Old Computer Blues

Old computers die, they don't just fade away, and if they don't demand constant attention on the way out their replacement requires tender loving care before they are ready to step up and do their job. My six year old desktop, Asmodeus, has been plagued by random crashes for several years. I sacrificed to it's appetite for components by installing a new video card and power supply at a cost of over $100 each before deciding it was never going to be reliable long term again. Which of course means replacement.

I believe that Microsoft and computer manufacturers conspire to make the replacement of a computer only slightly less stressful than water boarding. Having been in IT for the last 30 years I have always backed up my computers obsessively. Not only to external hard drives, but by cloning to a second HD in the computer itself. Now Asmodeus refuses to run consistently even on the clone so replacement is the only option. The problem is that you can only back up your data files. All your applications and peripheral hardware have to be reinstalled.

Find all those DVDs and CDs with software you bought. Find the ones with your printer/scanner/midi and other drivers. Now sit in front of the new computer for hours babysitting the installs. Oops here's one that won't register because you already have it on the old machine - Oh boy! Now you get to sit on hold while you wait for customer support to grill you like a criminal. Finally got all that software installed and now you get to try to install the software that you originally installed by way of downloads. Now where did I put the product keys for those? Inevitably there are some you pay for a second time because you can't find the keys and have to have them. Computer roulette = trying to guess which program won't run on the version of Windows® on the new machine because you can't buy a machine with the old version any longer.

Bottom line it usually takes me the better part of a week to get the new machine up and running. Worse, it make take months before I realize I overlooked something that I use infrequently but is essential. Do I have really have to say that this sucks like a lamprey? It's my belief that the source of this periodic frustration is Windows' registry. This was a bad idea 30 years ago and as operating systems and programs get more complicated it is a worse idea. When you buy a new computer you should be able to transfer data, programs, drivers and settings in a single operation. Come on Microsoft, its time for a no more tears OS!

ISPs, Phone Companies, and Service calls, oh My!

The Rantmaster’s castle has experienced a bumpy road of late. Things are breaking down faster than I can even call for help. Before itemizing the list of crises for your entertainment I’d like to spin a tale of technical support buffoonery served up by my phone company / internet service provider. I won’t name the company but it rhymes with “sensory stink”. For the last two months my DSL (I know – but that’s all that is available in my area) has been dropping connection at varying intervals, sometimes several times a day. The tech support line was called on three occasions. Credit where it is due, I never had to wait long for a pseudo tech (script reader) but the heavily accented ladies were unable to connect the symptoms I described to a solution. In the hopes of a fix the old hot head held his temper through some very trying conversations none of which produced any results. Finally I resorted to the internet chat support option which I had to do from work since – catch22 – I couldn’t from home because of the bad connection problem. This tech was much more knowledgeable and was able, from my description of the problem, to tell me that they would have to send a service tech out to solve it. I was told, and soon received a confirming email, that a service tech would show up the next day “between 1:00 and 5:00”.

I’m sure that you can see where this is going. There is nothing more frustrating than this type of service appointment. Essentially you are being told that “we really don’t give a damn that you have to work in order to pay for our services, we expect you to give up half a day to wait for a service call that may or may not happen in a timely manner.” But over the barrel I was. So I went home at noon to wait. At 3:00 I clicked on a link in my confirmation letter to see what the service schedule looked like. (I had learned that I could get a reliable internet connection if I took a phone off the hook.) The schedule said that a tech would arrive between 5:43 and 7:00. And that was the point where my patience ran out. I called tech support to confirm this and the heavily accented lady informed me that yes, the service call was now scheduled for after 5:43 PM. The next 30 minutes was an exercise in rantsmanship. I prefaced it by saying I understood that the lady had no control over this but since SensoryStink had no phone, address, or email available to express my displeasure, she was going to hear it and she could pass it on to her superiors. I won’t elaborate, but at the end of my diatribe – vivid and intense but free of profanity - I’m sure that the message was received that I considered the company’s service policies to be the equivalent of the throughput of a male bovine. She, of course indicated that she “understood” and that there was nothing she could do. I complimented her on her unfailing politeness in the face of raw anger and hung up.

Twenty minutes later the service tech showed up, spent 30 minutes at my house, installed a new modem and charged me nothing.

Now I don’t want to suggest that flying off the handle like Peter Finch in Network had anything to do with this outcome, but the service came suspiciously fast. So thanks to whatever got this accomplished. Problem fixed after only four phone calls, one internet chat and one service call. Should this make me happy? I am somewhat perplexed.

Now on to other concerns. The recent cascade of problems started with the cord in a drapery rod breaking. Not earth shaking, but it took a month to get cord and find resources to figure out how to make the repair. Meanwhile we have a blizzard, fight an ice dam leaking into our three seasons room, desktop computer’s on/off switch on starts functioning only intermittently, kitchen stove oven starts turning on spontaneously due to faulty repair part supplied by Sears service, garage door opener chain jumps track leading to cracking my head on the malfunctioning door, slow leak develops in tire, squirrels chew bulbs off outdoor Christmas lights, orchestra rehearsals reach new heights of frustration, doofusses at work continue to prove their doofusity daily and it’s winter! My friends and associates are heard repeating the phrase “don’t poke the bear”. Color me cranky.

No Freebies!!

My wife and I play in a woodwind quintet that we founded and that has been in existence for 12 years. The members are all musicians of exceptional talent and abilities. Here in Pig's Rectum USA demand for live chamber music is limited, but we do eke out a few paying gigs each year and visit nursing homes and hospices gratis. Our repertoire is large enough that we can play for four hours without repetition (add an additional two hours for Christmas specific music). Our quality is such that during the Christmas season one large upscale national department store hires us year after year as the ONLY group that they pay to provide atmosphere. Our training and experience is collectively in excess of 200 years.

Nevertheless, we constantly receive requests to play for free. I think that I have mentioned elsewhere that one of my wise teachers advised me “never play for free, people will think that is what you are worth”. These requests always mention that this would be “good exposure for the group”. At my age I have had decades of exposure! When does it start to pay off? Would anyone have the gall to call up a plumber and say “Our pipes are clogged up and we need your services. We can’t pay you but it will be good exposure.”? The very concept is ludicrous. Yet people who make these requests can get very bent out of shape when you refuse to provide free entertainment.

