The home of Country

Another bright and early morning, getting ready to spend the day in and around Nashville. Today starts out with Andrew and I exploring Clarksville waiting for Rebekah to get done with work so we can all go down to Nashville. We checked out various parts around Clarksville and visited a rather excellent museum that had a little of everything in it. Of course, the kids exploration area seemed to be the most fun we had, rolling balls along these roller-coaster type tracks, then playing with bubbles. Sometimes it's the simple things. :)

After lunch at Chick-fil-A we met up with Rebekah and headed down to Nashville. Nashville adventures began with the ginormous Opryland Hotel. We parked and walked in like we owned the place, the only way to visit a hotel you're not staying at and not get crazy looks from people. :) First of all, you stick a casino in the basement of this place and it would fit in perfectly on the Las Vegas Strip. Atriums everywhere under huge glass ceilings, waterfalls and rivers through the walkways, and unmistakable southern style. It was pretty hip (and gets quite the photo
dedication in my album).

Following that we got the driving tour of Nashville, driving by the Grand Ole Opry (which is right next to the Opryland Hotel), traversing music row where many of the big record albums are housed, and visiting the Parthenon.

Yes, the Parthenon... straight from Greece to Nashville. Someone had the bright idea to build an exact scale replica of the Parthenon right in Nashville, Tennessee. Why? You know, as much as I read all of the signs and historic information as I was walking around, nobody seemed to answer that simple question. I think the answer is an equally vague: "Why not?" After the Parthenon we dropped over to the Tennessee Capitol area of Nashville and checked out the capitol mall grounds and such. Nice, scenic, but the most interesting part was probably the 95-piece carillon that is at the far end of the mall. This supposedly plays "famous Tennessee songs" every hour on the hour, though we never were able to hear what it sounded like. Surely it was most excellent if it actually played.

Enough sightseeing, time to head downtown. We made it down to 2nd Avenue and Broadway, the music centers of Nashville. Had dinner at a brewery/restaurant that reminded me a lot of the Ram or Rock Bottom, but the food tasted much better. :) Being in the South, I had the obligatory chicken and ribs, which was quite tasty indeed. At least quite a bit tastier than I think I've had in recent memory back home in Seattle. But I also admit, I don't often go around craving barbeque in Seattle. But I digress... after dinner the nightlife of the clubs was starting to pick up, with quite literally live music coming out of every doorway along the street, from the restaurants, to the clubs, to even the ice cream parlor. We dropped by the Nashville Crossroads which is a smallish bar down on Broadway (supposedly pseudo-famous, though I am no country music afficianado, so don't ask me). A country group was playing there, playing a lot of music. Such as I don't regularly listen to country music, I knew few of the songs they were playing, but the music was still good. After an hour or so we hopped down to the ice cream parlor down the street, and had ice cream while listening to a solo guitar singer, who was also quite entertaining. We didn't stay out too late considering we had about an hour drive back to Clarksville, then had to get up early to get on the road again in the morning. Nashville was definitely the only city I came across that actually had things happening after about 5PM... I guess that means something.

On the road yet again...

A few days down the road and I'm back to update the last 3 days of adventures. I got out on the road in the rainy morning from Lexington and headed out bound for Clarksville, Tennessee. Rain, sun, rain, sun, rainsun, I made it to my first stop the historic (aren't they all?) Makers Mark Distillery. Managed to arrive there just in time for the first tour of the morning. By now, of course, I'm an expert on bourbon distilling, but fortunately this tour actually was interesting and had a bit more science and detail than the previous tours had. I also put on my John Ratzenberger hat once again and found the hand-bottling assembly line where the distinctive red wax dipped seal is placed on each bottle. The red wax being their trademark, the obligatory gift shop contained a wide selection of red-wax-dipped merchandise, most of which was actually rather cool. I also had my chance to dip my own bottle of Makers Mark bourbon to seal the bottle.

On the road again, this time stumbling across Lincoln's boyhood home which is really nothing more than a little falling-apart shack on the side of the highway. Stopped, took pictures, done. Next I came into Hodgenville, KY, which stakes claim to the birthplace of Abraham Lincoln. The Lincoln Museum in town was nothing to write home about (but writing on the internet about is apparently OK). The museum had about 12 scenes with wax figures of Lincoln throughout his life, and accompanying story to go along with it. Not glamorous, especially compared to the museums I have experienced earlier on the trip, but hey, it's history. Following that and a stop at McDonald's (the first, and I guarantee last such stop I will make on my entire trip, bleah) I ended up at Lincoln's Birthplace. This is the good stuff, probably because it's actually a national park and monument, and thus has real funding. The "symbolic" log cabin that he was born in (they don't actually know if it's the actual one, since it has been moved around so many times in its history, but they think at least part of it's legit) is enclosed in a huge marble building that is vaguely reminiscent of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C. Interestingly enough, that building was built back around 1910, long before the actual Lincoln Memorial was built in the 1930's. The Sinking Spring (apparently famous, though new to me) was nearby along with the site of the Boundary Oak (the large oak tree that is often referenced along with Lincoln's birthplace, but died a few years back).

Next stop was Bowling Green, Kentucky, home of one of General Motors vehicle assembly plants (in fact, the plant that manufactures every Corvette made) as well as, to no great surprise, the National Corvette Museum. Now I have no great interest (nor small interest, for that matter) in cars whatsoever. As long as a car gets me where I need to go in an efficient manner, I don't care too much about the finer details. But I succumbed to the intrigue (and the need to kill some time) and went to it. My suspicions were confirmed, the museum was filled with quite the obsessive car crowd--people who love everything cars, especially Corvettes. Sure there were some interesting displays, and it was interesting seeing some of the older cars and the like... but that's about it. The engines and inner-workings of the cars, not the most interesting in the world to me. But I succeeded in killing probably an hour or so and was back on the road.

At this point came the difficult decision-- really need to kill more time because I'm way ahead of schedule, but what is there to do? Pulling out and scanning the AAA map of Kentucky I notice a marking for "Jefferson Davis Memorial Monument." It's reasonably on the way I need to go, why not? Off I go along the highway, and eventually see something that looks vaguely reminiscent of the Washington Monument in the distance. Now, I must admit seeing this in the middle of Kentucky farmland sure is a shock, but I was reasonably certain that this was what I was looking for. Made it out there and yup, sure enough, it's a monument to Jefferson Davis, complete with an elevator that will take you up to the top (for a small fee, of course, which I did not pay). Yeah, uh-huh, ok, time to go.

Rounding the turn and headed down to Clarksville where Andrew's sister Rebekah lives. I arrived and found her, Andrew would be about 3 hours later arriving, so I went with Rebekah to meet one of her friends at a local bar they go to. This bar is the definition of redneck, with a Harley shop across the street, and colorful, yet friendly people who frequent the place. We ended up playing pool for several hours, prior to heading back to meet Andrew at Rebekah's apartment. I have a renewed appreciation for Washington State's new smoking ban that keeps smoking out of bars.

Today's blog has been brought to you by: Parentheses... they make the world go 'round.

Frankfort and Louisville

Well, my day started out much as I had planned. I got out on the road under a light rain and headed towards Louisville. I'm glad I remembered to bring my raincoat from home with me, because it certainly came in useful today.

As I was starting out to Louisville, I came upon the exit to go to Frankfort... and in the spirit of adventure, I decided to take a small detour. That detour to Frankfort turned out being far more interesting than anything I found in Louisville.

My first stop was the Kentucky Capitol building in Frankfort. As the rain continued to come down, I made my way to the ultra high-security building. The ultra-high security included a guard with a metal detector, which I only had to walk through because as I went in the door, I looked over to the side and the guard dude was like "oh, come over here".

I navigated through the crowds of elementary school kids touring the capitol, and found that it was remarkably similar to the Washington State Capitol in Olympia. The notable differences were that it was much more open and welcoming (far less security and closed doors than Olympia), and the House and Senate chambers were way up on the 3rd floor rather than on the main floor, that was rather odd I thought, but maybe that was just me.

After the capitol I dropped over to the Kentucky History Museum in downtown Frankfort. Another outstanding museum, this one very similar to the Washington State History Museum in Tacoma. But I've found myself a bit museumed-out as these all start looking the same after a while. Still interesting stuff. This one also had a special exhibit about flags, and the history of US flags as well as Kentucky flags. That was really interesting.

I almost decided it was time to head to Louisville, then changed my mind and headed to the north edge of Frankfort to visit the Buffalo Trace Distillery. A slightly different distillery tour than yesterday's tour of the Woodford Reserve, and actually still interesting. It's funny how each distillery claims all of the reasons why their bourbon is the best in the world. :) However, I actually did enjoy the Buffalo Trace a bit more than the Woodford Reserve. Does that mean anything? Probably not. The especially interesting part of this distillery was that several of the brands they make there are hand-bottled. This quite literally means that there is an assembly line of folks who fill, label, and package the bourbon. I felt like I walked into an episode of Made in America and that John Ratzenberger was going to walk into the room. Fascinating stuff though, that was probably the most fascinating part of the tour.

