Entry 378: Blog By Bulletpoint

It's 10:00 p.m. Sunday evening.  I had every intention of putting up a real post this weekend, but, you know, kids and whatnot.  I don't have the brain capacity at the moment to put together coherent, cohesive prose of any length, so I'm just going to put up some thoughts I've been kicking around of late and call it a post.  It's better than nothing... probably.

• You know what's a weird impulse that pretty much everybody I know has?  The overwhelming desire to tell something to somebody they don't need to hear and don't want to hear.  Today I was picking up dinner for us and some friends and it took a really long time because the restaurant messed up.  I was so annoyed that I vented to (more like at) S all the way to our friends' place, and then, not getting the response I wanted from her, I then vented to one of our friends once we got to their place.  I did this knowing full well that she could give a shit (nobody was in a hurry to eat).  In fact, as I was talking I could see the "I couldn't care less what this person is saying, so I'm just going to nod my head and wait this one out" expression come over her face, but I still kept going with it anyway.  Why?  Why did I do that?  Why do people do that?
  
• S and I, like, I presume, most couples, have the same two or three arguments over and over again just in different form.  One of our classics is the "nitpicking versus trying to clarify" argument.  In S's version, she will say something, and I'll call it into question on a minor detail, and she will get annoyed that I'm being so pedantically focused on minutia when she's trying to make a larger point. In my version, S says something that sounds wrong to me, and I will ask her about, because if I don't I won't understand her larger point.
  
  For example, today S and I had the following conversation.
  
  Her: Hey, you know how I'm going to get a new desktop computer?  I found a desk for it I want to order.
  Me: Wait... desktop... what?
  Her: My new computer -- I need a new desk for it.  Remember, you said there wouldn't be enough room for a desktop and your laptop on our current desk?  So we need another desk.
  Me: [Searching my brain for this conversation] I don't remember you saying that you wanted a desktop.
  Her: [Now annoyed] We went over this already.  I told you that I wanted the big screen.
  Me: I just don't remember you saying that you wanted to get a desktop.
  Her: We had this conversation, just like a week ago!  Remember I told you I needed a new computer -- my old one is about to die -- and I wanted one with a big screen for work?
  Me: Yeah, but I don't remember you saying you were getting a desktop.  Do they even make those anymore?  I mean, you travel all the time.  Why don't you get a laptop and buy a big monitor with a nice docking station?
  Her: Yeah, that's what I'm going to do.  That's what I mean by a desktop.
  Me: That's not a desktop!
  
  I'm claiming "victory" in this one.  A laptop with a docking station -- which we did discuss a few days ago (and which I should have remembered) -- is not a desktop.  S, to her credit, agreed with me -- in this instance.  There are others, I'm sure, in which I'm not the clear-cut winner.  But you probably won't read about those because I'm the only one of the two of us with the blog.
  
• I tried to take Lil' S1 to soccer again yesterday.  It didn't go well, at all.  He played for about five minutes, but only with me, not with any other kids, and then he dug holes in the dirt with a stick, and then after I took his stick away, he stood still on the field and pouted until snack time.  I'm not going to take him again.  I don't see the point.  He just doesn't like it.  He said, "Soccer's so boring.  You just kick a ball somewhere."  When I asked him what activity he wanted to do instead, S offered swimming, and he said, "No, baseball."  There's still hope!
  
• Two new podcasts I've started listening to: S-Town and Nancy.  Both excellent so far.  The latter is all about LBGT issues.  I learned all about the "other" Brandon Lee (very NSFW; the pic above is the cleanest one you will find if you Google him) and about the Log Cabin Republicans.  I have to say, being gay and being Republican doesn't really strike me as the massive hypocrisy I once thought it was and that liberals sometimes make it out to be.  Yes, gay Republicans belong to a party that isn't very welcoming to them, but they believe strongly in other tenets of the party, and they are actively trying to gain acceptance within the system.  People have to make these types of compromises and fight these internal fights all the time (amirite, ladies?).  And let's not forget, pretty much every major Democratic politician was opposed to many major LGBT rights and protections also until, like, five years ago.  So I'm not at all bothered by somebody being gay and Republican.  Well, I am, but it's just the Republican part.  Given the current state of the GOP, I don't see how a right-thinking, decent person could claim to be a part of it.  Who they want to screw doesn't even enter into the picture.

Alright, I'm out.  Until next time...

