Living in rural Texas, it’s almost a given that I have a long commute. I often use that time to listen to my Audible books. I’ve listened to a number of books in my attempt to improve my writing and to gain a better understanding of communication. Most of them were very good, a few were informative although dry and one was a waste of two hours. Yes, there were also a few weeks I spent listening to fantasy novels. You can’t study all the time.

When I finished my last Larry Correia novel, I was ready to return to improving my writing and I started listening to “The Modern Scholar: Way with Words: Writing Rhetoric and the Art of Persuasion” by Professor Michael D.C. Drout. This is a series of lectures on using and understanding rhetoric. Rhetoric, as Professor Drout explains it, is the basis for communication and getting people to act on that communication. I was apprehensive about getting the audio book because it was a series of lectures, by a professor, of English. Even today all I have to do is think about my English Professors in college and my eyelids start drooping.

You already know my fears were unfounded, otherwise this would be a very short post. Five minutes into the book, I know that I’m going to enjoy these lectures. Professor Drout loves his topic and knows how to keep you interested. Better yet, as he is teaching you the terms and rules of rhetoric, he’s able to explain why the rules exist.

Learning about the various forms and usages of rhetoric was fun. Professor Drout would explain a concept and then discuss an example from a number of well-known speeches. As he did this, you started to understand what made the speeches great.  His great love of this topic comes across clearly as he dissects each speech into the various rhetoric techniques.

Of the fourteen lectures in this audio book, three of them are on grammar. Grammar, really? I was ready to fast forward through those lectures but by the time I reached them I realized I was enjoying the lectures and decided not to skip them. This is where I started understanding a key element to my learning.

I can listen to a number of rules and file them away as miscellaneous. Too many rules that don’t make sense and I do well to remember 10% of them. Give me background so I can anchor that rule and it will stay with me. For example, Ohm’s law is a fundamental law of electronics. If I put 120 volts across a 2 ohm load, I’ll have 60 amps, at least until the circuit breaker trips. Having observed that rule several times in my early life and facing the wrath of my parents as I reset the breaker, I won’t forget Ohm’s law.

If someone tells me not to end a sentence with a preposition, what are the consequences? How was this rule derived? Professor Drout compares poor grammar to eating with the wrong utensils. Usually not fatal, but it communicates a lot about the person eating his peas with a knife. Then he goes on to explain that the preposition rule is derived from Latin grammar. The rule still doesn’t make sense but I can anchor it in my memory, not as a arbitrary rule but one that actually has historical derivatives.

I also found out that dangling participles aren’t illegal, they just leave the sentence subject to misinterpretation. We’re encouraged not to let our participles dangle to improve our readability.

He explains the use of commas, periods and semicolons as spaces in time. A comma is one beat, a period as two beats and a semicolon as a beat and a half. No rules, just a description that helps me understand when I need a comma, period or a semicolon. The grammar police will still deplore my usage of commas but I have a better understanding of when I use them.

I enjoyed his Rhetoric lectures so much that I bought his “The Modern Scholar: A Way With Words Part III: Grammar for Adults“. I’m about half way through it now and the subject of dangling participles has come up again. How can you fault a lecture when the English professor suggests saying “Keep your stinking Latin grammar rules in your own language” when responding to the language police over ending a sentence with a preposition? It was tongue in cheek I’m sure but it certainly grabbed my attention.

It’s obvious that I’ll have to listen to both lecture series a few times before you see any significant improvements in my writing but Professor Drout has created a dilemma for me. All my life, my teachers have done their absolute best to make me hate poetry and they were very, very, successful. Show me three lines of poetry in a book and that’s three lines I won’t be reading. Professor Drout has another book in this series, “A Way with Words IV: Understanding Poetry”. As I get closer to the end of “Grammar for Adults”, I find myself asking, just how bad can that go?

