April 20, 2008
Fuck The NHL
I really love watching Hockey and I love watching the Sharks most of all. Sure they tend to get up by 2 or 3 games in the playoffs and then slack off because they only need to win 1 or 2 more games and then proceed to lose the series, but still I love them. Of course, because I don't live in San Jose anymore I hardly ever get to see them unless it's the play-offs. So I checked the NHL website and it tells me their game is on a 5pm on a cable channel I actually get. Woo! So I tune in at 5 and what do I see? Fucking cowboys on fucking bulls. The schedule on the cable box say I am watching the pre-game show for the Ducks game. So I check the newspaper and it says the game is on at 7pm on another station I think I get. Ten minutes of searching through 1000 channels only to discover the game is on yetanother channel that I don't get. Or I could pay the NHL $90 or whatever so I could watch it on their overpriced pay-per-view whatever network.
Now, theoretically, the NHL is run by very smart people. Here's a tip: The solution to lower ratings isn't to make it impossible for people who WANT to watch the game to actually watch the game.
July 09, 2007
July 03, 2007
The Bottom Of This
The only explanation that makes sense at this point is that he is trying to be the worst president in history.
June 28, 2007
Mika Brzezinski for President
Clearly we would all be better off if she was in charge of the country...
November 11, 2006
Rubberband Bombs
I feel safer knowing that terrorists won't be able to bring deadly rubberband balls on airplanes.
October 25, 2006
Smog Issues
It's that time of year again: I must re-register my car. This year however I need to get a smog test so off I go to a official smog test center. Sixty dollars later the fellow tells me the car doesn't pass so no smog certificate for me. This saves me the $9 I would have been charged for the certificate but also means I have to spend even more money (and time) getting the car fixed. I ask him what I need to do now and he shrugs. I assume it means, "Go fix your car."
The next day I take it to my local Pep Boys AutoCenter and as I'm walking in I see a sign that says Official Smog Tes & Repair Center. I'm in luck. I go inside and explain the problem to the Pep Boys guy. He nods and says, "Sounds like your catalytic converter." Then he adds, "We don't fix those." I ask him what they can do and he tells me they'd have to re-administer the test for $45 and then troubleshoot the problem for another $144.
I ponder what he just told me. "Let me see if I got this right. You want to charge me $45 to administer a test I already know the car will fail, then you want to charge me another $150 to troubleshoot a problem you probably can't fix?" He thinks for a moment. "Um, yeah." I thank him and leave.
Monday morning I go to another place recommended by the Auto Club and drop my car off. It'll cost $80 just for them to look at the car so they can tell me what is wrong. I get a call before noon and they tell me the spark plugs were fouled and that a tune-up will probably fix my problem. Only $261. I tell them to go ahead. I get a call a few hours later and I'm told a new problem has been discovered. Some exhaust recirculation value sensor thingy. They cost about $500 so now we're talking almost $900 to fix the car.
I go back to the Auto Club and ask them what I need to do. They give me a state number to call and I pay my $90 registration so my car is semi-legal in the meantime. I call the state and after a remarkably short time on hold I get a nice lady who explains that there is a program where the state will pay up to $500 for repairs and I have to cover the first $100. I tell her I've already spent $261 and I find out that won't be covered because I have to take it to a state faculty to have the repairs done. She asks, "Didn't the man at the test center tell you this?" I explained to her that all I got was an enigmatic shrug. She apologized and promised to send me the form I need to fill out to get this done.
So, as they say, there it is.
April 08, 2006
Golf vs. Nature
Bird experts and enthusiasts reacted with surprise and anger Thursday when they learned that two nesting hawks at an exclusive golf resort in Orange County were shot down by federal agents.
The red-shouldered hawks were killed Wednesday morning near the clubhouse of the Villas of Grand Cypress Golf Resort near Interstate 4 and south of the Dr. Phillips community. About a dozen guests had complained of being attacked.
