Posts by Queasy Rider 292 publicly visible posts • joined 30 Jan 2014
Or asymmetric faces. There is a cop-show (I think it is one of the CSI series) that has a beautiful actress with eyes that are distinctly different in size. With every close-up of her I am completely taken out of the plot of the show because of those mismatched eyes. I can't help myself, I am a natural critic, and plot flaws, and stuff like that just jumps out at me. Sorry, I realize how annoying it can be.
I don't remember the numbers, but I once saw the statistics regarding the amount of spam mails sent vs. the amount of responses(for products like Viagra etc.) Even though the percentage of actual buyers was vanishingly small, (in the range of 0.00000 something) there was still money to be made thanks to the huge amount of spam mail sent.
It is the old 99 Slaps Principal as explained to me by a former co-worker. If your approach to women gets you laid once but your face slapped 99 times out of 100, you can approach 100 women a year and get laid once a year, or you can approach 100 women a night and get laid every night. Whether it is sex or sales, slaps be damned, persistence pays off. Every door to door salesman, phone solicitor, ad man, politician, Comcast phone responder, religious proselytizer, and Girl Scout cookie pusher knows this, and so should you.
Well, at least they aren't 'just' using the typical turn-around artiste's playbook...
1)Lay off masses of skilled workers leaving only an overworked skeleton crew to run things. Outsourcing is a cost cutting variation of layoffs.
2)Sell off huge chunks of the company, temporarily bumping up the numbers
3)Burn cash to a)Purchase other companies outside their core competency to 'diversify', or gobble up competitors or b) To buy back shares (making the remaining shares somewhat more valuable to the upper management still holding mega shares in the company. 4) Use reverse psychology and sell more shares or borrow more money to promote the latest variation of the already failed business strategy.
But hey, IBM, HP, Oracle and others are still around using such tactics, and still losing market and mind share.
And it worked for me too. I hooked up that $200. 9" Acer with XP to a 22" monitor and tethered to a Lumia 521 Win-phone, and used it as my primary system for years, preferring it to my Toshiba 17" laptop with Vista. I only retired it when MS ended XP support. Been thinking of upgrading to a Lumia 635 to get LTE, but probably won't till the 521 dies since I blow thru my 5GB limit at 4G T-Mobile allowance in less than a day downloading YouTube history documentaries. Sigh.
I had such an accident, was forced to brake hard enough to lock the wheels. My bike rose up onto front wheel, Tom Cruise style, but I still clipped the guy cutting me off. His insurance paid, but if he had moved half a second earlier, he would have cleared and I still would have been smeared across the highway with him having disappeared into the night.
I had an 8" enTourage Edge. Thought it was a brilliant design, but was poorly implemented, lame wi-fi, lamer software. I hated using it and can see why they went belly up. Bought it on sale. Support disappeared about the same time. Said good riddance when hurricane Katrina destroyed it. Still wishing for a dual screen appliance though that's not a toy.
Not having used commuter trains, horses, donkeys, camels, llamas, dogsleds or any other form of lower animal transport, I still feel as qualified as any of the above commenters to share an opinion. Having lived in various locales over the years, I have experimented with most modes of transportation, each for extended periods of at least a half a year or more. I have walked and hitch-hiked to work, bicycled, electric bicycled, rode a moped, motorcycled (two wheels and trikes), taxied (easiest but most expensive by far), drove a car, drove a pick-up truck and motor-boated (best commute ever). I am no stranger to public transit either, having used buses, subways, light-rail systems and streetcars in various combinations. As a tradesman working in construction I bounced around from jobs just down the street to sites hundreds of miles away.
People, you need to get off your high horses about this subject. At one time or another any the above modes were either ideal for the situation, or sometime impossible to implement. Take public trans for instance. I once lived just inside the limits of a large city (then over 2 million pop). My bus stop was third from the end of the line, but because the line fed into the subway system, the number of people boarding at that stop would often fill the bus to standing room only and down the line the bus was so full that it was forced to skip the last few stops entirely, leaving frustrated commuters at the stops hoping the next bus in line had room for them. Some mornings my stop would be so crowded that I would walk a block up the line to the previous stop so that I would be certain of a seat.