Finally time to get out of Frankfort, and I got back on the road to Louisville. My destination? The historic Churchill Downs racetrack, where just 4 days ago the 132nd Kentucky Derby was run. Little did I know that today was also a race day at Churchill, so there were lots of people around. Though I managed to get waved into a parking lot without having to pay, nice man who really didn't care much at the gate. Anyway, went on a "guided tour" of the track, which really consisted of going out and watching a race, which was fun. Then I explored the Kentucky Derby Museum which is on the ground of the track. Another well done, highly-interactive museum which I enjoyed. After a bit, I went back out to the track and decided it wouldn't be right if I didn't place a bet at Churchill Downs when I was there, so I did so. I fully expected to come away with a betting slip "souvenir" of my trip to Churchill Downs, but much to my surprise, my horse came in second, and I won the exacta, netting me a $6.40 profit which caused me to promptly return my souvenir for cash. Oh well, that's where I say "take a picture, it will last longer".

And so ended my day at Churchill Downs. By then it was after 5pm, which means the tourist world shuts down, but I still took the opportunity to drive downtown Louisville, explore a bit of the Ohio River and check out the monumental sky-high Louisville Slugger bat at the Louisville Slugger Museum and Factory. It looks far more interesting inside the windows than it did from the outside, but I had a action packed day regardless. Headed back to the hotel in Lexington and here I am.

Tomorrow I'm off to Nashville. Plans to stop at yet another distillery, where I will test the famous mantra "seen one, seen them all", followed by a stop at Lincoln's birthplace and such. The rest is a mystery. You never know the mysterous powers of the brown signs along the highways.

The Old Kentucky Home

The sun shines bright on the old Kentucky home. Today started out much as I expected, trying to get Amy up before noon proved futile. But that was OK, I took the opportunity to have a relaxing morning and get a little bonus sleep.

The mission was to make it to the Woodford Reserve distillery, though taking the scenic route left us travelling for miles along narrow 2-lane roads through the Kentucky countryside. Horse farms, rolling hills, tree-lined highways are my view of Kentucky thus far. It would have been much nicer to look at, had I not been travelling along these narrow roads at 55 mph trying not to slow down traffic, gripping the wheel firmly each time an oncoming car whizzed past in the other lane.

After quite the adventure we made it to civilization and to a Dairy Queen in the middle of nowhere. Now it feels like we're in the Kentucky I've heard about. Nice country people, but be sure to speak loud and slowly, and you'll communicate just fine. :)

Finally we arrived at the Woodford Reserve distillery in Woodford County. We arrived just shortly before the 2pm tour which was starting, and had quite the entertaining tour guide. I've been on many winery and brewery tours in my past, but never a distillery. Apparently this is the best of all tours, and our tour guide wasn't in a hurry to get rid of us, as the tour lasted just short of 2 hours. Good thing people weren't in too much of a hurry. Definitely an interesting tour, but Amy and I couldn't figure out if that was just because we've been on so many wineries and breweries that the distillery was new to us, or if it was actually an interesting tour. Perhaps the later. I now could talk at length about how bourbon is made, but won't. Follow the pictoral tour in the photo album and you'll get the idea. The most interesting thing I learned is the answer to the question on everyone's minds... if the bourbon is too strong, how do you get it down to a consistent proof? People have speculated complex answers to this, but the simplest answer is the correct one. They water it down until it gets to the right alcohol content. There seems to be slightly more to it than that, but ultimately that's what it comes down to.

After a drive back to the hotel and dinner at Applebees, it's time to relax for the evening. Tomorrow I'm leaving the working Vault team here and driving over to explore Louisville on my own. At least that means I don't have to worry about them sleeping in until noon when I'm ready to leave. There are some advantages to travelling on your own, I guess!

Joe's Great MidWestSouthern Adventure

The adventure begins. I'm writing this update from a hotel room in Lexington, Kentucky, on day 3 of my adventure.

Day 1 - Travel to Indianapolis was quick and efficient. The brief layover at Chicago O'Hare was just long enough to stretch my legs (and walk about a mile through the airport to get from one gate to the other) and then take off again. The flight from Chicago to Indianapolis was certifiably the shortest flight I have ever taken in an airplane. It makes the flight from Seattle to Spokane feel like an overseas flight.

The efficiency ceased the moment the plane touched down in Indianapolis. We arrived at precisely 8:30pm, at which point it felt like the entire airport was shutting down. All stores and food places were literally locking their doors, and then we realize that American Airlines has exactly 1 baggage crew working, with the task of unloading planes and delivering baggage to be claimed. As a result, my luggage was not in my hand until 9:45pm.

Luggage in hand I proceeded to my rental car, a lovely silver 2006 Hyundai Sonata. Nice car, so far it has served me well. I made it to West Lafayette by about 11:00pm, fortunately for me still being on Pacific time, it only felt like 8pm or so.

Day 2 - Scenic Indiana. Krista and I went to the Sunride Diner in Lafayette for breakfast, which was about as much of a diner as anyone would imagine. But accordingly, the food was great. We then took a walk around Lafayette and its historic places, which mainly consisted of its downtown historic district, and the old train station on the Wabash River. I must say, the water of the Wabash river looks about as disgusting as it possibly could. Not somewhere I'd like to go swimming.

We then went and checked out Purdue's campus and Krista's office and lab in the Chemical Engineering building. Pictures say much more than words, so check the photo album for interesting stuff there.

The afternoon consisted of adventures at Wolf Park just outside of West Lafayette. Wolf Park is a wolf education and research facility that has a couple dozen wolves, foxes, and coyotes. It was quite an interesting place, including demonstrations of feeding and handling the wolves. The main enclosure at the Wolf Park contains 7 wolves, which get fed a fresh (or sometimes frozen) deer 3 times a week. We were fortunate enough to view such a feeding, though the wolves were apparently not hungry at the time. Of course, Wolf Park doesn't have any trouble obtaining fresh deer due to the efficiency of Indiana drivers who hit them on highways throughout the state with great frequency. An additional feature of the Wolf Park is the wolf and bison demonstration, where as one might expect, they let loose a couple of wolves in their bison range where the bison and wolves are natural adversaries. Once again, on this day the wolves were in no mood to cause a ruckus with the bison, so not too much of interest occurred. But seeing the bison wandering around was definitely interesting.

After the adventures at Wolf Park, we went to the Tippecanoe Battlefield historic site. The only slightly-interesting museum was there, as well as the actual battlefield which is now a historic monument. The Battle of Tippecanoe was between the US and the Indians in 1811, which set the foundation for General William Henry Harrison's future presidency. After wandering the grounds for a bit, hunger set in and we headed back to Lafayette for dinner.

Dinner was good, then we went to Krista's and watched a movie, the 1938 Oscar winner for Best Picture, "You Can't Take it With You". A surprisingly hilarious movie that I would watch again, actually. Very entertaining. Sleep after the long day was next on the menu.

Day 3 - Off to Lexington - An early start to the morning had me on the road to Lexington, and into Cincinnati by about 11:00am. After exploring getting lost in the less-than-desirable part of the city, I ended up at the Cincinnati Museum Center, which is contained within the old Union Station. The highlight of that was definitely the Cincinnati History Museum. I have been to many quality history museums in my travels, but none as outstanding as this museum. First, it was huge, once inside it just kept going and going. Then, it was almost 100% interactive or 3-dimensional, or something interesting stuff to look at. Not just words on displays, but context and interesting stuff. An interesting exhibit about machining tools had a man who was demonstrating the working tools, and I proceeded to spend at least a half hour listening to him telling stories about the history of Cincinnati. That was the interesting stuff. Plus, it makes old men happy when you're interested in hearing their stories. All in all an outstanding museum.

Also in the Museum Center was the Natural History Museum. This was a good museum, but appeared to be a bit dated. It was geared much more towards children than adults, but did have its fair share of interesting exhibits.

After the museums, a driving adventure around Cincinnati took me to the Roebling Suspension Bridge, at the time it was built the longest suspension bridge in the world. After a quick drive across and back, I took a moment to snap some pictures of the bridge, along with the nearby baseball and football stadiums. Following a visit to the presidential birthplace of our 27th president William Howard Taft, off to Lexington I went.

I finally tracked Amy down and after we went to dinner, in this hotel room I am. Tomorrow's adventures may take us down to the land of the bourbon distilleries, or it may not. Who knows? We'll see how early I can wake these silly people up instead of sleeping until 1pm like they usually do.

