Rival Gates's Blog, page 77

Smoker's Rights

This is not an anti-smoking blog. This is not a pro smoking blog. This is a blog about everyone’s individual rights. I was at a restaurant last night and noticed someone having to step outside in order to have a cigarette. I watched and thought, “Times have changed.” Remember when their used to be a “Smoking Section” in restaurants? It wasn’t that long ago. I want to be clear on this. I do not smoke and I do not like being around others who are smoking. With all that said, is it really fair to ban others completely from smoking just because we don’t like it? I know all the studies about second hand smoke and I don’t want it around me or my family. There was a time, however when restaurants would have a door to a patio where smokers could go without having to leave the establishment. What happened to that? It wasn’t hurting any non-smokers. Smokers prefer to slowly kill themselves with tobacco. I personally prefer Doritos and red meat but, to each their own. At least they would have a little dignity instead of sneaking outside and away from the door to smoke. It’s almost like someone has declared open season on the smokers and is hunting them down. We didn’t hunt down the American Indians of the plains. We killed off their food source and forced them onto reservations. Well, we are not killing off the smokers. What we are doing is slowly constraining where they can smoke to the point that it becomes nearly impossible to smoke anywhere but at home. Is that right? Once again, I prefer not to be around the smoke but what about the smoker’s rights? We are banning them into extinction. The philosophy is, “If we make it too hard for them to smoke, they will quit.” I sincerely believe the majority of smokers want to quit. They actually have heard all the thousands of ads too but simply can’t quit for one reason or another. I pity them. Then I think to myself, “Do I really want all these people to quit smoking? They pay a large amount of tax that I do not have to pay. I don’t want to pay those taxes. What would happen if they put a special tax on Doritos and said you could only eat them in certain places away from others? That would upset me greatly. Part of the reason would be that I like Doritos and part of the reason is that I feel like that would infringe on my rights. IF I’m not hurting anyone else and it is legal, why should my consumption be regulated? Why are smoker’s rights any different? Give them a patio to go have their cigarette away from me and then let them return without having to walk by everyone waiting to be seated. Every law we make is killing another buffalo. And that just doesn’t seem right.

Three Cheers For Modern Medicine

Modern medicine has come a long way. Back when I was in college I had a bike accident in which I was thrown over the bike and into the street. I broke my clavicle in two places, separated my shoulder and shattered my ball socket joint. At the time I was fortunate enough to have a great orthopedic surgeon. He set everything right (though the pain was tremendous) and I rehabilitated it for about six months. Now it works fine and only gives me trouble on occasion. Then I see a professional athlete today who has a broken collar bone and they say this person will need about three weeks to recover. Wow! I know my injury was more severe but still, that is amazing. Then a friend reminded me that they now have bone growth stimulators and other methods of healing not available 25 years ago. That started me thinking. “If medicine has come that far in the last 25 years, what would have happened if I had broken my shoulder 25 years before that? And what might medicine be able to do 25 years from now.” We often look at what medicine has not accomplished like curing the common cold or finding a cure for AIDS or diabetes. It is rare that anyone looks at what has been done. I had a back surgery in my twenties and it required a long incision along my spine. Then I spent 3 months learning how to walk again in physical therapy. To this day it still bothers me from time to time. I spoke to a fellow with the same procedure a few months ago and he was up walking around like normal within a few days! The incision was very small. What a difference time can make. Recently I went to the doctor with a sinus infection. He prescribed an antibiotic. I can’t tell you how many times I would have died if no one had ever invented antibiotics. My three cases of pneumonia alone would have finished me off. Doctors often catch our ire for not having all the answers. Maybe we should be thankful for the answers they have.

Crazy Drivers

Driving is a very personal thing. Your driving style says a lot about the kind of person you are. Take for example the person who pulls up next to you at a stop light when you can both clearly see that his lane is going to end right after the intersection. He has no blinker on. That leaves him with two choices. Either he is going to floor the gas and cut in front of me in order to get into my lane in time, or he is going to go until his lane comes to a close and start edging into my lane. I live in a city not surrounded by much else so it is fair to assume that there is at least a 90% chance that this person knew when they pulled up that their lane was going to end and therefore planned to cut me off one way or another. The other 10% are tourists and young drivers who don’t know the roads yet. As we sit at the light and I look at this person, I begin to grow angry. They are willing to risk an accident just to get one car length in front of me. Will those three seconds they arrive at their destination before me really make that much difference? As the hairs on my neck begin to stand up I feel compelled to race ahead and force them to yield the right of way to me. As the red light drones on, I back off my stance and decide people like this do not learn lessons unless they do get in an accident. In the end, I am not willing to place my car, my health or my life in danger just to spite someone. But the thought did cross my mind. As I calm down I see that there is a line of cars behind him prepared to force their way into my lane right behind him. What is it about an automobile that makes people so irrational? Then look at the people who run the red left turn signals. After the signal turns red there is a 3 second delay before the next light turns green. Many times my light turns green and the person is JUST STARTING their left hand turn! Come on! You can’t even make an argument that the light was yellow. So I have to sit there with a green light and watch this manic drive in front of me. Some people see it happening and start into the intersection anyway. I’m ticked but I’m not ready to die to scare this guy. Something about the road brings out the worst in some people. I’m no angel but I see no need to play with fire. Car insurance is expensive enough.

