It’s our fault the economy sucks

Let’s look back ten years or so. Ford and GM were huge, successful corporations making millions of cars all over the world. Hyundai was a joke, a car that people bought because they couldn’t afford a nice car. Since then, Hyundai has focused on making affordable cars that people want to drive. Ford and GM have focused on making bigger and bigger SUVs and complaining about union wages. So where are we now? Ford and GM are financially insolvent, in need of giant government bailouts. Hyundai is leaving behind their joke reputation and making some pretty decent cars. But why is this our fault? It’s because we are so focused on the sound bytes. When the big three car execs went to Washington with their hands out, what did we report on and talk about? The fact that they flew their corporate jets. Yes, this is a good symbol of the misplaced priorities. But it is such an insignificant part of the problem. It’s not like leaving the corporate jet at home, or even selling it, would have suddenly made GM profitable. Those execs are absurdly rich. Get over it. I know we’re jealous. But even if we make them take pay cuts, we’re still going to be making the same money we do now. The real problem is that, due to mismanagement, failure to plan ahead, and a fundamental misunderstanding of the business they’re in, these execs have gotten into a position where it is better for the country as a whole if we give them millions of dollars. They can’t take all the blame for that – some of it is certainly on us. But to focus on the corporate jets as anything more than a symbol of their incompetence is to brush the real issues under the rug as soon as there’s something we can latch onto and get really fired up about. The issue at hand is that the American car companies don’t make compelling cars (In this country, anyway) and have lost the reputation for quality they used to have. They like to use the unions as an excuse, but the unions are rational human beings who depend on American car companies to make their living – you can negotiate with them and work something out. If you can’t, you’re probably not trying hard enough. If Hyundai can do it, so can you. No more excuses from the Big Three.

OpenSUSE fails at mainstream

I still don’t seem to be getting this whole “partition for a multi-boot Linux system” thing. Or maybe I just need to install OpenSUSE before Ubuntu. Whatever the problem is, I have only one OS installed at the moment, OpenSUSE 11.1, but at least this time it recognized my wireless card without any issues. However, it can’t handle Flash on 64-bit Firefox. This is a big giant obstacle to OpenSUSE becoming an operating system that normal people can use. I’m enough of a geek that I’ll figure out how to get Flash working. But most people aren’t, and no matter how much I hate Adobe for forcing their horrible proprietary language on the world, and how mad I am at the world for letting them do it, you can’t be a mainstream operating system if your default browser doesn’t support Flash out of the box. You can do what Ubuntu does and give open source options to people who refuse to put anything proprietary on their machine, but you can’t make people go download tar.gz files from Adobe and then be told that their architecture isn’t supported. Like it or not, Flash is a part of the internet experience. You have to find a way to deal with that, and OpenSUSE hasn’t. Other than that, I kind of like it. The equivalent of the Windows Start Menu is interesting, and clearly the result of looking at Windows and trying to do one better. Once I get Gnome-Do installed, I may never use it again, but many people will, and it looks like they’ve done some cool things with it. The experiment continues. Edit to add: And here’s the script to install 64-bit Flash in Firefox on OpenSUSE 11.x, in case you wanted to know.

It takes four signs to explain the parking


Originally uploaded by thetejon

I took this photo the other day while I was up on the roof with the heater repair guys. I couldn’t hear the bulk of the conversation, but I believe the woman in the brown coat, one of my neighbors, was complaining first to a parking enforcement officer, then to a police officer, and then to this woman, a parking enforcement supervisor, about tickets being written. During the winter, they suspend street cleaning. They don’t change the signs, they just assume you know that, from some arbitrary date in November to some equally arbitrary date in March, you are free to ignore the no parking signs for street cleaning. Try to find out what those dates are. I dare you. However, it seems you can only ignore some of the signs. Usually, the south side of the street is two hour parking for all out-of-zone cars. On street cleaning days, it changes to DC residential parking permit holders only. So the parking enforcement official ticketed all the Maryland and Virginia drivers on the south side. I’m guessing that my neighbor was arguing that these signs don’t apply when street cleaning is suspended. I don’t think she’s going to win this argument, but she did leave notes on all the ticketed cars. I don’t know what they said. I would have told them to contest the tickets by mail, which won’t do any good, but might make them feel better. Still, it is pretty absurd that it takes four signs to explain the parking. Doesn’t this suggest to someone that the parking restrictions might be overly complicated?

Coincidence? What now, University of Michigan?

Last winter, I applied for the open University of Michigan football head coaching position. I was rejected. What happened next? “Coach Rich Rodriguez … guided the Michigan football team to its worst season in its 129-year history in his first year.” (Source). The wife claims my rejection and Michigan’s awful season aren’t related, but she’s just a girl and doesn’t know anything about football (except what I taught her). I’m putting all you big football schools on notice – next time I apply for your open head coaching position, you might want to hire me.

