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Have I mentioned lately that the iPhone is amazing? Well, I've had mine for 16 months or so now, and I still think it is the best phone I've ever had.

What triggers this praise? Thanks to the wonders of Stanza (links to iTunes), I just re-read The Count of Monte Cristo (one of the all-time classics that is honestly fun to read). As I was reading, I decided to look at some of the different places in Google Earth, since I am very rusty on my French geography. Actually, I have no concept of French geography other than Paris.

So I look at Marseilles, then decide to look for the Chateau d'If. I found it, and on the island it looks like there is a little something unexpected:

So why didn't Edmond Dantes simply take the jet when he left the island?

He could have saved himself a lot of swimming!

Also, Monte Cristo is a real island:

Yet another post about bailouts

There are a few key failings of this blog:
First, I haven't posted in over two months.
Second, I haven't posted about something other than bailouts since September 9th.

One of these is going to be remedied tonight. The other is not. That's right, it's time for another angry rant about bailouts.

I won't rehash my disappointment regarding the original bailouts. I won't even criticize AIG, although they are an easy target. Also, say you were a large size company who received a sudden windfall injection of cash despite thoroughly mismanaging your assets. Why would you change your behavior? And if this same naive "investor" rewarded you with EVEN MORE cash without asking where the original money went, would you do anything differently? Yeah, me neither. And so that is why even though I hate AIG, I understand. What I don't understand is the Treasury and the Fed continually dumping more money. But I digress...

My original intent with this post was to comment on an article I saw on CNN's website. It is provacatively titled "Why the Big Three Should Fly Corporate Jets". As you may remember, on their first trip to capitol hill, the CEO's of Ford, GM, and Cerberus Motors...er, Chrysler that is...all flew on their own private jets. Each of them got hammered in the Congressional session and in the press for the audacity of wasting so much money and natural resources.

The main arguments in the article are:

• Congress wastes lots of money, too, so why should they criticize?
• If they had flown commercial they might have been late.
• Disney, one of the critics, lets its CEO fly a corporate jet.
• Most CEOs are "required" to fly corporate by their boards of directors.
• You are really just jealous it isn't you flying on the corporate jet.
• Corporate jets really aren't that nice.
• Corporate jets save time (really? You are going to waste words telling us the one thing EVERYONE in America knows?) and CEOs make a lot of money, so why waste shareholder's money?

Call me crazy, but I think every single one of these points is asinine. The main issue is not that the CEOs flew on corporate jets to their meetings--it is that the CEOs flew on corporate jets the their meeting to ask for $25 billion (now $34 billion) in taxpayer money!!! Let's do a quick reality check:

Imagine you had a really rich uncle. For years, he's been living the high life. He's had the mansion on the hill, vacations in Tahiti, ski lodges in Sun Valley, etc. You name it, he has it. On the other hand, you've lived a modest lifestyle, not much in the bank, but have good credit. One day your uncle flies into town on his private jet, pulls up to your house in a limosine and asks to borrow $250,000. Wouldn't you think it was a little extravagent? Wouldn't you want to know why he couldn't have flown in on Delta and rented a car from Hertz?

Most CEO's flying in corporate jets is not that big a deal. I think it is incredibly wasteful and silly, but if a company is in good financial shape, go for it. But if a company is asking you, my fellow humble taxpayer, for a massive loan, shouldn't they demonstrate a willingness to control costs before they are given more money?

Here we go again…

$700 billion more.

You and I (and our children and grandchildren) stuck footing the bill.

By now, you’ve heard the story. Henry Paulson, Secretary of the Treasury, proposed a bold new plan of action that would drive the value of the dollar into the ground. It would create exciting new opportunities for government corruption. And, it would make each of us marginally better off for a few months while harming all of us for the next 100 years.

If you need background, see the Ron Paul video below.

I don’t typically get involved much in politics. But this issue burns me up. Take action now. Contact your Senators and Congressman. (Disclosure—link goes to a John Birch Society sponsored website—if you disagree with their politics, use another service).

This article is an interesting commentary of how over 100 economists feel about the issue.