Why take the bus when my car would get me downtown in half the time? I could relax on the bus, do the daily crossword or catnap. The monthly pass was convenient and I didn't have to deal with the rush hour traffic every morning and afternoon (saving my already frayed nerves). I could go for drinks with the lads after work and not worry about the consequences. Wear and tear on the car was reduced and insurance and maintenance costs too. I even grocery shopped, using my buggy which I also used when walking or biking. Still, the car was convenient, and necessary for out of town jobs and for transporting tools and materials. When a car wasn't available those jobs were turned down, not a problem when jobs were plentiful, but bad news during hard times.
There is no ideal solution, but my fingers are crossed that the Elio makes it to market. Promised price-$6,800 (unlikely). Promised mileage-84 mpg (even less likely). Promised available date 2015 (also unlikely, if ever) but if they do come, I'm there. I'll slap a trailer hitch on that puppy and I'll be grinning from ear to ear cause it is the answer to my dreams, cheap to buy, cheap to run, cheap to insure(it's a motorcycle trike but has an enclosed cabin, capacity of two), compact and efficient. And you naysayers can snort yourselves all the way to financial and moral bankruptcy. Jeremy Clarkson be damned if he should rule against. It's not a Robin. And I'll be richer for it.
I have maintained for many decades that all of the achievements of the last century could have been accomplished before the birth of Christ if it hadn't been for the isolation of various societies from each other, and the constant loss of previously acquired knowledge due to war with its practice of the victor utterly destroying of the vanquished and their city/society, then mother nature stepping in with her natural disasters such as plague, famine, earthquakes etc. I have been utterly amazed by the revelations of ancient documents from the beginnings of writing, only to have been lost and finally rediscovered during the Renaissance and later. Could the Romans have walked on the moon? If all knowledge could have been saved and built upon, my guess is yes.
The Register is not entirely innocent on this account. I am quite tired of their headlines proclaiming some disastrous plunge of some firms fortunes, then reading in the body of the article that Company X's high flying double digit year to year growth or sales are now down to only single digits. They seem to be particularly fond of doing this with Apple stories, not that I have any love for Apple or their fortunes.
"Rather, AT&T simply cannot evaluate additional investment beyond its existing commitments until the regulatory treatment of broadband service is clarified."
And in response to that, the FCC should tell them, okay fine, then the FCC simply cannot not evaluate AT&T's request to merge with Direct TV until they have met their existing commitments.
Back in the mid-sixties my best friend and I would each put up a quarter to split a 25 pack. It lasted us a week. My sister and her husband presently spend $400/mo. combined on smokes. I am led to believe virtually all of that is taxes since they are smoking the no-name stuff. I wish they would quit for their own sake, but I sincerely doubt that over their lifetimes they will be a net drain on my taxes. I wonder how much alcohol tax they pay a month.
P.S. Taxes on tobacco products are set to go up again in January. Probably booze too, I never asked.
Glad you asked. I guess some people just don't think it's worthwhile to be sporting a masters or phd when there are so few jobs matching such qualifications, and so you're still stuck working with illiterates making the same as you. Being better educated can actually work against you. I've been turned down for jobs for being OVER-QUALIFIED. The thinking there is that your potential employer expects you to leave them for the first better-paying job that comes your way. And they are probably right. Unfortunately that could be a very long wait. Over 20 years ago I fell into a conversation with a waiter serving me in a local restaurant. Noting his obvious intelligence and education I asked about his back story. It turns out he had a phd in physics and was just slinging slop for a few years till the Super-conducting Super-collider was completed just down the road. Then Congress cancelled the project and he was now just a lowly waiter, no longer a future Texas physicist. If you are young enough, further education might, repeat, might raise you a foot or so above your present state when you are really aiming a mile up, but the reality is maybe one in a thousand achieve that foot, while the rest don't budge an inch. So, go ahead, knock yourself out, try and spread your books out in that trailer with 40 other sweating drivers with 35 seats, no a/c, no heating, one toilet for all. Just don't expect anything more than a piece of paper for your extreme efforts, and that piece of paper won't be a bigger pay stub. Sorry, reality bites.
