? Maybe.

I know I've said this too much recently; but, the only way that paying for content online will work is something on the cable/satellite model, hopefully with the ability to pick your news "channels."

Google or Apple is ready made to provide the pipe for the content. Both have an App store/market. Apple has experience with ITunes.

What I don't understand about current media is its apparent insistence on the town square marketing model. There's the butcher shop, the baker, the farmers' market, the hardware store and so on. Please patronize each of us with our own overhead, without the benefits of economy of scale.

That's good if everyone lives in the little town and can walk to the square. Kmart killed some of them. Then Home Depot, Lowes and of course Wal-Mart. Having been brought to death's door by the Internet big box model, media insists on atomistic behavior, each source being an island unto itself, come into my door, no my door! Pay me! Even the big boxes have reacted to the EBays and Amazons of the Internet, creating ways to drive business to themselves, and make it pay.

What media doesn't understand is that it doesn't sell a physical thing like a big box store does (and what book publishers will soon discover with their pricing). What it sells has value but it has to create a way to bring people to the value at a price that they will pay (what Amazon has provided for publishers). That way is a return to the old bazaar, really just a digital town square. One entry, choose what you will at the price that equates supply with demand.

Content can't divide and conquer. Each source on its own will only whither and die.

UPDATE: Since posting, I've gotten thinking that I'm not the sole audience for news. I can afford to pay. The old advertising model got people that can't pay, or pay much, access to hard news. Right now, I see those people slowly frozen out of the news stream, the very people that need to have access to hard news mainstream, unless we count E!, TMZ, Fox, CNN and MSNBC to be sufficient news sources, which I don't. I've got some thinking to do.

The Veg-O-Matic Has Arrived

My Germanic stainless steel blade, high strength, plastic slicer and dicer has arrived. Don't pay for shipping at Amazon, it got here first thing in the morning on the second business day after I ordered it.

It's pretty cool. I whipped out some thin and thick tomato slices right away. It has this other piece that makes thin and thick rectangles (juliennes). I haven't quite figured out how to make cubes - I think you have to slice them horizontally before you put them into the safety guard thingy and then slice them again.

Pos, from what I can see so far, it will slice meat as long as it is less than about four inches wide.

I'm not sure if it's worth what I paid for it; but, it does work and so far it's pretty slick.

My picture is next to stupid in the dictionary

First, a heartfelt thank you to Apple and Migration Assistant; but, we'll return to that below.

Friday night I was doing the usual, reading, surfing, watching something on TV. I came across an article that talked about getting rid of duplicate and unneeded files on your hard drive. I sent the link to my office Mac and downloaded a recommended program on the Macbook that would get rid of a lot of the detritus on my hard drive. I'm not going to tell you the name of the program. I strongly recommend you not do it, unless you are less stupid than I am.

So I used the program. Rather than getting rid of junk, I got rid of a number of programs, my entire Mail program and files, all of the Favorites in Firefox, and so on and so on.

Yesterday, I brought the Macbook to the office, connected a firewire cable, fired up Migration Assistant and about twenty minutes later, what was on the Mac Mini was on the Macbook, or so I thought.

Later on at home, I fired up the computer to get on line and download a program that had gotten zapped. Nothing in the Mailbox, nothing in Favorites. Damn.

So, about an hour ago I got back to the office and surfed on how to export those files from the Mini to the Macbook. I printed out some stuff and turned on the Macbook to do the exporting.

I noticed that on starting up there were two "Users," the new me and the old me which caused me to remember the program telling me it was going to call me something else. I clicked the lower one (the new me) and there was all my stuff right where Migration Assistant had put it, below the old me that had the gaps that I had found last night. If that wasn't a model explanation of what happened, sorry - I think that's what happened.

I have to break myself of the habit of doing things too fast. It usually works but clicking your way through a program that you don't know anything about wasn't one of the brighter things I did this weekend, twice.

Take this North Central and East!

It's only been snowing for a few hours. The weather people are beside themselves with the event. High tomorrow is about forty, we'll enjoy the blizzard while we can.

Blade Escalation

I got a beer with my friend the cop after work today. Our conversation meandered as it always does. We discussed tomatoes as I had made myself a couple of bacon and tomato sandwiches last night. I mention that I was going to stop by Target and buy a serrated knife, something I don't have and have meant to get for a long time.

My friend mentioned that he has a mandolin that he likes but that he doesn't use all that much. We discussed cost and I said I'd stick with my seven or so dollar cost factor for a cheap knife.

Well, I didn't feel like stopping, it's too cold and the Target on Druid Hills, and Druid Hills itself, are madhouses after work.

I just got done surfing mandolins. Did you know you can pay $400 bucks for one? Or you can pay about fifteen with twenty one star reviews.

I succumbed to the cheapest five star rating for $40 bucks, tax, tag and title.

If you need anything sliced, diced or julienned on German steel blades, let me know sometime after five to nine days from now (Amazon Super Saver Free Shipping).

I'm having flash backs to the old SNL bass-o-matic bit and Ron Popiel's spray-on hair.

Too Much

There was MySpace, Facebook, Twitter and now Google Buzz.

As best I can tell, the latter is better Facebook with a link to Twitter, if Google is to be believed (I'm holding out for the Wikipedia article).

The only thing I made sure to find out about Buzz was to make sure I can turn it off when Mountain View enables it on my phone - I can.

It isn't a sign of age, I have friends in my range and older that are on Twitter and Facebook; but, for the life of me, I can't figure out what their fascination is with them.

I was on Facebook for about an hour after Big Rick sent me an Email inviting me to join and friend him. Now don't get me wrong, Rick's a funny guy, a smart guy. His first words on Facebook were "just got to work, twelve hours to go." I cruised around his friends' places and got similar declarations of their beingness.

I resigned (though it took me several attempts to fully delete all my information - I think).