Where's the blog?

I will not neglect my blog. I will not neglect my blog. I will not neglect my blog. I will not neglect my blog. I will not neglect my blog.

There, now that I've scolded myself for not blogging more recently, it's time for a real update. We'll go ahead and pretend that nothing interesting has happened in the past 3 weeks, and start fresh. Today at about 3:00pm I officially left work and started my vacation. I'd like to thank my company for taking this week to remind me why I was going on vacation. Things were nothing but crazy all week long. But that is the last time I will think of work until the 16th, because I am now on vacation.

Tomorrow morning I will head to SeaTac and hop on a plane to scenic Indianapolis, Indiana after a brief layover in Chicago. From Indianapolis I shall begin what I will call "Joe's Great MidWestSouthern Adventure"! I'll spend the weekend in with my friend Krista who is at Purdue in West Lafayette, IN before I begin my driving adventure. The short version of my plan is to drive down to Lexington, Kentucky where my sister will be at the time, on a stop during her 6-month promotional tour for Coca-Cola. After a few days I'll continue on down to Nashville, Tennessee where my buddy Andrew will meet me and we'll spend a couple of nights at his sister's place. Following that I'll head with Andrew down to Birmingham, Alabama for the last weekend before I fly home on Monday the 15th.

What happens in the time between each of those checkpoints is still a mystery. Only the trusty AAA Tourbook knows for sure... and it's not telling. I'll endeavor to take a goodly number of pictures along the way and post them when I have the chance. Hopefully I'll have some interesting things to blog about!

Let the adventure begin.

Persistence finally pays off

In the continuing saga of my car windows and Nissan, persistence has finally paid off apparently. The gentleman from Nissan's executive offices called me back this morning (35 days after my initial complaint) and let me know that Nissan will cover the replacement of the faulty window regulators on my car.

Of course, over the course of the past 35 days, the Nissan dealer in Ballard that I took my car to originally has shut its doors and turned out the lights permanently. As a result, on Tuesday I will be taking my car up to Edmonds to get the repairs done, but for what it's worth, I don't mind too much. I'm just glad that they're finally going to take some ownership in their product and fix my car

It's nice to know that there ARE people out there who care about the consumer... the irony is that those people are NOT the ones in the consumer affairs department. Though the realization that Nissan does seem to care about having me as a customer afterall restores my faith in them, and I will once again consider getting another Nissan

... after my windows start working again.

As the curling season comes to a close

It's finally happening, curling season is coming to a close. This weekend is the big April Spiel, the last big tournament of the year. There are 53 teams in the spiel this weekend, with games running last night (Thursday), and then every 2-hours from Friday at noon through Sunday at 3. All day, all night. As is only proper, teams that win stay in the good brackets that don't have to play in the middle of the night, but start losing and you quickly end up playing games at 2am, 4am, or anywhere else ridiculous around there.

My team's first game was last night, we won so we are currently staying in the A-bracket and playing tonight at 6pm. Unfortunately due to the luck (or fate, in this case) of the draw, we are playing against 3/4 of the team that won the 2006 US Mixed National Championship. Of course, it's a game and anything could happen... but I suspect we may be a bit outmatched in tonight's game. If we lose, we fall to the C-bracket and play sometime Saturday morning, but if we win things are pretty good, I think.

After this, not too much more curling to do, but it's getting sunny and nice out now so maybe I'll find new and exciting things to do outside.

Another week, another call from Nissan

At least I still seem to be on Nissan's radar, for better or worse. This morning once again I received a call from Nissan, but this time NOT from their Consumer Affairs division, but from their Executive Offices. The gentleman I spoke with called to say that he received my letter, and would be looking into the problem. He just needed to know the dealer I took the car in to be serviced at, and some other contact information. He gave me his direct phone number and said he would call me back next week.

No accusations, no excuses, just a guy who seems to be honestly looking into my complaint. THAT's what I call consumer affairs. Maybe there's a reason this guy is in the Executive Offices. We'll see... at least this guy didn't leave me frustrated when the call was over. Maybe Nissan can save their reputation with me afterall. We'll see.

Nissan strikes again

I don't know if it's good customer service or not, but Nissan tested my patience today.

As an update to my previous reports regarding the defective windows in my Nissan Altima, after the "consumer affairs specialist" contacted me and told me Nissan would do nothing to resolve my problems, I sent a reasonably lengthy complaint letter to their headquarters in California. I must say, at this point I have resolved that Nissan really doesn't care about my satisfaction and going to do anything about it, my only real purpose is to make sure they know that they've made a thoroughly dis-satisfied customer.

After the frustrations with Nissan are all but out of my mind, what happens today? The SAME rep who called me the first time telling me that Nissan would do nothing about my problems, and had an excuse for everything in an attempt to convince me that my problem was not their problem, calls me again! For a brief moment I thought perhaps they had decided to own up to their problem... not so fast. No, this person had the courtesy to call me back and tell me that she "received my letter", gave me more of the same excuses that she gave me the FIRST time I talked with her, and informed me that Nissan has not changed their decision. My thought? WHY DID YOU EVEN BOTHER CALLING ME TO TELL ME THAT NOTHING HAS CHANGED?! Ridiculous if you ask me. She did say that she would forward my letter on to the "executive" level... which is really what the intent of the letter was in the first place. Put it in the hands of someone who actually should know how customers are satisfied or not.

One more thing to add to my collection of "examples of bad customer service".

Marketing spin at its finest

Here's one for you consumer advocates out there. Today I receive my monthly statement in the mail from Bank of America, enclosed in which was a notice of updates to my check card. Reading further couldn't help but make me laugh:

CHECK CARD UPDATE

We reviewed our Bank of America Visa Check Card benefits and discovered that while some check card benefits are frequently used by our consumer customers, others are not. In an effort to serve you better, we have streamlined our consumer check card benefits to provide the services you use most.

With this in mind, we want to make sure you are aware of the upcoming changes to your Bank of america Visa Check Card benefits, effective July 1st, 2006. At that time, Bank of America Visa Check Cards will no longer provide: Purchase Security, Warranty Manager, Concierge Services, Price Protection, Purchase Security and Extended Protection, or Travel Accident Insurance. Current consumer benefits provided with your check card depend on your check card type.

Bank of America will continue to provide the popular benefits that mean the most to our customers, including:

[ long list of features they haven't removed ]

To translate and filter through the marketing-speak: "In order to serve you better, we're removing half of the benefits on your check card. Rest assured the remaining benefits will remain unchanged. No new features have been added." It's amazing how all it takes is a positive tone and suddenly a bad thing sounds like a good thing. How would that work in the real world? Let's take a look:

On being fired: "We realize times have been difficult lately, so in an effort to improve the office work environment, we will be providing you an involuntary opportunity to leave the company."
On your car being reposessed: "Thank you for your continued support of our company. We realize you have been unable to make the required payments on your luxury vehicle, and in an effort to help you solve this problem, we are happy to inform you that we will be taking your car off of your hands. Rest assured that you will still have the same access to bus service that you have always enjoyed."

It's nice to know big companies still care about the customer.

Nothing's ever easy when it comes to cars

Well, what I hoped would be a simple fix turns out it will take another day to come to some sort of resolution. Where we're at now is:

I took my car to the Nissan dealership this morning bright and early. Dropped it off, got a courtesy shuttle ride to work, no problem. Plenty of nice people at the North Seattle Nissan dealership's service department.

Got one call from them around noon asking for more details of the problem. Explained in further detail the problem, and all was well.

Then got another call around 3:15pm explaining that they'd looked into the problem, verified that 2 window regulators need to be replaced, but that the almighty Nissan corporate warranty folks are denying coverage (because my car is at 62,000 which is over the 60,000 warranty extension). The dealer tried to negotiate with the corporate folks to get it covered, but got nowhere. However, TJ (the service guy) gave me Nissan's number so I could try to fight it out myself.

A call to Nissan got more nice people, who were rather helpful, or shall I say, as helpful as they could be without actually resolving my issue. The first person updated all of the basics, took all of my information, praised my choice of a Nissan Altima since it's the "most popular passenger car in the world", yadda yadda yadda, gave me a case number, and then passed me off to another "specialist" who really did nothing more than told me that a "specialist" (if everyone's a specialist, doesn't that make nobody one?) would talk to the dealer and I would receive a resolution by the end of the day tomorrow. I got no indication whether or not anything would actually be done about it, nor did I get the feeling that anyone I spoke with had any power to actually do anything to resolve it.

