Adjusting the Brightness

Posted by on July 25, 2010 No comments

I love how things work out sometimes.  Friday morning when I woke up I was so, so tired.  The sun is coming up later and I’m a pretty SAD person (meaning I get Seasonal Affective Disorder).  So I thought this year I will finally buy a sunrise light.  I know they’re around $100, so I started the buying process by mentally preparing myself to spend $100 on a light.

I went out for dinner Saturday and stopped by somewhere I’d seen but never looked in – an HSN outlet.  I love outlets, junk stores, pawn shops, etc.  So I get in there and right up front is a light therapy device with sunrise feature.  Priced at $70.  Awesome.

The store is pretty much how I thought it would be.  Lots of crap I’d buy before I entered my mature "I don’t need shit" mentality.  So, on the way out, I grab the device and head to checkout.

I didn’t pay attention to how the outlet priced their crap, but apparently, the longer a product sits there the cheaper it gets.  This product must have been pretty old because it rang up at $17.  Holy crap!  I was mentally prepared to spend $100, happy to spend $70, and ended up paying $17.

Last night I hooked it up, but misunderstood and misprogrammed the sunrise alarm feature.  I wanted to be up at 6:00, so I set the alarm for 5:30 with a 30 minute ramp-up time.  That’s not how it works; it started glowing at 5:00 to finish at 5:30. 

So, at 5:30 this morning, my room literally looked like the middle of the day.  Damn that thing is bright!  And I woke up.  I woke up, immediately turned it off and went back to sleep.

It was interesting that the device really did wake me up.  And the waking was pretty easy, not jarring like an alarm.  This week will be the real test.

Yeah, and also on Saturday morning I got to stand my theological ground against a couple of Jehovah’s Witnesses.  The most interesting exchange was when they tried to convince me God was a person. 

“So you’re saying, like a person, he has likes and dislikes?” I asked.

“Yes, of course.”

“So he’s biased?”

“I wouldn’t use the word ‘biased’ with God…”

I pretty much summed up my beliefs for them in that I do give thanks for what I have been afforded, although I don’t feel compelled to give thanks to a specific being with a name.  And lo and behold, that night I find something I put into my subconscious the previous day at a price I never imagined.  So I’m giving thanks for my fortune here and now.

Unclear On The Concept

Posted by on July 3, 2010 No comments

From a Yahoo Finance article:

“Bottom line: If you don’t have the discipline to list your credit cards in interest-rate order from highest to lowest and pay them off that way, try an online tool such as DebtGoals.com (about $15/month) that literally tells you what to pay off first to minimize your overall debt.”

If you have balances on multiple cards, maybe another recurring bill is exactly what you need.  I’ll remember this.

Take Pride, not Lives

Posted by on May 28, 2010 No comments

I see mass-manufacturer Foxconn has been pretty heavy in the news for all the suicides of their workers and now they have a solution: higher pay.  How American of a solution is that?  We’ll buy your happiness.  Little do they know they will only make the problem worse because now workers won’t be able justify quitting because they can’t make that much anywhere else.

Pondering this, I had a typical impractical thought.  But who knows,  it’s “so crazy it just might work” ™.  The root problem is job dissatisfaction.  Some of it is long hours, some is monotony, but I might speculate a lot of it is a feeling of uselessness.  It comes back to the Gung Ho principles.  These anonymous, tireless workers don’t understand the good that they are doing.  They don’t know the joy they are bringing to someone by assembling these products.

It’s not just Foxconn, it’s totally rampant.  It could be the #1 American export.  Automobile builders, apparel assemblers (shoes, shirts, jackets), farmers, everyone that makes something for someone else, they are all anonymized by a company name.  When people buy something, they say “Apple made this” or “Nissan built this.”  No, actually, people made these things.  We’ve forgotten that people do the work.  Take a look at some of the stuff around you.  People made those things for you.  Even if people didn’t make them, they maintained the machines that made them.

So, how to get this human connection back?  What if every automobile running through the assembly line had a “Thank You” card on it that each worker would sign as it went through their post?  What if an assembly worker would slip a note into each device they assembled stating “This was assembled by Dave Smith.  Let me know that you enjoy it at www.companyname.com/feedback/DaveSmith.”  You offer a chance for the worker to connect with the customer. 