When I started thinking about this post, I realized all the different roles my Mother has represented in my life. She started out representing wisdom and protection. She moved quickly into the role of chauffeur and just as quickly into the role of oppressive authority. Right around that point she lost all that wisdom and became someone that did not understand the way the world worked.

Fortunately, my perspective has also changed and I’ve come to realize that I had a one dimension of view of her and like an ice cube, I was only seeing an aspect and not the whole.

Fortunately for me she’s regained most of that wisdom she lost she lost during my teen year. I can now have long conversations with her and aside from her occasional lapses of judgment in politics, I enjoy the conversation.  Even better, I’m realizing that there’s a lot I can learn from her if I listen.

Having spent the majority of her life as a writer and a journalist, her opinion and coaching on my blog and the content have been especially helpful over the last year. She had a very good suggestion (strongly worded demand) for today’s blog. Before I follow her advice, let me say “Thank you Mom, for everything you’ve done for me. I wouldn’t be the person I am today without all your guidance, help and sacrifice.”

There is a Mother-in-Laws day. I think it’s sometime in September or November. I remember looking it up but thought it was a failed attempt for another pseudo holiday. In order to be eligible for Mother-in-laws day you probably already got your recognition on Mother’s day. Rather than attempt to add another special day to the calendar, I’m going to discuss my Mother-in-law today.

I’ve always resented my Mother-in-law. She and I get along fairly well, but when I’m with a group of married men and the topic turns to how bad your mother-in-law is, I have to stay quiet. Nobody wants to hear I have an exceptionally good mother-in-law.

How can I explain to my engineering peers that I can intelligently discuss computers with her? How can I explain that I enjoy going through Fry’s with her? When I ask my wife to go to Fry’s with me, she accuses me of spending too much time smelling the electronics and tells me to invite her mother.

Because my Mother-in-law pushed me, I have an iPad, an Audible account and a Dropbox account. These are the basics of my current life, not a day goes by that I don’t interact with one or more of those.

She’s supported me since day one on this blog. She acts as a political advisor and a copy editor. She even serves as a technical advisor, telling me I lost her about paragraph two and forcing me to rewrite the post.

I could denigrate her for owning a Mac but now days when I bring that up in front of the other husbands, I get “does she like it” or “it’s bound to be better than Windows 8” and even “I switched last year.”

So there it is, I suffer the shame and humiliation of having an exceptionally good mother-in-law. All things considered, it’s a small price to pay for what she brings into my life.

On this Mother’s day, I believe both my Mother and my Mother-in-law should be told how much I appreciate them and their constant support. And even though it’s a foreign concept to my engineering mind, both should know I dearly love them.

I fully subscribe to the fact that history repeats itself and we can best understand our future by studying our past. That doesn’t explain why the teachers seemed more intent on having us memorize dates and facts that have little or no bearing on the concepts and lessons we can learn from history.

Does it really matter what year Columbus sailed for the Americas? Do I really need to know who the 15^th president was? History exams aside, I have yet to encounter a single situation where knowing those facts were critical to a decision and if I ever do, I’ll consult Wikipedia rather than rely on my memory.

I know Eli Whitney invented the cotton gin. I barely know what a cotton gin is. I know nothing of the impact of the cotton gin on the economy or the forces that caused it to be invented. I know nothing about the prior art or who the mechanic was that constructed it. Don’t they deserve credit too?

I think our educational system has given up on us (maybe on itself too) and is attempting to get us to memorize little factoids that are easy test us on. This makes us feel good about our knowledge and gives the educational system a way to score themselves.

I know, even getting people to remember those factoids seems like a victory of sorts, only now I’m starting to understand what I wasn’t taught.

I have to give my wife credit for much of my knowledge. She could tell me when the Battle of Hastings was, she could give me the exact date for any battle in the Civil War but along with that she understands why they occurred. She knows what the social and economic pressures were that caused these battles. The most I got out of school was that the Civil War was over slavery. What a shallow response to a very complex time in history. It comes across as an easily graded answer on a test though.

