Archive for April, 2008

• Insane prices? Totally our fault.

  Date: 2008.04.29 | Category: ahh the news | Response: 0

  In an influential 1932 essay, Lionel Robbins defined economics as “the science which studies human behavior as a relationship between ends and scarce means which have alternative uses.” (from Wikipedia)

  I read a fascinating article about our current economic “woes” and it turns out fear is more of a factor than short supply. Simply because we desire them more they become more “scarce” causing the price to rise exponentially.

  Congress and the White House have tried to help out our economy by giving creating an economic stimulus package that should hit most of our bank accounts within the next week. This was hardly the correct solution as our problems were created, in part at least,.by an economy that went from a traditional supply and demand model to one of scarcity. There has been quite a bit of fighting between the parties and the branches in an attempt to play the blame game. This year is charged with politics and I can see both sides using any fodder available to put their party into a more favorable light.

  Gas prices have risen greatly in the past year because we have placed an increasing amount of desire for the fuel to keep our lives normal. We have placed a priority on fuel and as such we’ve seen the prices rise through the roof. Supply has dropped by a small amount but speculation has lead to dramatic price increases. I wrote about somebody talking about the futures market a few months ago talking about the rising price of oil – he couldn’t see the logic in the market. I don’t think there was any logic – we’re seeing a market that is being driven by fear. Fear is anything but rational. It is a reactionary impulse that causes us to hoard and make quick judgments. We fail to completely think through the problem.

  The media fails to help our situation as they feed us with line after line of diatribe causing us to grow increasingly more paranoid about the situation. Its a shame that there little wrong to begin with. A state news organization is not the correct direction to head but we should ask more from the media. Sure, they’re in a business and they’re going to try and drive a profitable and addictive story that will keep readers and listeners coming back, but, they’ve got to show a little more responsibility.

  Yes, there are more factors involved than a scarcity economy and yes – this is part socialism and economics but its probably the root of current ill. It’s a shame there isn’t much we can do about it.

  
  
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• I did it? Really? I guess so!

  Date: 2008.04.27 | Category: Life as we know it | Response: 0

  I’ve been on a quest – a quest to regain some of my youth. In particular, I’ve been trying to get rid of weight that I shouldn’t have been carrying around in the first place. When I left the states I was carrying 195lbs on my 5’11 frame. To put that in terms of a BMI I was a whopping 27.2 – I was overweight – and I wasn’t far from what they consider obese. Today I am a svelte 165lbs and with a “normal” BMI of 23. I haven’t been at this weight since I was 20 (I’m almost 27)

  The last five pounds went when I gave up one more thing. I gave up Gatorade. Sure, Gatorade tastes great (I swear to god they aren’t paying me for this) and it replaces lost salt but it has calories. Each bottle contained something like 230 calories – I was going through two of them a day. I ended up drinking another bottle or two of water – a drink that is devoid of calories.

  I’m not sure what I’m going to do when I go home. I know that if I go back to my old habits I’m going to have to work three times as hard to stay at this weight. I had a soda a few weeks ago and I thought I was going to go into sugar shock – maybe, just maybe, I can figure out moderation. I’ve been able to do it with my meals and I have been able to cut out snacks – snacks are simply food that I really don’t need. I allow myself something sweet (cookies or ice cream) about three times a week and I’ve found that watching the portion size has really helped me reach my goal. Gone are the days when I use the “shovel” method to crap heaping mounds of ice cream into a bowl. I always felt ill after eating that much – I think that I’ve finally figured out how to listen to the signals my body is sending me.

  If I can do it, you can do it. Its going to be hard and you’ve got to manage your portion sizes and get to the gym. Sure, you can try diet alone but your progress is going to crawl at a snails pace.

• Fish heads fish heads?

  Date: 2008.04.24 | Category: videos | Response: 1

  Someone played this last night and I laughed the entire time. The lyrics are absolutely absurd and completely off the wall – its my kind of humor. Watch, enjoy, and be prepared to have this song stuck in your head for the next week – kinda like those damn unicorns at candy mountain – I’ll never forgive you for ruining my ears with that schlock.

• 180 degrees

  Date: 2008.04.24 | Category: Life as we know it, desert | Response: 0

  I’ve been having a difficult time dealing with other people during my last few weeks here. My behavior to their actions remains the same but I have been unable to contain my frustration lately. Yesterday I drug a 6500 pound trailer 200 yards – by myself. I probably could have pulled it a half a mile because I was getting a little bit cranked.

