I laid out my arguments against them (both rational and irrational) in a most compelling fashion. Now, in the intervening time I’ve done a little preaching against pennies when the opportunity arises. But, mainly, my campaign consists of a good ole-fashioned one-man grassroots movement.

Namely, I don’t deal with pennies. Period. If ever pennies are owed to me as change from a transaction, I tell the cashier to keep them. And an astonishing thing has happened: sometimes they keep the pennies, and sometimes they round down to the nearest nickel. *gasp*

Now, I estimate that more than half the time they keep the additional pennies. So I’m losing as much as a dollar or two a year. Small price to pay. Especially considering that my return on that investment is that I’m breaking in retail clerks all across the land to the concept of KEEPING THE DAMN PENNIES IN THE DRAWER! My hope is that one day this trend will spread far enough that no one need even keep pennies on hand, because a vanishingly small percentage of the population (aka old people) will still use them.

Join me, people! Join forces against the evil and senseless tyranny of the smallest and useless(est) denomination!

The most common response is:

“Dude, that’s awesome. Seriously, please make that happen.”

Or something along those lines.

Sadly, as useful an invention as that might be, it’s just not feasible. I’m not that smart, but I know they call them laws of physics for a reason — there just isn’t a way around them. And I always have a tough time explaining why, exactly, there’s no way (without some vast improvements in current technology) to give the public the climate controlled undergarments they so richly deserve. I’m torn as to whether this disconnect is due to my own failings in explaining the laws, or just because the average person doesn’t know squat about thermodynamics. Probably a good deal of both. So I’ll use this space to try and better explain what I envision and why it’s just not possible.

The Laws
First law: “You can’t win.”
Second law: “You can’t break even.”
Third law: “You can’t quit.”

The Idea
Basically, my thought was to take a tight undergarment (say, an Under Armour-type tshirt and a pair of boxer-briefs) and interweave them with thin, hollow tubes (they’d need to be flexible and durable, so probably some sort of plastic or rubber). The tubes would all come to a ponytail at the tailbone area of the garment, where they’d feed into a small pump and condenser. The condenser I envisioned as a miniature version of the condensing units that provide the cooling for most of the homes in the world (except my design would use water as the fluid, not coolant…which actually makes it a chilled-water application, not a condensing unit. That’s a little too in-depth for this blog). It’s a simple, straightforward design, and it works. For that application. For this one, not so much.

The Problems
To sum up: the idea is to circulate cool water through tiny tubes, cooling the body through conduction (which is much more efficient than convection [conduction is what happens on a frying pan; convection is what happens in an oven]).

Problem 1: It takes energy to cool water. And not just the electrical/mechanical energy needed to run the pump (which would be suppied by a battery of some sort). It also takes thermal energy to keep the water at the necessary temperature (remember, this design is essentially a heat engine, taking the temperature difference and using it to perform work. This application is governed by the second law, and the clearest way I know to state what’s happening here is this: when two systems are in contact with each other and they’re not the same temperature, their inclination is to get to the same temperature, i.e., equilibrium. This produces entropy, but more importantly in our case, it produces heat.), which basically means the human body is hot and the water is cold. Each cycle (which refers to the time it takes for the water in any given tube to circulate completely through the system) will bring back warm(er) water, which will have to be cooled off before it can go back through the system. This cooling produces a slightly greater amount of heat (2nd law). There’s a reason why the condensing units are always outside; they produce heat. This is also the reason the back of your refrigerator produces heat. Exact same design.

In order to circumvent the heat produced, most condensers are remotely located (that is, outside for our house analogy). Unless I want my design to include a Radio Flyer on a leash, this isn’t an option for me.

Problem 2: the design would be really freaking unwieldy. This is just a miniaturization problem. This application probably wouldn’t need a real big compressor, but I’m not sure how small you can make on of those things. Additionally, it’d have to run on battery, which means it’d have to be really energy efficient. Batteries are ridiculously dense, which adds even more weight. If problem 1 went away, a workable solution to problem 2 wouldn’t be that daunting.

Problem 3: the design would be really expensive. Without having done so much as setting pen to paper, I’d guess that the whole system (specialized undergarments and a fanny pack for the cooling apparatus) would cost a few hundred bucks. That’s prohibitive. To realistically market the thing (y’know, outside the pages of the Sharper Image) you’d want the price in the $100 range.

Conclusion
If I want to build my design as it currently stands, the prototype would leave the wearer with a much cooler torso and 2nd degree burns on his lower back. Also, the thing would probably weigh 20 pounds and cost several hundred dollars. Back to the drawing board.

That’s the list of businesses that I’ve filed a formal complaint with for god-awful service in the last three years. Poor customer service is tolerated by management, but not by corporate. So I complain where it’ll do some good — to corporate. Since I’ve started doing this I’ve also filed several positive reports, in instances where I received outstanding service. I figure it’s only fair. Plus, since outstanding customer service is so rare, it’s not something I have to do often.

