*sigh*

The Home Depot
8334 Tamarack Village
Woodbury, MN 55125

Dear Store Manager and Kitchen Design Manager,

I visited your store last Saturday afternoon (10/29/05 1PM) to do some shopping for a house I just bought. My new house will require a great deal work of such as replacing all of the flooring, new paint, a new deck, a new fence and a kitchen that will have to be completely torn out and replaced.

In regards to your flooring, painting, and other departments I was pleased by your selection, service and pricing. However, the situation changed when I entered your kitchen area. I was politely greeted by an employee and he cheerfully suggested I visit with a kitchen designer and showed me the way.

The discussion with your kitchen designer was terribly un-helpful and frustrating. She had very few answers concerning prices, provided little guidance, and seemed intent on sending me away with a packet of brochures and little else. I had come into the process with very little knowledge of kitchen design, but I also came with a $10,000 budget. I was shocked that your designer took so little interest. I had brought some rudimentary measurements and I would have been very pleased to leave with just some help on what to consider, some design ideas, and possibly a few examples that would likely fit my situation. Ideally I would have liked to get a realistic understanding of what my $10,000 could purchase. Instead I got some brochures.

What disappoints me further is that there were no lines or large groups of other customers waiting to be serviced. There was no immediately visible pressure on this person’s time, but there was definitely the sense that she couldn’t be bothered.

I have gotten better service from used car dealers. While I have sometimes questioned their motives, just about every one of them at least took the time to give me a test drive. Whether it’s a $10,000 Buick or a $10,000 kitchen, I hope your kitchen designers take a hint from the used car folks and give your customers more attention.

White Sox* Win

And Harriet Miers withdraws. Universe in Harmony.

Last night we saw about the whiniest bunch of losers win the big one. It is my belief that their joy will be fleeting and quickly fade to their whiny and desparate ways. The Sox* lack any evidence of class and have no hope of building a dynasty that might continue their winning ways. So in memory of their win, let's post some comment for posterity:

"White Sox fans never stopped believin,' and Wednesday night it was time to kick back and hold on to the feelin.'"

"Thank God," said Danny Humanicki, 37, of Franklin Park, as he cried tears of joy outside a bar near Cellular Field. "You always dream about it ... and when it happens, you feel like a baby."

"In Chicago, we haven't experienced this in forever," said Kirk Vucsko"

"Champagne poured in the back room as men kissed men, women kissed women, people danced on tables and everyone hugged everyone."

(Must have been the gay Sox* bar)

"And more ominous gunfire rang out in areas scattered around the city -- 372 reports of gunfire in just one hour."
(That's the south side I know and love!)

''I didn't know what it was going to feel like and I still don't know what it feels like,'' Reinsdorf said. ''I'm just numb right now.

"What Chicago ever did to suffer almost a century of baseball hopelessness, you'll have to ask the evil spirits or Mrs. O'Leary's cow."

"No longer must any of us dwell on the 1919 Black Sox, Disco Demolition Night, elephants, midgets, drunks on the field and decades of futility and identity crises."

Just watch me.

I think the most amzing thing about the Sox* is that they are 19-3 since Sept. 23, slighly more than a month ago. That's a good time to get hot.

Comments, Appreciated and Otherwise

I do enjoy your comments, but not all of them. Especially not the spamming commercial variety that are often confusing at best. I got many of these in my long absence and on my previous post. No more.

I have also turned off the anonymous commenting... I think. From now on you will have to go through the elaborate process of creating a fake identity in order to comment anonymously. I'm somewhat torn by this. Anonymity often encourages the reluctant and can be a source of 'truth' that might be difficult to point out in polite company. It's the old fly in the down position dilemma. Someone should really tell that person, but who really wants to be the one to go through that uncomfortable exchange?

Another thing anonymity encourages is vulgarity. I have nothing against vulgarity, but I think it only fair that those who are, take credit for being so. Vulgarity in anonymity is mental masturbation. Vulgarity in public is likely to get you a morning FM job. So keep those audition tapes coming!

Mainstream, Qualified

I like to think of myself in those terms. They give me a warm fuzzy when I look in the mirror and say "Gilles, you're mainstream enough, you're qualified enough, and doggone it, 8 people read your blog."

This seems to be the reaction to Bush Fed Chair pick Ben Bernanke as summarized by this quote here: "However, the main reaction will be a sigh of relief that he is one of the mainstream, qualified candidates."

This is quite telling that Wall Street was aprehensive Bush would pick a non-qulified, non-mainstream candidate. What ever would give them that idea? Oh yeah, Harriet Miers, Bush's crony unqualified pick for the Supreme Court. I suppose in this case it was quite reasonable for Wall Street to brace itself for a Federal Reserve setting interest rates based on completed keg stands by new Fed Chief Jenna Bush.

The popular democrat pick for the Fed was Robert Rubin. He generally has a good reputation on Wall St. and served as Clinton's Secretary of the Treasury. Since Bush took office he has been running Citi Group - the massive bank and financial service company based in New York. I thought it would be interesting to compare the dem's guru to the performance of Bush and the American economy overall in the last four years.