  Whats my problem with him? He is using the “buddy” system, he is lazy, he loves to brown nose, and he spends most of his time trying to look important while doing nothing at all. As you can imagine, it can get on your nerves. I just want to go down to the building, do the work required, and come back.

  He wants to hang out with his buddies and play cards. While he is playing cards I get to do the work – he isn’t moving from his chair. When new people show up he is all “show” – when superiors show up he is also all “show”. Frankly, I’m tired of it and look forward to not working with this individual again.

  When I’m not at work I’m a happy care free guy – well, as long as the power is working. Its almost like a 180 degree difference. Its not a 108 degree difference, but, it was that warm outside today. Yes, I say warm because the worst is yet to come. Sorry for the tangent – my mind is wandering. Making this person change their habits is probably impossible because the other guy that outranks me has the same problem. We’re fighting the valiant fight and neither of us are winning. Most people can blow off their steam – I just need to blow off some energy. I could also spend time away from work – and it seems all better. Its a shame I have to go back – oh well, only 9 more days turning wrenches.

• An alternate theory on gas prices?

  Date: 2008.04.23 | Category: ahh the news | Response: 0

  I found another interesting article on high gas prices written by a PhD candidate in Economics saying that gas prices are right where they should be. The falling dollar surely doesn’t help but he may be right – then again – I don’t trust much of anything found on the internet without seeing raw figures. Here’s an excerpt

  But taxes have not stayed the same. The tax per gallon of gas in 1950 was roughly 1.5% of the price. Today, federal, state, and local taxes account for approximately 20% of gas’s posted price. Taking inflation and the increase in taxes into account (assuming no change in supply or demand) the same gallon of gas that cost 30 cents in 1950 should today cost about $3.13.

  Read the rest here

• Savage Chickens

  Date: 2008.04.23 | Category: links! | Response: 0

  I found yet another amusing comic on the internet yesterday – here is an example
  

  
  

  You can find many more at Savage Chickens

  If you’ve got too many random web pages in your rotation an easy way to keep them organized is with an RSS reader – a free one is available at Google. If you wanted – you could add my RSS feed. Included is a daily list of everything that I’ve found interesting on Digg – the list is exclusive to my RSS feed.

• Work, life, oil, the environment, and the economy

  Date: 2008.04.20 | Category: ahh the news, links! | Response: 0

  If you’ve been paying attention – we’re paying more for many of the things that we use daily. The rising cost of oil impacts the cost of transportation, consumer goods, and food. Companies are trying to cut costs wherever possible while trying to retain the most talented and hardworking individuals. Some would blame the war for our economy that is in a downturn. Everything is linked – I read a few articles and found myself hitting CTRL-B five times and I thought it was worth sharing. Each is tied to the other; lets hope that I can explain what I mean.

  According to recent polls many Americans have stated that they have felt that it has been much harder to “get ahead.” Our standards of “ahead” have changed since the days when my father was growing up in the 60′s. I’m going to guess that getting an education, having shelter, a good family life, and something (anything except mustard greens) to eat. Times were tough but if you were to persevere you could make a better life for the next generation and hopefully yourself in the process. Now we demand consumer goods as a measure of how well we are doing. Measures of American success include an car (or two), a house, high speed internet, and cable TV. Without these things many believe that they are failing in the race to get ahead. We’re demanding more than ever while overlooking the basics. I’m going to go out on a limb but maybe we should be looking for a little less – check out the full text at the Washington Post.

  Some who claim they are having trouble would point the finger at the ever rising costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the increasing price of gasoline. While the cost of the war far exceeds most if not all of the original estimates we’ve paid for most of it with credit. Its been added to our national debt and will probably remain for years to come – the price of oil is increasing rapidly due to increased consumption in America and in south east Asia in places like China and India. Companies outside of OPEC control have made few if any significant discoveries in recent years. It takes a considerable amount of time to find a sizable cache of carbon deposits, negotiate drilling rights, and remove them for refining and delivery. Simply put, even if there are reserves available we may not find them before demand outstrips supply. We have plenty of oil to last for the next 20 years but there has been rampant speculation of what will happen if consumption continues to increase at the current rates. If we cannot find additional reserves we might have a problem – we might find ourselves in a global energy crisis. (I hate the word crisis because I feel as if I am on a cable news network where EVERYTHING is a crisis). The futures market has seen this and that is why we are experiencing the recent increase in oil prices – sure – they could have seen this years ago but its happening now. I wonder if they took off their rose colored glasses at some point in the last two years and saw the error of their ways – the end result of their revelation is that we’re paying for it.

