Without saying too much, for the past 3 months, I have been sitting in a car for long periods of time.  It's kind of boring, and very inconvenient, but if you are not experienced, you can run into some issues.  Here are some of the things that I have learned:

1. Liquid in = Liquid out.  This means that whatever you drink will come out in nearly the same quantity.  Therefore, if you drink a bottle of water, you will pee a bottle of water.  NEVER throw away bottles, in case you have nowhere to go to to pee.  Just fling them in the back of your car, so they are nice and ready.  Also, always start the day off with one empty bottle, because you will forget to count that coffee you drank to start the day.

2. Dress comfortably.  No reason to wear binding clothing in your car.  Shorts and flip-flops in the summer are the way to go.
3. Never turn off the GPS.  It's good to know where you are without having to wait for the GPS to figure out where it is.
4. Have plastic bags in the car.  For trash.
5. All those napkins that you get should be stored in the glove compartment.  It's just buildup for that major spill that you are going to have. 
6. Unsealed liquids must ALWAYS be in the cup holder.  There is no reason to rush to #5.
7. Bring something to do.  Actually, bring a lot of somethings.  Especially if you don't have a card for the internet.  When you are not busy, you are REALLY not busy.
8. The temperature in the car will never be perfect.  AC on.  AC off.  AC on....
9. Car makers did not design an easy method for you to recover anything that falls between the center consols and your chair.

The longer you do it, the more comfortable you will get.  How comfortable, you ask.  Some of the guys have been doing this for 4-8 years.  One guy has a fridge, microwave, and coffee maker in his car.  That's comfortable.  Almost enough to make me stop house hunting.

First, let me say that I have been using Ubuntu for a bit over 2 weeks, and I am doing very well.  I think I switched over to Windows to see some settings to set up email, but aside from that I've been good.  Ubuntu runs very fast, and doesn't experience the bloat and memory leaks that Windows does.  There are still a few programs that I miss, mainly Microsoft Money, but once I figure out how to get one of the open source programs working things should be great.  Until then, Quicken Online is doing well for me.

On another note, it is amazing that people still fall for scams.  I mean simple scams.  A lot of them work off of the same basic scam.  Someone contacts you and says that they have a check for a sum of money, however, they are in need of money now, and are willing to give you the check, provided that you give them some portino of the check, and you get to keep the difference.  For example, the check is $2,000, they need $1,500, and you get to keep $500.  You take the check, give them the money, and a week later, your bank calls to tell you that the check has bounced, and is probably fake.

Like I said, the majority of the scams work on that same premise, e.g. you won the lottery, there is some inheritance, there is a bank account with money in it for you overseas, etc.  All of them ask you to give money.  Some have elaborate plans, like they give you a guy (they make say an IRS guy) who you can call to vouch that the check is legit.  The IRS doesn't do that.  And if they did, you could call any of them, not his specific guy.

The other big one is investment, which you would figure that people would be wise to thanks to Bernie Madoff.  Here's a tip: it is very rare to make a large percentage of money iin a very short time (like if you bought stock in CitiGroup when it dropped to under a dollar in arch).  If someone promises you over 10% in a few months, they are trying to scam you.

Now, if you receive these emails, or run into these people, I highly suggest that you report them to the FBI's Internet Crime Complaint Center, or your local FBI office.  DO NOT send any money.  Ever.  If you hear your friends mention following one of those scams, stop them.

I haven't been around for a while, but there is a limited amount of things that I can write about.  I'm still addicted to the internet though.  I may be breaking my addiction to windows soon, however.

I've been using Windows since Windows 3.11, which was really the first easily usable version.  I currently use Windows Vista, which I find very stable and easy to use.  People that are good with computers generally find it that way.  People that hate Vista generally don't know what they are doing.

As a bit of a computer geek, I have been trying to transition over to using Linux and more open source software.  The upside to this is that the programs are free, and the code is put out for users to be able to easily edit and provide programs for.  If you use Firefox (I highly recommend you try it.  I like it a lot over Internet Explorer) or Gaim (much better than having multiple chat programs), you are using open source.  The downside is that there is generally very little customer support, aside from the community of users.  However, if you can use Google well, you will find that community more than adequate.  With Linux, you are really required to take a hands on approach to doing everything, and there is some under-the-hood work that needs to be done occasionally to get certain things to work.  Like I said, the community is great with helping out, and unless you are one of the first people to do something, someone smarter that you has already encountered it and found a solution.

