Kids Change Your Plans (part 1)

Kids definitely change your plans. Everybody that has children can recall the second that the first child arived. Before, they could pretty much do what they pleased. After, they constantly had to think about and include their children in their plans. Kids want to be included in everything. They need to be snuggled often during the day and reassured that they are loved.
They have very short memory spans. They ask the same questions over and over. You have to repeat the same phrases over and over. For instance:

Things that I say most to my daughter
1. I love you. You are a great kid.
2. I love you too dear. (when she says: "I love you Daddy")
3. Eat the food! (repeated several times)
4. Out of the room (with a finger pointed in that direction)
5. EXCUSE ME!!!! (When she is standing in my way and won't move)
6. The computer mouse is not a toy!
7. Watch Disney Channel in here with me for a while. Mommy needs some private time.
8. Do as Mommy says!
9. Lower your voice! I can hear you very well.
10. I'm not going to find your mermaid's comb again! You have to find it this time.

I also found that once my daughter started walking, I developed kid radar. If I didn't see where she was, I started searching. Then I had to develop plans for how we would handle a lot of things I never thought of before.

Tto be continued......

College Transcript (Round 1)

Well...I wrote off for my college transcript about a week ago and had to pay $5 to get it. What I got today was totally unacceptable. It came in an envelope that said on the outside that it was not official unless the envelope arived with no evidence of tampering. What was inside was a copy of an old microfilm, that had handwritten changes on a lot of the grades, two different student numbers, and all my grades for my first two years were missing! Back then Fairleigh Dickinson University had the nick name of "Fairly Rediculous", because the students recognized that it was a University of mostly form without substance, ruled by a short fat guy with a big ego (Peter Samartino). (Three campuses in support of a Dental college) Back then, a college credit there cost $20 (16 credits/semester= $320). Today, that same credit costs $821 (16 credits/semester= $13,136)! That puts it in the cost range of Ivy League Schools, but still they can't deliver a computer generated transcript! I call them tomorrow morning. Stay tuned for further developments.

Storm's a Comin'

Well...yesterday it seemed to be turbulently windy all day, with a clear sky. Tree tops were being thrown around like some some giant was running his fingers over them. I was trying to get some fence posts put in the back yard, and by 5 pm I was finished. The sky was still mostly clear, but clouds with dark bottoms were starting to appear and race toward the northwest. Then the sky got a lot darker, and the mother of all storm clouds settled over our land. It was like one of those scenes out of the film "Independence Day", when the alien ships move in. Then the rain started and was at full intensity in a what seemed like a few seconds. Then the thunder and lightning started, and rolled on through the night, with more intense rain squalls. In the morning, as the cold front passed, the temperature dropped, and it stayed cold and windy throught the day. These rain splats seem to happen here in Tampa in the spring and summer, and are usually surprises when they appear. Other than Cape Canaveral, Tampa seems to have the most intense lightning storms. The name "Tampa" is supposed to mean "big sky lighting" in Seminole. We don't get a lot of violent cold front storms like this one. The storms we do get are mostly the type that build slowly with dark skies, sometimes for days before starting to rain. Sometimes the rain never starts. We call those fooley-bear storms.

More on Virgin Mobile

Well, after doing some searches, I found out that Virgin Mobile is doing the same double top-up tricks to a lot of other people, and in ways much worse than happened to me. Follow this link to read more personal anguish. http://www.consumeraffairs.com/cel_phones/virgin.html

If you want to read reviews of other cel phone providers, go to: http://www.consumeraffairs.com/cel_phones

Well, other than complaining, what can you do to stop cel phone abuse?
1. Take the cel phones away from your children, and give them pagers, and pocket change for payphones. You need to reach them. They don't need to call their friends between or in classes. Children got along just fine without cel phones until recently.

2. Close your Cel account, get an compact laptop computer with a Verizon or AT&T air card. Get rid of your home high speed fiber and surf the web on your laptop computer. Make all your personal phone calls from anywhere on your laptop computer using Skype VOIP. Skype most of the time costs nothing.

3. Do some hard thinking about what your real communications needs are, not what you need to do to keep up with your friends, or please your kids.

