Yearly Archives: 2007

links for 2007-10-02

Leave a reply

Renting a Car in Europe?

Leave a reply

Here’s something I wish I’d known about six months ago.  Apparently if you’re an American traveling to Europe and need to rent a car you should try to do so on the rental company’s website for that country because it will cost you a lot less to rent the same car.  From a New York Times Travel section article by Michelle Higgins (found via bookofjoe):

FOR a trip to Barcelona, Jorge Cuadros, a lawyer from Alexandria, Va., turned to the Internet to book a rental car. On Hertz.com,
Mr. Cuadros was quoted a price of 626.12 euros for an automatic
Mercedes for five days in October. At $1.42 to the euro, that amounted
to about $890.

Out of curiosity, Mr. Cuadros switched to his native Spanish tongue and checked Hertz’s Spanish Web site, www.hertz.es,
where the same car was offered for 263.92 euros — about 58 percent
less. He had stumbled upon a little-known trick that many online travel
companies would rather keep quiet.

“It seems that the car
rental companies are in some cases even charging twice the price to
residents of the U.S. than to Europeans,” said Mr. Cuadros, who
compares the practice to how some pharmaceutical companies charge more
in the United States than they do overseas. “This is abusive behavior.”

And it’s not just the car rental companies:

In an effort to expand their global reach, online travel agencies
based in the United States like Expedia and Travelocity, as well as
individual airlines and car rental agencies, are creating Web sites
geared to foreign counties. Travelocity, for example, just started Travelocity.com.mx for customers in Mexico. It also has Travelocity.co.uk for Britain; www.Travelocity.de
for Germany; and Travelocity.ca for Canada. Expedia has 13 foreign
sites including Expedia.dk (Denmark), Expedia.it (Italy) and Expedia.fr
(France).

The savings can be considerable. An Expedia.com search for a round-trip flight from Melbourne to Sydney
in August yielded a $350 airfare on Qantas as the lowest available,
including taxes and fees. The same flight was listed on Expedia’s
Australian Web site, Expedia.com.au, for 224.34 Australian dollars, or
about $187 at 1.20 Australian dollars to the U.S. dollar.
Expedia.com.au also listed a lower fare (about 200 Australian dollars)
on Virgin Blue, an Australian low-cost carrier; the United States site
did not search that airline.

So how’s this for a business concept: line up a company offshore that can offer multilingual service, promote discounted rates to American travelers and then have your offshore service book the travel and take a cut of the difference?

For my own sake I think I need to learn at least one other language.

Somewhere in Forsyth County is a Substitute Teacher I’d Like to Hang by His Thumbs

6 Replies

I’m doing something that is best not to do: I’m blogging in anger.  An hour ago I was working in my home office, happily dealing with the mind-numbing tedium that most non-lottery winners encounter every day, when my daughter knocked on my door and asked for help with her algebra.  Well, math is a struggle for me but I figured I could handle whatever basic algebra she’s encountering at this point in her school year.  Oh, how wrong I was!

It seems that my daughter had a substitute teacher today and according to her he spent 1/2 hour regaling the class with fond memories of his youth and telling them how lucky they are to have computers.  He also managed to hand out their worksheets, tell them to leave their textbooks at school and do their best for homework.  Nary a bit of instruction to be found.

That’s how I ended up in my office madly Googling problems like "the lesser of two consecutive even integers is 10 more than one half the greater" and visiting cheesy websites that offered solutions to the problem, but without much explanation.  Compounding my ire was the disappointment I felt in myself for not remembering how to do this stuff.  Yes, 25 years is a long time to remember something but I’m still able to remember how to spell "Pythagorean Theorem" without breaking a sweat.  I don’t remember what the hell it is but I can spell it!

Anyway, when I couldn’t figure out how to help I resorted to cursing out (under my breath) the substitute, the person that hired him, the Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Schools and the U.S. Department of Education for putting me in this position.  I understand that there’s a lot of pressure to accurately fill out the state mandated bubble tests to a minimum degree of proficiency, but for God’s sake help us out here!

Yesterday I read a piece titled "How Homework is Hurting Our Family" in the Wall Street Journal section of the Winston-Salem Journal’s Sunday business section.  The author, Jeff Opdyke, writes the following:

I’m not sure when it happened, but at some point U.S.
schools decided that if you can’t teach ’em, test ’em…or pile on more
homework.

The result is that my son’s life — and by extension
our family life — is a constant, stress-laden stream of homework and
tests and projects. It overshadows everything we do, always hanging
over our head. It affects our weekends, our meals, our vacations, our
work time, our playtime, our pocketbooks.

And to what end? Maybe I’m missing something, but when
did schools determine that the best place for kids to learn math,
science and English is at their own kitchen table?

