09 Dec 02
The setting: Our house.
The Day: Thursday
The Time: Sometime between 18:30 and 22:00.
The telephone rings.
Background: David curls in a league from 18:30 to 22:00 every
Thursday.
[SARAH] (answering the phone): Hello.
[AMERITECH]: Hello, is Mr. David Bogen available? This is
Ameritech calling.
[SARAH]: No, he’s not.
[AMERITECH]: Is this Mrs. Bogen?
[SARAH]: No, it’s not.
[AMERITECH]: When might be a good time to reach Mr. Bogen?
[SARAH]: Any evening except Thursday.
[AMERITECH]: Thank you.
Time Passes
The setting: Our house.
The Day: Thursday
The Time: Sometime between 18:30 and 22:00.
The telephone rings.
Background: David curls in a league from 18:30 to 22:00 every
Thursday.
[SARAH] (answering the phone): Hello.
[AMERITECH]: Hello, is Mr. David Bogen available? This is
Ameritech calling.
[SARAH]: No, he’s not.
[AMERITECH]: Is this Mrs. Bogen?
[SARAH]: No, it’s not.
[AMERITECH]: When might be a good time to reach Mr. Bogen?
[SARAH]: Any evening except Thursday.
[AMERITECH]: Thank you.
Time Passes
The setting: Our house.
The Day: Thursday
The Time: Sometime between 18:30 and 22:00.
The telephone rings.
Background: David curls in a league from 18:30 to 22:00 every
Thursday.
[SARAH] (answering the phone): Hello.
[AMERITECH]: Hello, is Mr. David Bogen available? This is
Ameritech calling.
[SARAH]: No, he’s not.
[AMERITECH]: Is this Mrs. Bogen?
[SARAH]: No, it’s not.
[AMERITECH]: When might be a good time to reach Mr. Bogen?
[SARAH]: Any evening except Thursday.
[AMERITECH]: Thank you.
Repeat ad nauseum
If you ran a normal business, the following might be signs that your
bills are too complex:
- Your cashier cannot understand and explain the bill.
- Your sales representatives cannot understand and explain the bill.
- Your billing department takes ten minutes, sitting in front of their
computers, to understand the bill well enough to explain it to a customer.
Such was the situation in which I found myself at the local Saturn
dealership last week. Sarah took the car in to get a new clutch
installed, as well as suffer some other bank-breaking routine car-ownership
maintenance hassles. We needed to have three tires replaced, and since
they were taking all the tires off the car anyway for an alignment, tie-rod
replacement, and whatnot Sarah talked them into giving us the fourth tire
for free. I dropped by the dealership the next day to pick up the
car. The cashier handed me a four page invoice detailing the nearly
$2000 worth of repairs performed on the car. I stood there studying
the invoice, trying to figure out if we’d actually gotten the tire for free
or not because the invoice seemed to indicate that we’d been charged a
reduced amount for the fourth tire, instead of not being charged at
all. When I asked the cashier to explain the bill to me, she nearly
panicked (weird…), and asked if she could get me the service manager.
“Sure, if you’ve got him handy,” I said. When the service
manager arrived, I showed him the bill and asked him to explain it to
me. He puzzled over it for a while and conceded that he could not
determine if we’d been charged for the tire or not. The service
manager then called for the lady in charge of the billing department.
She puzzled over the bill for a minute before declaring that she needed to
consult her computer. She disappeared for ten minutes while I stood
there at the service counter reading a book. Finally, the biller came
back and explained that I hadn’t gotten the tire for free, but I hadn’t been
charged full price for it either. They were going to take off the
price of the oil change to make up the difference. When I got home, I
took a calculator to the bill to verify my gut feeling that we actually got
the tire free and then some. The calculator helped me determine that
we got the tire, tire labor, and the oil change for free; a better deal for
us than the one to which the dealer originally agreed. If Saturn
wasn’t part of GM, there might be hope that someone, somewhere could
convince them to produce clearer, easier to understand bills. While we
made out better than we should have, I wonder how many people pay the dealer
more than they should simply because they don’t understand the bills.
Sarah and I came to the conclusion that while we like eating at
restaurants, it is very rare that we like the food we get while
eating in restaurants. Since moving to Madison, we’ve gotten truly
tasty food at exactly one restaurant. We ate at a restaurant on Friday
night that is a local favorite. Uh, huh. If you like mediocre
food in an ugly, loud, wood-paneled environment with unfriendly service, the
Stamm House is for you. On Saturday, we made Roasted Squash (with
browned butter and sage) and jalapeno sausage and rice and that was 100
times better than the food we got on Friday night. So, rather than
eating out once a week and getting mediocre food (I hate paying for
mediocre food), we’re going to make more interesting, creative meals at home
and eat at a restaurant every two or three weeks. This should spread
the mediocrity out over time a bit better. Yesterday, Sarah made
chicken and dumplings that were really good. This week, we’re making
turkey pie, calico beans, a pork loin smothered in a sauce of prunes and
cranberries (or juniper berries, if I can find them) that have been soaked
in bourbon and port and some other, easier dishes. If nothing else,
the drinks are cheaper at home.
On a side note: Sarah and I would happily sell ourselves into
slavery for a really good burrito or some really good sushi.
Of course, by their very nature, mediocre restaurants must exist.
If every restaurant produced tasty, affordable food, mediocre must cease to
be applied as an adjective. or mediocre would slide up the scale so far th
at
excellent would cease to exist for all intents and purposes and everything
would be either mediocre (currently a good restaurant) or good (currently an
excellent restaurant).
My Schwinn is still having problems with the cold weather here. The
basic problem is that the chain and sprockets can spin wildly without
affecting the rear wheel’s revolutions. This has basically rendered
the bicycle non-functional and has forced me onto the bus for the last week
or so. My current theory is that the cold weather is somehow affecting
the grease between the freehub and the gear cassette on the back
wheel. As the bike gets colder, the rear sprocket is less and less
likely to be engaged to the rear wheel, even as the chain (driven by the
cranks) spins around and around without encountering any resistance.
As the bike gets warmer, this ceases to be a problem. Since the bike
was converted from a ten-speed to a single speed in California, my theory
says, a grease that was never meant to see windchills below zero was applied
to the freehub and the sprocket. So, now I need to get a chain whip
and some solvent, remove the rear sprocket, and possibly and hub, and soak
them both in the solvent to remove the grease. Then, I need to get a
high-quality synthetic lube, apply that lube to both components, reassemble
the back wheel, and test the bike. All this so I can ride my bike
through snow and cold.
Yes, George W., the economy is in the tank because of the people you just
fired, and not your economic policies. Uh, huh. We really do
belive you. Now, if you’ll excuse us, we need to get back to watching
the sky for flying saucers and ICBM’s launched by bin Laden with Hussein’s
backing. How stupid do you think we are?
Rumor has it that Dick Cheney will leave his undisclosed location and
make an appearance in Madison. I thought I felt a disturbance in the
Force.