Month: December 2007

Preparing for the Mitchell Report

I’m kind of terrified of this thing.  I love baseball, and this is going to hurt.  It’s a necessary hurt, like tearing off the old bandage, but it’s still going to suck.  There are already leaks that Roger Clemens is on the naughty list, and the promise of other big names.

I hate Clemens, but he’s the best pitcher of my generation, and I don’t want to see his name tainted like that.  Maybe it will knock him down a peg and remind him that he’s not actually bigger than baseball and teams will stop letting him get away with this “I’ll pitch when I’m good and ready and we’re playing at home” garbage.

And I’m afraid that other big names are really going to hurt.  I hope the Orioles release everyone on the list.  Immediate, unconditional release for anyone breaking the rules.  I would rather watch the Orioles have the worst season in the modern era, or promote our entire AA team, than watch them employ cheaters.

My great hope for all of this is that maybe now the Steroid Era can end.  No more.  I want it to be over so we can go back to thinking about baseball, not asterisks.

Who eats better than we do?

Salad: The Wife’s Signature Salad, spinach with candied pecans, dried cranberries, blue cheese, apple and a delicious honey vinaigrette.

Dinner: Scallops over lemon orzo.

Accompanied by: Bell’s Sparkling Ale, a November-only 9% alcohol American Triple.

In the oven: 100% whole wheat bread, rising and almost ready to bake (NB – I used all 100% whole wheat flour instead of the other two types).

Most of the ingredients are organic. It’s very low fat, low sodium, and totally delicious. You thought I was smug about living in the city and taking public transportation to work? You haven’t seen us eat dinner.

You suck, Citicards

So, I have good credit.  I don’t carry a credit card balance.  I pay my bills on time.  I have a Citi World Dividend Mastercard or whatever the heck it is that I’ve had for maybe four years.  Actually, it was a different card up until a month or so ago, but they changed it, not me, so it’s been one continuous account as far as I’m concerned.  Anyway, I’ve NEVER missed a payment on it.

So I forgot to pay my November bill.  Just forgot to go to their website and schedule a payment.  Those jerks charged me interest, a $39 late fee, and raised my APR.  For ONE missed payment in four years.  They didn’t even contact me to say I was late.  My Discover card emails me and tells me if I haven’t scheduled a payment and my due date is approaching.  But Citi didn’t do that.

The first level CSR didn’t even think they should.  “Oh, we have so many cardholders, I don’t know how we could call them.  It would have to be on the computer.”  Well, of course, moron, I don’t want you to call me.  Why do you think I do as much business with you as I can on your website, and long ago stopped getting paper statements?  I don’t want to talk to you on the phone, or get any regular mail from you.

Anyway, the second level CSR that I got when I asked to cancel waived the fees, gave me some extra cash back bonus temporarily, and dropped my APR to 1.9% for 9 months, then it goes back to the rate I had before I missed the payment.

I’m planning to cancel the card anyway, but they don’t have to know that.

The message here is, when your credit card company does something stupid, call them and complain.  They’ll probably help you out.

Take that, DC Parking Enforcement!

Complaint Hub » Blog Archive » I win! I’m a big winner!

We’re still waiting on a response for the big ticket, the $100 ticket. The wife wrote that letter. She’s a lawyer, so she should be better at convincing them, but we had a much stronger case on the one that I contested. So we’ll see.

Yes, I just quoted myself. Shut up. A couple of days ago, we finally got the letter saying that they forgave the big ticket, too. We weren’t sure what was going to happen – the car still had the old Virginia tags then. I’m sure if they tried they could get my SSN or VIN or something from Virginia and track down my DC registration that way, but that involves WORK, and I just wasn’t sure they were actually going to do that. But I didn’t want to contact the DMV after it was taking them forever to get back to us on this ticket, because that would absolve them of doing any work to connect me to the old ticket. Anyway, it’s moot now, because they finally succumbed to my wife’s crushing grip of reason and tore up the ticket. That brings our record on contesting tickets to 4-0, I think.

Why do I write?