Sorry for two straight political posts, but I think that ultimately this issue will affect each of our lives much more than who the next president is.

Stop the Bailouts, please

As you may have heard—unless you’ve been in a cave for the last month—as a U.S. citizen, I am now the proud (one-three hundred millionth) owner of:

• millions of private homes, including lots of foreclosed properties (via the Fannie/Freddie takeovers)
• the world’s largest insurance company, with over a trillion dollars in assets (allegedly)

I hate that my government is getting involved here.  We allowed these companies to purchase financial derivatives and make billions in profits from these financial instruments.  When things go sour, I get stuck footing the bill.

I think Lewis Black said it best.  If you can’t describe in one sentence what your company does, it’s illegal.  No one can describe financial derivatives in one minute, much less one sentence.

On the upside, I’m excited to see how fast Uncle Sam can run these companies into the ground.  They are starting at the bottom, and somehow will manage to continue screwing up. 

Four tens

At the beginning of august, my company decided to have a trial of
allowing employees to work four ten hour days instead of five eight
hot days.

We are now in our sixth week of that trial. You might have noticed
that I have also not had a blog post in about six weeks. A stunning
coincidence!

Now, for some honest opinions about the four day week. It is awesome
to have the long weekend every week. However, Mondays thru Thursdays
are a waste. It's really hard to be motivated to do anything outside
of work on those days. You work, come home, then sleep (or so it seems).

All the same, I'm going to miss my long weekends when our trial period
runs out. With any luck, we will do them again once our holiday season
is over.

600 apples a day

When we bought our new house, it came with the landscaping installed. Everything was shiny new, including all the plants, except for an apple tree on the west side of the house. As apple trees go, it is a pretty good sized one, maybe 15 feet high. However, it had obviously never been pruned.

Since we moved in and the tree was already beginning to bloom, I decided to wait until after this season to begin pruning the tree. This was a bad idea. When the tree went into bloom in late April, the bees kicked into high gear, pollinization-wise. I think every blossom on the tree turned into a mini-apple.

I read on the internet that in early June, the tree would thin itself. I decided I would let nature run its course and thin its own apples. This was another bad idea. Yes, nature did thin about 200 apples off the tree. I spent the better part of an hour picking them up one Saturday afternoon. However, it left many hundreds of apples clinging to branches that are not nearly ready to support the weight of one apple, much less 5.

Over the past few weeks, I've lost several small apple-laden limbs that snapped under the weight of the growing apples. The larger apples are about the size of a half-dollar. Tonight, I finally decided for the sake of my younger tree limbs, it was time to thin the apples. I did a little more internet research. The general consensus is that you should leave one apple about every 6 inches. However, there is no advice on what to do if the limb is 7 feet long and clearly bending from the weight, even after thinning. I decided to just let it be. The limb can take care of itself.

The picture you see above is a small section of the tree, pre-thinning. Imagine this multiplied by several hundred, and you can visualize my task. After 90 minutes tonight, I ran out of sunlight. I had gathered two buckets full of small apples. In the interest of science, I decided I needed to find out how many apples I had cut off. I counted the smaller of the buckets and came up with 288 apples. So between nature and myself, the tree is down about 800 apples. Unfortunately, there are still a gazillion (roughly) left on the tree. Anyone care to join us for apple pie in a couple months?

Wii Fit, Day 10.

(Not my actual Wii avatar...unfortunately, I'm somewhat higher than the BMI shown).

After fighting it for over a year, my lovely wife finally broke down and let me buy a Wii. A couple days later, we were fortunate enough to find a copy of Wii Fit at Circuit City. We snapped it up and promptly began trying to get our butts into shape. So far, I've managed to get up every morning before 6 so that I can play Wii Fit for at least 30 minutes of "Fit time" before work. Because you have the same introductions and closing remarks after every different exercise, this works out to at least 45 minutes of real time every morning.

One of the best features is the daily feedback when you check in for a Body Test. This weighs you, gives you your BMI, and then calculates your Wii Fit Age. The Wii Fit age is a measurement of how young your body is, and is calculated by taking your real age, the results of a balance test, the tidal force of the nearest ocean, and the closing stock price of Nintendo on the Nikkei stock exchange.

