Hello gardeners and hot pepper fans. It’s time for the sixth update for the 2008 garden season.

When I posted Garden Update #5, we had just about completed the final transplant for most of the peppers, going from cell packs to styrofoam cups to 7-inch pots, and finally landing in assorted 5 to 7 gallon pots.

It has been about six weeks since then, and everything is going very well. Vigorous growth continues on most of the plants, bacterial spot has been kept mostly at bay, and insect pests are almost non-existent.

And man oh man have we already harvested a ton of peppers! We’ve given them to three of our neighbors, the owner of a local restaurant where we eat, and all of Jaime’s coworkers. We had a hot pepper taste test with my my nieces and nephew (age 8,9,10– and they all loved the peppers, the hotter the better). We’ve cooked a ton of hot food, and we’ve made some tabasco-style hot sauce (only 10x hotter).

Time for the photos.

First up, my makeshift drying station. Yeah, yeah, it’s a card table and a black trash bag. But hey, it’s going to be 101 today. It seems like a good time as any to start drying the paprika peppers, and the other peppers we harvested over the weekend. Since we harvested these a few days ago, I can’t send them out to friends because they would be rotten by the time they arrived. I can’t stand to let my peppers rot in the kitchen, so time to dry.

Working from top to bottom, left to right:

Hungarian Sweet Paprika (2 rows)
Spicy Mustard Habanero (far right)
Tabasco Pepper
Thai Chili
Long Red Slim Cayenne
Grocery store variety (but homegrown) Scotch Bonnet
Hot Paprika

Once the Paprika peppers are dry, I plan on smoking half of them before grinding, leaving me with hot paprika, sweet paprika, smoked hot paprika, and smoked sweet paprika. Mmmmmmm…!

These next two shots are of the main pepper rows, one from each end:

White Habanero:

Spicy Mustard Habanero:

Caribbean Red Habanero:

I had some shots of the fluorescent purple pepper, but they didn’t turn out too well, as were the pictures of my medusa pepper. I’ll get some new shots soon.

And by the way, if my pepper plants look wet in those pictures, that is because I had just completed my weekly spraying. I’ve made my own special spray that I’m trying out. 2 tablespoons liquid copper as an anti-fungal, 2 tablespoons paraffin oil as a pesticide, and 2 tablespoons fish emulsion as a foliar fertilizer to one gallon of water.

And by the way, if you’re interested in my soil mix, I ended up settling on:

5 gallons potting mix (Miracle Grow or Sta-Green)
1 gallon perilite
2 tablespoons controlled release fertilizer with micro-nutrients
2 tablespoons bone meal (for calcium and phosphorous).

That’s all for now. Update #7 coming in the semi-near future!

A couple of weeks ago, Jaime and I stopped at a dollar store that was in the process of going out of business. They had slashed prices and were now a half-dollar store.

We bought one of the items shown below. They’re sink screen, and we’re using the larger one in our claw foot cast iron bathtub to prevent hair from clogging the drain.

The packaging on this is classic lost-in-translation:

(Click to Enlarge)

HEALTHY LIFE! HAPPY LIFE! will take your health responsibility by the superlative quality

Well thank goodness– I’ve always wanted to take my health responsibility to the superlative quality, and this seems like just the product to do it!

Haha!

Get this.

We bought a brand new car, as you already know if you read my blog. We bought the car down in Jacksonville, mainly because we had a straight-forward salesman (Bobby Mitchell from Hyundai of North Jacksonville) and because the dealership had a huge selection of Elantras.

When we bought the car, we were told to wait a week or two before we headed to the DMV to get our license plate. I waited… uhh… 29 days. My temporary tag was to expire after tomorrow.

I went to the DMV today to get my plate transferred to the new car, and the title information has not yet been sent to the State of Georgia. Fine, no biggie. I suppose I can understand the delay when a Florida dealership is sending tax money (determined by county) and title information to a different state.

So I hand over my Florida temporary tag to the nice lady at the DMV, and she exchanges it for a Georgia temporary tag that is good for 30 days.

Now here’s the funny part.

The Georgia temporary tag is basically made out of the same material as a manilla folder– that card-stock like material that is a quite a bit thicker than normal paper, but not sealed in any form or fashion.

The lady at the DMV says something like, “Now, Georgia law requires that you put this on the back of the car where the license plate belongs, and not in the window. Since it’s made of paper, it will get ruined if it rains. You probably want to go to Kinkos and get it laminated.”

Whaaaaa…?!?! You mean to tell me that either some genius in the state legislature or some bureaucrat, or some combination of both, have mandated temporary tags that absorb water must be displayed on the outside of the car, exposed to the rain…?

Unbelievable. Believable.

Well, I just ate my last Breyers brand ice cream cone. I have no intentions of purchasing their ice cream again at any point in the future.

See, back in 2006, Breyers was acquired by Unilever, the same company that owns Ben & Jerry’s, Klondike bars, and the Fudgsicle and Popsicle brands.

A couple years back I noticed that my favorite Breyers flavor– coffee– had changed. I had been eating it as long as I could remember, and for some reason it seemed different. Unconsciously, I stopped buying it. I didn’t know exactly what was different about it, but to me it seemed as though it was more ice milk than ice cream. The creaminess was gone, and the flavor was off. I figured that they had started whipping more air into the product (I’m not going to call it ice cream), and that accounted for the change in texture and flavor.

Well, the other day, Jaime and I picked up a half gallon of Breyers, which in actuality is 25% less than a half gallon, coming in at 1.5 quarts by volume. I say by volume because they certainly are whipping much, much more air into the product than they used to. It’s pretty obvious– if you put your lips up to a cone and breath in, well… you can breath in. It’s definitely much, much more airy than it has ever been.

