Don't Back Down

It's times like this that I wished that I had some better way of displaying headlines. I don't know what, exactly. Maybe a big flashing sign. Or perhaps a rotating banner. Just something, because a story like this just begs for something more than text. I could always go retro and bring in the good old blink element, but that would just be annoying. So I suppose that means I'll just tell the story.

For those of you who don't live in Charlotte, or in the general area, we're low on gas. Really low. It's not because of the weather - at least not the weather that we have here. When Hurricane Ike hit what seems like months ago, apparently they shut off our gas pipelines or something. Because for the last week or so, stations all around town have gradually been shuttering their pumps, and now we're down to almost nothing. Gas-wise, I mean. Lots of lines, and plenty of horns. Even one arrest (maybe more, that's just all I've heard about).

Read "The Great Charlotte Gas Shortage of 2008" »

Maybe I'm just getting old. If I am, I hope that it doesn't involve the need to signal that I'm going to turn a mile down the road - and then come to a complete stop before starting up again to actually make the turn.

I'll admit that it's been a while since I've lived anywhere other than the South (approaching twenty years now), and when I did it was - gasp - California. But the people in North and South Carolina are really bad at turning.

Read "All the Slow-Turners are in the South" »

The laughingstock of nearly every state, the DMV is the place where just about everything goes to die. Your morning is wasted. Don't even think about a lunch hour. Try and go in the afternoon and you'll be lucky to get home before the evening news.

Reports in North Carolina have recently said that our DMV lines could be expected to double in the Charlotte area - from 45 minutes to as long as 90 - because of increased federal requirements. This makes no sense. While most things are faster in the computer age, this relic of antiquity languishes.

It is true that you can at least renew your vehicle tags online, and that's a good thing. But if you need to get a new tag or tag a test, beware of the great black hole.

Read "What's Up With the Department of Motor Vehicles?" »

Throughout the course of my life, I find that I read different parts of the paper. When I first started, I think I probably only read the comics (they were probably called the "funny papers" back then). One day I started reading the sports section, because there was something or other that I found interesting. Then I found myself wandering into the business pages, even though I have no business aptitude. I find it interesting.

These days, I typically browse through most of the paper, typically still on my way to the business section or the sports, with a stop at the comics now and again. But what really gets me is why there is just about always an ad in the sports section for an enhancement of some kind or another. If it's not for the best sex that I've ever had, it's for the guy who ate plankton and cured his cancer. Now it's not that I'm not happy for the guy or anything, but come on!

Read "Do We Really Need All This Enhancement?" »

The other day as I was listening to the radio - I don't recall which station, though I could probably guess if I really had to put my mind to it - I heard an advertisement about an upcoming show. During this ad, they mentioned something about the "biggest bands" and how they were coming to town and naturally, that piqued my interest.

When you think of the biggest bands, what do you think? I'm figuring it has to be one of the bands that is on a perpetual farewell tour. Someone like The Eagles or Kiss or someone. Maybe even someone who hasn't been around for a while, like AC/DC or Def Leppard. Now I know that the they aren't everyone's cup of tea, and that's okay - they sold a lot of records.

Read "When Does Exaggeration Become Outright Lying?" »

A decade-and-a-half ago, the movie Quiz Show gave some of us younger pups (no comments, please) insight into the world of corruption amongst game shows like that we had never seen. It was the story of Charles Van Doren, the pretty boy who was given the answers on the game show 21, and how he walked into the living rooms of America, only to be taken down in a scandal like the world had never seen - mostly because television was so new at the time. It's really amazing that game shows ever recovered. It's likely the only reason that they did recover is that generation is gone (not gone, gone, but gone from watching).

The new generation grew up on a different batch of shows - reality shows - and now it seems like there may be more trouble brewing. The first season of the rehashed American Gladiators saw contestants apparently about to survive The Eliminator toss the rope just as they made it to the top of the daunting Travelator. The second season saw the events lengthened, but then a contestant with part of a leg missing had the very same Travelator turned off so he could complete the course (a nice gesture, but you get the point). While early competitors on American Idol get tossed for forgetting their lines, the final performance last night appeared to have white lines scrolling at least twice - surely they don't want the final to be blown by contestants forgetting their lines, but that seems like an odd move by producers. Finally, the obviously superior David Cook (sorry, Archuleta) tanked his performance - so is it all just a scam?

