note to consumer product engineers

dear engineers,

please do not let your accounting department talk you into using plastic gears when you know you should be using metal ones. especially relatively expensive, in high-torque applications like:

- my broken shredder
- my broken stick blender
- my broken garage door opener

thanks,
dan

this is not okay.

from the time i was born until the time i was about 22 i had never seen my dad's upper lip because it was hidden behind his soup strainer mustache. one day i came home from college for the weekend and it was gone. i'm sure he was very attached to it, but he did the right thing. he shaved that bad boy off and to my knowledge, he has never looked back. today, msn posted an article about regrettable trends in pop culture, and while i feel the list may have overlooked several thousand items, i have to agree that this, perhaps, is one of the most regrettable and the one i'd most like to put a stop to immediately.

tech editors are idiots

it's the end of the year and of course this means everyone is doing their stupid end of the year 2008 wrap ups best of this worst of that lists. and for some reason, a bunch of tech column writers have decided that the peek is awesome. in fact, it is so awesome that it is in the running for time magazine's gadget of the year. the peek, if you don't know, is a small handheld wireless device that lets you check your email. that's it. you can't surf the web. you can't talk to your friends. you can't text message. you can't even check your work email, just web-mail. it costs $100 to buy the device and about $20/m for service. i can see how you might think this is awesome, if it was oh, maybe 1998, about a year or so before blackberries came out. but these days my dog can get her email on her cell phone. so why would anyone buy this thing and why would people who are alleged technology pundits think this thing is so great?

dan's economic bailout plan

it's been pretty hard to avoid all this news about economic bailouts and the failure of various large banks and investment corporations. your leaders are about to hand out $700B to banks who made and or bought risky mortgages. you are going to end up paying for it. i won't get into all the reasons why i think this is a bad idea, but i will propose an alternative.

the government buys any personal residences that are:

- upsidedown on their loans
- was listed on the market for at least six months and the sellers did not refuse any "reasonable" offers. (definition of reasonable is yet to be determined)

at which point, the government disposes of the house at market value, pays the mortgage company with the proceeds of the sale. the difference between the market value and the proceeds of the sale is loaned to the mortgage company by the government with interest. that same amount is added to the ex-homeowners tax bill at little to no interest.

why i think this is a good idea?

1) people who can't afford their houses have some motivation to get out of them and don't get to keep them. if i have to pay for my house so does everyone else damnit.

2) people who got in over their heads can get out, but still have to pay for it in the long run.

3) the banks don't get free money. they'll get some from the portion of the homeowners who are willing to accept the fact that they can't afford their house. they will eat some losses from stubborn homeowners who just don't care (i'd be interested in what the percentages would be). some will fold, which i consider a good thing to a certain extent.

4) the final bill will be paid for by the people who made the mistakes.

one of the problems with my plan is that it would take a while for their to be any effect and probably in the meantime, more institutions would go belly up. i'm generally opposed to government interfering in the free market, but on the other hand i'm not particularly a big fan of the idea of the entire american economy collapsing either.

how about some chinese?

my mom is very excited. she is planning a "mini" family reunion with some relatives who have flown in all the way from china. they'll be staying at my parents house. my uncle and his family are driving down from connecticut to meet these relatives for the first time i believe. we'll all be going out to lunch on saturday, and what better place to take them than hunan manor in burtonsville?

death transporter 2003

i think i am going to poop myself. trailers for death race AND transporter 3 are both out, BOTH starring jason statham.

sweet... 18 cents per gallon savings.

now i can finally afford that jr. bacon cheeseburger i've been jonesing for but couldn't afford due to gas price increases. two out of three of your presidential candidates have proposed a "gas tax holiday" for the summer driving season. apparently only one candidate

- is smart enough to realize that the average person would save about $30 at the pump
- has the dignity and enough respect for the american people to not try to buy votes for the aforementioned $30 each
- realizes that making gas cheaper is not the way to end foreign oil dependency.

i had spent some time considering which candidate i hated the least. thank you for clearing it up mccain and clinton.

PETA offers $1 million reward to first to make in vitro meat...

...cows, pigs and chickens to become extinct within months of award.

seriously, when was the last time you saw a wild cow?

incidentally, does anyone else find it curious that the DoD has just announced it will be spending $250M in research on regrowing human body parts at about the same time the PETA prize was announced?

tinfoilhats.com

now, i'm not trying to say i'm a genius or anything, but those of you who talk to me on a regular basis know that i pretty much crank out ideas (of varying quality) for new products, businesses, websites, companies and other money making schemes ventures on a fairly regular basis. it seems more and more that about six months to a year and a half after i hatch up my ideas and fail to do anything with them, they turn up as reality, making someone other than me rich. since i don't share my ideas with everyone and none of my friends seem to be getting any richer, the only logical conclusion is that they have somehow tapped into my brain. today, i bring you the two latest examples: banana flavored beer & and a diet incentive program.

i'm not going to lie. i'm into fruity (in whatever context you prefer) beers. pyramid apricot, sam adams cherry wheat, blue moon with a big slice of orange are some of my favorites. laura and i frequent capital city brewery in shirlington or rock bottom brewery in ballston. i'll usually give whatever new beer they have a shot. it was on one of these trips that it occured to me that a banana flavored beer would probably be pretty awesome. turns out i was right, when i found this. it's not for everyone, but if you're into the fruitier beers, give it a shot, and then send me a dollar 'cause it was really my idea.

my second idea (which is directly related to beer consumption) was a way to 1) help people lose weight and 2) capitalize on their inability to do so. i've always believed that the best way to get people to do something is to make them want to do it. for the majority of people to want to do something, it has to be in their best interest. the easiest and quickest way to make something in a persons best interest is to use the thing with which the most people will immediately recognize as being in their best interest, money.

the premise: potential weight-losers would go to my website, set some personal weight loss goal with a deadline, then send me some money to hold hostage until they either meet their goal at which point they get their money back (possibly plus some extra) or the deadline passes, at which point i get to keep their money. it's pretty much infallible (except for the part where i have attempt to verify some random person's weight loss over the internet). i stash their money in a high yield money market account while it's in my possession and in the end probably keep more than half of it.

apparently it took a contract law professor and a behavioral economist from yale to come up with the same idea. only they are a lot dumber than me because instead of keeping the money for themselves, forfeited incentive money goes to charity. dumbasses.