Morning at Casey's

  When you drive over a hundred miles a day to go to and from work, you find yourself buying a lot of gas. If I don’t have a chess tournament I fill up my car on Wednesday night in Des Moines and Saturday morning in Marshalltown, but the Thanksgiving weekend upset my timing a bit and I ended up needing gas this morning so on my way out of town I stopped at the Casey’s convenience store to fill up my tank. It was 6:45 when I got to the store. I swiped my credit card at the pump and filled up my tank in 3 minutes.

I filled up my tank with 8.8 gallons of my 10 gallon tank. You can see the "FREE" sign, but on closer inspection...

...you need to buy 10 gallons of gas to get a free soda in 15 degree weather.

  While I was waiting, I saw a card on the gas pump letting me know that Casey’s is giving away either a Vault or Mello Yello soda with a gas fill-up. I didn’t really want a soda in the 15 degree cold and even if I did, a Mountain Dew knock-off wouldn’t be my first choice, but the price was right. But then I noticed the ‘fine print’: 10 gallon minimum. My gas tank only holds 10 gallons so I was out of luck. The only way I could ever get the free soda was if I ran out of gas, pushed my car to the Casey’s and then filled my tank with gas.

  The gas pump at Casey’s didn’t give me my receipt, so I had to go in to the store to have them print it up. Since I had to go in and wasn’t getting a free soda, I decided to get a coffee using my refill cup (75 cents instead of a dollar and a quarter) while I got my receipt. There was only one person in line. He was a fat guy with a pair of overalls covering his dirty Iowa Hawkeye sweater and was getting a can of chewing tobacco. My coffee cup had a half cup of frozen coffee in it so I had to go into the men’s room to put some hot water in the cup and scrape the icy coffee out of my cup with my pocket knife. It only took a minute and I had my coffee poured and was ready to pay, but the fat guy was still at the counter talking to the clerk (who was missing more than a few teeth). He was asking about whether there was a fire yesterday by Gilman since he saw ‘2 fire trucks going down the road’ (I guess there is only 1 road in Gilman, Iowa). The clerk didn’t know but decided to go the extra mile in the name of customer service and asked the person working in the kitchen making the donuts and sausage biscuits if there was a fire in Gilman yesterday. The kitchen worker didn’t know and I was relieved that no one had a cell phone handy to call any of their friends to find out about the alleged fire (It may have been in the paper, but they were probably too shy to ask me to read it to them).

  Eventually the conversation wound down and the fat guy paid for his chewing tobacco. He reached into his overall pocket for the change and pulled out a handful of change, corn, and soybeans. He laid it all on the counter, separated the change from the corn and soybeans, paid the clerk, scooped up the corn and soybeans, put them back into his pocket, and left. I asked for my receipt, paid my 75 cents for the coffee, and was back outside 30 seconds later.

  When I got back outside, my car was blocked from going forward by another farmer in a giant truck getting gas in the pump in front of mine. The farmer could easily put 10 gallons of gas in his truck in order to get a free soda. The truck was parked at an angle so I couldn’t get around him, but had to back out and go around all the pumps to be on my way. At that point it was 7:00, 15 minutes after I pulled in.

And how did your day start?

Not only did this big truck block me from driving away, he probably got the free soda with his giant gas tank. I'll just look on the bright side, maybe he'll choke on it...

The Heat is On

  The NBA season is almost a quarter of the way done and it looks like the 1973 Philadelphia 76ers record-low of 9 wins is safe for another year since every team has at least 3 wins and are well behind the pace. At the other end of the scale, only the San Antonio Spurs are close to the 1996 Chicago Bulls top record of 72 wins against 10 losses. The Spurs are currently 1 game behind the pace at 14-2, but I can’t see them keeping up the pace, given the age of their best players.

  The big surprise in pro basketball this year is the star-studded Miami Heat’s pedestrian record of 9 wins and 8 losses. When superstars LeBron James and Chris Bosh joined Dwyane Wade in Miami, their fans celebrated as if the championship was already theirs and many of the basketball pundits were all but conceding multiple championships. I thought that if the Heat had gotten off to a fast start, they would have the confidence needed to win the championship (See my prediction here), but they have been set back by injuries and the weight of high expectations.

