A Rubber Door

This may be my favorite commercial. Thank god for YouTube for keeping things like this alive. The kid in these Geico Mike Wallace commercials is so dead on. Hope he has a career.

So we’ve had Verizon’s FiOS service for a little over a year (actually it’s a year for their Internet service and about 9 months for TV). So here are 5 things I love and hate about the service:

5 Things I love about Verizon FiOS:

1. Raw Speed - Verizon’s FiOS Internet is so much faster than Comcast’s service - and the word is that there’ll be a 10% increase in speed soon.
2. Picture quality - When we got our HD TV last year we were very disappointed in the quality of non-HD  stations on Comcast.  The quality was so degraded, that we missed our old analog set.  Not only are the non-HD channels significantly better, the HD channels look better too.
3. Price - This is hard to compare because the services aren’t the same, but I’m getting more channels, faster internet, for less money.  Case closed.
4. Multi-room DVR - with this service, a show you record on one DVR is available on any box in the house.
5. It works - our Comcast service went down so often, it felt like I was being ripped off.  So far, so good on Verizon.  Aside from my modem dying, the service has been pretty good.

First off, let me say I’m on the flesh it out side of the fence, but Grace brought this burning issue to my attention a while ago, and now every time I hear “We’ll flush it out” I want to scream.  This is what I think - someone a long time ago said “flesh it out”, and someone incorrectly heard “flush it out”, and they told two friends, and they told two friends, and so on, and so on.

Here’s the thing - flush it out only makes sense if your getting rid of something, and start all over.  Think about things your flush out - get it?  If you put something together that’s 50% done, those are the bones of the project - it next needs flesh, “flesh it out”.  Makes sense doesn’t it?  Someone is going to have to explain to me flush in that context.  YOU CAN’T.

Anyway, I got the bright idea to run a poll.  Let’s put this to bed. Of course I’ll flush out the results if I don’t agree. ;)

Kristen came across my new favorite show - BBC America’s Top Gear. It’s the car show for everyone. It’s hilarious, tests all the coolest cars, and has really well thought out challenges. Challenges like buying three beater cars and running them across two countries in Africa. They bring stars such as Simon Crowell and James Blunt on the show to race a “reasonably priced automobile” in time trials. It’s hard to describe it and do it justice, and I think watching a clip wouldn’t give the full experience. Really well done and really fun to watch.

It’s on BBC America, and this Sunday they’re having a marathon. Give it a shot.

I hate to make the race into a game. What’s at stake is so important, it’s just a bad analogy. That said, in games, you play to win the game (thank you Herm Edwards for that one). The one thing I worried about Barack Obama is that he wouldn’t do what was needed to win. No matter how good Obama makes you feel, if in January, John McCain is taking the oath of office, it makes no difference. This is the one thing that Clinton claimed that I believed. Sometimes I feel Obama doesn’t have the stomach for the dark underbelly of politics. This week by deciding not to take public money to finance his race made me feel as if he’s going to do what it takes.

Obama had to go back on his word; never a good thing for a politician. What Obama didn’t know when he made that pledge was that his method of financing through small donations would allow him not only to battle the Republican candidate, but it would also allow him to take on the 527s. The thing that Republicans bank on is that they’ll spend the $85 million allocated by taking public money, and the 527s such as the Swift Boat Veterans, will do the rest. They expected the Democrat to take the public money - and then bitch and moan about the attacks from the 527s. Obama hasn’t played by the rules. By continuing his method of financing his campaign, he gives his campaign a chance to battle toe to toe against the Republicans and all its henchmen.

It couldn’t have been an easy choice to make, because every politician avoids going back on their word; but this decision shows Obama is willing to make the hard decision. I could care less about a good guy that doesn’t take the White House from the long national nightmare.

This was a good week for Obama.

OK - maybe it won’t be my only post, but I’m not going to whine about the prices. Honestly, I can afford higher gas prices. Yes it takes away from paying down debt and other bills, but I can afford the mortgage and food and then some.  I’m not having the issues that poor folk have with the current gas price, so I’m not going to whine about it.

That said.

The current situation is pretty amazing. The cost per gallon has gone up over 33% in the past year. If you’re unlucky enough to be making minimum wage, that means that you’d have to work a day to fill your tank with gas. As crazy as that sounds, it doesn’t take into consideration the massive amounts of money that are being generated by OPEC. Today it was announced that Saudi Arabia would increase it’s daily oil production to 9.7 million barrels per day. At $140 per barrel that means that Saudi Arabia is making $1.3 billion dollars a day - and that’s just Saudi Arabia - and that’s using the Bush peso (that’s the new name for the American dollar).

It gets worse - you can’t pour oil into your tank. It has to be shipped, refined, shipped again, marketed, sold, taxed, and profited on before it gets to you. I’m sure that more than doubles the cost to the purchaser. I go back to that person making the minimum wage of $5.85 per/hour. How does that person do it? At the end of the day - it’s all about the profit the oil makers and the refiners are making off of the backs of people not just in this country, but all over the world.

OPEC can produce 30.4 million barrels a day - that’s $4,263,140,000 that they produce per day. (BTW - how long before OPEC begins trading in Euros?) That’s obscene. So any talk about this being about consumption, demand, the environment - while all true, this has to do with one thing - money.

Really I’m not. Great video from I Voting Republican. By the way, get ready for a run of YouTube videos - I’ve got a backlog of them.

I’ve been bad at reading my blogs and writing anything. It gets that way in the summer I think; last thing I want to do is write.

Anyway. I really like the new album from Santogold. Perfect summer album. Here’s the single L.E.S. Artistes (iTunes) from their self-titled album.