I once spent a year in Key West Florida, and when I noted that the high homeless rate was due to the mild climate, it was pointed out to me that most of the homeless couldn't leave even if they wanted to. They simply didn't have the financial means. So my advice to dead-enders stuck like these drivers, if you are young enough, is get out while you can. If your high school sweetheart has just announced she is pregnant and you are wondering how your pizza delivery job is going to pay the bills, it won't. Scan the internet for the nearest city with a decent employment rate and cost of living, save everything you can, quick as you can, then both of you get the hell out of there for greener pastures. It may be your only hope for a better life.
Maybe you should have read the linked article. The man earned $35.000./yr. before taxes and other deductions. His house note was $2,000/mo.(perfectly average) and his health insurance was $1,200/mo. Do the math. That's over $38,000/yr before he pays his federal taxes, state taxes, property taxes, car note, car insurance, house insurance, gas and maintenance for his car, groceries, clothing, house maintenance, cell phone, cable, school field trips for the kids. Did I forget anything? Oh yeah, maybe a pair of bus tickets for a trip to the local shelter for a free meal. You schmuck.
To all you clueless, pull yourself up by your bootstraps, Ayn Rand types sounding off here, unionization is the only reasonable answer. $17 to $25 an hour is a pittance in the Bay area. Do you
ever care about the details of these workers lives. They get up at 5 am to leave at 5:30. Get home at 9 pm. A meal and a shit, shower, shave brings them to 10 pm. If they skip the tv news and late-nite talking heads, and instead just collapse into bed, ignoring their family, home and friends completely they might just get 7 hours sleep if they drop off instantly.
What's that, you say, "Educate yourselves"? I don't know many night school courses that start at 9 pm and will eventually help under-educated drivers to earn any more than they earn now. My dad took course after course and never earned an extra cent by them. He was probably lucky to hang onto his job, if they helped at all.
"Why don't you go home in the middle of the day?" Sure, it's really worth driving an hour to be home for 4 hours, only to have to turn around and drive back an hour. Just don't fall asleep, and hey, that's only 10 EXTRA hours of driving a week and gas is cheap, NOT.
"Why don't you educate yourselves during that 6 hour gap" Yeah sure, any 40 or 50 year old can concentrate in a stinking trailer jammed with 40 other guys jabbering away and watching tv.
"So go out to your car." You mean the car that is roasting in the sun? To try and lay out some books in the front seat, in the stifling heat, and actually accomplish anything? To improve oneself so one can be told no one hires over 50 year-olds? And over 40, not so much either.
I repeat, the only reasonable solution is a union to stand up for you, get you a decent wage and working conditions, and maybe to help you to help your kids enough to not get ensnared by the no-future treadmill that you are on. To break the cycle of poverty, (sorry for that cliche, but there's a lot of truth in it.)
Probably not... for now. But if the U.S. attacks this matter from the opposite direction, i.e. from the tax side of it and succeeds in forcing the multi-nationals to cough up more to the U.S. taxman, then I can see that as the thin edge of the wedge that will eventually pry open many foreign servers.
Four billion dollars??? That sounds like a number they pulled out of their asses, so I'll give my estimate, based on absolutely nothing, nine thousand, six hundred forty-two dollars, sixteen point nine five three cents, total. Down vote away y'all.
And as for kids up chimneys, slavery, sweat shops, etc, when it comes to money and getting the best deal, the principal of 'ask no questions' still trumps all others.
As an aside, those who can take from you will take from you, no matter how hard you fought to gain. Just look at those Republican American states that cut teachers' wages by simply nullifying their contracts. With the stroke of a pen teachers were set back years. Do that often enough over the course of time and we all could be facing a modern equivalent of feudalism. And don't think that democracy will defend you. In times of crisis, democracies have never hesitated to suspend civil rights, (they really are only civil privileges, you know), and who decides we have a crisis? Usually the ones who created it for their own gains. Never forget that a democratically elected government prompted WWII's famous phrase which started with, "First they came for..."
Sorry to get off topic but I had to respond to a head in the sand comment above. Thanks for listening to my OPINIONS.
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