The mating hawks, which can be fiercely protective, had just begun their nesting season and were guarding eggs.
"They were killed because they were inconvenient," said Lynda White, coordinator of the Audubon EagleWatch program in Maitland.
[...]
Bernice Constantin, state director of wildlife services in Gainesville for the Agriculture Department, said the shooting of raptors is a rare event.
John White, a biologist and raptor expert with the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission in Eustis, said he was surprised to learn that the government had sanctioned the killing of protected birds.
"This is the first time I've heard of two adult birds of prey being shot by permit," White said.
Constantin said the nest and its eggs were removed from the tree. He wasn't certain what became of the eggs, although the agency's practice is to hand them over to a wildlife care center for hatching, he said.
The Audubon's White said the hawks could have been captured and released at a nesting site elsewhere, a measure done successfully with other red-shouldered hawks.
Other steps could have been taken, such as arming guests with umbrellas or cordoning off a wider swath of resort property to separate people from hawks nervous about the welfare of their nest, she said.
And what happened with the eggs/chicks? Austringer has an update:
Update: A comment on “Scientist Interrupted” site relates that the nest was left for two days. When the nest was finally examined, the chicks were dead. It also reports that the golf course management consulted with Florida Audubon, who told them about a successful relocation of hawks and their nest. The golf course management apparently decided that would take too long.
January 01, 2006
The Year of Red Ink
Actually the past few years the red ink has flowed freely. So much so that apparently they are running out and need more red ink:
Treasury Secretary John Snow has warned that unless Congress raises the national debt limit, the US government will run out of cash to finance its daily work in two months.
In a letter to Senate leaders Thursday, Snow said the statutory debt limit imposed by Congress of 8.184 trillion dollars would be reached in mid-February and the government would then lose its borrowing power.
"At that time, unless the debt limit is raised or the Treasury Department takes authorized extraordinary actions, we will be unable to continue to finance government operations," said the letter, seen by AFP.
Snow warned that even if the Treasury took "all available prudent and legal actions" to avoid breaching the ceiling, "we anticipate that we can finance government operations no longer than mid-March".
"Accordingly, I am writing to request that Congress raise the statutory debt limit as soon as possible."
Once the US government hits the ceiling, it comes under threat of defaulting on its debts and can lose the ability to raise future credit on the capital markets.
Snow underlined that the "full faith and credit of the United States" was a unique selling point on the markets.
"A failure to increase the debt limit in a timely manner would threaten this unique and important position," he wrote in his letter.
So he is saying we are servicing the national debt by borrowing more money to pay back the money we already owe. Again, not really a surprise. The odd part is that the treasury secretary (the country's CFO) doesn't seemed concerned about it. He's just concerned they might not be able to dig the country deeper into debt. He need not be concerned though. I have every confidence this President and congress will be able to pull it off.
November 06, 2005
National Security
The Army now admits that it secretly dumped 64 million pounds of nerve and mustard agents into the sea, along with 400,000 chemical-filled bombs, land mines and rockets and more than 500 tons of radioactive waste - either tossed overboard or packed into the holds of scuttled vessels.
These weapons of mass destruction virtually ring the country, concealed off at least 11 states - six on the East Coast, two on the Gulf Coast, California, Hawaii and Alaska. Few, if any, state officials have been informed of their existence. The chemical agents could pose a hazard for generations. The Army has examined only a few of its 26 dump zones and none in the past 30 years. The Army can't say exactly where all the weapons were dumped from World War II to 1970. Army records are sketchy, missing or were destroyed.
October 22, 2004
“Freedom is Just Another Word...”
You know, if I enjoyed rejection, the past couple of years would have the best times of my life.
On a completely unrelated note, here are two songs by the Mermen. The first doesn't seem to have a name other than New Song and the second is the verbose yet wonderfully named With No Definite Future And No Purpose Other Than To Prevail Somehow. They are from live shows so no copyrights were harmed in the making of the mp3 files. Download guilt free. I'll leave them up for a few days.