I am currently dual booting my laptop with Ubuntu and Windows Vista.  I try to work solely under Ubuntu for long periods of time, but I could never get anything like Microsoft Money on the other side, and I didn't feel like using a Virtual Machine.  Although I could go for a week in Ubuntu, I would have to boot to Vista to update and check my finances.  It was the last tether to Windows.

Well, this week, Microsoft announced that it would begin to end its support for MS Money.  I'm ok with it now, but with no updates, and the eventual death of the system, there is little reason to stay with it.  I am currently looking at on online program to pick up the slack.  I've found 3 that I like, which has whittled down to two.  I'll talk about those in the next post, however.  Maybe I'll be writing it under Ubuntu.

My current laptop is an HP Tx1320, a tablet, or touch screen, model.  It was a pretty nice machine when I got it back in December 2007.  The tablet function can be pretty nice to use, and it's small and generally light weight.  However, HP has some issues.

When I first got the machine, I already owned an HP Photosmart 3210 All-in-one printer/scanner/copier.  You would assume that the two items, being made by the same company, would work well together.  This was not the case.  To have touch screen, a computer essentially uses the Windows Tablet Service, which is also used for actual drawing tablets.  HP decided not to see if their scanner drivers were compatible with this.  HP generally failed to acknowledge that this was an error on their part, and would tell its customers that it was a Microsoft issue.  Way to go tech support.

After months of having to shut down the service to scan, which would remove touch screen functionality, and then have to reboot to get that back (you could not restart the service and have it work properly), HP silently fixed the problem in one of their updates.

Meanwhile, teh machine had issues of it's own.  At some point, I realized that I did not have wireless access.  Not a huge problem, since i use a CDMA card to connect to Verizon internet service, but it was a small annoyance.  After some searching, I would learn that this was a flaw in HP's motherboard.  Unfortunately, it normally hit people after their warranty was done.  It wasn't major, and if I really wanted to, a USB dongle would cost me $20.

Jump forward to a month ago.  My touch screen suddenly didn't respond to touch.  I also realized that the fingerprint scanner was not working, and the camera stopped, too.  Some searches would reveal, that this was also motherboard related, and was happening to a number of people with tx1000 series laptops.  HP generally refused to acknowledge that this was a major problem, and never issued a recall or offered a warranty extention.  However, though searching, I was able to find that if you sent an angry enough letter, you could get some help.

A few days later, I was phoned by an HP representative, and explained the issue.  From my research, I already knew that they knew what the problem was.  I just wanted it fixed.  They offered to fix it for free, and I took that option. 

It took them about a week to repair it, so I went into a depression at home. I would just walk over to where teh computer should be, as i to use it, only to realize that it was gone.  It was a sad time.  However, I got ready in the morning faster, so that was a plus.

When I got the computer back, I looked at the list of things they had done: motherboard replacement, heat sink replacement (the thing used to get hot enough to burn you), and they wiped my hard drive.  I was upset about the last one, but I had backed up everything, so it didn't kill me.  It took me about a day to get everything just teh way that I like it.

The letter is essentially what I just described, but you can see it behind the hidden area if you really want to:
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I was originally thinking of making the title "I hope you like..." with the last word being something that I had to buy in obscene bulk today, like corn.  In case you haven't figured it out, I went shopping at BJ's today.  I had a card for a free 60 day membership.  I can also get 15 months for $35 through my job, but I will get to that later.

The first thing that I thought when I walked into to the store was "sprawl."  This place is HUGE.  Reminded me of the movie "Employee of the Month."  I took one look, and then looked at the customer service line, and decided to buy a hot dog and something to drink while I stood in line.

When I got to the counter, the girl tried to sell me on the idea of getting a membership there.  I told her that I got it through my job for $35, but while I waited for it, I would just do the free trial.  She tried to tell me that if I got it then, it would come out to about the same, because you get $10 off your first purchase when you get a 14-month membership.  I declined, because her math was clearly off.  I can use the 2 month trial, and IF I liked it, get the 15 months for $35, giving me 17 months at the same cost as the 14 months that she wanted me to do.

The layout of the store is somewhat simple:  Things for the home that you cannot eat are on the left, clothing and books in the middle, things you can eat on the right.  Oh, and bread is in the back.  Also, pet food counts as something that you cannot eat.  The aisles are pretty wide, and so are the carts.  They have double child slots.