The worst part is that most of these requests come from large non-profit organizations who are throwing a huge fund raising banquet or similar bash. The money expended on venue, food, decorations speakers fees, etc. etc. etc. must run into many thousands of dollars, yet $250 for live music? Can’t be done. It would be a different matter if the organization in question had previously established some kind of relationship with the group they approach, but it is as if they pull names out of a hat. “Hey this is Jenny with Millionaires for Muskrats and we’re throwing a gala. We’d like for you to provide about an hour of background music during the banquet. You’d be expected to donate your services of course.” Of course? Why of course? Is it so universal that musicians are considered to be all but orgasming over the possibility of an hour of unfunded labor that it is just assumed that requests for free services are taken for granted? I’ll have to try this at the local bar. “Hey I’m Rich with Donuts for Dachshunds, I’d like for you to provide me with a keg of Heineken’s finest. You’ll be expected to donate this item of course.” I doubt if I’d even have time to see the bouncer coming.

Cell Phone Tyranny

I have consistently resisted the societal pressure to turn my entire telephone experience over to the not so tender mercies of the cell phone industry. My wife and I both have cheap pay as you go cell phones that we only use when we are either on the road or in case of emergency. The cost of both is around $18 a month and we have more minutes stored up than we will probably ever use.

I have a many reasons for this stance. I do not wish to become assimilated and like the Borg have this device seemingly grafted to my head as I see so many of my fellow humans have. I do not want the temptation to be “that guy” that I hurl obscenities at while he endangers my life as well as his weaving back and forth in traffic while he tries to both drive and engage in inane conversation. I absolutely refuse to even contemplate engaging in “texting”, a pursuit which – if random samples I have seen are any indication – has been invented in order to give the mentally challenged some means, however primitive, of communication. I long for the days when phones were used for the purposes of communication and not as a pacifier substitute.

Currently phone jammers are illegal in the United States. In spite of that I am mightily tempted to order one from Europe. Jamming phones might be the only way to return some people to consciousness. How about the mindless twit shouting into her cell phone on the elevator? I’m so thankful that your friend’s cystoscopy went well; or the 400 pounder blocking the aisle at the supermarket while regaling others with instructions to the kids on how to clean up the dog poo; and the self important blow hard that absolutely has to “take this call” in the middle of a business meeting and lets his co-workers hear the details of his offspring’s stomach virus. Right now phone jammers simply cause phones to lose the current call and prevent outgoing connections. I’m waiting for a model that not only jams the call but emits an eardrum shattering shriek. I want to make these dolts think twice before returning the phone to their head. Any rogue techy who wants to cobble a jammer like this together in their basement will have me in line for delivery.

Just out of curiosity, what is it that makes people think that they have to shout to be heard on a cell phone? I can hear your end of the conversation from fifteen feet away. It reminds me of the movies where the rural phone of the thirties is shown, the mouthpiece jutting from a box on the wall and the earpiece on a cord held to the ear with a character hollering “Gertie! Can ya hear me Gertie?!” Presumably the user doesn’t entirely trust the technology and hopes that somehow the soundwaves they are emitting can make it to the listener’s ear on their own. I don’t think that the cell phone provider commercials with the guy saying “Can you hear me now?” have helped this situation.

Finally, the cell phone providers do it to you without either a dinner or a kiss. A friend has a cell phone from a well known national provider that rhymes with horizon. Stuffed with too much hot technology, the phone’s touch screen stopped working. Company rep says: a) this is a known issue, b) phone is over a year old so no warranty, c) contract only allows discounted phone purchase every 20 months – so you can either pay full price for a new phone or I’ll sell you a used one (very likely to develop the same problem). What’s wrong with this picture? You’re locked into a contract with these thieves, your phone develops a “known issue” (translation: we bought a bad batch of phones) and the company tells you your only recourse to have a usable phone for the remainder of your contract is to buy a new phone at full price or take your chances with a used one. And I thought extortion was illegal.

Cell phones – feh!

Lawn Mowers - Spawn of Satan

When I was quite young, perhaps between 6 and 9 years old I was sometimes permitted(!) to mow my grandparents' yard using the only implement then available, the rotary push mower. For those who are too young to have first hand knowledge, these implements of destruction were heavy appliances equipped with a rotor on which were mounted from four to six blades which spun and mangled grass when enough forward propulsion was supplied by means of human muscle being applied to the wooden handle. Pushing one of these with enough force to both make it progress in a forward direction as well as spin the rotor took every bit of effort a young lad could muster. Frequently while straining over this contraption I wished for something better, something more modern. Sometimes we are cursed by getting what we wish for.

My family's first power mower was a gold colored Lawn Boy which my father pushed home proudly from the dealer who lived only two blocks from our house. Glittering in the sun it promised adventures in lawn care hitherto undreamed of by boys previously indentured to creaking rotary antiques. Alas, it was not to be. Although that first day the shining new Lawn Boy started on the very first pull it was to be the last time for such compliance, thus foreshadowing a lifetime of combat to come. I made the trip to the dealer's garage many times over the next few years where he would disappear with the Lawn Boy into his shop. Usually after about 20 minutes of clanking and swearing I would hear the machine cough to life and be sent home to mow. Eventually it got to the point where he would bring the mower out to me still running and tell me that I should probably not shut it down if I wanted to get any mowing done that day. I became a familiar figure in the street trudging the two blocks to my house with the mower merrily roaring away. This led to many a taunt from passing cars of teenagers about how well I was keeping the grass down on the blacktop. In my youthful innocence I would think "someday I will have a mower of my own and it will be a good one." Ah, the foolish dreams of youth.

Now many many years later I have owned many many mowers. I have also owned and used many other gas powered tools - chain saws, weed whackers, snow blowers, stump grinders, sod cutters, and lawn aerators to name a few. Based on this record of experience my conclusion is that the lawn mower industry's goal is to screw the customer hard and long. Maintain your chainsaw properly and it will give you years of willing service. Follow the manufacturers advice and your snow blower will get you out of your driveway with great reliability. But no matter what you do, no matter how diligently you pamper and service your lawn mower, it will fail time and again and at the worst possible moment. And it does no good to insist that you get what you pay for as, over the years, I have come to such a white hot hatred of lawn mowers that money is no object if I could obtain one that was reliable. Starting with budget K-mart mowers and progressing over the years through Craftsman riders and pushers to the current state of the art Snapper, no matter what you pay, no matter what the sales literature insists, lawn mowers are designed to move heavy, unwieldy chunks of metal as quickly as possible from the dealer showroom to the city dump.

Mower manufacturers are devishly clever in devising ways for mowers to fail. First it goes without saying that the day you bring the mower home will be the last time the mower starts as advertised. During the life of any mower arcane rituals requiring priming, pulling, cursing, and procedures from the sacred texts known as owners' manuals will be necessary to bring the machine to life. During my own long history I have had mowers defeat my efforts to start them in a variety of ways; starter rope breaking, starter recoil spring breaking, engine seizing, magneto failure, fuel line obstruction etc. Mowers that have any part of their mechanism driven by belts will slip the belts and/or tear the belt to shreds at least once annually and frequently more often. Self propelled mowers will throw belts, break c rings, jam, throw bearings or become clogged with debris. Any part of the mower that is expendable needing periodic replacement will be hidden behind shields and proprietary fasteners and will be so inaccessible that special tools and dental mirrors will be needed to effect a replacement.

