From MSNBC:

Prices of items in the Christmas carol “The Twelve Days of Christmas,” according to PNC Wealth Management:

Partridge, $20 (last year: $15)
Pear Tree, $200 (last year: $150)
Two Turtle Doves, $55 (last year: $40)
Three French Hens, $30 (last year: $45)
Four Calling Birds (canaries), $600 (last year: same)
Five Gold Rings, $350 (last year: $395)
Six Geese a-Laying, $240 (last year: $360)
Seven Swans a-Swimming, $5,600 (last year: $4,200)
Eight Maids a-Milking, $52 (last year: $47)
Nine Ladies Dancing (per performance), $4,759 (last year: same)
10 Lords a-Leaping (per performance), $4,414 (last year: $4,285)
11 Pipers Piping (per performance), $2,285 (last year: $2,213)
12 Drummers Drumming (per performance), $2,475 (last year: $2,398)

If it wasn't for the Internet, I would never know what to buy Nikki for Christmas.

I have nothing good to say about Dell right now.  So I just got off the phone with their "supervisor" "Austin".  Turns out they are not willing to authorize the replacement of this Piece of Shit M1330 unless they have had 3 service calls in 30 days. 

After talking, I use the term loosely as I was really upset, for 20 minutes here is what "they" will "do" for us.

First WE will run diagnostics.  Then when the diagnostics are finished WE will call dell and WE will tell them what is wrong with their computer.  Never mind that the last time I tried to run the diagnostics the machine hung.  Then they MIGHT send out a technician to do a repair.  About the only concession I've gotten out of Dell is that Yes all of the service calls have been about the same issue but since it doesn't fall within their "30 Day Window" they flatly refuse to replace this defective box.

Add on to that that the problem has sometimes taken a couple of months to re-manifest it is no surprise that these calls are not within 30 days of each other.  It used to be that Dell Support was something to brag about, and that's why I've actually  recommended buying them.  They've followed through with the fixes and their problems.  Unfortunately it looks as if this time its not going to happen and they are going to lose my business and the business of my family, friends and co-workers if I have anything at all to say about it.

The Case is still open, so they have a chance to redeem themselves, but I will NOT be buying or recommending another Dell in the near future (EVER) it should not have to be this hard to get a computer that actually FUNCTIONS.

So last January, we bought a computer from Dell, it was an XPS M1330.  I had one from work, and really loved it.  So I thought, I should get one for Nikki.  And we did.  She loved it, it was attractive and fast.  She quickly renamed the system the Black Pearl.  Now seeing that she named it after a cursed pirate ship, it should come as no surprise that the XPS itself turned out to be cursed.

Boy I wish I had bought something else. About 2 months into it, the hard drive corrupted, and the system overheated dramatically.  We called Dell Technical support and they came out and replaced the fan.  Unfortunately after reinstalling the OS (probably around the 4th time) the hard drive still corrupted.  So we called Dell Technical support again.  They came out again and replaced the hard drive.  Well a couple of months later the hard drive corrupted AGAIN.  Ever patient, we called technical support again.  This final time they replaced the Motherboard. 

Each time we had a complete stranger come into our house, disassemble the system and replace a component or two, sometimes assembling the case right and sometimes, perhaps not so much (those are hard cases to get right...) 

Well we've now done this three times, and it's still corrupting files.  I'm on the phone with the Dell Service technician again, and again they are really nice.  There is a little confusion as their technical support believes that they've replaced the hard drive twice, but I don't want to disabuse them of this as it will most likely cause confusion. I have no problems with the professionalism of their tier two technical support, and in fact this is the primary reason I keep recommending Dell even through these issues.  Right now it looks like the laptop will be replaced.  I'll keep you informed.

It should be noticed that I still love my Dell computer despite earlier problems with the GPU, and in the last year I've recommended 6 Dell laptops (including 2 more XPS's before we realized how many documented problems there were) and 1 Dell Desktop to friends and family and that's not counting the 4 or 5 I've recommended around my place of business.

So now I have to wait 48 hours for a supervisor to call me back. 