Aisles are clearly labeled, and you never really have to reach for anything.  Everything that is out of reach is where they store additional items for resupplying the aisles.  There were a lot of registers, and most of them were open, making it much better than Walmart.

The prices are really good.  Chicken was $2.99/lb, as opposed to 5.79/lb in Pathmark (which also has low prices).  It's a little hard to comparison shop other items, simply due to bulk, but meats and such are east to do.  That's about a 50% saving, so if you buy a lot of chicken, that's a huge drop.

Some of the downsides to the place.  You will not get everything that you need, and you get a LOT of what you came to get.    For example, if you need fabric softener, the bottle you buy does 178 loads.  Yeah, April-freaking-fresh.  I needed ground beef, but the smallest package that they had was 7 lbs., and they were limited on their pasta selection.  

There were items that I wanted that they just did not have, like Pillsbury Grands and skirt steak.  There were items that I needed that they had, but it was in such bulk, that it was unreasonable.  I needed a small can of Crisco, which would last me at least a year (I have never finished a can, and I only use it to grease my griddle for pancakes, and season my skillets).  They only had the giant cans (think giant can of coffee).

Also, make sure that your coupons say "any size" or some size and larger.  I wanted to buy toothpaste, but the coupon was for 1 package.  They only sold it in threes.  Also, try to get coupons that only require you to buy one of those "or larger" sizes.  I needed toilet paper.  The coupon gave me a dollar off if I bought 2 packages of 6 or larger.  The best value was the 24 pack, which has 400 sheets per roll.  Two of those packages would be 19,200 sheets.  I could have eaten Indian food for the rest of the year.

My biggest issue was the end cost.  It was expensive, since I purchased so much.  My bill was about $270.  A normal bill for me is about $160, when I shop every 2 weeks.  It will take the two months to do the full shopping comparison.  Mint.com and MS Money will be watched in the coming weeks.  I'm sure that the price inflation was due to some of the items that could only be purchased in bulk.

I've found myself in the middle of a of a number of discussions since the head of GM quit.  There seems to be the misconception that President Obama "made" him quit, in such a manner that the President told the guy that he was fired.  People seem to gloss over that the head of GM stepping down was a requirement for GM to receive more government money.  GM could have said no, would probably eventually fail, and the guy would be out of a job, but things would be a lot worse.  I'll get to the worse part toward the end.

There's the misconception that the President can fire anyone he wants and has some type of control over companies.  This glosses over thet fact that GM CHOSE the money, and the fact that the government has a vested interest in the company now.  I haven't found anyone that could articulate the "plan" that the auto industry had after the last bailout.  There didn't seem to be one.  It seems responsible to require that some things be done properly when you're working with borrowed money.  An example would be a student getting a scholarship, and then not going to class.  The college turns off the money, unless the student starts doing the proper work.  The student can choose to leave, but if they're broke, their options for education are limited.  And if they were rich, they would not care.

Now the failure of the American Auto industry is not just a failure of some business.  And I'm not going to touch on how it effects the economy in Michigan, but that can be important, too.  The auto industry isn't like a McDonald's or a Pepsi.  And the government's interest in the company is nothing new.  Just look at everything the government has.  The government buys American, because it supports American businesses, which supports American businesses.  Radios are made by Motorola, computers are made by Dell.  In the Army, AAFES ties and MREs are made by the blind, in America.  Even the cheap furniture is manufactured by convicts in American prisons.  Government likes to buy from American-based companies.

Now, back to the auto industry.  Go to your nearest police station and tell me what you see.  Chevy Monte Carlos and Impalas, Ford Escapes and Crown Victorias, Dodge Charger's, etc.  This is the same on city, state, and Federal levels.  The Hummer isn't just for soccer moms and preppy jerks with too much cash.  It's a HMMWV, which troops need in combat.  Fire Department command vehicles are in the same boat.  If the auto industry fails, what happens to the fleet?  Who makes the parts to keep the vehicles running.  There's a small chance at an aftermarket industry, but you'll need new cars so you don't go from repair to repair trying to keep a vehicle running.

They can stick with the American cars, but that's just staving off the inevitable.  Cars will break, and so begins the process of cannibalizing your fleet for parts.  This is done very well by the Army, but even they have to buy equipment eventually.  Vehicles will dwindle, and new ones will need to be purchased.

