Sunday, how about a little preaching?

Okay, here's something really annoying, at least to me. Credit is a big industry. How's that for pointing out the obvious? As a matter of fact, credit is often times the major product being sold by a store. Dave Ramsey says that Sears makes more profit on credit cards than on merchandise. They are really just a big loan company with some stuff for sale too. Since Sears sold off its Discover Card business, this may no longer be true, but you get the idea. I was reading this morning about how the three major credit reporting agencies have started their own credit score to compete with the FICO score that we've all become accustomed to. When you buy a report showing your credit score, it seems that you get their score, not the FICO. Plus what you get is inflated because they use a maximum score of 990, while FICO uses 850 as their maximum. I get irritated by these articles for a couple of reasons. One, I resent the idea that credit is a consumer product at all. The article pointed out that having a low credit score means that you have to pay higher rates on your credit cards. Well, no you don't, if you don't carry a balance. I haven't paid interest to a credit card company for years and years and the next time I do will be never. The second thing that irritated me was the contention that a lower credit score means that you might have to pay higher interest for a mortgage. My take is that if someone tried to sell me that bill of goods I would walk away. But what about borrowers with less than good credit, shouldn't they pay higher rates? I guess in theory they should, but the reality as I see it, is that they shouldn't be getting a mortgage if their credit is bad, and the mortgage idiots shouldn't be taking advantage of them by sticking them with high rate loans. This may be old fashioned, but what happened to the idea that if you were bad at paying your bills on time, people wouldn't loan you money? What happened is they got the ability to charge very high interest rates, so a little extra risk is no big deal. How sad is it to drag your butt to work each day, so that the creepy credit sharks can take your hard-earned money? When you're old and grey and feeble, you're also broke. Really sad. Merle. Things in this blog represented to be fact, may or may not actually be true. The writer is frequently wrong, sometimes just full of it, but always judgemental and cranky Tag: Daily Life Personal Finance Humor

Saturday

I never got around to my post yesterday because I was attending to the every beck and call of Mr. Sneedlet 1.

His mother, as you may recall from previous episodes, is recovering from surgery and is unable to attend to him at the moment. The giant plastic collar that they put around her neck and secured with a padlock, to keep her from scratching her ears, is so big that she can't see the floor, making navigation perilous. Picture a doberman that has had its ears cropped, only the collar is much bigger because of Daughter Sneed's inordinately long, monkey-like arms (hardy-har). So Sneedlet is with us until at least Sunday.

Disclaimer: The preceding paragraph is mostly a work of the imagination of the author. I sincerely apologize for any offense taken, real or imagined, by any persons living or fictious.

Yesterday we took a nature hike to the cafe a few blocks from here. It didn't start out to be a nature hike, it just turned out that way. As you can see from the picture, Sneedlet was able to find some dried sticks. They proved useful for drumming on things, shooting at stuff and prodding an older guy when he was trying to "rest his eyes".

Sneedlet lives kind of a sheltered life because his mom works from home and there are no other kids his age around. Yesterday as we walked to the cafe he discovered that his shoes leave footprints in the dirt where he steps. This has been a major point of discussion ever since. This morning he wanted to go out and make some footprints. Go figure.

We normally make a lap around the cul-de-sac when we go outside. Sneedlet has a regular array of attractions that we have to visit. We have to stop at the house next door because they have some big rocks a guy has to climb on. The house three houses down has steps, so he has to climb on their porch and then jump down the steps. We stop to look in the retention basin so that he can run up and down the hill and then conclude our trip by looking through the lights.

The lights are actually reflectors on a stick that the old lady at the end of the cul-de-sac has by her driveway to help her find it in the dark. Apparently, there are magical worlds that can be seen through the reflectors, but only by three year-olds.

I also had to take Daughter Sneed's car to get an oil change where I had the experience of the guy telling me that the oil change is $32.65 or $20 if I paid cash. There is probably something fishy going on, don't you think?

Sneedlet was very interested in the whole oil change idea and when we got home he got a coke can and declared it his oil can. Periodically, he rides up to me on his tricycle and asks me to change his oil. That tricycle sure needs a lot of maintenance.