I called the dealer back, who were also surprised that Nissan wasn't going to do anything immediately, but agreed that the corporate people will probably breakdown and cover the replacements. So tonight I'm back to pick up my car, with no repairs done to it at all. Hopefully once I get to a person who can actually resolve my issues, the reason will stand out and they'll stand by their product and fix the defective parts in my car. Then I'll make ANOTHER appointment to get the windows fixed and hopefully have it taken care of. Fortunately I'm in a position where it's not a critical problem that "must be fixed now", so I can fight until the bitter end if necessary. I'll say one thing, the longer and more trouble it takes to get this resolved, the less I'll be looking at buying another Nissan.

Windows... essential feature, or optional?

I suspect that 90% of you who read the title of this entry will assume this is going to be some geeky rant about Microsoft Windows and some buggy feature, or perhaps a dissertation on the merits of Windows versus Linux, or perhaps something completely unrelated to windows at all.

Well you're all wrong. The complaint I have is about the power windows on my 2001 Nissan Altima. As anyone who has ridden in my car with me no doubt knows, sometime last fall, just at the tail end of the Seattle heat waves of 2005, my passenger-side power window stopped working, well, effectively. It went down without any problem at all, but had serious issues rolling back up. Obviously something was broken in the mechanism, which I verified by actually ripping half of the door apart to see if it was anything easily fixable, which it wasn't. My conclusion, "hey, these things happen" and I'd get it fixed in the Spring when I actually cared about having a window that opens again.

Flash forward to February, for some reason I had the need to roll down the rear window on the passenger side, and as I was rolling it back up what happened... it was starting to act just like the front one! One broken window, reasonable accidental breakage... two broken windows, something's definitely not right.

After a little research on the internet last night, I find that there is a known issue with the windows on certain 2001 Altimas, exactly the issue that I am having. So this morning I gave a call up to my local Nissan dealer and talk to their service department. They look up the VIN number of my car in their system, and lo and behold, there's a voluntary recall / replacement program for all 4 window regulators on my car. Though in Nissan's infinite wisdom (or at least their lawyers, no doubt), they were covered under a 5-year/60,000-mile warranty extension, which puts the warranty expiration out to... March 30, 2006. Good thing I called when I did.

Of course, I don't recall ever getting a notice about this impending failure of my window regulators, or I probably would have done something the moment I noticed a problem. The minor caveat is that the mileage on my car is I believe about 61,000 miles. If they disqualify my warranty replacement because of that, just watch me go after Nissan's corporate goons and raise a fuss. I've been 100% satisfied with my car, many times extolled the greatness and trouble-free maintenance of my car, and would definitely consider getting another Nissan next time I buy a car... that should be worth far more to Nissan than angering me over silly window regulators that they know are faulty. I don't expect it to come to that, but I'm ready if it happens because no doubt retail price to fix 4 power window regulators probably runs in the $1000+ range.

Long blog short, I have an appointment to take my car in on Tuesday to get all 4 regulators replaced. Hope for the best.

Long time no update...

Well it's been close to a month since I actually updated my blog. Several reasons for that I suppose...

1) I was on vacation for the 3rd week of February. Didn't go anywhere, but Andrew came to visit, so there was much fun to be had, along with the Olympics being on TV for what seemed like 24-hours a day. All in all, some much needed time off.

2) Curling has been keeping things busy. This past weekend was the annual "5 and under bonspiel" which is a curling tournament open to all curlers in their 5th year of curling or less. It was quite a fun, yet extremely exhausting weekend. Out of 15 teams, my team was 8th, which by my calculations is about as middle-of-the-pack as you can be. Still, the fun is what matters. Only a little over a month of curling season left before the 6-month hiatus.

Not much else of any significance that I can think of. Some observant blog readers may note that the Amazing Race 9 started last Tuesday, and more importantly that I made no blog of it. There's good reason for that, blogging it is too much work and I'm less than inspired at the moment. However, AR10 might see a resurrection of the blog... we'll have to see.

Now I'll have to keep up more with my blogging. I'll try to have more interesting things to say sooner than later.

Torino 2006

The Olympics are finally upon us. Friday's opening ceremonies were brought to you by the bizarre Italian rendition of Cirque du Soleil, with lots of strange performances, but at least were something to keep your attention.

In the spirit of the Winter Olympics, and my own ignorance about half of the sports, I've compiled my Winter Olympics Event Lingo test. The format is simple, just match the Olympic sport up with the vocabulary term you'd find used in that sport. All of these terms were taken directly from the NBC Olympics website, and as such I take no responsibility for any inaccuracies, nor for any term that may fall into multiple sports. My answer key at the bottom is final. :)

Term	Sport
1. Blocks	a. Alpine Skiing
2. Chicane	b. Bobsled
3. Cowling	c. Curling
4. Crease	d. Figure Skating
5. Death Cookies	e. Freestyle Skiing
6. Death Spiral	f. Ice Dancing
7. Hack	g. Ice Hockey
8. Kufen	h. Luge / Skeleton
9. McTwist	i. Ski Jumping
10. Telemark	j. Snowboarding
11. Twizzle	k. Speed Skating

Wanna know what the terms mean? Look them up yourself, it'll give you something to do. :)





Answers: 1.k 2.a 3.b 4.g 5.e 6.d 7.c 8.h 9.j 10.i 11.f

What can I say?

How quickly time flies when you have nothing productive to say.

Have I had anything profound to say lately? No. Do I have anything profound to say now? No, not really. But I'm blogging anyway just so people know I still exist. Here comes the 30-second recap of everything that's happened in the past week.

Super Bowl - Yes, the Seahawks lost to the NFL Referees in Super Bowl XL. I'd rather have seen them lose on their own merits, but that's how it goes. My super bowl party went well, and I successfully proved that my apartment IS big enough to hold 8 guests with nobody needing to sit on the floor. That was pretty impressive.

Curling - Curling continues as usual. Friday night my team made me skip the game... despite my best resistance. :) [note, "skip" doesn't mean I missed the game, in curling the skip is the head of the team who calls the shots.] It was actually not bad, I curled well, and we won the match. No curling on Sunday due to the super bowl, but on Monday night I curled my normal lead position, and continued my outstanding curling. Going into Monday we were tied with one other team for first place in the league, both teams an undefeated 3-0 record. As luck would have it, we played the other team at the top of the standings. We proceeded to score 6 in the first end, and 3 more in the 2nd end, and went on to win the match by about 10-2, bringing our record to 4-0 and sole posession of 1st place. Of course, the season has I believe 6 or 7 games left, so there's plenty of time for us to fall to the bottom. :)

Work - Work is busy, yet not too bad. Trying to be productive over the course of the week and next before I go on vacation from the 17th to the 24th when Andrew is in town. That should be quite exciting, as the last real vacation I took was probably back in September. Though without a doubt I'll return to the work in a major crunch and have tons of work to catch up with. Makes me wonder how much of a vacation "vacation" really is.

Olympics - The Olympics start on Friday... opening ceremonies Friday night if you watch NBC's delayed coverage... but Friday at 10am if you watch CBC's live coverage. Thank goodness for Canadians and my DVR, I'll be able to watch the coverage in fast forward when I get home from work before I have to go curling. Other more lucky people might not have to work and be able to watch the opening ceremonies live at 10am.

I can't think of anything else important off hand... maybe next time.

Who wants to be evicted?

Arrived home today, checked my mail, and had a letter from my apartment management. The letter states that I am in violation of my lease due to smoking in my apartment, and that the violations must be corrected within 10 days or I will be subject to eviction.

Last time I checked, I've never smoked, nor has anyone who has been in my apartment smoked. Therefore, it's rather surprising I got this letter. After having dinner with my parents at the new pizza place up the street (which was very good, by the way), I got home and went upstairs to visit the apartment managers. The conversation went a bit like this...

"Hi, I live downstairs in apartment 111... I got this letter today in the mail stating that I'm violating my lease by smoking in my apartment."

"Oh, that wasn't you... that's supposed to go to 211. Nevermind, we'll take care of it."

"No problem."

So after that brief 2 minute exchange, it turns out that it's the crazy lady upstairs, who, if you recall from previous blogs [Apartment Living a.k.a. How to be an amateur CSI] both smokes and has cats in an apartment building with a no pets / no smoking policy. I've since learned that the lady in 211 is having a feud with the apartment managers, which no doubt is part of the reason for the drama and the letters. All I know is I'll stay the hell out of it.

Hopefully that concludes the drama for now.

State of Confusion Address

The pagentry, the mystery, the excitement that is the State of the Union Address. Do I really care what President Bush has to say? No, not really, but it's still fun to watch. In fact, this year I created the Modified State of the Union Applause Scoring system.

The final score of the address:
46 full applause breaks
13 half applauses (12 from only the Republicans, and 1 from only the Democrats)
7 interruptive applauses
1 joke
1 wagging finger

Of course, the wagging finger was in response to the half applause from the Democrats which was actually one of the more entertaining parts of the show (I say "show" because the whole thing is so scripted it's hard to believe it doesn't have theme music).

