Snowstorms that dump two or three feet of snow overnight, and the Friday after Thanksgiving, are why I stock up on supplies for the Winter.  There are days when you just don’t want to set foot outside, let alone drive anywhere.

It’s…cold…in Baltimore…in November…   Uck…

I was at a local Office Max the other day looking for a few household office supplies, when I noticed that the cordless phone set I bought with my credit card "bonus points", that sold for ninety bucks at Costco, was selling for one-hundred and forty there.  Wow.  And I hadn’t had to shell out anything to buy them.  Well…other then the fraction of a cent extra my credit card company is adding to every dollar of charge I put on the card to support the bonus point plan that is.

I’d come there looking for Dymo Label Maker tape…the old plastic stuff in various colors with an adhesive backing.  I actually have several rolls of the stuff here, that I’d bought cheap in the 1970s, that I was hoping to use for…I dunno…the rest of my life maybe.  But it turns out the adhesive degrades over time I guess, because the labels won’t stick to anything anymore.  So I went out to buy some new and discovered of course that my 1970s label technology is so…1970s.  Now it’s all some sort of electric imprinted tape stuff.  Bleh.  I like my colored plastic labels.  But Office Max wasn’t selling that stuff anymore.  I think I can order it online though.

I picked up some other things on my list and walked to the cashier and that was when I noticed how low budget things were getting in that store.  The sales isles were nicely stocked and well kept, but the front of the store by the registers looked desolate, and the employees manning them ragged and depressed.  Boxes of returned or damaged goods were scattered around, inventory was haphazardly tossed here and there.  There was only one person manning a checkout line that was pretty long, and the other employees you could see were all wandering around indifferently with other chores, completely ignoring the long line.  The store had maybe three-fourths the staff it should have had to keep things running smoothly and the ones that were there were all simply overworked and you could tell that beyond the breaking point was their normal day. When a person is depressed, you see it in their disheveled clothes and you see it in their disheveled faces.  I’ve seen this before in other retail stores that were on the verge of going belly up.

It’s a vicious circle that starts when management decides to treat its workers like they’re just another expense they can cut to the bone.  I’ve worked in retail and it’s hard work for low wages as it is.  Time was though, back when I was a kid and labor still had some clout in this country, that service workers could at least make a living wage.  Maybe not the greatest of one, but at least you could get by.  A small apartment, a cheap second hand car maybe.  A forty hour work week could get you a basic living, and if you wanted more you could take night courses.  At least you had enough free time to recover from your week before you had to get back to the grind.  Nowadays that’s nearly impossible on a service wage.  My mother raised me on the wages of a basic clerical job and what impresses me about that looking back was that was in a time when the glass ceiling ruled and women made only a fraction of what men did for the same work. 

But that was pre-Reagan America.  There is simply no way mom could have made a home for us doing that kind of work today.  Service workers are hurting bad, and the result is you walk into a store or office and the atmosphere reeks of despair.  How management expects to attract and hold on to customers in that kind of environment is beyond me, other then the obvious fact that they’re morons who should be the first ones out the door when layoffs…excuse me…Downsizing…happens. 

I do a lot of bulk shopping at Costco, and one thing you notice about them is their people are not just busy but Engaged with it.  I never feel like I’m walking through someone’s eviction pile when I shop there, unlike say the Office Max I was just at.  Costco isn’t Bloomingdale’s, its isles are sometimes cluttered and it does have long lines but that’s because they have lots of customers who buy tons of stuff.  It’s actually pleasant shopping there.  Costco tries hard to pay a living wage to its people.  And Wall Street is constantly bellyaching about it.  I read one jackass investment columnist who said that Costco treats its employees better then its investors.  But Costco makes money and that’s better then Wall Street can say about itself these days. 

I was just reading the Mercedes World forum and saw this…

From hidden engineering manu, command HD has 4 partations and SW update option. Head unit is from MELCO which is same manufacture as Mitsubishi MMCS head unit and same CPU.

Interesting find that OS is Windows CE and we may have software patch for VIM in future. 

Windows CE?   Windows CE??  My Mercedes-Benz Nav/Phone/Stereo system is running Windows CE???   Oh…great… 

So this spam email arrives in my personal (not my work…there’s pretty good about blocking spam here at work) mailbox.  Gain Inches The Easy Way…reads the subject line.  Ah-ha…thinks I…of course it’s easy.  Just stuff your face with cookies all day long and you’ll gain lots of inches.  Er…around the waste.  That’s what you meant…right???

Ever notice how much spam is targeted at male sexuality?  Never mind the porn ads…just look at all the ads for bootleg Viagra, among other things.  Either spammers think the entire world is gay (and that gay men like straight male pornography too) or they’re targeting all this to a mostly straight audience.  Yet we gay men are the ones who are obsessed with sex, and have like, thousands of sexual partners every night or something…

Via Benz Insider… Yes. I know. Mercedes sedans are owned by senile old rich guys. With trophy wives no less…

I’m really not sure who Audi is trying to sell their cars to here, but I’m guessing it’s people who don’t already own a BMW, Mercedes or Lexus. I have to say though…the two girls in the back of that Lexus SUV do the best Wednesday Adams since Christina Ricci in the Adams Family movie. That Lexus family should get its own show. The Adams Family, only instead of everyone being disturbed the same way, everyone is disturbed in their own special way.