And fire him they did

The Orioles finally let Daniel Cabrera go. I have posted at length about his ups and downs. And now he’s a National, so I can hop on the Metro go see him on occasion when we get a babysitter. He’ll probably pull a Schilling and turn into an All-Star. It’s funny how Schilling pitched 44 of his 569 career games as an Oriole, yet I still always considered him an Oriole who happened to pitch for someone else. It is more likely, however, that his control will continue to ruin his gobs of talent, and he’ll always be a 5.00 ERA guy who every once in while throws a two hit shutout and strikes out 10. I hope the Nationals enjoy him.

Tire vandals in Columbia Heights

The only reason we still have a car is my daughter’s car seat. It’s just not worth the hassle in the city. Sometime Sunday night, someone came down our street and slashed or deflated a bunch of car tires, including one of ours. I don’t see a visible puncture, but I find it pretty hard to believe that someone actually removed the cap, let the air out, and took the time to screw the cap back on. It could have been worse – we need new tires anyway – but it’s a huge hassle. I’m going to have to call AAA because the Mazda dealer managed to lose the wheel lock key last time I was in for an oil change, back when they were still doing them for free. So I can’t change the tire myself. I was thinking about this – if I were the vandal, I would actually take the time and let the air out and replace the cap. I think that’s way funnier, and it doesn’t cause any damage, so you don’t get in as much trouble if you get caught. Mindless vandalism lacks style. Do I need to file a police report? Half the street got a tire slashed, and I know at least a couple of my neighbors reported it. Our insurance deductible is more than the cost of a tire, so we probably won’t report it to them, either. Doesn’t seem like it’s worth the trouble.

If I were a teen girl

Have you seen the commercials for One a Day Teen Advantage vitamins? I keep seeing them because we’ve gotten hopelessly addicted to NCIS and House reruns on USA. It’s a disease. Anyway, if I were a teen girl, I would be pretty pissed off. The commercial says that there are vitamins designed for teen boys and for teen girls. That’s fine – teen boys and teen girls have different vitamin needs, so it only makes sense to have different vitamins for each of them. But the commercial and their website only mention that girls want healthy skin, and boys want healthy muscles.

Complete Multivitamins for Teen Boys & Girls to Support: * Healthy muscle function with Magnesium (for Him) * Healthy skin with Vitamins A and C, Copper, and Iron (for Her)

Now, as I said, I’m not a teen girl, nor was I ever a teen girl, or a girl of any kind. But I feel I can speak for them when I say that girls need muscles, too. You know, for exercising and playing sports and moving. Does One a Day Teen Advantage really think that the only thing girls might get (or want) from their vitamins is healthy skin? That sounds like a pretty worthless vitamin.

Wikimetro says, “We’re totally not a scam”

I got an email from Wikimetro last night telling me that they were not a scam. They did nothing to address my concerns, however.

Dear Complaint Hub (we dont know your real name, sorry), We just saw your comment on Complaint Hub and wanted to reply. Wikimetro is not a scam at all, but rather a marketplace that lets ad buyers and bloggers meet. If you are avail to talk, just email us a tel number and time to call, or give us a call using the contact us page on our site. Jeff B www.wikimetro.org

It was nice of them to actually read my blog this time rather than scraping a header tag for a name-like word, but this was never really my concern. It was more a clue that the email was auto-generated by a script. But telling me you’re a “marketplace” is one thing, and listing blogs as available to purchase ads on when these bloggers have never heard of you is quite another. I’m going to start my own “marketplace” here on Complaint Hub. For $500, Jeff B of Wikimetro will tattoo your name on his forehead. No, he doesn’t know it yet. But when you give me the money, I’ll approach him (Through the convenient contact us page on their site) and see if I can work something out. Or maybe I’ll just pocket the money and never even tell Jeff B he was part of the transaction.

That’s a weird place for an ad, Google

Those of you who use Google Finance to track the implosion of your stock portfolio have probably noticed that they’ve moved the graph that tracks the Dow and the S&P; over to make room for a big box of ads. I’m curious why they did that. Not only does it look a little out of place, but do people really go to Google Finance looking to buy something? If they offered a cheap way to buy stock, I could understand that. But the ad it’s showing me now is “Free Grants for Finances”, whatever that means. It doesn’t seem to really fit in with their typical strategy of unobtrusive, targeted ads. I suppose it doesn’t cost them anything, and could bring in plenty of money, but it could also backfire by annoying long-time users like me by taking up a pretty large chunk of prime screen real estate. I hope they don’t make any money off the ads and decide to remove them.

I hate the Cowboys

Originally uploaded by thetejon

What a disappointing game. Fantastic seats, though. The picture from my phone kind of sucks, but I didn’t feel like bringing the cool camera and I forgot to steal the wife’s point and shoot. Have you ever been to FedEx Field to watch the Redskins? It is the worst stadium I’ve ever been to in terms of getting home. There don’t seem to be signs to get back to the Metro (Probably because it’s a mile away) and getting out of the parking lot takes hours. I met my friend at New Carrollton because he was coming from Annapolis, and I rode with him to the parking lot. On the way out, he was going to drop me off at the Metro again, but I had to leave him and walk. When I got to the Morgan Boulevard station, he still hadn’t moved from his spot, and I caught the second to last train of the night. It’s too bad, because I like the stadium, but I’m not sure they could have made it less accessible.