  We can do our part to consume less but its going to take a concentrated effort. If we were to determine car insurance premiums based upon the number of miles that we drive we could leverage our savings against those who drive everywhere. They would be forced to consume less simply because they would be unable to afford all of the driving. Enacting immediate changes in MPG requirements and subsidizing companies that reduce consumption while taxing those that use heavily could help. The economic impact of such a decision can hardly be measured by me, but, it’s on the table.

  Everything is tied together – change is going to impact our ability to “get by” and may impact our quality of life. We cannot continue to increase consumption at current rates or we are going to see a bubble – a big bubble – and only the those with the most resources in the end will be able to survive.

• Fighting the spam

  Date: 2008.04.20 | Category: Series of tubes | Response: 1

  We all fight spam in one form or another be it snail mail, email, or comment spam. I’ve done a fairly good job at blocking out the email spam but and I can readily ignore the snail mail by throwing it in the trash. I haven’t had good luck blocking out the comment spam.

  Spammers will leave me random comments full of links to websites full of porn and prescription medication advertisements in an effort to increase their Google page rank. The spam filter catches 99% of them and leaves them for me to moderate. I have to dig through the comments in hope that there is something that isn’t spam – there seldom is.

  I noticed a new plug-in for my blog YAWASP (Yet Another WordPress Anti Spam Plug-in) that alters the comment field so that bots cannot easily access it and leave comments. Hopefully it works – only time will tell. It should be absolutely invisible to you but its going to help me out immensely. I’ll be able to see that I have no new comments from one day to the next. Oh well

• Oh the boredom!

  Date: 2008.04.19 | Category: Life as we know it, ahh the news | Response: 0

  To save you some of your valuable time I’ll paraphrase – I’m incredibly bored. The rest of this post will consist solely of me griping about it. Ok, get on your bike and go on your way.

  I rely on work to make me feel happy. When we have weather that keeps the planes grounded, as we have the last few days, there is little work to keep me occupied. As a result, I am no longer a happy camper. On a normal day people see me as a grumpy, cynical, curmudgeon. On a day that is filled with work they see me as a cynical wise ass. Last night I spent a few hours re-parking trailers – oh the joys! Most people have not had the opportunity of backing a trailer and if they do score a chance it probably does not have any steering system (campers, semi trailers etc). These are incredibly easy to park – incredibly easy. I could park one right up your… fill in the blank. We fight a different beast because we park trailers with a front steering system – much like the wagon that was always hooked to the tractor when I was a kid. They are extremely heavy and often need to be parked in gravel – deep gravel. This can make the job quite interesting. If you don’t get enough speed you’re bound to get bogged down and all progress will stop. We used to have a 4 wheel drive tug but its been out of commission for a while so we’ve been stuck with the real wheel drive model – it doesn’t help me finish my quest. Moving trailers has been the highlight of my night. The rest of the time I sat around looking for something to do – I’m not in a reading mood and the internet has lost all of its luster.

  If we were killing more terrorists/insurgents/whatever the pentagon calls them I would be much happier – solely because I would have something that would occupy my time. Writing this utterly pointless blog post gave me something to do for five minutes – and for that I am grateful. Unfortunately, my creativity is at a low at the moment so you’re only going to get a drawn out version of I’m bored

  I hope that cured your boredom for 26 seconds – if not – welcome to the club

• Photos of Iraq – well, only a small part of it

  Date: 2008.04.17 | Category: Life as we know it, desert, photos | Response: 0

  I took a few photos of the main office before I got on the bus to head home a few days ago. In stark contrast to the night – we have sunlight – just want to make sure you all know that we have the sun over here too. I only see the sun for a few hours a day but I prefer it that way – I sweat less when I avoid the sun. Wow – the sarcasm is unbridled today -

  admin edit – photos removed

  If you want to check out all of the Iraq photos – I’ve added a few more recently -