Sixth Gear

I recently began driving a car with a six speed automatic transmission. It has a manual shift mode, in case you're feeling sporty. The engine it's mated to is a 2 liter 4 cylinder, nothing exotic, in a lightweight car. So you can imagine my surprise when I could only achieve 31 mpg on the highway, and just under 30 in mostly highway commuting traffic. Something had to be done, especially after driving a Yaris that got 39MPG consistently, and often 40MPG.

I tried hypermiling techniques - shifting to neutral on downward slopes, slow acceleration, even turning on the A/C only when coasting. No cigar. It had no effect at all. So, I tried a different technique. I started using the manual shift mode on the highway and NEVER put the car in 6th gear. Things are looking up now. I'll have to do it for a while longer, but I think I'm getting in the neighborhood of 33 or 34 MPG now, which is basically like getting a gallon of gas for free every time you fill up. Not bad.

While the simple change I've made to my driving habits may not make sense at first, if you keep in mind that sixth gear is really a performance gear more than anything, it makes more sense. When you're cruising at 60 to 70 MPH on the highway in 6th, the RPMs are below 2500, in 5th gear it runs above 3000. On most 4 cylinder engines the peak horsepower is achieved at higher RPMs, and I think this is the reason for the gain - sub-2500 RPM driving simply wasn't efficient.

Almost Nine Cents A Day

Almost nine cents a day, $.08964 to be exact, is what it will have cost me to maintain a small portion of my professional persona over the last two years by wearing a pair of glossy black shoes.

I pulled up my old, closed Bank of America checking account info in Microsoft Money today and searched by category to find where I had purchased my last pair of black professional shoes on 5/17/06 for $65.44. Now that pair of shoes has long splits on the bottom, allowing water in, and I really think I need to replace them. I still may not for another year, because nine cents a day seems steep. If I keep them another year, we're talking 6 cents now, but I'm not sure how long I can avoid water - especially in May.

There's a scene in the Michael Douglas movie 'The Game' where Douglas loses a shoe during a chase. He comments, 'There goes a thousand dollars', to which his companion asks if his shoes seriously cost $1k, to which he replies, 'That one did' (classic badass Douglas). So, $2k for a pair of shoes. I feel better now. That's $2.74 per day over two years.

Healthy Shelf

I never thought that at the ripe age of 31 I would think that I had seen everything this wondrous world had to offer, but today I have crossed the line from being a death-fearing, cynical young man to being a wise elder ready to lie in his grave only because I now have learned and experienced everything life has to offer (except how to prevent run on sentences).

I'm referring, of course, to the awakening experience of visiting Costco.com and beholding the 'Heathly Shelf' - a concoction of pure utility and pure genius that only a Costco shopper ( upper middle class white person with nothing to do with their money ) could appreciate.

Imagine that small party you're always preparing for, but never have because you really loathe other people and always have the ideal of hanging out with clones of yourself. Now imagine at that party that your friend ( or connection, it's 2008 after all ) spills a glass of $10/bottle red wine on your carpet. Hey, no big deal, there's your healthy shelf right there - because you have one in every room. Look at the picture. I'm not a gun guy, but I'd keep guns in the little nooks, at least one of them. That way, someone spills something, they get shot - but you can still clean up.

Microsoft, the Next Microsoft

Microsoft, being a well led behemoth, knows how to turn a situation into an opportunity. Back in the dawn of Linux, and the prime of Unix kingping Sun Microsystems, Microsoft looked like they'd take a beating from their operating system competitors. But despite the rocky introduction of Vista, and ultrahip Mac culture, I suspect we'll see Microsoft rebound in the next few years. Here's why:

Primarily, Microsoft is making serious efforts to transform itself. This isn't an internal rebirth, but rather adaptation based on outside influences. XBOX, for example, was a dramatic addition for the company, and a clever one on many levels. Grand Theft Auto 4 is expected to generate 400 Million in sales during it's first week of launch. While this title isn't exclusive to Microsoft, it's a testament to the dollars to make in the video game market. What's exclusive to Microsoft in the gaming arena is some of the best game developing companies in the world, acquired by Ballmer & Co.

