Nethermancer's Théâtre de la Vie

It didn't start off that way...

I had wanted to get together with friends and have a night out at our favorite pub... but they had plans already. A sister's wedding or something. Okay... that's understandable... "Maybe another night." I was told. 

Yeah... pencil me in for NEXT YEAR, I thought...and was instantly sorry. They can't help that her sister had planned a wedding for the weekend of my birthday, right? Yeah, I was disappointed, but it's not like they did it on purpose. They didn't know. 

"Sure," I said, "Another time."

Then I saw a flyer for Avenue Q and remembered... another friend and I had discussed going to this show MONTHS ago! He asked if I would see it with him if he got a group together to go. I really wanted to see it and said, "Sure... that's perfect. It's the weekend of my birthday. Just let me know."

Well, I guess he forgot he had invited me and got their tickets and never let me know.  Since my surgery in January, and my husband losing his job at the same time, we are really heavily budgeted and it takes time to save up for these things. They never got back with me on it, so I never got my tickets. I'd almost forgotten about it till I saw the flyer and so I wrote and asked if they ever decided to go.  I was told yes... they had planned to be in Greenville for the show. 

I was going to ask why he hadn't let me know... but I figure if he really wanted me there, he had his reasons for not saying anything until I asked. Maybe he just figured I couldn't afford it anyway... still it would have been nice to have been remembered :/.  Instead I tried to keep it upbeat... benefit of the doubt... and I invited them over... thinking maybe we could get together after...or before.  "Probably not," was my answer. Apparently they are staying in the opposite direction and don't think they'll have time.

I bit my bottom lip and wrote that I hoped they had a good time... I never got a call so I guess they didn't have time.

Am I being over sensitive? Because that really hurt my feelings. It's bad enough not being included... that I could live with. But to be un-included? sigh.

Well, I went through my day at work and I can't remember a single job I actually did. I was depressed and performed like a robot... doing what I was told but little else. Occasionally checking the various message boards I frequent to see if anyone remembered. I smiled when (thanks to the auto-notify feature on most forums) I had threads dedicated to me. Other people had remembered... I wasn't totally forgotten. The day was looking up.

I got a nice birthday card from my brother and my sis-in-law. Another smile.

When I got home, I was greeted by my husband... he gave me a wonderful present... something I not only wanted but can really use, too... and he took me out to a late lunch at a nice restaurant.

Then about halfway through the meal, a man he works with comes in and sits down opposite the table and pulls out his guitar and serenaded me with classical guitar music for the rest of the meal. All my favorites and a few new ones, too.  My husband gave me the most beautiful card and what with the meal and the music... and the card... and everything that had happened leading up to this moment... I started to cry.

It was a perfect birthday.

GM has been hyping the Volt EV really hard to try and win over those who are concerned about gas prices... you know... those SMART people who are NOT being suckered into purchasing their "amazing lower price" gas guzzling SUV's with their $2.99 per gallon gas bribe offer? Do they really think the American public is that stupid -- better question -- IS the American public that stupid?

The only reason they can offer this $2.99 gas price is because of their connection with big oil, and the only reason they are doing it is because they have thousands of these gas guzzling monsters in lots right now that ARE NOT MOVING! This isn't cheap gas... this is your drug dealer supplying your needles so they can sell you their expensive DRUG. It's keeping you on the gas titty so they and their buddies can continue to rake in billions of dollars a year.

What they don't want you to know... is that technology is here (and has been here for quite some time) to completely do away with our dependence on gasoline for the average household. They don't want you to know it so bad that they destroyed the EV1... They don't want you to know so bad that they sold the patent to the NiMH battery that powered both the EV1 and the RAV 4 EV... to someone who would NEVER give it up because it makes way too much money for them collecting dust... Chevron. Now where have we heard that name before?

Now that the fate of the EV1 has gotten such wide spread review and a huge fanbase (thank you, Internet!) GM is having to backpedal...  Now they are promising the Volt... an electric car using a lithium battery that will get a whopping 40 miles per charge and takes 4 to 5 hours to recharge.