She hands me my cone the other day and says, “I had a hard time scooping it. It wouldn’t come out of the scoop like it normally does.” Now, when Jaime says that, I believe her. She worked at Baskin-Robbins for a while when she was in college, and I am absolutely certain she knows how to properly scoop ice cream.

So I scooped up a cone last night, and noticed the same thing. Granted, I’ve never scooped ice cream professionally, but I’m pretty sure I know how to ball up a scoop of ice cream. I’ve got lots of experience. When you scoop Breyers, it just doesn’t form into a nice ball like real ice cream should. It kind of flakes away and shreds up as you scoop, and getting it to take on any shape is virtually impossible.

As I walked upstairs with my cone last night, the Breyers had chunks fall off the cone four times. I had to stop, head back to the kitchen, get a paper towel, and clean the floor as I walked. Something was definitely wrong.

I ended up doing some research. At some point, Breyers changed their recipe from the standard ingredients. Instead of being pure, clean ice cream consisting of cream, milk, sugar, and vanilla, Breyers now adds something that they call “tara gum” to their product. Tara Gum, it turns out, is actually a product formulated from Caesalpinia Spinosa, which is some sort of tree or shrub. Either way, tara gum is not cream, it is not sugar, and it is not flavor; it has no business being in ice cream.

I did a search for something like Breyers doesn’t scoop and ended up at this page, a post from a site called A Daily Scoop. The post details the addition of tara gum and the company’s supposed reason for adding tara gum, and has a couple hundred comments from people who have no intentions upon purchasing Breyers again. If you are (were) a Breyer’s fan, it is definitely worth a skim.

Breyers says that the reason they added tara gum is that during shipment, ice cream that dips below the appropriate temperature and then is subsequently refrozen has a poorer texture. They say that they reformulated their recipes due to customer complaints. Well, the logical solution in that situation is to not let a dairy product such as ice cream get to a temperature that does not maintain its state of frozenness. Instead, though, Breyers has added tara gum instead of making sure their products are properly handled during transport. Likewise, my bet is that tara gum is cheaper than cream, and allows them to whip even more air into their product, thereby charging us for more air than cream.

I went over to as site run by Breyers, Ice Cream USA, and read the FAQ. I was always under the impression that FAQ stood for Frequently Asked Questions, but I can only deduce– from the number of comments on A Daily Scoop– that Breyers FAQ is actually Frequently Answered Questions. There is no mention of tara gum in their FAQ, no mention of the change in texture, and no mention of why the ice cream just doesn’t taste like it used to taste. Obviously, this question has been asked of them time and time again, yet it doesn’t make it to their FAQ.

Anyway, I’m not buying Breyers anymore. The flavor is different. The texture is different. It is just not right, at least according to my memory.

So what ice cream can I buy? None.

I can’t buy Ben & Jerrys ice cream because they’re owned by the same company, their products are way overpriced, their ice cream is loaded with too much crap like candy, swirls, and other kid-only ingredients, and I personally just don’t like their founders’ politics.

I can’t buy Häagen-Dazs, and it has nothing to do with their ice cream. A couple of years ago, I signed up for a coupon for a free container of their product. Like most free offers, I signed up using an email address that I could trace back if I were to receive spam on the account. To this day, I still receive email to haagen-dazs at mydomain.com. They obviously sold my email address, or had their mailing list servers compromised. I contacted them and they not only denied that they sold my information or had some sort of a security breach, but they denied they ever even offered a coupon! Yeah, riiiiiiiiiiight– a spammer just happened to make up the email address haagen-dazs. Pfft.

So, I’m planning on buying an ice cream maker. I’m not really interested in one of the makers that require you to freeze a container for hours on end. Those manufacturers of those machines don’t tell you that most residential freezers have to be set as low as possible, and likely can’t even get cold enough to properly freeze ice cream. Likewise, I’m not interested in some sort of salt-and-ice combo just to make some ice cream.

Here’s what I want: Cuisinart ICE-50BC Supreme Ice Cream Maker. Plug it in, add your ingredients, and turn it on. Once it’s soft serve, pop it in the freezer until it’s rock hard (that’s how I like my ice cream).

Either that or I’m going to have The Plush Horse pack some ice cream in dry ice and FedEx it to me.

I haven’t decided. But Breyers is definitely out for me, and if you like your ice cream to actually resemble ice cream, it should be out for you too.

I’ve setup a page with information regarding the 2008 presidential debates between John McCain and Barack Obama. If you’re interested in finding more information about the debates, check it out:

Presidential-Debates-2008.com

The page is still in active development. Here is the current to-do list:

• Fix navigation in IE6. Test(/fix) in IE7.
• Restyle top table on opening page for easier reading.
• Incorporate topics from AmericasDebate.com’s Election 2008 forum.
• Add more comparison links.
• Add to FAQ as necessary.
• Further cross-promote America’s Debate, America’s Debate Radio, and the America’s Debate Chat Room.

You can also access the page by going to Obama-McCain-Debate.com and… uhh… since the Democrats had a hard time picking their candidate, Clinton-McCain-Debate.com. They’ll be forwarded over shortly.

