Today's example is something of a classic..
Enough said.
Monday, September 21, 2009
Fidelity Investments Can't Count Money
Fidelity Investments is a pretty frustrating stockbroker to use. They keep finding new and inventive ways to prevent you investing your money.
Today's example is something of a classic..
Enough said.
Today's example is something of a classic..
Enough said.
Saturday, September 5, 2009
Views of the Sky
After much wailing and gnashing of teeth, the sunroof in the oversized, behemoth of a truck is functional and fully slidey-back-and-forthy.
At the used car dealer, the sunroof looked bad. It was covered in duct tape. The shade inside wouldn't slide. The dishonest car dealer informed us that the previous owner found it was leaking and so taped it over.
The real reason it was leaking was because the glass wasn't in one piece any more. It was shattered into a million little pieces. These glass shards were not in evidence inside the car, but the were pretty much packed into every raceway, slider track, crevice and corner of the sunroof mechanism.
This wasn't clear until the duct tape and bailing wire cover was removed and I climbed on a ladder to get a view from above. Obviously I wasn't going to remove the cover until the replacement glass came in, since it was that that was keeping the rain out. So by that time the money had changed hands for the truck and we were back on the other side of town.
I'm not bitter. The price was right.
So Thursday, the $400 bit of glass arrived in the mail from a wrecking yard in Nebraska. Filthy and dusty, but in one piece. Of course, shortly thereafter, anyone who set eyes on it proclaimed that I should have gone to so-and-so's yard and talked to so-and-so. They could have got me a better deal. This is all very well, but until such a time as they get off their behind and put their automotive parts on Ebay, Craiglist or something I can find with google, they don't get the sale. This Nebraka wrecking yard not only put the thing up on the web to be found, but included which models and years it fits into. Thus proof that information is not only power, but it gets the sale as well, especially when it is posted on Ebay.
I expect all the physicists, computer scientists and information theorists out there to wince a little, since you know full well that information = a measure of disorder = entropy = heat energy not available to do work. It certainly isn't power in the work*time sense, but bear with me, I'm writing for a lay audience.
Back to the point. Yesterday was spent on a ladder with tweezers, pulling out every bit of glass I could find. I would clear them out, get in the car and move the sunroof back and forth. Each time it would move a little further and push another pile of glass bits into view before locking up. Repeat ad nauseum and after an eternity (time runs more slowly when on the top of a ladder with the neighbor peering on) it started to lumpily slide all the way back and forth. After some more fiddling, it slid almost smoothly, but no more glass to pull out was appearing.
A bucketful of goof off was employed to remove the duct tape glue from around the seal line and the new glass was screwed in. Another half hour of fiddling with the position and it would sit in its hole correctly.
This morning, right on time, the sky's opened and rain, the big, blatty, wet sort or rain came down. So back into the truck for a look-see and yay, it doesn't leak.
So I now have a fully functional sunroof through which I can see the rain and cloudy sky.
Celebrations were held at the McMenamins Oak Hills Brewpub. Wifey had the black bean, tortilla dip thing. I had the hamburger, to go with my new truck driving image. Nestled under the menus and specials was a small slip of blue paper advertising Penney's Gin. McMenamins are doing their own gin now. A G&T was ordered and it turned out to be quite good. Very fruity. Not quite Hendricks, but you can't expect miracles. Kudos to McMenamins for not fluffing it up, like most gin vendors do.
At the used car dealer, the sunroof looked bad. It was covered in duct tape. The shade inside wouldn't slide. The dishonest car dealer informed us that the previous owner found it was leaking and so taped it over.
The real reason it was leaking was because the glass wasn't in one piece any more. It was shattered into a million little pieces. These glass shards were not in evidence inside the car, but the were pretty much packed into every raceway, slider track, crevice and corner of the sunroof mechanism.
This wasn't clear until the duct tape and bailing wire cover was removed and I climbed on a ladder to get a view from above. Obviously I wasn't going to remove the cover until the replacement glass came in, since it was that that was keeping the rain out. So by that time the money had changed hands for the truck and we were back on the other side of town.
I'm not bitter. The price was right.
So Thursday, the $400 bit of glass arrived in the mail from a wrecking yard in Nebraska. Filthy and dusty, but in one piece. Of course, shortly thereafter, anyone who set eyes on it proclaimed that I should have gone to so-and-so's yard and talked to so-and-so. They could have got me a better deal. This is all very well, but until such a time as they get off their behind and put their automotive parts on Ebay, Craiglist or something I can find with google, they don't get the sale. This Nebraka wrecking yard not only put the thing up on the web to be found, but included which models and years it fits into. Thus proof that information is not only power, but it gets the sale as well, especially when it is posted on Ebay.