As I write this, I’m beginning to feel cheated. All those hours I spent in classrooms memorizing dates and names with little or no regard for the driving forces. All that time I felt I was learning something that takes my iPad 30 seconds to pull up. Its only use was to provide a test grade, telling the world I was capable of memorizing boring facts.

The comment about history repeating itself is often used as justification to teach us history. Yet I don’t believe George Washington will ever be re-elected, 1492 is not likely to repeat itself and Eli Whitney has had his moment in the spotlight of fame, let him rest.

Despite what I’ve said, I don’t blame the teachers, I blame the educators. In the self-serving interests of making their functions look important, they’ve decided to teach us simple tricks and have us feel we accomplished something when we remember them. It’s much easier to test.

I also feel we bear some of the blame. Multiple choice questions are always better than essay questions. It is easier to memorize a date 12 hours before a big test and forget it an hour after the test. Do I really care what caused the collapse of the Roman civilization or can I get by just memorizing when Caesar was killed?

Maybe, just maybe, I do care. If I don’t, I might not even get a chance to wish I had.

When my aunt asked me why I was blocking her on my website, I was fairly sure she was wrong. This wasn’t the first time she had problems with my site.  About six months ago when I started using Wordfence she complained that I was blocking her. I checked the Wordfence forums to see if anyone else was having problems but there was nothing about random people being blocked. I assumed I had a setting in Wordfence wrong so I cleared all the blocked IP addresses and she was able to see my website again.

Two weeks ago, when I was being flooded by zombies trying to log into my website, I bumped my security up a notch by modifying my .htaccess file. I’ll be the first to admit that I barely understand the script I used. I did a cut and paste to make sure I wasn’t introducing any problems. My readership isn’t large enough that I can afford to block anyone coming to actually read my posts.

Apparently the changes I made caused her to be classified a webcrawler and were denying her access. I studied the changes I had made, decided I didn’t understand the new .htaccess script well enough to be sure so I went back to the old script and had her try again. She tried again and was still blocked.

To add to the mystery, her attempt to reach my site did not show up in my logs. With the .htaccess script active, she would be blocked before I logged the attempt but once I removed the script, I should have seen her attempt in my logs. This made no sense at all.

Fortunately my Aunt enjoys a good mystery and was willing to help. The next day she tried accessing various pages on my site using three different browsers. All three browsers were blocked from my front page but she could go directly to any other page. My log files were no help. They were showing her coming from pages that I had no record of her visiting. I was only seeing a third of her visits.

It was while I was in the thought stimulation chamber (shower) that the pieces fell into place. Somehow my webpages were being cached and she was seeing the cached results of someone else’s visit. Either she was using an Internet accelerator that used a common caching scheme or her Internet provider was using an ISP cache.

Caching is certainly nothing new. If you’re a provider with limited bandwidth, it makes sense to cache all the requests that come through and only download new pages you don’t have in cache. I discussed this with my Aunt, confirmed that she was not using an internet accelerator and gave her a way to test the theory.

Sure enough, if she tried to enter my site with Opinionbypen.com she was blocked. Today’s message was that her browser was too old. I started blocking IE6 and below long ago when I saw the correlation between IE6 and visitors trying new exploits on my site. My Aunt was getting the same message using Chrome, IE9 and Firefox.  She was able to visit my site if she used Opinionbypen.com/?=123. The ?=123 looked like a new page to the cache manager and my site ignores it.

Sure enough, her Internet provider was using an ISP cache. Under other circumstances this would have been transparent but since someone else, using the same provider, was being blocked by my site, her provider was serving her the blocked message instead of my website.

This also explained how she was able to visit my website without being in my logs. Her provider was not requesting new pages from my site, they were already in the ISP cache. Understanding this explained a lot of the anomalies I would see when looking through the logs.