Microsoft has quietly opened it's doors to standardization with the introduction of the .NET platform several years ago. I personally dismissed .NET as market-ecture, just a veneer of bullshit that executives have marketing people come up with to make everyone think something is going on behind the curtain. I was wrong, the new platform enables just about anyone to develop relatively sophisticated programs for.... the Windows platform. What's more, they provide the basic development environments for free, and you can distribute programs developed with said environment royalty-free. That's pure genius on their part - it virtually guarantees the future of their operating system, especially on the desktop, by making the decision to develop for Windows a no-brainer, so to speak.

I saw a guy that looked like the Apple commercial guy in the grocery store the other day. There were some teenagers hanging out nearby, and when they spotted him, I heard one heckle him, 'Dude, you're not as cool as you think you are. In fact, your intentional lack of interest and slack-shouldered coolness is only as significant as who you are on the inside.' It seems the XBOX crowd is loyal to their peeps, and likely will be for many more years.

I wonder when the Apple gaming machine will be introduced.

*yes, I did post about how bad microsoft sucks a couple of months ago, I've warmed to them since then. No, I don't own stock, but I will take a free XBOX for the write-up - I'm not above self exploitation, come see me at work if you don't believe that.

I'll Take It!

If you want to witness the downfall of the American middle-class, watch one of the many house hunting TV shows where young couples go looking for houses. You'll get to see the obscene sense of entitlement that the early 30's crowd has. I was watching one of these shows the other day, and the lame-ass excuse of a man decided he liked the living room and then turned to his realtor and wife and said, 'I'll take it!'



Correction, you won't 'take' shit, buddy. Remember, you have no net-worth, your career is barely started, and you have no self control. So instead of authoritatively saying you'll take it, why not say something like, 'I cannot really afford this house, but with an interest-only loan or maybe a 40 year conventional and two jobs I might be able to stay in it long enough to watch my marriage fall apart due to financial problems.' That's more truthful, and when you start deluding yourself things can get dangerous quickly.

Imagine how much lower housing prices would be if you weren't competing for your house with others who simply couldn't afford the house. When I signed off on my conventional loan five years ago, I was sitting one office away from people who were almost certainly making less money, buying more house, and using creative financing to make the magic show happen. Now those people are clearing out their trash, getting the house ready to sell, hopefully before the overworked Sheriff's office worker evicts them.

We all expect that people who are in bad financial situations will be exploited by others, like check cashing places or pawn shops. What you don't expect are college educated, middle class people leveraging themselves to the greated extent possible in an attempt to feel, and look, for a moment like they've achieved more - financially speaking - than they actually have. And the end result is that these people have exploited themselves, the've financially ruined themselves and their family so that for a fleeting moment they could look like whatever person on the TV they were drawn towards.

One of my favorite quotes from Atlas Shrugged, 'The only real moral crime that one man can commit against another is the attempt to create, by his words or actions, an impression of the contradictory, the impossible, the irrational, and thus shake the concept of rationality in his victim.'

Now for years, many years, I've driven through these suburbs and wondered aloud (to my wife), 'How can people afford all this shit??? How can you afford a $300k house and not be a doctor or a lawyer? Okay, that's fine, there's the house, but what about the Mercedes? I know this person, my neighbor, isn't a professional whatever. He or she isn't a high end IT worker - we're not in Silicon Valley.'

Well, now driving through the neighborhood it's a different story. You don't get outside as much and fluff your feathers when there's a FOR SALE sign out front, do you? Because everyone knows what's going on. Better keep the Mercedes in the garage so the repo man doesn't get it.

Cognitive Enhancement

The journal 'Nature' had an article recently about an April fools joke that reported on doping in the scientific engineering professions - a spoof on recent athletic doping scandals. An informal 'Nature' survey was sent out to readers (probably mostly scientists and academics) to gauge the scope of doping with cognitive enhancers, and it revealed some curious truths.

What I consider a significant percentage (20%) - acknowledged having taken some cognitive enhancer for non-medical purposes, ie to increase focus, concentration or memory. My old favorite, Piracetam, was mentioned - but mostly Ritalin and modafinil were cited. I won't get into the specifics of each drug, as I don't know much about any of the non-racetams.

