New Years Resolutions

My New Years Resolution this year is to read 52 books in a year. Some have asked me to blog about the experience, so expect to see some, or perhaps, a bunch of book reviews over the coming year.

So far, I've finished Super Freakonomics and started Malcolm Gladwell's What the Dog Saw. I enjoyed Freakonomics a lot, the unlikely correlation between things and underlying circumstances that drive human interactions fascinates me. Super Freakonomics book continues in the same direction. The final chapter about how we're looking at global warming all wrong and how what we're currently trying to do could actually be making things worse was immensely fascinating to me.

Strangely though, it didn't really settle into my consciousness like Freakonomics did. Here it is about four days out from finishing it, and I can barely even remember any of the major points in the book. For a "dense" book, it's also a very fast read and seems a little thin. At the end of the day, it seems like the authors had a lot to talk about in the first book, and this is all the stuff that either didn't make the cut or they didn't have time to research. Some of it has also been covered already in a book I read last year -- Malcolm Gladwell's The Outliers. That doesn't mean it isn't immensely fascinating, but if you haven't read either book, start with Freakonomics. It's stronger and more cohesive.

All that said, the chapter on global warming is incredibly fascinating, and it touches on a think tank founded by some ex-Microsoft guys who might actually have solutions that work. Of course, getting environmentalists to try them out is difficult, as some of the conventional wisdom on what might solve the problem turns out to be wrong, and some of it (such as eating organic fruits and vegetables) actually might be making the problem worse. There's also some interesting ideas on building cheap devices that might break down the feedback loop that causes hurricanes. There's also some talk on fighting terrorism that highlights a lot of talking points I've been making over the years -- you can't harden every target, and there are too many possible plots to defend against them all. However, freaking out over an attack not only costs money, it costs lives as well -- for instance, in the three months following 9/11, there were over a thousand extra traffic deaths. Caused, of course, by the people who were afraid to drive or didn't want to be hassled by the TSA and took to the road instead. Which, of course, isn't nearly as safe.

I think I'll find myself rereading this book a year or so from now, as I'll likely reread Freakonomics and want to do some extra reading on the same topic. I think I'd also like to see how the books read as a whole unit rather than the disjointed set. Either way, this one stays on the "good" bookshelf.

I'm going to write about that terror attack, but first ...

...I'm going to talk about my ticket situation. I'd love to talk about the idiocity that is the TSA and what they're doing, but I need to let my rage die down a little and let them shake out exactly what they're going to do. Right now, they're telling us they want things to be unpredictable, which just basically means, "we don't know what to do, so we're just doing stuff". If what they were doing was effective, they'd need to do it everywhere for it to be effective, otherwise, it's just for show. If it's ineffective, then why are they wasting time doing it? The time a TSA agent has to look at a passenger and his luggage is non-infinite. We shouldn't be frivolously wasting it on things that aren't effective.

But I digress. I can't write that post right now.

I'm talking about the ticket I got in March, that I went to traffic court over. After delaying the trial as long as I could and pressing the prosecutor as hard as I could, I decided I was tired of the nonsense and took their "plea bargain". Basically, pay the fine, don't do anything illegal for 90 days, and the ticket goes away like it never happened. I called the court and set everything up. Since there's some paperwork to be signed, they had to send some stuff to my mailbox.

Only something funny happened along the way: nothing ever arrived in my mailbox. I was told it would be about 10 working days, but after nearly a month, I started to worry. So, I called the court again. Got the same lady on the phone, she remembered my ticket and the settlement and said, "oh that's right, I forgot to send it out. I'll do that right away." Me, I'm feeling like an idiot because if I just hadn't called and asked, it would have just disappeared. Oh well, that's life, and peace of mind is worth that, right? Well, it's been another month and nothing's arrived. Actually, almost two months.

So, now what? I don't really want to call again, seeing as how the ticket seems to actually be lost ... again. Or maybe the woman is trying to cut me a break and "losing" my ticket. Either way, I don't care, so long as it stays lost. I've also renewed my license a few weeks back, so it doesn't appear that anything at all is happening with the ticket.

