LameList!

Girl Scout cookie season is upon us.  Last year I wrote that I was disgusted that the cookies still contained partially hydrogenated oils, yet the Girl Scout HQ folks proudly proclaim the cookies to be trans fat free because each unrealistic serving size is below the FDA lame definition that .5g per miniscule serving equals 0 grams transfat.  

So, instead of buying cookies , I simply donated cash and said to please keep the cookies so as not to punish the kids.

This year, same lame story.   Again, I’ll donate cash and tell them to keep the cookies.  I’ll also promote recipes for homemade Girl Scout cookies from BakingBites.com who expresses thoughts I share:

The other day, I expressed some concern over the fact that (a) Girl Scout cookies still have trans fats in them because they are made with hydrogenated shortening instead of, say, butter and (b) Girl Scout cookies don’t taste all that great any more – especially considering that the price per box has gone up and the size of the cookies seems to have gone down. I mentioned that I wanted to make my own Girl Scout Cookies and decided that I would go for it! This week, I’ll be featuring recipes for three of my favorites – these, Samoas and Tagalongs - and (if you’re lucky) I might throw in a bonus recipe, as well, though you can find a Thin Mint recipe in the archives if you want even more. 

Microsoft overpaid severance to some of the workers it recently laid off.  Now it wants the extra money back.

This letter is to inform you that an inadvertent administrative error occurred that resulted in an overpayment of severance pay by Microsoft. We ask that you repay the overpayment and sincerely apologize for any inconvenience to you

Some laid off workers may have beeen underpaid.

Is this a feature or a bug?  Get your copy of  MS Payroll 2009 (requires Vista).

Edited on Feb. 15:

This free download ended after Valentine’s Day, so the old link is now invalid. There are lots more Marvin Gaye MP3 Albums

For Valentine’s Day Eve and Valentine’s Day only, a free MP3 download of Marvin Gaye’s “Let’s Get It On” (from amazon.com)

Sneak it onto your sweetie’s playlist. It will be our little secret that it is free.

Zombies are among us. We just did not know the zobmies were associated with highway departments.

This portable traffic sign near the University of Austin in Texas was hacked according to Fox News.  

i-hacked.com has the details (and provided the photo):

some commercial road signs, including (this one), can be easily altered because their instrument panels are frequently left unlocked and their default passwords are not changed. 

“Programming is as simple as scrolling down the menu selection,” i-hacked.com reports. “Type whatever you want to display … In all likelihood, the crew will not have changed [the password].”

Of course, you should never tamper with such signs. Even i-hacked says so. The details are just for general interest and amusement.  

Super Bowl. Super Bowl. Super Bowl. There I said it: “Super Bowl!”  Ha.

The NFL so closely restricts the use of the words Super Bowl that companies resort to using euphemisms in place of the real words “Super Bowl.”

Wikipedia notes that one use of euphemism is “to avoid revealing secret, holy, or sacred names to the uninitiated.”  In the Super Bowl case it is besause companies did not pay huge licensing fees required to legally utter the words Super Bowl. 

A few examples from recent emails include these euphamistic subject lines: “This Year Watch The Game In Style!” (Costco), “Gather with friends for the greatest Sunday in Sports!” (Pottery Barn).   There are lots more. You get the point.

Funny, search Google for “the big game” and the #1 result is from WikiPedia: “The Big Game is the annual game between University of California, Berkeley (known simply as “Cal” or “Berkeley”) and Stanford University.  Contrary to local opinion, there is life beyond the Bay Area.

A websites robots.txt file tells search engines what they should and should not index.  When the robots.txt file lists a path or file as ‘Disallow,’ then the search engine will not index that location and it will not show up in searches.

The robots.txt for the Bush White House website was nearly 2,400 lines and included things like:

Disallow: /omb/search
Disallow: /expectmore/search
Disallow: /911/heroes/text

On and on for nearly 2,400 lines.

Obama’s robots.txt in its entirety:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /includes/

Thats it, thats the whole thing.

Tax dollars have been hard at work  play.  Some of those high profile sponsors of college football bowl games were big recipients of TARP bailout money. 

Who is enriched? Follow a simplified money trail.  Your tax dollars … to the government … to banks in the form of a bailout … to ad agencies … to TV … to the NCAA … to the coffers of rich college athletic programs.

In a WSJ article “The Bailout Bowl: Big-Game Sponsors Scored Billions,” we get some numbers and great quotes.

Citigroup: sponsor of the “Rose Bowl Game Presented by Citi,” recipient of $25 billion capital plus another $25 billion investment in bailout money. (Also purchaser of naming rights to the Mets’ new stadium, Citi Field.)

