Storage Wars - Local Edition

If you haven't seen the show Storage Wars on A&E, I recommend it. Basically, they auction of the contents of a storage room at one of these storage facilities. The people who had rented the room had stopped paying rent, so the facility auctions it to the highest bidder.

I've long wanted to attend an auction of any kind, and heard about a storage auction today at a local facility. I managed to get the time to go and wanted to see if it was like the TV show. I arrived a couple of minutes late, but didn't miss any action.

The first thing the auctioneer said was that if we were expecting any "buh-de-buh-by" type auction, that wasn't him. But he did a pretty good job. He explained the rules (you have 5 minutes to inspect the storage room, you can't touch anything, can't go inside), opened the door and moved out of the way.

The first unit was #616 and contained (as far as I could see) a couple of lawn mowers, a chain saw, some other lawn equipment, a couple of old (stained) mattresses and who knows what else. Bidding started at $300 (the first bidder started bidding before the official bids began). When the bidding was over, the unit sold for $475.

The second unit was #632 and it was not full like the first (and later) units. It looke like someone had closed out a florist shop or something. There were imitation ficus trees, lots of vases, some racks for holding clothes (or plants?). There was less interest in this unit, it sold for $325.

The third unit was #208 and contained a bed (frames & mattresses), an armoire, some end tables, a glass top coffee table (the bottom looked like a cat or something had gotten to it), a love seat and some living room chairs. and a clothes butler rack. But the prize in this unit was a grandfather clock. I looked and couldn't see a name of the manufacturer. I noticed that the pendulums were off, but in the clock itself. It's impossible to know if it was working. This unit ended up selling for $725.

Unlike the show, I didn't get to find out what was in the parts of the units that I couldn't see or find out the value of the units in the end. But it was an interesting day. I'll go to another auction and maybe buy something that time.

Bullying about road rage

Yesterday, I asked for statistics about the growth of road rage. So far, I haven't seen any (if you have some, please post here or on yesterday's post). But I have a theory and the theory is related to road rage. Let me explain.

Sometime in 1987 or 1988, some news reporters on TV coined the phrase "road rage" to describe the anger some drivers felt towards other drivers. AAA talked about how bad it was and called for investigations. Psychologists searched for reasons to explore the phenomenon. And police officers dutifully began reporting it when they saw it.

Road rage was real, but did these TV reporters create the wave that spread? Not just by encouraging copycats, (which they did) but also by reporting on something that had been there all along. The term didn't exist in 1986, so the statistical count was zero. The number of reported incidents incidents had no where to go but up. (for more on this media invention see here)

So, are we seeing the same thing with bullying? Certainly it is real and has been around a LONG time. But are we 1) creating copycats and 2) counting a problem we never counted before? Doesn't change the seriousness of it and I for one am glad parents are aware of it, but it doesn't make it a national problem.

The Event

I've been watching the television show The Event and last night realized the resemblance of The President in the series to President Obama.

The show, subtitled "What will you beLIEve?" could be science fiction as it has people from another planet or place and they have knowledge/power beyond what mere humans have, but really is more of a mild drama. There are no phasers or funny weapons. And they don't bend the laws of science very much.

The President in the series is played by Blair Underwood, a light skinned, good looking African-American. He was elected two years ago and according to his bio is "Moral and idealistic. Hugely popular with the American people and around the world, (he) wants to be a new kind of President, working toward a new America. He's committed to honesty ..." Like our real president, the president in this series is not fully, African-American, he was "born to Cuban refugees in Miami, Florida" and "is very proud of his Afro-Cuban roots. He is a graduate of Yale University."

But last night while watching an episode on my DVR, I noticed a deeper similarity, something in the character of the man that matches President Obama. In the episode, a man who tried to kill the president had been captured and was about to be interrogated. The President demanded that he be allowed to question the individual and that he could get answers. I'd seen it before in the series (although I can't remember the scenes), places where the President got involved in order to handle some seemingly small issue, not letting the experts do their job. The President thinks he can fix anything. He believes that he is Interrogator in Charge, Chief Fence Mender and Overall Head Honcho.

