Word of the day.

Toyotacceleration

(See also Toyotaccelerator.)

Remember, laws and limitations are for little people.

Newfoundland and Labrador Premier Danny Williams is set to undergo heart surgery this week in the United States.


Hey Canada! How's that socialized medicine working out for you?

Uno's files for bankruptcy

Uno Restaurant Holdings Corp, the Boston-based company that operates 179 Uno Chicago Grills in 28 states, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection today as it seeks to restructure its debt.

...

“The Uno brand is strong; it’s the balance sheet that needs fixing,” Frank Guidara, Uno’s president and CEO, said in a statement.

I know, how about instead of restructuring your debt to fix your balance sheet you work on restructuring your menu and cooking methods to fix your crappy food?

How about instead of figuring out how to satisfy your creditors, you work on satisfying your customers by not serving them heated pre-made frozen pizzas?

Sometime in the last 12 years or so this chain lost its way. They went from being a restaurant that cooked actual, tasty pizza to being a “strong brand.”

Not strong enough, apparently, to cover for their lousy food.

I wonder if Gordon Ramsey would take on the job of fixing an entire chain?

Interesting (though long) thread on the amazon forum about an alleged buying fraud by the Nebraska Book company (NBC).

Summarizing the allegations, posters write that NBC's fraud takes the form of:

1) Buying competitively priced used textbooks from other Amazon sellers.
2) Upon receipt of the used textbook, NBC reports to the seller that the book it received has a different ISBN than listed, making it materially different than the item offered for sale. Alternatively, NBC claims that the item arrived with undisclosed damage.
3) NBC then demands the seller issue a refund.
4) (Sometimes) NBC refuses or claims to be unable to return the textbook to the seller.
5) Allegedly, NBC then sells the book on to another customer.

Oddly, the thread concerning these allegations began back in June of 2008, and there continue to be allegations.

Sadly, most posters seem to find it only after having dealt with NBC.

[More on this here.]

Even after reading an interview with folks at NBC, I can't help but think that they are living at the bottom of a very steep silo.

In the linked to interview, it seems to me that NBC has an insular, defensive, and obstinate corporate style. Employees of NBC have the gall to suggest that it can't return books to sellers for refunds because the logistics of it are simply too hard to work out.

It hides behind its internal processes and self limitations, but refuses to acknowledge one important fact. It has chosen to act as a buyer in a marketplace that has certain risks, but also the upside of good pricing. NBC eschews the accepted methods of correcting online selling market failures, claiming to be "too big" to have to comply with normal refund processes. Because it buys so many books, it claims, it can't or won't send a book back to an amazon seller in order to facilitate a refund.

If NBC can't bear the risks and costs of bottom feeding for low priced inventory on amazon.com and half.com, it shouldn't buy on those venues. If NBC's overhead structure isn't capable of efficiently dealing with and returning for refund the 3.4% misdescribed and 0.5% damages inventory it buys online, then NBC should write off the costs of those purchases, improve its processes or abandon buying in these marketplaces.

+++++

Some funny stuff from ex-employees here: http://www.jobvent.com/nebraska-book-company-job-reviews-C4061

Watch out for that firewater!

Schaghticoke chief charged with DUI

WOODBURY (AP) — Woodbury police say they charged the chief of the Schaghticoke Tribal Nation with driving under the influence.

Fifty-nine-year-old Richard Velky was arrested Christmas night. Police say an off-duty officer who saw Velky driving his SUV erratically pulled him over at about 9:15 p.m. Friday.

Authorities say Velky got out of his vehicle, stumbled toward the officer's personal car, threatened the officer and punched the hood of the officer's vehicle.

Velky was charged with driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs, failure to drive right and breach of peace. He posted $5,000 bail and is to be arraigned Jan. 4 in Waterbury Superior Court.

A woman who answered a phone listing for Velky Tuesday said his arrest wasn't newsworthy and hung up.

Labels: booze, Drunker than, DWI, Native Americans

Most every one of these items on ebay violate its ban on police vehicle lighting.

As do countless other listings, not so cleverly hidden.

By the same sellers.

For months on end.

You're doing a heck of a job there ebay.




(Why this is is a big deal.)

UPDATE: 12/8/09 Wound up ordering a green dash light from LEDGUY.net. I'll report back after it arrives.
_______________________

I'm a volunteer EMT with my local ambulance squad. That means, in the state I live in, that I am permitted to mount green intermittently flashing lights on my car to use in responding to rescue calls.

One of my cheapo ebay china-sourced flashing green LEDs failed, so I've been looking for a replacement from a real brand name.

The only problem has been that many, if not most, warning lights are harder to source in the color green than in other more common colors.

I managed to vet the following sources as having at least some selection of vehicle emergency lighting in green and thought I would share it with others who might face the same shopping challenge.

List is in alphabetical order. I am not affiliated with any of these stores. I have not yet purchased from any of these stores.