October 10, 2004
At The Movies
I went to see Garden State with my brother the other week. Included with my ticket was a coupon. If I bought $2.00 worth of popcorn and soda for $9.00 they would sell me a 75¢ box of Milk Duds for only $1. The movie was very good and the Milk Duds were pretty yummy too.
January 24, 2004
Green Eggs and SPAM
For the curious this is the trash I've just spent 3 hours deleting 240 times:
Yes, it's an ad so poorly written and so ineffective it needed to be posted 240 times to have a chance of having any impact -- and still failed. You still can't post new comments until I install MT-blacklist but you can see old posts again when you look at individual entries (by clicking the date at the lower left of the entry).
UPDATE: Kip ointment? I gotta get me some of that. On second thought... ew ew ew.
HELP! HELP!
Does anyone in the BlogWorld know how to delete HUNDREDS of comments at once? Searching on Google hasn't turned up anything applicable. I've manually deleted 40 comments so far (120 clicks) and the prospect of manually deleting 200 more one at a time isn't appealing. Link to me with trackback or e-mail me if you know of a solution.
Spam is made from Spamimals
For a few months now I've been getting comment spammed by random sleazeballs who can't think of a better way to sell their worthless products and services. I'd get new spam every few days. Then once a day. Then a couple of times a day. Each time only a few individual spam comments. I prompted delete each one. It's been like this since October. Tonight I check and dicover some idiot spammer is apparently upset I've been deleting his crap and so posted over 200 new spamments. Now Movable Type doesn't have a quick way to delete all 200 quickly. Nope, I've got to click three times for each spamment. Six hundred mouse clicks to get rid of this crap. I think I'm read to begin my ritual killing spree now. Names and home addresses of known spammers would be a big timesaver so send 'em if you got 'em. In the meantime I'm turning off comments for now until I can figure out how to quickly purge spam. Before it gets out of hand, I'd like to say the whole "ritual killing spree" this is entirely a joke! (names and addresses would still be appreciated though)
Jeremy has an idea but I don't think it'll be effective.
January 18, 2004
January 15, 2004
A Bummer, part duex
I used to think I had it all figured out. That the time I had spent reflecting on love and life on my long journey searching for that special someone had given me some great insight -- made me some Zen master of love. But I know now this only proves how delusional I can be. There is no balance in my life. I am all yang and no yin. I am a fool. A fraud. A physician incapable of healing thyself.
Now where did my bouncy ball get off to? Ah! There it is...
January 12, 2004
Cannibal Cows
I spotted this post about mad cow over at dead parrots. I agree that comsumers bear part of the burden, but that doesn't mean the beef industry didn't make some really bad choices too.
Coming this evening: Abattoir stories from the Brother-in-law
December 12, 2003
State Of the State
I took a trip to the local branch of the library yesterday. I had my laptop computer with me so I could work with no distractions. I asked the librarian if there was a desk somewhere I could plug it in.
"Sorry, no. We don't allow that. Someone might trip over the cord and our insurance wouldn't cover it."
The library was built 29 years ago when I was 10 years old. I remember thinking how cool it would be to have a library nearby. I remember learning the Dewey Decimal system and browsing the stacks to see what interesting books I could find. But now, standing there with electron-less laptop in hand, I noticed something I had missed at first glance: The tables, the chairs, the shelves, the rug - everything save the computers that had replaced the card catalog - were as they had been 29 years ago.
Next time you go to the library look and see if there are desks where you can plug in your computer. If there are, then you live someplace with a better civic quality of life than California. Of course, if you lived here since 1978 then your property taxes are really cheap compared to, say, anyone who has bought a house here since 1978.
December 02, 2003
Dilbert Blows a Gasket
In case you missed Dilbert this weekend you should check it out. It was nothing less than a thinly veiled call for Class Warfare. Not that it wouldn't be a healthy thing for this country at this point, it's just that I think their success will be their undoing. As evidence I present the following search results from Google:
- "CEO AND Proud" - 669,000 hits.