I expect all the physicists, computer scientists and information theorists out there to wince a little, since you know full well that information = a measure of disorder = entropy = heat energy not available to do work. It certainly isn't power in the work*time sense, but bear with me, I'm writing for a lay audience.
Back to the point. Yesterday was spent on a ladder with tweezers, pulling out every bit of glass I could find. I would clear them out, get in the car and move the sunroof back and forth. Each time it would move a little further and push another pile of glass bits into view before locking up. Repeat ad nauseum and after an eternity (time runs more slowly when on the top of a ladder with the neighbor peering on) it started to lumpily slide all the way back and forth. After some more fiddling, it slid almost smoothly, but no more glass to pull out was appearing.
A bucketful of goof off was employed to remove the duct tape glue from around the seal line and the new glass was screwed in. Another half hour of fiddling with the position and it would sit in its hole correctly.
This morning, right on time, the sky's opened and rain, the big, blatty, wet sort or rain came down. So back into the truck for a look-see and yay, it doesn't leak.
So I now have a fully functional sunroof through which I can see the rain and cloudy sky.
Celebrations were held at the McMenamins Oak Hills Brewpub. Wifey had the black bean, tortilla dip thing. I had the hamburger, to go with my new truck driving image. Nestled under the menus and specials was a small slip of blue paper advertising Penney's Gin. McMenamins are doing their own gin now. A G&T was ordered and it turned out to be quite good. Very fruity. Not quite Hendricks, but you can't expect miracles. Kudos to McMenamins for not fluffing it up, like most gin vendors do.
Wednesday, August 26, 2009
Whole Foods
Food alert: Whole foods has "pork bangers". Four were purchased. They looked a little too thick but I will report ASAP when cooked for breakfast.
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
From One Extreme to the Other
Not a food related post this time, except for one minor detail. Read on..
For the past five years, I've been driving a very nice 2001 Miata SE.
It has been trouble free and has all the nice bits and bobs, like leather seats and Nardi wood steering wheel. This doesn't haul much except me and one passenger. So we have a 1994 Ford Ranger pickup with no mod cons at all. But it has a long bed and hauls stuff to the dump and from Home Depot with no problem. However, like the Miata, it has no back seat.
This has proved to be a problem when trying to move one offspring's stuff from her student accommodation to a new post graduation apartment. We had to drive up two cars to get around.
So a truck with back seats was called for. The ranger has been spending most of its time with another offspring at a different college so isn't available when we need it. However you can't just go out and buy another vehicle without getting rid of one first. For one thing, it gets expensive. For another, it is the start of a slippery slope at the end of which is rusty Buicks up on bricks on the front lawn.
So the Miata went up on Craig's list and by Friday it was gone in exchange for $10,000.
I had been thinking of a nice, newish, second hand truck with back seats. Say a Toyota Tundra or an F150. I could get one of them for $10,000 and I would be no worse off.
This is where wifey got involved and somewhat carelessly suggested that we wouldn't want to have to replace the truck if we wanted to pull a fifth wheel or a horse trailer or something in the future. We have neither of these, but could hypothetically have one or the other in the future, given a long string of unlikely events all falling into place. So the requirements went from a normal pickup to a 1 ton, diesel behemoth. By the end of Saturday we were home in a 2004, Lariat, 6.0L diesel, F350 with crew cab, long bed and a 4" suspension lift.
So I had gone from driving one of the smallest cars on the road to the largest pickup on the road, skipping over all the normal sized vehicles in between.
These trucks are not cheap. The new price would be about $50,000. The Kelly Blue Book price for this model is $21,000. We paid $15000. So something was up with it and whatever it was, it better had not cost more than $6000 to fix, or we would be out of the money. The randomly selected target was for the fixes to cost less than $3000. This is what is commonly known as a gamble. We will see if it pays off.
After driving it around for a bit and poking around, the problems started to emerge. The batteries won't charge, the tow bar connector was missing, one window didn't work, it smelled of cigarette smoke, the tires were bald and the sunroof wasn't there, the glass was broken. The trip computer was a brick.
So the challenge is on. The charging problem turned out to be corrosion on the terminals and so neither new batteries nor alternator were required. Just a good terminal cleaning and some anti corrosion goop. Score 1 for the gamble.