Virgin Mobile Money Leak

About six months ago, I bought a Virgin Mobile Cel Phone at a 7-11 store for $19.95. I was tired of paying $90/month for an Cingular/AT&T cel phone that I only used for emergencies. The Virgin Mobile pay-as-you-go deal was that: you put up $20 to start the service. As you used the service, you give them the right to top up your account $15 from your checking account as needed, so that you always have $20 in your Virgin Mobile account. As the months rolled by the phone worked really well, but I noticed I was being topped up $15 every 90 days whether I needed it or not. Last week they topped me up $15 twice in the same day. My balance was now $60! I called them and they, appologized for the error, and refunded the second $15. I then told them that they could no longer automatically top up my account, and would have to email me a link when they wanted me to top up, and I would do it manually.

My theory is that: In these tough times, when Virgin Mobile runs low on cash, they think that they can just go and top up all their accounts randomly whether they need it or not. Since Virgin Mobile's marketing is targeted at teens, who use the phone a lot, their parents probably wouldn't notice the hit to their bank account. If they did, Virgin Mobile would just appologize and return the money. For every 1 million customers, that's an extra $15 million in their bank that they don't have to pay interest on. Virgin Mobile probably doesn't think it's wrong to do this, but it is, and they should be held accountable.

The Grocery Clone Wars

I was out grocery shopping a few hours ago, and I noticed again something that I had been watching since the recession started. In the Cerial section, the local generic store brand of toasted oat cerial was totally empty, while the "Cheerios" and all the other name brand cerials had full shelf positions. The generic brand called "Toasted Oats" was priced at $2.49, and the same size box of "Cheerios" was priced at $4.99! For each type of cerial, there were twice as many shelf positions for name brand cerials than for the generic store brands, and from what a clerk told me: the store brands are only stocked once a week, and when they run out, they stay empty until the next week. When you properly interpret the Swahili, this means that: the name brand products, that have to pay for shelf space in the stores, fight and threaten the stores if they sell more than the minimum ammount of the generic store brands, which are usually 1/3 to 1/2 less than the Name Brand price. Thus forcing the consumer to pay higher prices. On top of this, wholesale comodity prices have been falling as the name brand products continue to increase in price. The empty generic brand shelves send a message to the name brands (we can't afford your products), but maybe nobody at the name brands is listening.

Problems with saying NO

That Montana plane crash last weekend still haunts me. The thing that sticks out is the problem with saying NO. The prominent dentist that owned the plane wanted to give his relatives a nice skiing weekend. So he got his 65 year old pilot to plan the trip and make several flying stops to pick everybody up. After: takeoff and land, takeoff and land, and takeoff, he was probably heavily fatigued, and made several bad judgement calls, because he was afraid to tell his passengers and his boss that he was tired, and couldn't get that many people into the plane safely. My hunch as to why he decided to change the flight plan, may be that: he was having physical problems, and couldn't bring himself tell anyone about it, or declare an emergency!

Several years ago, the Chairman, President, and a few Vice-Presidents of In-And-Out Burger were making a multistop tour of Orange County, California in a small executive jet aircraft, scouting for new store locations. After many short stops at regional airports in the area, they setup to land at John Wayne Airport. They were following a Boeing 757 on landing approach, slipped down into its wake turbulence and crashed, wiping out the top management of that company. Why was a car not good enough to get them to their scouting locations? Was the pilot afraid to say "no, this is a bad plan", or " hey, I'm getting fatigued, we better stop, and take a car home".

Not to leave myself out of this, I have a problem with this also. This past weekend, I got talked into driving my family up to northern Florida for my wife's high school reunion. I really didn't want to do it, but I didn't want her driving up there alone. So....I put on my "NO Armor", and reminded myself to: constantly check myself and when I got tired, that I needed to ask for help, and not to try to be the hero.

Another Turboprop bites the dust

The Bute, Montana Pilatus Turboprop crash this past weekend, and the Buffalo, New York, Bombardier Turboprop crash a few weeks ago, seem to have a common thread. Basically either going into adverse conditions (like icing), or operating outside the aircraft specifications (overloading, or outside the center of gravity), seems to make these aircraft prone to flipping over or diving straight for the ground. In the 1950's a series of Lockheed Electra aircraft dove for the ground also. Having long turbojet engines and big propellers stuck far out in front of the lifting surfaces, contributes to wing and fusilage stress, and controllability problems when trying to make turns in rough weather. Both the Pilatus and the Bombardier aircraft were made in Europe, and have supposedly have great safety records. So why did they crash? Maybe not enough pilot training, or FAA pilot certification, for the aircraft type. Maybe thinking that you can fly a turboprop like you can fly a turbojet. Maybe getting fatigued at the end of the day, and catching "get-home-itis" (disregarding fatigue warnings and proceding any way just to get home). I think it was fatigue at the end of a long day that may be the ultimate cause of both crashes.