My latest demonic entity is a top of the line Snapper self propelled mower less than three years old bought at daunting expense. I thought that Snapper, having fended off the attempt by Wal-Mart to absorb it and being built in the United States, deserved my patronage after the latest Craftsman's starter mechanism failed like a cheesecloth pup tent. In the showroom I mentioned my doubts about lack of either primer button or choke. "New technology." said the satanic minion attending us "It will start on the first pull everytime." And once more I believed and broke out my checkbook. It did start on the first pull. Once. Taken back to the "we service what we sell" folks they assured us there was nothing wrong with it and demonstrated starting on the first pull. Unbeknownst to me, it will start on the first pull once hot, but no power on earth will make it start when cold except yanking the rope at least a dozen times and then letting it sit for up to 20 minutes before trying again.

In the owner's manual I was warned that the oil must be changed after so many hours of use, so I attempted to change it. Of course the oil plug was concealed by the housing - but not to worry, the manual assured me that you could drain the oil through the filler spout by turning the mower upside down. Yes folks, I do possess a modicum of commmon sense, but there it was in the manual - turn it upside down and drain it through the filler spout. So I did. Huge mistake! Knowing what I know about the useful lifetime of a mower I would have been better off just to run it until the congealed, gritty old oil ruined the engine. After this fiasco it took two days of effort and supplication before it deigned to start again. Then, as soon as it started spewing huge clouds of oil smoke it broke a retaining clip on the self propelling mechanism and pushing it became a task for the World's Strongest Man competition. It's going to the shop tomorrow. Do I have high hopes? HA!

Housing Market Follies

I'm sure that there is no one left in the United States that doesn't know that the housing market is in the crapper and circling the drain. There is no doubt whatsoever that the largest part of this situation was created by greedy, near criminal, irresponsible banking institutions and other financial corporations trading obscure derivatives on wall street like bubble gum cards with about as much real worth.

However, there is another smaller yet integral part of the puzzle that makes it nearly impossible to sell a house even if you have an willing buyer. That part is eagerly supplied by incompetent realtors, title companies, bankers (there they are again - what a coincidence) and small time swindlers. This will be a tale of a hypothetical situation (hypothetical to avoid any implied information about actual people who might be involved in such an actual collosal FUBAR).

The story begins when the matriach and patriach of Midwesthappyfamily passed away. Midwesthappyfamily then embarked on a series of marathon weekends where members of the family visited from several remote locations to clean out the house and prepare it for the auction of its contents in preparation for the sale of the house itself. Now imagine how easy these transactions would be if the following desired events were to occur.

1) Auctioneer takes charge of auction preparations per instructions from family, house contents are sold and house is ready for sale.
2) Realtor lists house and performs duties regarding communications of offers, counter offers, needed documents, etc.
3) Offer accepted
4) Bank sets up appraisal- appraisal is made.
5) Decision to make loan is made. If decision is no, return to #2.
6) Loan is okayed - closing date is set.
7) Title company performs title search.
8) All documents finalized.
9) House ownership changes hands at closing.
10) Buyer and seller go away happy.

Now let's examine how in our hypothetical case things go wrong.

1) Instead of auctioneering all items auctioneer forgets who he is working for and cherry picks what he wants to auction. The rest he leaves in the house after thoroughly trashing it. He also disables water to the house after breaking the water line when removing the refrigerator. All members of the family are authorized to remove any articles from auction prior to sale date. Auctioneer tries to deny granddaughter access to items previously designated for her. After auction takes place family is left with a massive clean up job and disposal problem with items auctioneer couldn't be bothered with. Proceeds from auction disappear mopping up unethical auctioneer's leavings.
2) Realtor does list house. Tells family she has cash offer. Family accepts cash offer for house "as is". Oops! Realtor now says it is not a cash offer but there should be no problem with the loan. Closing date set.
3)Bank appraiser doesn't show up on time, closing date postponed. Weeks go by.
7)Title company can't get title search done on time, closing date postponed again.

Now buyer who has not had "as is" explained by realtor wants mold inspection and more cleaning done. Family declines. Realtor completely clueless and gives family false and conflicting information during this period. Finally family demands a firm closing date and buyer claims this is "too much pressure" and backs out.
So it's back to step 2.

To skip all the feverish phone calls and urgent emails from family to the realtor with the realtor whining that "I've never had trouble like this before" let's move ahead to the offer which finally culminated in a sale. Once this offer has been accepted, the house appraised and the loan approved a closing date is set and the realtor tells family "we have all the documents we need, everything is all set".

By now the family realizes that this statement means that there are going to be problems ahead and sure enough one week before closing each member of the family receives a packet of forms from the title company by email with an instruction list on which members need to sign which documents and which ones need to be notarized. The instructions are so incomprehensible that the family requests revised instructions that can be understood by normal human beings. A new set of instructions arrives the next day with instructions that totally contradict the first set. Requests for better instructions result in being told to call the office so "we can walk you through it." This produces an explosion from the family threatening to withhold commission from the realtor for non-performance. Finally this produces crystal clear instructions and the forms are returned from locations scattered all over the continent barely in time for closing.

Finally after three months of blunders, false starts and stupidity the sale closes.

The point of this rather lengthy tale is to ask - Why does it have to be this difficult? Of course corollaries to this question include "Why can't people just do what they get paid for?" and "Why is it so hard to keep incompetent people out of critical positions?" In this case our hypothetical family had a realtor that had to be told what to do and what was expected at every step in the process and who gave false information on numerous occasions, an auctioneer that was a borderline confidence man, appraisers that couldn't manage their work load, one title company that couldn't meet a deadline and one title company that had at least one employee that couldn't write comprehensible English. These aren't volunteers, these are people who get paid to do what they so egregiously fail to do in a satisfactory manner.

The American economy is going down for the third time, and these are the people and thousands like them standing firmly in the way of recovery. Lets let incompetents do hard manual labor and get some intelligence into the places that make capitalism actually work shall we?

Corporate Befuddlement

Today I am sitting in front of a computer screen doing nothing productive at time and a half.

Basically I am being paid to be the human equivalent of a Prozac tablet. Huge code rollout for the software I use last night and today testing is going on on the west coast which started at 4 AM PST and will go on until every possible scenario is tested. What no one has bothered to figure out is that testing every possible scenario would take days. Bear in mind that before this code rollout went live testing on a duplicate of the live environment went on for six weeks. So would common sense not dictate that testing on the live environment only be necessary for each component to be called and not every possible combination? Of course it would. So I think we can safely assume that there is no common sense at work in this particularly dysfunctional corporate world. As the day wears on and the zombificated testers work on into the night will anyone realize that six weeks of testing cannot be duplicated in a single weekend? I'm not holding my breath.

