Category: Life in General

I Didn’t Know Potatoes Were in Potato Chips?

Posted on by chappyshi

The Washington Post article, “Simplicity Becomes a Selling Point, Foodmakers Emphasize Uncomplicated Ingredients,” dated April 7, 2009, reports on how food makers are either reducing the ingredients in their products or noting how few ingredients make up their existing products.  This is apparently done to minimize the quantity of unnecessary or unhealthy ingredients in the food since, according to many healthy food experts, simplicity is next to healthiness.

I won’t delve further into the article to argue or support that supposition, though it does make sense.  I will note however that a Frito-Lay representative said, “It’s anecdotal, but we’ve had people tell us that they didn’t know there were potatoes in potato chips."  Makes me wonder if there is ham in burger…

Where Eagles Dare

Posted on by chappyshi

I had a nice time last weekend.  I went down to Suffolk, VA, to see my sister Kim and her husband Don.  Being with Kim and Don was relaxing.  The trip down and the trip back were not.  On the way down I was talking calls from a company that wanted to interview me.  I took the first call  while I was trying to eat lunch and pack to head to Suffolk.  I had little time to spare, if any, but ended up on the phone talking to the HR guy for about 20 minutes.

He said he wanted me to talk with the guy whose position I was interviewing for.  Come to find out I had a window of about two hours to talk to the guy before he left at 4:00 PM never to return.  I found this out on the road.  I scheduled it so I could get off the highway to take a leak and talk to the dude.  I thought that we have a fairly good chat.  The HR dude called me back and scheduled an interview for early Monday afternoon.  More on that in the near future.

Friday night Don was late getting home.  He has a horrific commute from home in Suffolk to work in Williamsburg.  Kim made ricotta cheese filled shells blessed with marinara sauce.   We went ahead and hate since Don was running very late.

Saturday afternoon Kim and I headed off to the Chesapeake Arboretum to walk a bit and hopefully see some interesting flora and fauna but it was not tOo exciting.  It is still early in the spring though.  En route, we stopped at a bead store right near the Arboretum.  Kim makes jewelry and such out of the beads.  I never realized how big this hobby could be.

That evening, I had my first “Blue-ray” movie experience.  Kim and Don had recently bought a 46″ LCD TV and Blue-ray player.  We watched the first Harry Potter movie.  I could definitely tell the difference between the Blue-ray and a regular DVD.  As Don said, it almost looks 3-dimensional!  Combine that with a nice 5.1 music/theater system and you’ll never need to go to the theater again.

On Sunday, we all drove down to look at Don’s  house which he has been trying to sell but has been embroiled in a lawsuit filed by his former fiance so he had to take the property off the market.  He forgot his house keys so we couldn’t see the inside of the house but it is on a large piece of property far out in the country south of Virginia beach.  It looked nice from the outside.  Of note, it looks like the lawsuit will be dismissed and legal fees paid for by the former fiance.  Hopefully they have good luck selling the place.

From Don’s house we drove to the Norfolk Botanical Garden.  Things were a bit slow there, like the Arboretum, due to the time of year.  It was still nice to get outside, stretch my legs, work the knee out, and get some pictures of the plants that were flowering.  Additionally, there was a pair of nesting eagles in the garden that had two chicks hatched, one that day, and another egg in waiting.  You could see mama eagle from an observation tower but mostly only her head.  The best way to view the action is from the Eagle Cam.  All three eggs have now hatched.

View of the Garden HQ from the garden

Norfolk Botanical Garden

A random flower picture

Random Flower

A few more flower pictures from the Garden

Mileage Tax My Ass

Posted on by chappyshi

The Washington Post’s support of Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood’s idea to tax  “vehicle miles” traveled is inane.  The article, “Mr. LaHood’s Good Idea,” dated 23 February, 2009,  purports that a mileage tax would be more fair and reap more tax dollars than an increase in the federal gasoline tax.

I look at it this way:  those individuals who commute further for  work each day are probably not doing it because they want to.  They are also probably driving more fuel efficient vehicles, because they have to.  So  they are taking jobs where they can, that they need to support their families and keep them in a home.

Those individuals who are driving gas hogs either don’t commute that far or can afford to keep filling them up.  Which person in these two scenarios is trying to conserve fuel and save money.  Which one doesn’t care about conserving fuel and saving money?  Which one should be taxed at a higher rate?  Do the math and “fig”ure it out, Newton.