Google is apparently going to use its algorithms and GPS to send me more beingness pegged to my location and predilections, from people that it finds out I know from my contacts and from their friends and friends of friends. I guess they are hoping they've got a ready made Facebook list by way of people that have Gmail.

If I want to talk to you or write to you, I know where to find you. The same is true coming back this way. And if I don't know how to find you, hasn't that told me that maybe you don't want to know what I've got to say? Hell, I don't put enough thought into what I write here, do you really think you want to be pushed my random thoughts? The answer I assure you is NO.

Whoa!

Now and again you're somewhere and you're struck by someone.

For me it's usually what I refer to as "alive eyes." It actually happens with both sexes, though it's women that I notice, and I suppose there's some attraction going on.

Tell me you know what I'm talking about.

This has nothing to do with what the person says or, really how attractive they are overall. You have a sense that they are, well, something special. You get it from their face. Big eyes, taking in the world around them.

The inspiration for this post was actually something else, the new Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue cover girl. She is stunning in most every way. Wouldn't it be wonderful if in person she had the eyes?

Alive eyes are seldom a wrong indicator. Their eyes don't necessarily indicate that you'll like them. Just that there's a brain in there.

I'm not explaining this well. Potter Stewart said he knew something else "when he saw it."

Next time you're in the neighborhood, and I see an example, I'll let you know.

A Favor Please

I registered with Google Analytics late last month. So far it is mostly baffling me.

Part of that is that it doesn't really explain what it "tells me."

As has been the case for the life of the blog, by far the biggest search hits here have been "The Federal Judge Song" and "How to Strip Speaker Wire." There are a lot of people out there that want to hear the song (the site where I found it is dead, I put an update at the top of the post telling people that, but Google still has me as the number one site for any variation of the search). There are a ton of people who want to strip wire. Here's the secret. Don't get any tools, get a lighter and burn the end off the wire. That's it. I continue to do a service to scores of people a month. I'm also good for helping people reheat pizza and not finding them whether they can buy booze on Sundays.

Back to Google Analytics. Who the hell are the two thirds of you that are unique visitors? The other third of you? Setting aside those of you that come from the searches mentioned above and others, there are still a bunch of you that stop by here and actually read what I write to the tune of about 30 a day (Google says that the overall average stay is about a minute and a half).

So, regular commenters, go on about your business. Those of you that I know read and never write, go on too. The rest of you, who are you? What got you here? What keeps you coming back? Tell us about yourself.

$2 plus million...

was spent a couple of minutes into the game.

Not much controversy. Mrs. Tebow is happy that she gave birth to Tim.

I'm happy she did.

Then too, there are women that die giving birth and some decades ago, they had no legal choice to choose life for themselves were giving birth to be a death sentence for them.

In the scheme of Super Bowl commercials, it wasn't much, though the Bud Lite and Dorito commercials played near it, weren't all that memorable.

Dilution, the price paid for so much money.

Though the Bud Lite commercial showing the almost end of the world, as I type this, was funny.

UPDATED: About a half hour later, any of you guys going to buy "Dove for Men?" That commerical has to be one of the worst wastes of money I've seen.

And, the Saints are still in the game.

UPDATE 2: Almost the fourth quarter. Saints have still got a chance. The commercials still suck.

UPDATE 3: Up by 7, 5 minutes left. De may be Dat.

FINAL: Yes they are!

Super Bowl Preparation and Prediction

Chili is in the crock pot. Later it goes into the frig to marinate, then simmer again for a while tomorrow.

That's it as far as preparation.

As to predictions, the Colts will probably win; but, I hope not. I've been to New Orleans a number of times over the last couple of years. The people I've met there are fun loving. They live and die by the Saints and have died by them for decades now.

As much as the City has gone through, as much as the people have strived to return from, I'd love to be there, not Miami, during the game, win or lose. Not being there, I'd love to see them jump up and down if Who Dat becomes Dat for this year.

That's not too much to ask I'm thinking.

Saints by one or more.

Quandary

I have a T-Mobile G1 Android smart phone, one of the early baby computer phones, after the IPhone.

In many ways it does as much as my desk top or laptop, and more when it comes to mobile search. A Google search for something commercial tends to give some local results. I'm assuming this is based on my IP address, though I'm not sure. I don't enable GPS unless it's needed for an application I'm using.

Anyway, starting today, if I go to the phone browser which is Google by default, there's a pop up that asks me if I want to give the "website" (duh, Google) access to my location. I have my choice between never, cancel and yes. A Google search doesn't tell me what this new question means for what Google will get beyond what it now gets.

Since Google is now in bed with the NSA on the China stuff….

So far, I'm clicking cancel.

The Forgotten Value of Knowing How Widgets Are Made - Part 1

Regular readers know that I’m not very good at math or economics. A few months ago I did a post that confessed I was lost when it came to understanding just what the hell happened to the world’s economy and what should be done about it.

I’ve been thinking about it off and on since.

In the late Nineties and continuing to about 2006, I went to Florida, Destin and Apalachicola in the Panhandle, a lot on the weekends.

In Apalachicola Bay there’s a small island, St. George, where I rented houses on the beach a number of times. There was a whole row of these skinny, three-story houses. They were great for the weekend – steps to the beach, maybe a quarter mile to the little town square where you could walk to get supplies, breakfast, lunch and a beer and return to cook your fresh shrimp and corn on the cob on the barbecue on the deck for dinner.

It always amazed me how cheap they were to rent – considerably less than a nice hotel on the beach cost. And, I came to realize that almost no one actually lived in them full-time.

Mid-way through my Florida weekend years I started going to Destin. It and its neighboring towns, Seaside (the location where The Truman Show was filmed), Watercolor, Santa Rosa are gorgeous. Think of the row of three story beach houses on St. George Island on steroids.

I stayed at a friend’s house in Santa Rosa. He had bought it in the low hundred thousands a few years before. He, and thousands like him bought up the beach as market values increased to double and triple what they paid for the properties.