What makes this particularly galling is that I have had to postpone a holiday vacation with my extended family by one day so that I can come into the office and stare at the wall. My presence here is needed because the company I work for practices management by fear. Since they hire middle management not for their knowledge of the work that will be done by their employees but by their longevity and ability to avoid offending anyone higher up the ladder. Thus IT departments find themselves run by people with no knowledge of the technology used by the employees they manage. Consequently on a day like today people are called to sit in their cubes and rot "just in case". In other words because management is terrified someone will ask them a question they cannot answer. For instance "Hey why aren't the names fitting in the fields on the form?" Instead of being able to say "Because the server monkeys didn't load the correct fonts." management needs galley slaves tied to their benches who can spit out the answer. Note that this does not require the galley slave to actually haul on the oars (touch any code) it merely requires them to provide an statement that any moderately functional member of the department considers common knowledge.

The system works perfectly. Not only does the manager not have to know what's going on, the system of mandated overtime (a characteristic I have always considered as indicative of a sweat shop) insures that the manager will never have to learn it. Thus the presence of the code jockeys in the cubes allays the fear that a manager might be exposed as knowing nothing about their department.

I give you one guess as to which industry can afford to waste money in this manner.

Technology Fear

I work in an IT capacity for a large financial company. Specifically I write and troubleshoot software as well as training new developers using a proprietary programming language specifically designed for document production and maintenance . We've had this application in place for over six years during which time my department has gradually taken on documents for a variety of business units that formerly had their documents produced and maintained by third party vendors. When you produce many thousands of documents a month, having a third party vendor involved gets enormously expensive. One such vendor recently raised their price to one dollar a document. When a single business unit can easily generate in excess of 30,000 documents a month, dealing with dozens of different business units on a company wide scale gets expensive fast. Naturally the motivation to move these services in house is strong and we add several units a year to those serviced by our department.

With this kind of incentive and a six year track record of producing thousands of accurate documents day after day when an incorrect document has very negative legal consequences you would think that once the decision has been made to move another business unit's documents in house this decision would be embraced by those who stand to benefit most by it. Namely those employees who have had to wrestle with the demands and deadlines of the third party vendors. But not so! These employees, which now need to provide my department with specifications and assistance in saving their department piles of money annually, inevitably dig in their heels and give their assistance only grudgingly and half-heartedly. Some of this is expected because long time employees approaching retirement age grouse that "we've always done it this way and it works, we don't see why we have to learn to do it a new way" and people are just naturally resistant to change. However, the largest component in this resistance, in spite of the fact that computers have been involved in business applications since the sixties, and personal computers since the eighties, is technology fear.

Technology fear should not be confused with technology ignorance. Technology ignorance is responsible for calls to the help desk such as "my cup holder is broken" referring to the CD drawer or "My computer won't turn on" when the electricity in the building is off. These people are perfectly willing to work with new technology and just need a little generalized training. Either that or their IQ is not sufficient for their position (a situation that sadly is becoming more and more prevalent as American education continues the ongoing process of dumbing itself down). Also, technology fear should not be confused with compartmentalization. My wife works for a university where her job requires fairly advanced skills using Excel and Access yet she needs help figuring out how to chat on Facebook. She's not afraid of technology, she just sees no reason to explore applications beyond her immediate need. Instead technology fear is a combination of Arthur C. Clarke's pronouncement that "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." and "oh my God what if something goes wrong?" In the first case the fear is that if all things are not in some mystical configuration the technology in question will immediately cease to function. Thus adding a new business unit to a functioning system must be accompanied by great trepidation and perhaps appeasement of some sort. In the second the fear is that should a malfunction occur there will be no one that can fix it. It puzzles me that these same individuals have no qualms in purchasing a new car and expecting it to work reliably when they have no more understanding of how it works than they do the technology that they fear.

It would be easy to dismiss these individuals if they did not present such an enormous cost in time to implement any proposed project. In a large company interested parties in a new project can be widely distributed geographically and a new project demands numerous meetings in the form of conference calls to get all systems involved to coordinate the changes necessary for implementation. This results in conference calls with up to thirty people wasting company time while questions like the following are fielded:

What happens if we can't print our document? (what happens when you can't print an email from Aunt Tillie? You call help desk.)
What happens if there is a power failure? (on your end - you quit working. On our end - the same fail-over plan that the company has used for 10 years applies.)
What happens if the home office is closed?(the servers run 24 hours a day - always have, always will)
Will there be training? (this is particularly annoying when everyone knows that the change will be transparent to the user)
How will we know what icon to click? (same as above. I'm not making these questions up.)
Will the documents fit on our printers? (no, we plan to make them billboard sized)
How do we know the documents are correct? (ever heard of QA testing? We have several hundred people company wide involved in this.)

I am sure you can get the drift by now. What is particularly galling is that the people on these calls asking these questions are invariably middle to upper management who must have an answer before we can proceed. Even more galling is that they ask the same questions on call after call as if expecting the answer to change. The goal of the endless questioning seems to be to postpone putting off any decision making so no one can be held responsible if something goes wrong. On the last call of this nature I was on, the project manager, having waded determinedly through the morass of mindless queries, finally reached a point where he could ask "So who is in favor of moving ahead with what was proposed." Of thirty people on the call, not a sound was heard. The PM then asked "OK so who has objections to moving ahead with the proposal." Again crickets. The entire meeting was paralyzed by fear.

I'm sure glad I have a desk large enough to allow room for head banging.

More Des Moines Shenanigans

I know the second installment of the cataract adventure is due, but I need to vent. Live with it.

rant mode on/

The latest demonstration of complete fail by the Des Moines city administration has to do with snow removal. As I've mentioned elsewhere Des Moines has a long standing tradition of never starting to clear the residential streets until the end of a storm. Considering that snow storms that last for several days are not uncommon this creates ridiculously difficult conditions for residents who simply want to get to work. Complaints to the street department always result in a litany of propaganda insisting that all major streets are cleared every morning of a storm in time for the rush hour. This is completely untrue as the morning rush hour after a storm is always characterized by commuters wallowing through piles of unplowed snow, sometimes actually above their bumpers.

