Okay, this is a little weird. I came out to the living room after taking a short nap, saw my daughter's laptop, and thought that I'd use it to write a post on the blog. As soon as I started it, I received a warning that there were multiple security problems, including, apparently, that her antivirus program was not running. So, instead of writing a post, I got to sit here while Avast does a sweep of her machine. I started reading the papers again -- it was a couple of articles that had suggestions something to write about -- until my wife came out and wondered why I was sitting er with the laptop open and some kind of program whipping up displays faster than the human eye could read them. At which point, she said that she'd bring ours out, and did. Ours is heavier than hers, incidentally.
There is an interesting article about telephone plan pricing in the Times. It boils down to two points: people like predictability in their cell phone bill, and will willingly pay more per minute if it means that the actual bill will be relatively consistent, month to month, and people aren't particularly interested in getting the cheapest, or even a cheap, telephone service plan. When phone companies offer free deals that cost them little, customers are willing to upgrade their plans, buying more minutes per month, even if they're not using them all, now. A different way to put it is that consumers don't buy the plans that economists would advise. I do, though. Just the other night, my daughter asked why we don't have a 'family' plan. I told her that we spend about five hundred dollars a year for the GoPhone service for our three phones (the phones get recharged when they run out of funds); that works out to about forty dollars a month. Family Plans usually run about a third more for the same service. I told her that I don't see the point of paying more if I'm not getting something better. Of course, better is as better is perceived; a friend who has a family plan will regularly get a new telephone for one of her family members, at a cost that's a fraction of what the phone actually costs outright. We don't. My daughter would like a new phone, and we're thinking about it; when we do, those 'free' or 'cheap' phones seem a lot more attractive.
An article in the Times magazine talks about that Army major who thought it'd be fun to kill people right here at home, no need to go overseas. Okay, that's trivializing it. It says that among other things, he thought that Muslim military members should be able to get conscientious objector status, and out of the military, if they're going to be sent to a war zone and have to fight/kill other Muslims. I think that's preposterous. That a Muslim wouldn't want to fight another Muslim (this is true of anyone of any religion, of course), I can see; that they might want a 'this far and no further' personal exclusion, I find astonishing. And yet this fellow is supposed to be a bright, insightful guy.
Nice little article in the same Magazine about a recipe for caramel corn, incidentally. It uses cayenne pepper, of all things.
The Obama administration is proposing that the Department of Transportation take over oversight of the nations subways and light rail systems. I think that's preposterous, too. What expertise and ability could they bring that isn't available to the states now? What's particularly interesting is that they didn't start thinking about it until a rail accident, with fatalities, occurred with the DC Metro, right in their back yard. How about you look into re-regulating the damn airlines, instead, guys?
2 comments:
Considering the endless Muslim/Muslim conflicts, his argument doesn't even make sense! Both Iraq and Afghanistan are complicated by "intra-Islamic conflict", as I imagine the military might say. I hate to think what he considers Somalia - a haven of peace and serenity? He just didn't want to go to war, so he brought a small part, the senseless murder part, to others.
We saved $10/month by purchasing new phones, a new plan and going with a new carrier. It also comes with the advantage that the phones work in the house! (Amazing, but true.) Our Verizon phones worked only on the left front corner of the piano. Everywhere else in the house? No signal.
Of course, we negotiated a new landline deal first... We should have done it the other way around! We might just have gotten rid of the thing.
We have three cell phones and two land lines, one of which has one hardwired handset/speakerphone, and one which has four cordless handsets and a speakerphone/answering machine. The Verizon pkg has free long distance, which is good for my wife; we use both lines when she's working from home on a teleconference. Generally, I'm happy, though every so often the damn cordless handsets pick up inordinate amounts of static. Drives me crazy. I'd like to replace them, but without *knowing* that a new one would be less prone to static, I won't do it.
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