Last Year's Predictions

Last December I made a few prediction for the upcoming year. A few have come true (mp3 players in phones, the Knicks falling from 1st place to finish horribly, the stock market going up while the economy stayed stagnent, discovering nothing on Mars, etc.), while other have not (Chinese man on the moon, wireless cable tv, troop levels in Iraq, and google losing market share). I am still working on controlling the weather and time travel, and thus my ability to predict the future is still a bit off. Nevertheless, here are my predictions for 2006.

1) The Republicans majority in the House of Representatives with decline only from 29 to 16 (which would be a Republican victory considering a lame-duck President and his very low approval rate). The races with be among the dirtiest in history and will end up dividing the Republican party, creating problems in 2008.
2) The Dow Jones will end the year 12,571 (currently 10,798) after dipping to below 9,000 in the spring. The economy will continue to dwindle and the US debt will reach new record highs. Oil price will remain consistent at around $60 (which is way above where it should be, but will be considered acceptable).
3) I will move to a new home.
4) Next generation DVDs will come out and confuse consumers (same prediction I made last year). Cell phone will become more expensive the laptops.
5) Microsoft VISTA will not be released in 2006.
6) The Jets will draft D'Brickashaw Ferguson, OT Virginia (hopefully). The Yankees will not win the world series, their division, or even make the playoffs. The Knicks will once again not make the playoffs. The Heat and Angels will win the NBA and MLB championships, respectively.
7) The US withdraws 30,000 troops from Iraq. George Bush convince most Americans that Iraq was a complete success.
8) Molly will take her first steps on February 2nd.

(maybe I’ll have some more tomorrow)

Workers of the MTA Unite

The New York City transit workers went on strike today for a variety of reasons, including higher wages and a better retirement plan. At one of the busiest travel and shopping weeks of the year, the union thought that having a strike now would give them the most leverage in negotiations (even though a strike is clearly against the law). Beyond the legal implications, I think the strike is immoral and non-productive (especially if it lasts longer then a day, which it might not), particularly from a utilitarian standpoint. It is also horrible public relations (for both the union, the city, and government officials (even politicians like Bloomberg and Pataki that are trying to stay out of it, which I believe is also not in the best interest of the city)). However, I believe that there is a much larger business/government theme that will become more prevalent over time, which is the concept of pensions. Pensions have played a very valuable role in society, allowing older citizens to maintain their self-sufficiency, while promoting stability in organizations. However, I see evidence that what people pay into their pensions and the benefits they receive with continue to decrease. Pensions may become a relic of a past economic system, and it will be replaced with either a federal guaranteed pension plan (very much like social security) or individuals will be charged with saving their own money and planning for their retirement themselves. If people were fiscally responsible this would be a superior idea in all aspects of individualism and capitalism; however, most people do not plan adequately for the future, especially the large majority of our citizens that live pay check to pay check (perhaps in High School they should teach financial management instead of calculus). And it is those families, that don’t have enough money to save, that don’t have any health care at all, that don’t have any pensions, that need the New York public transport system the most and are hurt the most by a prolonged strike. 20 years from now, the union might have only one thing for bargain, at that is salary because there will be no employee paid for benefits at all.

Analogy

Say there is a classroom of five-year-old kids. And I'm pretty sure that three of the kids wants to kill me. However, I can't find which kids it is, so I take a kid with a bad reputation and decide that I should beat the hell out of him. The teacher objects, but I say that he is hiding a gun in his backpack and I promise that he does and show her a picture I took on my camera phone of a bulge in the kid’s bag. The teacher still objects saying that this kid might not even be one of the kids trying to kill me. Ignoring the teacher I try and beat up this little kid. Now I thought I would just kick his ass, but it turns out the kid keeps kicking and punching. I go out to the store and buy a bat, a paintball gun, and cattle pod (I pay with my credit card, even though I am already in debt and my own family could be use some of my attention and resources). Anyway, I take all my weapons and I am still barely kicking the crap out of this kid (and I accidentally hurt some other kids in the classroom). In fact, he broke my arm and a few ribs, but in the end I stand over his barely conscious body and say “see how victorious I am, I beat up this kid and it only took months and a ton of money. And although I never found his gun, I’m sure those kids that wanted to kill me were distracted by my attempt to trounce this other kid. But what’s really important is that I just beat up a kid with a bad reputation and the classroom is better off for it. However, we must continue to beat up the bad kid and I’ll pay even more money to train other kids in the class and give them weapons so they can continue to beat him up when I leave, although I kinda like this class, it has oil-based paints and is in a good strategic location in case I want to beat up another kid with a bad reputation in the next room. Maybe I’ll stay.” And I look in the corner of the room and see one kid with a crazy look in his eyes and a bazooka pointed at my head and I quickly turn away and hope that he just goes away.