I don’t know how long her Internet provider caches pages but after the cache expired, the sequence of events would go something like this. If the attempted hacker were the first person to visit my site they would get a blocked message and the ISP cache handler would assume it was a valid response. The next time someone visited my site the cache handler would not query my site, it would instead send the same blocked message. If my aunt were the first visitor, everyone else for that day would see the same valid webpage that she had seen, all thanks to the magic of ISP caching.

Caching also explained why I wasn’t seeing all her visits. Because her ISP only loaded my pages once each cache period, I would only see her visit a page once a day even if she went back to my home page several times. Even then, I would only see it in my logs if she were the first visitor through her ISP to that page.

Only one mystery remained. Who was this person causing so much grief for me? Knowing they were using IE6 and which pages were blocked to my Aunt should allow me to pinpoint my visitor. It was easy but the only IP address using IE6, visiting the sites that were blocked, is registered in Germany. There’s no question that it was a direct match but my Aunt doesn’t live anywhere near Germany nor should German traffic come through her Internet provider.

I’ll report the issue to her provider and let them chase that mystery. I’m happy, my Aunt knows I wasn’t blocking her and I understand my log files a lot better.

At a basic level, using Poser is like creating a scene using wooden puppets. I start out with a basic figure, add hair, clothing, a few basic props and position them to make the scene. The more joints in the puppet, the more lifelike you can make the poses. Poser works the same way, although with virtual puppets you can make them look like anything you want. Here my puppets are made of wood, dead leaves and water.

Just like you can with puppets, you can make your own figures and props but that takes a little more skill.

Still sound interesting? There are a number of ways to get started without spending a lot of money. Poser Debut lists for $50 and can often be gotten for much less. If you’re willing to wait, you can often find it free at Fry’s after a mail in rebate. Daz3D offers a similar program for free. Many of the 3d models are interchangeable between the two programs.

Daz offers their program free to encourage you to buy premade models from their site. Poser costs more but starts you out with more models. Both programs have strong capabilities. The best advice I can give is don’t try to learn both simultaneously like I did. Pick one or the other and stay with it long enough to feel comfortable. I decided to continue with Poser because I was more comfortable with the controls.

There are a number of people out there making some very good 3d models for these programs. Some of these are free and some of these are very expensive. As I said earlier, you also have the option of making your own models but that’s an advanced topics.

Of course the first thing I did was Google free 3D files and start downloading. That was a rude awakening, I had no idea what they meant when they discussed obj files, pose files and texture files. When they added morphs, rigging and boning, I was totally lost. How does a rope have bones and why? Most of the files I obtained were zipped and I had no idea where all the files went. Nor did I verify that the files were compatible with Poser. I managed to obtain a lot of completely useless files before I started to catch on.

Simon – Naked male from Poser
I learned my lesson

While we’re discussing models, I may as well bring up the topic of nudity. The majority of your human models start out nude and you have to get used to working with them that way. Both programs do their best to reduce overt nudity but you will have to get used to it. Explaining to your wife that it’s easier to arrange naked female figures is not the best way to end an evening.

I finally realized it was much easier to get my models from a few professional suppliers. They look better, are usually complete and don’t cause as many problems. You still have to read very carefully what you are acquiring.  Standard practice is to sell a base figure as a package and then sell other packages based on the same figure but using different textures or morphs.

Once again I managed to acquire a lot of files I couldn’t use. I had poses without the base fixture, I had textures with nothing to apply them to and I had hair that refused to fit on any model I had. I might be able to use them someday, I only need to buy a few more files. When you buy a 3d model, make sure you know if it has prerequisites.

The easiest way to show the file differences is visually. This is the object file for a bird as it looks in Poser. The little dials on the right allow me to move the wings, head, body and even the beak.

 A pose file sets the dials to preset levels to achieve a desired position. This can be done manually but it’s usually easier to use pose close to the final and make fine adjustments from there.

 Now the bird is looking at us but it still looks like a plaster of Paris sculpture. Time to add texture.

Texture adds color and shape to the bird. It’s starting to look like a real bird. If for some reason you don’t like cardinals, changing the texture gives us a totally different bird.