Like on St. George Island, most of the houses weren’t lived in full time. Their owners came down for a few weekends a year and rented them to tourists the rest of the time. And also like St. George Island, the rents were cheap – there was a lot of competition.

The “plan” all along the Florida coast and in Arizona, California and other resort areas was to buy low (or relatively low as prices rose), pay for insurance, maintenance and the mortgage with the rental income and then sell and double or triple your money. To do that the hordes of investors took out interest only mortgages so that their costs approximated their income. Why pay principle when equity increased every month and you could use it to “trade up?”

And it wasn’t only snowbirds that succumbed to the call of easy money. American industry and the banks started to operate on the same plan, as did many of rest of us when it came to buying into the American dream of owning a home.

Then it all fell apart. Why is that? Well that’s the widget story, which is coming soon to a blog near you. Stay tuned.

Beware of the Corruption of Our Youth

Georgia Senator Saxby Chambliss doesn't want to get rid of "Don't Ask Don't Tell" as he feels it will lead to all kinds of problems.

From Talking Points Memo:

"'[The Military] must maintain policies that exclude persons whose presence in the armed forces would create unacceptable risk to the armed forces' high standards of morale, good order and discipline, and unit cohesion.'

"'In my opinion,' he said, 'the presence in the armed forces of persons who demonstrate a propensity or intent to engage in homosexual acts would very likely create an unacceptable risk to those high standards.'

"Why, if gays are allowed into the military, Chambliss said, soon the armed forces will allow all sorts of other things.

"Like what?

"'Alcohol use, adultery, fraternization, and body art,' said Chambliss.

"'If we change this rule of 'Don't Ask, Dont Tell,' he asked, 'what are we going to do with these other rules?'"

So, those of you that are veterans (Big Rick, Larry), confirm that none of those things happen now. If that's the case, I'm against the gays in uniform, hell, in society too, if they're going to lead to all of those horrors. First they threaten marriage and now there are going to be a bunch of straight, drunk sailors driven to getting tattoos and looking for love in all the wrong places. Say it ain't so!

Truth in Campaign Accounting

The Atlanta Journal Constitution has an article today about a nifty political practice.

Apparently there is a "me too" factor in political support. People want to back a winner. Winners have a lot of campaign funds, which attract more campaign funds, and so on.

So what does a cash strapped candidate do? Borrow money and lend it to the campaign.

Three of the four of five candidates for the Republican nomination have each borrowed about $250,000 and then loaned it to their campaign. It isn't spent mind you, it just sits there swelling the perceived contribution total.

Look at all that money in the account! A lot of people must support so and so.

"Asked if the line of credit was a tactic to appear to have more money, [one candidate's campaign manager] sighed.

“'If that’s how it’s perceived, that’s how it’s perceived,' he said. 'It is what it is.'” ("Damn, there goes another scam.") Pesky reporters.

Who Dat? Whoops, I'm in trouble with the NFL.

Google "who dat NFL" for the backstory.

The NFL has decided that tee shirt vendors can't put the phrase on their wares and has sent cease and desist letters to a bunch of them. Something about the phrase having become associated with the New Orleans Saints and thus the NFL has full marketing rights to it.

I've been a lawyer too long. My considered non-legal opinion: garbage.

Blood and Gore and Baby Wipes

1:33 a.m. Friday morning. I woke up with a start. Some sort of reflux, I bolted out of the bed looking at the clock.

A bit of a stumble coming out of bed and the left side of my forehead hit the edge of the bedroom door. On the plus side, I forgot about the reflux as I collapsed on the floor.

I put my hand to my head and it came back wet, very wet. I staggered into the bathroom and turned on the light.

The blood part of the title was evident. I grabbed a towel and wiped, spreading the blood, which kept flowing from my skin.

I soaked the towel and pressed it to the wound (which given the blood, I couldn’t see) and sat on the floor. I turned on the radio and listened to something for ten minutes or so.

Pulling the towel away, the blood started flowing again. Session two of compression, which worked.

I’m not big on first aid supplies. I rolled up a couple of paper towels, cut some strips of electrical tape and bound my wound.

It started seeping. Take two on the first aid. This time it worked.

At this point, fully awake, I looked around. Slasher movie in the bathroom and a trail of blood on the carpet through the bedroom. That would wait till the morning.

I gingerly got onto the bed, my head started pounding (it may have been doing so, but I hadn’t noticed). I thought through my options. I sleep on my side, usually my left. That wasn’t going to happen as the cut was on my left forehead. I tried my right side and listened to my head pounding and my right shoulder and neck aiking.

I tried flat on my back, which made the neck and shoulder worse. I built a ski slope with pillows trying to get rid of the angle between my torso and my neck and head.

I got up and sat on the couch for a while listening to and feeling my upper body pound.

Next try at the bed, I could alternate between flat on my back and on my right side, doze off, and repeat – 20 or 30 times over the rest of the night.

When the light started coming through the window I assessed matters. Interestingly, while my head was still pounding, I started figuring out how I was going to clean up the blood that I remembered depositing on the carpet and most surfaces in the bathroom.

Putting that off, I drank some orange juice and walked into the bathroom. I should have taken a picture. A roll of paper towels was strapped to my head with 4 strips of electrical tape.

I soaked the paper toweling with water and slowly pulled it away. Just a bit of oozing blood from my maybe inch and a half kind of reverse “s” wound.

Three aspirin and a fresh round of toweling and tape and back to bed.

A couple of hours later, during which I actually slept, I got up and pulled the “dressing” off. A bit of gore so I swabbed it again and then tried to figure out if I should go to a doc in the box.

It was clear that there was going to be a scar. As I don’t get by on my looks, I decided that self-treatment was in order. After some Internet time I bought some ointment, butterfly strips and something to cover it that says it will allow the wound to breath while it heals.