Bank of America: sponsor of the Pioneer Las Vegas Bowl, recipient of $15 billion from TARP.

U.S. Bancorp: sponsor of the Roady’s Humanitarian Bowl

Eagle Bancorp: sponsor of the EagleBank Bowl, recipient of $38.2 million from TARP

GMAC: sponsor of the GMAC Bowl

Capital One: sponsor of the Capital One Bowl

Some great quotes:

“Some of the advertising folks at these firms might think it’s important to put their corporate brand on public events, but taxpayers might think they’re being taken for a ride,” said Pete Sepp, vice president for policy and communications at the National Taxpayers Union.

Rep. Scott Garrett (R., N.J.) ,,, questioned why banks — which reportedly aren’t using federal funds to lend to consumers as intended — need to sponsor nationally televised sporting events. “The irony is these guys aren’t lending to people, so what are they advertising for?” Mr. Garrett said.

“There’s interestingly zero sense of shame” from banks paying for vanity advertising, said Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform.

There has always been big money in college sports (in recent history at least), mainly for the top men’s major sports programs, primarily football and basketball. The big money part is not new.

Federal funding of college bowl games is the new twist. Hopefully, a backlash of consumer sentiment will cause these recipeients of bailout money to spend less on advertising and more on lending and shoring up their businesses.

Karl Rove’s  opinion piece in the WSJ “Bush Is a Book Lover”  explains alot about the past 8 years. The article tells us about the vast quantities of books that he and Bush have read each year for the past few years.

Rove and Bush had a contest of sorts to see who could read the most books.  For 2006, Rove writes:

At year’s end, I defeated the president, 110 books to 95. 

Fifty-eight of the books he (Bush) read that year were nonfiction. Nearly half of his 2006 reading was history and biography, with another eight volumes on current events (mostly the Mideast) and six on sports.

In 2007, Rove won, 76 books to 51.  Thus far in 2008, it’s Rove 64, Bush 40.

We all have 24 hours in a day. Bush does not have to do laundry, cook, drive to the office, do the grocery shopping, etc. so, granted, he does have some discretionary time that most of us regular folks do not. But, my word! That’s a lot of time spent curled up with a book.

Imagine a world where Bush read “only” half the 110 books.

In 2006, that means he still would have read 55 books. Instead of reading 55, imagine he used that time to read briefings.  Briefings on defense issues. On financial, economic issues. Domestic issues such as our educational system, unemployment, technology, et al. 

Now let’s take those 55 books we let him read in 2006 and sprinkle in a few highly relevant books about financial markets.  

Here is a proposed reading list. Imagine if Bush had read some of these relevant books (mouse over for a photo of the book cover and more info):

• The Misbehavior of Markets: A Fractal View of Financial Turbulence
• The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable
• The Bill from the China Shop: How Asia’s Savings Glut Threatens the World Economy
• The Dollar Crisis: Causes, Consequences, Cures , Revised and Updated
• Nexus: Small Worlds and the Groundbreaking Theory of Networks
• Anatomy of the Bear: Lessons from Wall Street’s Four Great Bottoms
• Tomorrow’s Gold: Asia’s age of discovery

With the remaining time left, let’s suppose Bush pondered. That is, just thought about things. Thought them through. Think about it.

Today, my email inbox taunts me with subjects like:

There’s Still Time! Rush shipping extended on great gifts …
Christmas Gift Baskets in Time For Christmas
Last Chance for Christmas Delivery
Get Delivery by Christmas …
Last Day to Order Gifts in Time for Holiday Delivery 

That last one is from the company that I placed a toy order with on December 15th. I have little hope of receiving it because of the snowstorm that slammed our area.  Nothing is moving in and out and around our fair city.

I have become too reliant on our nation’s delivery infrastructure. Although I placed all orders by December 15th, my gifts have little hope of arriving.  My favorite status message is “Your package has experienced an exception.” Threw an exception.  Funny sad to us software geeks.

 I do my Christmas shopping online while the rest of the household sleeps and the house is quiet.  Now, it’s 1:15 am. I need a gift for my dad.  A HomeDepot gift card would be just the thing.  

He really would like it. It’s not just me being lame.  He’s that kind of dad, a real fix-it-up chappie (a Dr. Seuss character).  Behold, the online shopping experience during the wee hours. 

“Temporarily offline … visit one of our … stores” Gee how convenient.

Fortunately, fewer sites have been down during the night this year. It was a bigger problem last year.  

Lowe’s is open for business. They get the sale. Cha-ching for them.