Category: Uncategorized

Okay, so my “sick and tired”ness of travel has worn off. Woe for my budget.

I’ll be going on a family trip to Hawaii the week of Columb^W^H Native Peoples Day, (October 10-14 to be precise). On the way there, I will likely have a 3 or 4 day layover in ye ol’ bay area. On the way back, I’ll have an 15-18 hour layover in the LA area.

Also, southwest tickets are pretty damn cheap. (8 round trips to a freebie).

web browsing: I need to get out of the habit of using tabs and not using bookmarks.

social life: Yeah, I need a social life I’m content with before I start dating. And I can’t let hot guys and amazing sex sway me from that judgement. Okay, maybe I can. But I still need a social life. Maybe I need to stop meeting people in sexually charged environments? I dunno. Nerds and environmentalists need to establish meeting spaces. Homos are easy to find. Quality people are always in demand, and thus harder to reach. Despair is not an option. Choosing not to accept anything less than perfection means there will be very little one accepts in one’s life.

So, my folks are heading out to see the extended family in southern illinois this weekend. I would like to join them, but, it’s just not accessible. I’m saving up my spare time to join them (my parents) for a week in hawaii in october (and I still need to pull an extra day’s worth of work time out of some extradimensional orifice to make that one work).

It’s either a ‘5 and a half hour’ each amtrak trip assuming nothing breaks (approximately akin to assuming 2 inches of rain on any given day in AZ). or a 10 hour greyhound trip each way. Either option costs about 120, and spends 2/3 of my weekend getting from point A to point B. If I could take off an extra day or two for the travel, I’d probably do it. But I really don’t have the time to spare.

Otoh, there are some tempting looking e-saver flights. Like $202 to burlington, $160 to NYC, $250 to SFO, $200 to toronto, or $150 to dc. Except I’ve been to all of those places recently. No esavers to seattle, portland, or vancouver, the next places I’d really like to check out. Maybe I should just hang out and do something in town. Ah, but what to do, what to do? =)

So, hitting IKEA last night, I checked out the apple store at the nearby mall. There I (and Terry, who was driving me) got prompt service. The service itself was a gfy (the only things covered under warranty with the ac adapter is the transformer. The rest of it is too subject to user mistreatment, or so they say. He once again informed me of my buy option, then openly pointed out that there are non-apple retailers which sell ac adapters that work with iBooks, for less than half the apple store price (as phramok had in this very blog).

And that’s precisely what I’m getting.

Also, the genius on staff specifically steered us away from the sole store within chicago’s city limits. The only one readily accessible by L, pointing out that the place can’t handle its tech support load promptly.

Probably because it’s the only mac store accessible by L. And it’s more than up to handling the pace of selling new units, so they “clearly” don’t need to build a new store.

So, it’s a classic market strategy. Emphasize your sales force over your support force. Anyone foolish enough to buy your product is stuck with whatever support they can get.

Part of the reason I chose mac in the first place was that I wanted a computer where I wouldn’t have so many maintenance headaches. Well, let’s see, 4 trips in less than 2 years. This isn’t a whole lot better than the refurbished PC laptops I got. Well, I suppose it’s the customer service that really makes the difference. I can walk into any mac store and get my difficulties taken care of, right? Wrong!

2 hours before the store closes, I walk in, and they tell me sorry, they can’t see me before the store closes because they have too many other people they’re helping. Keep in mind, my problem is simple. My ac adapter is falling apart. The ‘fix’ will be to replace it. But, no, no, they can’t handle that at least not today. Despite the fact that I paid about $300 to have my warantee extended another couple years. You see, you also have to pay extra to get decent customer support from apple. Like the ability to make an appointment to get your ac adapter replaced? You need to purchase “ProCare” for that. I foolishly let my membership in ProCare slide. I can certainly replace it. It’ll cost me $100 (well, $99, but who’s quibbling?). Meanwhile, replacing the adapter, suggested to me when I called to check and see if they carried the premagnetic ac adapters, costs $80 (or $78 or whatever).

Meanwhile, they have 10 guys downstairs, strolling around, ready to sell you anything at a moment’s notice, but mostly just scratching their butts. The ‘genius bar’ upstairs is packed with customers, meanwhile, and the geniuses have not a moment’s rest. After getting a gfy from the assistance reservation system, I went downstairs and talked to one of the strollers. He called me ‘buddy’. I asked if there was any way I could get this replaced under my warranty. He brightened up and gave a big ol’ smile, and said “Well, you can buy one!”

Yeah, fuck you too.

Socially speaking, I’ve been a bit of a hermit lately. I’ve emerged from my room mostly only to go to work, gaming in the suburbs (once / week) and go to the gym (no more than twice per week). Well, that and go on one date. I haven’t been checking lj either this past week. I may be coming out the other side, and resuming more active levels of social activity, but we will see. =)

Woo. =)

So, I did a little math. If I stay with my agency for 21 years, contributing the IRS max to my 401k equivalency from the time matching starts (about a year from now) until the end of those 20 years, and if that account earns on average 10% interest for those 20 years, and inflation averages 3%, then by the end of it all, I will be getting the equivalent of a little under 70k in interest from my retirement fund, assuming that when I am withdrawing it’s getting 5% interest. If only 10 years, then 45k. Had I done something comparable with my cmu ira, or my motorola ira, well, I couldn’t have contributed as much, but I suspect I would have at least doubled it.

If any of you have have plans, use them. Regard maximizing your employer matching as the minimum. Stick around wherever it is until you vest. Especially if you are young. Do as I say, not as I do. *wag finger sternly*

Oh yeah, I’m also going to weight my TSP heavily toward the foreign index. Very heavily, like 1/3 in that alone, not counting the stuff from the composite account. You know, just in case, cast a wide net.

So, Tuesday evening, I did end up heading to the alternative transportation show with eco-social. The whole thing was a little, uh, fluffy? But I wrote a master’s thesis on this topic. It was comprehensive, and while there was selective information, sometimes to the point of deceptiveness (electric cars are zero emissions, nevermind where the electricity comes from, or, for that matter, what happens to the batteries when they’re no good anymore). Okay, okay, there was a brief comment to the effect of “well, okay, so the grid isn’t entirely co2 neutral, but it could be.” But that ignores the tradeoffs in expanding our generation capacity (do we want unreliable wind, polluting coal, expensive and [less] polluting diesel/natural gas, or radioactive nuclear?) It’s a complex issue, and they can’t put the whole thing on a single placard. And while they did have the electric cars, hybrids, electric scooters, electric trike with shell for two (the twike), they did not have any highly fuel efficient car, or any of the more readily accessible things that are out there today. (though I realize the CRX isn’t in production at present either)

At dinner there was a speaker panel of a bike coalition rep, a planning advocacy rep, and a transit agency rep. They were there to talk about planning for transit. And they did a bit. I wanted a more complete and coherent picture, but I already have one. The facilitator put in occasional humorous asides that were pretty off the wall, but then he’d also put in things that focused it back to the point. There were of course the audience questions from people with an axe to grind. Most prominently there was someone who wanted to know why one particular line hadn’t been extended out to what was, I suspect, her neighborhood, despite long range plans that have been around for decades. When the transit guy was talking about all the long range plans, she interrupted and said she was only interested in the one line. Ugh. Not that conferences are any better on that score, but still, ugh.