But now I can add Bennigan’s to the list above.

A group of coworkers and I went to Bennigans on Vets this Monday. I won’t tell you the story of that meal, but I will include the text of my complaint email to Bennigans for your viewing pleasure.

We came into the restaurant at about 11:15 or 11:20 am. There’s a group of us who work nearby, and we eat lunch at a different place nearly every day of the week. We have a regular rotation that, prior to this visit, included Bennigans. We typically go to lunch at the same time in order to beat the rush, and it works.

We were seated immediately, and we ordered our food about 5 minutes later. At this point, the restaurant was practically deserted (as you would anticipate, it not yet being even 11:30). Now, the last two trips we’d made to Bennigans had taken an extraordinarily long time, so we made sure to make it known that we only had an hour lunch break.

Still, 45 minutes had gone by and no sign of our food. We asked our waiter what the wait was, and he said that the kitchen had gotten busy. Whether or not that’s the case, the simple fact is that we placed our orders before the restaurant got crowded. And furthermore, should it really take 45 minutes to prepare 4 burgers and an order of nachos? I think not, especially after we specifically mentioned that we’re in a time crunch, here. We escalated our complaint to the manager, whose name I did not catch (she was a black woman, in her mid-30s, I’d guess). She apologized for the wait, but offered us no assurance that the slowness we’ve come to expect from this particular franchise was a problem she was attempting to correct.

52 minutes after we placed our order, our food came out. All four of the burgers had something wrong with them (bbq sauce on a burger that didn’t come with it, a plain burger with lettuce on it, another with bacon that was ordered without bacon, and one without bacon that came with bacon [those last two didn’t simply go to the wrong people, either, they were completely different burgers]). Not only that, but 3 of the 4 burgers were cold, as were the nachos. The manager began to apologize profusely and gave us 50% off of our bill.

This is not the first time we’ve had this problem with particular restaurant (although it’s the worst visit of the three bad ones), and they don’t seem to be making any effort to correct it. We like the food at Bennigans, and it’s conveniently located. But you can bet that none of us will be returning to this location anytime soon.

Criminally slow service, orders that were more wrong than right (and we didn’t have the time to wait for them to get fixed), and a staff with a cavalier attitude towards customer service. Bad news.

I would normally offer a better summary than I did in the final paragraph of this complaint, but their online for online allows you to input 2500 characters, and I was at 2499.

So long, Bennigan’s on Vets. We hardly knew ye.

Don’t pump gas on MAY 15th

In April 1997, there was a “gas out” conducted nationwide in protest
of gas prices. Gasoline prices dropped 30 cents a gallon overnight.

On May 15th 2007, all internet users are to not go to a gas station in
protest of high gas prices. Gas is now over $3.00 a gallon in most
places.

There are 73,000,000+ American members currently on the internet
network, and the average car takes about 30 to 50 dollars to fill up.

If all users did not go to the pump on the 15t h, it would take
$2,292,000,000.00 (that’s almost 3 BILLION) out of the oil companies
pockets for just one day, so please do not go to the gas station on
May 15th and lets try to put a dent in the Middle Eastern oil industry
for at least one day.

If you agree (which I can’t see why you wouldn’t) resend this to all
your contact list. With it saying, ‘’Don’t pump gas on May 15th”

Sounds like a great idea, right? Wrong. This is an urban legend that’s been around since at least ‘99. It doesn’t work, and I’ll try to briefly explain why.

It requires no sacrifice, hence no change in consumption. No one’s being asked to reduce the amount of gas (and therefore oil) they use — they’re simply asked to shift which day they purchase it on.

The gas companies don’t suddenly find themselves with an excess of product (which, if they did, would theoretically drop prices — supply and demand, and all that jazz). All that would happen, even if everyone who read this email participated in the boycott*, is that there’d be more gas purchased on May 14th and May 16th and less on May 15th. It’s like skipping lunch; you’ll just make up for it by eating a bigger dinner. Continuing that analogy, if you want to lose weight, it requires a prolonged commitment to calorie reduction.

The only way for action at the consumer level to lower gasoline prices is to decrease demand, which can be done two ways: driving a more fuel efficient car, or reducing consumption (aka driving less).

JT

*Boycott isn’t really an accurate description of what’s happening here. If I want to boycott Spiderman 3, that doesn’t mean I wait until Saturday to see it instead of going opening day. I refuse to watch it altogether.

I’m their one and only Saints writer (for now), and my article about the NFL draft went up this past Friday. ‘Course, since the draft was this weekend it’s not particularly timely anymore, but it’s there for the reading anyhow.

You can read it here.

I’ll update you guys here whenever a new article goes up. I’m not sure just yet what my schedule will be, but I’ll keep everyone posted. Er, so to speak.

In anticipation of that, I’ve been screwing around with the Wordpress UI (where all the driving takes place, you could say). One of the serendipitous side effects of that tinkering is that I got the embedding to work, so the music page now has an embedded flash player that you can listen to stuff with, instead of having to click away and hear the music. So go to the “Music” page and check it out.