This year, in a new propaganda campaign, the city designated several areas within the city "snow ordinance areas". What this means is that during a storm in these residential areas, residents may not park their cars on the street until snow removal is complete. According to information available on the city government web site snow removal on "snow routes" will be complete within 24 to 36 hours after the storm and residential streets 36 hours later. So home owners and other taxpayers may not park on the streets for a minimum of 72 hours. (Bear in mind that these are the city's figures and the clearing of residential streets within 72 hours after a storm is a wildly optimistic figure rarely achieved.) To add insult to injury there is a city ordinance that residents must clear their sidewalks within 48 hours after a storm - thus requiring the resident to be more efficient than the city street department.

Snow ordinance areas were newly instituted in December and after our first snowfall hundreds of tickets were issued to motorists who dared to park their cars on the street having nowhere else to park them (they could pull them up into their yard if another ordinance with a higher fine did not prohibit that). Des Moines was very diligent in issuing the tickets as police had to drive through snow choked streets to issue them. Naturally a huge outcry from the populace arose following this deluge of penalties and the result was a media blitz intended to sooth irate townspeople by telling them how refraining from parking on the designated streets during a storm would result in faster snow removal. News anchors were actually able to deliver this information with a straight face.

So now we have had our first major snow storm and are into the second 24 hours of continuous snowfall. Of course the residential streets in the snow ordinance areas remain untouched and the only evidence of plowing is on state routes and major highways. As one slides through the piles of snow on the way to work street department trucks are occasionally seen with their blades up and their sand/salt spreaders inactive. Having lived in several other cities in my life, some in areas with much more annual snowfall than Des Moines, I would expect denizens of Des Moines to descend on city hall if not with pitchforks at least with irate demands for some improved return on their inordinately high property taxes. I remember a snowfall some years back where the tardy clearing of streets in Chicago resulted in the ouster of the mayor. Not so in Des Moines. I'm not sure whether the populace of Des Moines believes the BS that the spokespeople for the city are so skilled at disseminating or whether they think that this is the way it is everywhere. Certainly the latter is possible as Iowa is a very insular state with few outsiders immigrating from other states and few inhabitants venturing beyond Iowa's borders to return with tales of far off climes like Colorado where they actually know how to remove snow in a timely manner.

Whatever the case - Des Moines Street Department, you are inefficient, unrepentant, incompetent and hypocritical. Snow ordinance my lily white ass, smoke screen is more like it.

/ end rant

Thanks for reading.

Moderating Best Buy Suckage

Over the years I've picked up some techniques to deal with Best Buy. Of course their effectiveness depends on how badly you want the item at the Best Buy price, how dimwitted the help on duty at the time of your visit is, and how quickly you can think on your feet.

Some examples:

1). Go when the store is busy. This may seem contrary to common sense, because if you have to deal with customer service, you will have to stand in line for 30 minutes and if you DO make a purchase, you will have to stand at the single open checkout for at least that long. However, if the store is full, the effectiveness of making a scene escalates. Best Buy will screw you long and hard if they can do it in relative privacy, but if there are 20-30 witnesses to the screwing, they tend to want to settle things quickly.

2). When things go bad, be loud. Don't shout or use profanity (no matter how appropriate it may seem), just pretend that you are on stage and the people up in the balcony need to hear you. If you have followed rule 1, there will be many people around who will be interested in what you are saying. For instance, when you want to buy the loss-leader item with the attractive low price and find they actually have none in the store (this happens CONSTANTLY). Phrases such as "You are advertising this item but you aren't actually selling them?" or "Have you ever heard of 'bait and switch'?" or "The State's Attorney is going to hear about this." make employees squirm. Then demand to see a manager and repeat the conversation at an even higher sound level. When asked not to shout by an employee, inform them that you are not shouting, that you are hard of hearing and how dare they ridicule a handicapped person. This tactic alone has gotten me sale prices on comparable items when being baited and switched and gotten me refunds on merchandise said to be "non-refundable" (i.e. damaged software CDs)

3). When asked to buy a PSP, politely say no. If pushed reply (again in your stage voice). "There are hundreds of stories on the internet about how PSPs are a scam." Again, if there are many people about, you will hear no more about PSP.

4). Ask employees to sign statements. "Will you sign a statement to the effect that you won't give me the price displayed on the shelf?" This is effective for those sales that "ended yesterday". Of course the floor guy will refuse, but at the manager level, saying "If this is your policy, you shouldn't be ashamed to put it in writing." often works wonders. Again, the presence of bystanders is very helpful.

5). Be willing to leave your purchase at the check out and walk out the door. People at the local Best Buy know me. They also know that if left alone and treated fairly I can be a good customer. They also know that if there is a hint of scam, things will get uncomfortable. When my wife and I walk into the store, there is soon a manager watching me. This is good. I never do anything unlawful and I am happy to have a manager near when the odious substance comes into close proximity to the fan.

6). Be polite, yet persistent. Don't back off on the volume and keep insisting that they live up to what they promise. The goal is to make them want to get what is turning into a small spectacle settled.

These tactics have obviously been built up over years of experience of shoddy and shameful business practices by Best Buy. I could refuse to shop there, but I feel that it is effective when you really need something quickly to put their feet to the fire and make them actually live up to their advertising, provide refunds when appropriate, etc. It helps that my wife and I are middle aged and look respectable. They can try to tell kids that they can't come back to the store, but with folks that have been around long enough to know their legal rights, they don't try strong arm tactics. Yes, they suck intensely, but with me they do so at the cost of extreme discomfort and embarassment.

Half the people you meet.....

are below average intelligence. By definition. Think about it. I thought a lot about it right after the 2004 election. I've even researched the wide variety of stupidity. Take a look at this site and it's obvious that this guy has done a lot of thinking about it too. I like the way he has the domain of the stupid broken down into categories: Fools, Idiots, Stooges, Doofuses, Spazes, Airheads, Twits, Dolts, Morons, Imbeciles, Retards and Cretins. Anyone can make a list of their own - Boneheads, mouth-breathers, fog-dwellers, trance-walkers, slack jawed yokels, dumbasses, etc. etc. I'll bet that there is an astonishing list of words for the mentally challenged in Yiddish.

Anyone who is baffled by how much stupidity they witness on a daily basis should check out the 5 basic laws of stupidity here. I particularly like the conclusion that "A stupid person is more dangerous than a bandit."

During the everyday struggle for survival I witness what I will call "Standard Stupidities" on a daily basis. Some of these are just mildly curious while others are life threatening.

A few selected examples:

The Malevolent Elevator
Working as I do in a large office building, I get to see this one three or four times a day. A group of people stand in front of a bank of elevators waiting for an elevator to arrive. Once it arrives, people begin boarding, pressing as they board, the button for their desired floor. When doing this, they look at the buttons. Buttons that light up once they have been pressed. I have observed that at least 80% of the people boarding an elevator will press the button for their floor even if it is already lit up. Likewise, when a newcomer arrives at the area where passengers wait for the elevator, at least 50% of the time they will press the "up" or "down" button even if IT is already lit. What do you suppose (if anything) is going on in their minds. "Oh, the elevator can tell how many people are in it (or waiting for it) and if the total button presses don't equal the number of people then the door will never open." A harmless but puzzling stupidity.