I don’t like the way the pose has the eyes closed and I’ve yet to see a robin that skinny. Here’s where I use the dials to morph (change) those features. Having premade morphs often distinguish professional 3d models from the free ones. In this case the artist supplied the morphs I wanted. A few seconds later and my robin is wide-eyed and fat.

He’s a nice looking bird but he needs a few props to give perspective. Add a bird bath and some grass and we have a real scene.

 I could stop here but this scene looks too sterile. Now all I have to do is copy this bird a few times and apply a few different poses and textures. One last step, once I have a scene that I like, I have to render it. This is where Poser or Daz calculates how the objects look in the light and reflections from each object. A good rendering can take several hours but makes a huge difference in appearance.

 The picture above would have taken me less than an hour to make if I weren’t creating it as I wrote.

If you’re interested in pursuing this further, here are some of the vendors I deal with:

Contentparadise.com – This is Smith Micro’s (Poser developer) storefront. They have a number of free and paid 3d models. They also have a number of free tutorials on using Poser.

www.Daz3d.com – Free DAZ3D Studio and some very nice 3d models. The birds above and the birdbath both came from Daz3d. They often have free models and specials. Not surprisingly, they have a number of free tutorials on Daz Studio. They also support Bryce, another very interesting art package.

www.Poserworld.com – Poserworld operates on the subscription model. You subscribe to them for a month, a lifetime or anything in-between. As a subscriber you can download all the 3d models you want. They release new models frequently. They will consider special requests and provide a number of useful tutorials.

www.Renderosity.com – I like Renderosity. They have a wide variety of packages and free packages. They run a lot of specials. When I need an unusual scene or special effects, I start with Renderosity.

www.ShareCG.com – ShareCG is a good place for aspiring artists to show off their efforts. Everything is free but you have cognizant of the rights given to you by the packages. Some are for personal use only and some are free to use for both commercial and personal. I’ve found some very good 3d models and some very mediocre. The grass in my picture came from HoboBo on ShareCG. On April 25, 2013 they announced a Poser sweepstakes and they are offering a free 30 day version of Poser to get familiar with Poser in preparation for a contest.

PzDB – PzDB is not a site, it’s a program that makes it easy to keep track of all the models you acquire. When I passed 100 files I was lost and found it increasingly difficult to find my 3d models. Now I only do a search followed by a drag and drop. I highly recommend it.

You might also enjoy seeing some of the other pictures I’ve developed over time. You can a rapid improvement as I started using Poser more and more. Poser Gallery

If you haven’t already, please go read the post. I’ll wait right here for you…

Welcome back. You took a little longer than I expected so I added a few more zombies to my picture. I’ll explain how it ties in later.

I may have to revise my opinion on attorneys, this man is absolutely right. You can’t start out with the belief that a person is competent and has your best interests at heart. Trust is something that should be earned.

I could add a few of my own observations supporting his view but I believe he’s done an excellent job of covering the subject and that’s not quite what I want to cover today. If you’ve read this far you’re showing some amount of trust in me, sooner or later I will say something interesting, funny or actually get to the point.

Actually you’ve already shown an amazing amount of trust in me if you followed the link I provided at the start of this post. I hope you already know there’s people out there waiting for you to follow the wrong link, or click the wrong icon on an email someone sent you.

I’m always amazed by the people that seem so smart and yet are so helpless when it comes to exercising a little caution in opening an email or clicking on a link. Yes, you have a firewall, a virus checker and who knows what else protecting your computer. The problem is all those programs are helpless when you decide you just have to open that file with information on how to collect your winnings, on that lottery ticket, that you never bought.

I can’t count the number of conversations I’ve had with people telling me they don’t worry about such things. After all, they don’t do on-line banking, they don’t have anything secret on their computer. They only use their computer to browse the web, play games and exchange email.

