I bought a crappy USB wireless adapter made by this rebate vampire at MicroCenter. Gigafast was offering a $25 rebate, obviously necessary to get anyone to buy the aforementioned crappy $35 USB wireless adapter since no one in their right mind would pay $35 for it, but $10, hmmm….. I do need one for my extra desktop…. so the cycle of rationalization began.
Had I known I would never receive my $25, had I known that Gigafast gets an F Rating from the Better Business Bureau, I likely would have spent a little extra on a quality component from a reputable manufacturer. However, I didn’t know these things at the time of my purchase. Gigafast, I believe, knows exactly what percentage of rebates it will honor. (Ed Foster claims the return rate for one rebate house was less than 30 percent.) This is a classic information inequality resulting in (1) a deadweight loss to society inflicted by this rebate regime in terms of wasted postage and administrative costs for all parties and (2) loss due to the opportunity costs of buying something for a certain (so we think) price, when, had we known the true price, we would have bought something else. This is a market inefficiency, and there are few things that I hate more than market inefficiencies.
Long story short, I e-mailed MicroCenter and relayed my complaint. They were very responsive and a manager offered to apply the amount of the rebate towards another purchase. Great customer service. I’ll shop there again. From Gigafast I heard nothing but a loud clanging silence.
great question. we’ll put it in the hopper. thanks for writing, sjd
It occurred to me that ‘the hopper’ could be a circular filing cabinet reserved for the rather obvious ideas contributed by intellectual pygmies like myself, but I prefer to think they’re debating the finer points of my suggestion right now at this very instant.
I don’t often discuss work on this blog, but one of my clients has a particularly interesting niche. Debra Bruce is a former lawyer turned lawyer coach. She practiced law for 18 years at both large firms and her own small firm before deciding to focus on helping other lawyers grow their practices and maintain sanity in their lives. She’s a great resource for productivity techniques. It was working with her that I first got clued in on the Getting Things Done method and becoming intentional about my career.
As I blogged the other day, Houston appears to be losing Cactus Music, the only vibrant, independent record store still going that I’m aware of. My favorite economics blog Marginal Revolution picked up on the wider spate of closings including Aron’s in L.A. and Rhino Records, quoting from an excellent article in Rocky Mountain News.
It’s hard to be surprised. I make a point of buying certain things when I go to Cactus, but I find those trips have become less and less frequent. More often I buy it on Amazon, typically used, and at a pretty steep discount. What we’re losing, however, can’t really be found online, the community that brought the artists into the store for performances, and the joy of browsing, which I’ve never seen adequately mimicked on the web. (It’s not an interface problem, it’s a resolution problem, as Tufte might say.) Wouldn’t it make more sense to transform Cactus into something else, a coffee shop, a guitar store, clothing, maybe a little of everything? I kept thinking that I would pay for the community aspect, whether they sold CDs or not. Secretly, when now one’s looking, I wonder if perhaps the Barnes & Noble next door might buy it out since they don’t have a music section.
Dave Alvin put on a great show at the Mucky Duck last night. Leslie and I got the VIP treatment at the “V” table. “V” is for Vern. Whoo-ooo-oo-ooo-oooo-oo… The impressionist-painting at left is a pic taken from my crappy camera phone. The extent of my knowledge of Dave’s work is from Blackjack David (2002) so it was great to hear things from his latest, Ashgrove, and earlier stuff, both solo and with the Blasters. He was joined by Austin guitarist Chris Miller and harmonica player Dale Spaulding.
Great show. Worth picking up a CD. I recommend Blackjack David or King of California.
Leslie told me some sad news this morning. Cactus Music, Houston’s only thriving, independent music store, will be closing in March. Cactus will be particularly missed for its live in-store performances. Among the acts I’ve seen there were Robert Earl Keen, Los Lonely Boys, Billy Joe Shaver and Bela Fleck.
How concerned should I be that the wonton soup at Lucky House smelled EXACTLY like a wet dog? At first I thought the guy next to me maybe worked at the pound. Nope, it was the soup. I’m going to try not to think about it.