Clueless Motorist
Oh, there are so many of these - where to begin. How about the automobile owner on their way to work during rush hour with their cell phone firmly attached to the side of their head and frequently balancing a cup of coffee who cannot figure out which of two lanes they really want so they drive down the middle thus frustrating both lanes behind them. What is the logic here? "I want to finish this phone call and coffee so badly that I am willing to bet my life that no one will either; a) run into me, or (on the West Coast) b) haul out a pistol and relieve me of worry about going over my monthly minutes on a permanent basis."

Without needlessly belaboring the clueless motorist category (I'm sure everyone has a favorite example), what baffles me is that people get into a machine weighing upwards of 1000 pounds, coax it to speeds at which a head on collision is guaranteed to require the use of a putty knife to retrieve their remains and then don't bother to pay attention.

Hey, knucklehead! If you turn left from the right lane, the next drooling neanderthal coming up behind you is likely to embed a hood ornament in your rectum!

Don't bother to signal, we all know that the lever on the steering column is to hang underwear on.

Be sure and come to a complete stop when you are going to turn so that when you have failed to signal you get another chance at rectal embedment of some piece of automobile hardware.

Doofuses Fear Silence
"Hot (cold, wet, etc) enough for ya?" "How's the weather up there?" "How about them Knicks? (substitute name of local sports team as needed)" Translation: "I don't have anything original to say, nor could I formulate a coherent sentence if I did, but here's some noise coming out of my mouth that I hope will provide intellectual camouflage."

What the Hell is this Green Piece of Paper
Setting: Retail establishment of any kind.
Present your items for checkout and after being told the total, present twenty dollar bill (or whatever denomination). Clerk will 9 times out of 10 say "Out of twenty?" giving it a definite questioning inflection. The clerk is definitely not stating a fact or confirming what you just handed them, they are asking a question. Either that or they have forgotten how the English language works. (Maybe they have. English is not really considered an inflected language but questions definitely have a rising inflection.) If I didn't know that it would needlessly prolong the transaction I would love to answer "No, out of fifty." Then I would get to see the checkout monkey stand there looking helplessly from me to the bill in their hand while the hamster wheel spins out of control.

I could go on. And on. But it is remarkably depressing. I'm sure any reasonably intelligent reader has their own favorites. Feel free to leave examples in the comments.

Asshat vs. Asshat

Crowley vs. Gates. What a huge dick waving contest. Neighbor reports someone trying to break into a house. And that is exactly what Gates was trying to do. I hope my neighbors would do the same. Cop shows up to investigate. Instead of showing his identification politely and thanking the cop for trying to keep his house safe from burglary Gates takes offense and starts yelling and making accusations. I understand that blacks get fed up with some of the treatment they still receive, but pick your battles why don't you? Asshattery incident #1. I wonder if Gates' house actually gets burglarized in the future if the cops will bother to show up. So what was Sgt. Crowley's response? Once Gates identified himself Crowley seemed unable to realize that the major stimulus to Gates' agitation was himself. So instead of "Sorry to bother you sir, thanks for your cooperation." followed by a respectful exit, Gates gets arrested. Asshattery incident #2.

Now Obama gets involved and instead of the making the obvious observation that both parties were letting their endocrine systems overrule their brains, says that the police acted stupidly. Right now in the United States this comment is the equivalent of saying that water runs downhill. Nevertheless the statement was made. It might not have occurred to Obama but it doesn't take much reflection to realize that if there is some kind of altercation between a black man and an authority figure and Obama disses the authority figure it's going to be interpreted as racially motivated. So now we have Obama with his size 10s firmly implanted in his mouth.

Solution - all three are going to get together and have a beer. Right, next time you see a white cop and a black man calling each other names, just walk up and ask them to sit down with you for a beer. But since Obama is president the results are likely to be different. Namely, both parties are going to have to choke down their resentment at being treated like this is a disagreement between fans of rival sports teams and fake goodbuddyship for the press frenzy afterward.

And a good time was had by all. Doesn't America have some bigger problems than this? This is almost on the level of a falling out between Lindsay Lohan and Sam. ARGHHHH

The Greatness of a Nation - 1

"The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated."
- Mahatma Gandhi

This is going to be a long one. Try to hang in there.

I do volunteer work for Dachshund rescue. I got into this because I got a great dog from a dachshund rescue organization and wanted to give something back. My original thoughts when joining my organization were of helping find loving homes for homeless animals and this is in fact a fair description of what I do. What I didn't count on was the constant head on encounters with selfishness, insensitivity, mind boggling cruelty and sometimes just gut-wrenching horror. (Disclaimer: My experiences are with dogs so I'm writing about dogs. I'm sure that things are just as bad for cats. So cat people please refrain from any accusations of dog chauvinism. Further disclaimer: My experiences are with dachshunds. Pit Bull aficionados be sure to write your own rant.)

How many people are involved in Dog rescue? It's hard to find a figure for this but consider; a search on Google for "dog rescue" returned 1,390,000 hits. A search for "dachshund rescue" returned 167,000. And what is the need? The American Humane society supplied these statistics for the year 1997:

* Of the 1,000 shelters that replied to the National Council's survey, 4.3 million animals were handled.

* In 1997 roughly 64% of the total number of animals that entered shelters were euthanized -- approximately 2.7 million animals in just these 1,000 shelters.These animals may have been put down due to overcrowding, but may have been sick, aggressive, injured, or suffered something else.

* 56% of dogs and 71% of cats that enter animal shelters are euthanized. More cats are euthanized than dogs because they are more likely to enter a shelter without any owner identification.

* Only 15% of dogs and 2% of cats that enter animal shelters are reunited with their owners.

* 25% of dogs and 24% of cats that enter animal shelters are adopted.

That's nearly 3,000 animals per year per shelter or 15 animals per working day. If you are an animal lover; and most shelter workers are there because of their love for animals, not the generally low pay; imagine that your job includes taking 15 animals a day into a room and killing them. These are animals, who because of thousands of years of domestication, have learned to depend on and trust human beings. Many are abandoned or lost pets who lick the hands of the workers who administer the gas or deadly injection so starved are they for human affection.

But this isn't about the shelters, this is about those of us who try to keep pets out of shelters, who try to intercept the unwanted pet before they get to the shelter or try to help pets already in the shelter. After all, the pet in the shelter only has a 1 in 4 chance of avoiding the hand of the euthanizer.