There’s a reason I always delete their emails without reading them. I don’t trust them. I might trust the people but I can’t afford to trust anything that comes from their computer. I do on-line banking, I do on-line shopping. I like having a bank balance above zero and a credit card that isn’t maxed out. I’m fairly sure that whatever is residing on their computer has other ideas for my financial stability.

Until recently I didn’t care what these people did. It’s fairly easy to delete their emails. This week I started seeing for myself how those machines were used when they started trying to log into my Opinionbypen account. When a computer is taken over by a virus or trojan, it’s often called a zombie. I’m not sure of the exact reasons but it certainly fits.

Each turned computer then tries to infect all the computers it interacts with. Meanwhile you have a zombie master giving instructions to all these zombies. Want to do a denial of service attack? Just tell all the zombied computers to start doing web requests at the same time. With enough zombies it’s easy.

Want to break into a website and use it’s bandwidth for more spamming and DoS attacks?  Just give the zombies a dictionary, point them at a website and say go. The infinite monkeys theory says that sooner or later they will be successful and it goes a lot faster when we use weak passwords.

This week the zombies have been particularly aggressive with WordPress sites. I would not be surprised if the log-in attempts on my site numbered in the 10’s of thousands this week. It’s nothing personal, it never is with zombies, but if they can infect my site, they will exploit the level of trust you have with me and attempt to infect you.

Please exercise some caution when you open that email or go visit a new site. Invest in a good virus checker and firewall. It’s nothing personal but I really don’t want to become a zombie.

While I’m on the subject, I will admit that one of my pet peeves are the publishers selling ebooks for the same price as a paperback. To me this is simply greed. There are several very good authors that I’ve abandoned because of that greed, Robin Hobb and Ilona Andrews are two that come to mind. (As I wrote this, I checked Robin Hobb and bought her Dragon Series, volume 2 and 3 because of recent price drops.)

I’ve never heard a reasonable justification for this pricing. I did hear one of the publishers call it a convenience fee. Greed is greed, I find it hard to believe that it costs more to distribute an ebook than a paperback. I’ll agree that an ebook is easier to pirate resulting in possible lost revenue. Then again, a paperback will probably be loaned to several people and then sold or given away.

On one hand, the publishers look like greedy politicians. On the other, the publishers are charging me more because I might be a thief. I really don’t care, there are a lot of very good books without all this baggage.

That’s the way I used to think.

Three years ago, while I was reading volume five of The Dresden Files by Jim Butcher, I was loaning out volumes one through three to anyone that had any interest in fantasy. People were beginning to call me “The Pusher” because I got them hooked on the series and then expected them to buy their own books after volume three. As it usually happens, I loaned them out one too many times and they never came home. No more converts.

If you do math the way the MPAA does, I cheated Mr. Butcher and his publisher out of over 15 book sales. What did happen was that people who had never read The Dresden Files and probably never would, ended up hooked on the series and shared it with others. My simple act probably sold over 100 books that would not be sold otherwise.

This week I started reading another series that reminded me of The Dresden Files. Monster Hunter International by Larry Correia has a similar pace feel and character development. Of course I immediately thought of all the people I had hooked on the Dresden Files. Except, I can’t loan my books anymore.

I’ve converted to ebooks and right now there’s not a good way to loan ebooks, especially across platforms. I can tell them how good the book is but unless they actually have it in their possession, they’re probably not going to read it.

I appreciate it that Amazon will often give away or discount heavily the first book in a series but it’s not the same. My Kindle is cluttered with free books that I might read someday. A loan carries with it an obligation to read the book and return it. A loaned book is far more likely to be read than a free book.

Why do I care? Books should be shared.  Being able to discuss a book or series with a group of people you respect allows you to see aspects and specifics that you might have missed or misinterpreted. It’s also a great way to kept up to date on any upcoming releases from the author.

I haven’t changed my mind about the publishers greed but I am realizing that an ebook just doesn’t have the marketing power of a paperback. Maybe the publishers are justified in charging me the same as a paperback they just don’t know why. No, now they come across as greedy and clueless.

