free as in blog

It’s not real money laundering, but here’s what happened.

I was at lunch yesterday with co-workers Kris and Andy. Kris and I are out of cash and the place we’re at doesn’t take plastic. Andy gives me $20 to pay for Kris and myself to buy lunch and then it’s easier for me to pay Andy back, since I just give him a $20.

Today, Kris comes in and offers his $6 to Andy, who passes the money to me. I still owe Andy $20 and I forgot to go to the ATM.

I hate ATMs. In my case, I pay $.95 per withdrawal plus whatever the ATM fee is, usually $1-$2. So to pay Andy back, it’ll cost me another $2-$3, or about 20% of what I needed to borrow from him at the time.

Andy and I went to JP Licks today for a post-lunch coffee and brownie. I had cash for me today since I had the change from Andy’s $20 plus the $6 Kris gave me this morning. So I offer Andy a deal. I’ll pay him back his $20 now, but I’ll do it as a JP Licks gift card. I could then pay for the gift card with my debit card and not have ATM fees. Andy gets JP Licks whenever he wants and doesn’t need to carry around cash to do so. He agrees. I tell them I want a $20 gift card. They tell me if I get a $25 gift card, I get a free 1/2 pound of coffee. They have great coffee, so I agree. I give Andy the $25 gift card, Andy give me $5.

We’re now even and somehow I walked away from that entire deal with free coffee.

A friend of mine started a gaming site called hackrag. I have an account there and have written a few articles about various games and hardware items I’ve purchased recently. Go over there and give them the money.

“One foot on the Mars bars”

I’m trying to get this phrase into common use. And putting it on my blog will do wonders *roll eyes*. On the plus side, once I tell the story of how this came about, people understand it and think it’s pretty good.

Anyway, here’s the background.

My brother (Scott) and sister (Kathleen) were at CVS one day buying something (photos probably) when the person behind the counter started giving Kathleen grief. Scott (being a good older brother) responds by nearly jumping over the counter and giving said person a ‘beat-down’. For those of you not familiar with CVS, they have their candy/gum below the checkout counter in front of you. And the counters are about waist high, so you can see where this is leading.

Good uses:

“That stupid security guard was just giving me a hard time about where I was parking. I had one foot on the Mars bars, and would have pounced if he didn’t walk away. And it was rainy and cold out.”

“The manager just left us standing there while the register was broken and they tried to get it working again. We waited for 20 minutes! 5 minutes more, and I would have put my foot on the Mars bars and fixed the thing myself.”

“Don’t make me put one foot on the Mars bars!”

Bad uses:

I haven’t thought of any yet. I’ll think of something. Or put it in a comment.

Some things are better aged. Cheese, wine, scotch … Ever try a day-old wine? Blech! Even homebrew that’s being freshly bottled has a taste that makes you want to just dump it down the sink.

So now here’s Budweiser who has been blasting the airwaves with how you too can get “Day fresh beer”, meaning it was brewed in the previous 24 hours. Real brewed beer tastes pretty nasty the first day you made it. It’s flat, the yeast hasn’t had time to convert the sugars to alcohol, and it’s just a mouthfull of hops and malt. Not bad, but not what I’d want to bottle and give to friends.

Good things come to those who wait. Try a homebrew.

I was up late last night watching a documentary about SpaceShipOne on the Discovery Channel. Today, SS1 (or SSO) went up and claimed the coveted X-prize, launching a pilot and (the weight of) two passengers more than 100km above the Earth’s surface. I was able to listen to an audio feed of the launch and landing and for a while afterwards. A big heap o congratuations to everyone involved.

The one comment that I heard a number of times was that private industry can do things faster/cheaper/better than the government (NASA). And they can. The cost of SpaceShipOne was a fraction of the cost of the X-15 (it’s closest relative).

But that’s not the whole story.

Scaled Composites skipped past a number of things that NASA would have done. Like wind tunnel testing. Their version of wind tunnel testing is putting a section of the tail on the front of a truck and driving around. Everything was done either in a computer or during flight testing.

Also, don’t forget that the entire X series of planes were designed for research. SSO is research, but it will soon be a commercial vehicle. It has the luxury of having the closest thing to a US-born Werner Von Braun (Burt Rutan) along with 40+ years of additional aeronautic/computer/material/space flight testing that went on. It’s like saying that since today’s computers cost under $1000, the $500,000 ENIAC was a waste of money.

Private industry is willing to take risks that the government just can’t do. When private industry screws up, lawsuits fly, lawyers get paid, and insurance companies pay up. When the government screws up, something worse happens - people get voted out of office.

Still, this is a huge accomplishment. It’s nice to see commercial interest in space flight. I may never be able to go up (it will probably take a long time to get to that point), but I hope my daughter can enjoy it someday.