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Paradise off Highway 10
The Hertz airport shuttle brought a must unexpected surprise today. The inquisitive driver asked if I was flying to Denver. No, I said, San Francisco was my destination. “It will be 40 degrees cooler there than it is here in Phoenix.” I replied that it was 107 last night, when I landed.
“My place is wonderful, and cool. I have cottonwoods on my property which provide a very pleasant shade. In fact, during June, I put up a hammock under the cottonwoods, setup a fan and slept outside at night with my three golden retrievers. Beautiful.”
Where might this paradise be?
“50 miles west of Phoenix, 2 miles north of I-10, the other side of the White Mountains. I bought the 10 acres 50 years ago for $250.00 (!). I bought it and planted those cottonwoods.” My annual property tax bill is $60.00. Those golden retrievers keep an eye on the property during the day.
How’s the commute?
“I drive 65 (the I-10 speed limit is 75). I arrive before all those people flying past me.”
I asked if civilization has encroached on his paradise?
“There’s no one within 5 miles.”
With that, I continued my journey to San Francisco.
San Francisco Ferry Building Photos
San Francisco’s Ferry Building recently re-opened after an extensive (and well done) renovation. I took a walk through the building and snapped these photos recently.
I noticed a growing selection of soy milk products in one of the establishments.
Using the Tax Code to Fix Health Care
Interesting ideas, certainly worth discussion:
We propose a simple change that will fundamentally alter the way people buy health care. All individually purchased insurance and out-of-pocket expenses would become tax deductible for persons who have at least catastrophic insurance coverage. The tax deduction could be taken by persons who claim the standard deduction on their tax returns and those who itemize deductions. All purchases of health care would receive the same income tax treatment.
With a level playing field, workers will no longer have a tax incentive to take their compensation in the form of expensive health insurance with low copayments and will shift to health plans with higher deductibles and higher coinsurance rates. Market forces will ensure that the insurance premium savings will be passed on to workers in the form of higher money wages. Just as workers have borne the burden of rising health care costs, so will they reap the benefits when costs are brought under control.
Cable TV – Charter loses subscribers
Local Cable TV monopoly, Charter Communications reported higher-than-expected subscriber losses for the second quarter, according to Peter Grant.
I recently thought about adding direct tv or charter cable to our home – largely for the Olympics (we don’t watch a whole lot of TV). I found the direct tv customer service folks to be excellent, while my charter interactions were not great (lots of rather hard upselling). I really only wanted local channels, espn and msnbc. They don’t evidently unbundle. Bummer that unlike other parts of the world, we won’t be watching live Olympic internet streams.
Medical Risk & Windows Software
Ellen Messmer on the substantial health care costs/risks of keeping Microsoft Windows systems patched
According to Network World: ‘Amid growing worries that Windows-based medical systems will endanger patients if Microsoft-issued security patches are not applied, hospitals are rebelling against restrictions from device manufacturers that have delayed or prevented such updates. Device makers such as GE Medical Systems, Philips Medical Systems and Agfa say it typically takes months to test Microsoft patches because they could break the medical systems to which they’re applied. In some instances, vendors won’t authorize patch updates at all.’ This is the typical patch vs. crash problem. Unfortunately, the stakes here could be human lives.
Smell the roses without maintenance?
Amy Chozick reviews the controversial use of shrub roses (9 million sold last year), cross bred to require little maintenance
he new varieties are controversial, with some long-stem-rose purists saying that even planting them is cheating. Still, shrub roses are now the fastest-growing segment of the rose market, with the nine million plants sold last year accounting for 30% of all rose sales — double the market share for shrub roses in 2002, according to the American Rose Society.
“These kinds of numbers are unheard of for roses,” says Keith Zary, director of research at wholesale rose distributor Conrad-Pyle, which sold 1.8 million of its “Knock Out” red-rose shrubs in 2003, up from 135,000 in 2000, the year it introduced the variety. Historically, a popular rose wouldn’t even hit the half-million mark, he says. At Jackson & Perkins, a nursery based in Medford, Ore., shrub-rose sales are up 6% this year, and the nursery’s multicolored “Garden Ease Rose Blankets” — $39.95 carpets of color that bloom into the fall — are now one of the company’s biggest sellers.
Google AdSense – the small print
Verne Kopytoff summarizes recent disclosures regarding google’s popular adsense advertising program:
Google is among the Internet’s biggest destinations for advertisers. The company had nearly $1.5 billion in revenue last year, 95 percent of which came from advertising.
Targeting the pitches
Underpinning Google’s business is AdWords, a program that allows advertisers to make targeted sales pitches alongside search results. For example, a shampoo company could choose to advertise for queries that only include the words “hair,” “dandruff” or “split ends.”
Google also runs the ads on partner Web sites including America Online, Ask Jeeves and Earthlink.
2005 Mustang Blog?
Ford is running a Mustang blog (rather quietly at this point). Interesting angle on promoting their new sports coupe. I don’t think they should run this off of the mother ship’s domain (ford.com). Peter Delorenzo thinks that Ford has many, many product problems, including several new models due this fall:
But by any measure, the upcoming Ford 500, the Fusion and the Freestyle sport wagon are not only uninspiring to look at (in spite of being built on the outstanding Mazda6 platform architecture), but they’re going to be indistinguishable from their competition. These new cars may be perfectly competent, but as we all know by now, being merely good enough just isn’t good enough in this business anymore.
Ford continues to make great waves and have fun with their feel-good “heritage” cars, but their passenger cars appear to be falling behind before they even hit the starting gate.
Ford desperately needs a Grand Slam home run – a “standard” Ford that possesses all of the attitude, heritage and legacy of performance that its greatest passenger cars once had. And no, I’m not talking about some Yester-Tech Nostalgia Rod here, but a contemporary automobile that unapologetically says “Ford” in the very best possible way.
Ford executives continue to watch their car sales plummet (the July figures just in were dismal again), yet they dismiss and deflect any criticism by suggesting that when they get their new products “on-line” – everything will be all better again.
But at some point, it needs to sink in at Ford that consumers have actually gotten used to the fact that Ford has nothing to offer them – and that when Ford finally says, “Here you go, folks, check out our brand spanking new product lineup!” – a lot of people will just keep right on walking by.
Related, sort of, article by Thomas Content on Detroit’s health care cost problems.
Meanwhile, Wes Raynal reviews the new Corvette (C6).
K-12 Sports: the essence in this video clip
This weekend’s All City Swim Meet’s final event had a very exciting last heat. Watch the excitement in this 12.5MB Quicktime Movie. Check out the results, photos and many more video clips here and here.