And another thing happens as well.  You create accountability.  And it’s personal.  Can you imagine how people felt putting tags that say “Inspected by #11”?  That’s all I am, is a number.  If that’s all you are, who cares what quality of a job you do?  But putting your name to your work is incentive to do a good job.

Of course, maybe I’m wrong.  The current generation seems to have no problem posting stories of exceeding stupidity and embarrassment on Facebook, tying it directly to their names.  Maybe there is no value anymore to “having a good name.”  On the other end, maybe it’s completely impractical for a large company with massive turnover.  Then again, maybe there’s a reason for the massive turnover.  Hmmm. We can’t implement this idea because of the turnover cost, even though the idea might improve the retention rate.

Back in the Game

Posted by on May 12, 2010 No comments

I’ll just toss out a story I have on seating and lumbar support.  Before owning the MX5, I spent 10 years in an Acura TL.  Its lumbar support was pretty pitiful – just a lever that would push a bar forward in the seat.  But still, I used it from day one because I heard that lumbar support was good. 

A few months after owning the car, my back went out while I was standing up in the office.  I had never had back problems before and at that time, I wasn’t really overweight.  That injury put me out of commission for a week and changed my life forever.  Those of you that have had back failures know you are never the same afterwards.  But at the time I never considered why it happened.  It was a mystery.

Almost 10 years later, I had another significant back failure (and blogged it).  Another week of lying in bed, afraid to move at all.  I attribute this failure to poor riding posture on my then-new motorcycle.  The hump for the passenger seat was pushing very hard into my lower back.  Still though, I never wondered why my back failed to begin with.

At this time in my life, I’m doing a 150-mile commute a day and working 9 hours at a desk – nothing but sitting.  This is literally destroying my back.  The pain was constant, I was popping Advil for days straight, and I was hating life.  After a business trip for a few days, I was feeling better but when I got in the car, within 10 minutes my back was killing me.  I was cursing Acura for having such crappy lumbar support, not like some cars like the old Ford Taurus with the inflatable bladder.

I fiddled around with the seat positions for a while and found two things that turned me around completely.  One, sitting with my legs together.  I used to drive more (ahem) spread-eagle and the bolsters on the seat were pushing on my hamstrings and the sciatic nerve.  Two, turn off the lumbar support.  This shocked me.  After ten years of leaving that bar pushed against my back, I found I never needed it.  In fact, I’m inclined to think that it caused my first, life-changing back failure.  It makes sense that the same pushing of the motorcycle seat and the Acura lumbar support have the same result.

When I was planning the purchase of my MX5, I read as much as I could on the seats and it’s kind of a love-it-or-hate-it thing.  I found a store that sells inflatable lumbar support and budgeted to buy one (at around $100).  After a few weeks in the new seat, with proper seating posture, I don’t think I’m going to need it at all.  I have a slight concern about the side bolsters pushing against my hips, but if I flex my glutes, I can push myself up and the pressure is relieved.  This is kind of motivating for me to (re)develop those muscles that have atrophied from years of deskwork.

So, if you have back pain and are constantly searching for better or stronger lumbar support, maybe you don’t need it.  Maybe the lumbar support is what is causing the back pain, as it was for me.

Resize, Reassess, Restructure, Relief

Posted by on May 6, 2010 No comments

Downsizing. No, upsizing.  No.  I’m not really sure.  How about resizing?  Yes, I have resized my vehicle.  After 10 years of driving the same model car – an Acura TL – I have changed to a new vehicle.  It is a new 2010 Mazda MX-5.  I’ve been driving it for a week and I’ve had substantial time to reflect on the change on a micro- and macro-level.  Going from a midsize, near-luxury sedan to a roadster is a pretty radical change.  Most people add a roadster as a weekend car; I made it my only car.  I had some logical reasoning going into the purchase, and post-purchase, I’ve affirmed these beliefs and realized others.