It's very cheesy, but I find myself getting excited and competitive about my daily results. I've lost over 5 pounds so far, and my Wii Fit Age has dropped from 46 to 34. Considering that I'm 32, I don't feel too horrible about the extra two years of age. So anyways, the goal is to keep up the Wii Fit regime along with any other exercise I might get and report the results every 10 days.

The other somewhat unexpected result is that as a result of all the balance games and feedback, I feel legitimately more balanced (literally) on a daily basis. It sounds ridiculous, I know, but somehow you feel like you are walking with better posture and distributing your weight more comfortably once you've done your time.

Note: Mrs. Floporama is also participating in Wii Fit. I'll leave it to her to detail her experiences.

A happy ending (for another year)

Time to celebrate another year of the world's worst person being a literal loser. Tonight, Kobe Bryant's Lakers got smoked by the Boston Celtics. It couldn't have happened to anyone I like less. Why, might you ask?

1. He is a rapist. If it weren't for a multimillion dollar settlement, he'd be behind bars.
(By the way, smart move on his part to settle. Say the case went to trial and he goes to jail for 2 years. He loses $30 million plus in salary for those two years. What is $4 million compared to $30? Not much)
2. He's a spoiled, immature, little man. Let's not forget that he drove Shaq out of L.A. Not being content with that, he got a 9-time world champion coach fired. Then, after all that, he demands an offseason trade a few years later. Let's see...you don't want to play for a terrible team that is terrible because of the decisions YOU made. I'm thinking that someone doesn't want to take responsibility for his actions.
3. Enough already of the Jordan comparisons. Kobe is talented. However, he doesn't bring out the best in anyone around him. Did Jordan ever lay any eggs in the finals like Kobe did this year? I doubt it. Kobe, you are your own worst enemy.
4. (Disclaimer--this is not strictly about Kobe alone, although he is the player who most exemplifies it.) Kobe expects to get every call to go his way all the time. He's never fouled a guy in a game--or so it would seem.
5. He's a horrible teammate. About the only thing I've heard from his current teammates this year is how he is a good teammate. Why? Because he picks up the check at dinner. Hmmm...he's the highest paid guy on the team. He makes many millions of dollars every year. How does him paying for dinner (for other millionaires) make him a good person?

I could go on, but I'm worked up enough for today. Enjoy Kobe liberation day. Let's hope to celebrate again next year, shall we?

Square Foot Gardening

First, I apologize to all zero of my readers for not posting in quite a while.

Today was our extra Memorial day holiday that we get every year. Because I work for a retail/direct marketing company that does the vast majority of its business around Thanksgiving and Christmas, we don't get extra days off around those holidays. They try to make it up to us by giving us extra days off for the summer holidays.

To make a long story short, I had today off. I spent most of the afternoon building new square foot gardens for our new house. While we were living in Utah, Annette heard the inventor of square foot gardening on the radio one day. It intrigued her, and we looked into it. Ever since, we've used it as the basis of our gardening efforts.

The basic principle is to create raised beds that are then divided into 1x1 foot sections. In each section you plant one crop. If it is a closely spaced crop, you plant 9 or 16 plants in a square. For something large like tomatoes, you plant one per square.

The secret is the soil. Instead of using whatever soil you have and trying to make it better, you use 1/3 peat moss, 1/3 compost and 1/3 vermiculite and plant your plants in that mixture. They grow very well.

Today, I built two beds in addition to the one I built 2 weeks ago. We planted quite a few tomatoes and peppers as well as marigolds, pumpkins, and watermelons. I'm looking forward to the harvest. We will make lots of salsa and spaghetti sauce.

Happy General Conference!

Today is the first day of General Conference. Part of me feels really lame for saying this, but here goes: this is my first General Conference where I haven't been in Utah or Idaho in over 10 years. In fact, it is the first time since my mission. However, a lot has changed.

On my mission, we got to see exactly zero sessions live. We'd get a videotape about a month after the conference so we could watch one session. Internet feeds were nonexistent at the time.