I would really appreciate it if you could link to the site. Here’s some code you can use, or feel free to make your own:

<a href=”http://www.presidential-debates-2008.com” name=”Obama vs. McCain: 2008 Presidential Debate Information” title=”Obama vs. McCain: 2008 Presidential Debate Information”>Obama vs. McCain: 2008 Presidential Debate Information</a>

The link will appear like this:

Obama vs. McCain: 2008 Presidential Debate Information

And if you just want to link to the site without all the extra text, you can use:

<a href=”http://www.presidential-debates-2008.com” name=”Obama vs. McCain: 2008 Presidential Debate Information” title=”Obama vs. McCain: 2008 Presidential Debate Information”>Presidential-Debates-2008.com</a>

…and it will appear like this:

Presidential-Debates-2008.com

Major League Baseball had this promotion wherein if you voted in the All-star game final vote, you would receive MLB.TV for free for seven days. MLB.TV allows you to watch pretty much every game, with the exception of games blocked by blackout restrictions.

So I voted the maximum number of times, even though their system didn’t tell me when I hit the limit. I counted, though– I voted 50+ times, and 25 was the max. I voted for Jermain Dye, who deserved to win but was bested by some freaking rookie.

Anyway, I received my email for the week-long MLB.TV promotion, and it had a link to click to activate the promotion. I clicked the link, and the page read: The redemption code you provided has already been used. Please verify and try again.

Odd. That was the first time I clicked the link. I tried playing the game, and it wouldn’t work. It was asking me to start a paid subscription.

So, then I thought that maybe the problem was that the email address I used was a disposable-type address (allstarvoting@mydomain.com), but my account was my generic info@mydomain.com. I created a new account for the allstarvoting address, clicked the link again, and tried to play the White Sox game. Nope, no go.

I tracked down the support phone number, buried in the website, and gave them a call. I held for 30 minutes before my call was answered. I knew they were getting slammed over this promotion.

Now, here’s the part that inspired the title. We all have heard the cliché. It’s as American as baseball and apple pie. Well, apparently the MLB needs a reminder of that phrase.

I would be lying if I said I wasn’t disappointed to find out that MLB has outsourced their customer service, but I would also be lying if I said I was surprised. It’s got to be hard to make ends meet for the MLB. They only make what… $25 minimum for a nosebleed seat at a taxpayer-subsidised stadium? They only charge what… $5 for a bottle of water, $6 for nachos, and $7 for a beer. I can see how they can’t afford to pay minimum-wage Americans to answer their phones, particularly when you consider the notoriously low salaries of the massively underpaid players.

Sarcasm, obviously. My meter is off the charts.

I mean, come on– the people whose organization consists of the American League and the National League certainly can’t be expected to employ Americans in the nation of America.

I ended up getting nowhere in my call, being told that I would have to check every 30 minutes to see if the video started working, or as an alternative I could check back in 24 hours. Good solution.

As the call wrapped up, I asked the guy to whom I was speaking where he was located. He hesitated, and reluctantly stated “the Philippines.”

Yeah. The MLB: As American as baseball and balut pie.

What a shame, what a shame. I’ll never, ever pay for MLB.TV so long as their call center is outside America. Hell, Canada would even be acceptable to me. But the Philippines?

I. Don’t. Think. So.

EDIT: So, my it turns out that my voting numbers were based on “test data” that was not marked as such. Grrr. Oh well, Barrow still sucks.

So I’m stuck being in John Barrow’s “district.” I put it in quotes because Congressman Barrow was originally elected as my representative when his home was actually located in the district. Unfortunately for him (and us), our district was redrawn.

So in 2006, Barrow had the option, from what I understand, of either remaining in his home and running without the benefit of incumbency, or moving in order to remain in the district to which he was elected to represent and take advantage of his incumbency.

Obviously, he chose to turn his back on where he actually resided and instead chose to exploit the power of being an incumbent, even if it meant having to move his home.

Well, he’s running for re-election. He’s obviously worried. Very worried. If early voting in Savannah is any indication, he won’t make it to the general election on the Democratic ticket. He’s losing to Savannahian Regina Thomas by a 2-1 margin in the Democratic primary.

Well, Barrow is currently and repeatedly shooting himself in the foot, and when you shoot yourself in the foot, it hurts.

He has a group of telemarketers– I’m not sure if they’re an outside firm or campaign volunteers– calling the residents of Savannah to convice them to vote for Barrow in the primary. Here’s how his callers appear on my caller ID:

Unknown Name
000-0000

First call, yesterday at 2:45PM. I didn’t answer.

Second call, yesterday at 4:16PM. I answered, and politely informed the caller that I didn’t like the fact that they spoofed caller ID data while calling constituents, and asked that they not call again.

Third call, today at 5:55PM, while I was eating dinner. I answered, “Is the the John Barrow campaign?” The caller was stunned. She said nothing. I asked, “Who is this?” She said, “I’m calling from the campaign to re-elect Congressman John Barrow…” I cut her off.

I informed her that I did not appreciate that they were fraudulently spoofing caller ID data, didn’t appreciate that they called me again after I asked them not to call again, and informed them that legislation has already passed the House outlawing caller ID spoofing with intent to defraud or cause harm (HR251, June 12, 2007, Truth in Caller ID Act of 2007). If the house actually had a recorded vote, my bet is that Barrow voted for the bill, but the ever-transparent and practically-zero-approval-rating Congress did a “voice vote,” where members’ votes are not recorded or available to their constituents.

Was I defrauded or caused harm? Well, it took my time to answer the call again. My dinner got cold. I had to go through the stress of informing my congressman’s campaign that they were being dishonest. Am I nitpicking? You bet. But the fact is that levels of “harm” are not differentiated in the bill. Causing me to, for example, have to pay 1/1,000,000 of a cent extra on my electric bill to charge my cordless phone after Barrow’s three calls is harm, just as much as if he were to come burn my house down. Harm is harm, and the bill fails to differentiate levels of harm.