More aspirin.

The current plus side: a baseball cap hides the scene of the crime unless you are shorter than I am.

My current medical treatment includes alcohol taken orally.

Oh, the blood on the carpet. The Internet says use baby wipes. The Internet is right, though it takes forever.

Bin Laden Goes Green

It must get a little boring sitting up in the mountains on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border between meetings to plan the destruction of the Western world.

“Osama bin Laden, the leader of Al Qaeda, blamed the United States and developed countries for not halting climate change and said that the global economy should immediately abandon its reliance on the American dollar, according to an audiotape released Friday by the broadcaster Al Jazeera.

“’Talk about climate change is not an ideological luxury but a reality,’ Mr. bin Laden was quoted as saying in a report on Al Jazeera’s English-language Web site. ‘All of the industrialized countries, especially the big ones, bear responsibility for the global warming crisis.'"

NyTimes.com (not The Onion)

Monetary policy and global warming. Ben Bernanke and Al Gore must be nervously looking over their shoulders. There’s a new pundit in town.

Partial Organic Failure, But, I Don't Mind

Other than lunch, I’ve been cooking a lot over the past couple of years. I used to eat out most nights and just got tired of “fresh garden salads,” fast food and chain food.

A couple of months ago, I started trying some of the local “farmers” markets around Atlanta. A couple of weeks ago, I discovered the mother lode: Your DeKalb Farmers Market.

For those of you that are local, don’t wait, run, don’t walk. It’s huge. The produce section is probably 15,000 square feet. It has everything you’ve ever heard of and stuff that, even reading the sign, I have no clue. Much of what’s there is organic.

There are two bakery sections. One for bread, bagels, cookies and pastries. All of it is organic. The other section has more fancy baked goods. All of it is baked there, every day.

The seafood and meat sections, each, are maybe 3,000 square feet and again, most of what is there is organic.

Spices. You name it, they have it.

Prices. Starting with the last subject, a tub of white peppercorns more than twice the size of a McCormick’s jar was $1.45. The little label said it had been packed the day I bought it. Tomatoes, 39 cents a pound. Cucumbers, 39 cents each. Whole bean Sumatran coffee, $7.00 a pound, about half of what the neighborhood coffee shop charges.

Enough of all that.

Last night I decided to have an organic dinner. Fried chicken thighs, baked French fries, tomato and cucumber, all organic. A hint, don’t buy organic frozen French fries. Six minutes on each side, after the first side, results in burnt sticks. The rest of the organic meal was wonderful.

A Big Something From Nothing

I read about the iPad announcement yesterday and noted that AT&T will have a two-tiered 3G plan for the device. $15.00 a month for 250 megabytes and $30.00 for unlimited data.

With news stories over the past year or so about consumption based pricing for Internet service, I’ve several times wondered just what kind of bandwidth (if that’s the right word) that I use.

So what do you get from a megabyte?

From NYTimes.com:

“An hour of browsing the Web on a mobile phone consumes roughly 40 megabytes of data. Streaming tunes on an Internet radio station like Pandora draws down 60 megabytes each hour. Watching a grainy YouTube video for the same period of time causes the data consumption to nearly triple. And watching a live concert or a sports event will consume close to 300 megabytes an hour.”

A Netflix streaming movie would blow through the 250 megs in AT&T’s cheap plan in one sitting. I’m usually surfing four or five windows at a time while I’m watching a movie, let’s call that another 160 megs. I’m often “consuming” close to a half a gigabyte of internet an hour during the evening. And I don’t know that I’m particularly unusual.

Looking back at how I got to this point, it seems that the media companies, Comcasts, AT&Ts and Verisons of the cyber-world can be equated to drug dealers.

Five years ago, like now, I had DSL at work, a cell phone and home cable; but, a lot of what I did at work back then was off line. Now almost everything I do at work is on line. My cell phone back then actually could surf the Internet, but I didn’t surf – the screen was tiny, the speed was glacial and the on line world didn’t render well given those limitations. Cable Internet was there; but, the content available was minimal. There was no streaming Netflix. Pandora hadn’t come into its own. No Huffington Post. YouTube sprang to life. NYTimes was charging for “premium content.” And so on. Now they and many other content sources are there 24/7.

I, and millions like me, took the candy and became addicted.

Now both the pipeline and content providers, having a growing, hooked audience are upping the price of our drugs. Want the Wall Street Journal, and soon Fox and the NYTimes? That will a few bucks each a month. Oh, and now that you’re streaming all that stuff, the ISPs have their hands out for all that bandwidth you’re using, AT&T is just an early adopter.

I’m not saying they are bad people. I am saying they are good marketers. From nothing, they’ve created a multi-billion dollar stream that we are going to pay more to play in.

You probably don't recognize me; but, Dave's a friend of mine. He'd probably say I'm his property. I asked him to take a picture of me, he did, which is good because I don't have any hands or fingers.

I"m writing to you in desperate need.  You see, day before yesterday, I was hanging out on the counter in Dave's kitchen with my little brother.  The usual was happening, the sun was rising and we heard Dave getting up.  He came into the kitchen and made some coffee.  Time passed, we heard a knock at the door and then this female voice. Dave left and the girl stayed.  She was banging and wiping and throwing things away. Little Bro' was a little scared - I told him not to worry, I'd handle any problems. After a while, she came over to where we were on the counter.  I've got to admit, she's a looker.  She picked both of us up and started rubbing on us.  Wow.  I've never felt that good.  Little Bro', he was moaning.

I've got to confess, I passed out.  When I woke up, everything was quiet.  I yelled, "Bro, what's up?  You OK?"  No answer.  It was dark.  A while later Dave came home, I heard him banging around, the TV came on.  Time passed and he came into the kitchen. The frig opened. More banging around, drawers opening and closing.  "Ah, where'd she put them?"  Suddenly there was light and Dave picked me up. It was dark because I was in a drawer, Dave never puts me in a drawer, then too, he seldom rubs me, and never like she did.  As always, I was there to help him cut up some food, last night some nice roast pork.  He banged some more.  He doesn't call Little Bro', Little Bro', hell he doesn't know my name.  "Where the hell is the paring knife?"  More opening and closing drawers.  No results.