However tires (or tyres) are going to be next. That should be $800 ish.
$150 was spent getting a replacement trip computer off ebay, which came, was fitted and now works fine.
$400 was spent getting new glass for the sunroof. Again off ebay. But it has yet to arrive.
But for now, the beast is driving. This gets on to the important bit. There is very little evidence to suggest that if I tried to drive the thing through a McDonalds or Starbucks drivethrough, I would be able to come out the other side without serious damage to either the vehicle or the vendor.
So from now on I park and walk.
For the past five years, I've been driving a very nice 2001 Miata SE.
It has been trouble free and has all the nice bits and bobs, like leather seats and Nardi wood steering wheel. This doesn't haul much except me and one passenger. So we have a 1994 Ford Ranger pickup with no mod cons at all. But it has a long bed and hauls stuff to the dump and from Home Depot with no problem. However, like the Miata, it has no back seat.
This has proved to be a problem when trying to move one offspring's stuff from her student accommodation to a new post graduation apartment. We had to drive up two cars to get around.
So a truck with back seats was called for. The ranger has been spending most of its time with another offspring at a different college so isn't available when we need it. However you can't just go out and buy another vehicle without getting rid of one first. For one thing, it gets expensive. For another, it is the start of a slippery slope at the end of which is rusty Buicks up on bricks on the front lawn.
So the Miata went up on Craig's list and by Friday it was gone in exchange for $10,000.
I had been thinking of a nice, newish, second hand truck with back seats. Say a Toyota Tundra or an F150. I could get one of them for $10,000 and I would be no worse off.
This is where wifey got involved and somewhat carelessly suggested that we wouldn't want to have to replace the truck if we wanted to pull a fifth wheel or a horse trailer or something in the future. We have neither of these, but could hypothetically have one or the other in the future, given a long string of unlikely events all falling into place. So the requirements went from a normal pickup to a 1 ton, diesel behemoth. By the end of Saturday we were home in a 2004, Lariat, 6.0L diesel, F350 with crew cab, long bed and a 4" suspension lift.
So I had gone from driving one of the smallest cars on the road to the largest pickup on the road, skipping over all the normal sized vehicles in between.
These trucks are not cheap. The new price would be about $50,000. The Kelly Blue Book price for this model is $21,000. We paid $15000. So something was up with it and whatever it was, it better had not cost more than $6000 to fix, or we would be out of the money. The randomly selected target was for the fixes to cost less than $3000. This is what is commonly known as a gamble. We will see if it pays off.
After driving it around for a bit and poking around, the problems started to emerge. The batteries won't charge, the tow bar connector was missing, one window didn't work, it smelled of cigarette smoke, the tires were bald and the sunroof wasn't there, the glass was broken. The trip computer was a brick.
So the challenge is on. The charging problem turned out to be corrosion on the terminals and so neither new batteries nor alternator were required. Just a good terminal cleaning and some anti corrosion goop. Score 1 for the gamble.
However tires (or tyres) are going to be next. That should be $800 ish.
$150 was spent getting a replacement trip computer off ebay, which came, was fitted and now works fine.
$400 was spent getting new glass for the sunroof. Again off ebay. But it has yet to arrive.
But for now, the beast is driving. This gets on to the important bit. There is very little evidence to suggest that if I tried to drive the thing through a McDonalds or Starbucks drivethrough, I would be able to come out the other side without serious damage to either the vehicle or the vendor.
So from now on I park and walk.
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
Lured Into Alcoholism By Hendricks
Preparing for July 4th, we raided the local liquor store and came out with a bottle of Bison Grass vodka (that wifey likes) and more importantly, a bottle of Hendricks gin.
Come July the 4th, we didn't get around to cracking out the gin or vodka and it languished in the fridge.
The problem with Hendricks gin is that it is the most quaffable, enjoyable, flavorful gin on the planet. So 2 nights ago, on finding the unopened bottle in the fridge, I poured myself a pint glass of gin and tonic (lots of ice, so it wasn't really a pint), quickly followed by another.
It was so good that I had another last night. Again tonight I cracked out the gin and had another couple.
I have been a moderate, infrequent drinker all my life. I've got some sort of internal alco-meter that starts pinging at the mildly drunk stage and makes the next drink quite unappealing. So alcoholism is not a problem.
