People aren’t dumb, just bad at judging actual cost

High gas prices driving small car sales

The trend proves again what we already knew – that people respond to events that hit their wallet, not their conscience.

High gas prices driving small car sales Shocker – with gas getting more and more expensive, people are buying more small cars. While I agree with the above-quoted statement, I think what it really gets at is that people are inherently rational. We just aren’t always good at judging value. It goes well beyond over-valuing brand new Lincoln Navigators with 22″ chrome wheels and heated massage chairs while under-valuing small, efficient, reliable cars. Now, I know that I tend to over-value that feeling of smug self-satisfaction when I walk to work or take the bus home, laughing at the schmucks who drive two hours into Nowhereville, VA. But I also know that a lot of them over-value the sixth bedroom and second acre their house is on as they give up twenty hours a week commuting. Anyway, I hope GM an Ford can figure things out before the European and Japanese and Korean car manufacturers swoop in and totally wipe out the American manufacturers, who seem to have mortgaged their future on the mistaken idea that people would continue to buy high-profit SUVs forever. I hope that GM and Ford can quickly change with the gas prices, and perhaps bring some of the cars they make for overseas markets to the States as the demand changes. But I have to say I’m not that optimistic.

That was money well-spent

A little while back I sponsored two pages at Baseball Reference. It was mostly for fun, and because it’s one of my favorite sites on the whole internet, and it’s cool to give something back. So I thought I’d give a report on how that sponsorship is going in terms of referrals. My sponsorship of Mark Knudson has resulted in TWO new visits to the site. Since I’m surprised that two people have even looked at Mark Knudson’s career stats since April 7th, that seems like a good result. And my sponsorship of Chad Bradford has resulted in FOUR new visits to the site. Bradford’s status as an active player having a good year (Small sample size, but he’s got a 1.03 WHIP and a 297 ERA+ in 12 innings, can’t complain about that) means that he’s probably getting more traffic, so it makes sense that he’d drive more people here. To put the traffic in perspective, though, over the same time period, I’ve had 504 total visits (It’s been a slow posting time, so my traffic is down). 27 of those hits are from people Googling “vector security”. Five are from “mccain nude”. Six are from outside.in and twenty are from Facebook. Anyway, I’m certainly not going to quit my day job anytime soon and make a living here. Of course, since I don’t sell ads here, paying for traffic is kind of silly, but that wasn’t really the point of my sponsorship.

Man, who thought this was a good idea?

ESPN – Papa John’s to offer Cleveland residents 23-cent pizzas

Papa John’s Pizza issued an apology to Cleveland and the Cavaliers for making T-shirts with LeBron James’ number and the word “crybaby” under it.

Who’s the marketing person in Washington who decided this would be a good idea? I suppose I could probably find him or her by doing a resume search on Careerbuilder for marketing resumes added in the last two days. Since I’ve watched more basketball this year than any other year in my lifetime because of the Celtics-fan wife, I have a better idea of what a hard foul is than I used to. And the little montage ESPN put together of the Wizards pounding on LeBron was pretty ridiculous. So I don’t blame him for complaining a bit. And I doubt he’s crying now, as he’s headed to Boston on Tuesday while Brendan Heywood is headed to play golf.

What to do when your team isn’t local

So my little brother is heading to Arizona State for law school in the fall. I’m both happy for him and this opportunity, and a little sad that he’ll be across the country. But I’ll get used to it – the wife deals with siblings on both coasts and in between, so I can manage. But in his list of things to do, he mentions “Become an Arizona Cardinals fan”. This is where it’s clear that he needs some guidance from his older and wiser brother. I’m in a sort of similar situation. My football team is local (Well, sort of – they’d be local if the Washington Redskins actually played in Washington, but whatever), but my baseball team is not. The Orioles are far enough away that I can’t get to an evening game without leaving work early. But we have the Nationals. There are two important things about the Nationals that I think are nearly mirrored by the Cardinals. One, they’re terrible. They’ve pretty much been at the bottom of the standings since they were the Expos. And two, they have a beautiful stadium. What does this mean? Empty seats and a great place to watch the visiting team. The wife and I went to RFK before the Nats moved to watch the Nats play the Oakland A’s (As a baseball fan, I’ve of course read Moneyball, so of course I have a soft spot for the A’s. Plus they were my team in ’88 before McGwire was a cheater and when Eck and Stewart and Rickey were awesome). We saw Barry Zito before his arm fell off. A friend and I went to a game at RFK and watched Tom Glavine pitch for the Mets. Now, the Cardinals don’t really play anyone cool at home next year – they play the Redskins in Washington, they play in New England – with one exception. On October 12th, the Dallas Cowboys come to Tempe. This is a perfect opportunity. By attending the game as a Cowboys hater, you in effect become a Cardinals fan without disgracing your DC Metro Area roots by actually becoming a Cardinals fan. You’re free to root for the Cardinals, exchange high-fives with Cardinals fans, and generally have a good time rooting for the home team. But you get to keep your football soul. Everyone wins. Except the Cardinals. They never win.