Entry 377: The Problem with Curious George

One annoying thing about being a parent, to which everybody who is a parent can attest, is that you have to read/watch/otherwise consume stupid kid stuff.  It's not stupid because it's kid stuff per se, some kid stuff is quite good, but it seems much easier to get away with making stupid stuff for kids, because kids will read/watch/otherwise consume just about anything if it's colorful and big and animate and has animals or animal-like creatures in it.

Lately Lil' S1 has been on a Curious George kick, because we are at my in-laws and they happen to have a book of Curious George short stories, and while Curious George is far, far from the worst there is out there, I don't like it.  It subtly -- or perhaps not so subtly -- sends a very bad message to kids: Good results make up for a bad process.

In every story George gets himself into a jam because he's stupid and doesn't follow basic rules of safety or common sense (apparently "curious" is a euphemism for "idiotically dangerous"), and then he somehow lucks into solving the problem at hand, and everybody lavishes him with kudos for doing so.  I think that last part is the worst, because you could argue that since George is a monkey he follows different norms, but the humans should know better than to reward bad behavior, even if it does work out on a particular occasion.

In one story, for example, George climbs into a rhinoceros exhibit at the zoo, and gets (correctly) chastised by the zookeeper, but then he stumbles upon a missing baby rhino, so the zookeeper reverses course and hails him as a hero.  That's really an awful thing to teach kids -- that you can do whatever you want and as long as things work out for you that one particular time, it means you made a praiseworthy decision.

And if you think "c'mon, there just silly kids' stories," well, I don't completely disagree, which is why I still read them to my sons.  But somebody had to take the time to make them -- so why not make them good?  Why not show them ways in which curiosity is actually beneficial, like in science and math?  Wouldn't that make for a much better story?

Anyway, as I mentioned, I'm at my in-laws, so I'm short on time and have to log-off now.

Until next time...

Entry 376: Is that Your Umbrella Under that Trailer?

My car was broken into last night.  Well, actually that's not true.  My car was somehow entered last night by somebody without my knowledge, but there was actually no breaking involved.  All my windows are intact, and the doors aren't pried open, but somehow everything inside my glove box ended up on the street.  The most probably scenario is that I forgot to lock the doors, and some no-goodnik realized this and metaphorically seized the opportunity to literally seize my belongings.  Once he (or she, but c'mon, it was a dude) saw that I had nothing of real value in my car (other than the car seats, which, I assume, required too much effort to move), he dumped everything under a trailer randomly parked on my street and fled the scene.

I didn't even notice it when I took the kids to school (the glove box was shut; everything looked normal), but about 10 a.m. I got a knock on my door from my neighbor.  He was holding the little folder in which I keep my insurance card, and he was like, "Uhhh... I think your car got broken into."  He thought it was strange that a trailer was parked on our street (because it is), so he went to check it out and noticed all my stuff under it.  Everything from my glove box appeared to be there -- papers, manuals, an iPhone charger, an umbrella, even two ballpoint pens.  They also left the $2.67 I have in coins in the console drink holder.  Lucky me!

The trailer is gone now and seems to be unrelated to the crime other than it was the most convenient dumping ground.  I just put my stuff back in the glove box, made sure the doors were locked, went back inside, and went about my day.  What else was there to do?  I suppose I could report it to the police.  I probably should do that, but it seems like such a hassle for something that ended up being little more than a slight inconvenience.  Don't get me wrong, it's disturbing that we have thieves prowling the streets in our neighborhood, but unfortunately that's pretty much how it goes in D.C. in almost any neighborhood.  That's why you don't keep anything of value in your car and why you always lock your doors.  I'm actually very surprised that I forgot to lock them.  Usually I'm overly anal about it.  In fact, it's so unlike me that I'm halfway inclined to think there is some other explanation.  But there probably isn't -- Occam's razor, see.

Anyway, in other news, I'm sure you heard about that foofaraw on the United flight about a week ago -- you know, the one in which that doctor got his head smashed in and his belly exposed as he was literally dragged off a flight to which he had purchased a valid ticket and on which he had already been seated, because United needed his seat so that they could transport some crew members so that a different flight could takeoff.  That one.  Everyday seems to have a take on it.  Here's mine.