I just put up a Google Map mash-up of all the places I like to go in Houston. I’m calling it Luke’s List. I’ve been wanting to play with the Google Map API for a while and could never find the time. Then I came across Mapbuilder.net and had the map up and working within about 15 minutes. Brilliant! (guinness commercial)
I’ve just got a couple of things up there now, but check it out and let me know what you think. I’m planning on adding separate maps for the Best of Houston’s restaurants, watering holes, places to play tennis, and live music venues. Am I missing anything?
Oliver Lafayette
AP/Tim Johnson
Lafayette had a half to remember against LSU.
TEAM OF THE WEEK: HOUSTON
By Andy Katz, ESPN.com
Tom Penders has never been shy about boasting. When he worked at ESPN, he had his no-spin top 10. Well, there is plenty to spin with the Cougars this season without any of it sounding falsely positive.
Self-described “Turnaround Tom” is at it again with the Cougars looking like Memphis’ and UAB’s toughest competition in Conference USA this season. Houston grabbed wins over two ranked teams by stunning LSU on the road and then taking out Arizona at home.
Almost-player-of-the-week Oliver Lafayette, who is averaging 22.5 points a game, scored 27 of his 32 points against the Tigers in the second half and then lit up the Wildcats for 28.
The key now for the Cougars (3-1, with the only loss to VCU) is to stay away from losing games like at South Alabama or at Centenary as they forge ahead. Houston deserves Top 25 consideration with the week it just had.
Kim thinks I look like her Uncle Rick. She first told me this a few months ago and had her mom come look at me during our softball game. When Matt and Joel went over to her house for Thanksgiving, she made her Dad try to find a picture of Uncle Rick to show them. Then a week or so ago she brought me pictures of Uncle Rick. Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against Uncle Rick; he’s a great guy as far as people I’ve never met go. I would be honored to resemble him. As I do for all of life’s tough questions, I leave it up to the internet to decide.
Matt Clinger and I joined up with HACCRT (Houston Area Christian Crisis Relief Team) for another saturday of tree-cutting, this time in Sabine Pass. It was a great trip; the folks we were able to help were wonderful people and First Baptist from Groves, TX, where we had been working previously came down and hosted a Thanksgiving Dinner at the high school. Good food and fellowship is hard to beat.
I’ve created a flickr photo group pool for some of the pictures everyone has been taking. I’ve convinced Grove to finally start a blog to coordinate activities and get the word out to others who might want to get involved. It should be up in the next few days at http://haccrt.blogspot.com
My boss at Somerset House, Grover Norwood, has organized a group of guys from his church in Simonton to provide free tree-cutting services in parts of east Texas still reeling from Hurricane Rita. Despite the damage, very little attention has been given to the area in news reports. Matt Clinger and I were able to make the 3rd such trip, this time to Port Arthur. Grove has been working with various police and fire departments in the vicinity and Pastor Joe Worley of 1st Baptist Church in Groves to identify those who have the worst damage and are least able to afford professional crews. En route, we saw a dozen or so houses where fallen trees had caved in the roof, many still lying there. We were able to complete three sites. I’ve posted pictures from the site at Glenda Blanchard’s house, who had 10 good sized trees down, a bit more work than we had originally planned on to say the least. Grove has christened the new organization “Houston Area Christian Crisis Relief.” We’re creating a blog website to keep partipants and well-wishers apprised of our activities. I’ll post a link when available. We’re working on our next trip to Sabine Pass, which bore the brunt of storm and by most accounts was pretty much wiped out.
Kris, Lisa, Vic, Olivia, Adam the headless Oklahoma State fan, Luke and Kelly’s cup, hand and knees - I think Stan took this one a few beers into it
What a great weekend. Kris’s church had a social planned for a ranch near Somerville on Saturday so we decided to camp out friday night at the state park nearby. After a quick stop for provisions and some waiting for folks whose sense of time was, shall we say, more approximate than our own, we made the trip up without a hitch. We had just enough daylight to set up the girls’ tent (real men sleep under the stars) and get the fire going.