Hallelujah brother!  Now I’m not going to lay the blame entirely on the teachers.  They often have over 30 students per class to deal with and they have to make sure that their students pass the No Child Left With an Imagination Behind – mandated inspection. That’s a situation they don’t have much control over.  On the other hand there have been more occasions than I can count where the kids have come home with work and absolutely no classroom preparation.  Sometimes it’s because the kids weren’t paying attention, but other times it was because the teacher didn’t get to it in class and sent them home with the worksheets and the expectation that Mom, Dad or Uncle Google would bail them out. 

All of this was annoying enough when the kids were younger, but now that they’re getting past the point where the remnants of Celeste’s and my educations end we’re running into dangerous territory.  I don’t mind getting the kids help via a tutor when it’s obvious that the work is too difficult for them despite the extensive preparation provided by the teacher, but it burns my toast when there isn’t any classroom prep at all. 

Again, I don’t want to paint all teachers with this brush.  The vast majority that we’ve dealt with over the years have been hard working, talented and obviously cared for the kids.  As I said they are dealing with some tough situations every day and I have a great deal of respect for them.  But I also believe that even the best teachers are being forced to heap more and more work on the shoulders of the kids, and by extension their parents.  And speaking for this household I can tell you that if the future of my children’s advanced math education relies even somewhat on my weary brain then they’re in a world of hurt. I imagine it’s much the same in many other households.

Okay, I’m done ranting and am officially in a lessened state of pissedoffment.  I do, however, have a final note for our friends at the Winston-Salem/Forsyth County School System:  If you’re going to put someone in a classroom as a substitute teacher and that person’s not qualified to teach then at least tell the nimrod to send the textbooks home with the kids.  If not I’m going to hunt every one of you down and force you to figure out how to find "the lesser of two consecutive even integers is 10 more than one half the greater" without any help and see how you like it.

No, the OTHER Left

Leave a reply

Last week while I was in Northern Virginia on business I was invited to go with some friends to the Shenandoah Brewing Company in Alexandria to brew some beer.  Since brewing beer entails a lot of waiting and sampling the various products brewed at the facility we decided it would be prudent to take a cab there.  Anyone from that area can tell you that taking a cab is not as straight forward as it is in other parts of the contiguous United States.

First, you have to wait for the call from the cab driver saying, in barely intelligible English, that he can’t find your location.  After giving directions in the same dialect you use when conversing with tech support for your computer, or phone, or DVD player, or MP3 player, or…you get the idea, you’re picked up 1/2 hour past the scheduled time.  At that point you give the address of your destination, sit back and enjoy the ride while you wait for him to tell you you’re there when obviously you’re not because you’ve stopped in front of the one remaining vacant lot in the surrounding 300 square miles.  Eventually you realize you’re only about a mile from your intended destination so you begin to bark out directions, which should be fairly easy except that every time you say "turn left" the guy turns right.  Literally you scream, "No the OTHER left" and he gets all flustered and starts making these guttural click-click noises that mean something on the other side of the world.  Here they just mean you know the guys cussing you out but you don’t how, and since you just want to get where you’re going you start talking to him like he’s your four year old kid that you’ve just made cry.  "It’s okay Mr. Cab Driver, just take it easy and turn left up there in front of that really bright red sign…the one on your left…NO, THE OTHER LEFT.  No, not the green sign, the REEEEED sign.  Ah, there you go."  Thankfully he manages to avoid hitting the one person in Northern Virginia who walks from one place to another and deposits you at your destination a mere 45 minutes late. 

That’s exactly how our trip went last week.  We were mildly concerned about getting home because after brewing beer all night we weren’t so sure we’d know right from left and were pretty sure we wouldn’t be speaking intelligible English. Luckily another member of the group showed up late, stayed sober, and gave everyone a ride home.  Poor guy had to put up with us demanding a McDonald’s Drive-Thru and then being boxed in when a police cruiser in pursuit of a suspect screeched to a halt at the end of the drive-thru and continued the pursuit by foot. 

Having a front row seat to a live episode of COPS! reminded me why I don’t go out any more.  Well, that and the rather nasty headache I had the next day.  It ends up the stuff we were drinking had something like an 8% alcohol content, which means we were having a kind of 2-for-1 special on regular beer.  Add that to the fact that I’m no spring chicken and you have the recipe for a not-so-fresh feeling the next morning.

Despite my day-after discomfort I highly recommend the experience at Shenandoah Brewing.  After all, nothing says you HAVE to sample so much of the stuff and it is a really interesting process to watch and participate in.  If you have the choice use a designated driver since I’m not entirely confident you’ll get home if you take a cab.

I’d Rather Have Molars Extracted Without Novocaine

2 Replies

Some people in these parts are really into the Dixie Classic Fair.  Then there’s Esbee who’s REALLY into what I affectionately call "Hell on Earth."  Personally, I’d rather clean the bathrooms with a toothbrush than suffer through watching and listening to this town’s teenagers enjoy the midway.  Honestly it’s like watching cows cough up and re-chew their cud, revolting yet somehow impossible to avoid watching.