When Rubin took over, Citi's stock price was about $48. Today Citi is trading right around $44, roughly a 9% decline in that time.

As a proxy for the US economy I took the S&P 500 index. At the same time Citi was at $48, the S&P was at $1100. Today it is trading at about $1200, or roughly a 9% increase.

So at the same time US stocks were up 9%, the Democrats great economic guru lead one of our country's largest banks into a 9% decline. Granted I'm not digging too deep here and maybe Rubin saved Citi from a 30% decline or some other disaster, but as a general investor, I'd be much more pleased with a generic index of American stocks, all of which at the mercy of general American trends - than the stock specifically guided and directed by Rubin. Nor would I be interested in having him manage my mutual fund, let alone promoted to setting monetary policy for the whole country.

Try this next time a Democrat claims the economy stinks. Explain growth is up and Bush's economic record is better than Robert Rubin's - and watch their jaws drop and immediately go into how Bush is an idiot. This will be even more amusing to you if you get them calling Bush an evil genius earlier in the conversation about the recent spat of indictments.

Do as I say, not as a I Powerball

Powerball, I spit on you! I belittle you're very existence! Powerball is a tax on the poor, the ignorant, and the wishful thinkers. I must have caught a case of the last one pretty bad because I broke down and bought a ticket when the jackpot hit $340 million.

I spent a good deal of time wishful thinking, enough anyway to check on some things to make sure I could fit all of my plans into my 'winnings'. I found I had to scale way back. A good rule of thumb is to take the lottery jackpot and divide by 4 - and you'll get your true winnings. Now $340 million divided by four is still $85 million, but it's not enough to buy the Twins and build a stadium. It's barely enough to have a stadium named after you. It's certainly enough to let you quit your job, but not enough to live like Paris Hilton - more like Jacque Jones. $85 million handled prudently should generate about $5-$6 million a year, just about what the Twins RF makes.

One guy at the dog park tried to justify getting tickets when the dollar amount exceeded the odds - 1 in 146 million. At first I bought this. On further inspection, the true 'break even' is much, much higher. First off, we need to take the $146 million times 4 in order to get your dollars odds to match your lottery odds. So the jackpot has to be $584 million. And let's not forget that you are buying your lottery ticket with after tax dollars (as opposed to putting them in your 401k), the jackpot would have to be about 25% higher - or $759 million.

Policy wise I'm torn by the lottery. It is appalling that government would prey on people's ignorance and greed just to bring in a little extra revenue... (why did Enron just come to mind?) On the other hand, I do believe that every citizen should pay taxes - rich poor or otherwise. All of them get to enjoy the services provided by government, all of them should pay for it. In this age of hand wringing over the 'poor' the lottery (and cable taxes, cigarette taxes, alchohol taxes, and gas taxes) is the only available means to tax the poor. Some of the sting is taken away with the realization that the tax is voluntary, but then why does the government ban lotteries assembled by private citizens? Why was the numbers game in New York City something undertaken by the mafia and Malcolm X? I dare say we have a double standard.

Moral of the story, don't play lotto unless the jackpot is more than $759 million - and until it is, make fun of people who do play it.

Missing in Action

I had no idea. I leave my blog alone for one measly month and I start getting junk email posts to my comments section. Something about online dating, another about the food network, and few other pieces which may or may not have been random.

Anyway, hopefully the fact that I'm posting will chase away these junk comments.

Many topics have surfaced and submerged in the last month or so.

The White Sox are going to the World Series. This is a tragedy beyond words. If ever a curse was derserved, it is the White Sox ever since they threw the Series back in 1919. The curse of the Bambino was a dumb trade, but hardly curse worthy - and moot anyway. The curse of the billy goat is just stupid, unless that is your code word for Dusty Baker.

The Black Sox made Pete Rose look like a girl scout by comparison. Rose, for all his stupidity, merely bet on his team. The Sox THREW the game! The entire existence of the Chicago White Sox* should be followed by an asterisk. And every fan worth a damn who believes in the history and integrity of the game should do everything in their will power to wish the Sox* into an embarrassing defeat at the hands of the National League.

As troubling as the World Series bound White Sox* is to me, it can only be trumped by the inane pick of Harriet Miers to the Supreme court. Listen, I love Bush and I'm willing to swallow a lot of swill to support him. I can swallow Miers being an affirmative action female pick. I can swallow a 'stealth' candidate that is difficult to pin down in a confirmation hearing. I can even, just barely, handle the fact that Miers is a crony. What I can't swallow is what the MSNBC/Wall Street Journal poll made abundantly clear - only 29% of American's think Miers is QUALIFIED to be a Supreme Court Justice. This is a country, and we are a party, of Merit! Bush could have violated all of the other things I dislike and I would have accepted his "trust me" had his nominee been remotely qualified to serve on the Supreme Court. Sadly she is not, and she needs to be kept off the Supreme Court. I'd even swallow a White Sox* victory for that outcome.