I doubt Smokey would have approved of our liberal use of kerosene, but we were starving and hobo packs take 30 minutes to cook. For the uninitiated “hobo packs” are hamburger meat, potato cubes, sliced onions, green peppers, seasonings and half a stick of butter, wrapped up in aluminum foil and tossed in the fire. Unfortunately, we neglected to properly dispose of the leftovers, which attracted visitors in the night. I managed to sleep through the whole thing, but Kris claims he was awakened by the Vic’s growling and looked up to see the marauding skunk perched on my head, hissing and waving its tail. Kris scared it off but didn’t wait long enough before letting Vic out of the kennel and he promptly ran it down and got nailed.
Vic lived out the rest of the weekend in exile. We played an extended game of fetch in Lake Somerville but to no avail. A steady wind helped keep the fumes at bay, but coming back from breakfast at the Fluff Top Roll in Brenham we could smell him from two blocks away. I doubt he’ll be getting very many visitors in the courtyard this week.
We had a blast at the Baker’s ranch, caught up with some friends I haven’t seen for a while and got hustled by some girls in a game of Bocce ball. You win some and you lose some.
So if you missed it, I spent an extended weekend with some friends fleeing hurricane Rita which was ominously bearing down on Houston early last week. It didn’t do a whole lot of damage in Houston, but we got some interesting stories out of it and a few good pix.
I’m back in Houston; back at work. Since I’m in a reflective, work-avoiding mood, here’s a list of 10 things it would have been nice to have this past week.
A power inverter to plug in my laptop from the cigarette lighter of the car. They run about $30. There is no reason on God’s green earth I didn’t have one. I’m ordering one right now.
GPS receiver for maps, directions, distance, etc. Luckily Kris had one of these. We got a couple of good back-road routes out of this one, plus I’m always getting lost in general.
A way of knowing the average speed and/or travel time between any two points on texas highways. There was a local info number, but something like the signs on Houston’s freeways for rush hour would have been helpful. Hopefully some über-geek at TxDot will whip up a Google Map API for this one.
Cruise control that would keep me inching forward but would also stop the car automatically to keep from running into the guy in front of me.
A way of going to the bathroom in mixed company without getting out of the car. OK, so I don’t think this will ever be invented, but it would have been damn useful.
even moderately healthy food at any gas station
A Treo cellphone to use as a modem for my laptop and get online from anywhere. Oh wait I’ve got one of those, sure wish I had figured out how to use it as a modem before this all went down.
Tivo for the radio. Wait, what did they just say? The road’s washed out where? Don’t take which highway? Every radio needs a rewind button.
Call forwarding for my cellphone. This would be useful for life in general. If I’m at home, send my calls to my home phone, out of town, send it to my hotel. You get the idea. I realize Cingular has their Fast Forward services, but it seems like this kind of thing should be universal like voice mail.
Speaking of which, how about a transcription service for that voicemail to send them to me as text-messages. This is also something that would be useful for life in general, but especially so when the networks are under a lot of strain.
None of this is going to happen on account of this measly little blog post, unless of course any of you reading this happen to be inventors, in which case you can make out a check for the royalties semi-annually if you please. On the upside my mom figured out text-messaging on her cellphone. I’m tempted to call this an evolutionary event on level with dinosaurs growing feathers, but I’m pretty sure my aunt Sylvia just showed her how.
Rita is expected to make landfall east of Houston, sparing the city most of the extreme winds that would do the most damage. Houston west of I-45 is expected to fare pretty well. (Good for us, since we’re on the western edge of Houston) The most immediate danger at this point appears to be debris being picked up by the wind and becoming projectiles. However rainwater flooding may be a big problem as projections for rain are up to 24″ according to some, conjuring up memories of Tropical Storm Allison from 2001
The latest computer models are tightly clustered around a landfall point just west of the Texas/Louisiana border. Confidence is high in this forecast. Houston and Galveston should escape major wind and storm surge damage, and only experience maximum sustained winds of 60 mph with gusts to 85 mph. It is still too early to tell what will happen after landfall, as the models all take Rita different ways. A major rainwater flooding problem will ensue after Rita’s landfall, with 10 - 30 inches of rain falling over a large area of Texas and Louisiana.