- "CEO AND humble" - 73,000 hits.
"Whom God would destroy, he first makes proud." (3 hits on Google?! Is this not actually a biblical saying?)
November 24, 2003
Vivendi Universal is Dumb
In a recent post I pointed out that mp3.com had become a wasteland under Vivendi Universal's stewardship. Today I ran across a story saying that Vivendi has decided, in their infinite wisdom, that the right thing is to do the electronic equivalent to setting it on fire and burning it to the ground. The mp3.com idea could have shaken the music industry out of its stagnation. Record Company Executives recognized the danger of this and have once again made the world safe for country-western alternative retro classic rock.
October 24, 2003
Lovely Spam! Wonderful SPAM!
I had heard it was the hottest new thing in SPAM technology: Blog spamming. Some spammer somewhere decided that since I let people leave comments that it's okay for him to leave spam in my comments advertising his stupid, lame, I-hope-it-dies viagra web site. You know what this makes me wish for? A cult that hunted down and sacrificed spammers. Candles, long knives, and ritual murder - just for spammers. If not a cult, then I would wish for a serial killer that only killed spammers. And after he killed he would use the dead spammer's computers to spam other spammers to tell them if they didn't stop spamming they would soon be as cold and dead as a can of spam.
Ah! I feel much better now. If you noticed I've turned off the comment feature in the near future you know why now. There are several other proposed solutions floating around. On the bright side, I'm only getting this spam because I'm getting highly ranked on Google. Which of course can only mean one thing: You like me! You really like me!
August 25, 2003
Brothers United
Since yahoo IM sucks on the Mac and Thom only sees 10% what I write there, I'll use his new blog.
August 18, 2003
A Ballot of Fools
I've toyed with the idea of voting for Arnold Schwarzenegger. Rob Lowe seems to like him. More importantly Warren Buffet seems to like him. What's not to like? He's a moderate Republican, right? Well, honestly I can't tell. Arnold doesn't like answering questions. He's got Pete Wilson running his campaign, who would be difficult to shoehorn into any definition of "moderate". He apparently hung out with Enron's Ken Lay but Arnold says he doesn't really recall anything about it. Ken is not a really popular guy in California - if he campaigned for Arnold here the crowds would most likely show up with torches and some rope. No, I'm really just beginning to think Mr Schwarzenegger isn't a great candidate. Plus, I have to keep looking up how to spell his name.
I think my only other option (aside from wasting my vote on a protest candidate) is to vote for the Lt. Governor. At least I can spell his name - good ol' Cruz Boostemante. Er, Bustimonti... um, Boostimon... Ah, hell, I'm going to bed.
August 15, 2003
Where's my Duct Tape?!
The power is out in New York! It's not a terrorist attack, but it could have been. If it had been a terrorist attack government officals would have been able to handle the situation. Of course, this demonstrates how vunerable we are to terrorists attacks. Make sure you're stocked up on batteries, plastic sheeting, and duct tape! Terrorist are probably plotting right now how to knock out our power! But don't panic, because this wasn't really a terrorist attack. But it could have been...
*sigh* Luckily the news services aren't talking much about how our deregulated power utilities aren't re-investing in maintaining our power grid. If they did the terrorists might realize they could just bribe the power companies to screw things up. Wait, scratch that. No need to bribe anyone - they're screwing it up just fine as is.
August 08, 2003
$500 Hammers in search of Problems
Over at The Daily Dystopian there is a story about defense spending that everyone should read.
July 12, 2003
Buck Passing on Internet Time
It sounds like the neocons really are running the government like a business.
The current strategy of the Whitehouse? "Move along! Nothing to see here..."
July 03, 2003
Making it up as they go along
Do frivolous lawsuits sometimes win big jury awards? Yes. Does it happen often enough that you don't need to make up ficticious examples? Apparently not.