That's probably about all the time that's worth devoting to this.

Iron Age Technology

At my desk are countless writing implements at my disposal. Several types of pens, in varying colors and styles; a variety of highlighters; permanent markers, in both fine nad broad tip; even mechanical pencils. But despite all the variety, I'm consistently drawn back to the simplicity of the solid #2 pencil. By all accounts, the other options are far superior, no need to sharpen, constant flow of ink, less smearage, bright colors, everything. Yet I still keep pencils around, and actually go through phases where I love writing with them. I don't know what it is. Perhaps it's the simplicity of it... the fine point of a freshly sharpened pencil... the convenience of the eraser when things go awry... or just the distinct feel and sound of the pencil graphite scribbling on the paper. Nothing else is quite like it.

Why does it matter? It doesn't. I just find it interesting that technology can't improve upon it. No doubt the rocket scientists at NASA still keep countless pencils around for the astronauts to use in space, because it's one thing that isn't affected by changes in gravity in the slightest. The only improvement that could be made would be a pencil that never needs sharpening... but still works and feels exactly like a normal graphite pencil. Perhaps someday our space age technology will figure that out... until then, I'll stay back in the iron age.

The West Wing... dead after 7 seasons

As I was watching The West Wing last night on TV, I thought to myself, "this show will be cancelled at the end of this season". Lo and behold, it was announced that indeed The West Wing will end on May 14th with the inauguration of the new president, still to be determined.

Now I don't think I really became a dedicated watcher of the West Wing until its third season. Fortunately through the miracle of DVD, I've watched straight through the first 3 seasons to catch up on everything I never saw. Unfortunately, my DVD viewing habits are sketchy, and I still haven't completely finished the 3rd season shows... with the complete 4th and 5th seasons sitting on my shelf vastly untouched except to be removed from their Amazon.com packing box. Though I must say, they are excellent for long flights when you need to kill time with some quality DVD viewing. That's how I made it through so much of Season 3.

Why am I not surprised the show was cancelled? While I think the writing was not so good after Aaron Sorkin quit writing the show at the end of Season 4, it seems to have improved vastly this season, especially in the plots surrounding the election of the new president. Perhaps that's just because they found something to write about. But the show itself had one necessary flaw, a president can only serve 8 years... and once that's done, you're out of luck. Could the show survive with an almost completely new cast? Could ANY show survive with a completely new cast? Perhaps, but doubtful. The only way to stay true to a show that prides itself on keeping true to the reality of American politics, is for the show to end and the characters fade off into their post-White House lives where nobody even remembers their names.

Certainly it didn't help that NBC decided to move West Wing out of it's traditional 9pm Wednesday time slot for a cursed 8pm Sunday time slot. The last show I think I ever remember watching on Sunday at 8pm was Murder, She Wrote. It still baffles me why TV executives haven't figured out that moving shows out of their well-established time slots always signals the show's demise. Maybe they know this, and move them to help speed along the process.

Whatever the reasons, at least I'll have my 7-seasons of West Wing DVDs to watch whenever there are terrible new shows on TV that aren't worth watching.

In related television news, a few interesting lineup changes will be coming too:

For the past 14 seasons, Law and Order (the original, not SVU, CI, or the ill-fated Trial by Jury) has been in the Wednesday 10pm timeslot on NBC. But no more... NBC shakes things up by moving it an hour earlier to 9pm. I think this one will be able to survive the minor shift, but I'm no expert. It goes up against Mythbusters, which is the same problem I had when West Wing was on Wednesdays at 9, but fortunately I have a DVR now. Problem averted. :)

Las Vegas continues it's tour of the NBC schedule, after being moved from Sunday to Monday it makes its way down to the Friday night time slot. Might work, since there's nothing else good on Friday nights, but also who watches TV on a Friday night unless you want to see Dateline (which is moving to Saturday) or 20/20?

Las Vegas' move to Friday clears the way for that epic sensation Deal or No Deal to have a permanent spot on the Monday at 8pm timeslot followed by the Donald. I've said my thoughts on Deal or No Deal before... I give the show 10-weeks before it gets the axe and is buried in the gameshow graveyard along with the short-lived revived classic "21" with Maury Povich, and the Weakest Link (which was only entertaining to hear Anne Robinson verbally berating the contestants).

In the meantime, Food Network probably has plenty of episodes of Emeril Live, Good Eats, and Paula Deen stocked up to satisfy your TV viewing needs... with extra butter.

Things you'd never expect to see...

There are a few things you would never expect to see... one of those: the Seahawks going to the Super Bowl. Not only did they win, they beat Carolina hands down. What does this mean? One very important thing... this year I'll watch the Super Bowl for more than just the commercials.

As for my weekend... it was a busy curling weekend. We had a bonspiel (which for you who aren't hip to the lingo, a bonspiel is a curling tournament) with teams from the Evergreen Curling Club down in Portland. It was fun, but as a result over this past weekend I curled 6 games because I had my normal Friday and Sunday games, with 4 games for the bonspiel inbetween. Lots of fun, but equally tired now.

Now I have to go back to work tomorrow... but that's no surprise. Still doesn't mean I have to like it. :) I think every weekend should be a 3-day weekend... that's a better idea.

Remember to honk... when you drive by Tom Shane

Few people in Seattle can watch television between the hours of midnight and 6am without encountering that shady auto insurance pitchman imploring you to "Remember to honk when you drive by Vern Fonk." Though I know of nobody who actually has purchased insurance from Vern Fonk, most everyone can clearly recognize and remember his obscure, bizarre, yet often entertaining and creative commercials.

Well move over Vern, there's a new resident moving in down the street. The illustrious jeweler whose trademark voice has graced Seattle radio airwaves for decades has made the leap to television with a new series of advertisements and a jingle that puts "Remember to honk..." to shame. Tom Shane, your self-proclaimed "friend in the diamond business," stars as a faceless version of himself in these creative, yet odd commercials for the Shane Co. jewelers. In past radio advertisements, the closest thing to a jingle was the distinctive slogan, address and store hours that concluded each spot. The crossover to television ads seems to have warranted an actual jingle that reinforces the quirkiness of the commercial: "He's dull. But he's brilliant." Short and to the point.

On the bright side, the commercials are highly entertaining. I guess I can't complain too much about that.

And in a brief addendum, a bit more research has shown that much to my surprise the Shane Co is actually not a local company. Despite the fact that they do a very good job of making it seem (at least to me) like Tom Shane is sitting in his Medina mansion extolling the virtues of the Shane Co, he's actually headquartered and originally based in Denver. He now owns over 20 stores nationwide from Washington to Georgia. Fascinating. Still funny commercials.

Small annoyances

Isn't it ironic how sometimes the smallest things are the most annoying? I own a 2001 Nissan Altima, which is a great car. I've had the car for nearly 4 years, and have yet to require any major repairs of any sort on the car (I do have a broken power window on the passenger side, but I'll worry about that when the warm weather comes). However, there is one thing that I consider to be a fatal flaw in the design features of this car. There is NO sensor/light on the dash that tells you whether or not the trunk is open.

This seems rather small, I admit. But the trunk is also very well designed (or is it poorly designed?), such that if the trunk is unlatched, it still sits down as if it were closed. You actually have to pull up on the trunk to open it. It's very well balanced so it doesn't really have a preference of up or down. Convenient I guess.

The problem is, on multiple occasions, whether because I just forgot I had unlatched it, or because I had accidentally bumped the trunk release on my keychain, I've driven extended distances before I've noticed that the trunk is open. On several such occasions, I drove down I-5 at about 70mph for 30 miles or so, only to notice in the middle of the freeway that the trunk lid was bobbing up and down as I went over bumps in the road. At that point, it's not like I can do much about it, so I just keep going. But still, is it so much to ask that there be a little light that tells me the trunk is open... that would solve ALL of these problems.

Fortunately, I don't think I've ever lost anything out of the trunk as a result. It's a pretty deep trunk so stuff can't just slide out. At least I don't *think* I've lost anything. Wait, what about that million dollars I had sitting in my trunk last week? Maybe I should call my insurance company about that right away... hmmm.....

And the award goes to...

It's that time of year again... the time of year where we "honor" the best of the best (or the best of the worst) from the previous year. Last night was the People's Choice Awards, apparently the kickoff to the awards show season.

First a recap of last night's People's Choice Awards: ZZZzzzzzzzzzzz. What an action-empty, non entertaining show. Hosted by TV's Craig Ferguson, who I usually find quite funny, he was not at all funny on the show. I blame it on bad writing, but perhaps it's his own lack of humor. Plus, who shows an awards show on a Tuesday night? Isn't that just a blatant declaration that the show is not important enough to even bother to watch? Tuesday night is when you show made-for-TV movies that you don't expect anyone to watch, not award shows.