The solution to this, as many have pointed out, is mind-numbingly easy: Jack up the value of the vouchers until you get a taker.  They stopped at $800.  My guess is once they got up to $1,000, certainly if they went up to $1,500 or $2,000, somebody would have taken it.  So in order to save a few hundred, maybe a thousand dollars, United cost themselves n times that in bad publicity and a likely lawsuit -- not too smart.  And I've seen it reported that they couldn't have gone above $1,300 by law, but then I read something by a lawyer who said this isn't true because that's only for involuntary removal.  If it's voluntary -- which, if you make the incentive large enough, it would be -- then there's no law preventing an airline from offering whatever they want.  And even if $1,300 was the limit, they stopped at $800, so it's not a good defense, anyway.

The other thing about this that I haven't heard mentioned that much, but is important, is that the airlines aren't offering actually money.  They're offering vouchers to be used at some time in the future that often come with strings attached.  Customers are learning that the vouchers aren't actually worth anything close to their stated value.  If airlines offered actual money -- cash or Visa gift cards or something like that -- people would be much, much more inclined to give up their seats.  I guarantee it.

My fix, if I was advising United on how to go forward, would be to offer cash, and to hold an auction when this happens.  Whoever is willing to get off for the least amount of money wins.  Maybe you could even do it when you buy your ticket.  There's a little checkbox that says "In the unlikely event we need a volunteer to give up his or her seat, I would be willing to do so for $____."

I've heard others say that airlines just shouldn't be able to overbook.  In this case that wouldn't have mattered because the issue wasn't overbooking, but the need to move crew members so that a different flight could take off.  And it's not unreasonable to inconvenience a few people so that a flight of hundreds can take off on time.  United apparently was scrambling all weekend due to weather-related cancellations and delays.  (How they handled "inconveniencing" people, however, was completely unreasonable, to say the least.)  Also, we the customers bear some of the responsibility for overbooking as a general practice, as we often miss flights or change our plans at the last minute and demand refunds.  Without overbooking, the airlines have to accept a loss every time this happens, which means they have to charge us more.

Of course, they could in theory also just eat these losses and be less profitable.  But while that sounds good, the truth is, airlines actually aren't very profitable as it is.  They're not investments banks.  They provide an incredible service -- getting across the entire nation in a matter or hours -- but also an extremely costly one.  And their customer base does not always appreciate this latter point.  We all want airlines to offer us better service, but we don't want to pay for it.  People think air travel is expensive, but it's actually much cheaper than it used to be.  We drive the market this way.  Matt Yglesias at Vox wrote a very interesting article speaking to this.  It's really a great breakdown of the general economics of air travel.  I highly recommend it.  But if you're not going to read the entire thing, I will leave you a quote from it.

In the long run, for air travel to be better, passengers would have to pay for it. And decades’ worth of evidence suggests we prefer cheap and safe to pleasant. 

I found this to be true not just in air travel, but in many walks of American consumerism.  Everything is about the deal; you always have to get the best deal possible.  You know what I say to that?  Fuck the deal!  When I wanted a new TV, I didn't shop around.  I didn't compare prices online.  I walked straight into Best Buy, picked one off the shelf and bough it.  It took me 15 minutes.  When I got a new car, did I haggle with the salesperson?  No sir.  I paid sticker price and went on my way.  I don't do airplane miles; I don't have any reward cards; I don't do credit card points (well, technically I do, because S and I have a joint card, but she set it up); I don't even have a Wegman's card and I shop there almost every other day!

Am I getting ripped off?  Am I sucker?  Maybe.  But I don't waste my time with any of that stuff, and I'm much happier because of it.  So if that makes me a sucker, then you can lick me up and down and call me Dum Dum.

Until next time...

Entry 375: Feeling Annoyed or Scared -- One of the Two

I must say, there is nothing like the possible start of yet another unwinnable war with yet another Mideastern country to put things into perspective.  Yesterday afternoon I was feeling annoyed by an incident that happened at my son's daycare; yesterday evening I was rudely reminded that my country's military -- the most powerful in the world -- is controlled by a remarkably ignorant reality TV host whose defense "strategy" seems to be mostly influenced by whatever it was he last saw on cable news.  Juxtaposing those two things will really help you get your priorities straight.

To be clear, Bashar al-Assad is a terrible, brutal, oppressive dictator who has little compunction about killing his own people (and others), but if he is forced out, he almost certainly will be replaced by a terrible, brutal, oppressive terrorist syndicate that has little compunction about killing their own people (and others).  Either way, it's awful; either way, it's death for a lot of innocent people.  There are no good options, and when there are no good options, my feeling is to chose one that doesn't involve another decades-long war.  I read today that a former defense strategist for Obama called the strike "justified."  It clearly was.  But was it smart?  I mean, we bombed an air force base -- okay, now what?