Anyway, I was too busy yesterday to find annoying things to complain about. I will try and do better tomorrow.

Merle.








Things in this blog represented to be fact, may or may not actually be true. The writer is frequently wrong, sometimes just full of it, but always judgemental and cranky


Tag: Daily Life
Personal Finance
Humor

Tube or Argyle?

I have a couple of housekeeping things to take care of here.

Someone, and he knows who he is, abruptly stopped posting and may be in witness protection. He claims to be in jail, but I'm not buying it. Come back now!

Thanks to Frugalrosie for pointing me to the link about the guy who sued Dell over a bad repair job. He served the papers on them at their kiosk in a mall and then won a default judgement in small claims court when they didn't respond. How great is that?

Dell, like most companies, doesn't let their employees actually solve customer service problems, because they can save money by making the customers jump through hoops to get what they pay for. Many give up and just go away. The management of major corporations are mostly weasels in case you wondered.

Take Circuit City...please. They always have mail-in rebates rather than just discounting prices. The reason is that they can give the illusion of lower prices while secure in the knowledge that most people don't ever send in the the rebates forms. It bumps up sales and puts the burden on the customer.

At my company this month, we are very concerned with SOX, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002. It is also known as the Public Company Accounting Reform and Investor Protection Act of 2002. If you are unfamiliar with the SOX and want to read more, be my guest. Don't say I didn't warn you though.

Allow me to give you my version of the story. The guys running Enron, Worldcom, Arthur Anderson and a bunch of other major US companies were thieving crooks. They stole from their investors and laid waste to the retirement plans of their workers, leaving them broke and working at McDonald's.

These sacks of human debris are now mostly in jail, cooperating with the authorities to avoid or minimize their incarceration, or in the case of Ken Lay, quite dead. To that I say, good riddance, one and all.

Anyway, Sarbanes and Oxley, a couple of US legislators, cooked up legislation to insure that these sort of hijinks don't happen again. The bill basically says that you have to record financial transactions accurately and stealing from the corporation is frowned upon. I thought we all understood that, but apparently not. I have no confidence that this will deter the thieving bastards one whit, but it does put a major burden on the honest corporate citizens and their powerless lackeys, like me.

At my company we are receiving serious, in-depth training on complying with the SOX law. We were told that the training was mandatory and failure to pass the test would result in our dismissal. We got to spend several hours memorizing crap that has nothing whatever to do with our jobs. Plus, since guys like me can't spend one cent of the companies money anyway, the chances of me scoring big at the company treasury are slim, even if I was so inclined.

My favorite part of the training was when the 100th person pointed out that a lot of what they were teaching us was about stuff we don't have anything to to with. The trainer earnestly explained that upper-management thought it quite important that we know all the material. Hey, did you understand the question? You guys got us into this mess to begin with.

So, I took the training, took the test and got my certificate. Now I can forget the whole business until next year and get back to my job, because you see, I am not a crook and I got the paper to prove it.

Isn't this the way it always works? The bigshots get caught cooking the books and we all have to get religion. Can I get an amen?

Merle.




Things in this blog represented to be fact, may or may not actually be true. The writer is frequently wrong, sometimes just full of it, but always judgemental and cranky


Tag: Daily Life
Personal Finance
Humor

Wednesday

A big Mary Poppins fan

This is a bunch of random stuff, unlike my usual posts, which, come to think of it, are a bunch of random stuff. Never mind.

The picture here is Sneedlet sitting in his Thomas the Tank Engine bed, watching a video and evidently expecting rain.

Daughter Sneed had a surgical procedure today, so Sneedlet spent the night with us. He is a delight, but man does he have a lot of energy.

Isn't modern medicine amazing? Who knew that butt-reduction surgery could be done on an out-patient basis? I can just hear Daughter Sneed saying "Hardy-har", right now. Of course, I'm kidding, it was ear-reduction surgery. The big downside to the surgery is that now she has to pay for Directv. The surgery went well, so we are thankful for that.