Watching a little basketball, playing with some computers

So how’s this for a great Friday evening: I’m sitting on the couch. To my left, the windows are open because it’s a gorgeous spring evening. Right next to me on the couch, the wife is napping, waiting for the Celtics game. I have a kitchen full of beer and wine left over from my birthday party last week. We have the ingredients ready for dinner, pasta with tomatoes and asparagus, plus some cauliflower poppers. In front of me is my brand new work computer, on which I’ve just installed Launchy, which everyone should install on their Windows machine. It’s similar to Gnome-Do for Linux and Quicksilver for Mac – I’ve been using Gnome-Do for a while and I love it, and wanted something like it for my Windows work machine. And speaking of Linux, my personal laptop is currently downloading and upgrading to the latest version of Ubuntu, Hardy Heron. So, I have sports, food and drink, computer geekishness, and my fabulous wife. I have no idea what more I could possibly want.

Getting back to my life

So I’m back at work after my birthday trip to Paris. There are a ton of pictures here. I haven’t finished uploading them as of right now, but there are about 200 posted, so that should keep you busy. And speaking of busy, I’ve been very busy lately, which is why I haven’t been posting anything. I know it’s the fifth law of the internet or something that anyone who runs a blog non-professionally must periodically go through a slow phase and not post, then apologize and say they were busy. The good blogs don’t do this very often. Anyway, hopefully things are slowing down a little and I can get back to complaining about things. There are certainly things to complain about.

I guess it serves me right for buying a soda

I got a Cherry Coke out of the machine down the hall to drink with my lunch. I don’t drink nearly as much soda as I used to, but every now and then I can’t help it. This time, I should have been more careful in my selection. It wasn’t actually a Cherry Coke – it was a Cherry Coke Zero. That means they’ve taken out all the delicious high fructose corn syrup and replaced it with carcinogens that fool your tongue into thinking you’re consuming something sweet. I know my view on this is a little extreme, but I’d like to see Coke and anyone else who wants to use aspartame and sucralose and all those other non-food products have to put a big disclaimer on the package, like a cigarette warning.

WARNING – this product contains a chemical substance posing as food that is not, in fact, digestible by humans. It tricks your taste buds into thinking it’s sweet, but it is all a lie. Also, there is non-trivial evidence suggesting it causes cancer. If you still think it’s better than high-fructose corn syrup, go ahead and enjoy.

Hey, all you Catholics

DSC_8698So the Pope is in town. Since I work almost right next door to the White House, which is where he was hanging out this morning, some coworkers and I went up to the roof of the building to watch as he hopped into the PopeMobile and drove off down Pennsylvania Avenue and past the adoring throngs. Anyway, there are more pictures here. The view from the roof is pretty good. And there are electrical outlets and benches up there. With the weather getting nice, I might just have to take a laptop up there now and then.

Dell again

Wow. Another email from Dell. The best part are these consecutive passages:

. . . I will provide you the information.

As a Customer Care I am unable to provide you the information . . .

Please don’t think that my anger here is because Dell has outsourced their customer service. I truly don’t care if the CSR is in the United States or India or the moon or anywhere else. I don’t care what his or her first language is. The only thing that’s important to me in a CSR is being able to fix my problem, preferably in a minimal amount of time. That’s it. Hence the anger. None of the people who emailed me could fix my problem. What’s even more exasperating is that each of them has chastised me for asking my question to the wrong person. It’s a little frustrating to be directed to talk to a person who tells me that he or she is not the person who can help me. Anyway, I’ll get a computer eventually. And I still hate Dell.