So, Congressman Barrow, if you want my vote, and if you want to fight the stereotype of dishonest politicians, I recommend that you behave and conduct your campaing in the most honest possible fashion. And that includes making sure that people who work on your behalf are 100% honest as well.

Oh, and by the way, I’m on the do not call list. How nice that Congress exempted them from that law.

So our future most recent ex-president has decided to go to Beijing to attend the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games.

He is quoted in numerous news articles as saying that if he were to miss the opening ceremony, it “would be an affront to the Chinese people.”

I want to point out that according to both Jaime’s and my research, Bush did not attend the opening ceremony for the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens, Greece. Likewise, Bush did not attend the opening ceremony for the 2006 Olympic Games in Turin, Italy.

Was his lack of attendance at either the 2004 or 2006 Olympics an affront to the Greek or Italian people?

No. It was not.

Earth to President Bush: Nobody freaking cares where you go. Barring one final executive power grab– which I wouldn’t rule out just yet, alleged war on terror and all– President Bush has less than 200 days left before he, as I said earlier, becomes our most recent ex-president.

Likewise, numerous sources quote Bush as saying that his absence at the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games would make it “more difficult to be able to speak frankly with the Chinese leadership.” I fully understand that Bush needs as much help as he can get in his attempts to speak frankly with anyone, let alone the Chinese government.

I am yet to see, however, any evidence that Bush will attempt to conduct anything that resembles open and/or direct discussions with the Chinese government. He’s had seven years to initiate these frank discussions, and hasn’t acted. What are the odds he’ll initiate these frank discussions with the Chinese government before he declares “let’s roll” to the Texas-bound parade of moving vans parked in security zone in front of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue?

My bet? Slim to none.

I wish he would just be frank with us, the American people, for once. It would be amazing if he came out and said he wants to go to the Olympics because he knows his term is coming to its close, he won’t have free access to his own taxpayer-funded jet come 2009, and, once he leaves office, he won’t be able to launch a war against China if they decided to ban him from China.

Yeah, that’s right. 3 Sucks. And that’s letting them off light.

Several years back, Georgia Power took over Savannah Electric, and since then, prices have been steadily increasing while quality of service has been in rapid decline.

Earlier today, July 5, my power went out. It also went out on July 3. It also went out on July 2. It also went out on July 1. It also went out June 30.

That means that so far in July, it has gone out four out of five days, and it has gone out five of the last six days.

I’ve checked with my neighbors, and their power has gone out as well, so it’s not just me– it’s everyone in my neighborhood, or at least on my block.

Every time the power goes out, I have to go around and reset clocks. Lots of them. Fridge, coffee maker, radios, etc. It’s a real pain in the butt. Every time the power goes out and comes back on, it puts extra and unnecessary strain on my home electronics, causing all my computers to forcefully shut down and then power back on when the restored power surges down the line. Every time the power goes out, my house heats up very, very fast, and my air conditioning has to work extra hard and extra long to return my house to the pre-power-loss temperature. Every time my power goes out, my freezer stops making ice, my fridge cools, and my food starts to spoil.

It doesn’t make sense that the power went out in the last five out of six days. The temperature and humidity, in Savannah terms, has been low. 90 degree days, 80 degree humidity. We’ve only had one storm. At the end of June, we had a good week-long run where it was in the high 90s, and we didn’t experience a single outage.

Beyond that, Georgia Power has this crazy graduated billing wherein during the summer months, they nearly double the price once you meet a certain threshold (very easy to do in a big old inefficient house like ours and all our neighbors’ and, well, just about all of our Established-In-1733 city).

Furthering the suckedness that is Georgia Power is their bills. Their bills are miserably inadequate at best. Basically, the bill consists of four line items:

• Current Service- The amount due for the actual power used (although this is very, very misleading, and fails to include hidden fees– one of which happens to be 46.5% of the actual energy cost).
• Environmental Compliance Cost - A tariff implemented to allow for recovery of costs related to environmental controls mandated by state and federal regulations. This charge is 6.1246% of the “Base Charge” ($7.50/month for the pleasure of doing business) + Current Service + DSM charge (Demand Side Management Residential Rider– whatever the hell that is)
• Franchise Fee - Compensation paid, apparently for the city of Savannah, for utility companies’ use of city property and right of way. 2.5084% of the total revenue.
• Sales Tax - We all know what this is. But the nice part is that we pay sales tax on the Environmental Compliance Cost, along with the Franchise Fee. Gotta love being taxed on taxes.

On June 30, I emailed Georgia Power to ask them exactly how they come up with my bill. They told me they would get back to me within one business day. They never did. Here is my email:

Hello,

I searched all over your website and cannot find the answers to my questions. Your prompt response is appreciated in this matter.

I am trying to figure out how my bill is calculated because, according to my math and information provided by the Georgia Public Service Commission, it appears as though I am paying more anticipated.

Can you please tell me how the “Current Service” total from my bill is calculated?

Please be sure to include the Base Charge, the price amount I pay per kilowatt hour (including variable pricing due to usage levels), as well as the Demand Side Management Residential Rider amount, the Fuel Cost Rider, and any other fees or charges that impact the “Current Services” field on my bill.

Additionally, please include how the Environmental Compliance Cost is calculated, as well as the Franchise fee, and the tax rate I am being charged.

Thank you,

I have to go now, for it is raining lightly and I expect the power to go out any moment. Coming in Part II of Georgia Power Sucks, Sucks, Sucks: A detailed breakdown, the best I can, of the exorbitant fees Georgia Power includes as part of our “Current Service.”

So I was looking up BP stations just a little while ago. We had a $25 gift card from one of Jaime’s relatives that was given to us as a Christmas gift.

