An Appeal to the US Voter

Dear US voters,

I know none of you read this blog, since I know only one person reads this (Hi) but I'm making an appeal to you anyway.

To us in Britain, your election seems to have been going on for years. I know those were the candidate selections, and it still baffles me that you have a system where people in the same party sling muck at each other, only to then have to support whoever was the victor. But different strokes and all that, after all we don't technically elect any of our heads of state.

Still, should you care, please, for the love of gods don't vote republican. Its not that I have too many issues with John McCain, its the party in general (Lets face it, they've made a balls of things so far) and more specifically Sarah Palin. She scares me, a lot. Not because I have a problem with women in power, quite the opposite, in fact if the democrats had gone a different way I'd have thought a Clinton/Obama ticket could do great things (More on that a little later). No, a woman who makes GW Bush look like a progressive liberal being one heart attack away from running the most powerful country in the world, have you any idea how dangerous that is?

And what is wrong with Obama, Is it because his middle name is Hussein? Is it because for some reason you seem to have got it into your heads that he is a Muslim? Or is it, in the words of Ali G, because he is black? And if the answer to any of these questions is yes, What the hell is wrong with your people. If I got to pick a leader, I'd pick the person most suited to the job, regardless of race, colour, creed, faith or shoe size. Hey, Sarah Palin hunts. We share the same hobbies, and that's your reason to vote for someone, should I vote Tory because one time leadership challenger John Redwood was a Trekkie? In fact should I ignore all the parties views on different subjects and vote for someone purely on their taste in TV and if they play City of Heroes. I can see it now. Yes, I find David Cameron smug and annoying and could never bring myself to vote for his party, but we did a safeguard mission last night and he was a really good tank.

Now despite the fact that it probably means Tory rule, I'm happy that people in the UK probably won't vote Labour next election, in fact unless Boris does something spectacularly dumb the Tories have it in the bag. SO why would you still vote republican after the kicking they've given your country, because John McCain got shot down a lot, because Sarah Palin is a family obsessed nut redneck like yourself. For once vote with your damn head, you might grow as a person.

Love and Hugs

Pie Man

A mini rant on Fog Lights

It was a wet morning today on my drive in, and I have one message for motorists, and no it isn't slow down you maniacs, you'll kill us all.

It is Turn off your God Damn fog lights, note the name, they are not Rain Lights, not Night lights, they are there for fog and like your car insurance, you are not being conned if you don't even use it.

And for those who say the front fogs make the car look cool,

1. Get the hell off my road, a red scanner on the front makes any car look cool but its not allowed, if you want to look cool buy something better than a bloody Rover.

2. It doesn't make you look cool, it makes you look like an idiot who doesn't know what his foglights are for.

In fact, I propose front foglights only be given to people who can prove they can use them responsibly. Or the police pull over anyone driving with foglights on in an inappropriate situation, sure sign they'll be a dangerous driver.

Pie Man's Work Lexicon #1 - Short Range Accounting

A little idea, given an optimistic number so as, like flora and fauna of roads I may continue it beyond #1.

Short Range Accounting - Where huge costs and inconvenience are incurred for short term savings.

An example of this comes from when my work was more clerical based. Our department clearly had too few staff for the volume of work. Sometimes this was covered by Temps and sometimes by Overtime. However how this happened was absurd. So we'd be working a few OT shifts here and there and the call would come from on high "Your overtime bill is too High, all OT is banned" very well, says my boss, how does the work get done "Hire a Temp" replies boss. A few months down the line "Our temps costs are too high, dismiss all temps" comes from on high, once again my boss asks how work will be done, "Overtime" replies boss. A few months pass and once again "Your overtime bill is too high...."

There is an obvious solution to this problem that was mooted by my boss of the time, Hire more full time staff. This was dismissed on grounds of cost.

Short range accountancy is practiced by poor managers and over-zealous accountants who are too focused on the costs of their specific sphere of influence or costs over the short term to worry about such things as long term costs, other people's budgets or practicality. Its a practice that people should be stamping out, but in the world of performance statistics and "Goals" these figures mean more than actual useful work. In short by people who have no interest in the Big picture unless it means they can sack someone or not hire someone by referring to "The Big Picture"

This can also extend to equipment. Most companies will use the cheapest kit available, because it looks good. "Why yes, we are paying 80 pence less per widget using these new ones." Of course these new widgets are 3 times less effective and wear out 4 times as fast, meaning your yearly widget costs are higher and costs of widget installation and failure are increased as well, but it can't be the cheap widgets. I'd penalise the staff, they're doing something wrong.

A Load of Bankers

Well, financial meltdown is Here. And it looks like the honest taxpayer will have to foot the bill.

Question time last night was interesting (of what I saw at any rate) and had a good speech by Chuck "Lib Dems when they were popular" Kennedy where he basically said "Yes, it sucks that we have to bail out the banks. (Oh Lib-Dems, you fools, your lust for power robbed you of your chance at opposition. Compare him and Nick Clegg, pah, but that's a different rant) It really bugs me that, in order to keep money moving and everything else running we have to bail out millionaires who have cocked the whole thing up" and I agree with him mostly on this.

However, what I cannot forgive is how badly this has been handled by the current government. I've heard many reasons about how we got into this state but here's my unqualified and unfocused rant of the major factors.