Let’s start with the merely selfish, insensitive and stupid. When one acquires a dachshund one gets an animal whose lifespan can extend to twenty years. Fifteen is not unusual. This is nearly as long as it takes to rear a child from infancy to independence. Recent studies indicate that dogs have intelligence comparable to that of a three year old child. I have my doubts about that, it may be an underestimate. When they want to dogs can demonstrate remarkable reasoning powers, when they don’t want to they just truck along on instinct – this tends to confuse humans who frequently equate intelligence with “what I want it to do”. My conclusion is that dogs are smarter than you think and far more laid back than humans. But that’s another rant. As mentioned previously, dogs have been domesticated to the point where they are no longer equipped to support themselves without human assistance. In addition to having had a lot of survival skills selectively bred out of them, they also have to cope with less than optimal physical traits. Thus the low profile of my breed, the respiratory problems of the pug, the bad hips of the shepherd, the size of the Chihuahua and I’m sure you can think of others. In addition to all this, dogs have been bred to bond with human beings. I’m not sure that I’m being all that anthropomorphic when I say that if this does not actually equate to affection, then it is very close to it. Watch a dog playing in the park with its master or welcoming the master home after an absence be it only a brief one. To say that the dog is experiencing something close to joy is certainly no stretch.

So we’ve established that dog ownership implies a long term relationship with a semi-intelligent species that is dependent on you and is capable of something close to emotions. Below is a list of the most common reasons that people give when they contact me to help find their dog a new home.

1. Moving
2. Landlord issues
3. Cost of pet maintenance
4. No time for pet
5. Inadequate facilities
6. Too many pets in home
7. Pet illness(es)
8. Personal problems
9. Biting
10. No homes for litter mates

I’d like for you to look at the first nine items on this list as if you were the parent of a three year old human and ask yourself “for which of these reasons would I give up my child?” A ridiculous question, right? If you were moving you’d look for proper accommodations, you’d move if the landlord gave you grief, you’d make time for the kid, you’d make whatever alterations in your living arrangements you needed. You’d deal with all your offspring and their illnesses. Whatever your problems you’d deal with them. Behavior issues would be addressed.

So what is it in the minds of so many that when they decide to get a pet, the unspoken assumption lies there hidden in the dark, swampy recesses that if situations change they can always get rid of it? Is it because you can pass this little piece of selfishness off on a stranger? “Roscoe doesn’t get along with the baby. Can you find him a new home?” Can I find him a new home?? CAN I FIND HIM A NEW HOME!!! How about a new home for the baby? How about you spend a little time to modify both Roscoe’s and the baby’s behavior. My guess is that Roscoe is not happy about having his ears and tail pulled. But wait, I forgot, you are probably going to let the baby pretty much raise itself until you can pack it off to daycare or school and hope someone else cleans up your mess there as well. But I digress. Got a problem? Just find someone to take the dog off your hands. No matter that he is emotionally attached to you, you that he depends on for everything good in his life. No matter that he will be nervous and frightened possibly for weeks after you change his whole world. He may get sick from the emotional shock. If he is already sick he will get worse.

Think that the dog will get over it? Let me tell you something. I have dealt with rescue dogs for years. I have two in my home right now. They know! When I go into a stranger’s home, if they have a dog I can tell in a few minutes whether this is a rescue dog or not. In the best case scenario the dog is almost pathetically grateful and devoted to the new owner, much more so than a dog that has been raised in the same family all his life. This is the greatest reward of rescue, you sense that gratitude, that indisputable attitude you see in the dog that something traumatic happened in his life and the new owner is his deliverer. It is a humbling experience. The other sadder case is that the dog is forever traumatized and hides and cowers from strangers and runs and hides from unfamiliar experiences. For this dog life will never be entirely good because at any moment he could lose everything. After all, it happened before.

I want to talk some about irresponsible breeding and puppy mills, but I think those are going to be rants of their own. It’s a lot to take in. Thanks for listening.

The Chronically Late or The Case for Drano Enemas

By way of preface let me make it as clear as possible that I realize that anyone can be late. Shit happens, the car craps out, you step in a gift from your dog on the way out the door, your wife can’t get your mother-in-law off the phone, the Okie next door has his four wheel drive penis substitute parked in your way, Congress has passed yet another brainless alteration in when daylight savings time starts, a million things can happen. But, let’s keep it real, everyone over the age of 3 knows that it’s statistically impossible for one of these things to happen to you every freakin’ time you walk out the door!

There are two kinds of chronically late individuals. The first is the person who is in some kind of leadership role, without whose presence an event cannot begin and the other is what I call the clueless doofus whose major responsibility is simply to show up.

I had to deal with a prime example of type 1 several years ago. It’s hard to characterize his behavior without supplying details that might identify him, but let’s just say that he presided over one weekly meeting where 100 people might be in attendance and several smaller meetings throughout the week with from 5 to 30 people in attendance. I had a minor functionality within the organization that required me to attend approximately 75% of all meetings. Over a period of eight years this guy was late to every single meeting I attended. Every one. Without exception. And when I say late, I don’t mean that he came skidding into the room a few seconds after the appointed time, I mean 5, 10, 15 minutes late. Invariably the first thing out of his mouth was “Hi folks, sorry I’m late.” Oh PLEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEASE! Give me a huge break! If you were sorry, you’d stop doing it.

Let’s examine the effects of this blatant disregard for one’s peers. 1) It pisses people off. People that attend your meetings have lives and they often have other things they would rather be doing. Even if they would rather be attending your meeting than anything else, sitting around waiting for you to make an entrance is not what they signed up for. 2) You lose respect. You want people to do something you won’t do, show up on time. Any leadership trainer on the planet will tell you this won’t work. 3) You send the message “my time is worth more than yours”. Right. Up yours fella, all man hours are intrinsically equal, and if the alternative is doing something productive as opposed to waiting for you, then the time you caused me to waste was indeed valuable. 4) It causes people to dread your next meeting. “This grinning chimp has done this to me umpteen times – do I really feeling like going out into the snow to have him do it again?” I don’t want to get into a rant here, but I think everyone gets the picture. I have to at least entertain the thought that when people do this, they want everyone else to be there when they arrive so that they can make an entrance. Bite that! If you want to be a leader, then lead and quit posturing.

Now we come to the masses of clueless doofuses. (say “clueless doofuses” 5 times fast) I happen to have spent an alternate life as a musician and now retain this part of my life as a hobby. I play in a community orchestra, have my own woodwind quintet, and play for various community theatre events as well as the occasional odd recital. Each of these groups has its own particular brand of doofus, so we’ll look at these one at a time.


