Swimsuit Shopping VS Dental Visit

A recent UPI article cited an Illinois study where 52 percent of females polled said they would rather have dental surgery than shop for a bathing suit. I believe I can safely say that my dear wife falls on the majority side. But in the article I found an interviewee's quote to be ironically funny. A Nordstroms shopper was quoted as saying "It's the fact that we no longer have the bodies of 18-year-olds, and bathing suits accentuate every flaw you have." I was rolling. Why so funny? Because that shopper obviously hasn't seen the 18 year olds around here.

Both of my dear daughters (much younger than 18) are due for new suits, and this creates the opportunity for another survey. Would you rather have dental surgery than take your young daughter shopping for a bathing suit? They seem excited about shopping for new ones, it's Mom that might prefer having teeth pulled...

Fools is as Fools Does

Nothing is Foolproof, because fools can be so ingenious

In a previous job one of my outspoken, socially challenged coworkers had a phrase he liked to use. He'd say "I don't have to suffer fools". This was somewhat amusing, because it was clear to the rest of us that he had to suffer himself. But he had many anecdotal examples supporting the idea. He had a good point. Why should we be expected to suffer because of others foolish actions.

The examples are endless. My dear wife and I relate them to each other almost daily. Driving, shopping, at work, at the kids school. I could write pages....

So how much should we suffer fools? How much precious time or effort should we be willing to give up? Often these fools take advantage of tolerance. But then too, when do we need to recognize that we ourselves just might be the fools.

DVRs, the Jury Says:

Digital Video Recorders are both wonderful things and dangerous things. Wonderful because of their capabilities. Dangerous because they further encourage video addictions. Yes, these wonderful marvels of technology help the TV suck the life out of you!

It is great being able to rewind during a show when you aren't quite sure you heard the dialogue. Or pause the play for a potty break. The best feature has got to be the ability to buffer shows and then skip the commercials. You can regain 10-15 minutes of each hour just with that.

The DVR even lets you record shows to watch later. But this is where we start hitting the danger. Our DVR has a recording capacity of 60 hours that just begs to be used. At last, we can record all those shows at odd times we wanted to watch and view them later. But there's the problem. When is later? Instead of reclaiming your life, it pulls you further in. Especially after we record one of those marathon sessions of some show series and find ourselves with a dozen episodes of something that we now have to watch.

I have a friend who has 3 Tivo DVRs in his house. Between his wife and kids, he complains he can never find room to store his shows on any of them. But then he also told me about a feature they have. Once you record a show the Tivo will record similar shows for you automatically, if you have room. And it "does a good job at it"... It's downright scary!

My wife is slowly filling up the capacity. This brings me to another limitation. We have a home network and plenty of disk space on another computer. Unfortunately there is no way to offload from the DVR onto anything else (without hacking the box). I know they do this so that people can't freely distribute copyrighted shows, but it would sure be nice to keep a personal library of certain shows that we can't get elsewhere or on DVD. Without hacking or upgrading the disk in the DVR.

Overall, a DVR is a "nice to have". But it encourages TV compulsion and all the bad things that go with it. If you don't have time to watch all the stuff you've recorded, it's a good thing!

Gasoline Prices

I saw gas for over $3.50 a gallon today. The premium grade. That's still cheap compared to other countries, but has people around here whining.

I use technical analysis software and methods in trading stocks on the stock exchange. I've found technical analysis of changing prices good for looking at and predicting price trends and underlying buying/selling pressures. So when I look at the recent price trend for gasoline, I can't help but think about it like any other commodity price driven by buy and sell and market influences...

For all the whining, I still don't see people giving up driving to save gas. Using alternative energy only shifts demand to other sources. Efficiency can only help so much and is negated if it leads to more travel. The newest batch of hybrids have lower overall fuel efficiency than some non-hybrid cars... So demand is still strong, supply is limited and could become more so.

I have to ask myself, would gasoline make a good investment? Would I buy it now to sell in a month? Probably not. But as a longer term investment I would be tempted. And that is foretelling about what I expect...