Over the rest of the night, I yelled a few times myself.  Nothing.  I'm thinking Little Bro', not as experienced as I am in the ways of the world, and having been handled as I was (I'm almost moaning myself thinking of it), he might just have hopped to somewhere around here and he"s afraid to come out.  Dave looked in all the drawers and couldn't find him.

You probably can't tell from the picture; but, the business end of me is about 8" long.  Little Bro', his shiny stuff is about half of mine.  If any of you see that pretty girl, tell her I miss the kid. He might just come out of hiding if he thought he had a shot at another go-around.  Oh, and if she's of a mind to rub some steel, I'm here, ready and waiting.

(Little Brother was found in a corner of the dishwasher, no worse for his experience, as far as I could tell. He's back with his larger kin, both sitting on the counter, next to the cutting board where they've always resided. If I hear any reports as to negative effects from their experience, I'll let you know. Dave.)

Paperless

Are you? I’m getting there.

Virtually everything I read at home is on a computer. There aren’t any newspapers or magazines piling up around the couch.

Every bill that I can pay online, I do. But, I do print out the confirmation of payment even though I get confirming Emails and they are backed up on an external hard drive.

I bank online except for depositing checks (and I’ll soon be able to scan them and send them to the bank over the Internet). I still, irrationally, won’t put checks in an ATM; but, that will change soon as I understand some banks are scanning the checks in the ATM and spitting out a picture, front and back, on the receipt.

At work, almost everything is paperless. Other than court related correspondence and filings (and soon most, rather than some, courts will allow or require electronic filing) I get and send hardly any letters by mail and very little stuff by facsimile. “Letters” are now scanned and attached to an Email (lawyers are a little conservative – the “letter” has the street address and looks just as it would were we to print it out, put it in an envelope and mail it, some still actually mail and Email it – me – only if I don’t trust the other lawyer - and then it's usually by UPS or Fedex because I have to prove receipt).

I'm slowly training clients that I don't want inches/feet/boxes of paper and getting them to scan the documents and Email them to me (there are a number of secretaries/assistants that are less than pleased with me on occasion).

The major paper holdover: I can’t (don’t) read statutes and legal opinions on the computer screen, other than an initial skimming. If I have to think about it and use it, I need (want) it on a piece of paper in my hands, or strewn across the desktop. I’ve tried to write a brief using the cases and statutes in the form of files in the computer: but, I find that I lose my train of thought clicking through tabs to find the file and scroll through it to find the part I want. Maybe someday.

Given my evolution, there’s still a lot of paper piled up in the office, though I don’t add much to it. Maybe one of these years I’ll clean it up.

I don't want to admit it; but, I might be a candidate for a Kindle or tablet one of these days.

Short Movie Review

Songcatcher, 1999. No one that's famous, that I know of, is in it, other than Aiden Quinn.

A professor of "musicology" goes to Appalachia to visit her sister in the early 20th century and discovers mountain music, transported Scots Irish music from a hundred or so years before. She bonds with the local people and their ways.

Great music. Nice story. Quite worth a Netflix rental.

Don't feed stray animals

I'll let you draw your own conclusions:

http://blogs.ajc.com/jay-bookman-blog/2010/01/24/the-andre-bauer-solution-starve-the-poor-theyll-stop-breeding/?cxntfid=blogs_jay_bookman_blog

Moral Authority

Secretary of State Clinton spoke out recently on the attacks against Google and other companies that originated in China. She wants the Chinese government to "explain."

"Clinton said 'the ability to operate with confidence in cyberspace is critical in a modern society and economy….""

Oh come on. The United States and other governments, I'm sure including China, have been spying on the Internet for years. Indeed, the "back door" used by the Chinese hackers exists because the U.S. made Google put it there so the U.S. could monitor Google users:

http://www.cnn.com/2010/OPINION/01/23/schneier.google.hacking/index.html?eref=igoogle_cnn

Goose, gander. Pot, kettle.

It's that time of year again.

I got my annual notice from the State Bar of Georgia reporting my Continuing Legal Education (CLE) status.

I'm ahead of the game, I only have to get 6.5 hours by the end of March to finish CLE - for last year. Then I have to get another 12 for this year; but, I'll worry about that next January.

I just spent some time on the CLE website. There's a problem when you've been doing this as long as I have. You run out of things to be educated about. I've taken pretty much every class there is that has anything to do with my practice. Every few years, I retake a class to see if there's anything new that I don't know about. (I am not willing to learn about criminal or divorce or bankruptcy (the debtor mostly stiffs the creditors) law.)

Remaining a lawyer is also getting more expensive. Bar dues are something like $400. The cost per hour of CLE seems to be going up. I just looked at one seminar that cost $175 for three hours of credit.

I wonder if I can apply for credit for the time I spend doing posts about law.

Very Little Law; but, A Whole Lot of My Politics

The Supreme Court ruled today that corporations can directly pay for political ads. There's a lot more to the decision and the issue. From what I can see, now rather than creating "front' PACs, companies can skip a step and try to directly buy elections.

The Constitution aside, the state of laws dealing with corporations before this morning and going forward isn't in good shape.

Corporations are "persons" under the law. If you want to know more about that try Google (or Baidu in the PRC). Their personhood is a "legal fiction" that allows law to apply all the normal rules applicable to people - they can be sued for breach of contract, negligence, violation of statutes and so on. If they fail, and they've dotted their "i's" and crossed their "t's" you are stuck with the fake "person's" assets, you can't reach beyond and get to the owners' assets, which encourages investment. So far, so good.

