general

Somebody in our family turned 50 recently. 50,000, that is. On June 10th, 144 miles through a tank of gas the reliable, trustworthy, efficient, useful 2005 Subaru Outback began the second half of its journey to 100,000 miles.

This car has been through quite a bit with this family. It brought all three of our kids home from their places of birth (hospital for Elizabeth, birth clinic for the other two). It's taken Crystal and me on two anniversary get-aways. Carried lumber for the house remodel. Made five trips to Anchorage (one of those being a one-day round-trip for shopping and to pick up an oven). Helped us move into (and out of) two places. Carried pallets for a contract job (five in the back, four on top). Dozens upon dozens of shopping trips. Been an impromptu baby-changing station.

It's been a great car. We look forward to another great 50,000 miles.

The first is by Ben Stein, Kevin Miller, and Walt Ruloff about the persecution that scientists and other experts have been enduring for simply suggesting that there might be an alternative to Darwinian evolution. Quite the irony in a nation that claims to value "free speech," "free thought," and "constructive discussion and debate." More at Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed (Found via Alaskans in the Minne-City)




The other one is about how mechanized and unnatural the birth process has become in modern medical America. From the web site: "The film interlaces intimate birth stories with surprising historical, political and scientific insights and shocking statistics about the current maternity care system." More at The Business of Being Born. If you're in the Fairbanks, Alaska area, they will be showing this at the Women's show April 4 through 6.

As part of our house gutting, we called Fairbanks' only refuse company, University Refuse (who recently bought out the local Waste Management franchise) and ordered an 8-yard dumpster. I went by the house on Friday to check it out, and discovered they had not delivered it. By then, of course, it was too late to call, and we were stuck without a dumpster.

I began calling around, mainly to see if anyone knew how to contact someone at University Refuse. Long story short, a friend of mine hooked me up with someone at our church who rents dumpsters. Big dumpsters. Forty yard dumpsters. We got one dropped off Saturday afternoon. On Sunday, we took what we had pulled out of the house so far, as well as some yard waste, and threw it in. And filled over half of it. I'm now thankful we didn't get the eight yard dumpster.

But it doesn't quite end there. I called University Refuse on Friday (and tried again on Saturday) and let them know they didn't deliver. I then called on Sunday and told them to cancel the order, and please do not deliver one now. Come Monday, then Tuesday, they never called back, never offered an apology, never said, "Please try again in the future, and we'll do better." I guess when you're the only game in town you get sloppy. Hmm...maybe I'll start a garbage business and do customer service right. Not right now...maybe in a few years.

When you let your computer keep track of statistics and other minutia, you can end up with some really interesting factoids.

Like this, for instance: Tonight I opened up the properties sheet on the spreadsheet file that I use for bookkeeping. By doing so, I learned I had spent a total of 165 hours editing that file since creating it on February 14, 1999. That's 6.875 days, or if I was only doing "work weeks," that's almost a month of non-stop work. But, when all is said and done, it's only about 1.7 hours per month. Not too bad, considering. Oh, and the file had been saved 855 times.

So, what interesting facts about your life has your computer (either intentionally, or otherwise) recorded about you?

My fellow blogger and former CDE colleague put up a few random thoughts mostly inspired by, it seems, by his trip to O’Reilly Emerging Technology Conference. I'll respond to a couple.

The trend seems to be: managers and accountants and investors have PCs, the hackers have Macs, the Ubergeeks have Linux.

Well, I guess that makes me an Ubergeek. Or not. But I do enjoy using Linux. However, with trends the way they are, Mac's may soon be losing their "elite" status and become much more common. Microsoft Vista is doing a great job of generating Mac converts.

A nice analogy to flawed project management practices regarding innovation: it’s like assuming that since it takes a woman 9 months to have a baby, all you need is 9 women to have a baby in a month.

A good point to remember from the (almost mythical itself) book "The Mythical Man Month." Just because you have more people doesn't mean you'll be able to program any faster, or generate ideas that are of any higher quality, or even generate more ideas. It takes quality people, quality time to come up with winners.

A couple more that don't need any comment:

Another nice project management thought: schedules are a shared hallucination.

Shouldn’t a medication that helps men stop having to go the bathroom dozens of times a day be called Flo-Min rather than Flo-Max?

"Some people!" It's usually an expression of frustration or exasperation with a certain segment of society. "Some people" don't fit what we think of as kind, mature, thoughtful, or some other criteria. The Seattle PI has a nearly unbelieveable article about some people.

It seems some people

would buy big-screen TVs and then return them months later, when newer, and less expensive models went on sale. [CFO Richard Galanti] said the practice had become so prevalent one member recently wrote the company saying she was disappointed because she had heard Costco was going to stop its "free TV upgrade policy." Galanti said Costco never had such a policy.

So, let me get this straight: "some people" would buy a TV (probably a flat screen), use it for several months, and then bring it back expecting, and apparently getting, a full refund. Boy, some people.

In response to this, and the losses it has caused (in the "tens of millions"), Costco is limiting returns on electronics to 90 days. I think I would say less than that if I were in their place. In "exchange" for this new policy, Costco will cover all electronics with a two year warranty. This is inclusive of any existing warranties on a product, not in addition to.

So, the end story is you'll be able to return your product if something truly goes wrong, but "some people" won't be able to abuse the system any more, which was just raising costs for the rest of us.

Today's lesson: don't be a "some person."