Your Worst Investment

I remember back in high school sitting in Consumer Education Class. (My parents couldn’t believe that was a real class. It’s like today when my children take “Everyday Living” and I think “What’s next for my tax dollars to be wasted on, Breathing 101?”) Anyway, needless to say it was a blow-off class designed to boost your GPA. As I worked on math homework the teacher (who sounded like the one from Charlie Brown) finally spoke an audible sentence. She said, “A car is the worst investment you will ever make.” That made me stop and think. To that point, all the investments I had heard of were stocks and bonds. A car wasn’t an investment. That’s just nonsense. Fast forward many years to the present day and I finally see what she meant. My 16 year old daughter wanted a car and I told her that if she wanted one, she would have to pay for it herself. Undeterred, she saved every paycheck from her part time job and accumulated a sizable amount. Keeping my word to help her we spent months checking out cars and having our mechanic look them over. None of the cars met the mechanic’s standards but we finally found one that could be fixed well enough to be reliable for a total amount of just slightly over what my daughter had to spend. I guess I helped her out a little. We bought the car and then the work began. It needed brakes and fluids and this thing was leaking and that thing needed to be replaced. In the end the car looked no different. It sounded the same. If we tried to sell it we would have been lucky to get what we paid for the car, let alone the repairs. So why did we spend the money? Simply put, my precious daughter is out there right now driving that car. If something terrible was to happen I could not handle someone coming to me and saying, “The accident happened because the brakes failed”, or “The car broke down because this part needed to be replaced.” Then I thought about those words from consumer class. On paper a car IS the worst investment you will ever make. To quote my wife, “A car is something to get you from here to there.” All the fuel and maintenance are just money being spent to maintain the status quo. You will never see that money again. So I agree. Monetarily a car is an awful investment. On the other hand, I think of the peace of mind I have about the car keeping my daughter safe. I think about my wife not losing traction and having an accident because I either didn’t replace the tires or else bought cheap ones that didn’t handle the bad weather well. I think of that frigid winter day after brushing the snow off my car and turning the key to hear the engine fire up. Maybe this is not a monetary investment you gain from but rather an outlay for that feeling of security? It’s that slightly better sleep you get. Some things can’t be measured in dollars. This investment is one of them.

Interview Today

Today I have an interview posted on Indie Author Land. Check it out!
http://www.indieauthorland.com/archiv...

How Halloween Used To Be

Well, it’s Halloween again. As I was observing our annual pumpkin carving I asked my daughter about her strategy for tomorrow night. I was saddened to hear that the plan was to walk around to houses until she and her friends grew tired. That’s it? No battle plan? No way to store excess candy? What a sad state of affairs. After thinking it over I realized that kids today simply have too much access to candy. It isn’t such a big deal to get anymore. When I was growing up, we had candy at Easter, Christmas and Halloween. My older brother and I would start planning around Labor Day. First we needed costumes that would not weigh much so we could walk longer without wearing ourselves out. Then we needed bags that could hold a lot of candy and not break when flung around. 50 pound onion sacks were our best bags. They stretch but don’t break. Then we would get out graph paper and draw our neighborhood. Yes we actually drew it out on my father’s writing desk. Then we would mark the houses that gave the best candy the year before in one color. That way, if we were worn out we could just hit the highlights. When you’re dragging that huge bag you don’t want to waste steps for a piece of Double-Bubble. Then we would mark the people who worked later in another color. We could hit those houses after the others had run out of candy because they started giving it out later and likely just wanted to empty their bowls at the end of the night. The week before Halloween, we fitted our costumes to make sure they weren’t constraining. Halloween night Mom could make whatever she wanted and we would eat it because we weren’t going anywhere until dinner was done. (She knew it too and almost always made us eat fish sticks.) Then we set out. The route was drawn in highlighter so we would work one side of a street and turn from there. Then we could work the other sides on the way home. Our goal was to never waste steps going by houses we had already hit. We started at 5PM at the houses where we knew the mother didn’t work so she would be there with candy. We knew the map and battle plan so well that we did not bring it with us. It would be too hard to read in the dark. We would finish our sprint at about 10PM and be right by home when done. If rationed correctly and hidden from the dog and other family members, our candy would last almost till Christmas. Today the kids buy a $30 costume with accessories they will never carry. Then they get those little plastic pumpkin pales that hold about 10 pieces of candy before they are filled. Parents walk behind with spiked drinks and cigarettes, waiting at the road in case someone tried to abduct their child. The whole process is over in about an hour and a half. By then they are too tired to go on and have wasted time going back and forth across the street and to the neighbors. What a waste! I spent more on candy than they haul in. That’s a bad investment! Where is the planning? Where is the perseverance? How sad this holiday has become. And it’s all because your child can get a Snicker’s bar pretty much any time they want.