Of course my kids are into the "Event Most Likely to Cause Forsyth County NC to Become the Cardiac Care Capital of the World" which means at some point I have to suck it up and go watch people cook and consume fried Twinkies.  Apparently that moment will come this evening after the kids get home from school and complete their homework.

Joy-joy, happy-happy.  Yes, I’m the Dixie Classic Scrooge.

When it Rains…

Leave a reply

I’m in DC on business and staying the night at my brother’s house. He and Kelly (his lovely wife who’s WAY over his grade) are flying to Montreal tomorrow so my Mom and Bert are here too to care for my niece and nephew until Russ and Kelly get back.
So obviously today is the day that the motor in their AC unit would die, as would the kids’ hamster and one of the toilets. No, not from flushing the hamster. And here I thought Celeste and I were the only ones who had this crap happen to us the day before leaving on a trip. Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

How to Define Schadendouche

Leave a reply

From Boing Boing comes the tale of a guy who allegedly steals some computers and inadvertently posts pictures of himself on flickr for the world to see.  From the post:

"Last week a number of computers were stolen from our office in
Vancouver, BC. One of those computers was a shared iMac with
Flickrbooth, an app that automatically uploads photo booth shots to our
flickr account, installed on it.
Just this morning a friend called to tell us that there are photos of
whoever has the computer now in our flickr stream! Obviously the guy
didn’t know he was uploading images of himself and his awesome tattoos."

Here’s a link to the shots on the company’s flickr account. Do you know who this guy is? The theft victims and the Vancouver police would love to hear about it. Looks like the SomethingAwful forums are all over the case, too.

Update: A gem in the comments thread:
"There should be a word for this, thinking you’re getting away with
something on the sly while the world laughs at you, anticipating your
inevitable demise — schadendouche?" [beatnik]

To help us understand this exquisite new term (schadendouche) let’s explore its roots.

First we have schadenfreude: a German word meaning ‘pleasure taken from someone else’s misfortune’.

Then we have douche: Douche bag, or simply douche, are considered pejorative terms in Australia, the United States, Canada and New Zealand. The slang usage of the term dates back to the 1960s.[4]
The term may be used in a phrase such as "that guy is such a douche
bag!"

Yes, I think we have a winner and I also imagine that we’ve all had our moments of schadendouche-ism…or would it be schadendouche-ity?

June 18, 2043

Leave a reply

One of the co-founders of Wired magazine is a guy named Kevin Kelly.  He also has some interesting blogs that he’s running, including Cool Tools, CT2 and True Films.  On CT2 he’s posted a do-it-yourself calculator to figure out how many days you have until you die.  Fun, huh?

Doomsday
I followed his method and figured out that if all goes as the law of averages says they should I should kick the can on June 18, 2043.  To the left is what my own personal doomsday clock looks like.

Kelly sees this as a great way to motivate yourself to live your life to the fullest.  Personally I see that I have over 13,000 tomorrows to put something off til.  A procrastinator’s paradise.

Roy Cooper is My Hero :)

Leave a reply

Here’s an interesting tidbit from the news:

North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper and Connecticut Attorney
General Richard Blumenthal on Tuesday said they are continuing to lead
a 50-state investigation into Facebook, a social networking Web site…

Cooper this summer was one of several attorneys general who demanded
MySpace provide data on how many registered sex offenders were using
the site, along with information about where they live…

"We presented to them some of the more graphic and unacceptable
material found on portions of their site, but also design aspects that
must be changed to protect minors against predators," he said.Cooper
has pushed for legislation in North Carolina that would require
children to receive parental permission before creating social
networking profiles, among other changes.

This is brilliant!  But I don’t think Mr. Cooper goes far enough.  First of all I think we should demand that parents procure training in graphic design for their children before they allow them on a social networking site.  I mean have you seen some of these kids’ pages?  Who’s protecting my brain from being seared out of my skull by these emoticons layered upon animated GIFs and then overlaid with an illegally downloaded Nelly Furtado track?  Forget the sickos out there, we need to protect these kids from themselves.

And why is Mr. Cooper confining himself to social networking sites?  We need to protect our kids from the bookstores.  Have you been in a Barnes & Noble lately?  There are books with pictures of naked people in there!  Rumor has it that some people also use naughty language while they’re walking the aisles.  Worse, apparently bookstores will allow anyone to walk through the doors so I think we need to demand that they provide an accounting of every criminal they serve.  After all we must keep our children safe.

What about ice cream stores?  Those are well known to be places that kids like to go, but I’ve also heard that they will serve anyone.  What’s to keep sickos from sullying our childrens’ brains there as well.

What’s that?  You think it’s a bad comparison because parents will protect their kids since the kids need to be with them to go to those places so by default the parents will be able to protect them?  Are those the same parents the kids need to provide the computer and the internet connection in order to use social networking sites?

links for 2007-09-25

Leave a reply