  I’ve gotten to see the Heat a few times on TV and it seems to me that the other championship contenders playing against the Heat with an effort level that is normally given to a hated rival or a defending champion. The Heat don’t have a top-notch center (Bosh is more of a power forward) or a point guard. Championship contending teams generally have at least one of those components and most championship teams have both. The Heat team seems designed to have Bosh do the rebounding while James and Wade do the scoring, but I think the team does better when Bosh is the top scorer, pulling the opposing teams big men away from the basket so Wade and James can penetrate and score. This is how the great Knick teams of the early 70's played with undersized 'big men' Willis Reed and Dave Debusschere, who would shoot from the outside while guards Walt Frazier and Earl Monroe scored close to the basket.

  There have been rumors about the Heat complaining about their young coach Erik Spoelstra. Even an accidental bump by LeBron James is interpreted as disapproval of their coach. Spoelstra is a good coach, but if the slow start is not his fault, then it would be the fault of the players and that probably won’t be allowed. I think Spoelstra keeps his job for the year since I don’t see 67 year old GM Pat Rielly taking over the coaching duties like he did 5 years ago when the Heat won a championship with Shaquile O’Neill, Wade, and a bunch of cast offs. If the Heat don’t win the championship this year, Rielly will steal a championship coach from another franchise and try again next year. The Heat's season is still a candidate for redemption. Basketball, like most sports is a game of confidence and as soon as the Heat string a few wins together, November's turmoil will be a distant memory.

  President Obama is also feeling the heat, but I think he is bringing more on himself. With the Democrats having lost control of congress to the (at the moment) budget-minded Republicans, Obama is trying to get ahead of the deficit debate by proposing a 2-year freeze on government employees salaries. In a country where 60 million people collect Social Security and 40 million more are getting food stamps, Obama would be better off letting the Republicans make the enemies by deciding what spending to cut, rather than ticking off a group of people who would otherwise be in his corner. He could still look fiscally responsible by proposing to freeze the salaries of just the employees making over $125,000, which would dovetail nicely with his wanting to let the 2001 tax cuts for families making over $250,000 expire. I don’t know how many 10 or 20 dollar an hour jobs the governments really has, but it looks bad to be trying to cut off the raises of those people just to make a point. And even worse, since President Obama can only propose the pay freeze and not enforce it, he is allowing the Republicans to pose as the 'friend of the working people' by not letting the 'mean' president have his way.

Flying, body scans, and pat-downs

  I never liked flying even before 9-11. Maybe I don’t like flying because I never was on a plane until the ripe old age of 25. There is something about flying over water that gets me especially sick to my stomach.

  Most of my plane trips were to visit relatives and involved travel to and from Florida, Iowa, and New Jersey. They mostly went smoothly, but I’d rather spend an extra day and drive to where I want to go. When the company I worked for in Des Moines was purchased by a company from Indianapolis, I had to fly there around every 2 months. There was no direct flight so I’d end up having to connect through St. Louis or Minneapolis or Detroit. A flight to St. Louis was delayed when it was discovered that there wasn’t enough fuel loaded on the plane to get us there. I still made the connecting flight when it was also delayed because they were waiting on a part. They didn’t say what part, but I’m glad it wasn’t the part that told you there wasn’t enough fuel on the plane to arrive at the destination.

  After 9-11, the security was a lot more stringent. I had to take off my shoes a few times, my son’s backpack got searched in the back room once, but nothing more than that. My good friend and mentor Dale Steiger once complained to me how he was patted down at the airport. Dale was wondering what the point was of patting down an 80 year old man. I told Dale that if word go out that old men weren’t being patted down, there would be a lot of terrorists buying canes and white wigs.

  After a terrorist managed to board a plane last Christmas with explosives in his underwear, government authorities have frantically working on a way to prevent terrorists from smuggling concealed explosives into planes. The latest effort is the ‘full-body scanner’, which seems to work a lot like the x-ray specs that were advertised inside comic books when I was a kid (samples here). Some people are complaining about being seen by airport personnel in a ‘naked’ state or are worried about the levels of radiation from the scanners and may ‘opt-out’ of the scan. If they do, they are subjected to a full body search which will require security agents to do a pat-down of the traveler including the ‘crotch and chest’. This takes 4 minutes or longer as opposed to the 10 seconds for a randomly chosen body scan.