Buying Halloween Candy

Today I purchased Halloween candy. I have a simple theory behind it. If I buy the candy early, my family will just eat it and then I’ll have to buy more. So I wait till the last minute. The problem with my grand plan is that the candy is pretty picked over by now so you kind of have to take what you can get. I started off by checking the grocery store ads to see who had the best deals. Once I was satisfied, I took my daughter to school and went to the store. The candy aisle looked like the Mother’s Day Card display the day AFTER Mother’s Day. The pickings as always were slim. That’s scary in and of itself because you don’t want to be known as the people in the neighborhood who give out yucky candy. Now candy companies really know a thing or two about packaging. Take your Snickers, Milky Way and Three Musketeers bars. They are in small bags and cost a decent amount. To give those out you would have to buy a lot of bags. Then you see a big bag with those same candy bars in it for a relatively reasonable price. There’s just one catch. In with the good candy bars are candies like Whompers. Does anybody REALLY like those? I have never met anyone who did. So every other child who comes to your door is going to think, “Not Whompers! It wasn’t even worth walking up the drive for these.” News like that travels fast around the block. We can’t have that. So I continue down the line. There is a huge bag of Kit Kats. While not necessarily a premium bar, it won’t go in the trash pile at the end of the night for a child. Then I look at the price. Wow! For that price I could afford to give candy out for about 15 minutes before it was gone. So the question becomes…quality or quantity? As with most things in life, you need both. So how much do you buy? You think of the Halloween where you had tons left over and were eating Sweet Tarts during the Super Bowl Party. (Those things are like round Pez!) Then you remember the year you ran out of candy. You would hear the doorbell and think, “Maybe if I don’t answer they’ll go away?” Then they ring again. “They know I’m here, drat! But I have nothing left to give them. Well, it’s time to face the music.” You answer the door and explain that there is no more candy. Little smiles disappear instantly and a young girl looks like she’s going to cry right over the makeup of her Selena Gomez costume. Your heart breaks and you are this close to handing out dollar bills from your wallet. Nope. We can’t have a repeat of that. It leaves you with one choice, Big Guy. You have to buy the good candy and a lot of it. You feel trapped as you drop the bags in the cart. By the time you get done, you feel like you might be better off handing out dollar bills. You shuffle off to the checkout line and watch the register tape grow with purchases of candy you will probably never get to eat. Now you can look forward to checking your child’s candy for open wrappers or homemade treats with someone’s address on them. How do we know that’s the right person’s address? Even if it is, why take the chance? Sorry folks. You made rice crispy treats for nothing. They’re going in the trash. Dude, how long till Christmas?

Enough With The Spam

It used to be that email was cool. You would check to see who wrote you and what was new. You might get three or four per day. It was exciting. Now I check my email every day, not out of anticipation, but in order to keep them from piling up. There are hundreds of messages in there. I get department store ads, statements for bills, the same coupons you were sent yesterday, ads for one day sales every day, food ads, grocery ads, school newsletters, entertainment news and the list just keeps going. 99% of it is pure garbage. I spend at least twenty minutes clicking on an email and waiting for it to no longer show as new before I hit delete. You would think the junk mail folder would help but you need to go through that to or else it will continue to show new emails there. And every so often there is something important that ended up there. Everyone seems to have my email address. I don’t know if companies sell it (which they always claim that they don’t do) or somehow I signed up for all of this. Some of it is easy to track by origin. Others come out of the blue like notices about upcoming sporting events or concerts. I never expressed interest in this team or music group. Why do I have to sift through emails about them? Each day I probably keep 3-4 messages that are pertinent. The rest go in the imaginary recycling bin. I have tried to “unsubscribe” from these different places but they make it nearly impossible to do so. You have to know your password and follow all these links. If you actually manage to do it they ask you to fill out a survey as to why you unsubscribed. (That could be a whole blog by itself) It’s as though they are shocked that I no longer want to be peppered with their spam. In the end, your inbox still has as many messages as ever. And it isn’t like the trend is diminishing. It’s just the opposite. Everyone is “going green” and “going paperless” with their bills. Some companies reward you with an extra discount if you go paperless. Others like my bank take the opposite approach. If you actually want them to sacrifice a poor tree in order to make your precious statement, they charge you. So you have to go paperless or else pay for something you won’t look twice at before filing or discarding. Maybe emails SHOULD cost money? Then we wouldn’t be inundated with cyber-bombardments. I have asked friends what they do and they all tell me to change my email address. That’s like moving so you won’t get as much junk mail. It just isn’t practical. Think of how many people you would have to notify of the change. Besides, changing email addresses just makes me feel like the spammers won. Perhaps I’m stubborn but I will not give them the satisfaction. So I continue my daily routine of opening and deleting. There has to be a better way.