July 02, 2003
Lip Service
Two Words: Go Army! In a related item, we now know that the WMD were deleted from the Iraqi server before the war.
June 24, 2003
June 22, 2003
Cynical Quote of the Day
The law is not blind, it can definitely see the size of your wallet.
Searching for my Monkey
Was just looking at my handy Chinese calendar horoscope. Apparently I was born in the year of the dragon. It says:
I have to marry a monkey or a rat? I choose monkey.
In other news, I discovered Eric Alterman, the author of "What Liberal Media?", has a blog. It's pretty active and some interesting links show up there from time to time.
I always enjoy a good parody. Be sure to check out the review of William Bennett's newest book: Gambling, The Christian Way .
Here's an article on MSNBC about homeland defense. Towards the end of the article it points out the administration is pushing hard for it's ICBM missile defense shield at a cost of $9.1 BILLION. What kind of missile is most likely to be used by terrorists in the near future? A shoulder fired anti-aircraft missile. Adding equipment to all planes world-wide to protect them against these missiles would cost about $10 BILLION, but is considered "too expensive."
I saw this articlethe NYTimes website but now they want $2.95 to read a single article from a newspaper that costs (I'm guessing) 25 cents. I wish the NYTimes good luuck at selling their content on the web with a several hundred percent mark-up.
Understanding Punctuation is Good.
Finally, here's an inspiring piece by Bill Moyers titled, The Progressive Story of America.
June 17, 2003
The Evils of Public Education
Debbie Riddle, a Texas Republican state representative, recently opined, "Where did this idea come from that everybody deserves free education? Free medical care? Free whatever? It comes from Moscow. From Russia. It comes from the pit of hell." Apparently they don't teach history in Texas. I don't know where the first free public education system was, but I think we've had public education in this country for close to 200 years. Some crackpots called the Founding Fathers thought it was a good idea - if only Debbie had been there to set them straight to how evil it truly is. I agree with her on free medical care though. I prefer the current system where I can get health care (as long as I can afford it) and poor people, well, have the freedom to get sick and die young.
June 07, 2003
Better Living Through Lawyers
There should be a reality TV show called I'm crazy and I'd like to prove it! Wait, it already exists but is called The Jerry Springer Show.
Software and Lawyers. When numerous Foundstone employees expressed their dissatisfaction with working conditions by quitting and defecting to a rival start-up, NTObjectives, lawyers were consulted. The Foundstone lawyers' solution: sue NTObjectives. A soon-to-be-former-employee at Foundstone was aghast. Foundstone management got the satisfaction of firing this ungrateful, whining, unperson employee. The former employee gets the satisfaction of being right. Foundstone finds itself accused of massive software piracy. While I'm sure the penalties probably run into the hundreds of millions and involves first-born children they should just be glad they weren't pirating music, otherwise they'd be facing some really expensive fines.
June 02, 2003
Eat It or I'll Sue!
Apparently an Italian food critic reviewed his local McDonald's restaurant. He described the food (accurately, I think) as "repellent" and compared its burgers to rubber and its fries to cardboard. What does McDonald's do? Work to improve the quality of their food? Ha ha ha! Yeah, right. Nope, they are sueing him for undisclosed damages (possibly as much as the $25million it spent on advertising in Italy last year).
May 23, 2003
Terrorists are Afraid of Pork, you know...
Which state do you think is more likely to be victim of another terrorist attack: New York or Wyoming? Did you guess New York? Me too. On a per capita basis, which one do you think receives the most Homeland Security funds? Did you guess New York again? Wrong. Under the formula the Department of Homeland Security has adopted for handing out money, it spends seven times as much protecting each resident of Wyoming as it does protecting each resident of New York. One last question: which state voted for George Bush?