Think about the implications of this. Chemical congnitive enhancement is widely used by some of the brightest people in the industrial world, which would imply that those people not doing this are at a cognitive disadvantage, on average. There are also a subset of mainstream people who take these agents to be more productive in everyday life. Perhaps we should spike the drinking water with Piracetam like we do fluoride. In a year we could all wake up one day to a world with better lawns, cleaner cars, fewer yardsales and better computer operating systems.

You might be inclined to think I'm joking. I'm not. Given the long history of substances like Piracetam and it's analogues, you should really be able to pick it up at CVS. We're almost to that point, and we'd all be better for it.

Affluenza and The Chemical Lawn

It's springtime again, and all over the neighbors are either poisoning all the wildlife with chemical pesticides, or their lawn is chock full of weeds. I have neither problem, I mow the shit out of my yard - and I mow it about an inch above the dirt.

The problem with Affluenza is that those infected live by the false premise that the world around them is insulated by a thin plastic veneer that's only porous enough to allow oxygen. Or it could be, in the case of chemical weed killer, that there's an old-school trust in Dow Chemical Corporation. The pellets in my yard are birdseed that I've dropped on the way to the bird feeder.

So, the poor birds looking for seeds somewhere else might just eat a granule of toxic weed killer shit. The rabbits in my neighborhood love my yard, they dont have to worry about eating grass sprayed by chemlawn. I was watching one rabbit eat a blade of grass yesterday, and I realized that me and the rabbit should form an alliance - 'People and Rabbits United Against Unnecessary Material Consumption - PRUAUMC.

Anyway, I've made the point that Affluenza is bad for everyone, and everyone ends up paying.
What is the cure for this disease? It's not poverty. If we have a long recession, as soon as a positive economic growth report comes out - the white trash is back at walmart getting their plastic life enhancers or their Poison Poison, which is a poison designed by Dow to poison certain poison's that you might be suspicious of. And don't forget the new Larry the Cable Guy BluRAY DVD that just came out.

The middle class is necessary to our survival, but like my grass and the rabbits, the Middle class can't be fed shit that's going to kill it's collective self - like New Kids On The Block (reunited), Fox Business Channel, Reality TV, manufactured envy of The Wealthy through shows like The OC or High Net Worth.

But these are the very chemicals that the Wealthy have sprayed on their Middle Class, because, like us they know it's probably not a good thing to do, but a smiling person on a plastic bag filled with poison granules at Class Depot made it look easy, like a good idea.

Car Shopping With StupidFilter.org

Wall Street Journal recently had an article about a guy who has painstakingly developed artificial intelligence algorithms to detect stupid comments left on forums. He's trying to develop a business model around it, and there's a demo on his website.

Coincidentally, I was looking around for a new or almost new car recently, and ended up at a Mazda dealership. My experience with Toyota has always been positive, and I sort of expected the same thing from another Japanese dealership. I was sadly mistaken. These guys play all the games, all the stupid car dealer games that internet savvy people figured out about a decade ago thanks to Edmunds.com sending people undercover to work at dealerships.

I have fun with them. I let them know that I was working with dealerships across the region, in several different states, and had offers from other dealers to get a car for under invoice. I wasn't lying, except perhaps that I was repeating what the other dealers had told me, which were almost certainly lies.

The 'who's the best bullshitter' game is always fun to play, and so on a Friday afternoon I pulled off the gridlock interstate to see how much free gas I could burn in a new car, and whether or not I could score the coveted free dealership soda. After burning some free gas, and drinking some free Mello-Yello, I made a scene when the sales manager got sassy with me - and I stormed out of the dealership. A chase ensued, but I got out with my free drink and a big grin on my face. Seriously, that's some of the best fun around, and I don't feel bad at all because these guys are usually complete scam artists. And who knows, if the deal's good enough I'm always ready to buy.

So, tonight I entered some of the dealer's lines into the stupidfilter.org computer, and here's what I got:

Dealer: "we'll beat any other dealer's price, even if that means we have to go below invoice"
StupidFilter: "Text is likely to be stupid."