We've seen this in real life, with the mishandling of the Shirley Sherrod case, getting involved before he knew all of the facts. It can be seen in the  Henry Gates case, by saying the police "acted stupidly" then having a beer summit to ease the tensions. He weighed in on the 9/11 Mosque, an issue that should have been handled by the residents and officials of New York City. And we've seen the President get involved to fix important things (like medical care) where the government has no business meddling.

Like the President on The Event, President Obama thinks it's his job to fix anything and everything that comes up

For previous posts on related to this see here and here.

Jet Packs for LA Police

At dinner Friday night, one of my friends told me this story. Seems the LA Police has ordered jet packs for their police to a tune of about $1BILLION. Seems a little strange, but hey, this is talking about California, land of fruits and nuts. The left coast.

We thought of a lot of problems, those things don't last that long, what happens if you go up for 30 seconds and then run out of jet fuel, the criminals are all on the ground, what good does it do to be up in the air, they can't afford to pay teachers, yet they spend this kind of money (when you live with a teacher, every subject turns to education) etc.

I looked for information about the story this morning and found this item. Seems the story is FALSE. First reported by the Weekly World News (we all know that's a reliable source), then picked up by Fox News. The Fox anchors said they doubted the story, to which I have a question - WHY DID YOU REPORT IT? This doesn't help your credibility at all. Oh, sure, you said it was questionable, but a lot of the folks watching didn't hear that part.

Fox knows the audience and knows that conservatives love stories like this. It's a great chance to make fun of those from "the other side". But this just makes Fox look just as bad as the other networks. I thought Fox wanted to try for a higher standard? I guess I was mistaken.

Now why didn't I think of that?

As a parent, I always tried to get creative with punishment when the kids did something wrong. Slamming the door? Take the door off the hinges. Slam the lid on the toilet? Must need practice - raise and lower it 50 times - if it slams, start over. Forge a parent's signature on a paper? Lecture on forgery and the prison sentence followed by letter of apology to the teacher with signatures and counter-signatures (pretty tough on a 3rd grader).

Tonight, the television was on ABC when a comedy with Patricia Heaton "The Middle" came on. Being too lazy to find the remote, I let it stay there, after all, I think she's a good actress. Turns out the teenage boy was in trouble for saying he had gone to church, but instead going to the mall with a girl. Oooo. Big trouble, bad enough to lie, but to lie about church. Big trouble.

Dad came up with a punishment, the teenage boy had to stay within 5 feet of a parent at all times. Dad gets up to go to the fridge, teenage boy goes with him. Interesting part was when dad needed a shower, he suggested mom (who was at work) stay on the line with son (I guess 5 feet electronically was good enough). Mom said it was dad's punishment, make teenage son put on a bathing suit and go with dad.

Of course this would have been a problem for me with my girls, but I probably could have figured something out. "Excuse me daughter, can you hand me a pair of my underwear?"

I bet that would have prompted some obedience...

Defying Gravity - New Series review

Last night I watched a pilot of a new series, "Defying Gravity." My wife was unenthused, as she is about anything sci-fi. But I decided to hog the downstairs TV and watch it anyway. The premise is that a new space-ship is taking off for a 6 year tour of 7 planets. First stop is Venus, after a brief pitstop in earth orbit. Only the astronauts don't know that some unknown thing, "it" or "Beta", is making all the decisions, including who is on the mission.

Set in 2054, the mission is commanded (or some other role, it was difficult to tell), is the man who commanded a Mars mission 10 years earlier, a trip that left two people stranded on the red planet. The show is full of flashbacks to the Mars mission and to the 5 years of training this set of astronauts went through to earn a spot on the ship.

One interesting aspect is the view of abortion. Now we're never really told that one of the astronauts had an abortion, but it's certainly implied. Zoe, had a one night stand with the mission commander (the one from the Mars trip). She was drunk and he was persistent, so they ended up at a no-tell motel. He's quite a womanizer, seen hitting on several different women in the pilot (and one woman actively hitting on him).

