Canseco = Fail

Jose Canseco's press conference to announce his fight with Hong Man Choi, the 7'2" behemoth MMA fighter, does not get the clamoring crowds he'd been hoping for.

To which I say, Ha. Ha. Ha.

I'd be tempted to suggest that the one guy in the chair there is actually asleep or a blow up doll. Or Canseco's lover. Or a corpse. Or an escaped mental patient. Or Roger Clemens.

Why do I dislike Canseco so much even though he's been a major catalyst in splitting open the pinata that is performance enhancing drugs in major league baseball? Because he didn't do it out of the goodness of his heart, he did it for money and because he's a bitter, washed up and poor jackass. He has no interest in helping to clean up the sport, he is only interested in making money because he blew all his money on hookers and blow or whatever his chosen vices were that he can no longer afford.

Jose Canseco happily took part in the steroid era and then, when he bounced out of baseball, he tried to make a buck off of it again.

And now he's been reduced to fighting and getting knocked out in freak shows. Boo-hoo.

Odd Payments, or The Customer is NOT Always Right

Years ago when I still owned and rode a Kawasaki Concours (that's a ZG1000 for you non-Americans), I was also a member of the Concours Owners Group, or COG. It was an email group and generally a good lot of people. You could get tips on how to fix, modify or otherwise make your bike more like what you wanted/needed.

Because my Concours suffered severe injury when an uninsured, unlicensed illegal immigrant made an illegal left turn in front of me and I catapulted up and over his car, I was parting out the remaining parts on the email list. I'd done it before to good effect with another Concours (what can I say, I had a thing for huge honking shaft drive Jap bikes).

In the course of parting out the bike, I made what seemed like a simple request to potential buyers to help me keep track of who wanted what. It was that they put the part they wanted in the subject line of the emails they were sending to me. Because it is damned annoying and tedious to go through several dozen emails to discover what each person wanted.

And, for the most part, the buyers were good about doing it. But there are always a few people that either don't read the request or just ignore it. And one person in particular was obstinate about not doing this small thing to make keeping orders straight much easier on me. Even after several direct requests, he refused to submit his email with the parts he wanted in the subject line.

So I posted an email to the entire group, probably a bad idea, and pointed him out as being the exact opposite of what I was asking for, definitely a bad idea but I was aggravated.

That email touched off a shitstorm of a debate about how the customer is always right, no matter what. Which is, of course, utterly ridiculous.

My counter example to their argument was: What if someone wants to pay you in sand? What if someone wants to pay you in eyelashes? What if the customer wants to trade you massages for your product? I mistakenly thought that these clear examples of when the customer isn't right would resolve the dispute. But they did not.

I still stand by my original argument that the customer isn't always right, heck, the customer is rarely right. In fact, it is a marketing slogan that the customer is always right, only people don't seem to grasp that. Yes, businesses wouldn't exist without customers to buy goods and services. Yes, customers are the lifeblood of the economy and they propel the movement of money through the financial strata. But that doesn't mean that they are perfect or infallible and to think otherwise is just plain stupid.

Payments aren't generally negotiable unless the deal is a barter or trade and then they are wide open to negotiation and/or haggling.

In the end, I quit the group because of the constant sniping and harping. And parted out the rest of the bike on Ebay and made more money because there wasn't any owner's group discount in the pricing.

Oh, So That's Why....

Santa Cruz and Watsonville are among the ten least affordable cities with less than 500,000 people. I guess that's why we're having such a damned hard time making ends meet.

Less affordable than Napa even. That's surprising, especially given the levels of gang violence, drug violence and general idiocy.

Maybe its time to start rethinking living in this area since it doesn't seem likely that we're going to get ahead anytime soon here.

Exposing a Stupid Marketing Concept: Money Saved Isn't Money Earned

Everytime I hear an ad on the radio that talks about discounts and marked down prices they seem to invoke a failed concept as an added incentive to try and get you to buy. They invoke the idea that, because you've saved money from them, you have this big wad of cash leftover that you get to keep.

The reason this is as failed concept is because there is no pile of money that equals the full price of the item to begin with. People either buy it on credit (and lose the benefit of the discounted price in finance fees) or they save their money and wait for a sale to afford it. At least that's what I do, I can't really speak for anyone else.

The same thing applies to the Cash Back deals that car dealers advertise. You aren't going to get a car and a big wad of hundred dollars bills. You'll get a car and some of the price knocked off the top (though the dealer will still make a hefty chunk of change on the transaction).

Money saved isn't money earned and a discount doesn't equal more money in your pocket, it just equals less money taken out. Trying to convince me otherwise smacks of economic jiggery.

Familial Economics

Sometimes it is hard being the youngest sibling of three when my two older sibs are both highly educated, extremely successful and driven individuals who are also married to highly educated, extremely successful and driven individuals. The combination of those marriages results in incomes and freedoms that I can only imagine and hear about second or third hand. As in, trips to visit family in Florida, a week long break in Belize, taking a year off and traveling the world with the family.