I hope that someone works out a way to loan ebooks soon but until then, trust me, if you like slightly off beat fantasy, grab a copy of Monster Hunter International. You’ll enjoy it. I’d also recommend Dresden Files but his publisher seems to have decided he doesn’t want my Kindle business.

Curse you Larry Correia, I will never see elves in the same light again.

Forgive me for not realizing how all the pieces went together, I was young, but I assumed that the library paid the librarians and the library bought all the books so the authors were also paid. It never occurred to me that the few fines I paid were far too little to support the library, I was too busy deciding what to take home next.

Fast forward to today. Rather than planning an afternoon at the library, I bring up the Internet and Google whatever subject I’m looking for. I might find the information on YouTube or in a blog or in Wikipedia. If the subject is complicated I may browse to Amazon for a book on the subject.

If I’m only looking for entertainment, I start with the Kindle books on Amazon. Once again I really never put much thought into how much work goes into making all that information available to me. That all changed recently.

If you spend any time in Texas,  you’ll soon think it’s a state law that each family has to own a pickup. Fortunately my wife really likes her pickup, using it to carry horse feed, hay, agility equipment and the odd piece of lumber for maintenance on the farm.

When she called me on her way to Houston and told me that it sounded like raccoon with a hammer was trapped behind the dash, I was able to locate a YouTube video with the same sound within five minutes. Another ten minutes and I knew it was covered by warranty, was only annoying and that it was also related to her air conditioner not working. With that information, she was able to compete in her show without worrying about her engine falling out on the way back home.

Let’s take a moment to go back through this, someone put the video of their truck making this sound on YouTube, several people had videos of what it took to replace the parts, several more people had written in various forums describing the sound, telling us what years were in warranty and even how long it took. With the exception of one person on YouTube  selling a kit, none of the contributors stood to make any money.

I doubt that any of them know that they saved the weekend for my wife. Every one of these people took the time to make this information available to people like me. Of course I sat down and wrote everyone of them a deep thank you for all the time, effort and concern they saved me. Well, I thought about it. I should have done it.

And there’s my point, we don’t thank them, not nearly enough. These people had nothing to sell, they went out of their way to provide information, and we can’t take the time to thank them.

Yes, I know it’s hard. You usually have to set up an account and give your email address to give a response. Once you do that, it’s only a matter of time before your address gets sold and you get flooded with spam. That’s your only excuse?

You don’t have to give your real name. Most of the time you don’t even have to give a real email address. If you’re really concerned, you can use Google, Yahoo or even Microsoft for a spare email address. I’ve found that using slight variants of my name when I sign up allows me to see where the spam originated.

Why do so few of us leave a simple thank you?

When I look at forums and the comments people leave, I can see one reason people don’t want to participate. It seems like the people posting comments are more interested in discussing the rules of grammar than actually showing appreciation for the effort to make information available. Yep, I don’t even want to be on the same column as those losers.

While I justify all that to myself, I have two stray thoughts. The only reason those people went to the effort of providing that information was in hope of someone saying thanks and in my post on Apathy I said you have to speak out for what you believe. This is our neighborhood and a few thank you comments might go a long way to improve our community.

Pardon me, I have to stop here. I have a video on YouTube and a few posts on air conditioner diverter doors that I need to hunt down and leave comments. It’s time to speak up, if only to say Thanks.

I was amazed, all these weeks I’ve been thinking that Congress had no clue about math or science and they’ve had the answer all along.

Using the same established accounting principles that Congress used to give us our World Class Health Care, we can lower gas prices by a factor of four and easily get 100 miles per gallon.

Enough grandstanding, the solution is simple, all we need to do is redefine the size of a gallon. Take the current gallon and call it a jumbo gallon. Now redefine a quart as a gallon. I never saw the need for a quart any way. Think about it, overnight the price of gas will drop by four. This will also make my wife happy because it will also cut the cost of milk.

