Month: December 2017

So here we are at the end of a year and the start of a new one. We will be changing the format in the coming year, maybe not posting as much, but we will keep posting. As I said in other posts – it is a labor of love. Happy New Year to our readers – looking forward to another year of ODD.

After 3 days on the road from Texas I’d like to share a little more road trivia.  The nice thing about having a spouse who loves trivia as much as me is that when I wonder about something we see on the road, she is already looking it up when I ask.  Some interesting facts we learned on this trip.

• There are two Colorado rivers in the United States. The one in Texas is the 18th longest and empties into the Gulf of Mexico.
• The Zebra mussel is an invasive species plaguing America’s fresh waters – they are originally from the Caspian Sea in Russia. They came over in the bilge water in ships. Another Russian conspiracy.
• Calaveras means skulls in Spanish, so the very celebrated story book by Mark Twain is actually (in English) “The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Skulls County”.  Not as nice or quaint, actually quite scary.
• RM and FM roads in Texas are Ranch to Market and Farm to Market. RM roads are much wider than FM roads. FM roads are also very dark and in poor shape. You can thank the traffic app, Waze for that bit of trivia.
• Its just as far from Knoxville, Tennessee to Texarkana, Texas as it is from Texarkana to San Antonio.  Texas is stupid big.
• Arkansas and Kansas come from entirely different root languages, so they shouldn’t be pronounced the same.
• Texas doesn’t believe in lighted streets outside of big cities.
• There are a lot of deer in Texas judging by the number of dead deer beside the roads.
• Louisiana needs more commercials about littering the highways. Reminded me of the 70s.
• The two longest bridges in the United States are in Louisiana.
• Mississippi was surprisingly clean.
• If you are in Biloxi, Mississippi stop and get some hot tamales at Doris’ Hot Tamales. The best I’ve ever had.
• Doris’ Hot Tamales is part of a Mississippi Delta hot tamale trail.  Who knew?
• The largest underground lake in the United States is just off I75 near Sweetwater, Tennessee.
• The meaning of the Tennessee was lost to history – it has an Indian meaning, they just don’t know what.

Last but not least – when playing the license plate game the hardest ones to find (didn’t see one coming or going) are Hawaii, Alaska, Montana, and South Dakota.

Speaking of traditions, the British have a nice one that I think is worth mentioning. The day after Christmas is called Boxing Day and it is a national holiday just like Christmas. The tradition started as a day for people to “box up” their decorations and out their homes back into pre-holiday look before heading back to work.

Boxing Day is very practical and non-emoti Nail like everything else British. Even in today’s frantic social media driven world with all the push for retail sales similar to Black Friday, Boxing Day is seen by the British as a day off to prepare for normalcy. It just seems to make sense.

Merry Christmas to all our readers. Last month I wrote that Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. One of the main reasons is that there is no stress over gift giving. Christmas has come to be almost inextricably ties to the act of gift giving which, at least for me, has significantly tainted this holiday.

Fortunately, Christmas for our family and friends is also strongly associated with traditions. This aspect of the holiday season always make me feel better. I’m not a big fan of tradition in general. Oftentimes, I believe tradition gets in the at of progress and I’ve seen that phenomenon play out during my military and civil service careers.

However, holiday traditions are different for me. Holiday traditions remind me of family and friends, of childhood memories and parenthood joys, of comfortable surroundings and warm feelings.

We weren’t able to honor holiday traditions this year for a variety of reasons. We chose to not honor some and our circumstances kept us from honoring others. Some were ignored because they were deemed “impractical” and others were simply impossible. But we initiated two new ones which we enjoyed with our new family member. The new traditions gave me the same feeling our old traditions provided. Traditions don’t have to be long standing. They just need to mean something… and they have to start sometime.

I hope all of you are able to honor old or new traditions today. And I hope that whatever Christmas means to you, it brings you joy and happiness beyond measure.

Day two of our road trip and I’ve made some general observations.

When you get outside of the Washington D.C. metro area you notice that more people smoke.

There are as many body shapes as there are fruit.

For the most part, the best drivers, and most courteous, are truckers.

The higher the price of gas, the worse the roads are. Shouldn’t it be the other way around?

Hotels that charge less than $100 per night have crappy beds. You pay for what you get.

Southern hospitality is a thing.

The farther south you go – the bigger the portions, and the people.

The cheaper the gas, the dirtier the restroom.

Much like flying – people now drive in their PJs.  What happens if your car breaks down?

Love the sunsets in Texas.

Drivers in Arkansas watch too much NASCAR based on their driving habits.

Wishing all the readers a very Merry Christmas, may God keep and bless you.

Hitting the road for the holidays is mostly stressful, hectic, and fun. I enjoy driving and seeing parts of our great country that I haven’t seen. You get to meet nice people from all walks of life and get a glimpse of what life is like for people living in other parts of the country.  I try to make the journey as much a part of the vacation as the actual vacation, whether it’s stopping at a roadside attraction (largest ball of twine) or just finding local cafes eating something new.

I also remember how much my parents did not like being forced into always traveling to see their parents.  As a reminder, kids actually listen when their parents are talking are complaining.  Just saying. So I try to make it fair when it comes to holiday travel when I can. Traveling also means that Santa has to find you on the road, especially when you have small children. A challenge, but one that can be overcome with some ingenuity and early arrangements with USPS.