As far as "award season" goes though, there seems to be a lot of wasted bandwidth there. How many award shows are there that all give away awards for the same things? Obviously they're all given away by different groups of people, but does anyone really pay much attention to which organization is giving the awards away? Probably not. Most people would tell you that the Emmy's are for TV, the Oscars are for movies, the Grammys are for music, and the Tonys are for theatre. Beyond that everyone's mystified. The People's Choice awards are given to nearly all of the above (except theatre, obviously the people's opinion isn't worthy about the theatre). The Golden Globes? both movies and TV. Screen Actors Guild? Also movies and TV (but they actually only have 13 award categories which is nice.) The Emmy's are apparently so important that they break them into two pieces, one for daytime television and one for primetime television. Though I think only people who have no lives care about the daytime awards.

Actually, I think people care far less about the awards themselves, than they do about the celebrities and how they dress and who they're with and... well, it's just a big celebrity paparazzi event if you ask me. But for my own benefit to know which to avoid, or for your benefit if you need to mark your calendars, the major award shows of the year:

32nd Annual People's Choice Awards - Tuesday, January 10th
63rd Annual Golden Globes Awards - Monday, January 16th
12th Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards - Sunday, January 29th
48th Annual Grammy Awards - Wednesday, February 8th
78th Annual Academy Awards - Sunday, March 5th
33rd Annual Daytime Emmy Awards - Friday, April 28th
60th Annual Tony Awards - Sunday, June 11th
58th Annual Emmy Awards - Sunday, August 27th

Now I'll go back to not caring again.

Happy New Year!

Well I haven't had much to blog about lately, nor have I had much time to blog lately. Must be the holidays, oh yeah, and work.

Today I must say it took me until after noon to realize it was the last day of the year. For some reason I hadn't associated tomorrow with being New Year's Day. But while we're on the topic... what kind of ridiculous holiday is this?! Somehow just because it's the first day of the year, every country in the world decided that it's a day worth celebrating. This is fine with me, but what about the first day of the month? February 1st, March 1st, September 1st... these should ALL be holidays! Oh well!

I guess today was a productive day of cleaning... so at least I can start the new year with a clean apartment.

I also watched this quality cinematic feature called Men with Brooms. As you might expect, this is probably the only movie ever made that revolves around the sport of curling. It's definitely a comedy, though don't look to see it among the ranks of any Academy Award winning films. First, it's more bizarre than it is funny. There is a lot of subtle curling humor, that you'd only understand if you are a curler, or fully versed in curling lingo and etiquette. As it was, it was nothing more than a fully predictable plot, filled in with a lot of other obscure garbage. Oh yeah, and since it's a Canadian comedy, it takes every opportunity possible to make fun of Americans and portray them as stupid, uptight, pompous, or some permutation thereof. The most famous actor in the film was probably Leslie Nielsen, which makes perfect sense considering he's Canadian and probably has made more terrible comedies than any man alive. (Though I think he is still hilarious, and enjoy even his terrible movies.)

Happy New Year!

Deal... or No Deal?

Tonight began yet another primetime gameshow that we stole from the Brits. The show, Deal or No Deal, is being run as a primetime mini-series-type special that will run each night this week at 8pm on NBC. Reminds me of the original schedule of Who Wants to be a Millionare, before they started running it every night for a month, and then eventually even syndicated it, until people got so sick of it they run away.

I digress... so Deal or No Deal. The premise of this show is so ridiculously simple I feel like I'm sitting back in my STAT 394 class determining the probability and expected value of each decision. Once you filter out all the lights, glitz, and strategically placed commercial breaks, you're left with this:

1) There are 26 numbered briefcases, each containing a value from $.01 to $1,000,000.
2) The contestant selects one of the briefcases.
3) The contestant then selects the remaining briefcases one-by-one, which are opened to reveal the values contained within.
4) At various points throughout the process, the contestant is made an offer to sell the briefcase they selected for a specified amount of money. If they take the offer (Deal) the game is over, otherwise (No Deal) the game continues until they either take a Deal or all of the remaining cases are opened.

That's all there is to it. The fascinating part (to me at least) is how "The Bank" a.k.a. the man upstairs with a yellow legal pad who is supposedly making the offers, though I consider it far more likely that a computer is making all of the calculations, is actually coming up with his offers. Now, I didn't take too close of a look at the values being offered at various points, but I'm pretty sure they're just offering the expected value of their selected briefcase based on the values remaining. For example, when the contestant tonight was down to just 2 briefcases (their own, and one other) the two remaining values were $50,000 and $500. So what is the EV of the case she selected? (50000+500)/2 = 25250. And what was she offered? $25,000 even. Sounds about right to me.

How long is this going to last? My guess is probably, oh... about 5 episodes. :) Why? Because the show has several fatal flaws that are the curse of all bad gameshows:

1) The audience can't play along. Well, they CAN, but really, it's about as much fun as when your friend goes "I'm thinking of a number between 1 and 26". "Oooh... sorry, wrong."
2) B-list celebrity turned game show host. The host of this show is Howie Mandel. Name one thing he's done in the past 10 years... yeah, that's what I thought. Now the same might have been said about Regis when he first took on the role as host of Millionaire... but he proved himself nicely... it helps that people knew who he was and he's a likable enough guy. Howie reminds me of when they got John McEnroe to host that failed attempt at a game show called "The Chair" where people were answering trivia questions while strapped into a chair and they lost if their heart rate went up too much. Can we say ridiculous premise?
3) Lack of variety. After about 5 episodes of this, every episode will start to feel the same. It's not like they can change up the questions, or have new celebrity guests, or anything different. See reason #1... how many times can you play "I'm thinking of a number" before it gets old... oh yeah, maybe twice. 'Nuff said.

Now that I've devoted more time than this show deserves, I have a question... what's the deal with America stealing all of our gameshows from the British? Are we not creative enough to create our own incredibly ridiculous premises and pretend to give away exorbitant amounts of money, but in reality give away nothing more than the slimmest chance of winning anything substantial? I have one thing to say: No Deal.

If you don't think this is cool...

... there's something wrong with you.

http://www.universeofsynergy.com/xmaslights.wmv

Q: How'd they do that?
A: http://www.wonderlandchristmas.com/wizardsofwinter.php

Now, if only I had:
1) a house
2) money to burn
3) creativity

I'd be all set. Well, 3's no problem, 2 might be able to work... but 1 is a sticking point. We'll see what we can do.

My name is Joe, and I endorse this product.

Celebrities and well-known people have been endorsing products since the beginning of television (or if you consider radio the precursor to television, long before the beginning of television). One thing I've always wondered though, why do celebrities do it? Admittedly, it probably depends on the celebrity, I mean your solid B-list celebrity probably genuinely could use the extra income it provides... so we'll forget about those. But pick someone rich enough that they shouldn't really need to do commercials for the money. In recent memory I recall Donald Trump hawking Domino's Pizza. Do I really believe that The Donald says to the wife "you know, let's order some pizza tonight" from his Manhattan penthouse, and even if he did want pizza, would he order that mass-produced cardboard that comes out of the Domino's ovens? Not in a million years. But surely he can't be needing the cash (though maybe to him, every dollar counts, so that measly $500,000 he gets from Domino's to act like a buffoon on national TV commercials is money in the bank)?

Enough about Trump, what about the new commercials for Campbell's Select soup with John Lithgow? Personally, I think the commercial where he breaks out into a spontaneous showtune about soup is absolutely hilarious. It's a great commercial, though I'd never buy the product. (Somehow I liken eating soup out of a box to drinking wine out of a box... just add "Mc" in front of the name.) Does John Lithgow need the money? Perhaps, though being the star of a top-rated sitcom for a few years (which is still in syndication somewhere, I'm sure) must leave a bit of cashola in the ol' pocketbook. Does he actually like the soup? Probably, but who doesn't like soup?

No, I think there is a commonality here that we have yet to explore. Celebrities are famous only as long as they remain in the minds of the public as a whole. What has Lithgow done since his sitcom? Can you name a single show he's been in? I can't, though I'm sure there are some. But what better way to get your face back on the screen and back into the viewers minds than by doing a cheesy TV commercial... one where everyone talks to their friends and goes "did you SEE that commercial with so-and-so... can you believe he did that?" It's perfect. Has anyone forgotten about Trump yet? No, probably not, but like him or not, he's a very smart man and knows business and how the public thinks. He probably thinks of his Domino's commercial solely in terms of keeping his name and face out there in the public. As long as he's still a star, people won't soon forget him, so it's time well invested (and he can buy a few pizzas with the chunk of change they gave him).