I go to their site and hunt around for quite a while in order to find the station locator (why is that not prominently displayed in the navigation section?).

I stumble upon this:

As Jaime put it: $1.67?!?!?!?! I haven’t seen those prices since last century.

So is this just an outdated webpage? Or– note that there is no decimal point– is this a sign of things to come? $167 / gallon gas?

I have no clue. But I did find a bit of humor in it.

How Cuba Can Open Trade with the United States:

Step 1. Announce the initiation of your shiny new nuclear program
Step 2. Wait a few years.
Step 3. Announce that you have discontinued your nuclear program.

See: President Bush Discusses North Korea

It worked for one communist nation, why not Cuba? Hell, Cuba isn’t evil while, according to the president, North Korea is evil. This should be a slam dunk.

We can all smoke a cigar while talking on our communist Chinese cellphones as we celebrate the lifting of our unjustified and hypocritical embargo against Cuba.

And people wonder why the international community considers our foreign policy to be a joke.

Come on, MSNBC!

The Supreme Court just issued a landmark ruling, affirming our creator-given right to own guns for defense. This impacts 300,000,000 people today, and billions in the future. It is incredibly important.

What is MSNBC covering? Some scumbag who killed his wife and kid.

Call me cold. Call me insensitive. Call me whatever you want.

I couldn’t care less about some murdering thug who killed his family. The highest court in the land just told the government to suck it and the people that they can defend themselves. This is more important than any individual or any murder.

MSNBC just went to break, saying they’d cover this when they got back. They came back. It was covered for less than 20 seconds. And now, flooding and weather.

Hey MSNBC, did you ever wonder why you’re last in the ratings? Yeah, this is why. It’s because your coverage priorities are highly misaligned, and as a result, you– how do you say it… oh yeah— YOU SUCK!

Hey, you– the guy with the rack of audio gear sitting in your closet that you never use. Or maybe you work at a radio station with piles of old, unused analog gear that you replaced with that fancy-pants digital system. Or heck, maybe you work at Symetrix and have oodles and oodles of gear sitting in a warehouse.

Whoever you are, if you have a Symetrix 421m AGC-Leveler and if you’re not using it, I need it. Actually, I need two of them.

I don’t have a heck of a lot of money, but I do have a genuine need for a pair of 421m AGC-Levelers. Here’s why:

Jaime and I host this little online talk show called America’s Debate Radio. We talk politics, and take phone calls. I’ve rigged together a duct tape, rubber band, and bondo studio and I think I’ve done a fairly good job at it. We sound good. But there’s a problem.

The problem is that when we take calls, I have to direct a ton of attention to making sure the callers levels fall in line. Too high and I risk clipping. Too low and the listeners can’t hear the caller. And in this age of cell phones and voip, we all know that levels are all over the map.

So it goes like this. Someone calls. We put them on the air. Jaime handles the first few minutes of the call while I rush to tweak levels. Without fail, the caller asks me a question. I have been paying attention to VU and dB meters, adjusting levels, reducing bass, tweaking treble. The question is asked and my response is similar to, “Errrr…uhhh….duhhhh…. ummmm…. ” That is because I had to direct my attention at audio gear and not at what the caller was saying.

To put it in just a few words, I have to spend my time paying attention to gear and not the caller, and it makes me sound like an idiot, and it lessens the quality of the show.

SOOOOoooooooooooooooo…..

If you have any Symetrix 421m units sitting around, please, by all means, let me know. Hopefully we can work out a fair price or trade.

The Article: Housing rescue plan passes key Senate test

The mortgage aid plan would let the Federal Housing Administration back $300 billion in new, cheaper home loans for an estimated 400,000 distressed borrowers who otherwise would be considered too financially risky to qualify for government-insured, fixed-rate loans.

So let me get this right. We have 400,000 people who are fiscally irresponsible. So fiscally irresponsible in fact that they have chosen not to make payment on one of the fundamental requirements of human life: shelter.

Beyond the lack of fiscal responsibility, the very same 400,000 people also lack a fundamental requirement for American success: foresight. They couldn’t tell that they were over-extending their finances when they signed the documents to purchase their homes.

I think you can see where I’m going here.

400,000 losers. 400,000 people who made bad life decisions and who should suffer the consequences. 400,000 people who have proven they lack foresight, fiscal responsibility, and desire to provide for themselves the basic necessity of life. 400,000 people who signed a contract to pay for their home who ended up unable to hold up their end of the agreement.

So please, someone, anyone, tell me– why exactly should the fine taxpayers of these United States bail these folks out? Why should we exert our confidence in these deadbeats to the tune of $300,000,000,000?

Oh yeah. I know the reason. It’s an election year.

We are fools for allowing our Congress to buy votes in this fashion.

So Jaime and I have basically resigned to getting a brand new car. We don’t want one– we don’t. But, we can’t stand to buy a used car. Either we’ll overpay at a dealership for a car of questionable past (they haggle 8 hrs a day, I haggle 8 hrs a decade,– who has the advantage there…?), or we’ll get a fair price on a private party sale for a car of a questionable past.

We just can’t do it. We can’t sink $10,000 into a used car that has no warranty, no maintenance records, and no provable accident history. With our luck, any used car we buy will need brakes ($300), tires ($300), radiator/transmission fluid replacement (Uhh, $200?), a timing belt (who gets those replaced? People who have had them break, that’s who) (Uhh, $400?), sparkplugs/general tune-up ($125), fuel filter ($10), air filter ($20), and likely tons of other wear items that I’m forgetting, but also require regular replacement.