The other major auto makers are based in Japan, South Korea, China, and Germany.  Three of those are in a pretty unstable part of the world.  South Korea has the North looming over it, we're not best buddies with China, and Japan is cool, but if things break out over there, Japan will probably do what it does best and try to convert to a war economy.  Oh, and South Korea and North Korea both hate Japan.  Replacing the entire fleet with a foreign based company means that when they don't like us, or things go bad, we suffer.  Think of oil, but on a higher level.  Then we start the cannibalization again.  You can go with Germany if you don't mind choosing between BMWs and Smart cars.  Try catching a crook in a smart car.

I'm not saying that the bailout is a good thing.  I'm just saying that compared to the alternatives, on a global-economic scale, it's better than the alternative.  Other countries have vested interests in their companies.  Italy gives property tax breaks to vineyards.  The French government installed listening devices in the headrests of their business class seats to steal company secrets and feed it to French companies.  Economic infrastructure is important to every country.

Everyone says "we shouldn't do that."  Call me when you have a realistic plan for what we should do.

There is a place called Eastchester.  That's really the point of the post.  I was looking at where another place was and saw Eastchester on the map near the location.  It's just that I have lived in NY for a long time, and I have never heard about it.  AT ALL. 

I mean, I have met people from Westchester.  A lot of people live there.  But I have NEVER met people from Eastchester.  I have no idea if it actually has a population. 

It's the Wyoming of New York.

Every morning, I have to cross a major New York bridge to get to work.  Right before I get there, there is a signal that is always red to get onto the bridge.  Every morning, there is a guy that sells copies of the Daily News.  During the red light, he walks between the cars, and if you want one, you just roll down your window, and give him 50 cents. 

At first, I though, "Who REALLY needs this."  I mean, there are stores everywhere, and so few places in Manhattan have parking inside the building where people work, so it's highly plausible that people would walk past a store in the morning.

Then I thought that it was probably easy for people who just didn't want to stop.  I guess that it would be easy for them to have it brought to them while they sat at the red light, anyway.  Maybe those people are pretentious and like being served.

Then I became one of those people.  I swear, I have a completely valid reason.  Almost without fail, when I come into work, the door that I come into is not near a small news stand that we have inside the building.  In my rush to get to my desk (I have no idea why I rush.  It's not going anywhere), I always forget to stop there.  Furthermore, I travel in the elevator two or three times for actual work related things before I remember that I need to go all the way down for the paper.  By the time I'm done, I've gone up and down more times than a game of Elevator Action.

The past few mornings, I have made it a point to have 50 cents on me.  Now, I get the paper handed to me while I wait, and there is no way to forget it.  I wonder if that's everyone's excuse.

Last week, I had to go to an off-site office for some work.  Although this office is smaller that the one that I regularly work at, it does have basement parking, which is a lot better than having to fend for a parking space every morning in New York City.  I need to try to get into permanent work at this office.  Did I mention that it is about 10 minutes from where I live?  Yeah, I really need to get there.

Anyway, when I get there, I realized a couple of things.  First, I left the name of the guy that I needed to contact back at the office, and I only knew his first name.  Second, I never called him from my cell phone, so I didn't have his number.  However, Ranger School and a lot of mistakes have taught me to be resourceful, and I was able to find him in under 5 minutes.

The guy said that I did a lot better than the previous two people that had been sent out there.  Prior to me, a girl came out there, and she ended up calling him from the stairwell, because she could not get out.  Apparently, once you enter the stairs for the building (there is a different set of stairs to move between the floors controlled by this organization), the only way to exit them is to go all the way down to the basement to exit.

She is only slightly than the guy that came before her, who called from the basement, because he could not get out.  Apparently, even if you go all the way down, if the basement is locked up, you can't get out there.

So, the guy said I had earned one point. 

So, I got to go shooting the other day.  In NYC, no less.  I found out that there is a firing range under a building.  It's not the most advanced range, but you don't need motorized target movers to shoot a gun.  Anyway, I needed to get some practice in, so I went and put a box down range.  Here are the results, with some editing to show where I hit.

The group is about 5.8 centimeters wide at about 25 feet, fired from a Glock 22.  Six rounds fired at a medium pace (I don't have a timer.  Money is tight).  Apparently, I'm squeezing my finger tips while pulling the trigger.  You should have seen my first group on another one of these targets.  I was squeezing way too much with my strong hand. 

Right before that,  I shot a bad-guy target and around 25 feet.  2 magazines of 6 rounds, fired in 2-round groups, probably within a 1-2 seconds (again, no timer).  Point of aim was the non-gun hand.  Here is the target and a closeup of the target area.
 
Looks like the I need to work on my grip.