As for the old guy in the Mercedes…look…I’ll gladly endure senility, if the ‘S’ class, the mansion, a hot young guy and a good cigar go with it. Was all that supposed to be a disincentive?

I don’t think I’ve ever seen the sky over Maryland open up like it did just now.  For a moment it felt like a waterfall had perched over Casa del Garrett.  I’ve never heard rain pound my roof like it did just now.  And half the sky is bright with sunshine.

I was laying in bed…my energy levels have been really weak lately…and I heard what I thought was hail smacking down on my aluminum window awnings.  I rolled over and looked out and it wasn’t hail but those big fat raindrops that sometimes portend a sudden tropical downpour.  Lots of them.  And sure enough, what followed was a torrent of rain.  No kidding…my neighborhood street had almost dried out from the past couple days of rain, rain, rain, and in under a minute it was soaked again with a fast moving stream of water rushing toward the Jones Falls creek bed.  Then it stopped. 

The sky to my east is dark as slate.  To my west it’s all sun-shiny.  Everything is soaked again.  My poor front yard is a swamp.  I’d been thinking about a certain someone who lives in Florida when I laid down and then I suddenly get a downpour that reminds me of the weather down there.  I wish I could believe in that omen.  But here’s what my logical analytical brain is telling me: If this is going to be a wet winter, better hope it’s a warm one or I could be digging out of three or four feet of snow every few weeks. 

Every November I make a point to stock my basement supply shelves with things to last me through the winter so I don’t have to be going to the store all the time when the weather’s bad, and especially when it snows, because the people here in Maryland just dogpile on the stores whenever the forecast so much as breaths the word ‘snow’.  I buy my entire November through March supply of non-perisable items and pick through it until winter goes away.  I also make sure I have plenty of things on hand like batteries and over the counter remedies, soaps and cleaners and things for doing ad-hoc repairs.  I’m not a survivalist, I just hate going outside when the streets are all snowed up and iced over, and everyone is dog piling on the stores because ohmygodit’sgoingtosnoweekeekeek…  Winter is what bulk warehouse shopping was made for.

Oh look…the sun is out again…daring me to go for a walk…

So I check the weather before heading off to bed, and see that a tropical storm may form right off the Carolina coast and be blasting Baltimore tomorrow and Friday with high winds and rain.  Wait…what..???

Damn.  I thought these things were supposed to form in the tropics and then get a name or something before they bounce up the east coast…

Gold went up from around $783 to $862 today.  Maybe I should hold on to my gold after all.  I was going to sell it to pay off some debt.  Maybe right now is not the time…

"A Brabus Maybach," he said, as she turned her head in time to see him give the wheel a little pat. "The firm of Brabus extensively tweaks the product of Maybach, to produce one of these."
-From chapter 17 of Spook Country by William Gibson

I must go buy this book…

So it looks like tropical storm Fay might become a roaring hurricane before it makes landfall.  The Florida Keys and Orlando, both of which occupy fond places in my heart for various reasons, are in its path.  So I’m keeping an eye on it.  Her.  It.  Whatever.

You know…they need to stop giving these dangerous things cutesy names.  Instead of Fay, how about Insane Clown, or Babbling Homeless Man With An Axe, or Drunken Train Engineer or Laughing Pit Bull or Flying Anvil Swarm…

via The Local…

Germany wants limits for uranium levels in drinking water

The German Health Ministry is reportedly preparing to establish maximum levels for uranium in drinking water after a study found the radioactive material in water supplies throughout the country.

How about zero?  Geeze… 

So I’m in Portland for the fifth year in a row at the OSCON Open Source Developer’s Conference.  And as in prior years, the Institute has put me up in the DoubleTree just a couple blocks away from the convention center.   That’s do-able largely because of the deep discount the hotel gives to OSCON convention attendees. 

The rooms I’ve had have ranged widely from the small to the large.  Last year they put me in a really nice deluxe room.  This year it’s one of their smallest.  What’s going on I found out, is that the hotel basically fills in the blanks with conference goers.  We get, at a very nice rate, whatever the hotel couldn’t book at the regular rate.  And I am not complaining.

DoubleTree beds are decadent.  I’ll reliably stay at a DoubleTree whenever I can afford it for the bed.  I get, hands down, the best sleep ever on these beds.  The chain has them custom made to their own specs, and you can actually buy one yourself.  Swear to god one of these days I will…but they are not cheap.

It’s not just the mattress and box springs, it’s a whole system including a cushioned mattress cover, box baffled down blankets and triple sheets plus lovely jumbo down pillows.  I was so looking forward to getting to my hotel after a long day’s flight, crammed into a tiny passenger jet seat, and lay down in one of these lovely beds.  It’s been two nights of heaven so far.

One thing you tend to forget about when you take a yearly cross-country road trip is jet lag.

(It’s What time???)

As it turns out, turbulence while taking off is even more nerve wracking then turbulence while landing.

(Safely in Portland)