My day began with a chance meeting with a guy in the parking lot at work. He works for another company in my building as a software developer or something. He used to work as a contractor for my company, so I know him some. He was telling me that he is flying to California tomorrow to interview for a new job, an executive job, that pays over $600,000 thousand per year. How do you respond to that? He makes maybe $50,000 now, working for the same company.

That story is just slightly more likely than his being able to flap his arms and fly to California under his own power. I'm not sure why people say things that are ludicrous on their face. Maybe they actually believe them, who knows?

I gave him the old ya-ya, assured him that I was available to be a cabin boy on the good ship Lollipop, should it come in and hustled off before I said something stupid.

We had a bake sale at work today to help the coworker I posted about yesterday. In addition, we circulated two envelopes for donations. The idea was two envelopes would travel faster than one. Someone stole one of them. Nice. Man, I wish I believed in Karma.

Also, the boss threw a little holiday luncheon today for all the troops. You know how I feel about these free lunches, so I went to Subway. Free lunches rank right up there with UFOs and Bigfoot. Ain't no such thing.

There wasn't enough food for all of us anyway and the boneheads in the office were lined up like he was handing out rations to the starving. The way these things work at our place is that the first people in line get the good stuff and it gets progressively more meager as the line progresses. By the end, some poor schmuck is scraping the bottom of the pan in hopes of finding edible chunks. Plus, the boss was regaling everyone with his wit and wisdom and who needs that?

Anyway, I off to bowling and if anything develops you will be among the first to know.

Merle.




Things in this blog represented to be fact, may or may not actually be true. The writer is frequently wrong, sometimes just full of it, but always judgemental and cranky


Tag: Daily Life
Personal Finance
Humor

Merry Christmas to Most

Sometimes you see a crazy person do something that is funny and you have to laugh. Some people, dare I say most people, think it is wrong to laugh at what a crazy person does because they can't help themselves. But I'm not some people. Funny is funny. I appreciate that being crazy is no laughing matter, but I think it is possible to find humor without belittling a person, so I am going to go ahead and tell you a story.

This morning I had to go to the dermatologist's office to have my leprosy checked out. I don't really have leprosy, but my real condition is hard to remember, so I go with Hansen's disease (leprosy).

On the way back to work, I realized that I hadn't eaten yet today and since I am always vigilant for signs of hypoglycemia or other food deficiency-related matters, I stopped at a supermarket, to get a snack. Okay, that was a load, but I was hungry.

My snack became a meal, but that's another story. As I waited to pay I noticed that the manager of the store was a giant of a man, maybe 6 foot 10 or taller. Or as medical professionals say, really tall. Since there aren't that many giants around, I figured that I better go over and read his name tag to see if he was formerly famous or anything.

I approached him and from a discreet distance tried to make out the name on his tag. I squinted my best and as I did, a fellow dressed like Elmer Fudd hunting ducks, barrelled up and started asking if the giant was the manager. When he affirmed that he was, the guy launched into a rant, the crux of which was that there was a man talking to him outside the store who wouldn't stop. Plus, he added, the guy was wishing him a Merry Christmas. The monster! He went on to say that he had asked an employee of the store earlier to make the guy stop, but the fellow persisted. The guy in question was the Salvation Army bell-ringer. The incident ended when the manager went out and told the bell-ringer not to talk to the guy. The poor bell-ringer seemed confused, but promised to go forth and greet no more, at least with respect to this guy.

In other news the son of a coworker had a brain aneurysm a couple of weeks ago. He is just 25 years-old. He has been in a brain injury hospital in another city for the last couple of weeks and will have a long period of recovery. My coworker has had to be with him because it has been touch and go.

This morning I had to go see the boss and when I walked into his office, he was talking to her on the phone. He was in the middle of explaining to her that she had used all her vacation and was not being paid for the time off. This adds insult to injury, if you ask me. If the poor woman was at her desk she would be paid, so what is the difference? Some of us will have to cover her work anyway. Twenty years working for the company and she get zero consideration when she needs it. Ain't corporate America grand?

Since I overheard the conversation, my boss felt the need to tell me that as much as he would like to pay her, he just can't, we have rules afterall. That is crappola. All he has to do is to fill out her timesheet and no one will be any the wiser at headquarters.

There are leaders and then there are bosses. It is the rare person that is both.