Couldn’t quite manage to get that Bob Marley tune out of my head the last 24 hours. According to news reports there were over a million Houstonians fleeing from Hurricane Rita today. It sure felt like it on 59 heading north to Daingerfield. Kris, Lisa, Jason, Christie and I left Houston at 10pm last night in two cars. By 7am this morning, driving through the night, we had made it as far as Livingston, about 70 miles. The speed gradually picked up as we made it further north. We rolled into Daingerfield around 7pm. I’ve never been so happy to roll up to Outlaw’s BBQ.
The Verizon network seems a bit overloaded. None of my calls are getting out, so for those looking for updates, here’s the plan - we’re heading out of Houston in two cars - Kris, Lisa & Jason in one; Christie and I in the other at about 10pm. We’ll mosey on up 59 to Nacogdoches and meander up to the Hohn lake house in Daingerfield to wait out the hurricane. God willing and traffic permitting, we’ll hit Daingerfield some time around 4 am. Hopefully cell service will be a little better up there.
Ole Lukey’s not liking the looks of this one. Galveston has been under mandatory evacuation since this morning or last night. Mayor White has called for a voluntary evacuation of Houston, and mandatory evacuation of southern outliers such as Clearlake, Pearland and Friendswood. Rita is expected to hit Houston some time on friday, at which point, God willing, I’ll be kicking back with a cerveza somewhere warm and dry, most likely the Hohn compound in Daingerfield. Not expecting massive flooding on the scale of Katrina, but it’s a hundred freakin’ degrees and there’s a 99% chance this thing will knock our AC out, so away we go. If anything exciting happens like I get hit by flying debris, I’ll be sure to update.
Reality is a bit overwhelming these days with Houston awash in the hurricane refugees, gas prices over $3 a gallon, and my Cougars losing ugly to a team with a freaking duck for a mascot. Time for something escapist, at least for a lit geek. I curled up in the courtyard with John Hollander’sRhyme’s Reason: A Guide to English Verse this morning. As a guide to English Verse, it’s more specifically a manual of poetic form, which I think tends to be one of those subjects, like grammar, that in American universities is seldom taught (and almost never taught well) but of which you are assumed to have an intimate working knowledge. Hollander’s guide is remarkably bearable, even fun, at least if a deeper understanding of anapests and iambs happens to turn you on. Hollander, an accomplished poet in his own right, mixes explication with poems that themselves demonstrate their inner workings:
In couplets, one line often makes a point
Which hinges on its bending, like a joint;
The sentence makes that line break into two.
Here’s a caesura: see what it can do.
(And here’s a gentler one, whose pause, more slight,
Waves its two hands, makes what’s left sound right.)
Cactus Music & Video, Houston’s last real music store, is hosting a triumvirate of Texas troubadours (how you like those alliterate apples?) in the next month or so at its in-store performances.
The Houston Kid, Rodney Crowell plays Thursday, Sept. 8th at 6pm. James McMurtry (minus the Heartless Bastards it would seem) plays the next night, Sept. 9th same time same place, and Billy Joe Shaver on October 1st at 4pm.
Cactus is a great place to see your favorite artists in an intimate venue. St. Arnold’s is known to serve up some refreshing beverages from time to time. Limit 2 per customer. Usually they’re gearing up to play some place that evening. Crowell is playing the Continental Club the 7th and the 8th, and Gruene Hall in New Braunfels the 10th. McMurtry is also at the Continental on the 9th. Shaver’s playing the Firehouse Saloon on Oct. 1st.