I could never afford the X-ray Specs, but now I could just get a job as an airport screener. The only down side is I'd have to look at EVERYONE.

  A protest movement has now erupted to protest the full body scans and searches, citing personal privacy issues. They tried to get travelers to refuse the body scan in order to cause long delays at the airports. The apparent thinking behind this protest is that by delaying the boarding of the flights, the authorities will suspend both the full body scans and the full body searches.

  Of course this protest failed to cause any meaningful delays since no one wants to be delayed any more that they have to when they are traveling. The only way a protest like this would have a chance of succeeding is if someone would bankroll large numbers of airplane tickets for the protesters who could insist on their pat-down, leave the terminal, and reenter for another pat down.

  Perhaps the protesters should put the free market system to work and start their own airlines with no pat downs or scans. It would be very popular with supporters of ‘personal freedom’. I hope they have a lot of replacement airplanes because they will be very popular with the ‘Harry the Human Bomb’ crowd also.

Finishing strong

  The St. Francis chess club held our second parochial school tournament yesterday at the St. Francis cafeteria. We had 16 players, down from 25 at the initial tournament 3 weeks ago. The parochial school basketball season has started and for most young boys, chess is going to take second place to football, basketball, and baseball, but that also means that the players who came were the ones for who chess comes first. The lesser numbers gave me a good chance to have a lot of 1 on 1 time with the parents and everyone had a great time. St. Francis head chess coach Jim Mona bought participation medals for all the kids and no one left empty-handed. Hopefully, I can retain some of these kids for the beginner section of my open tournaments.

The 'gang of 16' chess players.
They had a great time and played some good chess.

  One of my second grade charges, Nate, had a rough patch yesterday. He finished second in the last tournament, but yesterday he only got one draw out of 3 games. In his first game, he played the player who finished first last time and had 2 rooks, a bishop, and a queen against his opponent’s queen, but he wouldn’t trade queens even though it should have been an easy win. He then proceeded to get frustrated and lost his queen, the rest of his pieces, and the game. In Nate’s next game, he was a queen ahead, but forgot to castle, got his pieces all jammed up around his king, and got checkmated by his opponent’s knight move. In his last game, Nate had a king, queen, and bishop against his opponents lone king, but left his opponent without any legal moves and the game by rule is a stalemate and a draw.

  I had previously worked with Nate on checkmating with a lone queen, but after Thanksgiving we’ll go over the how’s and why’s of winning a game a queen or more ahead. I told him after the tournament, that he could have won all 3 games and he played very well, but he was discouraged and frustrated and I hope I haven’t lost him as a tournament chess player. As a teacher, I spend so much time showing how to play correctly so they will get a winning advantage that I neglected to work on converting the advantage.

If more kids spent an afternoon or 2 playing chess instead of mindlessly watching TV, the nation's education system would be a lot better off.

  When I got home, I was able to watch another example of not finishing strong when I saw the Iowa Hawkeyes play the Buckeyes of Ohio State University. The Hawkeyes had high hopes going into the season. They won the Orange Bowl last year and most of their best players were returning for another season. Even the schedule seemed to be in their favor with home games against their main conference rivals, including the Buckeyes. Sadly, the Hawkeyes have lost 3 games all in the same fashion. With the score tied or the Hawkeyes clinging to a slim lead, the opponents drove the ball the length of the field for a go-ahead touchdown with enough time left for the Hawkeyes for a chance to mount their own last ditch attempt to win the game. And in each of the 3 games, the Hawkeyes’ offense failed to score and the team lost.

  Yesterday’s game was no exception. The Hawkeyes led 17-13 and the Buckeyes were facing a 4th down and 10 yards to go and less than 3 minutes to go in the game. Ohio State quarterback Terelle Pryor dropped back to pass, couldn’t find an open receiver, but managed to scramble for a first down. Predictably, the Hawkeye defense gave up the go-ahead touchdown and the game was lost when the Iowa offense failed to score with a minute left.