Izzy has a post venting his frustrations with companies that don't know how to ship to Alaska. I can relate. Since moving to Alaska in 1999, I've had my share of frustrations with companies that a) have to have it explained to them that sending USPS to Alaska doesn't cost any more (because they try to charge you more for USPS shipments to Alaska); 2) say they ship to the "continental" United States, but they exclude Alaska, that "Yes, Alaska is on the Continent," or 3) charge simply exorbitant rates for shipping a small item (oh, say a computer part) up here.

Example: Amazon
Amazon sells packs of Seventh Generation diapers* for two to three dollars less than our local Fred Meyer. Problem? Amazon classifies diapers as "grocery items," so they do not ship them to Alaska. When I inquired about this, they said that due to some items being larger, the shipping cost is too high. Hmm...really? How about putting it in a USPS box, and slapping a label on it? I don't care if it has to come fourth class, I believe (but could be wrong) there are classes of postal mail that are the same cost whether you ship them across town or across the nation.

*Yes, we usually use cloth diapers (see Blueberry Baby. But Elizabeth wears disposables to bed so she doesn't soak through when she sleeps all the way through the night, and Jonathan still wears them because cloth diapers would be extremely messy at this stage (he's exclusively breast fed, so there is, shall we say, nothing solid coming out).

Example: 1800diapers.com
Similar story: shipping to Alaska costs too much. Well, maybe, but I bet that even with shipping we could match the price we'd get up here. Which would be fine when Fred Meyer is out of what we need (which they have a scary propensity to be).

Example: Most online computer parts stores
Pick just about any online tech store (some notable exceptions, see below) and you'll pay as much or more in shipping than the item cost (for small items, of course). When you want to buy a $30 mouse, and shipping is $40, it kind defeats the point.

Example: Companies that don't know about ground service
Often, when greeted with high shipping prices, I suggest to the store's feedback center that they look into shipping via UPS Ground or FedEx Ground. I get a range of response. "We can't do that." Huh? "Our system isn't set up to handle that." Hmm...need a better system. "FedEx doesn't offer ground service." Wow, either they really don't know what they're talking about, or their FedEx account representative needs to be, shall we say, reeducated. And as much as I hate to use them, there always is the option of the United States Postal Service. They're usually pretty cheap (often with service to match), and they usually get the job done.

Example: Most small companies
It seems that smaller companies are the ones that are the worst offenders, and I suppose it's not really their fault. Either their low shipping volume, or their lack of account with a shipper (shipping items one at a time) causes them to charge the "market rate" for shipping, instead of the rate offerred to customers that have an account, or those who ship more. So, either they need to get an account, which would lower their rates at least a little bit, or they should investigate the USPS as a last resort. The note about Ground service also applies here.

Exception: Newegg.com
Newegg.com has very reasonable shipping. On most small orders, you can get FedEx two day service to Alaska for $25 to $30. Nice when you're ordering a $60 hard drive and you have to have it soon. And when you are ordering lots of small items, it starts at about $25, and doesn't go up too much with each small item. Larger items (computer cases, etc) cause shipping to climb a little faster. There are also a couple other companies out there that offer free or low cost shipping to Alaska, but I don't recall their names right now. I'll find them and put them in another post.

Exception: Christian Book Distributors
They use USPS almost exclusively, and their shipping rates are often so low that, even with shipping, they're cheaper than buying locally.

So, yeah, shipping to Alaska is a pain. Royal, big, Alaska size pain at time. I look forward to seeing how Izzy's story turns out.

Nah, you know you're really getting used to the cold when it's -25° (or colder) and you run outside in your T-shirt to plug in (or start) the car.

If you weren't convinced the first time around, yet another reason why old people shouldn't drive.. Well, at least occasional testing would be good.

Two days ago (2/13, Tuesday) Carl's Jr. opened here in Fairbanks, with yesterday being their first really busy day. Today on my way to work (half way across town from Carl's Jr.) I saw a bag from there along side the road. Sigh. I'm glad we have a state-wide cleanup day every spring.

(Found on the net, attribution unknown...apologies to all those who have sensabilities, or thought I did )

RED-NECK VALENTINE'S LOVE POEM

Collards is green
my dog's name is Blue
and I'm so lucky to have
a sweet thang like you.

Yore hair is like cornsilk
a-flapping in the breeze
Softer than Blue's
and without all them fleas.

I suppose I should have known better than to get a credit card from Chase Bank, but it was several months of no interest, so I thought I'd give it a try, as we are trying to do some debt reduction.

A couple weeks ago I got a call from someone whose English I could barely understand, inviting me to enroll in Chase's payment protection plan. You know, where you pay the bank a monthly fee to protect them in case you can't make your payments? I told them no. And listened to them explain all the benefits again. And told them no again. Well, they called back about a week later. Again, it was a person whose English I could barely understand. After about sixty seconds, I said no, and hung up. I thought that was the end of it.

It wasn't. Today, I got I got a letter in the mail thanking me for enrolling in Chase's payment protection plan. Huh!? I immediately called the number, and let them know that I was very aggravated, and that I never signed up or authorized this. The lady on the phone was helpful, but she was sticking to her script. She told me that chase would "never charge me without my authorization." Hmmm...I beg to differ...they just tried. If Chase cares to dispute my record, I would like them to come up with the two phone conversations I had with their telemarketers. After the nice lady agreed to cancel it, she tried to explain once again all the "benefits" of remaining enrolled, and finished it off with something to the effect of "so why don't we leave you enrolled today?" Sneeeeeeeeky! And deceptive. In the end, it was canceled, and as soon as that card is paid off, it will be canceled too.

I know Chase has a shoddy reputation...and today I learned first-hand why.

Hello, and thanks for visiting. This is the first post of the year to the Kugler blog,and actually the first post ever. We hope to get much use out of this tool. See you soon!