Now excuse me while I don't jump up and down...but I can't see a reason to get excited about a car that can't get the same performance or BETTER of the car they trashed 10 years ago!

GM can do better... they won't. They are throwing the American public a nasty old mold encrusted BONE and expecting us to chomp down. Only an idiot would think 40 miles per charge and 4 to 5 hours per recharge is good -- when the EV1 was getting 120 miles per charge and recharging in 3 hours.

Kudo's to Tesla and Mitsubishi for making the playing field interesting...

I may not be able to afford a Tesla Roadster, but that Mitsubishi i Miev at a suggested retail of $28,000 is within grasp for anyone who can afford a frigging SUV.

Why can't anyone seem to explain things as well as Doug Korthof of the Electric_Vehicles_For_Sale group on yahoo? I wish I could personally afford to take out a full page ad in the NYTimes so that everyone could see it -- but since I can't... I'll reprint it here:

If you look at the oil and auto industries as two heads of the same beast, or, rather, as Big Oil as the head and GM at the other end, mists clear and many mysteries vanish.

Let's assume the creature called, say, "SO-gm" wants to make the most money it can, while the getting is good, while there are no Electric cars available, almost no public transit, and people are still invested in big 12-passenger gas-guzzling monstrous Soccer-mom-biles. Which they can't dump because they are still on the hook for the payments.

1. There is still no appreciable resistance to upward movement in the price of gasoline.

This means if you look at it as a "dollar max" problem in Calculus of Variations, demand is falling slowly enough that the "maximum dollar" point is not yet visible. Gas burning is down 2% or so; it would have to be down at least 10% to show any resistance. Is anyone watching? I think so, because:

2. The oil "market" is not a market at all, but a nexus of collusion.

Big Oil (the 6 or 8 oil combines plus national producers) can set the price any place they want it to be. We are NOT seeing shortages ANYWHERE, which would be the case if it were a supply-constrained price rise; indeed, as Congress has noted, THERE IS NO VISIBLE CAUSE for the price rise, although they blame it on "speculators". In fact, the oil market is so constrained and contrived, Big Oil can set the price any place they want. So,

3. If Electric cars threaten to become real, Big Oil can, and probably will, drop the price back to a point where people accept (and are happy with) the price of gas. What will that take? Like a surgeon, working his way into a wound, it takes painful expansion, then retraction, in a long series of cycles. People will be alternatively outraged, intimidated, and then accepting. So I figure that, after a long cycle of price stabs, screams and retreats:

4. Gas and oil will peak somewhere less than $7/gallon and $150 per bbl, and then be "reduced" to a point where people are not outraged (maybe $2.50/gallon, maybe $3.50). People are stirred up, now, but once they get used to higher prices, they will forget all about EVs, IMO, and the auto companies can quietly drop all their programs, saying, "...gee, the batteries are not ready" which indeed, if you ask about Lithium, they are NOT.

I recall outraged motorists vowing "I'll never pay 60 cents for a gallon of gas!" and then repeating that vow about $1 gas.

The point is, they have to pay, because there is no alternative; now, the benefits to Big Oil of its monopoly are showering down on them.

The fact that, as Bob Lutz says, NO manufacturer is pursuing anything other than Lithium for EVs means that it's a shuck, most likely. But who knows. There MAY be a miracle battery, after all this time! Who will believe that GM would discover it? Not me.

GM has a record of destroying Electric cars, selling batteries to Standard Oil, fighting would-be users, jailing would-be EV1 buyers, not carefully developing and exploiting the technology.

Since there is not one EV or plug-in car for sale, today, when 6 years ago the Toyota RAV4-EV was offered for sale, and eleven years after the EV1 was NOT offered for sale, there's reason to believe that they are not in any hurry to re-introduce plug-in cars.

It's a lot easier to build a serial plug-in hybrid (a 100-mile-range EV with a small range-extending IC gas genset) than it is to build an EV that goes 100 miles without the help of ANY IC engine.

