Greg In The Desert

Ford is eliminating 41,000 UAW workers. The package according to Reuters is a lot.

Ford workers have until late January to accept the offer, which includes payouts of up to $70,000 cash for newer hires to $60,000 cash for veterans already eligible for retirement.

That’s $2,870,000,000 total compensation based on a simple calculation of 41,000 times $70,000. Nearly 3 billion dollars. I sometimes don’t understand how companies save money laying off but I suppose that they were going to pay at least this much in salaries in a year year anwyay.

I thought I would try to turn a negative into a positive with my scorpions situation by capturing them and keeping in them in a glassed habitat in the house. Perhaps there’s money to be made selling scorpions.

The first thing I did was to clean out a 10 gallon aquarium that was being unused.

I then added cactus from the back yard.

I then added some sandy soil (commonly referred to as dirt), also from the back yard.

I then added a pile of rocks, from the front yard this time.

I then added the scorpion (Vaejovis flavus). This one came from inside the house.

The first scorpion died after keeping it in the tank for about a month. This was despite providing it several crickets that it quickly ate.

Since Saturn the cat came along, I rarely get a scorpion before she kills them. Plus she is has eliminated the scorpion food supply in the house so I don’t know that I will get much more of them. The tank currently sits empty.

• Transparent aluminium is ‘new state of matter’ – Oxford scientists have created a transparent form of aluminium by bombarding the metal with the world’s most powerful soft X-ray laser. 'Transparent aluminium' previously only existed in science fiction, featuring in the movie Star Trek IV, but the real material is an exotic new state of matter with implications for planetary science and nuclear fusion.
• Blue M&Ms ‘mend spinal injuries’ – The compound Brilliant Blue G blocks a chemical that kills healthy spinal cord cells around the damaged area – an event that often causes more irreversible damage than the original injury. On the downside, the treatment causes the skin to temporarily turn bright blue and BBG needs to be injected soon after the trauma. The test injections were given within 15 minutes.
• iBank provides yet another reason to dump Quicken for Mac – IGG Software has announced a "Why wait another day?" rebate program to persuade frustrated Quicken Mac 2007 owners to switch to iBank 3.5 (US$59.99). If you're a Canadian or U.S. owner who purchased iBank after July 10th, 2009, and have proof of ownership (installation disc or receipt) for either the Mac or Windows versions of Quicken or Microsoft Money, sending in a mail-in rebate form will get you a $20 incentive to switch to iBank.
• S.C. case looks on child obesity as child abuse. But is it? – USATODAY.com – Jerri Gray was doing all she could to help her son lose weight, her attorney says. But something had gone terribly wrong for the boy to hit the 555-pound mark by age 14. Authorities in South Carolina say that what went wrong was Gray's care and feeding of her son, Alexander Draper. Gray, 49, of Travelers Rest, S.C., was arrested in June and charged with criminal neglect. Alexander is now in foster care.
• Consumerist – Watch Out For Panasonic’s Proprietary Battery Cameras – Panasonic – Many of Panasonic's cameras will only work with official Panasonic batteries—the newest models require "an embedded security ID chip," while older models have been issued a firmware upgrade that locks out third-party vendors. This is already pretty obnoxious, but what makes it even worse is Panasonic can't keep up with demand, so the batteries they insist you buy for your camera aren't available.
• Al Jazeera English – Americas – Man gets life for Bush murder plot – A man who received a 30-year jail sentence for joining al-Qaeda and conspiring to kill former US President George W. Bush has had his penalty increased to life imprisonment. Ahmed Omar Abu Ali, 28, was given the harsher sentence on Monday after a US appeals court ruled that his 2005 punishment was too lenient.
• AP Sources: U.S. Man Was ‘Gold Mine’ of Terror Intel – Local News | News Articles | National News | US News – FOXNews.com – Months before President Barack Obama took office with a pledge to change U.S. counterterrorism policies, the Bush administration gave Vinas all the rights of American criminal suspects. And he talked. "This was by the numbers. It was a law enforcement operation and it worked,"
• BBC NEWS | Americas | Whale wedged on cruise ship bow – A rare whale was discovered wedged on to the bow of a cruise ship when it docked in a Canadian port. The 70ft fin whale, a threatened species in Canada, was found when the Sapphire Princess docked at the Port of Vancouver, the cruise company said.
  It said it had "strict whale avoidance" measures and it was unclear where, when or how the whale became stuck.
• Revealed: the secret evidence of global warming Bush tried to hide | Environment | The Observer – Graphic images that reveal the devastating impact of global warming in the Arctic have been released by the US military. The photographs, taken by spy satellites over the past decade, confirm that in recent years vast areas in high latitudes have lost their ice cover in summer months. The pictures, kept secret by Washington during the presidency of George W Bush, were declassified by the White House last week. President Barack Obama is currently trying to galvanise Congress and the American public to take action to halt catastrophic climate change caused by rising levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
• Southwest Airlines breaks losing string, posts $54M profit | News for Dallas, Texas | Dallas Morning News | Latest News – Southwest Airlines Co. said Tuesday it earned $54 million in the second quarter, the Dallas carrier's first official profit after three quarters of losses. However, the carrier said it cannot guarantee that it'll make money in the third quarter, typically one of the strongest for Southwest and the airline industry.