All of this is sometimes really hard to read about and not feel the twinges of jealousy. Mind you, I know my brother and sister busted their asses to get where they are and deserve every accolade for achieving as much as they have.

And I know that I could have gotten there as well if not for a few character traits that might be considered faults or obstacles or impediments to success. But I hate excusifying, I think its cheap and lame to look back and excuse away opportunities untaken and unexploited.

The most difficult thing about being me with my family right now is reading my brother's new blog about his year off and the travels that he and his family are undertaking and enjoying. Its fantastic in the abstract, trips to the Bahamas to plan it out (which would be a highlight vacation on its own for us), staying in a real castle that costs more per night than my entire month's mortgage, summer camp in upstate New York, a side business trip to Turkey. It all sounds so very, very far from what my reality is and will continue to be.

My reality is looking at a job in the school district that pays me less per year than others in my family make in a month (and that's probably being kind to my salary). My reality is struggling to pay our bills each month, wondering what corner will be cut this time around, figuring out how to keep food on the table, electricity flowing and out phones turned on.

Yes, I know where I am is the result of choices I've made and where they are is the result of (better) choices they have made. But it mitigates the reality of the situation not in the least.

Extended beyond my immediate family things get even more difficult. One side of my family is really rather wealthy and I basically stick my fingers in my ears and go "Lalalalalala" whenever talk of the villa in the south of France comes up or the month long trip to Iceland or the new house my cousin bought with a nice big theatre room in it.

And I know that one of the unfortunate effects of the pretty gross economic disparity is that I don't really go that far out of my way to see my family that much. Not only can I not really afford to economically but I can't really afford to emotionally. There's only so much happy face making I can swing when I have to listen to how fan-fucking-tastic other people's lives are.

I don't begrudge anyone the success they've achieved. At least I try not to but it is hard to not feel like the pauper in the room whenever I am around my family. Because I am.

I do try to not let the disparity in my life and the lives of my siblings and their families affect me too much. I try not to look at my world and wish for things to be different. I try not to look at our monthly bills and wish there were enough to pay them all and have some left over. I try to find some silver linings where I can and I try to convert the envy I have for those "better lives" into motivation to improve the lot of my family, to create additional income streams and claw our way upward.

I love my brother, love my sister, love my brother and sister-in-laws and adore my nephews and niece. I really and truly do. But sometimes it can be easier to be ignorant of the benefits of having big income and just not knowing.

Yes, I do know that it is a clear sign that my life is out of balance if I'm looking at other lives and comparing them to my own. But knowing and not doing are two different things. I try to focus on the things I do have in my life and quite a number of them really are beyond awesome and I do count myself to be truly blessed (by whom is up for debate) to have a beautiful wife, two healthy and incredibly awesome little boys and a house I can, mostly, call my own.

But sometimes the grass on the other side of the fence is so green it just dazzles me and I can't help but stare and wish I could get a taste of it.

Money Rules

From 9 Money Rules to Live By

We are not a nation of money geniuses by any stretch. In fact, according to the article, a quarter of adults failed the test given to teens (almost half the teens failed and that number is growing). Women were far more likely to fail than men (42% to 15%) and men were far more likely to get an A or B (51% to 17%). What does it all mean? It means we, as a nation, need to come to grips with some financial rules to subscribe to in order to dig ourselves out of the massive consumer credit debt hole we are in.

Here's the short version, the linked article expands on all of these:
The difference between needs and wants
Scarcity makes your choices for you
The pointlessness of the hedonic treadmill
Every money decision has a cost of its own
Why supply and demand rule
Throw no good money after bad
The role risk plays
The time value of money
The miracle of compound interest

I talk about needs and wants with my dog and kids all the time. Graydon doesn't need to watch SpongeBob, he wants to. Nande doesn't need to go out every six and a half seconds, she wants to. Sully doesn't need another Otter Pop, he wants one. It is an important mindset to understand and knowing the difference between a need and a want can save you an awful lot of money.

Throwing good money after bad is an attempt to buy your way out of the hole. Sometimes money just gets spent badly, it gets wasted on materials that are consumed without a tangible product. Sometimes you just need to call the loss for the loss and move on without sinking more money into a failing or failed project. Emotional investment can often make this alot harder than it needs to be.

Now, all I need is some money to put some of these concepts into practice. Anyone with a spare million? I promise to send you a really nice thank you card.

I've Got A Place To Shove Your Convenience Fee

Who came up with the "convenience fee"? And how in the hell do they get away with charging one?

It isn't a convenience to get an additional charge automatically stacked on to my order for absolutely no reason and that provides absolutely no value to me. It is just a way of pretending their prices are lower than they really are.

When we went to the county fair a few weeks ago, there was a coupon to buy the tickets online and save a buck. But then they went and added a dollar to the cost and called it, you guessed it, a convenience fee. So convenient for me to pay to print my own ticket and pay the regular full price for the ticket. Woop-de-fucking-do!

Whenever I hear the words "convenience fee" my brain automatically translates it to "Fuck You and Pay Us More Money for Nothing Fee".