The mistake we made was giving them personhood for other purposes, like having any part in politics, taxation or charity. Corporations have no "business" being involved in anything but operation of the business, for the benefit of their owners. Their owners, real people, support and oppose political candidates, pay taxes and give to charities. Once you place a layer over peoples' actions you lose transparency, be it political, financial or charitable. You can't tell who did what.

I've railed about it before; but, corporations shouldn't pay taxes - that they do so only masks what you and I pay (theirs are passed along to us in the price). They shouldn't give to charities as it's quite probable that all of their owners don't agree on the recipients and us folks who pay the price for their goods and services (inflated to pay for their charity) are guaranteed to not all agree on the recipients. Quit with the taxes and charity, lower the price and let us decide.

Then there's the political involvement. When Goldman Sachs, Microsoft or another corporation spends money to influence political decisions, it dilutes your and my ability to do so. They've got more zeros after integers in their bank accounts than we do and carry more weight with our esteemed politicians than do we. Adding insult to that injury, again, we are paying for their lobbying and politicking.

For a somewhat biased view of the legal aspects of today's opinion:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/doug-kendall/citizens-united-the-probl_b_431989.html

Aren't you glad that I haven't posted since Sunday?

How does Kroger calculate?

I just got home from Kroger as I didn't want anything I have at home to eat.

Smoked sausage, sauerkraut and frozen macaroni and cheese. The Kroger card gave me 15% off the marked prices. Nothing off the macaroni, ten cents off the sauerkraut and a buck something off of the sausage that was only $2.50 to start with. Sometimes I get a percent or two, sometimes seven or eight percent. Now and again, I hit the jackpot like tonight.

The discount doesn't seem to have any logic (other than when an item is marked on the shelf with two prices, the lower one given with the Plus card). Overall, Kroger is cheaper than Publix with the irrational discounts so I keep going. (I could also shop at Whole Foods, IGA and Winn Dixie - WF would be crazy expensive, IGA has no selection and Winn Dixie is too far away).

I just wish I could figure it out. Maybe they have a random number generator that gives an average "x"% off over time.

"Just send your cash"

First time I've agreed with the last President in a long time. I will.

White Meat?

The Thursday night, once or so a month dinner group ate at the Horseradish Grill night before last.

The moon, stars and perhaps a black hole were aligned. I wanted to quote Jesus Christ Superstar, but was too lazy to go find the actual quote.

There was a disconnect between our orders and the server and the kitchen. I'll not bore you with it, beyond saying that two attempts at the signature dish failed with a few other basic matters. If you live hereabouts, I don't recommend the place.

The signature dish was fried chicken.

As conversations elliptically go, once the first attempt had failed, Bill the Engineer said that wings were white meat. His factual basis being that if you order white meat chicken at a fast food restaurant, you often get a wing with a breast.

Two of us said he was full of it. Wings are dark meat. With four smartphones at the table, I was first to check his foolishness. According to WikiAnswers.com, wings are white meat, He's right according to the Internet.

I'm saying the Internet is wrong. White meat poultry is the breast. Legs, thighs and wings are dark meat, the result of more muscle movement. Right?

Comments are welcome.

Importuning the Enemy

We think of the First Amendment as the main protection of free speech, assembly and religion.

Then there is the other side. The need for privacy to be able to speak, assemble and practice our religions, without harm.

I don't have a lot of sympathy for the proponents of Proposition 8 in California that somehow got the Supreme Court to bar simulcast of the proceedings in the current trial in a handful of courtrooms, based on their "fear" of harm if their faces were known in addition to their names (they are volunteer witnesses and have been all over the news).

Then there are the more than a hundred thousand people in Washington State that signed a petition opposing same sex marriage that are now opposing a Freedom of Information request for their names. The Supreme Court issued a stay against the release of their names. Again, not much sympathy here.

But. If the fears of retribution are real, do we do an injustice to free speech by exposing them to those that would expose them?

I’ll leave the law stuff to the Court; but, it's kind of funny for the anti-government, states rights crowd to petition the heathen courts to protect them as they've for years argued that the godless courts should stay out of matters that they say are reserved to the states' legislatures and citizen votes - majority rule and all that, unless the majority is opposed to their view I guess.

Curmudgeon, I know this wasn't lawyerly, I'm less and less so as time goes on.

And on Friday, disappointment ensued

Those are my golf clubs in the lower left corner of the picture. The brown stuff is dormant grass (and mud) on the driving range. To the left, out of the picture, is the golf course. The golf course which is still frozen.

It was about fifty degrees when the picture was taken, just after I was told they wouldn't be opening the course today. It's now fifty-three. The high may reach sixty.

As a consolation prize, I hit a small bucket of balls. I only shanked two shots (I'm not counting the duck hook - I'm rationalizing that had I hit it on the course, it would have been on the 14th hole that has a large bailout area to the left).

For good luck, I made a tee time for a week from tomorrow at noon. I know God's busy and all; but, come on.

God and Us

Pat Robertson made the news this week by saying the earthquake in Haiti was the result of Haiti's "pact with the Devil" to get rid of the French a couple of centuries ago.

Sarah Palin and Glen Beck opined earlier this week on his show that God played an "essential" role in the founding of the U.S.

Palin is supposed to have said that her selection as the GOP VP nominee in 2008 was God's plan. During the campaign she described the Iraq War as God's "task."

Various terrorists claim legitimacy by claiming to do God's will.

Legislatures, parliaments and the like do all manner of harm after praying to do God's will.

Football and baseball players seek God's blessing for hoped victory (oh, and don't let anyone get hurt) and thank Him for touchdowns and home runs.

Georgia's Governor famously prayed for rain at the height of our drought a couple of years ago. His prayers were answered last fall.

God bless you. God damn you.

God's will be done on Earth, as it is in Heaven. We're making a mess of that one and have been for millennia.

Jerry Landers: How can you permit all the suffering that goes on the world?