The volunteer amateur orchestra: This orchestra exists so that people who for whatever reason (lack of expertise, lack of openings, lack of commitment) cannot play in available “for hire” orchestras. If you’ve ever checked out the number of “for hire” symphony orchestras in your community, you probably see where there might be more musicians around than there are orchestral seats. Also, our group which can be surprisingly listenable gives free concerts. This allows folks on fixed incomes, students, folks that don’t want to pay the premium to be seen with the blue haired aristocrats, etc. to hear live music they otherwise would not get to hear. It’s a great community service and we have a good deal of monetary corporate support that agrees with our goals. But I digress. The point is these people that participate are there because they want to play and have limited outlets. A small dedicated group of volunteers labor long and hard so these people will have this opportunity. So what happens? Every week at rehearsal at least 30% of the membership comes dragging in after rehearsal has started. You know the type, the same ones that come into the theater 10 minutes after movie starts dragging their drooling progeny who all do Irish step dances on your feet while they try to reach the most inaccessible seats. Let me illuminate this picture for you. Our rehearsal room is in a church basement. When set up we reach from wall to wall in both the width and length of the room. Instrument cases are stacked in every available square foot of floor space, instrumentalists have the minimum amount of room to allow movement to operate their instrument and both the conductor and back row of brass have their backs literally against the wall. An important fact to note is that the door to the room is in the front of the room, sneaking in the back is impossible. When the appointed hour arrives the 70% of us ready to play begin rehearsal. Ten minutes later the asshat parade begins, always the same people. Stepping on instrument cases, tripping over people’s feet, bumping wind instruments thus causing lip injuries, knocking music off stands, obscuring lines of sight, dragging coats and cases across the heads, arms and shoulders of other players and generally proving the existence of near perfect vacuums in the dark empty reaches of their craniums while leaving sorrys and excuse mes in their wake. Sorry? Like hell, you do this week after week with the same mindless grin on your face. Sorry? Hey, everyone is looking at you, you attention whore, you’re as happy as a tapeworm in shit. Excuse you? Yeah, the first time. Now eight years later feel my hate – hotter than a white hot poker gleefully inserted in a rectum.

The woodwind quintet: For some reason in here in MidWestSuburbOfHell USA it is difficult to find French horn players for our group. It’s not that such players are scarce; it’s that they really don’t want to actually play. This in itself is a bit of a mystery. Its not that they don’t want to rehearse, it’s that they won’t even play for money. Not just for our group, but for any group. And pretty good money at that. I wish I could afford to turn down $50 an hour gigs. There is a list of French hornists as long as your arm that groups are advised to call when such a player is needed, but getting them to actually agree to play is up for grabs. “Hey! I own a French horn and I want to be called for gigs. That’s it. I want to be called. I don’t actually want to play I just want to be asked.” What’s up with that? So anyway – we actually have a rarity in our quintet, someone who owns a horn and will, if begged in the proper obsequious manner, play. However, show up on time she will not. The four of us are at the gig in time to set up, warm up, and tune up. Now we begin the waiting. Will she show up? We have to start playing in 10 minutes. Should we try to call her? Oh there she is! And with a whole 3 minutes to get ready. No time to tune or warm up, we can do that after 10 minutes of sounding like four pros trying to drown out a Junior High Student. This is her behavior at paying gigs. Forget rehearsals! When she does show up she has invariably left some vital piece of equipment at home. Oh I guess we can’t rehearse our newest number today since you didn’t bring it. Music stand? Surely I can find a spare since you forgot yours. Once she actually forgot her mouthpiece. Plus she has the annoying habit of singing her part when she can’t actually get her lips around it, which is all too often. The point of this somewhat extended story? Lateness can be a symptom of overall cranial/rectal inversion.

I’ve probably gone past any reasonable length on this one, but my frustration has burst the surly bonds of earth. Get this, buttheads! It’s called a watch. Use it!

Winter in the Midwest and Abject Stupidity

When I moved to Iowa, no one told me that it was also fondly known as Baja Minnesota.

"Hey, you used to live in Illinois - what's the big deal?"

I'll tell you what the big deal is; blizzards. Not just snow, but piles upon piles of snow backed up by 40 mph winds and followed by days of below zero temperatures with -30 degree wind chills. Snow comes in from Nebraska horizontally. In Illinois a big snowfall is usually followed by kids sledding, building snowmen, ice skating on farm ponds. Not so in Iowa. After a snow in Iowa people of all age groups huddle indoors listening to the wind scream around the eaves and try to conjure up realistic sounding excuses for not showing up for school, work, church, or whatever other organization is fool hardy enough not to cancel their activities. Oh yeah, I almost forgot. Whenever it snows in Iowa it first lays down at least a quarter inch of ice which arrives as freezing rain. Gotta love that when you go out to get in your car.

Ah yes, the car. There is a macho mindset in Iowa that nothing can stop commerce/business and if you can actually see the doorway to a place of enterprise it will somehow try to open no matter what the depth of the drifts in the streets. So one must climb into the vehicle and venture forth.

Problem 1: In Iowa snow removal does not start until the storm ends. That's right, if the storm lasts 4 days and deposits 28 inches of snow, not a plow, not a salt truck, not a sand spreader will creep from the city barns until bright sunshine is clearly visible and not a flake still floats in the air. Calls to the department of public works invariably brings the response "The main arteries were clear by 7:00 AM". This is little comfort as you sit on one of the aforesaid arteries hung up by the frame of your car in the middle of a 6 foot drift. Worse, the city employees trusted with the responsibility of clearing the streets suffer from "seasonal amnesia" where they forget from year to year what the white stuff falling out of the sky is and how to deal with it. Thus for at least the first two blizzards, no street clearing activities take place whatsoever.

Problem 2: All native born Iowans had as their last vehicle a horse and buggy. That can be the only explanation for their total inability to make the slightest effort to observe traffic laws and courtesies. Turn signals? Just rip that lever right off the column, Pa, we won't ever be using it. Changing lanes? Just change, if there is anyone behind you they'll look out for themselves. Turns? Just turn from whatever lane you happen to be in to any direction you wish, someone will look out for you. No parking places? Just park in the street and walk away - seriously, on any given day the streets are full of cars abandoned in traffic lanes while the owners run in for a donut or whatever. And all this is when the streets are clear, dry and in the light of day. When the snow starts, the seasonal amnesia sets in and as one, Iowa natives believe that bad weather driving consists of a single rule "drive as fast as you can and everyone else will get out of your way".

Let's face it, there's a theme here - which will turn up again and again in this blog and it is that the great majority of people are STUPID. Half the people you meet are below average intelligence - think about it - and that average has been falling steadily since the late 1800s (don't believe this? get hold of an 8th grade math book from the 1890s and look at the problems. Give these to the high school student who needs a picture of a burger on the key of the fast food cash register in order to ring up your order and see what results you get.) STUPID I tell you, STUPID.