All was going well, perhaps too well, sadly banks from the very top to the very bottom thought that the astronomical rise in house prices and mortgages combined with low interest rates couldn't end. Some may have known but largely the housing crash came from believing their own line of BS. Problems were showing when houses became so expensive that first time buyers dried up. See housing is like a chain, sort of. If you own a house, and want a better one, you have to also sell your house. Problem is that people start expecting more, as do estate agents etc. end of the day the first link, namely the first time buyer, couldn't get on, and so sales stall (I do realise its more complicated than this) sadly many of the banks, particularly the ex-building societies like Halifax, Northern Rock and Bradford and Bingley, relied quite heavily on mortgages. This slowdown adversely affected their prices.

However this was not all, there were also these City Traders, bankers etc, who swore blind that if left free of regulation they wouldn't do legal, but underhand things that may ruin the economy for short term gain. They of course did, as the type of person who becomes a stock trader is usually a vicious killing machine in a suit with a very flimsy ethical code and as a result needs to be watched like a hawk as to them, ruining an economy is collateral damage.

However, the real damage, at least in the UK, which I believe could have lessened the effects over here, was to bail out Northern Rock. It sent the wrong message, it told every CEO of banks, and city trader that they could take the big punts on other peoples money, because the Government would cover their behinds. I'd have let Northern rock go bankrupt, made sure all savings were protected, but let it go and have its assets bought by whoever wants them. Then used its fall as a reason to regulate the financial sector more heavilly. The shock that there was no safety net may have been enough to save HBOS or Bradford and bingly.

Of course if we're bringing in new legislation, then I'd like a few other caveats in, because its is frankly disgusting that the CEO of HBOS, the captain of the sunk ship, will be claiming his £2 million bonus. In the grand dictatorship of Pie Man, the pot with his Bonus, salary etc, and those of senior board members, would be fair game should your bank go belly up. That would mean that the bill for protecting savings and paying off frontline staff would come from that, then the assets and finally the tax payer.

Finally, one more Culprit. Us, for forgetting that this happened before and can happen again, for believing that there is any sort of Risk free investment. Seriously, I'm an HBOS shareholder, if I'd really wanted the cash from those shares, I'd have sold them. High. Someone was saying that their shares had dropped from £14 a share to less than £2 and that this had impacted on their nesteg. Well yes, but that's what shares do. They go up and down, and can become worthless.

Similarly the thing people kept saying during the property boom was "You never loose money on property" which is plum bollocks. You can pay too much for a property. What you won't loose out on is if you buy a home. Because if you have a home you can live in it, and keep living in it until the market reaches a stage where you cans ell it on and hopefully have enough put by to buy a better one when required. Yes, its common sense, unless you can play the market or run a bank, there are no fast bucks. The less you look for them the more stable you'll be.

Talk Like a Pirate Day

Arrrr, why is this not a national, nay International holiday

Slow Ride

Last night I had the unenviable task of driving a car with a very loose drivers door to a garage in largs.

Yes, our old Clio has just about lost its drivers side door. Its disconcerting to be able to see the road through the gap between door frame and car, and to be rained on through said gap.

Anyway, the point of this was, that despite the road to Largs being pretty good in places, and tricky in others, for the most part it is safe to run at 50-60mph (In fact if you were a bad person and speeding some stretches could take 70-75) however the door would show worrying amounts of daylight if it pushed the poor Clio much above 40 so I had to crawl up to Largs.

SO where am I going with this? Well, the road is single carriageway and quite bendy in places, which means if you have someone with a loose door creeping along at 40, there are scant few opportunities to overtake. Seeing the train of cars in my wake was quite mortifying, but level in thought not as mortifying as having to retrieve my door from the middle of a main road. However I have often been in a car with 2 functioning doors on this road and found myself tottering behind someone who also seems to have a fully functioning car at 40mph. Its infuriating, frustrating and I wonder how they do it without feeling thoroughly embarrassed. I can understand slowing down for the tight corners, but there are long clear straights.

It was infuriating.

In Game Advertising

City of Heroes has decided to start selling ad space in game, and I for one, don't mind.

There is almost always uproar when this sort of thing happens, but I'm finding it hard to get riled, particularly if it keeps subscription costs down, and in this case, can be switched off. The picture here shows one of the best uses of it, a movie ad, outside an in-game cinema, some of the other boards look added but overall, ads seem to be on in-game billboards not plastered on the sides of buildings or flashed up on every loading screen.

There was initial controversy when Battlefield 2142 announced there would be in game advertising, although this was in part due to a myth that your browsing habits would be analysed and advertising targeted to you. To be honest Battlefields ads aren't too bad either.

I really don't know where the opposition comes from. Yes, I've seen games where buildings are more or less replaced by blocks of advertising, and that is poor, but this is just replacing in game fake billboards, for Vanguard or Crey, with a poster plugging a Vin Diesel film. And as always, if this keeps subscription costs down, I'm all for it.

Naturally, not every game can take ads, I somehow don't think a bar in World Of Warcraft would look particularly good with a Babylon AD poster in it. But so far the whole thing seems sane and normal.

Now, Issue 13, Architect.

The mission designer sounds interesting, more on my part to see how they've managed to avoid making them XP farms. However the part that really appeals is the Day job, where you gain points depending on where you leave your character when you log off, so Logging off near a hospital means you're doing hospital work and will give health benefits which is tantalisingly close to being able to engineer a secret identity. I like it.