Free Lunches for Big Political Donors
Warren Buffett has some words:
I never really paid much attention to him before but recently I really am starting to like this guy. I also spotted the following rather insightful comment by Matthew on one of the best blogs I've ever discovered, "It's Still The Economy, Stupid":
May 06, 2003
"Okay, now we're bitter..."
I spotted this letter in the Home section of a local newspaper:
We were about to close escrow on our home when the buyers' home inspector stirred up trouble over the roof repairs. The house is about 35 years old and has two layers of shingles. According to the roofing contractor, the building code allows a third layer to be applied. But the home inspector says the structure is sagging and should not be loaded with the weight of additional shingles.
Removing the old material will add about $500 to the cost of the job and seems to us to be a needless expense. As far as I'm concerned, the roof is strong enough to support another layer of shingles. If a third layer would truly be detrimental, t wouldn't be allowed by code. Don't you agree?
I can tell from the letter that this man is an executive at a software company for the following reasons:
- Anyone who disagrees with him is trying to be troublesome.
- He ignores any evidence that supports the troublesome opinion.
- He considers the marginal extra cost to do the job correctly is a "needless expense".
- Tries to find outside party with no firsthand knowledge of the situation that will support his position.
The home inspector columnist replied to his letter by saying the codes set a minimum standard and the fact that the roof is sagging under the weight of two layers of shingles indicates there is a real problem that needs to be addressed. He also points out to the letter writer that this would help protect him from a lawsuit later should just adding another layer of shingles not solve the roofing problem.
Even with all this I'm still betting that the chances of the guy paying the extra $500 to do the job right are sill less than 50/50. I mean, it's $500 and everyone trying to force him to spend it are just greedy bastards -- unlike him.
May 05, 2003
Jobs Everywhere!
I guess I'm just dreaming I'm out of a job. Apparently there are over half a million jobs waiting to be filled that I can't seem to find. Oh wait, they want to bring in more cheap foreign labor. I guess I'm not dreaming. It all makes sense now...
May 04, 2003
User Interfa[A System Error Has Occured]
Lurking in IRC I found this link on user interface design or something. Too bad Windows XP crashes after playing five minutes. Microsoft's new slogan should be "Windows XP: Crashes more predictably than ever!"
April 27, 2003
Sue as I Say, Not as I Sue
Senator Rick Santorum's wife received $350K in a recent malpractice suit -- to which he provided testimony and full support -- which is $100K more than he now says anybody else should be allowed to receive, thanks to a pending GOP bill.
Geez, bad enough he's a bug-eyed lunatic... turns out he's a hypocritical bug-eyed lunatic. Chances he'll give back one hundred thousand dollars to show his support for limiting awards in malpractice suits? I'd say chances are as close to zero as they can get...
April 23, 2003
*sigh*
The question for today is "Are Dallas Police stupid?" As far as I can tell the answer is yes...
April 12, 2003
The Mathematics of Crime
I read an article in the business section of the paper today about yet another executive sentenced for fraud. California as a rule is pretty tough on crime. We've sent people to the big house for 25-to-life for stealing a slice of pizza (really, this is not a joke). Anyway, Paul Jain was CEO of Media Vision. In 1993 the company reported a profit of $20 million on revenues of $241 million. Their stock price doubled, Wall Street went wild and there was much rejoicing by investors. A few months later they announced they needed to restate their earning for 1993: they actually had a net loss of $99 million on revenues of only $150 million (i.e. they lied to the tune of $100 million). Wall Street went wild again, but this time investors lost nearly $200 million in equity. On Friday Mr. Jain was sentenced to two and a half years in federal prison. Steve Allan, the CFO (Chief Financial Officer) received a much harsher sentence. Well, at least a slightly harsher sentence: three and a half years (the maximum sentence he could have gotten was only eight years). If you stole ten slices of pizza a day (at $1 per slice), every day, it would take you approximately 55 thousand years to steal $200 million worth of pizza.
March 01, 2003
Homeland Insecurity?