Note: Doing research while on the phone , I've found that the XPS has documented manufacturing defects.  I had these graphics issues on my own personal system back in early summer.  So I'm glad I was hit early.  It was taken care of very effectively in house by my corporate IT. 

This really will be the tell if I continue to recommend Dell's or not...

Today is a good day:  The end of the Bush Error (Don't blame us we voted for the other guy in 2004).  Possibly my favorite article of the day regarding this win was the one about Condoleezza Rice.

Unfortunately not all news is good news, California's proposition 8 appears to have passed, and frankly out of all the idiotic asinine constitutional amendments I find none more offensive. Colorado put up a good fight for title of idiocy, but at least they defeated the stupidity of their religious zealots.

Today we will celebrate a new president, mourn the passing of the rights of my friends and family in California, and hope that in January we can be glad that there will be a new Supreme Court.  For our intolerant friends, I would remind you that in the 60s many states had the same bans against interracial marriage.  Mildred Loving, who fought the ban, (after marrying in Washington I might add) died this year. I wonder how she would have voted.  She won her case in the Supreme Court in 1967 after being arrested in Virginia for "cohabiting as man and wife, against the peace and dignity of the Commonwealth".

The first supreme court decisions were unfortunate.  Pace v. Alabama, the supreme court actually said it was constitutional to prohibit the marriage of people of different races.  This law was apparently in place to (according to the Alabama Supreme Court) to stop "the amalgamation of the two races, producing a mongrel population and a degraded civilization, the prevention of which is dictated by a sound policy affecting the highest interests of society and government." (Pace & Cox v. State, 69 Ala 231, 233 (1882)

This argument is just as offensive as the lines of thought that I heard coming out of the mouths of the people this year:  "We are protecting the children, children need a mother and a father..."  Bleck, whatever.  Tell that to the hundreds of people I know that were raised by their mothers, or in several cases, raised by their gay fathers. 

It took the supreme court almost 100 years before they fixed this catastrophic offense against humanity.  The tide started turning in 1964 with McLaughlin V. Florida, and the battle was finally won in Loving V. Virginia.  I am positive that the Majority of people at that time said the world was going to end, and the interracial children would bring about the End Of Times.

I suppose we'll find out.  If these laws had been allowed to continue, would we even have Barak Obama?  What great leader are we preventing from learning the lessons they need from a loving family?  All I know is those self righteous ignorant hicks in Arkansas  had best make their way to the foster homes and adoption centers.  There are a serious number of kids looking for a home now, and you have prevented them from finding one.  Every person who voted yes on Arkansas Initiative 1 should have to spend a year as a Foster Parent, since they are RESPONSIBLE for reducing the number of available fostering households.  But then again, when did the religious right ever take responsibility for anything.  They'll probably blame the children next.  "It's not our fault you were produced from miscegenation."  That's a loving, apparently godly, thing.

Tags: nano

So we're broke, spending a fortune in paying off our debt, but who gives a damn.  When the market (by whatever measure you want) is down 40% over 10 months, you start finding ways to buy stock (unless you're one of the fools that are pulling out).

So what are we buying?  Things we know.  I'm holding Microsoft (MSFT) (why sell when your down), we've are also now holding NetFlix (NFLX), and next week (ish) we'll be buying Activision/Blizzard (ATVI).  Microsoft, btw, with a PE at 11.9 is a fantastic deal.  Unfortunately the Stock has been under performing for so long I have a hard time keeping it around. (Perhaps because we bolster Yahoo's price at the expense of ours?  I don't claim to know, but it's frustrating).

So you might be wondering, how are we doing?  Well we're not getting our butts kicked, but we're not ahead (down 10% in Microsoft over a month, and 4.3% in NetFlix over the week).  Fortunately (other than the MSFT) we're looking to hold this stuff for 10+ years.  By then, I think we'll be doing just fine. 