Where is the evidence that the gas tax — which, we note here for the umpteenth time, should be raised — will be less effective in capturing revenue?  The gas tax, just like income and sales taxes indexed to target the wealthy, should target those individuals who have the disposable income to waste it, gas that is.

Why should a family struggling to make ends meet that finds a job 40 miles one way from their home have to pay higher taxes than a Hummer driver who can afford to live 10 miles away from their employer?

Of course figuring out how to record, track, and assess all those miles would be insane in the membrane.  The IRS is screwed already. Discussion of GPS’s and recording devices at gas stations comes up.  That’s going to work…  Who is going to take on this new function?  Seems like the gas  tax is the way to go.  We don’t even need  to skew it to the gas hogs.  They get hit just because the need more gas!

I am losing my faith in the Washington Post on this one.   I think that we should tax on consumption but the tax should not be  biased toward miles accumulated but toward miles per gallon.  There is a lot of gray area out there.  Is it more efficient to fly than to drive, should we take the slow boat to China, etc.

The bottom line for me is fuel efficiency.  The owners of the vehicles with the worst fuel efficiency should pay the most for their fuel.  Similarly, those individuals whose homes  are the least fuel  efficient  should pay the most for their fuel.  The only way to fairly apply that principle is via fuel taxes.

It’s No Fun Anymore!

Posted on by chappyshi

I know everyone says you cannot look back or do the retroactive “what if?” scenarios but I cannot help it.  Had I not skied out of my comfort zone on the last run of the last day of three days of skiing last month, I would be in Vermont  skiing this week.  I had a three day package booked for Killington.  I would have been in the Baja Cantina at the Chalet Killington right now having drinks and eating a half-price burrito or appetizer.

If I were not drooling over the food, I  would have been salivating about the conditions.  They got 11″ inches of snow in the last 48 hours and a total of 44″ for the last week.  The conditions were as good last year when I skied there at the end of February.  13″ of snow  fell the day before I arrived on the mountain.  It was awesome.  I am sure it is just as good right now if not better.  The conditions were pretty darn good  when I was  there in early January this year.

Ah me.  What is one to do?  I guess I just have to keep working on getting my knee strong.  Hopefully I will be in my kayak paddling and on my motorcycle riding in a month or two and skiing again next winter.

Economic Stimulus? Not If You Are Unemployed.

Posted on by chappyshi

I noticed that the Washington Post article “Congress Reaches Stimulus Accord,” dated 02/12/2009, description of  the “Economic Stimulus” plan says that the proposed tax break for families and individuals “…would be distributed mainly through reduced payroll tax withholding.”  What good does that do for the millions of unemployed out there who are on reduced or no payroll?  Where’s the love?  Screw the love! Show me the money!

Crackberry Chronicles

Posted on by chappyshi

It has been bad enough that people have to use cell phones everywhere all the time.  Driving, parking, grocery shopping, etc.  Signs not to use cell phones in doctor’s offices are blatantly disregarded…  The use of Bluetooth ear pieces initially led me to wonder who all these people were talking to.  I had never seen so many incidents of what I gathered were whack jobs talking to themselves.  I have sort of gotten used to that but it is still unnerving.

Crackberry’s and other smart phones loosely based on RIM’s Blackberry have recently moved out of the corporate world onto the street.  It was disconcerting at work to see so many people walking down the halls typing away on their Crackberry seemingly oblivious to that which was going on around them.  Company policy forbade using the devices in a moving vehicle without and earpiece but that didn’t seem to stop people from using the phone and/or the email feature.  I did it myself.

However with so many more people using them outside of corporate America, I see the Crackberry as the new threat to my survival and sanity.  The though of more and more people typing messages on the device or messaging on their phone while blazing down the motorway really scares me.  That says nothing about the inconsiderate fools who interrupt the flow of foot and vehicle by typing away on the Crackberry without a care in the world about whose progress they might be impeding.

I had a woman walking toward and in front of my obviously idling car pecking away at her smart phone while I tried to get out of my parking space at the grocery store.  She looked right at me and just kept coming toward me typing away without the thought that she might stop doing so and get out of my way in a timely, considerate manner.  I guess maybe I am being sensitive but it really is the little things that matter when it comes to being polite.

I would have loved to see the look on the woman’s face had I leaned into my horn…  But I was too considerate to have thought of doing that.