WARNING: Rant about a crappy product below.

MagicJack is a piece of garbage.

If I knew how to make that more prominent in the search engines, I would.  Their tech support is online only and while they’re actually OK< it’s chat only and takes FOREVER to troubleshoot anything.  Kind of like the Fry’s approach to returns…  if you make the process as painful as possible, then no one will return anything.

It may be just peachy for a PC but on a Mac, it’s worthless.  It drops calls like crazy and will do odd things like successfully complete a call then not work for the next two weeks.

It has to be un-plugged and re-plugged constantly to restart it and the software is a really bad windows port to the Mac and has an absolutely un-mac-like UI as a result.  At least they finally fixed the crashing bug that would cause the app to vaporize if you clicked in the window anywhere other than the grab bar on top.

So, when I bought the thing, i paid an extra $60 for an additional 3 years of service.  OK, it’s not a lot of money, especially for three years of phone service but I’m not getting three years of phone service – i’m getting three years of expecting a silver turd with a USB plug and an RJ11 connector to make phone calls.

Admittedly, completing phone calls isn’t something a reasonable person would expect a turd to do.

Rant complete.

Article 1, Section 9 of the US Constitution is incomplete.

It’s July, it’s hot, it’s a Friday, I’m working.  Sitting on a conference call, actually, listening to a presentation in Spanish so I’m not adding much value right now.  It’s usually a bad sign when folks switch to the local language as it means when the gringo starts talking, they’re not leaving with much of what you have to say.  But, i digress.

Term limits.  Congressional term limits, specifically.  The Elephants took money from the Wyly brothers for a long time and the Donkeys took money from Rep. Rangel for about as long and they’re really trying hard to wave judgmental fingers at each other.  It strikes me as odd that there aren’t term limits for House and Senate seats except that getting these folks to introduce that is about as likely as getting them to police their own ethical and fundraising transgressions.  It’s laughable.

I don’t doubt that there are honorable people there, trying to do their best to do what they think is right and in the best interests of their constituencies, but the damage one charlatan can do can overshadow the good work accomplished by a dozen good ones because of the loss of confidence in the body as a whole.  It would shift their focus from perpetual re-election/campaigning to doing the good works they were sent there to do.

Don’t re-elect nobody? That’s too far and would be short-sighted but there need to be limits.  Article 1, Section 9 of our Constitution limits what the Congress can inflict on the citizens but doesn’t limit how long they can be inflicted on us. That’s what’s missing.  It’s time to demand that.

Service? Really?

KitchenAid, KitchenAid, KitchenAid…  y’all it’s really not that hard to run a service business.  It’s a little harder to do it well, but to do it and really poorly actually takes some full-on neglect.  Beware!  A rant follows…

We have an espresso machine, (model #KPES100, thanks for asking) whose hot water switch poked his head out from behind the rock, saw it’s shadow and never came out of the enclosure again soon after first actuation.  So, like any good consumer would, i threw away the receipt and waited four years to do anything about it.

So, I called KitchenAid today to ask about service locations and was told they have several places in TX that repair their countertop appliances.  One location in each of San Angelo, Ft. Worth, Dallas, and Amarillo.

The one in San Angelo really just does telecom equipment repair and fabrication and the one in Dallas only does mixers and blenders.  The one in Amarillo can mail me the part but no install instructions, and this switch is buried deep in this rascal so i’m probably going to have to stop there.

I figured i’d just stop there and hold on to the belief that the one in Ft. Worth is a world class shaver and appliance repair facility.  I’m not going to call to verify my belief but there are some moments in life where experience tells you that you’d be better off living in a blissful dream than snooping around only to crush that last bit of confidence in something revered.

Luckily, water boils at the same temperature on my stovetop.

Boy names

Give this a try…  go to Wolfram’s awesome Alpha site and just enter names…  it will tell you the rank of that name, the popularity over the past hundred or so years, etc.  Very slick.

http://www.wolframalpha.com

What it doesn’t do is make recommendations.  A pity really, as that would be really useful.  In current form, it just tells you how un-original you are, or how odd the name is that you’ve chosen.  You’re either following the pack, out of date or statistically insignificant, none of which are particularly flattering.

Like most prospective parents, we’re still struggling with names, and contrary to popular opinion (sorry, no objective research to cite here) this exercise does not get any easier the more kids you have.  My favorites are Elvis, Boudreaux, Earl-with-a-silent-H (or just plain Earl), Ivy (IV, really), Four, Junior, and Jesus.  Oddly enough, none of those are winning me any brownie points with the missus though.

And the girl is crying now so i’d better go assist…  Maybe a name will come to me in a dream.

Has it really been a year?

Indeed.  And much has happened in that year…

I’m a year older, as are you.  Obama is still President, though that would have been a pretty safe bet a year ago.  I went to Vegas with some buddies and re-confirmed my recollection that I’m not a huge fan of the town.  We’ll have another monkey in about a month (a boy and no name yet).  I’m still trying to decide if Facebook is good or evil.  We’re significantly poorer but at least have a new beach property to show for it.  The house currently residing at said property isn’t much to write home about, but it’s really the dirt that people pay for in California.  I just paid property taxes to our County Tax Assessor.  You, know I could write about that…  there’s a lot to say in the tax space and that might actually be helpful for folks considering investing in property here in TX.  Hmm, i’ll have to think about that one.