I can hear the scientists and mathematicians now, “You’ve changed nothing. You’re just making it sound better”. They would be right if we left it there. You’ve probably already realized that this would also cut your mileage by four. Once again, letting Congress lead the way, all we have to do is redefine the length of a mile too.

If we redefine a mile as 208.7103 feet, we multiple the current mile by slightly over 25. Now an acre is exactly one square mile and you will be getting over 150 miles per gallon on the new gallon system!! Added benefit, students can now remember the relationship between a square mile and an acre.

Think about it, overnight we can lower gas prices and improve gas mileage for everyone. All by using the same established accounting practices Congress is using to balance the budget, provide for Social Security and don’t forget our World Class Health Care.

I’m still hearing a few naysayers out there. I extended my time in the thought simulation chamber just to consider all the confusion and chaos this would cause. I wasn’t making progress until I realized I was still thinking like an engineer.  Once I shifted into politician mode, the answer was easy. This isn’t a flaw, it’s actually an additional benefit of my plan.

These changes would create a huge number of jobs as people corrected maps, signs, labels and standards to bring us into modern times. By the time the changes had been made, the economy would be going strong.  All thanks to the lower gas prices and the increased mileage everyone was getting.

There may be a few more small details to work out but after she read this, my wife has restricted my time in the thought simulation chamber.

Never mind that in order to get my coupon I had to come up with proof of my original purchase, give my name, address, a valid email address and sign away all future rights. I’ve never quite understood how they were able to include me in their class action suit but seem to have completely forgotten everything about me in the settlement. You would think they were gathering names for mailing lists.

Come to think about it, I could probably get better discounts just by cutting out the lawyer middlemen and signing up on a few mailing lists. I’d retain more rights too.

I’ve even opted out of a few class action suits. It wasn’t that I thought I could get a better deal if I represented myself, I only did it to annoy the lawyers and cut their take by a small amount. That is, I did until the lawyers got smart and made you really have to work to opt out.

If you haven’t read King of Torts by John Grisham, you’ve missed a great read and an excellent insight into class action suits. The short version is that the law firms take is based on the number of people they represent in the suit. The law firms tend to care more about the number of people they can represent than the merits of the case. The more people they represent, the more money the law firm makes and unlike us, they don’t get paid in coupons.

In the example I made up for this discussion, the law firm wants to sue the bicycle tire manufacturer because the tires were advertised as 24 inches, and they are actually only 23.8 inches. Since the tires only sell for $16 each, the law firm can’t make any money with only one client. If they can convince the judge they represent two million clients with two tires each, the law firm stands to make a significant amount of money, in addition to their standard fees.

The only winners most class action suits are the law firms. Whatever discounts the consumers are given are offset by the companies raising their prices to pay the lawyers in the settlement. This is all justified because the companies are duly punished for their heinous crimes against humanity and will change their wicked ways.

You might have the impression I hate class action suits and you would be right. As much as I hate them, I also believe that they are a necessary evil. Maybe with just a few changes in the rules everyone can benefit.

Consider this, we really don’t need any more discount coupons. The cost to validate and distribute the discount coupons is probably higher than the value of the coupons. Lets just do away with that part. Unless the compensation is greater than $897 per person, just give the money directly to the US Government. (In case you wondered, I’m using the IRS method of setting arbitrary dollar amounts as thresholds.)

This puts the law firm working for the US Government. With the Government’s skills in setting doctor fees in Medicare, the lawyer fees are going to drop dramatically. We still want to punish the evildoers that say 23.8 inchs is 24 inches by encouraging punitive damages. The lawyers still need incentive so we give them 12.2 percent (IRS method again) of the punitive damages and give the rest to the US Treasury.

Lower lawyer fees, more money in the treasury, punishment for the evildoers, this could work. Wake up your Congressman, this could help our budget and it’s certainly more feasible than some of the ideas they’ve come up with.