Dealer: "afraid your wife is going to kill you?"
StupidFilter: "Text is likely to be stupid."

Dealer: "you want the car below invoice? That ain't gonna happen."
StupidFilter: "Text is not likely to be stupid."
*Note: Very adept, stupidfilter, I'm impressed

Pipskippy: "Well no deal, then, and I'm not coming back."
StupidFilter: "Text is not likely to be stupid."
* Note: You'd better freakin' believe it, stupidfilter!

Just to check the calibration of StupidFilter, I pasted a quote from dubya:
George W. Bush: "Do you have blacks, too?"
StupidFilter: "Text is likely to be stupid."

So there you have it. I encourage you all to go out and pretend like you're going to buy a new car today. The dealers are very slow, and it's decidedly fun and darned good practice for when you do buy.

I did purchase a used car from a Ford dealer the next day, just for the record, and they were incredibly nice and straightforward.

All That Shines

Every time I log in to this blog, I get mad at myself for not sticking to the premise of promoting class warfare. It's a catchy title, and one I'd like to be devoted to, but it's really difficult to follow through with the concept when you pass a Rent-A-Center truck while driving home through your middle-class (arguably semi-upper-middle) neighborhood.

I know families who use check cashing places, but make $60 or $70k a year. Everyone knows someone who is paying over 20% on credit card debt month after month, or someone who bought furniture on credit - it could be you! I'm sitting on a chair that was used in a southern hospital during the civil war. It was free, and is likely stained with the blood of men who fought to protect slavery - that's called win, win.

The new slavery in America is largely voluntary, it's called consumer debt ( please don't confuse this with medical debt ), and it's our own fault. Exploitation in this case is a two way street paved with material envy, class misconceptions, and delusions that exclusivity is mass manufactured.

Chrome plated plastic is the modern icon of the finer things in life. If it shines, nothing else matters - not what's underneath, not how long it lasts. Chrome plated plastic shines on the grill of the Lexus LS460h, a $100k car driven by too many people with chrome plated lives. You can extend the concept easily to encompass our largest banks, mortgage companies, bridges - on and on.

Bear Stearns' headquarters should have been built out of foam puzzle pieces like a Puzz-3D. Ditto for Countrywide, Enron, MCI/Worldcom, General Motors, Ford, and possibly Lehman Brothers. Far too many large American companies have dissolved or teetered on the edge of disaster this decade for anyone to feel good about the future of this country - anyone who's paying attention anyway.

It's been far too long since people experienced the sting of the Depression. Global economic contraction could straighten out an increasingly globalized sense of entitlement, at least for a generation.

Boeing NightmareLiner

It was recently revealed that there is a critical error in the network design of Boeing's newest passenger aircraft, the 787 DreamLiner. According to the FAA, the 787's airplane control network is apparently the same network that the passengers use. It's the same thing you do at your house. If a guest comes in, they plug into the same network you have your computers on - no big deal - except your personal computers don't control an airplane, and you don't have to cavity search your guests to make sure they aren't trying to kill you.

Being a geek, I know a little bit about computer networks. I know, for example, that I can load software onto my laptop to crash a network segment. There are a few different ways to do it, and they're all easy.

I won't get into the details of crashing the network, but I will say that this is not an obscure, difficult to identify design flaw. It's computer network basics, and a company that receives perhaps one of the largest corporate welfare handouts can't seem to hire an entry-level computer network technician to look at their basic design.

Seriously, there are hundreds of high-schools in America now that have classes dedicated to entry-level computer networking courses specifically designed to help kids get industry certification from companies like Cisco Systems. I guarantee you that if you polled these kids in the first two weeks of class and asked them what they thought about Boeing's design, you'd get this: "Bad fucking idea, dude. Me and Peanut just skipped out to toke one and grab a cheeseburger, and I gotta say... there's more than one way to fly, dude.. and I'm not getting on that plane".

So is this par for the course in a nation that's becoming more and more half ass due to a lack of education, a lack of giving a shit about anything but yourself? Or is this the faith-based airplane design that we've all been waiting for? I don't know, but I hope they fix it.