Disclaimer: This is not the first ticket I've had that's been lost. See, when you get as many tickets as I do, sometimes things that are very unlikely to happen still manage to happen. Every day tickets get lost. Someone misfiles something, a ticket book gets lost, a file gets tossed in the trash or falls behind a cabinet. Chances are though, it's not your ticket. But if you get enough of them, it stands to reason that some of them might disappear.

This would be number three, by the way. The first one happened 15 years ago. I got two tickets in the same location on consecutive nights. Bad luck and not knowing where the speed limit actually started. I don't know if someone got confused or took pity on me, but when I went to take care of the second ticket, no one could find it. They also couldn't advise me on what to do, because if it did turn up, a warrant would be issued. On the other hand, they couldn't process any payment or court date for it because as far as they knew, the offense never happened. Strange predicament to find yourself in at 20. The ticket never turned up.

The second one happened in Giddings, TX but it was your standard run of the mill ticket, and I think I told them I would take defensive driving for it. Maybe. I don't know. What I do know is that somewhere along the line, I didn't do what I was supposed to do and someone never took my file out of the right folder and my ticket almost didn't get processed. I say almost, because about three days before the statute of limitations was up (three years), the Giddings Municipal Court called me. Seems they'd found the ticket and they wanted me to settle up. I couldn't remember when the offense happened -- I remembered that it did -- and asked them to remind me. When they told me, I told them that if they thought they could subpoena me and get me into a court of law and render a judgement inside of three days to go ahead and try. They kind of laughed and said, "well, we thought it was worth asking."

Now I'm faced with a similar situation. The ticket seems to have effectively disappeared into the ether. It may surface in the future or it may not. I'll likely call again on Monday, just to make sure, but if they still don't send me anything, I'm going to consider it lost. I will record my conversation though, just in case.

Traffic Court Again

Went to traffic court again on Thursday. This is a ticket I got back in March for speeding. I got offered a pretty good deal -- 90 days deferred adjudication, take a defensive driving class, pay the fine, and it's like it never happened. This is a pretty standard deal in Texas, other than the driving class, and usually I'll take it. However, I feel the prosecution doesn't really have a case and I've got a witness, so I made my counter offer: 90 days deferred, no class, reduced fine.

Rejected. 90 days, no class, full fine also rejected.

So, looks like I'll be going to trial. I should get one more shot to negotiate, so we'll see how that goes. I need to file a couple of requests for routine paperwork in preparation, but hopefully, it won't go that far. We'll see.

For those who don't know, deferred adjudication just means that you can't have another ticket post to your record during the time you're on deferment. You can get other tickets, you can even get other deferments, you just can't let any of them go on your record. If you manage to stay out of trouble for 90 days, the ticket disappears like it never happened. This particular court is unusual in that they really like you to waste your time taking a DDC while on deferment. It doesn't count against the one per year agreement the state lets you use to get out of a ticket, but it doesn't change the fact that I hate taking them -- I could practically teach the class at this point, it's absurd for me to attend.

Don't valet park your car.

This is just a little tip I have for you after talking to a valet I know.

Everything you worry about when people valet your car, yeah, that sometimes happens. I've been forbidden to talk in specifics, but I'll do the best I can about a particular valet at a particular spot downtown and some specifics I've heard about.

This valet works at a very prominent location downtown and routinely valets cars that are worth more than most people make in a year. Nearly every single one of these cars he drifts around the garage when he parks them. The valet level of the parking garage is mostly closed off from the public, so no one other than the other valets and management actually sees what they do. What kind of cars are we talking about? Oh, Ferraris, Lamborghinis, Porsches, Bentleys, stuff like that. I've heard stories about the races they stage down in the garage -- literal drag races between things like a Ford GT and a Porsche GT2. He'll talk about which cars can reach over 70 mph in the garage, and how close they like to slide the cars near the concrete at the entrance to the garage.