It is confirmed that she's pregnant and her friend tries to talk her into an abortion. We haven't seen yet that she decided to go through with it, but presumably she wouldn't have been allowed on the trip with a 5 year old at home. What makes all of this interesting, is that all through the pilot, she hears a baby crying. No one else hears the baby, so I'm assuming that it's the baby she aborted.

The series focused more on the romance and tension between characters than it did on any real sci-fi. I was surprised at the free sex within the astronaut community (maybe AIDS and STDs have been eradicated). The tension between former sex partners is shown, so surely, some mission psychologist would have prevented this kind of action. Also, all of the characters went on a drinking binge the night before lift-off. Today airline pilots are prohibited from drinking the night before flights (which makes me glad), why would you let astronauts drink before their flight? One astronaut is even confronted as being an alcoholic, they would let him go? Oh yea, Beta is making the decisions.

All in all, it was a good show. I'll probably watch again next week, but it comes on very late for me (10pm). I can't stay up that late every Sunday night.

Aha Moment

We've all had one of those moments, times where something clicks and we suddenly understand something we've struggled with for a long time. Teacher's live for these moments and can see it in their student's eyes. Comic strips show it as a light bulb going off above your heard and from this article at WebMD, it may not be too far off (the article says these moments are "marked by a surge of electrical activity in the brain." - What will Al Gore say when he hears this, try to legislate aha's out of existence?)

But it seems that TV Queen Oprah may have had one too many "Aha" moments. She found out that Mutual of Omaha Bank (is MOB the correct acronym?) is the "official sponsor of the aha moment" according to their website here. Seems the MOB thinks an aha moment is that "moment of clarity... a defining moment when you gain real wisdom - wisdom you can use to change your life." A little wordy, but a good definition.

Oprah's lawyers sent the MOB a letter telling them to cease and desist using the phrase, for fear it might look like she supports the MOB. She claims the legal rights to those words. Of course the MOB claims that even if she trademarked the phrase, "she 'abandoned' those rights by failing to 'police their alleged mark' when other businesses used it in the past. (source here). Seems the MOB thinks the words are free game (but then how could they be the sponsor?)

Looks like all of this is headed to court. I hope the judge has an "aha moment" and throws it out AFTER splitting court costs between the two parties. And I hope they don't see my post and start coming after me. But if they do, I'll just claim that with the greenhouse effect, I'm afraid to use any additional electrical charges in my brain for fear of the environment. Hey, I wonder if that excuse will work for my boss?

Digital TV - another change

Ok, the latest word is that the conversion is off. NY Times says that we'll hold off the conversion until June. See here.

So we've been planning this since 1996, and we get to the end of the conversion and hold the presses, let's wait four more months.

Then we decided not to wait, now we're waiting again.

On, off, back on and now back off.

Can't we just get it done and over with?

Digital TV Conversion - updated

You may have heard that the conversion to Digital TV has been delayed. CNN reports "The transition to digital-only broadcasts had been set for nearly a decade for February 17, 2009, but 6.5 million households, mostly lower-income, have not bought the newer digital TVs or converters for their old sets." (emphasis mine, full story here).

Congress, the ever caring, is worried about these 6.5million households. Now there are over 111million households (see here), so this is just under 6%. So why is it that we are worried about these 6% of Americans? Well according to the LA Times, "Consumers throughout America . . . will lose access to essential news and information" if the deadline isn't extended (see here).

But wait, people who have access to cable or satellites (or people who thought ahead) will have access to essential news and information. So, we're talking about people who don't have access to cable or satellites. People who only have access to the big networks. Which has been proven over and over to be left leaning. So, if we convert on schedule, those brain-washed by the left, won't be brain-washed anymore. Hmmm, maybe there's more to the story here... Oops I just lost my connection, guess I can't investigate any more.

** Update
Steve beat me to the punch (I guess I slept too late). See in the comments where he points out the vote did not pass and the digital TV conversion will proceed as originally planned. According to one report I read, "millions are unprepared". The switch will (at least for now) still take place on Feb 17. Digital TV sellers will increase prices until then....