  I see a failure to finish strong a lot of times. Many times on the job, a programming assignment will be complete enough to be put into production, but small errors are left in like a misspelled error message or misaligned labels and are never corrected. At some point, a customer gets upset with the company and will point out that you couldn’t even spell an error message correctly. I’ve seen chess tournaments run without an accompanying article to let people know that the tournament was held. No one will make a mental note not to miss the next tournament if they don’t see that a good time was had or the tournament was even held. Then the same organizers will complain about declining attendance. When I did my church’s newsletter, I was continually flabbergasted by groups that would send a notice to publicize an event, but wouldn’t send along a small article (I called it a picture and a paragraph) to let the people who didn’t attend what they missed and also to recognize the people who did attend and thank the people who helped with the event.

  My 2 most disappointing chess losses were due to not finishing strong and expecting the game to win itself. In 2003 at a team tournament, I cost our team a hard earned draw when I not only failed to beat Tim Crouse with a Queen and 2 pawns for Rook and Bishop, I even managed to lose the game. And last year, as soon as I won a piece against Gerald Hawkins, I made 4 awful moves in a row to lose a game I had no business losing. Since my formative years in programming was as a ‘lone wolf’, any mistake big or small would end up coming back to my desk and I learned to write my programs as complete as I could. I don’t know how many annoying phone calls I saved myself with this practice but I wish I had a dime for each one. Sometimes it seems to be the easiest thing in the world to say a project is 'good enough', but I try to remind myself how much time and future effort I'll save by finishing strong. Besides, i don't need any extra proof that I'm not perfect!

  At work, we have a simple 'pick the winner' football pool. Thanks to Peyton Manning's interception, I won all the afternoon games and find myself in a 4 way tie for the lead. I originally picked the Giants for this game, but the Yahoo pool allows you to change your mind until 5 minutes before game time. I figure the other people I'm tied with will pick the Eagles, so I've changed my mind. Hopefully, my change of mind will allow me to finish the pool strong and pocket some $$$.

Jobs by the numbers

  2 months ago I made fun of the I-JOBS program spending $618,618 in a recession to renovate the old Marshalltown Library into a refurbished City Hall, creating a grand total of 10 non-permanent jobs in the process. At the time, I considered this a very poor return on investment, but I was not looking at the big picture. It seems as far as government job creation goes, I-JOBS is a model of efficiency.

  Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board Ben Bernake has been on Capitol Hill defending his newest plan to revive the economy and create jobs by buying 600 BILLION dollars of US Treasury Bonds over the next 8 months. Last year the government spent 700 BILLION dollars in a stimulus program that was supposed to keep the unemployment rate from rising under 8 percent (it is currently at 9.6 percent) and create or save between 3 and 4 million jobs.

  Bernake has claimed that buying 600 BILLION dollars worth of US Treasury Bonds could create 700,000 jobs over the next 2 years. He presumes that buying the bonds will lower interest rates, which will allow individuals and businesses to get loans, which will promote spending, which will create jobs, which will reduce unemployment.

  I’m no economist so maybe that’s why I can’t see how buying a bunch of bonds will create a lot of jobs. Maybe a few jobs will be created for the brokers that sell the bonds, the printers that will print the money to buy the bonds, and then a few more jobs for people who will be washing the cars, mowing the lawns, and cleaning the homes of the lucky brokers and printers.

  I’m not sure how lowering interest rates will help the economy this time. Interest rates are already at an all time low. If people borrow a bunch of money to buy TV’s and computers that aren’t made here, the only money that will stay here is the commission that the salespeople get. I’d like to see the government give money to US manufacturers to produce goods here that can be sold competitively overseas. That is the only way to create jobs in this country that aren’t consumer driven.

  I took out my special calculator with room for big numbers and saw that Bernake’s job creation plan will spend $857,000 for every job he hopes to create. I don’t see why Bernake wants to go through this roundabout process to create all the jobs. Why not find 700,000 working families and give them $43,000 a year for 20 years to not work? Then there would be 700,000 jobs open for the unemployed. We could do this even cheaper by selling raffle tickets to see who would be part of the ‘newly retired’. Not only would the government make money by selling the tickets, there would be extra job creation in convenience stores all over the country selling raffle tickets.

  In any event, the I-JOBS $61,000 per job for the 10 jobs renovating City Hall seems like a real bargain now.