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To begin, I simply wasn’t happy with my Acura.  It had been purchased used and had the same transmission problem as my previous one.  The “buying it used” part had a big effect on me.  I never felt the car was really mine.  I never had any emotional attachment to it – not like the first Acura, which I had bought new.  So buying new was the only option for me.  I felt that I wanted to be back in love with my car.

Looking at the vast choice of cars available, I was very uninspired with all the sedans.  Even the sport coupes didn’t appeal to me.  The thing that annoyed me the most was bulk and waste.  I’ve hated SUV’s and trucks for a very long time.  I’ve recently been on a simplification plan – downsizing and minimizing my footprint.  Becoming a motorcycle rider helped with that.  It’s simple, no-frills, no-baggage transportation.  Looking at sedans, there’s two extra doors and an entire back seat area that will rarely, if ever, get used except to collect and haul crap.  The two seat roadster was the answer.  Of the available roadsters, of which there are very few, I didn’t want to deal with the cost of maintaining a BMW or Audi.  Like I’ve said to others, “I could get a Z or a TT, but I like my money, too.”  So the MX-5 was the answer.

So I satisfied my need for minimalism and initial-ownership.  The roadster choice also fulfilled my need to enjoy driving again.  With my massive commute in a bulky, heavy sedan, I had begun to despise driving.  It was a chore.  And I had to drive sensibly to save gas because my commute was so far.  Riding the motorcycle was a totally different experience.  The small engine meant I could go faster and ride harder without worrying about wasting gas.  The light weight and general “bike-ness” meant I could handle it harder.  The open air experience was unmatched.  In the last few weeks of owning the TL, I drove everywhere with all the windows down and sunroof open.  It was ok, but a convertible is a totally different experience, for the better.

So when I bought the MX-5, I was a little freaked out.  The windshield view is tiny and I wasn’t completely prepared for it.  It took a few days to feel comfortable with the car and then I could relax and understand my feelings in this new car.  One thing that came into my head was an article I had read about people buying large houses.  The article said that people don’t really feel comfortable in large open spaces.  I applied that to my new-found comfort in my purpose-built driving cockpit.  Everything is close at hand.  It made sense.  Then I thought of when I had my first Acura and I bought a cheap beater car: a Toyota Celica.  The Celica was crappy in many ways, but I honestly think I liked it more than the Acura.  Maybe because it was smaller and had a more sports-car atmosphere?  Possible.

I think the TL was supposed to be my “all-grown-up” car.  I had “made it” professionally, I was living on my own, and this was the next step.  Grow up, be an adult, get a responsible car.  I never considered that I didn’t have to follow the recommended path.  So with the MX-5, I feel more like my old self.  And that can’t be a bad thing.

And now that I’m here, the term “mid-life crisis” means something different.  When you’re younger, it’s a joke.  To see some middle-aged person acting like a teenager again seems dumb.  They’re supposed to act their age.  But when you get to “mid-life” yourself, you find yourself evaluating your life so far.  You may discover you haven’t taken the time to have fun, maybe you’ve gotten wrapped up in work and chasing status and collecting “stuff”.  You look around, see all the stuff you have, and while it’s nice to have, it’s also a pain to have. 

“I’d love to have a dozen cars!”  Really, no, you wouldn’t.  You have to store, insure, license, maintain, and wash all those cars.  “I wish I had a house with a few extra rooms.”  No, you have to heat, cool, clean, furnish, and pay taxes on that extra square footage.  People ask me how I’m going to get anything home in my tiny new car.  First, if I’m buying more stuff than can fit in the car, I’m buying too much stuff.  Second, if it’s too big to fit in the car, I should have it delivered.  Third, if it can’t be delivered, I call Enterprise and rent a bigger car for a day.  The likelihood that I would end up at the final choice is very slim.  Buying a bigger car enables bad choices like buying too much stuff.  I can’t take a bunch of crap with me because there’s no room in the car.  If I have trash, it comes out right away, there’s nowhere to put it in the car.

Less is truly more.

Going Above and Beyond

Posted by on April 21, 2010 No comments

A couple of days ago I bought a piece of jewelry to extend a bracelet, since my wrist was between link sizes – one link either made the bracelet spin freely or cut off circulation.  So I purchased a small extender, $8 after shipping.  It arrived today.  This is what I bought:

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This is how it was packaged:

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Nice and fancy.  That kind of stuff is lost on me.  But that’s not the end of it.