Now I've found a drink so nice that I could drink myself silly with it. Its a good thing I have a brain and can choose to stop. I'm told that my grandfather was an alcy and my teatotal mother was afraid I might go the same way if I took up acohol, but instead I turned into a lifelong moderate, occasional drinker.
So the advice of this post is.. Go get some Hendricks gin. Its so good that it can turn a non lush into a lush. Enjoy.
Now back to the fridge..
Come July the 4th, we didn't get around to cracking out the gin or vodka and it languished in the fridge.
The problem with Hendricks gin is that it is the most quaffable, enjoyable, flavorful gin on the planet. So 2 nights ago, on finding the unopened bottle in the fridge, I poured myself a pint glass of gin and tonic (lots of ice, so it wasn't really a pint), quickly followed by another.
It was so good that I had another last night. Again tonight I cracked out the gin and had another couple.
I have been a moderate, infrequent drinker all my life. I've got some sort of internal alco-meter that starts pinging at the mildly drunk stage and makes the next drink quite unappealing. So alcoholism is not a problem.
Now I've found a drink so nice that I could drink myself silly with it. Its a good thing I have a brain and can choose to stop. I'm told that my grandfather was an alcy and my teatotal mother was afraid I might go the same way if I took up acohol, but instead I turned into a lifelong moderate, occasional drinker.
So the advice of this post is.. Go get some Hendricks gin. Its so good that it can turn a non lush into a lush. Enjoy.
Now back to the fridge..
Thursday, July 2, 2009
The end of travel as we know it.
For the past few years my job required me to travel several times a year and not little trips either, but all around the world for about a week per trip. The last few were..
- Levi, Finland
- Kona Hawaii
- Boston, USA
- Orlando, Florida, USA
- Madrid, Spain
- Athens, Greece
- Orlando again
- Denver, Colorado, USA
- Dublin, Ireland
- Kobe, Japan
- Dallas, Texas, USA
- Vancouver BC, Canada
- London UK, Brussels Belgium, Cologne Germany in one go.
This doesn't include the lesser trips to the bay area.
But this year I've moved onto a new job, starting Monday and it has been a travel cold-turkey.
I haven't been on a plane since April and that was just a non business weekend in Vegas. I am not, for the first time in many years, booked on any flight anywhere.
So this time last year, I would spend my time thinking of ways to avoid getting on planes. Now the reverse happens. Since there is no one telling me where to go, I'm free to choose anywhere and consider going there for vacation. Especially now that I'm not staring unemployment in the face any more.
So the shortlist of places to go is..
Maui, Hawaii. Probably in the winter. I've been to Oahu, the big island and Kawa'i but always on business. So a week in Maui without a job to do sounds like a good plan.
Japan. This time with the family in tow and no conference to attend, to see Kobe, Tokyo and a few other cities.
Botswana. It looked very nice on the #1 Ladies Detective Agency. No other reason.
New Zealand. I've never been South of the equator.
India. Don't know which bit. But the curry should be great.
Cuba. It's about time they started flights from the US and quit with the restrictions.
Wifey probably has opinions. We shall see..
- Levi, Finland
- Kona Hawaii
- Boston, USA
- Orlando, Florida, USA
- Madrid, Spain
- Athens, Greece
- Orlando again
- Denver, Colorado, USA
- Dublin, Ireland
- Kobe, Japan
- Dallas, Texas, USA
- Vancouver BC, Canada
- London UK, Brussels Belgium, Cologne Germany in one go.
This doesn't include the lesser trips to the bay area.
But this year I've moved onto a new job, starting Monday and it has been a travel cold-turkey.
I haven't been on a plane since April and that was just a non business weekend in Vegas. I am not, for the first time in many years, booked on any flight anywhere.
So this time last year, I would spend my time thinking of ways to avoid getting on planes. Now the reverse happens. Since there is no one telling me where to go, I'm free to choose anywhere and consider going there for vacation. Especially now that I'm not staring unemployment in the face any more.
So the shortlist of places to go is..
Maui, Hawaii. Probably in the winter. I've been to Oahu, the big island and Kawa'i but always on business. So a week in Maui without a job to do sounds like a good plan.
Japan. This time with the family in tow and no conference to attend, to see Kobe, Tokyo and a few other cities.
Botswana. It looked very nice on the #1 Ladies Detective Agency. No other reason.
New Zealand. I've never been South of the equator.
India. Don't know which bit. But the curry should be great.
Cuba. It's about time they started flights from the US and quit with the restrictions.
Wifey probably has opinions. We shall see..
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