God: Ah, how can I permit the suffering?

Jerry Landers: Yes!

God: I don't permit the suffering. You do. Free will. All the choices are yours.

Jerry Landers: Choices? What choices?

God: You can love each other, cherish and nurture each other or you can kill each other. Incidentally, "kill" is the word. It's not "waste."

George Burns and John Denver in Oh, God! 1977. Imdb.com

Whither Google

Google has announced that it, kinda, maybe, won't censor its results in China. It hopes to work a deal with the PRC to operate legally there and not censor.

It seems to be trying to stake out a negotiating position. To do that you have to have something the other side wants. I don't think Google has that in China. China can live quite nicely, in its view, without Google.

If Google wants to "do no evil" it should withdraw from China and promote what I understand are a number of ways for Chinese internet users to get around Chinese firewalls to reach the real Google. Ads are ads whether you get to them on Google.cn or Goggle.com.

An aside, did you know that if you go to Google.cn, you actually go there? I didn't. Same spare page, with Chinese characters. Oh, and in the lower right of the page there's a link for Google.com. Clicking it sent me to my iGoogle homepage. I wonder if clicking it gets you to the real Google if you are in the PRC.

Anyone want to play golf Thursday at about 2:00 p.m.?

The high is going to be 58, not that I believe it totally. Think we'll need a tee time? If you are looking for me, try the cell phone, I may be playing hooky.

I think I need to swing the weighted club leaning against the wall over there. It is too cold to go outside and get the putter and a couple of balls. The carpet is lumpy anyway.

This could just happen. Bogey golf would be just fine. Even worse, no that's not true.

Another occasion that lets me get on my soapbox

Warning, if legal stuff puts you to sleep, come back later.

A trial began today in a U.S. District Court in California. The Judge is hearing evidence with the purpose of deciding whether the U.S Constitution bars enforcement of California's Proposition 8 law barring same sex marriage.

43 years ago the U.S. Supreme Court looked at marriage and race:

"This case presents a constitutional question never addressed by this Court: whether a statutory scheme adopted by the State of Virginia to prevent marriages between persons solely on the basis of racial classifications violates the Equal Protection and Due Process Clauses of the Fourteenth Amendment. For reasons which seem to us to reflect the central meaning of those constitutional commands, we conclude that these statutes cannot stand consistently with the Fourteenth Amendment.

In June, 1958, two residents of Virginia, Mildred Jeter, a Negro woman, and Richard Loving, a white man, were married in the District of Columbia pursuant to its laws. Shortly after their marriage, the Lovings returned to Virginia and established their marital abode in Caroline County. At the October Term, 1958, of the Circuit Court [p3] of Caroline County, a grand jury issued an indictment charging the Lovings with violating Virginia's ban on interracial marriages. On January 6, 199, the Lovings pleaded guilty to the charge, and were sentenced to one year in jail; however, the trial judge suspended the sentence for a period of 25 years on the condition that the Lovings leave the State and not return to Virginia together for 25 years. He stated in an opinion that:

'Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents. And, but for the interference with his arrangement, there would be no cause for such marriage. The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix.'"

Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1 (1967).

Since then, a number of courts have refused to use Loving as precedent for same sex marriage cases. It all comes down to whether sexual orientation and race have the same constitutional protections and why marriage is a fundamental right. There's room for both sides in the Loving Court's opinion:

"There is patently no legitimate overriding purpose independent of invidious racial discrimination which justifies this classification. The fact that Virginia prohibits only interracial marriages involving white persons demonstrates that the racial classifications must stand on their own justification, as measures designed to maintain White Supremacy. We have consistently denied the constitutionality of measures which restrict the rights of citizens on account of race. There can be no doubt that restricting the freedom to marry solely because of racial classifications violates the central meaning of the Equal Protection Clause.

****

"These statutes also deprive the Lovings of liberty without due process of law in violation of the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. The freedom to marry has long been recognized as one of the vital personal rights essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men.

"Marriage is one of the 'basic civil rights of man,' fundamental to our very existence and survival. Skinner v. Oklahoma, 316 U.S. 535, 541 (1942). See also Maynard v. Hill, 125 U.S. 190 (1888). To deny this fundamental freedom on so unsupportable a basis as the racial classifications embodied in these statutes, classifications so directly subversive of the principle of equality at the heart of the Fourteenth Amendment, is surely to deprive all the State's citizens of liberty without due process of law. The Fourteenth Amendment requires that the freedom of choice to marry not be restricted by invidious racial discriminations. Under our Constitution, the freedom to marry, or not marry, a person of another race resides with the individual, and cannot be infringed by the State." (Footnotes omitted.)

So which citation does the Judge in California pick?. Are race and sex on equal footing under the Constitution? Not so far; and, given the make up of the Supreme Court, I don't see them extending the Loving Court's equal protection analysis. I don't see a District Court doing that on his own. But, he could cherry pick their due process cases to find that marriage, be it heterosexual or gay, is a "vital personal right…essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free men," not tied to its connection to procreation, "fundamental to our very existence and survival" so as to conclude that "the freedom to marry, or not marry, a person of [either sex] resides with the individual, and cannot be infringed by the State."

I've seen a lot worse reasoning by courts.

Fortress of Solitude

The picture shows the exterior of the fortress, my office. Getting here this morning was a bit like Superman's journey to the original fortress, cold and lonely.

We had .6" (note the decimal point) of snow last night. That is about half of the annual average snowfall in these parts.

Atlanta doesn't do snow. We panic. We buy up bread and milk. Schools announce they will be closed. Employees tend to report that they are iced in.

There are legitimate ice ins. I just got an Email from Bill the Engineer. He lives in a condo complex that is quite hilly and is literally ice bound.

But most absences are less legit. There is no one here in the fortress of solitude except me. I even succumbed to "Ice Jam '10" (yes they name our snow "storms") by not leaving home till about nine.