What would it cost to build the EV1, if GM went into volume production using the Panasonic Storage Battery Company EV-FC1260 lead-acid battery?

According to Lutz, it would cost $80K per car. Actually, it could cost much less. Here's the figures for mass-production of the EV1,
using generous cost estimates. But it's dependent on GM honestly
working to lower costs, honestly using its mass-production
techniques, and honestly trying to sell an EV1:

BATTERY: 24x$200 = $4800 (Retail price of 20,000 yen; GM cost would be less)
FRAME+INTERIOR = $2000 (based on Impala)
LABOR = $800 (current rates + margin)
ELECTRONICS = $500 (electronics are cheap, in quantity)
MOTOR-CONTROLLER-CHARGER = $1500 (a dumbed-down version of the AC-150 would be $6K in quantities of 1000, a savings of 80%, so thismore primative 100 kW drive system would be a fraction of that cost: basically, just three IGBT and a bunch of twisted metal)Nothing much left but the squeal.

So why does Lutz make up stories about $80K cost? Well, that might even be true, if GM dragged its heels and sabotaged things.

You could build a better EV than the EV1 like this, using one-off techniques and paying retail: Buy the AC-150 for retail cost of $35,000; for the body, a used Scion xB ($10K); 100 hours of engineer time at $100/hour ($10,000) plus ACP's ergonomics and gauges, etc., maybe $5K -- total of $60,000. That's a better car (essentially, an eBox) for at most 80% of Lutz' estimate of EV1 cost. How can this be? When it costs less to hand-build an EV, using retail components and expensive engineers for hand-labor?

Why does Lutz lie?

What people don't realize is that the car industry is very high margin, high volume, high profit. At least, when things go right. When the margin and volume fall, and rebates rise, profit vanishes. And then, the business can crash like Evel Knievel's motorcycle spinning out of control.

Ironically, the $56,000 Yuckon Dinali XL costs GM about the same to make as a Chevy Impala that sells for $20,000. The cash cost of labor is about $600, about 20 hours times $28/hour, and the cost of the rest of the car's components brings it to between $5K and $10K (used to be even less! I'm factoring in $4 copper). This is due to a century of cost-cutting, time-and-motion study engineering, quantity buying, assembly-line techniques, the JIT assembly model, etc. Of course, the cost of supporting laid-off and retired workers
is not included; but that, like excessive overtime cost, the corps of drones in Ren Center, and the big advertizing budget, management mistakes like Fiat and GMT900, and other failures, is a result of executive-suite decisions to dump union workers and defer dealing with reality.

So if it costs them $5K to build a car that makes them $15,000 in gross margin; OR it costs them $10K to build a car that makes them $46,000 in gross margin -- You can see why they prefer to stick with SUV instead of reasonable small cars!

In fact, by this reckoning, if they sold more Impalas, they'd be competing against themselves, lowering the sales volume of the high- profit, high-margin Yuckon Dingali XL! And as volume falls, that crash looms.

If they sell 1M Impalas, the sloppy dorks in GM central have to get by with $15B for dealer profit, design, overhead, waste fraud and abuse;

If they sell 1M Yuckon Dinali XL, everyone smiles as the dollars rain down, $46B for dealers, middlemen, wholesalers, design jerks, overhead, waste fraud and abuse.

Sure, they could put out a clean car for $10K, but why should they?? or so they think.

And probably their masters at SO wouldn't let them put out a small reasonable car, as one recent article pointed out. GM still seems afraid to offend its quondam partner SO, which helped it destroy America's light rail system forever.

What can change things? That's easy. Standard Oil ran into the Sherman Anti-Trust Act back in 1911 or so; it's time for some politician with guts to confront the beast again, and break it up.

Again.

/Doug

PS, if you got this far, BONUS:
The Libertarian calls for Eminent Domain confiscation of Chevron's patents on NiMH!
http://www.nolanchart.com/article4113.html

My reply? Which one?