So by the same concept, as long as I keep blogging, people won't forget that I exist and people will keep reading. I'll be a Z-list celebrity yet!

Episode II: The Phantom Jury

Another day of jury duty, waiting to be called... the wheels of justice turn slowly apparently.

8:30am - I arrived and checked in, and took an obligatory seat in the jury assembly room. Today I got here plenty early, and got a nice table to work at over in the corner. Much easier than sitting with your laptop on your lap. It's decidedly more empty in here today, maybe removing those 40 folks from yesterday made a difference. As I count the number of people in the room I'm in... 37. There's probably slightly more in the other room, and a few more in the lobby. So yeah, I'd estimate at least 100 folks around here today waiting for their chance to serve (or more likely, sitting around hoping they're not called so they can go home for good at the end of the day).

9:15am - First announcement of the morning. 4 cases on the docket today with potential juries. Nothing as of yet, so more to come. I'll continue to sit here wasting time finding things to do online.

10:30am - Still nothing. We had an "official" jury break... but still no news. In one of the rooms they started a movie on the TVs, I guess it was good... I was already sitting in the "quiet" room and didn't feel like moving from my excellent seat. :)

11:15am - Finally some word. Of the 4 cases scheduled today, 3 of them have settled or otherwise been dismissed. That leaves only 1 jury remaining for the day, and we've got way too many people for that. So 50 people are selected to be excused with thanks for their service. My name is called, and I'm done.

And that was the story of my jury duty experience. I guess it wasn't a total waste of time... though it's hard not to think that when I spent two days doing nothing short of sitting around doing nothing. Oh well. At least I've served my time until next time.

Doing my part to uphold the Seventh Amendment

Is this what we have to go through to uphold the American right to a trial by jury? Perhaps so. I must say, they have gone to great lengths to make the process as painless and efficient as possible.

As one might have guessed, I'm sitting here in the Jury Assembly room of the King County Superior Court at the Regional Justice Center in Kent. Fortunately they have wifi internet connectivity here, which makes for a slightly more efficient way to pass the time. But in the interests of infotainment, here's a running commentary of today's events thus far:

8:00am - Arrive at the courthouse, make your way through the metal detectors at security, and check in with the nice people at the desk in the Jury Assembly room. Nice facility, I must say... and very efficient process. Just have to grab a clipboard and fill out my "Juror Biography" form (in triplicate, of course... gotta love bureaucracy) that basically asks your age, occupation, where you live, and various other classifying questions that would be provided to the lawyers should you be picked for a jury pool.

8:30am - I'd suspect about 150-200 potential jurors are gathered by now. One of the judges dropped by to welcome us all and give us an obviously scripted spiel about how important we are to the judicial process and such... though she obviously ad-libbed a lot of it too and added much more sincerity than a scripted list would do. This followed by a well-designed, yet incredibly cheesy "How to be a juror" video describing the activities. I felt like I was watching the pre-flight safety briefing video you see on some airplanes.

9:00am - Orientation complete... time to sit around and do nothing. We get the first announcement of the day, informing us that there are 4 potential jury trials on the docket today. Sit back, relax, and enjoy doing nothing.

9:30am - Update... 1 of the 4 potential trials will not be requiring a jury. Make that 3 potential jury trials remaining. I think it's a slow day at the RJC.

10:20am - After a brief 20 minute break to walk around and stretch our legs outside of the JA room, we receive the first jury impaneling of the morning. 15 names are called, and they all immediately leave for their mission. 2 potential juries remain.

11:00am - The 2 trials may still need juries, but definitely not before lunch. Since official lunch time is 12:00am-1:30pm, we may leave now and be back by 1:30pm. A nice 2 1/2 hour lunch break. I realized that I should have brought my laptop, and now with a 2.5 hour break, I drove back to my parents house in Federal Way, got my laptop and had some lunch... and then got back to the RJC at about 12:45 or so to sit and relax with the wifi connectivity.

1:30pm - Everyone's back from lunch, and time to call more jurors. This time they're going to impanel 40 jurors. (Based on this, we guess that it's probably a pretty big criminal trial they're dealing with.) I was not one of the 40 selected. Good news or bad news? We shall see. The 40 all turn in their juror bio forms and receive a number, and come back to relax some more while the counsel reviews their forms. Tick tick tick... 1 potential jury remains.

2:15pm - The 40-member jury panel receives word that the case has settled (I've watched enough Law and Order to piece this together... lots of legal bluffing from one side or the other... threatening to go to a jury, scared the defense enough to take a plea). As a result, those 40 people who did nothing but get assigned a number, are dismissed with the thanks of the court. They were technically on a jury even though they never actually left the jury room... so they don't have to come back tomorrow and they're done. Suddenly everyone's wishing they were one of the 40 selected. :)

2:30pm - With one potential jury remaining, and by my estimations well over 100 potential jurors in the room, it's quite clear that a lot of us will be returning tomorrow. But, at this point I have a minor celebrity-sighting. Who is one of the other potential jurors in the pool, none other than former Washington State Governor Mike Lowry! As my friend Jonell said, "That's a mug you can't miss!" True enough. Anyway, shortly after 2:30, we get the final announcement: the last trial has plenty of work to get through the rest of the day, and won't need a jury until tomorrow. So, we're all excused early, and will report again at 8:45am on Thursday. If we still aren't selected, that's the ballgame and we've served our time. Otherwise in the unfortunate event that I get selected for a jury, I could end up back again later the following week to continue on a trial. We'll see how things turn out. Time to go home!

You have now entered... the twilight zone...

When worlds collide, we enter a dimension known only as... the twilight zone. In tonight's episode... two of my favorite things come together in an unexpected place. But more on that later. First, last night was the usual Monday night curling league, we had what I would call a supremely decent showing. We actually got lucky when it mattered, but all in all played very well. The line score follows:

	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	Total
We	1	1	2	1	1	2	x	x	8
They	0	0	0	0	0	0	x	x	0

Now for the obscure connection. Tonight I'm watching the Amazing Race, as usual, and nothing too odd happening. But then came the previews for the finale of the Amazing Race 8, where in my usual attempt to discern where the race will go next week I saw the greatest thing ever. They'll be CURLING on the Amazing Race next week! From the looks of it, it appears to be some sort of detour or roadblock, my guess is that they have to throw a rock and sweep it into the house, or perhaps something more complicated. It's great! Now I MUST watch next week!

Why DVR is the greatest thing EVER!

Rarely do I like to praise anything that comes from those money-grubbing fools at Comcast, but despite the fact that I think they charge too much for the services they provide, I can't dispute the fact that they provide top-notch products. I think their high-speed internet is far superior to DSL, and their cable TV I can't argue much with either.

So yesterday, I upgraded my cable box to one of the new fandangled dual-tuner DVRs from Comcast. For those of you not in the know, a DVR is a "Digital Video Recorder". If you hear people talking about a Tivo, it's essentially the same thing. Tivo is a brand name, but they make DVRs. Of course, what can you DO with a DVR? I'm glad you asked!

In its simplest form, it works just like a VCR, except that instead of recording things on a VHS tape, it records it digitally on its internal hard drive. You can play the shows back whenever you want, fast forward, rewind, pause, basically everything you can do with a regular VCR. But that is where the similarities end.

The excitement begins with the fact that it's fully integrated with the on-screen TV guide. The advantage here is that all you have to do is find what you want to record in the TV guide, and press the record button on the remote, and you're set. It knows exactly when to record it, and won't forget. No chance of messing up the times or anything like that.

The excitement continues... say I want to record the same show whenever it's on. For example, I set it up to record The Price is Right every day. Now, if I get home from work and want to watch it, I can watch that morning's show whenever I want! And I can even set the option to only keep the most recent episode, so my DVR doesn't try to store weeks worth of shows, but only todays. It's... ehem... Comcastic?

The excitement builds... so since I'm too tired to stay up and watch David Letterman at 11:30 every night, I can just watch it the next day when I feel like it. But what's better? Since it's all pre-recorded, I can fastforward through all of the commercials. An hour long show is immediately cut down to something like 40 minutes or so. Plus who really wants to watch all of those commercials anyway.

The excitement never ends... it's more than just for watching pre-recorded stuff. You can also do lots of neat stuff with live television. Last night I was watching Law and Order and I got a phone call (during the most exciting part, of course), so I missed part of it. Then I remembered... I can actually PAUSE live TV. So I hit the pause button and the DVR and all is well... except that it took me about a minute to remember that I could pause it, so I missed some stuff. NOT A PROBLEM... I can also REWIND live TV because the DVR automatically saves the last 20-30 minutes of what you're watching, so it's easy to go back if you missed something. (I haven't tried this with say, a football game, but sounds like a pretty neat feature there!) No chance to miss anything.