Roswell New Mexico was the site of a supposed alien crash site in 1947. In 2002 UFO researchers found a tiny piece of metal that isn’t native to the Roswell area. It must be from the UFO!

The Metal is aluminum silicon, which is a common alloy made on planet earth, isn’t native to Roswell because it’s a man made metal. However “proper scientific analysis” will apparently prove that the metal is from the alien space craft.

The UFO investigators have apparently ran out of money for the additional testing, whatever that is.

A bank robber dressed in a pin striped suit tried to rob a Bank Of America on Country Club and Southern Blvd in Rio Rancho on Friday.

He apparently changed his mind and took back his note and money bag. It takes a much higher class of person to rob a bank now a days.

• Under 35? Hurray for the meltdown! – MSN Money – If you're 35 or older, the financial crisis may seem to have no upside. Your retirement funds, home equity, job prospects and credit lines have withered so much that it's hard to focus on anything but what you've lost.
  If you're young, though, the biggest threat to your future financial security isn't the current crisis. Your greatest risk is that fear will cause you to miss some once-in-a-lifetime opportunities.
• Al Jazeera English – Europe – Italians hold anti-mafia protest – Tens of thousands of people have marched through the streets of Naples to commemorate the victims of mafia violence and demand an end to organised crime in southern Italy.

  Demonstrators, many clad in white, held banners and pictures of relatives killed by mafia gangs, as the names of some 900 mafia victims were read out through loudspeakers on Saturday.

• Tech Trader Daily – Barron’s Online : Dell: Dude, What Did You Do With Your Cell Phone? – Shaw Wu, an analyst at Kaufman Bros., asserts in a research note today that the company’s first attempt was basically rejected by the carriers as too, well, Dell-like.

  He asserts that Dell showed a prototype to the carriers, but that they weren’t all that impressed. “From our conversation with supply chain and industry sources, it appears that it ultimately came down to lack of carrier interest and small subsidies, making it difficult for Dell to make a profit,” he write. “In our view, the last thing Dell needs is to enter another money losing business as it seeks to preserve its operating margins of 5%-6%.” (Which he notes compares to Hewlett-Packard at around 11%, and Apple and IBM at 15%.)

• Part of Biosphere 2 to get boost from sun to run things – Biosphere 2, the giant terrarium in Oracle, plans to use the sun's energy to operate a portion of the facility.

  Solon Corp., a solar-panel manufacturer with a factory in Tucson, is donating more than $200,000 in solar panels to the research center.

• Report: BofA CEO wants to repay TARP money by 2010 – New Mexico Business Weekly: – Bank of America Chairman and CEO Ken Lewis said he’d like to repay the government’s $45 billion investment in his bank later this year or in early 2010.

  “In terms of paying it totally back then you’re probably talking about sometime late this year or sometime early next year when we see the economy improving,” Lewis told the Charlotte [N.C.] Observer this week.