If I Could Be Any Animal...

Have you ever been asked, “If you could be any animal, what would you be?” The question was brought to me and I started to really think about my answer. Part of me would want to be something like a lion at the top of the food chain. Then I heard they were being hunted into near extinction which turned me sour on the whole idea. On top of that, they eat a diet of raw meat that they have to chase down and kill. That didn’t sound too appetizing either. Then I thought of an eagle. They soar majestically across the sky and nest at the highest perches where few can be a bother. They also have amazing sight and can see prey from great heights. I have seen them on television where they glide effortlessly over a lake and then suddenly extend their claws and pull a ten pound trout out of the water. Now that’s pretty cool if I do say so myself. Just think of floating on updrafts and diving like a lightning bolt down to ground level in a moment. That all sounded pretty great. Then I thought how hard it would be to carry that trout back to your nest. The fish is flopping all over the place and the eagle is thinking, “Hey my talons have gone clean through your body. Even if you shook loose your life is over. So just give it a rest. My nest is at the top of this mountain and you’re getting heavy.” Picking through fish guts also is a big thumbs down for me. Then I started reading about Koala Bears. Right off the bat, they live in the jungles of Australia. That sounds pretty good right there. They sleep for 18-20 hours of the day and spend the rest of their time eating eucalyptus and mistletoe leaves and bark. Bark has to have a lot of fiber, I figure. And who reading this can honestly say they couldn’t use some more sleep. What do these animals have to complain about? When they get together does one say, “Dude, I only had 14 hours of sleep last night and I’m really dragging. Toss some eucalyptus leaves over here. I’ll be right as rain!” Now that’s the life I want! Sure one of the leading causes of death is dog attacks and humans are encroaching on their habitat. Then there was the early Twentieth Century where they were nearly hunted to extinction for their fur. But overall, can you think of a much more carefree life? So that settles it. If I could be any animal in the world, I would be a Koala Bear.

Explain This Price To Me

I don’t think I will ever understand the pricing of some things. Take frozen yogurt for instance. In the store you can buy a half gallon of premium ice cream for about $5. At a frozen yogurt shop you can buy a little container with some toppings for about $8. I understand convenience and markup but really? That’s a lot for frozen yogurt. The problem lies in the fact that you don’t usually go there alone. You usually take someone of some significance in your life. It might be a spouse, significant other, child or just a friend. When you’re picking up the tab, however, it looks pretty bad to say, “Don’t put so much in your cup”, or “Hey, lay off the gummy bears. They charge by weight and those things weigh a ton!” You just can’t go there. Instead, you have to smile and pay for it. The nice girl behind the counter knows what’s going on but doesn’t help you. Instead, she tells the other person or people with you, “Hey, you should try this topping. It’s one of our biggest sellers”. Thanks ice cream lady! Then look at the price of pop. If you want a 20 once pop it will cost you about $1.39 at a convenience store. You can also buy 2 liters of the same pop for about $1.39. Am I missing something here? You are giving me less than a third of the amount of product, but the price is the same. So you try to save a little money and buy a fountain drink. You pay about $1.20 for 32 ounces. That’s still no bargain. Apparently the ability to drink something while traveling down the road makes it more expensive. Not so fast. Then you go to a restaurant to eat. They charge $2.99 for a cup of ice with a little pop in it and boast free refills. I should hope so. I would need to have quite a few watered down drinks in order to get my money’s worth that way. So what is the genius behind the pricing of pop? It costs practically nothing to make so companies take profit in any form they can. In clothing, small sizes cost the same as extra-large sizes. Plus sizes are more but there is a lot more material used to make an extra-large than to make a small. I actually come out ahead on this deal but people who wear small get the short end or the deal. I won’t even get into health care price differences. That could be a blog in itself. I’m not cheap. I just don’t see the logic in these prices.