Fantasy Racing Wreck

It seems like there is always someone out there who is trying to ruin a good thing. Every week, I make my picks and check the results on Pepsi's Fantasy Racing web site. The contest involves selecting which Nascar drivers you think will score the most points during each week's race. This week I noticed that my picks had put me in two hundred thousanth place for the week. Now, I'm not that good at picking winners, but on my best week I have placed in the top two hundred, and my worst has been the top twenty thousand.

I figure they have about 50 or 60 thousand players each week. When I looked at the top 100 this week, they have a bunch of names listed that have a series of periods before their names. Of course each extra period makes the name unique. So, it appears that someone has figured out how to automate the login and picking system. It looks like they were trying to select every combination of driver, so that they could get the best score. Despite the hacking effort, it looks like a real login won for the week, because you also have to guess the average speed. But having an extra couple hundred thousand fake players in the system, has pretty much ruined the fun for the rest of us.

Other than that, gas is still $3.98 a gallon, food prices are skyrocketing, and tornadoes are devastating the Midwest. But, I'm looking forward to a quiet weekend with some nice weather for a change.

Kodak Memorial 2008

I have always liked Kodak digital cameras. But this week, someone at work had one that wasn't working and asked me to take a look at it. The Kodak EasyShare C703 went for about $149, so it's not a very expensive camera. The one I checked out would not turn on and the lens would not retract. The owner said that the camera had not been dropped, but that the batteries may have been installed backwards at one point. I tried several different batteries with no luck. I was able to retrieve the photos by connecting the camera to a computer, but nothing appeared on the camera's LCD screen.

I did a search online and found many people with the same problem. There is a web site that will give you an estimate on a digital camera repair. The fact that someone made a web site that can give you an instant repair quote, tells me that digital cameras are not built very well. The camera was out of warranty, so the repair estimate was $98, very close to the price of a newer Kodak C713. Built in obsolescence? Sure looks like it to me.

This week gas prices over here hit $3.98 per gallon. Is this the beginning of the end? I heard that if oil prices do not stabilize soon, the economic damage could take decades to repair. I think they need to start rationing gas, if the world demand is outpacing supply. Listening to congress grill the oil execs this week was laughable. Those guys know that we will run out of oil soon and they are just trying to make as much money as they can while it lasts, never mind the consequences. Unless things change soon, I'm predicting that we will be in an economic depression by 2010.

Back to Basic

This week I decided to cancel my extended basic cable television subscription. In my area, extended basic gives you channels 23-72. The extra 49 channels were nice, but after the six month discount period, the price jumped from $19.95 to $39.95 per month. This increase along with the increase in cable Internet, brought my monthly bill to $105.

There is something about paying over $100 dollars a month for cable that exceeds some kind of reasonable boundary in my mind. I will miss the SciFi channel, Spike, and FX, but you can only watch Planet of the Apes so many times. Now that spring is here, I will be spending more time outside. Cable TV is also a big distraction if you are trying to get anything else accomplished in your life. Every hour spent watching TV is time that could be spent improving your life in some way.

One of the ways I'm going to use the extra time, is doing the final edit on my girlfriend's novel. I also have a new web site in development for a fire protection company. Obviously the goal is to generate more income to offset the rising price of food and fuel. Like many Americans, I am looking for ways to cut expenses. I started taking my lunch to work, saving eight miles of driving each day. I rarely drive anywhere unless it is absolutely necessary. Cutting back isn't much fun.

Marantz PMD620

Part of my job as a media technician requires that I stay up to date on the latest AV technology. This week I got my hands on the new Marantz PMD620 digital voice field recorder. The unit is about the size of a pack of cigarettes and weighs about 4 ounces with the batteries installed. You also get an AC adapter and a holder that functions as a belt clip or a tripod mount. It records in WAV or MP3 format and comes with a 512MB SD card. It retails for about $399.

The only thing I don't like about it, is the 5 hour battery life. Other voice recorders will operate for at least 8 hours on a set of batteries. The PMD620 will produce a higher quality audio file than most voice recorders. But, Yamaha just came out with the Pocketrak 2G, which will produce CD quality files and run for nine hours with a rechargeable battery. The other feature that is starting to appear in recorders of this size is ALC (auto level control). This is an important feature for voice recording, because without ALC, recordings can be too loud or too soft, making microphone placement more critical.

This week I updated the Budget Hompage web site with a wider, cleaner looking design. I found that working with CSS templates can be a serious pain. Dreamweaver MX is unable to render a page properly if it is made entirely with CSS code. If you want to adjust the size of anything, you have to edit an external CSS file and then preview your change in a browser. This can take forever if you are trying to resize content on a page. Until I find an editor that will provide simple CSS editing control, I'm going to stay clear of it.

The Eco-nomic Truth

This week I watched An Inconvenient Truth, the global warming documentary hosted by Al Gore. It looks like the result of putting millions of tons of junk into the atmosphere over the last few decades, is going to have dire consequences for future generations. At least they listed several things that could be done now to help reverse the trend.

Rising oil prices may be the only thing that forces US auto makers to produce cars and trucks with better fuel efficiency. Most people I know have already changed their driving habits so that they have enough money to cover rising food prices. The economy will struggle to maintain itself during our transition to environmentally friendly fuels. The big question is; can we change our ways in time to prevent a global meltdown. As we try, I suspect that nature will keep trying to rid itself of the human infestation.

Student loan debt is an equally troubling issue for our economy and society. Here is an article that highlights the results of the foolish policies that place young people in long term debt to get a college education. Here is yet another good article which helps explain the growing problem we are facing with student loan debt. Until they change the loan system, there will continue to be people in our society who will take student loan debt to their graves.