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So, a bracelet link in a poly bag, in a mesh bag, in a poly bag, in a shipping box, wrapped in the shipping invoice, wrapped in tissue paper and shredded packing paper, in a plastic shipping envelope.

Now that’s how it’s done.  That’s http://chainextenders.com for everyone that insists in having their jewelry treated like gold – even if it’s not.

Epiphany

Posted by on April 10, 2010 No comments

There is an infographic I found a while ago that I found quite interesting.  At the time I found it, It was a “that’s neat” response.  Upon revisiting it and doing some critical thinking, I realize that it answers so much about the current political environment.  Some questions it explains:

  • Why can we never have world peace?
  • Why can we never be equals?
  • Why must some people be poor?
  • Why do those poor people typically vote for Democrats?
  • Why are rich, white people typically Republicans?
  • Why are we so screwed up right now?

The key, for me, is understanding the base motivations of Conservatives and Liberals.  It also made me realize how liberal I am, so consider this your warning.

For reference, the graphic is at: http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/leftvright_world.html

Typically, when you hear pundits talk about right/left, red/blue, Republican/Democrat, they focus on stereotypes: Democrats want to raise taxes, Republicans want to start wars, Democrats want government to control your life, Republicans only care about the rich people.  No one ever talks about why these parties do this.

A simplistic view is that Liberals want everyone to get along and to be treated equally, while Conservatives want defined classes of people.  Why do Conservatives need classes of people?  Because their whole ideology is based on getting personally rewarded for your personal efforts – the harder you work, the more reward you get.  Sounds pretty good,  and I agree with it until I realize that this requires a winner and a loser.  Your success results in failure for others.  Their success results in failure for you.  So, successful people want to remain successful and keep others that would threaten their success as subordinate. “The rich get richer.” 

Why are they called Conservatives?  Because they resist change.  Things are fine just as they are, with us in control.  How far back do you have to go to see Conservatives resisting change because Conservatives were in power?  All the way back to the days of slavery.

So on the other side you have Liberals, who are always changing things in the interest of balancing power, making advancement possible for people who don’t have the resources available to richer people.  And Conservatives hate that.  First, because they didn’t get any help for their success, and second, because it gives them competition.

The other light bulb burning brightly from my study of this graphic is a key word applied to Conservatives: fear.  It is found in the relationship of parent to child.  Parents control their children through fear.  It’s been nearly 10 years that we have been besieged with a non-stop torrent of fear mongering from our Republican leaders.  When we finally received a break – in the message of “Hope” – the Republican message remained unchanged, but refocused.  Now instead of fearing an external enemy, we must fear our own government.  But only because the current president is a Democrat, once Republicans take over again, we can start worrying about the rest of the world.

So in summary, having Conservatives in charge means things will not change.  That’s great if you are a Conservative yourself and/or you are content with the way things are right now.  The problem with being Liberal is that your nature is to promote equality.  This tactic doesn’t work against a Conservative, who does not believe in equality and whose prime mission is to rise above and control others in order to succeed – little more than base, primal, instinct.

2012 can not come soon enough.

Too Many, Too Many, Too Many

Posted by on April 8, 2010 No comments

I’ve been thinking about things that have changed since I was growing up and what made them change.  And I’m beginning to point the finger at people.  Not specific people, just people.  There’s too goddamn many of them.  And they suck.  But, oh, don’t worry about me.  I’m doing my part.  I’m not incrementing that population counter at all and I’m not living past my prime.  I’m just a passing fad.

So what have we lost as we’ve gained people?  I haven’t done much thought on this topic, just some casual thinking.  So I don’t have a multi-page rant, but I came up with a few items.

Travel:  Whether by air or car, there are too many damn people travelling.  Air travel used to be luxurious.  My parents dressed me in a suit to go to the airport.  It was like going to church.  Now, it’s just a big cattle train.  With the apparent loss of manners and couth of the average American, it’s a terrible experience.