Merle.






Things in this blog represented to be fact, may or may not actually be true. The writer is frequently wrong, sometimes just full of it, but always judgemental and cranky


Tag: Daily Life
Personal Finance
Humor

Who Knew?

One of the things that I am amazed by is how immigrants can come to the United States and figure out how to make a living, by doing things that would never occur to me, in ways that I wouldn't try.

When we had our kitchen remodeled the plumber was a Bulgarian guy who taught school back in Bulgaria and had a degree in Bulgarian history. He said that he couldn't qualify to teach in American and no one was hiring Bulgarian historians, so he learned plumbing. The decision to come to the United States turned out to be a good one for him, as he saw it.

For our trip these past few days, we made reservations on the Super Shuttle to get from the airport in Los Angeles to the hotel in Anaheim and back to the airport. The fare was $24 per person round-trip. Normal fare is $30 but we had a coupon.

The fellow who picked us up last evening at the hotel was an immigrant from somewhere in the middle east. The ten-passenger van that he picked us up in, had nine passengers booked, including our party, so being the largest I quickly called shotgun, and I got the seat next to the driver.

As an aside the World's Foremost Expert on (fill in the blank), sitting in the middle of the first row of seats behind me and the driver, bitched about the tightness of the quarters. With the passenger to her left pressed tight against the window and the passenger to her right hanging on to the edge of the bench with one butt-cheek suspended in air, she loudly announced, "This is ridiculuous. I know I'm big, but I'm not that big." I beg to differ, sis.

As we drove along I was trying to figure out how the whole Super Shuttle process works. I asked the driver where he parks the van at night. To my surprise he answered, "At my house, this is my van, I bought it."

I had assumed that our driver was an employee and that the van belonged to the company, but it turns out that the each Super Shuttle van is an individual franchise. This guy bought the van, ordered in the distinctive Super Shuttle blue, paid to have all the logo stuff put on and presto he was in business for himself.

In exchange for franchising with Super Shuttle, he pays them $625 per week plus 25% of his fares, about $34 per trip to or from the airport. Assuming he has a full van, he gets about $100 per trip for himself, out of which he pays the van payment and all expenses, except insurance. They provide him with liability insurance, passengers, access to the airport and administrative support.

Whenever he wants to work, he logs into the Super Shuttle system to see what is available and is assigned a pickup. At the airport he has to wait in line with the other drivers to get a load. A wait that can be as little as 15 minutes or two to three hours, depending on the season. Sometimes Super Shuttle will call him if they need a driver to make a pickup right away.

He told me that he would never want to be an employee, so this was great for him. The downside is that he works long hours to make a living, but it is worth it because he can make his own schedule and doesn't have a boss telling him what to do. He enjoys the flexibility.

I'm pretty sure that if you plunked me down in a foreign country tomorrow, with little money and no job, I would quickly become just another homeless guy. These immigrant guys seem to land on their feet. They have dream, and I guess that trumps fear by a lot.

Merle.
Things in this blog represented to be fact, may or may not actually be true. The writer is frequently wrong, sometimes just full of it, but always judgemental and cranky


Tag: Daily Life
Personal Finance
Humor

Saturday

What sort of parallel universe is it where a 30ish guy wears an Old Guys Rule shirt?
I tried to turn on my laptop this morning and nothing happened. This is the second time that I've had this experience. Just like the first time, it finally started up like normal. Very strange.

I spent my fourth and final day at Dinsneyland. Thank goodness that's over. Sneedlet and I had a great time today by ourselves. Our son and his family left for home this morning and called this evening to say that they had arrived safely. We are grateful for that.

Yesterday, as I pushed Sneedlet into the park a woman sidled up next to me ands said, "I guess you're never too old for Disneyland." I was flabergasted. I'm only 56 for cripes sake. I've seen plenty of much older people than me, why did she pick me out? If that was some sort of come on, she definitely needs work on her technique.

