Cornfoot Road

Coming back from IKEA last night (which was closed, the only night of the week that it closes early), we took Cornfoot Road to avoid the traffic jam on Columbia. That was an eye opener. There is one big industrial establishment after another. In order, from East to West:

• United State Postal Service Processing Center
• Copart Automobile Auction
• Air National Guard 142nd Fighter Wing. They've been here before.
• Oregon Army National Guard
• Matheson Flight Extenders
• FedEx Package Processing Center

Boeing Paint Hangars at PDX

Looks like they aren't being used any more.

PDX Ground Run-up Enclosure

Looking at the map I notice a great big thing. It's the Ground Run-up Enclosure (GRE).

Prizes!

Google Search Console Report

This showed up in my email this morning. Looks like I won a contest of some sort, they awarded me a trophy after all. Okay, it's just an icon representing a trophy, but still, something nice, or least not bad.

I don't know what any of it means, and I'm pretty sure I don't care. I just checked my blogger stats and a ten year old post about Zimbabwe that has been in the top spot for years has been knocked out, so maybe Google finally got around to looking at how they were collecting these stats. I don't know where they are getting their referring pages though, none of them even mention me. The top referring page is three years old. I think there Google's stat collection is still a bit wonky.

Stupid

I'm reading The five universal laws of human stupidity by Corinne Purtill and as I scroll down this combination of text and picture appears:

Stupidity leads to a new Mercedes

which I think is a perfect sequence, given my disdain for over-priced German vehicles.

This is probably due to my cheapskate attitude, which I undoubtedly got from my parents. It's not just expensive German cars I abhor, it's anything that carries a premium price tag based on some perceived superiority. Apple, Sony and Honda products all fall in the same category.

I have this attitude mostly because my upbringing doesn't allow me to spend money foolishly, and if you haven't squeezed ever penny of value out of a dollar, you're wasting money. If I had more money, I would relax a bit. Shoot, I have a bit more money and I have relaxed, but not enough that I would be willing to throw away money on a stupid Mercedes.

The big idea though, the one that I just recently realized, is that people will pay good money for services, services I would never buy because I can do it myself. The circular thought running around in my brain for the last 50 years has been that because I could take care of a problem myself, I would never pay for it, and since everybody else could likewise take care of their own problem, nobody else would pay for someone else to fix it either.

Call it the curse of over-competence. Of course, doing things for other people requires talking to them, and there are few people I enjoy talking to. I suspect that might be because I am too wrapped up with all the nonsense running around in my head. Between that and napping, I just don't have the time.

Wikipedia has a short article about Carlo M. Cipolla, the author of the originating essay. It seems be his primary claim to fame.

Via Indy Tom

Stupid Walgreens, Part 2

Filling my pill minder this morning and I run out of one of my drugs. I think I ordered refills last week, but did I really? So I go to walgreens.com and this is what I get:

Walgreens Message

What? Two hours after what? After I log on? Bozo on a pogo. Rx refill status is useless, let's just try the refill page.

Walgreens Error

Great. You know what happened? I'll bet I know. They put bureaucrats in charge of the system, and the one person who actually knew how the system worked got fed up with their bullshit and bailed. Now they have a bunch of clowns scrambling to find their shoes. Effing corporations.

P.S. Walgreens has appeared here at least a dozen times in the last nine years. I'm not quite sure what to make of that.

Belief

Map of Superfund sites as of October 2013. Red indicates currently on final National Priority List, yellow is proposed, green is deleted (usually meaning having been cleaned up).

William Ruckelshaus, a big-time government bureaucrat, passed away a few days ago. He came to fame heading the EPA. Reading the Wikipedia article about him, I came across this quote:

I've had an awful lot of jobs in my lifetime, and in moving from one to another, have had the opportunity to think about what makes them worthwhile. I've concluded there are four important criteria: interest, excitement, challenge, and fulfillment. I've never worked anywhere where I could find all four to quite the same extent as at EPA. I can find interest, challenge, and excitement as [board chair of a company]. I do have an interesting job. But it is tough to find the same degree of fulfillment I found in the government. At EPA, you work for a cause that is beyond self-interest and larger than the goals people normally pursue. You're not there for the money, you're there for something beyond yourself.

At first, I thought this was great. His description of what makes a job worthwhile is spot on. And in general, I think the EPA is a good idea. Too many people were dumping really nasty shit all over the place. But when you start getting into cases, well, it gets a little fuzzy as to just what is 'nasty'.

He banned DDT, which I thought was good. Then I read that he thought global warming was a real problem and I realized that belief is double edged sword. If you believe in a cause, you will fight for it, regardless of whether your cause has merit or not. Of course, the deciding whether a cause has merit or not is also generally a matter of belief.

I try to avoid the global warming issue because the discussion has become completely political. The fight is now between true believers on both sides. I doubt you could find a set of data that both sides would agree on. I suspect that people are arguing about this issue, not because this issue is of paramount importance, but because people like to fight and since we aren't engaged in a great big military conflict (also known as war), they look around for lesser issues to fight about.

Via Indy Tom

Lost in Translation

Batwoman with Molotov cocktail

DC Comics posted this image, the Chinese Commies complained, so DC pulled it. Hey, if it tweaks the commies' noses, I'm all for it, so here it is.

Via Monday Evening

Younger son has been on vacation, so we've been working on his house, which has been consuming my time and energy, which is why I haven't been posting much lately.

Childish Gambino Christmas Special

Childish Gambino Christmas Special
Second good thing I found on reddit today.