Education:  All the time, I’m hearing about how schools need to be built or expanded.  Where the hell are all these children coming from?  When I was growing up, there was no school shortage.  And with all this overcrowding, there’s no way anyone’s getting a good education and no teacher is getting paid for the effort they have to put in.

Beaches:  I haven’t always lived near a beach, but when I was growing up, there were regular vacations to a beach.  And I remember it was a lot different then.  For one, you could drive your car on the beach.  Not now.  And can you imagine if you could?  It would be a big-ass parking lot with no room for people.  Traffic jams on beaches; beach rage; idiot drivers.  Again, something that used to be a pleasant experience ruined by the masses.

Does it sound like I’m being elitist?  I don’t think so.  If the stupid humans of the world had enough damn sense that they don’t need to have more than two kids, much less 4, 6, or – holy shit – 8, then there’d be enough resources for everyone.  There’d be enough seats on a flight.  There’d be enough roadway for everyone.  There’d be enough beach for everyone to lie out and for some to bring their car. 

As humans, we’ve lost any concept of humans as a race.  And we’ve stopped thinking about the big picture, and we’ve certainly stopped thinking of anyone but ourselves.  2012 can not get here soon enough.

Driver Formula

Posted by on March 10, 2010 No comments

I think I’ve come up with a formula to determine the assholosity of any driver on a highway.  The formula is simply:

x*abs(y-z)

Where x is the number of lane changes per mile, y is the average speed of the driver, and z is the average speed of the rest of traffic.  Spoken, the formula is: the number of lane changes per mile multiplied by the deviation in speed from the flow of traffic equals the level of asshole on the road.

This formula is a great step forward in the field of Asshology, of which I consider myself an expert.

It’s Just Money

Posted by on March 5, 2010 No comments

Why is this conversion to Quicken so goddamn hard?  I think I’m a reasonably smart person, so why does my money keep getting screwed up in Quicken?

Whenever I use Quicken, it’s laborious.  And not because it’s different, I’ve come to learn the differences in the 4 months I’ve been using it.  It’s dumb.  And I pity the people that have been using for years and years, because MS Money had a much better user interface.

My latest fiasco occurred this morning when I got a notice from a bank saying a transfer was cancelled due to insufficient funds.  After confirming that the balance in Quicken differed from the bank web site, and after a short walk to calm the hell down, I discovered that I had six deposit entries in my register that were duplicates of downloaded transactions.  Thankfully, this was a simple transfer between savings accounts and had no effect on any bills.  Of course, it uncertain if I will be whacked with an overdraft fee or not.

The problem is, I can’t trust Quicken worth a shit.  This situation arose even after reconciling the ledger of the funding account.  Should I have been suspicious that I had unmatched transactions in my register?  Yes, but it has happened so often in my short time with Quicken, I’ve taken it to be normal.  And just now when I was downloading transactions, I had a transaction mismatched and I couldn’t find the real transaction it belonged to.  Why?  because the last time I downloaded, I thought I would trust Quicken and chose “Accept All” to auto-match all the downloaded transactions.

As far as laborious, the matching process is the worst.  The downloaded transactions are in a list at the bottom and as you select each one, it highlights the matched transaction in the register above.  So your eyes are constantly scanning up and down.  Payee?  Good.  Date? Good. Amount? Good.  Ok, next.  Three checks for every downloaded transaction.  And as I’ve found, you have to check all three, especially if you frequent a business often.

The bill payment is very confusing.  The idea that you can pay a bill in Quicken, but that it doesn’t really get paid until you update your accounts is dumb.  And I certainly got misled by “One Step Update”, which I thought would make an immediate payment, but instead merges payments and transaction downloads together.  You mean there’s an even dumber way to handle online payments in Quicken?

I haven’t even dared to test out the reporting and projection tools.  I’m actually scared.  Not that anything would get messed up, since you can’t change anything when running a report, but I think I’m scared at how disappointed I will be or at how confused I will get looking at the results.

This has been one problem after another.  I spoke to a co-worker one time about a business application we use and she commented on how stupid she felt after training because none of it made any sense to her.  It was because the program is so un-intuitive, it made her have to think differently about everything she wanted to do.  That is how I feel and I do not think it is my fault.