One thing I loved about conference in Utah was that you could just turn on your own tv (or radio if you were in the car) and hear it doing whatever you wanted to be doing--which often involved either garage work, yard work, or outdoor recreation. However, in Oregon, I'm not so lucky. Sure, it's broadcast on BYUTV, but that's part of digital cable, which we've declined to get. So, for the first time, I tried out the internet feed from lds.org

The results were pretty good. I hooked up my laptop to our plasma and we watched on television. The picture quality was so-so--maybe a little less than SDTV. But, it saved us the $15 a month on upgrade to digital cable. Sound quality was fine.

So anyways, whereever you are, happy conference.

It's Here...

Baseball is back...officially...for reals. As I type this, I'm enjoying the sight of Major League Baseball in Hi-Def on my plasma. And even though my Atlanta Braves are trailing 2-1 in the fifth inning, I have the optimism that comes every April. The Braves may not have done much the past couple years, but I'm not the only person who thinks they could be great again this year.

Baseball Time!

Once again, the time has snuck up upon me. It's baseball time! In case you haven't been paying attention (Annette) or if you just don't care (too many to name, including Annette!) at approximately half past early tomorrow morning, the Major League Baseball season gets underway in Japan. For more traditional fans of games played in North America, the season begins Sunday night, with my Atlanta Braves facing the Montreal Expos...I mean Washington Nationals in prime time on ESPN.

Once again, I'm excited to watch the Braves try to get back to the playoffs. I like their team this year. I plan on future blog posts about them, but for now...welcome back, baseball. It's been a long winter.

Government Inaction

Over the past week, I've spent entirely too much time at government agencies. There is no better argument for free markets than visiting government agencies.

First up was a trip to the DMV last week. After being in Oregon for several months, I decided it was finally time to retitle our cars and get an Oregon driver's license. Most of my recent DMV experience has been at Utah DMV offices. I used to not understand why Utah had separate offices for registering your car and getting your driver licenses. Now I do. In Utah, even if I waited for the end of a month to register a car, it was a relatively painless process. Not so in Oregon.

You walk in and immediately have to wait in a line. This line is to tell you whether you are eligible for the express line or have to take a number and wait. I had to wait. My number was 95 and they were on 88. Doesn't seem too bad. However, they only had 3 people manning the desks. An hour later, I was finally called. Everything was pretty smooth. Then they informed me that I had to pay $5 to take the written test for the driver's license. This could not be paid with the same check for car registration and a driver's license. Why? Who knows? Of course, I only had one check. Luckily I was able to scrounge $5 cash from the recesses of my wallet. After taking the test, I had to wait again for a desk clerk to tell me I had passed. Then, I had to wait another 10 minutes for them to call me up to the desk to take my picture. Finally, I was done. Just have to wait another 5 days to get my license.

The thing that killed me was the waiting area. The seating was disgusting. And the clientele was somewhat less than what you might call "high-class" I don't think I saw anyone who had showered or shaved in the past 2 days. Finally, I just decided to stand while I waited.

As bad as my DMV experience was, it pales in comparison to my recent experiences with the Postal Service. We moved to a new apartment recently. Because it is a brand-new apartment, there were no keys to the mailbox yet. We were told we needed to go to the post office and claim the keys. There's the rub. We tried to go on a Saturday and were instructed that the office for claiming keys was only open Monday through Friday from 9:30 to 3:30. Government hours baffle me. By my calculation, that's 30 hours per week.

So I returned on a Monday at 3:15. As I arrived, I went to the office and it was locked. There was a sign on the door saying "we will be closing early today." So, let me get this straight. They can only be bothered to work 30 hours a week, and then can't even work the whole 30? So, I went again the next day on my lunch break. All I can say is I'm glad I'm on salary. We waited almost 45 minutes to see the person who spent 30 seconds to give us the key. See, the brilliant powers that be at the Medford Post Office decided to have the passport office in charge of giving out mail keys. So, we had to wait for 2 people filling out extensive passport applications. It literally took her 30 seconds to get our key. Why can't they have the main counter clerks do it? It involved her looking through a bin for our address and handing us an envelope. Does that require special training?