Sources for Green Emergency Warning Lights, LEDs, and Strobes.

http://www.fleetsafety.com (Limited Green Selection)

http://www.galls.com (Limited Green Selection)

http://www.lonestarpse.com

http://libertypublicsafety.com/

http://www.lshlights.com/

http://www.projectresponder.com  (Dedicated Green Light Section)

http://www.sirennet.com

http://www.strobesnmore.com

http://www.swps.com

UPDATE:

From the comments, a few more sources:
www.lightsnsiren.com (Dedicated Green Lights Page)

emergencyresponderproducts.com

Labels: EMS, EMT, Green, LED, Light, Sources, Strobe

I don't know why, but this strikes me as funny.

"Your fugitive's name is Doctor Sheldon Cooper."

A great quote from Brad Thor's "The Apostle", referencing an all-pink rifle covered with Hello Kitty stickers.

"The Taliban hates Hello Kitty."

I wrote this as a comment here, but I liked it enough to make it a post on my own blog.

Last year I went to a Skip Barber school at Lime Rock, about 45 miles from where I live.

Last month, when I returned to driving school, I went to one about 2,600 miles away from where I live.

Wanna know why I traveled an extra 2,500 miles each way to go back to driving school?

Easy.

Skip Barber sent me out in a Formula car that almost had a front wheel and hub assembly come right off the car during our first lapping session.

Skip's crack mechanics cleared a car that did not have all its front suspension bits attached.

As it was I had to limp back into the pits with the wheel flopping wildly, help in place by a less-than-complete set of links.

(I understand liability and all that, but) No one at Skip Barber ever apologized to me about this.

Not one of the instructors.

Not one of the sales people.

No one in customer service after I mentioned this in the after-class "satisfaction" survey.

No one thought to apologize.

So now I make a point of telling people that I would happily fly six hours for another high performance driving class, but I won't drive an hour and a half for one.

My thought on government healthcare.

The "Cadillac" health care plan is really a Hearse.

California not accepting its own IOUs as payment.

Don't be anxious.

          We're good for it for you.

                    We're just not good for it for us.

(Note by a B&B'er over at TTAC.)

Mary Jo Kopechne's death is to the moon landing as Farrah Fawcett's death is to the moon walker.

Inspiration: I came up with the following part yesterday, and posted it first as a comment here.

July 20, 1969 - NASA lands a man on the moon.

July 18, 1969 - Teddy lands a woman underwater.

A few days bigger gap and there might have been enough ink available to cover both episodes fully.

The moon landing won out, and the U.S. has had to suffer with Teddy for 40 extra years...

The opening analogy came to me as I was writing this post.

Reminder - Ted Kennedy owns a dog he named "Splash". The dog's breed, and I am NOT making this up, is a Portugese Water Dog. Teddy wrote a children's book called "My Senator and Me" from the perspective of Splash.

Labels: Kopechne, Swimmer

The producer of the most popular television program in the world speaks about the upcoming 13th season of Top Gear.

Basically Hammond, May and I went to see AC/DC, and there they were, nine thousand years old, still making your ears bleed with the same pulverising ferocity they managed three decades ago, and you think to yourself, it doesn’t matter if your pony has one trick as long as it does that trick really, really well, and more importantly, it really cares every time it performs that trick. And immodestly, I can say to you all, we still really, really care about what we do.

The fire we have inside about giving you good telly burns as fiercely as it did in 2002. So sit back and enjoy Top Gear 13, the same old shit.

Labels: Caring, Fierceness, Top Gear

"If you don't find it in the index, look very carefully through the entire catalogue." -- Index aid in 1897 Sears catalog.

I'm not sure progress has gotten us much.

Index aid in Microsoft's PowerPoint 2007

What happened to the Summary Slide and table of contents options?

1. The ability to create a summary slide and a table of contents slide in your presentation is not available in Microsoft Office PowerPoint 2007. Instead, to create your own summary or table of contents slide by copying slide titles onto a new slide, do the following:
   
   On the Home tab, in the Slides group, click the arrow under New Slide, and then click a slide layout that contains a large body text placeholder (placeholders: Boxes with dotted or hatch-marked borders that are part of most slide layouts. These boxes hold title and body text or objects such as charts, tables, and pictures.) (such as Title and Content, Two Content, Comparison, or Content with Caption).
   
   Note If you add a Blank slide layout, you must then add a text box. To do this, on the Insert tab, in the Text group, click Text Box, and then drag to draw a large text box on the new slide.
   
   
2. In the pane that contains the Outline and Slides tabs, click Slides.
   
   
3. For each slide that you want to add to the summary or table of contents, copy the title in the title placeholder, and then paste it onto the new slide in the order in which the slide appears in your presentation.

Basically they don't have any functionality in PowerPoint to build you an index or table of contents in an automated fashion, so instead they give you step by step directions for how to by hand create a static table of contents.

And Microsoft wonders why people hate it?