The other major side effect is that this means I can use Wordpress and the CMS for my music site, which is nice for several reasons (not the least of which is that I’m already familiar with how it works, so the learning curve isn’t too bad).

1) Play to your strengths.  If you’re an ex-player or coach, then your strength is inside information and educated analysis.  You’re not a freaking comedian, no matter what that pack of yes-men at the network tell you about the sitcom where you play the quirky father that’s in development.  It ain’t happening.  Tell me something I don’t know, and be brief.

2) Be a team player.  In other words, let the other guys play to their strengths.  If you’re the play-by-play guy, kick it to the color guy when it’s time and be ready to get it back.  Color guy, don’t talk over the em effing play!

3) Don’t be a jackass.  I call this the Bradshaw rule.  I’m not using ‘jackass’ metaphorically, either.  The man literally gets on TV and brays.  Or at least that’s how it sounds to me.  Bradshaw spent two series of the LSU/Notre Dame game talking loudly about how he couldn’t get the telestrator to work.  This, after mispronounciating JaMarcus Russel’s name for the first series (as DaMarcus).

4) Don’t be a homer.  And I don’t mean Simpson.  If I heard one more ‘expert’ talk about the matchup between Bill Belichick and Philip Rivers this week I might have thrown myself from a high window to end my misery.  Stop auditioning to be the fluffer for the Pats.  Belichick’s not a genius; he’s a damn football coach.  And he doesn’t play defense.

Also, I don’t give a shit what the sideline reporter looks like.  Hire someone who knows something about the sport they’re covering, even if they look like a Picasso, aight?

p.s. Dear Stuart Scott, you’re not nearly as funny as you think you are.  You haven’t come up with a clever catchphrase since “cool as the other side of the pillow”, and your lazy eye freaks me out.  Never say ‘BANANAS’ on the air again.  The players are not your friends — they’re nice to you because you cover them.  Shaq ain’t having you over for a bbq because you said his album was ‘ill’.

The new company’s great.  Great people, great environment, great work, and some days it’s almost fun.  Almost.  The new company got bought out by another firm about 8 weeks after I started, so there was a fairly medium sized shakeup.  The dust is still settling on that one, I think.  I’m still trying to sell my house in Lafayette so I can get an apartment in New Orleans, which will hopefully cut my commute from 2 hours daily to around 30-45 minutes daily.

One of the unexpected benefits of living at home is that I get to be back in my hometown for the first extended period of time since high school.  One of the unexpected bummers of living at home is that I have to be back in my hometown for the first extended period of time since high school.  It’s great to see my friends on a regular basis, and it’s been a lot of fun reacquainting with people I knew when I was younger and lost touch with until recently.  Playing the open mic night at Brady’s every Tuesday is by far the bright spot of my week.

But Hammond, as with most small towns, is one of those places where the more things change the more they stay the same. 

And that’s the 90 second wrapup of the last few months.  I had a great holidays, and a fuzzy, if interesting, New Years.

Resolutions:
Play more gigs;
Write more music; and
Reverse the expansion of my midsection and my policy of appeasement towards it.

‘Cause after all, it’s not a resolution if you don’t write it down.

Thing is, since she came on she’s gotten less attractive but more talented.  Not to say that she has physically gone downhill, more that she’s continually shown that she’s trash (not that she’s alone in that — yes, I’m looking at you, Britney) which makes her much less attractive in my eyes.  Whatever works for her, though; I’m not a moralist.

Her last album came out about 3 years ago and it was fantastic; a total departure from her early stuff (which makes sense, since she had almost no say in her first album).  So I was excited when I realized that this one was due up soon.  I bought it on the day it came out, and listened to it the next day during my commute.  It’s a double disc, and after disc one I was saying, “Meh.”  It was (and remains) underwhelming.  The arrangements are innovative, and sonically very interesting.  But the hooks are non-existent.  What happened to melodies, Christina?  Remember them?

So I almost didn’t even make it to disc two.  Boy, am I glad I did.  Tracks 3 & 4 are catchy as hell — great energy and just downright nasty arrangements.  Track 5 is a pure blues jam with a strange and unsettling vocal treatment (which seems like it’s meant to sound like a recording through an old school radio, but is just distracting).  But the real gem is track number 8, Save Me from Myself.  It’s unlike any song I’ve ever heard her sing.  For starters, it’s a completely stripped arrangement with only an acoustic guitar for backing (and some light strings further in).  She’s close mic’ed vocally, and does the song without any vocal treatments (no reverb, even, which is downright bizarre for her).  It’s a really impressive performance, and if only she could learn to sing like this elsewhere (instead of over-singing the shit out of every melody she comes across) she might be the best female pop vocalist working.

As it is now, though, she’s the Nuke LaLoosh of pop music.  Million dollar voice; ten cent head.  The average is so low right now, though, I’ll keep buying what she’s selling.