Well, after weeks of dealing with instability (relative instability, this is XP after all, and not 95/98, read as: I was forced to reboot twice a week instead of once), and utterly bizzare behavior (why shouldn’t it take 15 minutes for the shutdown dialog box to come up? why shouldn’t trying to access folder properties cause explorer to lock up?), I finally gathered the tuits and formatted the windows partition, laying down the fresh glossy sheen of a fresh install of XP. Snappy as hell. There are some files I forgot to backup, but hey, they weren’t that important.

Reinstalling Windows is like eating fast food takeout. When you first do it, it’s a revelation, it’s hot and fast and there’s a little bit of mess but think of how much easier it was than the alternative. From then, it’s kind of a compulsion. Computer is acting slightly strange, wonder if it’s time to reinstall again? This seems slower than it was two weeks ago, wonder if it’s time to reinstall again…

I then spent some time installing drivers for my wireless card, then downloading drivers for my motherboard, then downloading drivers for the sound card, then downloading drivers for the video card, then copying back over my utilities directory and pictures and then got Live Writer installed and then got Foxit installed and then got Keepass installed and then got Tweakui installed and Gcaldaemon and Rainlendar and notepad++ and 7-zip and Launchy and Avast and that’s when it hit me.

I’ve reached the end of my patience. Reinstalling Windows is repulsive.

 The whole pantheon of arcane rights and rituals to get Windows back into fighting shape is laborious and horrible and idiotic.

It took me two hours to get my frickin’ onboard sound drivers. The manufacturer throttled the downloads at around 20k/s. The only alternative I found was throttled at 30k/s. They would both spontaneously reset my connection and didn’t support resume. Seriously guys.

Installing Gcaldaemon is a fucking exercise in picking nits blindfolded. The whole process is idiotic and repetitive. If it weren’t for Fargo spending several days building a nice, neat install program for it, I’m not sure I’d have gone to the trouble of using it.

I’m still missing dozens of critical programs, frameworks, video codecs, Firefox add ons (being able to easily back these up would be a godsend you guys), tweaks and settings that will make this install viable in the long run.

Honestly, the only thing I _am_ satisfied with at this point is Foxmarks and Gmail, which kept the important parts of my online life in check. Everything else has been underwhelming.

So, once I quit smoking, I started riding my bike again. That pretty much coincides with moving up to Oregon, so say 2004. I rapidly remembered that riding bikes with soft soled shoes kind of sucks, so the Trek 4900 I was riding got a pair of Shimano PD-M535 pedals. I got my IRO Rob Roy in early 2005. At that time it was wearing the same SPDs, which were switched out for a pair of used Time ATAC pedals when I started having spud problems (false engagements and a couple of high rpm disengagements). After two years of rock solid service, I figured my pedal worries were largely behind me aside from some bearing maintenance down the road.

The other day, I had another disengagement at speed, which almost resulted in a crash. I knew this was different from the first moment, because trying to re-engage the pedal just wasn’t working….

I had pulled my foot from my shoe.

See, I had noticed some poor velcro performance before. These were, after all, 3 year old entry level MTB shoes. The velcro had kind of fluffed out, so I gave it a little trim about a year and a half ago. It did it again, so I gave it another shave about three months ago. Apparently two shavings is the limit for velcro, because my non-drive-side shoe just let the two upper straps go and then nature took it’s course.

I started shopping for new shoes, dreams of some fancy expensive Lake or Sidi shoes, the kind where you can get actual widths and whatnot (my wide feet aren’t particularly comfortable in most narrow-as-shit bike shoes, though the Body Geometry shoes were comfortable enough). After getting hit with some unexpected expenses, $170-$250 shoes just weren’t in the picture. I started looking at Nashbar for cheap shoes, but I had ill visions of ordering some $30 closeouts and not being able to ride in them without footcramps. I was kind of staggering around the whole thing, thinking about maybe going back to clips and straps (I have a spare set on my as-yet-unfinished-but-not-abandoned Beater/Grocery bike project) and normal shoes. I got as far as trying to figure out how to keep my shoelaces out of the chainring (which is an annoyance on a freewheel bike and damned near a tragedy on a fixed gear) when it hit me.

Shoelaces.

So I headed off to the craft store (Since when did Michaels only have one aisle of sewing stuff?) and pick up some eyelets ($2 for 25 eyelets, $2 for the setting tool which is handy but probably not necessary) grabbed my hammer and clicky knife and set to work.

They’re more comfortable now than they were with velcro, but time will tell if the laces are more trouble than they’re worth. Here’s a shot of one completed shoe (less laces).

Update : All laced up and done with the first test ride.

Conclusion? Cheap and effective. They’re comfortable and I feel more secure in the shoes than I have in a long time. When the laces are double knotted there isn’t much chance they could get into the chain. Aside from the ugliness factor of bright white tennis shoe laces, the vague chainsuckdeath paranoia, and the last metal ring (which I may or may not just leave there, maybe I can think of a use for it), I’m quite happy with the results. If nothing else, it has saved me from having to make a rush purchase of an item and gives me the freedom to search for a good value (and try on shoes in the store).

It also reminded me how long it’s been since I rode my bike without my laptop in a pannier bag, I got up to sprint a little and the back end went all wonky on me. Time to start doing that more.

Power company came out to look at the supply lines coming from across the street on Tuesday. I had called them asking about burying the line, but they seemed to indicate it would be a pretty expensive proposition (to the tune of a couple grand). I figured I’d have somebody out just to look anyways and see if there were other options (read: free options). The guy took one look and agreed that the situation was kind of scary, what with the feed lines rubbing up against the gutter downspout. He said they’d be out to reroute my service from another pole (closer to the house, he wasn’t sure why they hadn’t done it in the first place). Best part was it was going to be completely free and done within a week. What he meant to say is “they’ll be out here on Wednesday and have it done in 20 minutes”.