"This is a great deal, trust me"

Car Shopping Experience

With the advent of winter, we decided that Grandma’s Cadillac wouldn’t be the best bad weather car, if fact it is horrible in poor conditions. Thus our search began for what would be my first new car. We wanted something with room, good safety rating, somewhat reliable, and good in bad weather. The car we had always talked about was the Hyundai Tucson, a small SUV that meets all our criteria and is very cheap. Maybe we should have gone with our first instincts and not bothers to experience the “shop around” process; however, that was not to be so. The more we looked the more we were overwhelmed with the choices that were out there. There are over 30 small SUVs, over 50 regular cars that would be acceptable, and dozens of random, yet interesting cars. For example, the Toyota Prius looked promising (great gas mileage, tax, rebate, very reliable; however, one little problem, my knees hit the steering wheel. Toyota spent billions researching a hybrid engine, but they didn’t think to add one of those steering wheel adjusters in the car. Anyway, because there were so many choices we settled on a small 4X4 SUV. For the sake of brevity, I will not go into a detailed description of the cars, it is the process that was so infuriating. So we went to dealerships and of course they make you fill out this form with your name, address, phone number etc before you even start. After the fifth place, I just refused to give more then my name (especially when I just wanted general information). Not to generalize, but car salesmen are all lying scum (is that wrong to say?). They are not to be trusted and things like invoice price, MSRP, and destination charges all mean absolutely nothing. They will show you the actual invoice and pretend that if they can’t sell the car for more then that then they lose money, which is a huge lie. No matter what, they will never make you an offer in which they lose money or break even. So once we went around to enough places to test drive the ones we wanted, and created an excel sheet to organize them (and some of their vital stats, MPG, warranty, price range), we narrowed it town to about five cars (Hyundai Tucson, Kia Sportage, Honda CRV, Subaru Forrester, and a Mazda Tribute). The Forrester was ranked #1 was consumer reports and the CR-V was #2, the rest where middle of the road, but inexpensive.

So in order to try and get a good deal (because bargaining with salesmen is useless) I first tried several on-line car search engines. I’ll make this quick, not one website was useful in any way. They don’t give real prices or accurate information, at best they will give you a phone number of a local dealership. Don’t waste your time with them, although I wasted many an hour. However my next idea was much better. I went to all the manufacturers’ websites (i.e. Honda.com) and got a list of all the email addresses for dealerships within 25 miles. Then I emailed each one (and there was about 65 in total) saying I am trying to decide between their car and a similar car, and I got an offer of $XX,XXX from this other place, can you beat it? And the price I used was lower then anything I had heard from a dealer. 75% of the responses were auto-replies and useless, but I got many actually responses either asking for specific information or giving me a price. After a few days I called the dealership that got me to the lowest price for each of the five cars and made sure there weren’t hidden fees; if there weren’t then I would send out another batch of email with this new lower price. I did this over and over again until I had sets of dealers competing against each other (and another key was it was near the end of the month and I was promising to buy before December and thus meet their quota (which I never did, but I would have if the right situation was given)).