The Zombie Robert Heinlein Rises From the Grave Yet Again to Annoy the Politically Correct

People start writing literary fiction as they tumble through writing programs at Sarah Lawrence or Bennington or Iowa because that’s what they’re expected to write and they want to impress their professors and fellow students; people start writing science fiction, on the other hand, roughly ten seconds after they set down The Star Beast or Ender’s Game or Snow Crash because they get done with the book and think, holy crap, I want to do that.

This comes from science fiction writer and blogger John Scalzi. I’ve had similar experiences with reading something and being compelled to write almost immediately. The first time I remember it happening was reading Faulkner. I struggled and struggled through the first eighty or so pages of Absalom, Absalom before I put down the book and said to myself, “I have no idea what I just read, but the act of not writing (well, trying to write) that myself right now is causing me physical pain”. I don’t know if Scalzi’s quote directly applies to me, though. It’s not just science fiction that does this to me, although Charles Stross has definitely had that effect. I think, for me, I get that feeling of “I must do this” when I get lost in the book. This can be lost in a science fiction world like Stross’, or lost in the amazing things that Faulkner could do with the English language. Of course, I never finish any of the projects that these books inspire, but that’s a different issue.

This thing is going to look funny

Inhabitat » TRANSPORTATION TUESDAY: The Smart Car

The Smart car is a tiny subcompact vehicle, only about 9 feet long and 5 feet wide. The three cylinder engine has fantastic fuel consumption, getting 42 miles per gallon, and has a top speed of 90mph.

So, those of you not in the United States, or who have traveled to some of those other countries who realize that not everyone needs a gigantic car may have seen the Smart car, about the size of two defensive linemen.  Seeing them parked on the street looks a little ridiculous even when the cars around them are smaller than your typical American behemoth, so imagine this car parked between a Yukon Denali and chromed-out H2.

I ‘m a little disappointed that it will both cost $11,000+ and get only 42 miles to the gallon, but the bigger picture is that Daimler thinks this thing will sell here.  That means that we’re starting to see people thinking differently about transportation and conservation and things like that.  Hopefully seeing these tiny things driving around will make more people reconsider buying an 8-passenger SUV to drive to work alone.

Im one of those DC snow car people now

When I first moved to the DC Metro area back in 2001, I was living in Fairfax, VA, and working on Wisconsin Ave NW.  I used to park on a little un-zoned residential street.  One winter, either 2001 or 2002, I forget, we had a big snow that was on the ground for a couple of weeks.  We got 4-6 inches, and then it just stayed cold.  Most of the cars in the neighborhood just didn’t move.  For weeks, they just sat, covered in snow.

Now, today we got our first snow since we moved to the city, and my car is still covered.  I expect it will be covered tomorrow.  I mean, it’s supposed to get up close to 40 degrees tomorrow, so there’s not much point in clearing the car.  In fact, since street cleaning has been suspended for the winter, I don’t expect to touch the car during the week until March or so.

Well, tomorrow we have errands to run in Virginia.  But other than that.

It’s funny how quickly my attitude about driving has changed now that, for the most part, I don’t have to do it.  Going a day without driving used to be really strange, and now it’s the norm.

Anyway, the snow’s kind of nice.  My commute is only outdoors for three blocks to Metro, and then a minute where the Yellow Line train goes over the Potomac into Virginia.  So the snow isn’t really a concern.  I do have to take some trash out tonight, though.

Bread is delicious

So, the bread I made last night was fantastic. It’s the kind of stuff you can just sit and eat. We haven’t even tried toasting it or putting butter or anything else on it. I’m all ready to go out and find a good recipe for some fancier bread. Some 100% whole wheat, maybe some grains and other bits of goodness. Maybe some raisin bread, although the wife doesn’t love raisin bread.

I would recommend that anyone who is disappointed by the quality of bread in the grocery store (Or the omnipresence of everyone’s favorite, high-fructose corn syrup) try baking his or her own. Yes, it helps a lot to have a Kitchen Aid mixer, and I know these are not cheap, but you don’t HAVE to have one, and it’ll probably save you money in the long run if you actually bake your own bread regularly.

The instructions for baking, incidentally, are very detailed and easy to follow.  We had to look up how to prepare the yeast, which wasn’t explained, but that wasn’t too hard.