This is the best customer service experience I’ve had in five years. Hands down. I called, they sent out a guy at exactly the time they said they would, he had a quick assessment of the situation, let me make a decision, and put it into action quickly and effectively. The technicians who showed up to make the repairs were punctual, let me know when they were getting started (so I could shut down my computers), and did the work faster than I would have guessed possible.

Interestingly, they work in an industry that has absolutely no impetus to provide good customer service. Much like land-line phone providers and cable providers, you just live in their zone and they’re the ones you have to use. Sure you could argue that cellular phone service is competitive with land line phones (which is false, because they sell different services), and that Dish TV competes with cable (which is a more accurate comparison). I can no more choose the power company I do business with than I could choose to have Verizon phone service instead of Qwest or SWG instead of Northwest Natural. If the guy had rolled out and told me that the line rubbing was a result of me messing with the line and that there was a $1500 fine and they’d be out in nine months to fix it, I could have done nothing more than a phone-tree-based bitch and moan campaign that would likely have gotten me a payment plan instead of a straight fine and it would be fixed nine months after I finished paying it off. What could I have done? Buy a generator?

In contrast, Cingular AT&T wireless (whose technical and customer service foibles I have blogged about before) is in an industry that is extraordinarily competitive, and outside of certain superhyped phones and the inevitable multiyear contracts that certain phone promotions will get you, you are not tied to one provider at all (in the US. Things are presumably different elsewhere.). Whenever I contact them, it is a with a sense of pre annoyance, and I am inevitably greeted with the sort of contempt that most would reserve for door-to-door evangelists. It’s almost as if they are daring me to leave and find another provider with our every interaction. I can only assume there’s some kind of depthcharge-style fee for backing out of a contract by using the phrase “fuck you inside out you rottencrotch mouthwhore”.

I don’t really have a good reason for this, I’d like to say it’s because Pacific Power is a traditional company with lots of great American values or whatever, but I really don’t think that’s it. After all AT&T has been around just shy of forever, 1885, you can’t get too much more traditional than that. Maybe it’s a corporate philosophy that runs to the core (AT&T was never really known for it’s customer focus), but I haven’t really seen that run true in other companies I’ve worked for. Maybe it’s because the guys I worked for are union workers, journeyman trade workers who have done this for years and years and are making roughly twice what I do (and probably four times what the people I talk to at AT&T make).

The paycheck really seems the most likely.

It’s always hard. With strangers, I can lie. Tell them convenient things that mirror their own personal belief structure. I figure in the long run, the comfort of having someone say they’re praying for you outweighs being lied to by a stranger, every time. Jesus has a plan. God opens a door. Aaron greases palms with generic solace.

Lying to a friend is harder. For starters they remember your tirades about how the old testament is just a parable about not eating tainted meat and towing the line for an ever grander temple royalty built on your hard work, and the new testament is a “for dummies” faith revision built by some guys who decided maybe there could be two temples.

But I digress. It’s tough to know what to say to a friend who tells you his kid has been diagnosed with autism. What am I going to say to that?

I’m sorry.

You’ll get through this.

Family comes first.

It is killing me inside to think of your struggle.

Life is shit stacked upon shit to keep us out of the water enough to breathe and out of the sun enough not to burn.

I want to hit something.

Maybe they’re wrong.

Please, let them be wrong.

I can’t imagine what you’re going through.

I don’t know if you understand what you’re going through either.

Don’t let it burn you up.

Don’t let the shit stack too high.

Dollar Cost Averaging is as highly debated as any topic in finance. Most of the negative arguments tend to fall into the “it’s better to just invest the lump sum” variety, which ignores one of the very important factors that several personal finance “professionals” seem to ignore.

What if I don’t have the lump sum at the beginning? Seriously, simple simon. If I had the lump sum up front, sure, it probably makes no sense to hold onto part of it (unless it’s making some seriously good interest). But redo your table there to indicate a real world situation where you’re trying to save up the $3000 lump sum for 10 months, and extend it some. Let’s see what that gets us (I’m making the same assumptions of purchase time as the article for the DCA investor, and ignoring the dividends reinvestment, for simplicity’s sake)

Mr. DCA ends up with 113.31 shares, and a December 27th value of $3235, give or take some decimal points I left off. Mr. Lump Sum buys all $3000 of his stock when he has the cash saved, on 10/01 and ends up with 112.57 shares with a Dec 27th value of $3213.87. Twenty two bucks isn’t gonna be the difference between life and death, but it certainly is more. I’m willing to bet if you repeated this year after year until now, assuming it takes 10 months to wad up enough cash to lump sum it, you’ll end up with more stock as Mr. DCA, likely (but not definitely) purchased at a better price. Outside of a stock market dump, where Mr. Lump Sum is protected by having his bundle in cash and can invest at a much lower rate, the DCA plan is better for those who don’t have the cash up front. Of course, his “random” assumptions aren’t great either, as it’s not really random, it’s just ten small investments, which is… Dollar Cost Averaging.

The reason I’m thinking about this is because while the stock market is puking up it’s guts right now and everybody is freaking out, I’m trying to remain fairly calm and just accept this as something of a gift. I don’t have a lump sum to invest (and right now would be a pretty OK time to do it in my entirely amateur opinion), so I have to just let my 401k soak up a couple more shares per dollar until this sorts itself out.

Anyone have any good reasons why my DCA example doesn’t work? Let me know.