Read "Is the Fix (Unofficially) In on Television "Game" Shows?" »

As I'm eating lunch yesterday, who should be on the television but the Pope! He's just pulling into Yankee Stadium in his Popemobile - a modified Mercedes that just looks wacky, with an enclosure on the back where everyone can see him, and presumably he is safe from someone who might like to kill him. But just how safe is he?

While he's being driven along, it looks like the enclosure is completely sealed. Until a corner shot shows that his hand is out one of the windows. So obviously it's not totally closed, and one of the seventy thousand or so people in the stadium could try and get something in that opening. Nice.

Read "Do You Have a Sense of Security?" »

In my job, I am often called upon to solve problems - in fact, most of my job is less about writing code or making things pretty (no comments from the gallery, please) than it is figuring out how to make things work the way that they are supposed to. Often, the issue is actually to get everything back the way it was before a wayward upgrade skewed the normal operating procedure to a point where everything went slightly haywire.

Over the weekend, for instance, against my better judgment, I took on a job to implement an upgrade. With steps in hand from the company who supplied the software, I felt mostly confident that we could get the job done relatively quickly. Unfortunately, as we were nearing the end of the process, everything went absolutely nuts. Suddenly files were inaccessible and nothing would work. I still have to admit that I just don't know what went wrong - it's like there was a forgotten uninstall process that someone just left waiting to explode. At that point, the most useful skill was not knowledge, but being able to figure out how to restore some semblance of order.

Read "The Lost Art of Thinking Critically" »

CompUSA continues to go out of business, and it seems that they are going to be at it for a while longer. The signs on the corner say that the discounts have reached 20-40%, and if you step inside, you'll see that some of the shelves are now bare, but there is still a lot of merchandise left. Perhaps most importantly, you'll see that even though the discounts aren't going down very quickly, the real reason that the merchandise isn't moving appears to be because the prices on the items left are actually going up.

That's right, the product left on the shelves is actually being marked up while the discounts are ever-so-slowly drifting down. Not too long ago, networking equipment was at the 10% discount level. One item in particular - a Belkin Bluetooth adapter that was recently $29.99 has now been marked up to $39.99. So you could have had it for about $27 ($29.99 * .9) or now you can get it for about $32 ($39.99 * .8). Sweet.

Read "Finding Deals at CompUSA Doesn't Get Any Easier" »

The other day as I was in the grocery store, I was struck by the absurdity of just how far one woman was going in her pursuit to get a discount on a package of hot dogs. Now don't get me wrong - I'm all for scoring a discount and all, especially when it involves little to no effort, and even more so when we're talking about lots and lots of money. The greater the reward for the least amount of effort, the more exciting the prospect.

But in this case, there apparently was an ad in the weekly circular that said something to the effect of Beef Franks on Sale. Now if you ask anyone - especially my wife - if I am a stickler for language, I am. When it comes down to what someone says or what someone meant, I will almost always side with what someone says, because after all, that is what they said. I have no way of knowing what they meant. We even have our own little joke about it, saying that I have a condition - which may or may not be true.

Read "Do You Value Your Time or Your Money?" »

With the announcement that TigerDirect parent Systemax is acquiring the CompUSA brand, trademarks, e-commerce business and as many as 16 stores from my least-favorite retailer. The sixteen stores are located in the Florida and Texas in the United States and in Puerto Rico, apparently a hotbed of CompUSA action. TigerDirect currently operates 11 retail stores in Florida, Illinois, North Carolina and Ontario (Canada) and of course their website, tigerdirect.com. The cost of the deal is about $30 million, depending on the precise locations that are acquired (I guess that hasn't quite been decided yet).

What amazes me is that the remaining locations are worth anything at all. We have made a couple of stops by the CompUSA location on Independence Boulevard here in Charlotte, because I can almost always find something that I can use at a good price, and I am simply amazed at the lack of good pricing, even several weeks into the store closing sale. Usually when someone goes out of business, they try and actually make money from the process. It is of course possible that they are not paying rent, and are planning to stiff the leaseholder when they ask for payment, but I'd think that the cost of the cavernous building would outweigh whatever miniscule amount they might be scraping from withholding the good deals from the merchandise.

Read "CompUSA Can't Even Go Out of Business Correctly" »