Wade Phillips - I regret to say...

I like Wade Phillips, I wanted him to do well, but truth to tell he probably should have been fired a few week ago. The Cowboys are 1-7 and looked really bad in their last game against the Green Bay Packers on national TV.

I'm watching them play today with their new coach, Jason Garrett and the announcers mentioned that Garrett had instituted some NEW rules - players had to be on time for meetings, and they had to dress in suits and ties when flying.

And I'm thinking of everything announcers and people had ever said about Wade Phillips - that he was the nicest guy in the NFL...and I guess niceness didn't include discipline.

I guess he assumed grown men would just naturally know enough to be on time for team meetings, and to dress appropriately when travelling.

But you'd've thought Phillips, after his first three or four games this season, would have figured out he needed to instill some discipline in his team...but I suppose after four years of letting his team do whatever they wanted, he couldn't suddenly do an about face and start acting like a coach.

Anyway. this just goes to show that discipline is necessary. The Cowboys are playing a lot better today!

The power cord is part of the receiver!

We have recently moved from Yorktown, VA, where we had 3 TVs hooked up to satellite. When my dad asked what needed to be brought to our new location in Cheyenne, WY, he was told, just bring the receivers.

So, he just brought the receivers. Wihtout the power cords.

Well - I was in charge of packing my own room and so of course I brought my power cord, but now the satellite guy is here and we've got two boxes and no power cords, and the boxes are so old that he doesn't have the right kind of power cords to fix them, so we'll have to go get them.

So my dad is all annoyed, saying, Why didn't they specify you had to bring the power cord to the receiver, as well as the receiver.

And I said, the power cord is part of the receiver.

And my dad said, Well, why didn't they say that then.

Well, at this point I just gave it up as a bad job, because to continue on would have been to point out that he was just stupid. Of course the power cord is part of the receiver, there's no need for them to specify that - except apparently to someone who is 78 years old.

So I just said, "I don't know," which my dad interpreted as, "You're right, they should have specified it," when of course what I really meant was, "They shouldn't have had to specify it. It's the electronic equivalent of not putting hot coffee between your legs, a no brainer.

I can see where he's coming from. We'd have to bring our computers in to a computer shop once in a while, and there all you had to bring in was the tower, they had the cords and the monitors to hook up to any computer.

But receivers are different. The power cords for them are not interchangeable. (Would that they would be - seems kind of dumb that they're not, but I suppose it's a different voltage, or something.)

Whatever the reason, the point is that when you're bringing your electronics, you bring the power cords, and any other connectors!

There's a sign on a road in Cheyenne, Wyoming

If you drive north up Warren Avenue/Greely Highway, you'll drive through the center of Cheyenne. As you pass 22nd Avenue, there's a great big, huge, easily visible and legible sign that says Post OFfice This Way.

There's only one problem. There isn't a post office on that road and there hasn't been one on that road for 3 years.

Yet the sign is still there, directing newbies to the city to turn there, in full authority of an official sign.

I've lived in Cheyenne for about a month, and got tricked by that sign a couple of weeks ago. I'd had my mail forwarded to my new address, but after one day's receipt of mail, nothing for two weeks. So I tried to find the post office to ask what was going on. Now - if I'd never seen any signs directing me to the post office, I would have looked up the address on the web. But in my driving down this particular road, which I do every day, I'd always seen that sign, and I think I was justified in thinking, "No need to look up the address. I'll just follow this sign."

(As for the mail problem, the woman from whom I bought this house decided to go to Mexico for a vacation. She still hasn't found a new home (I won't go into the issues of that - but it's nice to know she can afford to go to Mexico for two weeks, before she finds a new home to live in) so she put a hold on the mail. All of it. Those with her name on it as well as mine.

So I got that sorted out.

But it just makes me shake my head.

Who knew fish farms would be a bad idea?

Anyone with common sense...


Underwater Times: Large-Scale Fish Farm Production Offsets Environmental Gains; 'Creates Large Scale Problems'

SAANICH, British Columbia -- Industrial-scale aquaculture production magnifies environmental degradation, according to the first global assessment of the effects of marine finfish aquaculture (e.g. salmon, cod, turbot and grouper) released today. This is true even when farming operations implement the best current marine fish farming practices.

Dr. John Volpe and his team at the University of Victoria developed the Global Aquaculture Performance Index (GAPI), an unprecedented system for objectively measuring the environmental performance of fish farming.

"Scale is critical," said Dr. Volpe, a marine ecologist. "Over time, the industry has made strides in reducing the environmental impact per ton of fish, but this does not give a complete picture. Large scale farming of salmon, for example, even under even the best current practices creates large scale problems."

The fish farming industry is an increasingly important source of seafood, especially as many wild fisheries are in decline. Yet farming of many marine fish species has been criticized as causing ecological damage. For instance, the researchers' found that the relatively new marine finfish aquaculture sector in China and other Asian countries lags in environmental performance.