Add those expenses up: In a best-case situation on a used car with around 75,000 miles on it, we’ll have to pay another $1,355 to own the car over the course of the first year. And that doesn’t include costs for any repairs (our luck = broken car + $1,000 to fix it). And it also doesn’t include the fact that, over the life of a car, gas mileage slips. A car that gets 30mpg today might only get 28mpg when it’s 5 years old.

The numbers just don’t add up for us. We need a dependable, fuel-efficient car that isn’t going to cost an arm and a leg to own. We have no choice– we have to buy a new car.

So anyway, before I tell you all about the car we intend upon buying (a post for a different day), I want to get to the real issue of this post: hidden budget drains. I’m talking about items that you buy because you’ve always bought them, but you’ve never really added up the cost.

Here’s my example. I drink Coke. I know, it’s terrible for me. It’s not even that good, really– it tastes fake. But that’s neither here nor there.

So I drink Coke, about two 12-packs a week. At $4 for a twelve pack, I spend about $416 per year on Coke. Yes, $416 a year on Coke. Insane. That works out to 2.8 cents per ounce, rounded up.

In an effort to scrounge up the budget room to buy a brand new car, I am going to try to commit to stop drinking coke. In it’s place, I will drink iced tea– mint flavored and home-brewed, my favorite.

Here’s the price breakdown:

Note that I estimated the cost of the items. I believe the mint tea is usually about $2.79, the regular tea is about $2.49, the sugar is about $2.49, and I have no idea how much the city charges us so I took a guess on the cost of the water.

When I do the math on that, I find that the cost of the tea is $0.008/ounce. Yes, eight-tenths of a cent per ounce.

Compare that to coke. $0.028 per oz vs $0.008. Coke is about 3.5 times more expensive than iced tea.

Add that up over a year:

14,976 oz Coke: $416.00
14,976 oz Tea: $119.81

That means that over the course of a year, I would spend $296.19 less on beverages, or a reduction in beverage cost of 71.2%

So, with the down payment we’re looking at on this car, our monthly payment will be around $200 for 4 years. If I simply switch from soda to tea, over the life of our loan, we would save $1184.76. Divided by our monthly payment and we end up paying the car off about six months earlier.

Of course, that doesn’t factor in for loan interest (we’d pay less interest if we paid the loan off six months earlier, thereby saving even more money). It also doesn’t figure in the tax on the beverages, and obviously the more expensive the beverages, the more tax is paid. So we’ll save even more money there.

Crazy, isn’t it? All I have to do is switch from soda to tea and a 48 month loan becomes a 42 month loan. Plus, I end up with a better-tasting, less-unhealthy beverage.

Article: Judge rules for White House in e-mail controversy

In that case, a judge is considering whether to instruct the EOP on steps it must to take to safeguard electronic messages. The White Houes is seeking to have that suit thrown out.

White Houes?

Houes?

Get a freaking spell check.

Or better yet, just close up shop so we can, for once and for all, get rid of the cookie cutter crap journalism and less-than-skillful writers that the AP has established as their status quo.

Well as promised, here are some recent photos of the garden. I took these this morning, the day after the big transplant.

Here’s the herb and ornamental pepper portion of the garden. The peppers that are in there are: 6 Thai peppers, 3 fluorescent purples, and a medusa. Other than that, we’ve got six curly parsley, six catnip, six sweet basil, four purple basil, one spicy globe basil, on Thai basil, one rosemary, and probably some plants that I can’t recognize. Yes, I am aware that my catnip is down hard in this image, and in need of water. The reason is that the catnip is in a black 7″ pot with no mulch or anything to hold in moisture, is in full sun, is fully rootbound, and it was freaking 97 degrees out today. Yeah, if I were a plant, I’d want to lay in the dirt, too.

This next one is a shot of the majority of our peppers. These peppers transitioned from cell trays to styrofoam cups to 7″ pots and now to their final pots, varying between 4.5 gallons and 7.7 gallons per pot. The two peppers that are closest in view in the five gallon buckets are our two carry-overs from last year. On the left is a Tabasco pepper, which last year grew to about six feet in a way-undersized 8″ terra cotta pot. It yielded about 200 peppers or so. On the right is the Scotch Bonnet originally from grocery store seed. Last year, it barely grew. It made it up to maybe a foot and a half, and it yielded two or three peppers that didn’t mature until November, and which I didn’t eat. They were a nice yellow color, though, if I recall correctly. You can’t tell, but there are at least a dozen and a half peppers on that plant, some that I expect to change color any day now. Jaime even observed that the peppers, which were hanging down for the majority of the fruit growth, have turned up towards the sun– almost as if they somehow rotate when the time to change colors approaches.

Same section, shot from the other side. You can easily see the massive size of these 7.7 gallon pots. They took a ton of potting mix to fill, but my bet is that the results will be spectacular. You can also see that the majority of our peppers are still pretty small– between a foot and about two and a half feet. That’s about as I expected, considering these were started from seed on March 19 and germinated by about April 1. Given that our peppers grew to between four and six feet last year in 8″ pots, I’m expecting great results out of our big pots this year.

Here’s a closeup of one of the Scotch Bonnet peppers. It’s nice and big, and is tempting me to pull it off and eat it. Considering it’s June 9 and I’ll start harvesting in probably just two or three weeks from now, it looks like we’ll be eating some nice, spicy food this Independence Day.

Here’s one of the fluorescent purple peppers that I’ve been raving about. Look closely at the leaves. You’ll notice silvery patches, purple patches, and some patches that look almost pearlescent. Everyone I show it to says that they’ve never seen anything like it before. Good job, Pepper Joe!