I've always had a bit of a problem with people tossing blessings out like cookies as if everyone wants one or needs one. I know that this was beat into the ground last holiday season by the PC peeps... but really... it's not about being Politically Correct or an Equal Opportunity Retail Greeter. It's about being truly considerate and sincere.

When you wish someone something... anything... be it "good morning", "Merry Christmas", "bright blessings from the bubble goddess"... you are GIVING them something. Shouldn't it be something that holds significance for **them**? Why would anyone bother to give a gift that has no meaning? You wouldn't give your 5 year old daughter a "Happy Vasectomy" card... why would you walk up to a Jew, a Muslim, or a Wiccan and wish them a Merry Christmas? In both cases you are giving them something that they have absolutely no use for... Why do it?

You know... most of us take such care when selecting physical gifts for people. We try to pick something they will like... something they can use... or if we don't know what they would like or could use... we give them something more generic that will be appreciated by just about everyone.

By the same token... why should verbal gift giving be so different? I think it's empty, thoughtless... and rude... to turn a gift giving opportunity into a chance to push your own beliefs on someone.

I've yet to meet a person who hasn't appreciated a smile and a "Have a nice day" as a thoughtful and caring alternative.

My favorite radio station wants some airtime on my journal and because I think everyone needs to bang a little head (cough)... knock yourself OUT ;)


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I'm sending the letter in the following link to all car manufacturers and this is my encouragement to my friends to do the same. I'm tired of watching prices go up and doing NOTHING. This is something we all can do.

http://www.ev1.org/pledge.htm

Tesla Motor is moving in the right direction... but right now they are nowhere near affordable.



Maybe with all of these manufacturers in competition we can finally drag that price point down to where it's not a price issue when we go to choose a new car.

When you think pennies per mile...compared to what we are paying right now... I wouldn't mind spending $25 grand on a new car, and I have NEVER spent more than $12 grand on ANY car... but there is NO reason they can't get them even lower.

Sounds like a hair salon/restaurant chain, huh? :)

Not so, says Rolo!

He returned from the vet Friday afternoon, neutered, ID chipped, and very woozy. We spent the afternoon together curled up on the couch with him licking my knees, fingers, anything within reach. He hasn't seemed to be in any pain, but I have been administering his little puppy pill every 12 hours as our vet said. No problem with him licking the incision site... he can't reach it anyway. heh.

The most touching thing was when he got home... Sadie sniffed his nose...then sniffed ALL the way down his body... then licked his nose twice. That's really the first time she's shown any concern for him since we brought him home.

That rapidly changed as throughout the weekend... he is back to his old rambunctious self. We keep him from jumping and such, but he's a little fireball of energy. I was sort of hoping we'd get to keep the drugged and sleepy version of Rolo. It was nice to have a cuddlebunny instead of a yippy nippy puppy!

This, too, shall pass...they say. I just hope whoever "They" are... had corgis.

I just got this in my mailbox because I'm a member of a yahoo freecycle group. A group started to keep usable items out of landfills and to help those in need of these items at the same time.

One of the members thought it was her duty to help "Spread the Word" about the New US Coins that were minted without the words "In God We Trust" on  them... even though what she was asking people to do was against the very reason for the group itself.

Here's the "plea":

I have a client who walked in off the street and wanted me to do his business card. He had a bad polaroid he wanted to use for a picture for the background and when I told him it was out of focus he went to get me another photo... using his cell phone.

Now, cell phones take excellent pictures for what they are displayed on... a low resolution screen about 2 inches wide... but to print on a business card with any clarity, it really requires a little more resolution. I said I would do the best I could.

Well, I did. I don't like the card. In all honesty, it looks like shit and I'd be embarrassed to admit to ANYONE that I'd done it... but he said he wanted it exactly like his old card with the exception of photo being different... so there was really nothing I could do to help it along.

The customer wants what the customer wants, after all.

He just left after proofing his first draft. Yes, there will be a second draft. Yes I will have more creative license with it... but I'm still reeling at the reasons he gave.

"It's not very professional looking," he complained.

Okay, let me explain how he walked into my office. He's in a dirty mechanics jumpsuit. Oil and car smut I could understand... he is a mechanic... but it didn't stop there.