Even worse, they see nothing wrong with what they're doing. They claim that they're driving the cars no harder or rougher than the owners would, and the concrete floor of the garage is sealed and slick, so sliding the car is easier and more predictable to do than you'd think. All of this may be true, but it doesn't excuse the behavior. I drive the red Porsche Cayman S you see in the banner at the top, and I'm pretty generous with letting people drive it. I also race that car, and I can tell you that it's very likely that no one would drive the car as hard as I drive it. Even still, if one of my friends drove the car like this guy says he routinely drives the customer cars, the ride would be over real fast. We wouldn't even be having much of a discussion other than "Stop. Now." If I don't even know you?

Look, it doesn't matter one bit what the valet parker thinks. As the owner of a car that he thinks nothing of trashing, I can tell you that it does personally bother me. I didn't give you license to drive it that way, and while I might drive it harder, I also pay the bills and tires and other consumables. A better argument would be, "how about I fuck your girlfriend? I probably won't fuck her as hard as you would."

Oh, and for those of you who haven't yet signed off of valet parking, management is aware of this behavior and approves of it. No one's been fired for it, and no one's been reprimanded for it either.

Portholes confuse me.

And not just in the fact that people find them attractive.

So, this is the new ghetto modification -- fake portholes. Usually, they don't do this good of a job lining them up or even figuring out where they should go, they just do a real slapdash job of "good enough" which looks absolutely terrible. But, that's not what I find most interesting about this trend.

These things were started by Buick, back in the day when the Buick name actually meant something, and the number of portholes (3 or 4) denoted if you had the low-rent engine or the high-horsepower one. Buick reintroduced them in 2003 on the Park Avenue, mainly as a way to tie the Buick name back to its illustrious past. They still do it, but it was mostly a marketing failure -- no one's really buying that Buicks are somehow cool and everywhere other than China, it's a failing brand name.

Yet, somehow, the portholes became ghetto chic. They caught on in a way that Buick never has, and now I see these plastered on every low rent car on the east side of Austin. My only question is why? I mean I could understand it if Mercedes had done it, or Cadillac had done it -- well, maybe not understand, but at least it would make some kind of ghetto sense -- but I can't understand how something from Buick became the epitome of low class style.

So I just drive around looking at portholes and questioning.

Making minitures from images of real stuff

There was a time when I was fascinated by miniature cars and had a fairly decent collection of them.  Never had the room to display them, and after a while, it feels kind of foolish anyway.   However, now I've found a way to indulge my habit virtually.  

Photoshop tutorial: Make Fake Miniature scenes. 

It Just Occured To Me

There's a helmet law for cyclists in Austin, but not one for people on motocycles.   Whiskey.  Tango. Foxtrot.

Not that I'm a fan of helmet laws for anyone, but I guess the bikers' PAC is stronger than the cyclists'.  

Historical blogging, part 1

There was a time when I had another blog.  Due to some less than understanding significant others, along with a whole host of other issues, I took it down.  However, I did keep the posts.   While they are over two years old now, I was really enjoying reading back through them and seeing where my mind was not so long ago.   Because of this, I thought it might be a halfway decent idea to just go ahead and post them again, which I'm going to do over the next few days.

First up, Seattle sucks and I'm tired of it.  This post was from January 2, 2007.  My life was falling apart at the time, my marriage was ending, and I was 2500 miles from home and all I wanted to do was get back to Austin.