You know, that gives me an idea.  I think i’d be a more regular writer if there was a little audience participation here…  so, i’ll make you a deal.  Send me a topic – it can be a thought, a sentence, a number or even a word and i’ll give it a go.  Any takers?

Bueller?  Bueller?

Obama

I think I like this guy.

I’ve written previously that I had serious reservations about him, mainly about his lack of executive experience, but i think his temperament and practicality are making up for it.  He’s lowering the expectations of the super-lefties that he’s not going to be the most liberal person to walk the face of the earth, he’s turning around some of the sillier things Bush did such as limiting stem-cell research.

We went to the Inauguration because Alexander was going with a group but we decided to make the drive and attend as well.  It was crazy cold that day – 18º all day.  Two million people on the Mall and another 300,000 on the parade route.

The other attendees were a pretty mixed bag though.  On one hand it was great to see so many people and so many that wouldn’t otherwise be so involved in political events but on the other hand it reminded me of the reports of the aftermath of Andrew Jackson’s Inauguration – the “class” quotient was really low.  President Bush was booed as he left the White House, for example.

But, on the whole it was a once-in-a-lifetime experience.  Glad we went.

It’s been a while

Yes indeed.  But, after two family outings, one to New Hampshire and and then 11 days later climbing in a car and driving to Washington DC for Barak Obama’s Inauguration, I’ve had some time to ponder a few things.

First, I dig driving places.  Lots of great things to hit on the way to places.  We stayed in some fairly mediocre hotels but made it up with some really good food.  Found fantastic pizza in Shreveport, LA and a great Irish Pub in Charlotte, NC.  Not what you’d expect.

Now, here are some things I wouldn’t do again – drive I-95.  Packed and crappy drivers.  I-20 between Tuscaloosa and…  well, not quite sure where to cut it off…  Monroe, Meridian, Jackson…  not many redeeming qualities.

Paul Newman

He died today of lung cancer at 83. By all accounts, a great guy. An actor who lived with family in CT, not LA. Part owner of a race team (Champ/Indy). Started Newman’s Own food line that donated a couple hundred million to charity.

Cool Hand Luke is one of my favorite all time movies. I think i need to go buy it now. Sorry to see him go, though we all eventually do.

F**ked Company flies again (on my blog)

In a nutshell…

1) Housing market stagnates and homes in key markets no longer appreciating
2) Subprime loans mature and folks can’t make balloon payments or refinance
3) Foreclosures soar
4) Secondary market for mortgage-backed securities dries up
5) Insurance for bonds of mortgage lenders soars
6) Northern Rock nationalized
7) Countrywide begs BofA to buy them (the writing is on the wall)
8) BofA buys Countrywide
9) Mortgage credit default swaps exposed as “not really insurance” and credit totally vaporizes
10) Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac seized
11) Indy Mac (formerly Countrywide Mortgage Investment) seized
12) Morgan Stanley buys Bear Stearns
13) Lehman Brothers flops
14) Goldman Sachs buys Merrill Lynch
15) AIG seized
16) Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley become commercial banks
17) Wamu flops
18) JPMorgan buys WaMu
19) Citigroup gets Wachovia Banking
20) Congress approves $700,000,000,000 line of credit to the Treasury Secretary (almost)
21) DJIA drops from 778 points. (largest point drop but only 17th largest percentage drop)
22) Ok, now it passed 263-171. Still called a”bailout” package though. I’ll do another post on the plan itself as despite whatever it’s called by people – it’s significant.
23) WAIT! Now Wells Fargo announced that they’re buying Wachovia. FDIC disagrees.

and probably more to come… this is unbelievable…

How to vote.

Just pull the lever, dumbass.

Seriously, I’ve seen notes from a few people whom I respect deeply that basically say everything Bush did was bad, he’s evil, ergo the Republicans are evil. Therefore, if you don’t vote for Obama then you are two things:

Stupid and racist.

To paraphrase another good friend of mine, the Republican Party has pulled up the tent stakes and moved to looneyville (Looneyville being the laps of the religious right). I wholeheartedly agree with this.

You know things are bad when self-avowed moderates long for Sen. Barry Goldwater.

There used to be a time when being a conservative meant being a Republican and being anything else meant being a Democrat. No more. There’s basically no home for someone who’s a fiscal conservative and a social moderate/almost liberal. The Republicans are also violating a tenet of Reagan’s that it is the role of government to protect us from each other, but not from ourselves (again paraphrasing) and they’re straying from that as well with the Marriage Amendment and abortion stance.

I’ve blogged already that neither McCain nor Obama are qualified for the office they seek, but I can’t get behind the idea that voting for McCain demonstrates that I’m a racist. In fact, voting for Obama simply because he’s black is just as racist as not for the same reason, but people (mainly white people) think that voting for Obama somehow cleanses us from some sort of white guilt. Whatever.

The problem is our society doesn’t defend moderate views – we have to deal in absolutes to be comfortable. Moderate views might be let in the door but they’ll never be the last idea standing because the poles will accuse them of being a traitor to a principled stand, ultimately driving anyone standing there to a pole via shame for not being part of a “principled” team.

Bush said it best – you’re with us or against us. We can’t agree on some issues and disagree on others and remain friends. Moderation was the promise of each candidate and you see people are being shamed into a corner.

Back to the topic – how to vote? Just pull the lever.