Disneyland may be the last great demilitarized zone. In Disneyland you see plenty of scary guys. Guys with prison tattoos, guys who look like they kill for a living and really freaky-scary guys, you know, the one's who have mom's head in the freezer? Only at Disneyland will you see a guy that you know has done hard time, wearing a Goofy hat or or A Donald Duck hat with the bill as, well a bill. Even the hardened criminal element and the Hell's Angel's love the Magic Kingdom. Go figure.

When we were leaving the park tonight, it was raining hard and was cold. Whoever wrote, It never rains in southern California, was either lying or had never spent time here.

As we waited in the rain for the hotel shuttle, with the sleeping Sneedlet bundled up in his stroller, a gaggle of inconsiderate jackasses raced up to where we were standing and pushed their way on the bus. Only the driver's assurance that another bus was right behind him averted an international incident and my incarceration for attempted homicide. My advice to people would be, if you come from a country where people don't line up for their turn, then I would appreciate it if you would stay there. I'm not saying I mean the Germans, but if die Schuhwaren fit, wear them.

Merle



Things in this blog represented to be fact, may or may not actually be true. The writer is frequently wrong, sometimes just full of it, but always judgemental and cranky


Tag: Daily Life
Personal Finance
Humor

The Forced March to Hell..er..Disneyland Day Two

If you can find two cuter guys, buy em!


Another day at Disneyland. Got there at 9 am and stayed until 6 pm or so. I met Older son Sneed and his family for the day. The Sneedlets and I spent some time on the little kid's rides so that mom and dad could do the more adventurous stuff.

Sneedlet One and I went on the Pirates of the Caribbean ride and he was scared. We won't be doing that again. This was before the other arrived. Sneedlet Two flatly refuses to consider the possibility.

Disneyland gives a guy the chance to observe a people in large groups. Let me tell you that there a a lot of weirdos wandering around. There was a family on the shuttle from the hotel this morning, husband, wife, boy and girl. They looked perfectly average, but for some reason the mom kept staying loudly, Zoe kicked Darth Vader's butt. Zoe was the 4 or 5 year old daughter. What's the point? Why not just wear a sign saying you are a hick?

Lot's of family have reunions at Disneyland and some have tee-shirts made to celebrate the occasion. You know something like The Smith's Disneyland Family Reunion 2006 ? You see about 20 or 30 people wearing the shirts. My favorite in this category was a scary looking guy with prison tattoos covering the visible parts of is body. He had ripped the sleeves out of his tee-shirt which made him look even scarier. Hey, kids Uncle Lester made bail and came to the reunion.

Some folks take the lines and proper line etiquette very seriously. A lady at the Winnie the Pooh ride today took offense that I was taking a picture of the Sneedlets when I was supposed to be getting into the car for the ride. She yoohooed me and finally told me flat out that I was supposed to get in.

I also nearly knocked out a Disneyland worker. Sneedlet One dropped something a when I turned to get it I somehow connected dead on her nose with my elbow. I don't know what the penalty is for maiming an employee of the Happiest Place On Earth, but I'm sure it isn't pretty.

We went to Outback Steakhouse this evening for dinner and it was a treat to eat something besides Disney food. I even had broccoli and it was so good.

I apologize for the suckiness of these posts but I don't have much to work with here.

Merle.






Things in this blog represented to be fact, may or may not actually be true. The writer is frequently wrong, sometimes just full of it, but always judgemental and cranky


Tag: Daily Life
Personal Finance
Humor

Disneyland, Day 1

I here at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Garden Grove, California, where Daughter Sneed and the lovely Mrs. Sneed are attending a conference put on by the Milton H. Erickson Foundation The purpose of the foundation is to train mental health professionals and this conference is an annual event. Fortunately for Sneedlet and me, Disneyland is a mile up the road, so we have plenty to do. Coincidently, our son, Dr. Older Son Sneed, PharmD, had to give a talk at the meeting of the American Society of Hospital Pharmacists, at the Anaheim Convention Center, this week so he, Daughter-in-law Sneed and Sneedlet II are also here. Today we met up with them at Disneyland at 4pm and spent 4 hours in the park. It was great fun and the little boys loved it. Tommorrow, while the lovely Mrs. Sneed and Daughter Sneed are busy, Sneedlet and I are meeting the others to spend the day with them. Perhaps I can relieve them a bit from having to spend every moment with their Sneedlet. We will see. I signed up for a weeklong internet deal with the Hyatt, so I will be boring you all with the details as they develop. After our one hour flight today and the corresponding one hour time change, I'm pretty sure that I have a touch of the jet-lag. I need to go to sleep. Merle. Things in this blog represented to be fact, may or may not actually be true. The writer is frequently wrong, sometimes just full of it, but always judgemental and cranky. Tag: Daily Life Personal Finance Humor

I'm Thinking of a Number...