I got was seemed like a great offer of $20,399 for a 2006 Forrester from Liberty Subaru in Jersey. I was happy with this was sent out another round of emails to just Subaru places and got an offer $200 lower from Ramsey Subaru; I sent that offer back to the first place and we went down another $200, and then finally the newer place offer $19,799 “just because they didn’t want the other place to get my business.” Great; however, it was the last day of the month and Lindee felt rushed and thus we decided to risk losing the monthly rebate and take a few more days. The next day the rebate for December looked the same but the original dealership, but I for an email from Liberty Subaru saying that because of some dealership rebate they could not make the deal for $19,500. I still didn’t feel like I owed this dealership anything and wanted to save Molly a trip in the car, so I went to the local Subaru place and said, “I got an offer of $19,500, can you match it, here is my credit card”, and they said the other dealership must be lying because that price is impossible and they said there best price was $21,200. With them out of the picture, and a snow storm predicted for the next day, I called Liberty to set everything up, but one little glitch, there maintenance team left for the day and it would take 2 days for them to clean and check the car before we could take it. So I called up Ramsey and the conversation went like this with the manager (after the salesmen was useless)Me: Liberty offered me $19,500 for the car, but if you can get it to me tonight, then you don’t have to beat that price, just match it.
Manager: Well, I don’t know if we can do that, maybe if you were here ready to buy it…
Me: Well your place is far away and my baby daughter hates the car, are you going to be able to give me the price when I get there.
Manager: Honestly, I can’t say yes over the phone, but if you come down here, and you’re ready to sign the papers, then I’m sure we will be able to work everything out and make you happy.
Me: Ok, but I’m not paying more the $19,500.
Manager: I understand, we’ll work it out when you get here.

So I drive all the way to Ramsey and when I get there and say what I want, they say they can’t do it, and then they called the Liberty dealerships liars. I wanted to scream and yell, but I didn’t want to waste my time. I don’t him that they were purposely manipulative and deceptive and that they knew I can a baby with me and they still wouldn’t give me the deal that they overtly implied they would. Now, even though I wanted the car right away, Ramsey would never get my business. I went to Liberty, they explained why they couldn’t have the car ready that day (which seemed reasonable), gave me the $19,500 price (no hidden fees) and I signed the papers. We picked up the car two days later and all is well. The End.

Ps, Glen, I want to start a website would people submit the final price they paid on a car and it would be a useful research site. I’m thinking about paying people $1 to scan and email me their papers with the final price on it.

Uppppppppppppppp!

Again a huge lapse in my posts, and for that I apologize. Life continues as an unending set of changes and challenges. In the past month, I have started a new job at the Westchester Children’s Association, extended my time at IRC for another month (part-time) as a consultant, searched for and purchased a car (more on that process in another post), had numerous family events, and celebrated Molly’s six month birthday. Overall, I am mostly ok, although I feel too scattered to be really efficient. Hopefully, things will settle into place in 2006. Perhaps I will write a year in review at some point, although the very idea of trying to relate everything that has happened is a bit overwhelming. However, I wanted to write at least part of that now…

I am a father. I am still coming to understand what means. All the other parents I talk to always say the same thing about their children, “I love my kids, although this is such a horrible age [no matter what age], but it’s the best thing in the world”. I have thought about this a lot and I’m still trying to work it out; is every age has so many problems then why does everyone love it so much. Is it some sense of social guilt? Is it simple denial, or is there something more. My guess is that our memories treasure the good things and dismiss the bad things. So after five years, you’ll have five years of good memories and only remember the recent challenges. It’s like good memories are served consecutively and bad ones are served concurrently. There are lots of things I can guess on, but this seems to be something that I just have to experience for myself.

These last six months have been challenging not just to me, but to Lindy and Molly. I would like to express my deepest respect, love, and admiration for the wonderful mothering Lindy has done. She has spent 95% of her time of the last six months within 10 feet of Molly, always there to provide love, care, smiles, and nourishment. It is clear that Molly appreciates it all and I see a strong bond already between them. Of course, there have been rough times and disagreements, but are learning new ways to deal with these new types of issues. We all want to be good parents, but sometimes its hard to also be good individuals as well. It is a challenge that I will continue to face and hopefully will improve myself and my ways.

As for Molly, she is growing up to be lovely little girl. She smiles when we give her something to smile about and dances when we play good music. She has even said her first word (and keeps saying it) that means something specific. She says “Up” (aka – uuuuuuP, and uppppppppp!); which means that she wants to stand (most kids mean “pick me up” when they say up, but molly just wants to stand). And she wants to stand all the time. She has strong legs and a very strong upper body. She can pull herself up from sitting sometimes and can stand indefinitely when holding onto something of the right height. I think she will walk very early, especially considering that she does not have interest in crawling or scooting. Just last night, she stood on her own for three second. Right after I wrote that, I can peer into the future and see myself looking back at time when I was exited that she stood for three seconds. Such is life and such is my life.