Dr. Volpe added, "The fastest growing sector is Asia, where we found a troubling combination of poor environmental performance and rapidly increasing production."

With support from the Lenfest Ocean Program, Dr. Volpe and his team developed GAPI, which uses 10 different criteria to assess and score environmental impacts. Incorporating information such as the application of antibiotics and discharge of water pollutants, GAPI allows researchers to gauge which farmed species and countries of production have the best or worst environmental performance. The researchers examined the environmental impact of marine fish farming per ton of fish produced and the cumulative environmental impact for each country producing a major farmed species.

"GAPI provides a valuable tool for developing environmentally responsible fish farming. Governments can use GAPI to inform policies and regulations to minimize the environmental footprint of fish farming. Farmers can use it to improve production practices. And buyers can use it to compare and select better, more environmentally friendly seafood options," said Chris Mann, senior officer and director of the Pew Environment Group's Aquaculture Standards Project, which collaborated on the work.

Amazon

I got a bad shock a couple of weeks ago...took me a while to get over it.

A year or so ago, I discovered that Amazon was allowing people to publish their blogs on the Kindle. People who did so receieved a 30% commission.So, if a person's blog cost 99 cents to subscribe to, the author would receive 30 cents for each one. If the blog cost $1.99, the blogger would receive 60 cents.

However, the blogger has no control over how much Amazon charges for the blogs. And they ALL start at $1.99.

After a while, some blogs drop to 99 cents...no one knows why, while some stay at $1.99.

So it was with me. I had established somewhat of a blog publishing empire. I published 10 blogs...indeed, more than that, as I figured quantity of blogs would help my income.

I had three successful blogs. After about 5 months, one of them had 70 subscriptions. It cost 99 cents, and had done so for about a week after I'd started it, so I was quite happy with getting 30 cents per sub.

Of my other two blogs, one had over 90 subs, and was $1.99. THe other had over 160 subs, and also cost $1.99

So, to recapituatle, I had 2 successful blogs that were earning me 60 cents a piece, and I continued to get subscriptions every single day.

Then, a week or so ago, mid-month, I saw to my horror that my two very successful blogs had been reduced in price to 99 cents. So my income was reduced in half. For the month of September, I earned $170, in October, my income will be $90. I'd anticipated getting 1000 subs by early next year, which would have earned me $600. Now, it will be $300. That's a loss of $300.

Well, I was mad enough to spit. The more so because my 7 blogs that have 1, 2, 3 or 4 subs...still cost $1.99!!!!!

I emailed Amazon's "help desk" and requested, astringently, that my blog prices be put back to $1.99, but I was refused.

So, it's taken me a week or so to recover from my fury. I'm still in the process of shutting down my blogs - I'm not going to help Amazon - at least the Kindle portion of it - earn any money. (The more so because they've also cost themselves money by reducing my prices!)

My one very popular blog, The Rush Limbaugh Report, continues to get subscriptions. I am allowing it to continue for a while - hell, I need the money, even if it is half of what I should be getting - but as soon as my desktop publishing books take off, I'll dump these things.

Update on Colorado's Road Workers

I'd meant to amend this entry several days ago, but time got away from me.

I'd posted how Colorado road workers were out on a Sunday, blocking a 6-mile stretch of road, despite the fact that the road looked quite fine.

Well...that's because it was fine. It had just been laid, as I found out the next day. I encountered more delay going up the highway on the holiday Monday, but this was road workers pouring concrete in another lane.

So I came to the conclusion that the lane closure that had irritated me the other day must have been because "they" want a newly poured concrete road to set undisturbed for 48 hours or more, before trucks start driving over it.

Now, as Terry Pratchett puts it in Thief of Time, (although I'm paraphrasing because that book is now hiding somewhere in my new house), New information calls for a new conclusion, but does not render incorrect the old conclusion, based on the knowledge had at the time.

In other words, just because I was wrong in the previous case about road workers being paid triple time for no good reason, isn't to say that they don't on average get paid a heckuva lot for standing around doing very little. (3 supervisors to 1 worker, etc.)

Brett Favre

Brett Favre has not said, "It's a lie" when asked about the allegations made against him by a few women in New York. So, although I had initially hoped that it wasn't true, I'm beginning to think that it is.

(How fascinating that the women involved didn't decide to complain until two years later. Had Favre refused to pay blackmail to them?)

Anyway, his actions aren't as bad as Tiger Woods, as far as having relations with over 30 women, but they are as stupid.

Here's a guy with a wife and kids, in the public eye, making money in endorsements, and he sends text messages and photos to women in the New York Jets organization? And he doesn't expect this to come out and tarnish his image.

It's just stupid!