I guess we will see...

[Lil' S2 has gotten really into stuffed animals lately. He loves Hulk...]

So here's the daycare story.  Every morning, Monday through Thursday, I drop Lil' S1 off at school and then I drop Lil' S2 off at daycare.  I very much prefer to do it in that order because the daycare is on the way from the school to my office, and it's easier to take Lil' S2 with me to his brother's school than vice-versa.

School drop-off is from 8:30 a.m. to 8:45 a.m., and I have to be at daycare before 9:00 a.m.  It's only about a five minute drive from school to daycare, so the timing all works out -- or at least it should all work out.  A few months ago one of the women who works at Lil' S2's daycare asked me if I could bring him in by 8:30, because otherwise he misses most of breakfast.  I told her that I couldn't do that, and that I give him breakfast at home, so it's fine if he doesn't eat.  I didn't think anything of the conversation.

But then about a week and a half ago several workers start dropping hints that it would be really nice if I could get him there earlier.  Nobody came right out and said that again, but they would point out that he just missed pancakes or that all his "friends" were here already -- stuff like that.  I would just smile and pretend to not get the hint, even though, of course, I knew exactly what was going on.

Not getting the response they wanted from me, they tried a new tactic: They went to S.  It was well-played on their part, not because S agrees with them, but because she hates being the middle-person in these types of "disputes," and so she'll just want to resolve it as quickly and easily as possible.  Already she's resentful of the fact that 99% of the time the daycare workers go to her first with any issue.  Even though we both go in there everyday (usually I do drop-off, she does pickup), whenever something comes up, like Lil' S2 needs more spare pants or he broke a strap on his shoe or he pushed another kid, they almost never talk to me about and expect her to deal with it instead.  In this case, they told S that if I bring Lil' S2 in after 8:30, then I have to wash his hands and put him in his seat before I leave.

[... and Wheedle ...]

This might not sound like a big deal, but it real, real annoys me.  Getting my boys up and dressed and fed and out the door and into the car and out of the car and into school and back into the car and back out of car (parking is always an issue too) and into daycare is already an arduous process.  (And then I have to turn around and hustle to work.)  I don't want an extra little chore tacked on at the end, especially one they can easily do.  I've seen their setup and their system.  They aren't doing anything that can't be put aside for a few minutes when Lil' S2 comes in.  I'm sure it's annoying for them that they have to do this, but it's annoying for me if I have to do it.  Somebody has to be annoyed, and I don't think it should be me.

I have to admit, money is a big part of it.  Lil' S2's daycare isn't a beleaguered public school or neighborhood co-op; it's a for-profit business.  We pay a hefty amount of money to go there.  It's on the expensive side for a daycare in DC, and DC is the most expensive city for daycare in the nation.  I feel like accommodating the parents should be a priority (within reason, of course).  I mean, isn't that supposed to be the whole deal with daycare -- you take your kids there, and then they do all the work, so that you don't have to?  It's like if you hired people to clean your bathroom, and they asked you to get things ready by scrubbing your toilet before they got there.

But, of course, a child is not the same thing as a toilet.  It probably doesn't behoove me to get on the bad sides of the people to whom I'm entrusting the well being of my son, even if I feel like I'm in the right.  So I'll probably just suck it up and do it.  (Plus, that will make S happy.)  I thought about talking with the woman who runs the daycare.  I feel pretty confident she would take my side -- in the contract it doesn't say anything about having to arrive before 8:30; the stated official start time is 9:00 -- but there's a good chance that will make it worse.  The workers might view it as me ratting them out, which would probably make them really resent me.  Plus, although S and I are paying a lot for this daycare, it's not like any individual employee gets a giant cut of it.  I don't know how much they make.  Maybe that's a big part of it from their perspective; maybe money is a significant factor for them too; maybe they don't feel like they make enough to be so accommodating to the parents.  I don't know.

[... and Grover]

What I do know is that I basically have three choices: (1) Play dumb, pretend like nothing ever happened, and don't wash his hands or put him in his chair -- just drop him off and go, and if they ask me to do it, say I don't have time and walk away; (2) Talk to the woman who owns the daycare and try to get her to adjudicate the "dispute" in my favor; (3) Get annoyed, vent on my blog, and then do what they want, while outwardly acting friendly and pretending like it doesn't bother me.

You probably can guess which one I've already decided to go with.

Until next time...