And last, here is a closeup of one of the fluorescent purple pepper’s flowers. Purple leaves, purple flowers, purple peppers (while ripening)– what a cool pepper.

That’s it for now. I’ll be posting more pictures and information soon, especially considering that just today I transplanted about 20 herbs from 12oz cups into 7″ pots. Dill, cilantro, oregano, sage, thyme, and– oh yeah, not an herb, but…– some decorative blue fescue grass.

Let’s call modern environmentalism what it is: envirocrap.

Most of the time when I read an article that is obviously meant to be “pro-environment,” I come up with critical flaws in the presentation of the subject matter. These flaws reveal what appears to be the author’s true intent in writing the article: pushing a personal agenda.

Take for example, this article. The article basically states that the Minneapolis City Council has voted to pass an ordinance limiting vehicular idling to no more than three minutes. Of course, I see tons of problems with the legislation itself: police idle all day long by necessity, some vehicles require idling to operate (cement trucks for example), and semis must idle for an extended period of time– especially in Minneapolis winters– to properly warm up the engine, just to name a few.

Hell, I even think it’s a good idea to limit idling– if a person chooses to do so. I am, of course, opposed to any laws such as this. I refuse to consider government-enforced environmentalism as being conducted under the right motives until, at a minimum, the legislative body exerting their power outlaws drive through windows, mandates closed-cooling grocery stores, and mandates automatic door closers for homes. Hell, what am I saying? There are no “right motives” for the government to enforce their opinions upon the populace.

But anyway, back to this article, and why I don’t like it. Here’s the quote:

Vehicle motors release particulate matter, dirt, nitrous oxides, hydrocarbons, carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide into the air. These chemicals are linked to increased rates of cancer, heart and lung disease and asthma and are the major source of human-caused climate change.

OK, this statement is clearly presented as fact, correct? Now, answer me this:

If a chemical like dirt is “linked to increased rates of cancer, heart and lung disease and asthma and are [is] the major source of human-caused climate change,” then why can I buy bags of dirt at the store? Why can I have dirt in my yard? Why can a person who works at a greenhouse, as I once did, conduct their work without the same sorts of chemical suits that are used when spraying pesticides?

If a chemical like dust– referenced here as “particulate matter”– is “linked to increased rates of cancer, heart and lung disease and asthma and are [is] the major source of human-caused climate change,” then why– in the name of national health and safety– do we not have a National Dusting Corp whose duty it is to eradicate the deadly dust that brings us closer to death with each passing day?

Ooooh. I get it. The author is saying that the particulate matter and the dust– the items listed first– can cause asthma– the symptom/disease listed third. Is this spin? Is this pushing an agenda? Is this just careless or incompetent journalism? I’d argue it’s the second and third.

All the author had to do in order to remove the agenda from these two sentences was to substitute an “and” with an “or,” and add in “believed to be.” It is likely that either careless or incompetent journalism dictated otherwise.

Compare these, my bolding. The original:

Vehicle motors release particulate matter, dirt, nitrous oxides, hydrocarbons, carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide into the air. These chemicals are linked to increased rates of cancer, heart and lung disease and asthma and are the major source of human-caused climate change.

My one-word change and three word addition:

Vehicle motors release particulate matter, dirt, nitrous oxides, hydrocarbons, carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide into the air. These chemicals are linked to increased rates of cancer, heart and lung disease or asthma and are believed to be the major source of human-caused climate change.

There, see how easy that was? Now any reader who implied that dirt caused cancer or was the major source of human-caused climate change would be a fool. As it stands, it is the author who appears foolish.

I could go on and on dissecting this piece, but I’m not going to go any further. I will say, however, that the cumulative effect of articles like these– articles that distort reality– is that the masses of asses eventually begin to believe whatever assertions that those in a position of information authority decide to make. And that can not be good.

This is just an update to my prior post about the car accident in which I was involved. As you recall, another driver traveling at about 35mph collided head-on with my Corolla, which was traveling at about 10mph. Airbags all around, no major injuries, and the other driver was at fault and cited for failure to yield.

His insurance company, State Farm, has decided to total out my car. They initially offered me $6,000 or so, plus a few hundred for tax, title, etc., so around $6400. Most everyone I talked to said that it’s a take it or leave it situation, but I have to tell you that it is not. Their initial offer is just that– an offer.

I had a list of reasons why my car was improperly valued, focusing on the fact that the NADA website states that they only list the most common options. My contention was that the appraiser missed quite a few options for which I paid (Winter package w/ upgraded starter and heat, color-keyed mirrors (match the body paint), a trailer hitch (used for my bike rack), and floor and trunk mats). I had the original sticker from the day I bought my car (Oct 28, 2000), and I knew exactly what I paid for those options. I used them as a negotiating tactic– “You valued a base-model Corolla, which my car was not”– and was able to get them to up the offer a little bit. Hey, something is better than nothing, right?

I was able to talk them up to an even $7,000, which to me isn’t that bad. Hell, $6,500 wasn’t bad, and was certainly more than what I’d get were I to sell the car outright, prior to the accident. But, $7,000 is better. The car had a broken windshield, the lights on the dashboard had started to go out, the Savannah heat had caused just about all the door and window seals and plastic to pop (some torn right off), the interior was in terrible shape, the door was missing an interior handle, and I had never even checked– let alone replaced– my transmission fluid and antifreeze. Of course, I had done some repairs to the car– two new tires for $100 or so, and new brake drums and pads on the back for another $60 or so, plus my own labor. So I only got to use those parts for about 90 days.

I’d say $7,000 is pretty fair.