So, why am I so thrilled? Why can't I live without this? I probably could... but wow is it a neat thing and now even when there's nothing on live TV, there's plenty of stuff I can watch pre-recorded. Is there a catch? Of course, it costs me more. But I was actually considering a Tivo before I realized how far superior the Comcast DVR is. Tivo costs $12.99 a month, PLUS you have to buy the Tivo box which is NOT fully-integrated with your digital cable. With the Comcast DVR, no up-front costs-- the box is provided-- and the monthly fee, only $9.95 a month on top of my current cable bill. BUT... this actually replaces the HDTV box that I'm already using, which was $6.50 more a month... so if you subtract that, add the other, you realize that it's only costing me $3.50 more a month! Well, that's what the original plan was. But there's one more catch there (leave it to Comcast to zap every bit of money out of your wallet)... you MUST subscribe to Digital Cable in order to get DVR. I was originally just using the basic cable package. So another upgrade to the Digital Classic base plan was an additional $10 more a month. The result... $13.50 more a month, but that also includes a whole bunch more channels (including my good friend the Game Show Network). Somehow that all worked out I'm paying $13.50 more and am perfectly happy with the result.

And believe it or not... despite the price that I still think is higher than it needs to be... it's still Comcastic. :)

All that work for a $10 lightbulb

What ever happened to do-it-yourself car repairs. Sometimes I swear that manufacturers intentionally design cars just so that it's next to impossible to make simple repairs yourself. Now, I'm not trying to replace the engine, or anything like that... I'm not crazy. I just found last night that one of my headlights was out, so logically, this morning I go to the auto parts store up the street and pick up a replacement bulb. I figured, pop the old one out, put the new one in, piece of cake, right? WRONG. A job that I expected would take no more than 10 minutes ended up taking over an hour.

So I pop the hood, use my trusty maglight to scope around for an easy way to replace it. I can see exactly where the bulb connects to the car, the problem is you basically need hands of a 6-year-old to even reach down in there, plus once you do, there's not enough clearance to get the bulb out anyway, because the battery is in the way.

Plan B: Remove the battery. Easy, right? Sure, just disconnect the battery terminals, and loosen the one bolt that holds the battery down, and it just pops right out. Battery terminals... considering I've never replaced the battery the nuts that hold the terminals on were a little tight and awkward, but I managed to get them off with reasonably little trouble. Then that big bolt way down at the bottom that holds the battery on... not such an easy story. I can get a ratchet down there and it just fits in perfectly. One problem... there's no space to TURN the ratchet. Minor details.

It's at this point I second guess myself just wondering if there's an easier way then taking the battery out. So, after messing with my own intuitional instruction manual, I opened up the glove box and found the owners manual and flipped to the page on replacing head lamps. (At least they still put the instructions for this in the manual.) I call it "How to replace the headlamp in 9 easy steps." The first 6 steps involve removing about half a dozen screws, nuts, and bolts and basically disassembling the front corner panel of the car, followed by 3 quick and easy steps to disconnect the bulb and replace it. The additional caveat, "based on the complexity of the procedure, we recommend taking your vehicle in to an authorized service center for replacement." Taking the car into the dealer to replace the headlight? I think not. Removing half the front end of the car just to replace the headlight? I also think not.

I now return to the original plan of removing the battery, this time with a bit more resolve than the last time. Using a creative combination of the ratchet, vise-grips, and crescent wrenches, I managed to get the bolt holding the battery on loosened. From this point forward things become decidedly easier. I removed the battery, which gave me a wide-open reach at the back of the headlight. A few twists and disconnections and the bulb came right out. The new one went in equally easy. Of course, since the battery was now sitting on the floor of the garage, I had no way of knowing whether or not the new bulb was installed correctly and working, but I had hope.

I replaced the battery, reconnected everything and screwed everything back in (albeit this time, not nearly as tightly as it was in previously, because inevitably next week my battery will die or something). Turned on the headlights and it worked beautifully. The only lasting side-effects: my radio presets were all reset, but I'd been meaning to change them around anyway, so it worked out well. All in all, everything's fine but it was incredibly too much work for such a simple task to replace a $10 lightbulb.

Curling updates

Well, curling is still keeping me busy these days. Monday night curling went, I wouldn't say "well", but by the right combination of luck and decent shots we managed to win. As you might tell from the line score:

	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	Total
We	0	0	0	2	0	1	1	1	5
They	1	1	1	0	1	0	0	0	4

Things were looking bleak after 3 ends, but somehow we managed to turn things around at just the right time to make it work. In related news, as is part of the Monday night league, each week 2 teams bring food for everyone, and this was our team's week to bring food... or so we thought. There was a shuffle of the schedule a few weeks back, at which we thought we got moved from last week to this week, so we brought food this week. Unfortunately, everyone else seems to think we were supposed to bring food last week, so confusion abounded. Either way, there was plenty of food this week and everyone was happy. :)

And in other news, in our Sunday novice league, we had a mini open house... basically a "bring your friends curling" day, and I convinced Jonell and Chris to come. They both ended up having a good time... after they discovered the miracle of slip-on grippers to go over their shoes. Being a med school resident, Chris has no consistent schedule, so a weekly event like curling doesn't mesh well. But Jonell has decided to join the novice league this year, and will be out curling with us next week. How exciting!

Do they think people won't notice?

Have you noticed that commercials take certain "artistic liberties" when promoting their products and services? This has probably been done since the dawn of television, but it makes it look so fake and unbelievable. Now, I accept the "best case scenario" advertising, like you see in the fast food commercials. You see the Burger King commercials for a Whopper... have you EVER ordered a Whopper that looks like that? Of course not... mine has usually been squished and flattened, with no strategically-placed beads of ketchup and mustard glistening out of either side of the crisp red tomato. But theoretically, on a particularly lucky day, it might look something like that... the commercial is simply what you might get in the best case scenario. This doesn't really bother me.

What I'm taking about are things that are completely changed for the purpose of the commercial. Take credit card commercials for example. It's so common these days to demonstrate the "convenience" of using credit / debit cards to make purchases. Their favorite way of showing this to show the customer swiping their card at the terminal when checking out. Of course, they take certain care to hold the card so you can see the Visa logo (or Discover, or whatever, they all do it) while they're swiping the card. Freeze the camera. Go pull a credit card out of your wallet... go ahead, I'll wait...

...


...


OK, good. Now tell me, what's wrong with this picture?:

I'm all about product placement, but tell me exactly how productive this transaction is going to be, considering the magnetic stripe on the card isn't even going through the machine. Plus, if you've ever had a senile moment and tried to swipe your card this way, you'll quickly notice how it doesn't slide particularly well when you're running over the raised numbers! Every time I see this, it drives me crazy. Think of how many people mimic what they see in the commercials, and then feel stupid because it doesn't work. Maybe they should sue Visa for emotional distress caused by their deceptive advertising? No no no, that would be a frivolous lawsuit... and that's a blog for another day.

Election updates...

Watching the election results come in can be a satisfying experience... well, when you're in the apparent majority. As a follow-up to my Initiatives blog from a few weeks back, apparently the majority of the state had mostly the same sentiments I do. What we have learned tonight:

• Nearly 2/3 of Washington citizens don't like smoke, at that's something all 39 counties can agree on. In 30 days, look forward to enjoying smoke-free bars, casinos, and bowling alleys.
• Confusing initiatives about healthcare and malpractice reform don't win enough votes
• As much as people hate gas taxes, they hate our current roads more
• 57% of Washingtonians still listen to the trash that comes out of Tim Eyman's mouth, but ironically, most of the rural counties in the state have him figured out. I'm not quite sure what to make of that.
• Seattleites are fed up with the monorail, and will be glad to stop hearing about it for good.

I guess I don't have much to complain about, believe it or not. The people have spoken.

And in a last-minute reminder and plug for my other blog, the Amazing Race 8 Travelblog had a special guest columnist this week, so be sure to check it out!

And the Oscar for best movie reviews goes to...

In what I will officially credit as the find of the year, my friend Andrew stumbled onto a biweekly online video segment on Movies.com that features everyone's favorite heckling Muppets, Statler and Waldorf, live From the Balcony with reviews (or rather, what seems to be more of a cynical view) of recent and upcoming movies. Each segment is about 10 minutes or so in length, and 99.9% hilarious. The current episode is actually the 10th in the series, but fortunately for those of us a little late on the uptake, they have the entire archive of past episodes available for viewing. And the best part: it's absolutely free! It can't be beat!

Each episode features clips from trailers, special features starring other members of the Muppets crew including Pepe the King Prawn, as well as the weekly "Balcon-ism". This is high-quality entertainment, so much so that it merits being immortalized on my featured links segment right here in the Universe of Synergy! Now if you'll excuse me, I have more reviews to watch.