Didn’t go into work. Didn’t even think about work. It was glorious… and then I happened to be browsing around on the web (non work-related) and found this:
I suppose everyone has their guilty pleasures. Barbarella is one of mine. I have the original Barbarella promo poster hanging behind the door to my room (pictured at left) that a friend gave me after we wrapped up his shoot. (Check out the Nostalgia Factory if you’re into vintage posters) For the uninitiated Barbarella is based on a french comic book and stars Jane Fonda as a space vixen who is sent to track down evil scientist Duran Duran (yes, this is where the band got its name) and has a series of double-entendre-laden adventures along the way. The film is unbelievably campy, directed by Fonda’s then husband Roger Vadim, with a script by beat icon Terry Southern (Dr. Strangelove, Easy Rider) and produced by Dino De Laurentiis (who produced Italian neorealists Fellini, Rossellini, Visconti, De Sica, Antonioni and cult-favorites Blue Velvet, Flash Gordon, Dune & Conan the Barbarian). If that weren’t enough Marcel Marceau the french mime appears as Professor Ping.
Imagine my delight to discover the Museum of Fine Art in Houston will be screening this classic epic of risque sci-fi as part of their Movies Houstonians Love Series. Bold choice Annalee Jefferies! Not happy about waiting until March 13 for the screening though.
Houston traffic being what it is, I spend a lot of time trapped in the car. This is all the more intensely annoying since I used to be able to read the entire Times or Journal or 30 to 40 pages of book on each leg of my commute in Boston. Enough is enough. Time to reclaim the time lost to traffic tyranny.
Then oddly enough, I realized, I don’t really need Audible, even though that’s what got me started. I don’t really need a huge collection of audio books and I’d like to be able to loan what I listen to to my friends if I wanted to. Amazon sells new and used audiobooks on CD, why not “rent” an audiobook by buying it and then selling it to someone else when I’m done? I can’t do anything but listen to the mp3 file from Audible, but I can do whatever I want with my well-packaged CD - give it to a friend, resell it, whatever. Moreover, the I can copy CDs to my computer and onto my ipod, generally in more user-friendly format since it’s divided into chapters on the CD and comes in one hulking file from Audible. Audible executives take note. There are chinks in your business plan.
Kinky Friedman really is running for governor. This is a bit weirder than I can really fathom. I suppose I should be prepared for this kind of thing, in this Schwarzeneggerian political-era, but… now this is just weird. The New Yorker is hot on the Texas Jewboy’s campaign trail…
“The Governor has decided on pancakes!” he barked, finally. “Jewford, are there pancakes at this buffet? Do you see any kind of pancakes anywhere?” “Pancakes for the Governor! The Governor will have pancakes!” Little Jewford shouted, and promptly did nothing about it. Little Jewford—who was born Jeff Shelby—was one of the original Jewboys, a conservatory-trained pianist who played keyboards, accordion, clavieta, toy trumpet, and kazoo. In this new road show he acts as Kinky’s driver, all-around bodyman, and voice of reason—or, often, a sort of profound unreason. They have known each other for almost fifty years, since they were children, and they play off each other in a continuous Marx Brothers-style high vaudeville—Kinky does Groucho, Jewford does both Chico and Harpo. Kinky, who has never been married, often introduces Jewford to crowds as “very possibly the next First Lady of the state of Texas”; when asked about it, Jewford tends to shrug and say things like “I need a gig.”
Just caught Lise Liddell and Teresa Kolo swapping songs at the Mucky Duck’s sunday supper session. I heard Teresa Kolo’s song Traveling Hat on KPFT maybe four years ago and tried to track it down without success. Seeing her tonight inspired me to dig a little deeper and I finally turned up her album Carapace on the Teresa Kolo page on MyTexasMusic. Terrific songwriter, particularly loved Traveling Hat and Blow Bite Blow. More here when the album arrives…
Well, so technically all games we play have been made up by someone at one time or another, but I’ve decided to record for posterity the games I’ve encountered at or near their conception. The Game of Bottle is one such.
I read somewhere that it took 20 years for nascent basketball players to figure out that they needed to cut a hole in the bottom of the peach basket so they could quit climbing up the ladder to fish out the ball. Games gestate. In 50 years there will be a world-champion bottle team and their star player will have more endorsement contracts than he knows what to do with. Any megacorporations want to get in on the ground floor with some start-up capital? Coke? Pepsi? … Fanta?