It is cold - the wind chill this morning was about zero. And, it's supposed to stay that way till Monday or Tuesday.

Yet another weekend of no golf.

Google Goggles

I was bored a day or so ago and downloaded Google Goggles from the Android Market (the newer and poor cousin of Apple's App Store) for my phone.

The program - I don't like the word "app" or application, both of which have replaced program; but, I suppose that's another post - is pre-Beta, what Google puts in its "Labs":

http://www.googlelabs.com/

Most of its stuff starts out there.

"Google Goggles lets you search Google using pictures from your camera phones. We take an image as input, and using several image recognition backends (object recognition, OCR, face matching, etc), we return relevant search results."

Maybe someday.

I've taken a picture of a wood chair, it gave me ten or so images, including a pool table. I took a picture of a glass that had the logo "KENO" on it and again got ten or so totally unrelated results.

I took a picture of my monitor with no results. I decided to give it some help and did a close up of the bottom band of the monitor which spells out "DELL." The results were varied. The first time it gave me links related to Iphones; the second time with a little less of the screen in the picture, it gave me eBay results for "egadget" whatever that is.

Next, I tried a painting of the clubhouse at Augusta National Golf Club. Google isn't a golfer. My results were mostly pictures of beaches with a picture of a Wrangler jeans logo tattoo thrown in for humor I suppose.

I'd say they've got a bit more development ahead of them.

Some Posts That Didn't Pan Out

I'm dry when it comes to getting interested enough in anything to write about it. Even if something interests me, I find I don't have much to say other than to regurgitate what I've read - you can read for yourself. Then there are the ideas that require too much work or just don't have any substance. Some of the latter:

All cable channels are the same. More specifically, there's no difference in programming on History, Discovery, Bravo, TLC or their cousins. I don't want to watch poker, see what happens in a pawn shop, on a boat (or in a truck) in cold weather or learn how something's made (be it a widget on the Science Channel or potato chips on the Food Network).

National security after recent news events: It's obvious changes are needed; but, I'll be damned if I know what they are. I hope some of the people in charge do.

Our arctic weather, especially down here in the South. The lead for a post: Shovel ready recovery project - build a tall wall to keep the cold air up there where it belongs.

Just who is Tila Tequila? What is her connection to Casey Johnson? Just what kind of person follows (is that the right word?) her tweets about her grief? The questions grow: beyond being an heiress, was Casey Johnson anyone beyond being one of the current crop of Spears/Lohan clones?

Is it the Dems or the GOP that's on the ropes? Today every news site says the Dems are in big trouble this fall with two or three Senators retiring. A month or so ago wasn't there a burst of reporting that the GOP was about to implode because its far right had too much influence?

We have a lot of unspent bailout money. You think Cheney would shut up for a low eight figure bribe?

How come Emeril Lagasse was on Iron Chef America on Sunday, billed as a "super chef?" I thought they put him out to pasture a couple of years ago.

I didn't know that senility (stupidity?) could come on as quickly as it appears to have with Brit Hume.

I hope regular programming will resume soon.

Tiger Woods is dumber than I thought he was

Until a month or so ago, I didn't think he was dumb at all. Then I watched him throw away a family and maybe a career.

I just read that he is on the cover of February's Vanity Fair, pecs ablazing:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/01/04/tiger-woods-shirtless-emv_n_410364.html

The photos and story were done before the controversy. Without the recent problems, I'm thinking that AT&T, Buick, Accenture, Gatorade, etc. wouldn't have been too thrilled to see him all buff and with a skull cap on the cover. Not quite targeted to their demographic.

I guess he's got plenty of money left even after a divorce; but, I can't help but wonder what the hell he's been thinking.

364 Days

If you are new here, skip this post or do a search on the blog for "Tony."

Tony would be happy that I'm not so slavish that I had to do a post on the exact anniversary of his death. Instead, I'm beating it by a day.

I quit writing about his passing a long time ago; but, I and our friends didn't quit thinking. The thinking is sporadic these days. A subject comes up and the conversation drifts to something he said or did. Someone says "Bastard" and we move on.

Tony, the other Tony, left a comment on one of my early, angry, posts:

"Tony kinda' represented the anchor of the group…they seem to have been part of a large machine, each not quite able to be complete without the parts of the other."

He's right, it isn't the same. We've moved on, adrift without the anchor. In fact, "we" aren't without him. That isn't all bad. I've had to extend myself, reach out to others. And work a bit to maintain part of what was.

Calm center, everyone needs one.

I hate this stuff

For someone who makes his living negotiating, litigating and solving problems, I am remarkably averse to personal conflict. I'm the kind of person that doesn't argue. I don't yell. I procrastinate and avoid.

I was driving home this afternoon and the "Malfunction Indicator Light" came on. A bit of Googling has determined that it is the Hyundai equivalent of the check engine light. Further Googling indicates that it can mean almost anything.

So here's the thing. I immediately run through all the things that will result in grief. Out of bumper to bumper warranty? No - a few thousand miles to go. Thus the power train warranty is still good too. Did I miss any scheduled maintenance? Nope. Oil changes as scheduled and the 60K mile major stuff is, again, a few thousand miles down the road.

There is the "recommended" changing of some fluid or other by the Dealer that wasn't in the maintenance manual that the Dealer said I should do, that I declined and the service writer notated on the sheet they fill out. I was going to make an issue of it but didn't. Is it about to come back to bite me?

Anything else that can be wrong? I don't know, but I'll gnaw at it till Monday morning when I take it to the dealer.

For wont of something profound to say on the first day of the year...

I'll give you a link to a story about an increase in price of the cheapest Russian vodka:

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article6973554.ece

The government there wants to cut down on drinking, apparently only in the lower economic classes. There's now a minimum price, which I assume won't have any impact on people with money.

Happy New Year to all our Russian friends with enough money to celebrate.