I was buying my lunch at Subway today and the guy in front of me asked the cashier about a copper bracelet that he was wearing. The cashier said that he used to be skeptical about the alleged benefits of copper bracelets for pain management, but since he started wearing one, he had become a believer. I would bet you that almost everyone knows someone who believes that copper is beneficial for pain relief. In fact, you may believe it yourself. The problem is that there is no actual scientific research to support these claims and I for one, think its all crap. The problem with assessing claims of pain relief from copper bracelets or anything else outside the bounds of real medicine, for that matter, is that they are so subjective. It is difficult to measure pain objectively anyway; minor pain to you, might be excruciating pain to me. It follows that the level of improvement is also subjective and hard to guage. We can't slap a bracelet on someone and find out via scientific measurement that the pain that was a ten, is now a five. That is not how it works. Adherents report gradual improvement and reports of the benefits of these type of devices are exclusively anecdotal. It is more about what we believe works than what actually works. Here's a major clue, regular doctors rarely recommend copper bracelets, or as Bill Engvall would say, "Here's your sign." Without question, the dumbest purchase that I ever made involved another bit of psuedo-scientific quackery, magnets. Magnets are reputed and touted to be useful in curing a number of physical and practical problems. In my case it was practical. During the 1980's, when I was younger and more gullible, I wasted $300 on a magnetic water conditioner. The lovely Mrs. Sneed noticed that the dishes had a white film on them after being washed. Our assumption was that our water was of low quality. The braintrust running our fair city's water department had switched over to Colorado River water and there had been a lot of trouble over water quality. It seemed perfectly reasonable. At the same time I heard a guy on a local radio program touting his revolutionary water treatment device based on magnets. This was no yokel, or so it seemed, but a real scientist, at least he said he was. So I called him. This bozo showed up while I was at work and strapped a cheesey magnet to the water pipe coming into the house. Then he went in turned on the water and he and his assistant stared at the flow for a minute, before exclaiming, "Did you see it change?" The lovely Mrs. Sneed looks at this guy and saying something to the effect of, "You're a freaking crook." then she calls me at work to tell me that he is a crook. The guy beats feet, fearing for his safety. The funny thing was that in the hasty retreat he lost his day planner book and called me at work to ask if I would call her at home to see if it was there. He freely admitted that he was too scared to call himself. Unfortunately, we were out $300 because I wanted this device to work. Another important factor in falling for quackery is wanting something to be true. As it turned out the problem was that the dishwasher was broken and didn't rinse correctly. The film was soap residue. So not only did we own a useless water device, we got to buy a dishwasher. Dave Ramsey calls this stupid tax. This is an important lesson that I once heard from a doctor. When you hear hoof beats think of horses, not zebras, or said another way, common things are common. In science and logic this is called Occam's razor. The simplest explanation is more likely to be right that a complicated one. Another thing happened to me today that shows how easily we delude ourselves. We are going to California tomorrow so that the lovely Mrs. Sneed and Daughter Sneed can attend a conference. We had a plan for Daughter Sneed to meet us at the airport. I thought to myself, What if she has car trouble and we miss the flight? Maybe we should pick her up. Well, tonight on the way to come to our house to drop off Sneedlet so that she could attend a meeting, her car died. Some people would tell themselves that they had a premonition. I would except there is no such thing as a premonition. The real explanation is that I always think of the worst case, so it is natural that when the worst case occurred, I had predicted it. I always predict it. Go figure. Merle. Things in this blog represented to be fact, may or may not actually be true. The writer is frequently wrong, sometimes just full of it, but always judgemental and cranky Tag: Daily Life Personal Finance Humor