Paul's Comments

It's Girl Scout Cookie season. If you like Thin Mints - as I do - and want them during the off season, Keebler makes a similar product, the Fudge Shoppe Grasshopper mints. Now the news is telling us that - just like no one expected Toyota to have safety-related problems - a Kentucky bakery has recalled the Lemon Chalet cookies because of a breakdown in cooking oil. Apparently it's not that they're unsafe to eat as much as they taste funny (or bad.)

I got the phrase 'Toyotaed' from an associate of mine who points out how bad the service of Delta Air Lines is by mentioning when someone gets a bad trip* from an airline that "they got Deltaed." So when an unexpected product recall occurs, I say the product "gets Toyotaed."

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* The use of the term "bad trip" here which also is used to refer to an unsatisfactory experience taking LSD, is intentional for ironic purposes

My favorite stock is Berkshire Hathaway Common, (BRK-A), and I happen to be a big fan because it's the most expensive stock in the world. They never do stock splits so the price remains the same, roughly. It reminds me of the corporation that runs the planet Venus in Robert A. Heinlein's Podkayne of Mars in which you're only one of three classes of people: a visiting tourist, an employee of the company, or a stockholder. You have to be fairly wealthy to have enough money to buy at least one share to become a stockholder but once you are, basically you're set for life.

No, I don't own any stock in Berkshire although I wish I could. I've made jokes how "I could have bought Berkshire Hathaway at 8 (thousand)" but that's not true, I probably didn't notice BH until maybe 1995 and by then it was between $20 and $27 thousand a share.

The current price for Berkshire Hathaway is about $117,000 a share.
I couldn't raise that much money if I sold a kidney, lung and anything else of which I have spare parts (presuming I could sell body parts; Federal law doesn't allow it.) That means that if you're wealthy, sick, need a part and can't get on the waiting list or have a wait expected to exceed your estimated life expectency, you go to India where you can buy a spare part, and cheaply too. (Presuming you have your own private checking done to make sure the donor doesn't have AIDS.)

Originally I wrote that it's interesting that is very close to the price to obtain a taxi medallion in New York City. That's before I looked it up. In May of 2008, the City of New York sold 86 medallions in a group of 46 2-medallion blocks for a minimum price of $700,000 each and one medallion for an independent for $189 large.

That tongue-swallowing nosebleed price for Berkshire is the reason I'm such a fan of it. Plus I've been a customer of theirs from time to time; BH is the holding company for GEICO insurance (among a whole bunch of other companies).

You know, it's pointless for me to just post things here without checking them; a two-minute search on the internet can give me almost any fact I need to find out. I first said that I'm not sure if Berkshire bought the Burlington Northern Santa Fe railroad or if it was the chairman of the company - who I could not remember his name - on his own. Again, two minutes told me that Warren Buffett didn't buy BNSF for his own account, it is a (wholly owned) subsidiary of Berkshire.

I decided I wanted to post an article here about something, so I go to this website and I'm informed I can't get through. My hosting provider is having trouble translating the domain name paul-robinson.us into the internal subdomain it is actually hosted as. Well, I try going onto NearlyFreeSpeech.net to check their control panel. Well, even they are having the same problem I'm having.

So I decide to go back and check whether my subdomain can be reached directly, but I need to find out what it is. So I go to my DNS provider, which is GoDaddy, and find out that my automatic password that the web browser generates is wrong. While I understand the need for security, the one real problem I have with GoDaddy is the "three strikes and you're out" penalty, that basically if you try to login 3 times in a row with the wrong password your account is locked until you call them for an unlock. I don't know what the right balance is but I think 3 is too low.

Well, anyway I go into my web browser's Password manager and there are different passwords depending on which service it has gone into - an indication that I've logged in at different places and different times - and so I don't know which is right. So I end up having to call them for an unlock, which, since it's 4 in the morning - call it 2 A.M. in Arizona - the wait is extremely short. So I get the guy on the phone to read me the password hint, and from that I know what it is, and it works.

One thing I find as an example of how stupid some people are, in that they see a number of disreputable organizations operating domains using GoDaddy that they figure anyone using them is also disreputable. They apparently have no sense. In general, GoDaddy is the cheapest provider of domain services in the world; everyone else is about 3 times or more as expensive. So those who don't need handholding or technical support will use them, as will anyone registering a large number of domains. Unless you're authorized to be a registrar yourself, anyway, they will be the least expensive provider for most services.

Now, this blog runs on NearlyFreeSpeech because their hosting is very inexpensive, and allows me to run this site without advertising. I figure it costs me about $15 a year to host this without ads; the cheapest I can get an ad-free site from GoDaddy is about $3.50 a month, or about 3 times as much.

Now after all this, I have no idea what I was going to post about!

I have discovered what it is like to suffer a severe power loss. As a result of the massive blizzard that started Friday we had a power failure. It happened around 9am Saturday morning.