Also shocking to me was that in the cramped passport office, there were two desks being manned, or in this case womanned, by one cranky woman. On the two desks there were a total of 0 computers. Isn't this the 21st century? How can they not have computers? Wouldn't it be infinitely more productive to have someone type up silly passport documents and express mailing labels?

So anyways, I spent a total of 3 hours or so at the various government agencies. Not my idea of fun. But at least I'm done. Until I get the title of our recently paid-off other car. Then I get to go back for another hour or two.

walking the walk

So, our temporary housing finally ran out. I'm not complaining. I think it was marvelous to get a furnished apartment rent free for 3 months. So we had to find a new place. My wonderful wife found us a brand new apartment. The best part? It's a five minute walk from my front door to my desk at work.

Let me repeat that. It's a five minute walk from my front door to my desk at work. Now, let me put that into perspective. If I were to drive to work, it would take me 2 minutes if you count sitting at the traffic light. Then I would have to park in the nether-reaches of our parking lot. Then I would still have to walk 5 minutes from my crappy parking spot to my desk. So, it's clearly a slam dunk for me to walk to work.

I've driven my car once since Sunday, for a short 2 mile trip to the grocery store. You gotta love it when you are putting more miles on your feet than you are on your car.

Annette is loving it too. She's two miles from her work. More importantly, there's just 4 stoplights between here and her work. Before, there were approximately 73.

Just for fun, because I'm the biggest dork in the world, I decided to illustrate. See below:

Borrowing money from the Chinese

One of my favorite complaints from politicians (Mike Huckabee, in particular) has been about the recently passed (in the House, anyways) Economic Stimulus Package. I keep hearing about how we are going to "BORROW $150 BILLION FROM THE CHINESE!!!!" Seriously, let's all ease up a little bit. Several things bother me here.

First, the implications that because it is THE CHINESE!!!! we have to be particularly worried. Would it generate the same political soundbite if we said "We're borrowing $150 billion from the British?" That's what I thought. Enough with the China bashing

Second, unless I'm mistaken, the "tax rebates" (see below) will be paid by the U.S. Treasury, not the Chinese. They will be paid by the government's favorite tactic, deficit spending. The government will issue $150 billion in new bonds on the open market which will be repaid in 10 or 30 years by our children and grandchildren in the form of taxes. (Note: while I have little problem with running a large trade deficit, I am not a fan of large government deficits.)

Calling these "rebates" is dumb. Most people getting them are getting back as much or more as they paid in taxes. Ugh. Call them "gifts" or "the dole" or "our children's future" or whatever--just not rebates.

Next, these rebates are a joke. Seriously. I remember the last time we got these things. I used it to buy new brakes for my car. $150 billion is a little over 1% of GDP. Nothing to sneeze at, but can the government really not come up with a better use of $150 billion? How about working to eliminate poverty or find a cure for cancer? How about giving Western Oregon its timber money back so I can have a decent library? Scholarships for high-performing University students? Anything but giving Joe Blow $300 so he can have a booze party!

Anyways, if you feel passionately, call or e-mail your Senator and tell them the stimulus package is a joke and to vote against it. We're not in a recession. If we were, this wouldn't get us out. We don't need the checks.

Now, if anyone is still awake, let's talk briefly about the trade deficit. I worry that sometimes we as a nation have the cart and the horse confused. The trade deficit represents foreign capital coming into the U.S. to fund investment opportunities that we as a nation cannot fund. Why? Because our savings rate is negative (as a nation and as consumers). This means the Chinese, and Japanese, and other nations invest their savings to fund US capital investments. In other words, these investors see the US economy as a good place to invest their money.

Allow me to ask a rhetorical question. Would you rather US banks have so much extra capital that they were investing in Chinese and European companies, thus creating jobs abroad, or have foreign banks investing in US companies creating jobs here in the U.S.? I personally prefer the latter.

I know this is a gross oversimplification of trade deficits. I'm sure I've left out some valid concerns. But I'm sick of politicians beating up the Chinese just because we are running a huge trade deficit with them. If it weren't China, it would be some other country. Why? Because the U.S. economy is still a good place to invest.