So tomorrow, Jaime is taking the day off and we’re buying a car. We’ll have the $7,000 to spend, along with up to $3,000 that is available to us from our bank if we need it.

I’ll let you know what we get!

Welcome to my fourth garden update for 2008. At least I think it’s the fourth update. Regardless, here we go.

I don’t want to spend much time on the herb portion of the garden other than to say that some of the herbs are growing very well, and some of them have been neglected and are desperately in need of a transplant.

The varieties that are growing well are the basils– sweet, spicy globe, purple. By luck, our purple basil contained a Thai basil seed, and that is growing well. For those of you who have only grown sweet basil, I highly recommend you try some other varieties. The purple basil is beautiful. It makes a great garnish and can add a nice color to a dish. The flavor is pretty much the same as the sweet basil. The spicy globe basil and Thai basil depart in flavor and aroma from the standard sweet basil. They smell very licorice-ey, and maintain some of that in the flavor. I’ve enjoyed using it, and if you like basil, you will too.

Other good-growing herbs are (for once) mint, catnip, curly parsley, and rosemary. I need to transplant the sage, thyme, oregano, cilantro (won’t make it in our heat anyway, why bother?), dill (same as cliantro), and flat parsley.

So time for the peppers.

Jaime and I spent all day today working on the pepper plants. Almost all of our peppers were in 7″ pots before today, and ranged in height from 8″ to 30″. Only one pepper remains in styrofoam– the Red Savina Habanero. It’ll be transplanted into a 7″ pot soon. It’s just a slow grower.

We transplanted into regular potting mix. I forget the brand, but it’s the cheapest stuff they had at Lowes– $11 for 3 cubic feet. I have a bunch of $10 off $25 coupons, so we’re basically buying our dirt in $25 increments (for $15). We called around to the nurseries and greenhouses for bulk potting mix, but none of them had any (or were closed on Saturday, dummies).

I like potting mix, but it often seems too dense to me. Too much peat and too much bark, or at least the wrong shape bark. I used to work at a greenhouse, and we used a nice potting mix that contained a bit more perilite than most commercial mixes, and the bark was almost like little pebbles of bark. We grew everything in this same exact mix– tens of thousands of mums, thousands of poinsettias (for the Chicago Botanical Garden no less), and hundreds of thousands of other plants ranging from geraniums to begonias, from vinca to verbena, from ivy to asters. We made no adjustments to the soil for PH or texture or absorbtive qualities or anything like that. We used a good quality potting mix, and we used it for everything with incredible success.

So, here is what I’ve come up with for my peppers. I start with the regular potting mix from the store. To each cubic foot of potting mix, I add about 3 quarts of perilite. This aerates the soil, making it much more porous and light. I have found that garden plants grow grow well in this ratio.

For nutrient supplement, I add two heaping tablespoons of CRF (controlled release fertilizer) with micro-nutrients (important, don’t buy CRF without it), just to juice the mix a bit. I also add two heaping tablespoons of bone meal, which technically is an under-application, but the CRF covers most everything the plant needs anyway. If you’ve never used/seen/heard of bone meal before, it’s exactly as it sounds: a meal made from bones. Think corn meal, but with bones instead of corn. It’s 1-11-0, so it’s a low nitrogen source and a pretty good phosphorous source. The phosphorous will help the peppers set lots of nice strong blooms that will hopefully become nice healthy peppers. Bone meal is slow release– it takes a while for bone to break down, and the effects of the fertilizer are realized over time.

With soil like this, I shouldn’t have to fertilize my peppers at all throughout the season. They should have everything they need available to them from the minute they hit the pot.

For pests, I’m trying paraffin oil this year, which I bought as a concentrate that is sprayed on. All the research I’ve done indicates it’s kerosene, although I can tell you it is not kerosene. It isn’t marked as flammable, and doesn’t smell like kerosene. I’m not sure what it is, but it says it is made from natural ingredients. Any way you look at it, it’s got to be better than the fairly ineffective Sevin dust, and it’s got to be less deadly than the pesticide of last resort– Malathion.

For anti-fungal treatment, I’m using the same as last year: Liquid Copper. It’s a beautiful blue liquid that appears to be copper suspended in ammonia. You mix it with water and spray it on. You have to keep shaking it because if you don’t, the copper will settle back down to the bottom. Strange stuff, but it works incredibly well to rid your peppers of bacterial spot. I’m spraying this as a preventative this year, since our crop was severely diminished last year by my inability to diagonse and treat bacterial spot.

So anyways, the peppers. I feel like I’ve already said that.

As of right now, in the final pots, we have the following:

• 6 Bell Peppers
• 2 Hungarian Hot Paprika Peppers
• 4 Long Red Slim Cayenne Peppers
• 3 White Habanero Peppers
• 3 Spicy Mustard Habanero Peppers
• 3 Sweet Paprika Peppers
• 3 Fluorescent Purple Peppers (one is not fluorescent for some reason)
• 1 Pimento Pepper
• 1 Scotch Bonnet Pepper
• 1 Tabasco Pepper

That’s 27 plants, all in containers. Considering the average container size is about 6 gallons or so, we’re looking at roughly a yard of potting mix. Holy crap!

Our two Caribbean Red Hot Peppers are still in 7″ pots, growing slowly as expected. We’ve also got a half dozen Thai chili peppers in 7″ pots, as well as a Medusa Pepper that we picked up last week. We have one remaining Fluorescent Purple Pepper to transplant, although it’s not fluorescent like the rest. And of course, the Red Savina I mentioned above.

That is all for now. I’ll take some photos as soon as I can and post them in 2008 Garden Update #5. Stay tuned…