He was unwashed, smelled like a cross between feces, rotten food and Jim Beam... and had maybe three teeth in his entire head. I'm really glad I didn't take lunch that day because I could taste breakfast at the back of my throat, readying for hasty retreat! Seriously! I'm not exaggerating.

"It's not very professional looking."

What was I supposed to say to that?

The card reads: "Ask for Fuzzy" No first name. No last name. Just "Ask for Fuzzy".

"It's not very professional looking."

It was all I could do to keep from laughing out loud... but I very carefully explained that with the current verbage, the card leans itself toward a more "informal" look... but if he would like to me spruce it up, I would be happy to -- at additional cost.

I should have won an academy award for my acting prowess!

Stupid Fuzzy people annoy me.

My furry kids and I spent a lot of time outside this weekend, so I thought I'd share some photos with you!

Sadie (the 6 year old), Rolo (almost 6mo old) and Loki... the honorary Corgi by marriage :)

Enjoy!

Put "I've seen ____ of these 168 movies" in the subject line and repost. If you've seen over 85 movies, you have no life. Mark the ones you've seen. There are 168 movies on this list.

( The List )

I apparently have no life. Shuddup and pass the fucking popcorn. ;)

Stolen in the dark cover of night from jkahane


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My husband says I'm priceless... hehe

That's all set up took on my new computer... and five of that was getting it out of the box!

Plugged it in... first to the wall, then the network cable, then the mouse. Turned it on. It played a flashy intro sequence, Said hello to me in several languages and asked me for my apple ID.

That was it.

Suddenly I was connected to the internet, my printer, and saw every computer in the house...even the PC... listed in my share window.

Flawless.
Utterly fucking flawless.

I have never been so thrilled to sit at my keyboard and just "stare" at how unbelievably pretty my computer is! All that and it runs like greased lightning, too. Now if I could just quit giggling and WORK on something! :)

Well, nearly...

Look who just moved in with me....!



So forgive me for not posting for a while. I need to show my new roommate how best to please me... rrrrowr!

Jealousy maims a caring heart
Turning common sense to dust.
It blinds and deafens us to truth
And steals from us, our trust.

You can only be "punished" if you feel you have done something wrong. Otherwise, it's simply an attack... and thus... subject to retaliation."

Happy birthday :)

Hard to believe, but our little boy is now 3 months old! His ears are finally perked up and he officially looks like the perfect little corgi :)



Here is Rolo relaxing and watching TV before bed. He loves the Discovery Channel, Animal Planet, and Subway Commercials. There are more photos of him in my photo gallery (on the left panel of this page)

I was up most of the night Wednesday with some moderate stomach cramping and figured I had a virus of some sort. I stayed home from work Thursday but Thursday night the pain got steadily worse. Friday morning found myself and my husband at urgent care, where the doctor there informed me that I may be about to lose my appendix. He sent me to a surgeon and by noon I was admitted to the hospital and was scheduled for surgery at 1pm.

It happened so fast, it was like it was all a blur. I haven't had any type of invasive procedure like this before, unless you count my Caesarean about 23 years ago... and my first time under a general anesthetic. I remember the anesthesiologist(or however it's spelled) saying something like, "You'll feel a little pressure," and then *nothing*. Now I've heard of people having whacked out dreams when they go under but it was like literally not existing for a span of time. I think that was scarier than anything I've ever experienced... that period of *nothing*.

The doctor extracted my appendix (it was nearing the bursting point) and everything went well. I was discharged today and I'm home on bed rest for the next week or so. All in all I'm doing fine. Get tired pretty quick but hardly any pain (especially considering what I have to compare it to!)

The only thing I keep going back to is that feeling of *nothing*. I keep telling myself that I believe in an afterlife... maybe not the choirs of angels and gates and heaven and hell and all that... but just that there *is* something beyond this; but this experience has me rattled. No... a little scared. I really hope that's not what death is. I don't like the idea of everything that was me just blinking out as if I didn't exist.