For your own protection, all Americans of middle-eastern descent (and those with olive-colored skin, just to be sure) report to internment camps as soon as possible. Unfortunately, former Japanese internees are likely to sympathize with the new Arab ones so I think we'll need to re-intern them too, just to be safe. Meanwhile, back at the ranch, George Bush is using nothing more than his mental powers to line up support from world leaders. Turkey would be a good example of this. They feel so threatened by Saddam Hussien that something like 98% of the country is against going to war and they want nearly $30 billion from us for the privilege of protecting them. Turkey says it might need to invade Iraq too, but just to carve out a "security belt" for the protection of war refugees and to maintain stability. If any Kurds are killed, I'm sure it'll only be those unstable ones.
Manifest Destiny. I'm not sure what to think of those people who criticize our glorious leader, George Bush. He has been demonstrating genuine leadership and some real imagination with the economy. If you haven't written a letter to the editor yet extolling his virtues then you probably belong in one of those internment camps too. Sure, you might be cynical enough to think we're not going to war with Iraq for strictly altruistic reasons but you better keep it to yourself, buddy. You know why? Because if you're not with George Bush, you're with the terrorists. He's a uniter not a divider.
A Better Hitler Analogy? So we're going to invade Iraq in order to liberate them and give them democracy. That sounds like a pretty admirable goal so let us forget for a moment that it's been tried in the past and didn't work so well. What I'm wondering is, after we leave, who is this overwhelmingly Muslim nation going to elect? Nevermind, I'm just being silly. I'm sure it'll be someone who loves America. Anyway, if it's not someone we like we can always liberate them again.
February 02, 2003
Blogger.com Hell
Well, spent a couple of hours attempting to get my blog archived thru blogger.com's interface only to discover that numerous things are broken. Can't archive my old entries, I can't add new users to my team, and their discussion boards generate weird, internal XML Error loading errors ("A string literal was expected, but no opening quote character was found. at line 27, character 26"). I'm hoping this just means a server at blogger melted down and it'll get fixed monday once someone comes into the office and notices all the smoke.
January 15, 2003
Forever minus a day
The Supreme Court has upheld the Sonny Bono Law. See it on slashdot.org. I'm off to buy a new CPU. I like to think of it as an "upgrade." I'll call AMD later and see if they'll replace the exploded CPU.
January 10, 2003
Triumph of the Low Bidder
Some days you wake up knowing exactly what you have to do that day and then proceed to be amazingly productive. Other days you wake up thinking about all you need to get done, then you spend a lot of time worrying about which you should do first, then you realize you're not getting anything done, and then you worry about that a while. I was having the latter sort of a day. Then something happens that you didn't expect and you have to deal with that first. I'm now having that sort of day now.
Why fix it right once when you can do a half-assed job over and over and over? A month or two ago my apartment's roof sprung a slow leak. I called the apartment manager and eventually someone came to take a look at it right around the time it became a not-so-slow leak a week or two later. They opened up the wall and saw water dripping from the apartment above. They couldn't tell where it was really coming from so they caulked the bathtub in the apartment above, the leak seemed to stop, it didn't happen again for another couple of days so it was fixed! Apparently not. I left the apartment for about an hour and a half today and come home to a not-so-slow drip coming down on top of my bookcase.
I call the apartment manager again and tell him the problem is back. Later he calls me back and says he's got someone to coming to look at it on Monday (it's Friday today). Happily I convinced him that because it is still dripping that this might need looking into before three days from now. So now all I can do is wait and hope the repair guy shows up today, and is being paid enough to motivate him to actually fix the problem right this time. As I wait, I figure out how much this has cost me in ruined books now. My first estimate is 5 or 6 completely ruined books plus another 4 to 5 semi-ruined books. Total cost to me (since I assume the apartment isn't going to reimburse me) I estimate to be about $200 to $250. But think of how much Woodmont Apartments saved by not spending a lot of time fixing the problem in the first place.