Who ever you are, quit looking. Don't spend every moment obsessing about your 201K.  If your managing your own portfolio, check to make sure there hasn't been a tragedy and get back to your day job.  The simple facts are: Your stocks are down, and if you sell NOW, they will never go UP.  If your under 60, just hang on. If you have good companies, you'll come out just fine.  Just be sure they are, really, actually good companies (who knew Wamu was that rotten...)

The group entering the cave was comprised of Michael McCormack, Aaron Stavens and Kari Doller. Dave McElmurry was unable to attend, and Ben Sainsbury was moved to Bob Straub's group for safety reasons. We took the old Papoose trail down, and it was generally safe until after the climbing wall, where the trail virtually disappeared to the cave, smothered in the soot and remnants of the prescribed burn.

The drive over was unremarkable, less trouble than I remember, and we set up camp late, around 2 AM, all times are Mountain.  It was somewhere around 17 degrees Fahrenheit, and the wind was howling.

The next day we woke up and we had to and braved the ridiculous cold to make coffee and oatmeal.  I started to prepare my camera for the visit and discovered that my battery was completely dead.  After the necessary preparations Bob's team headed off to the cave.  We followed and entered the cave and hour later at 1:00 PM. The creek was flowing into the entrance of the cave, and was a solid indicator of high water levels throughout most of the cave. It was really  quite beautiful, with ice formations formed all over the debris field.  We had one 10-15 lb rescue cache for the R&R Room with us, and we were planning on picking up one additional cache in the Sand Room to complete the journey.

We entered through the new main gate which is an incredible improvement over the previous culvert gate. It was difficult (damn near impossible) to shut from the inside without the hinges and we are excited that those will be added soon. The gate is well designed and clearly a good investment for the environment of the cave and safety of the cavers. Those involved in the project should be commended on their fine work.

We progressed safely to the 25' drop, were the concerns about the high water were realized, there were two waterfalls at the drop. We travelled down to the 40 foot drop, Kari was lugging the bucket, and we were all glad that my camera's battery was dead. We then rappelled the 40 foot waterfall with a deviation. The waterfall was incredibly active, and the deviation was not sufficient given the water volume. Though undoubtedly better than rappelling and climbing straight through. The sound was amazing and I need to get a sound recorder so I can try and put together a photo-cave experience.

Our trip through the cave was slowed by the large 6 gallon bucket, and we made it to the sand room sometime around 3pm.  Here we took a quick break for lunch and water.  We were already getting chilled and we decided we needed to get a move on.

After this brief respite, we grabbed the food cache for the R&R room and headed up to Satori. Great care was taken with the buckets both believed to be between 10-20 lbs. through the highly decorated passages, which slowed our team greatly. Sometimes we were canyon-ing through the passages with the buckets tethered to our seat harnesses, dangling between our legs.   Other times we simply muscled them through the passages as best we could.  The buckets added substantial complexity and fatigue to the overall trip. Water was flowing in Satori and lower Satori which is somewhat unusual. In my experience, this is usually not more than pools. Puberty Pit however was completely dry, there was no water movement in this area at all which surprised everyone on the trips.  the sound was incredible here, a room with amazing acoustics.  We passed Bob Straub's team at the bottom of Puberty Pit, where we exchanged news and plans for the trip out.. Continuing on, we passed through the Great White Way, again being very careful with the buckets so we would not harm the highly decorated passage.  This was a serious pain in the butt.  Crawling through water, under delicate formations with a 6 gallon 20 lb bucket is not a lot of fun.  Eventually we made it into the R&R room at around 5:30 PM.

The team at this point realized they were too exhausted to take up the sight seeing trip through the Rat Race and into the Lightning passage, so after a quick look at the Millrace room which had a good amount of water flowing through it, we headed back out.  At Puberty Pit, we sang several renditions of Swing Low while Kari made the first climb.  The acoustics added to the reverberating bass line in a very pleasant way. Kari caught up to Bob's Team at the top of Puberty Pit, and again at the top of the Forty, where the two teams exited together without incident.

Gear froze solid over night, when camping, and the team decided to cancel the second planned trip, to an unmapped portion of Papoose cave, we'll save that for next time. 

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Tags: fiction, gud, magazine