Finally, its that wonderful feeling you get when you haven’t seen a loved one for some time. That can be reason enough to travel – it is for me. Its best to leave from those trips when you have rehashed all the old stories, shared new ones, and are still a bit reluctant to leave. That’s the perfect blend.  More from road travels on day two.

Apologies for the long post.  This is a collaboration between us on a fairly complicated story  Yes, we have an opinion. Since so many people have been asking me (and my other geek author I’m sure) what Net Neutrality really means, let me share our point of view.

Yesterday, FCC Chairman Ajit Pai announced the repeal net neutrality, a policy that went into effect in April of 2015. The internet didn’t stop, and Netflix and online prices didn’t immediately triple.  One of the crazier claims by those supporting Net Neutrality was repealing it would lead to more monopolies. This couldn’t be further from the truth. Ironically enough, one of the top issues people take with net neutrality is that people will now be able to pay for faster internet. I want faster internet, really fast internet. And I’m willing to pay for it. Imagine if all cars had governors on them so no car go could any faster than another car – that was Net Neutrality. Great for the guy who loves driving 55, not so much for some of us.

Back to the monopoly argument. The chicken little’s I’ve read claim that ending net neutrality will lead to more monopolies and corruption. But the truth of the matter is that net neutrality has caused increased monopolization and corruption. What net neutrality ultimately did was undermine the market allocation of goods by allowing the State to determine how the internet is managed – that worked really well for the Soviet Union.  Remember all the great products produced under Soviet Communism? No?  Neither do I.

It seems that advocates of net neutrality beg for a monopoly: the State. People that want the government to hijack the market for ISPs are just begging for the government to monopolize it either through the State, or through the State’s selected winner. This is where we get to corruption. If you have regulation, you have regulatory capture. I, as a big businessman, see that the government wants to regulate me, so I buy them off. It happens all the time. It happens more often than not, think Detroit.

Even if regulatory capture were to disappear miraculously, the regulations wouldn’t hurt big ISPs nearly as much as they would hurt small ones. Big businesses have a greater capacity to afford the costs of regulations than small businesses. It doesn’t take a PhD in economics to realize that having more money makes you more able to afford expenses, so why don’t people see this with regulation. The regulators will merely put small competitors out of business. Net Neutrality only stifles competition, and thus decreases quality of service and increases prices. We have seen this in the telecommunication industry before with the breakup of Ma Bell. 

It used to be that the phone company owned the lines and all the equipment in your house and it was all controlled by the myriad of regional Bell Telephone companies and the pricing and service was a monopoly. You either had a phone or you didn’t. When the government broke up the companies, we slowly started to see competition and change. The first big change was that you could (actually had to) buy and own your own phone. This alone jump-started the industry and opened the door for the cell phone manufacturing we have today.  By ending the artificial restrictions on the net under net neutrality we let the market dictate, which grows the economy. 

Now that Net Neutrality is on the way out, competition will finally reemerge and we can start to see even more progress in the digital sector. What the end of Net Neutrality does is lower the cost of entry into the industries of the internet. With this new deregulation, the young and entrepreneurial have a chance at making a better digital world for all of us. Net Neutrality was anything but neutral. Rather, it put people with new ideas at a disadvantage, all but forcing them to join the big corporations when they would be better off competing against the giants.

What if I want to just buy internet service that allows me to check my email and write articles, why should the government stop a producer from meeting that demand? What if someone wants a super fast internet speed (like me)? Why should the government stop this me from paying more for faster speeds? There is no reason. If there’s a demand, the market can handle such a situation much more effectively than Uncle Sam.

Think of it this way.  Look at the cable packages out there today.  We already have tiers of service, and the outcry is that we want more choice, not less. Have you ever looked at your bill and said, I don’t need 200 music channels, but I really wish I had a few more sports channels?  I thought so.  We prefer choice and ala carte pricing, because it puts us in control of what we consume, whether it be food or online content. 

Perhaps the greatest straw man regarding this is that ISPs will make you pay for access to specific websites. Really?  While the ISPs would in fact have the right to do this, it would be economic suicide for them to do so. There is no incentive for a business to lower their quality while charging the same price (unless they are a Soviets, or North Koreans). Also, it is important to remember that Net Neutrality was implemented in April of 2015. Do you remember when you had to pay extra to log in to Facebook back in 2014? Do you remember the super high fees you paid then? No? Me either. This has never happened before. People claiming this will happen have never given any reason to believe it will happen. It’s nothing more than a scare tactic to make the people wish away their choices and enforce monopolies like Google and Amazon. Why do you think they are all for Net Neutrality? Have you actually read the user agreement that Amazon and Google make you sign before you use their services? You should.

Ultimately, Net Neutrality is nothing short of Internet Communism. It is the State ordering the expropriation of the entire ISP industry from the private sector to the public sector. It is a massive uptake in central planning in which private owners have no say.  And it is particularly insidious in the way it is being marketed.  I call it FUD, fear, uncertainty and doubt. Rather than rely on the facts, people are being told the sky is falling. 

There are two pieces of advice that I have learned to trust in.  First, if someone is telling you all the bad things that could happen and none of the good, look really closely because nothing is 100% good or bad.  Second, when someone tells you we need the government to manage something for us, keep one hand tightly on your wallet.