Seattle sucks, and I'm tired of it.  Current mood:  aggravated I've been consulting on Boeing's new 787 airliner, so that means I've got to spend an awful lot of time in Seattle.   I've earned over 200,000 frequent flyer miles this year, mainly traveling from Seattle to Austin.  I'm tired of it.   Seattle is gorgeous if you manage to get here during the summer months.  It's mild, and it doesn't rain (shocker, I know!).   The other nine months of the year?  This cartoon pretty well sums it up: It's just gray and gloomy and cold and that kind of bullshit rain that never really gets you wet but just serves to remind you how cold and shitty the weather really is.   And no matter what you may think, or how much fun an expense account is, traveling for business is nothing like traveling for leisure. I've got to get back to Austin.  It's like recharging my batteries when I'm home.  I want to go hang out at Maudies Milagro and drink margaritas with my friends until I can't drive home.  I want to go run my car for a few dozen hot laps at Texas World Speedway.  I want to ride my motorcycle up and down Lime Creek Road until the sun goes down.   I need to be with my friends, my family, and everyone important in my life. Not that Seattle's all bad.  I can go snowboarding, surfing, mountain climbing, off roading, fly around the city, visit Jimi Hendrix's grave, or any enjoy number of all the cool things Seattle has to offer.  It's just that it's not home, and with a few exceptions, my friends here are of the very superficial variety -- they'll be happy to drink your beer, but when the party's over, they're no where to be found.   And having visited here off and on for over year, I've seen everything here and I'm kind of done with it. I'll have to make another trip up to Vancouver before I leave though.  They don't call "Vansterdam" for nothing.   If it's vice, it's probably legal.  And if it isn't, no one's paying attention anyway.

So, in retrospect, what do I think?   Well, I never got back up to Vancouver, and I'm not entirely sure that was a big loss.   I have a couple of vices, which most of my good friends know well, but the vices allowed in Vancouver and Amsterdam really aren't any of those.  I think I was just upset and reckless and destructive and wanted to be stupidly hedonistic for a little while. 

Two years later, and yes, I really do miss Seattle.  I don't miss the weather, and I'll never visit in the winter time, but I did make some good friends there that I really do miss and there's some things in town I'd like to see again.   Hell, I even miss the calamari at my usual friday night eating spot in Sea-Tac airport. 

I'm starting to travel again for business, and that's a love hate thing all on it's own.  I'm looking forward to racking up miles and being upgraded all the time, but I'll miss being away from friends, family, and Austin.   Then again, I really miss my old Boeing job too.  It's still the coolest thing I've ever done and the highlight of my professional career.

Got Out of Another Ticket

I have no idea how I managed to get out of this one.   Usually, when you get pulled over driving a bright red Porsche that's obviously seen track time and has a license plate like mine .... well, you just man up and take your ticket.    And yet, somehow, I got lucky.   Did I mention that I couldn't find my insurance card either?  

So, what happened?  Well, I was running around town, trying to pick up my date and get back to the annual SCCA party (did I mention that I was going to a party with a bunch of racers?) before I missed out on everything.  Luckily, the officer didn't see me showing off for my friends (~80mph in a 35 in the middle of downtown) or hauling ass down the interstate (~110 in a 55) and instead caught me leaving "spiritedly" from a stop sign.   

Honestly, I was just having fun and I'm not entirely sure I broke the speed limit.  But I am pretty sure that I could have gotten busted for exhibition of acceleration.   I don't know where the officer came from, but as much attention as I was attracting, he could have come from anywhere. 

Once he pulls me over, I wonder just how bad it's going to be.  When I can't find my insurance (took it out of the car for an inspection, forgot to put it back) I know it's going to be bad.  Not having proof of insurance pretty much guarantees you'll get a couple of tickets -- they're going to make sure you show up to court to prove that you were covered, and as long as they're writing one ticket .... well, you get the idea.  

When he asked me to step out and to the rear of my vehicle, I knew it was going to be bad.  They don't ask you to step out for no good reason.   Rather, he didn't ask, he ordered me.   So, we had a nice little conversation -- where had I been, where was I going (I sure as hell didn't mention I was going to a party with a bunch of race car drivers), and just what in the hell I thought I was doing.   I tried a bullshit excuse, and then just said, "I wasn't showing off, but I don't have an excuse either."   We danced around all the other bullshit, like had I been drinking or were there any drugs in the car, and then he informed me that he was just going to cut me a warning and let me go. 

I guess some days you just get lucky.  I have no idea.   He never noticed that I wasn't sporting my front license plate either.