• New Mexico Independent » New Mexico’s brave new world of film and TV — courtesy of you! – Gov. Richardson liked the idea of luring movies and TV to New Mexico so much that he expanded the incentives package — increasing what had been a 15 percent film production tax rebate to 25 percent. The Democratic governor also led the charge to relax state sales taxes on the industry, and he added a program to subsidize the training of New Mexico residents in so-called “advanced below-the-line” crew positions — a subsidy that amounts to a reimbursement of half of the trainees’ wages.
• Goodbye Google | stopdesign – Yes, it’s true that a team at Google couldn’t decide between two blues, so they’re testing 41 shades between each blue to see which one performs better. I had a recent debate over whether a border should be 3, 4 or 5 pixels wide, and was asked to prove my case. I can’t operate in an environment like that. I’ve grown tired of debating such miniscule design decisions. There are more exciting design problems in this world to tackle.
• PETA: Ingrid Newkirk’s Unique Will – a. That the “meat” of my body, or a portion thereof, be used for a human barbecue, to remind the world that the meat of a corpse is all flesh, regardless of whether it comes from a human being or another animal, and that flesh foods are not needed;
• Was Eliot Spitzer Taken Out Because He Was Going to Bust AIG? | PEEK | AlterNet – Today in Slate Eliot Spitzer has a short op-ed that speaks volumes about what is going on, and indirectly, if you follow the money, what happened to him. Plainly stated, Spitzer brings the AIG Ponzi Scheme one step closer to the revered establishment when he explains how the bailout money was funneled straight into the top players, with Goldman Sachs being the name that comes up again and again. These top players already got bailout money, and Goldman is looking at zero losses at this point, while regular Americans are being asked to make concessions or just plain losing everything. here are the biggest financial entities in the world, making billions on what appears to have been nothing but air traded back and forth, and having gutted the American people they are walking away with 100% return to their stockholders.
• Despair over financial policy – Paul Krugman Blog – NYTimes.com – To this end the plan proposes to create funds in which private investors put in a small amount of their own money, and in return get large, non-recourse loans from the taxpayer, with which to buy bad — I mean misunderstood — assets. This is supposed to lead to fair prices because the funds will engage in competitive bidding.

Intuit’s Quicken online sent a letter to mint.com requesting evidence and substantiation on how mint.com comes up with their claim of 3000 new users a day, according to Tech Crunch. Then Intuit responds to Tech Crunch saying it was just a simple request to understand how Mint counts their users. I read the letter, sound like Inuit thinks Mint is lying.

I’m not surprised by Mint’s growth and they were one of the first at doing the online bank account management and linking. Quicken online is trying to play catch up.

The way Mint works is by users giving Mint their account numbers and passwords for various online bank and credit card accounts. Mint then can help manage users money with this information including paying bills. I would never trust Mint or Quicken or any such site with my account and passwords, they look like a huge target for breach and it’s only a matter of time before this information is stolen.

I use the Quicken Mac desktop app. I love what it does for me I hate that it’s old and out of date. At least my information stays on my computer where I have control over it. I fear that one day I will have no choice but to use a online system like Mint’s where I have to provide my account and passwords and the desktop clients will go away.

When Smarthome had their last sale, I ordered a few things from them. I used the cheapest shipping which is through FedEx SmartPost. The package went from Irvine, CA to Los Angeles, CA to Denver, CO to Phoenix, AZ then back to Los Angeles, CA then to Denver, CO then finally arrived in Rio Rancho.

It’s as if they were doing everything they could to avoid brining the package through New Mexico. I realize this is the cheapest shipping option but I can’t see how Fed Ex saves any money this way.

Heard about that peanut butter salmonella contamination by Peanut Corporation of America? If you haven’t then you can read more about it on the FDA’s website. Apparently a bunch of it is being recalled in a variety of products. Including Clif Bars.

How do I know this? Because I received a call from Costco (via 800-774-2678) notifying me that the Clif Bars I bought within the last year may be contaminated and I should destroy them.

I probably wouldn’t have never known that these bars could be contaminated if it wasn’t for this call yet I find it disturbing that they kept such records about me. I shouldn’t be surprised though.

Thankfully, I haven’t opened this box of Clif Bars yet. Now what about a refund?

Update 02/19/09: I returned my Clif Bars to Costco. They refunded my money and I didn’t even need to explain what they were.

Creative commons photo of Clif Bars by earlg on Flickr.

I went to the second annual xprize cup competion in Las Cruces in 2006. Although incredibly windy it was a great event to attend. This year they don’t have the money for a public display so only registered attendees get in. What a bummer.

“The Cup as it has traditionally been held is not (going to happen this year) because of funding levels it takes to run a massive public event,” Steve Landeene, executive director of the New Mexico Spaceport Authority, told the Sun-News.

“And the fact that the air show at Holloman is not on this year … that was part of the decision-making process that went into saying, ‘Hey, we don’t have the funds to have a massive public event.’ So what we’re doing this year is kind of a hybrid,” Landeene said.