Well, what can you do? I had been watching some of the extended snow coverage and watching some of the details. As it turned out, by sheer luck I had just recharged my cell phone. So I want to call PEPCO and report the outage to be on the safe side that it was reported. Well, I don't have the automated number. Oh yeah, I have it in my other phone, the one I don't put any minutes on since my sister loaned me one of the spare ones they have. But that one was left on and never recharged. So I have to call 411 (at probably over $1 a call I hate having to pay for Directory Assistance calls, however I know from prior attempts that neither Free 411 nor toll free DA ever gives the correct number for PEPCO, I don't have a choice).

So I get their automated system and need either the phone number the account was set up under or the account number. I don't have either and because of the emergency the voice mail to record a message is full. So I call the landlord and I get the phone number and I call it in. Well, at least I discover that there already was a report so we were covered.

So what can I do? Can't go out, the walk isn't shoveled and we don't have a shovel anyway, plus all bus service is suspended. No electronic toys so can't use computer or watch TV. So I do what I often do on weekends: sleep.

There is a problem,. however; even with the place kept closed it's still getting colder. Eventually, in addition to the Snuggies and blankets I have on, I have to put on my new winter coat that I got for Christmas. So it's slightly uncomfortable due to the cold, but at least it's not dangerous yet.

So, anyway I get hungry. We are fortunate to have a gas stove, unfortunately the oven uses a computer to operate it, so without power the gas oven can't be used! But the range can be, if I can find matches, since the automatic starter uses power. Someone has matches.

Okay, what do I have that I can cook on the stove? Well, I have two cans of clam chowder that, fortunately, I'd been saving for emergency rations. And they're pull-top so I don't need the electric can opener. So I have one and that gets me through lunch. Back to sleep for a while.

By the time it gets dark I realize that this is the darkest dark I've ever seen in the place. Many times I leave my computer monitor on or the TV on because I have it for background noise, but occasionally I'll turn everything significant off. This means the TV, the cable box, my computer monitor and the lights. But at that, the cable modem indicator lights, my computer's power light on the front, the on-off light on the front of the converter box, and the surge suppression and power indicators on the wall socket are still on. Here, there's nothing but the light of the snow on the ground from outside reflecting the light of the moon; even the streetlights are out.

Later in the evening I get hungry again. I don't want to have to eat the other can of soup so I look what I have. I didn't buy much the other day because (1) I only had $20 and (2) I expected to go the next day to the credit union where my disability check is deposited. So I had only bought enough food for a couple of days. In the interim the huge snowstorm was announced so I couldn't go, I might have been stuck.

So, I have hot pockets. Oops, microwave or oven. A pizza; oven. Taquitos: oh, great, they can be pan-fried. But they're supposed to be thawed, first. Oh please; I know that if you leave a freezer closed the food will stay cold for many hours; thawing the food was what I did not want to happen! So what I did was to put some water on, boil it, then use the plastic bag to heat up the taquitos enough to make them not frozen. Seemed to work only I'm supposed to have oil or butter to cook them in. It's going to be too much trouble to find some as I'm working by flashlight, so I'll just wing it as best I can.

It works. They actually were pretty good, and slightly crispier than when microwaved, I may have to try it this way again. I turn the (non working) light on in the kitchen so I'll be able to see when the power comes back on.

In doing this, somehow I am reminded of a scene in the movie Hotel New Hampshire where the two kids of the owners decide to turn every light in the building on after a storm knocks out the power. The sheriff of the small town they are in stops by, and is in the parking lot, turns the knob on his radio to turn it on, when the power is restored at that moment and the entire building lights up like a Christmas tree. He's so shocked that he has a heart attack and dies!

So anyway, back in bed I try really hard to do something to keep me a bit warmer, and I end up with the condition where - this was going on all day - you sleep for a while - maybe a couple of hours - until either the cold disturbs you or you have to pee. So you never really get good, solid sleep.

I'm awakened again and I notice the outside, and I realize there's a streetlight on. Yes! I turn around and I can see through my glass door that the kitchen light is on. I go out and discover that it's exactly matching, the clock on the stove - which resets to 12:00 when power comes back on - now reads 12:45. As it turns out, that's exactly when power came back on. As an exercise for the reader, now figure out what time it is when I'm looking at this clock.

The heat is back on plus I turn my space heater on. It takes most of Sunday before it's back to being comfortably warm again.

So one of the things I'm putting on my list to pick up next time I go shopping is more canned goods so I have at least enough for a week.

The History Channel has a series called Life After People that runs every Tuesday night at 10pm, in which it gives an idea of what could be expected to occur if people suddenly vanished from the earth (for whatever reason).

A couple of comments I found were very funny. The first concerned a painting by Leonardo DaVinci on a church wall, which has required regular retouching over the centuries including dehumidifiers. Since people are no longer around to keep up these protective actions, "How long will it be before nature finishes off The Last Supper?"

They also take a look at the 2nd tallest building in the world. "Taipei 101 is considered by some to look like a series of [Chinese Food] take out boxes. How long before nature takes out Taipei 101?"