Cash For Clunkers? Too boring

So Cash for Clunkers program is in full swing, but reports are estimating it running out of money in Sept.

Will the government feed it more money? I suggest a revamp.

Instead of giving out money to people who probably don't really need it to start with, how about we get lots more cars off the road AND make it entertaining! Think LeMons racing + DeathRace.

So the country is divided into regions, based on population of 'Clunkers' as currently defined and older cars because the fuel efficiency ratings won't matter. More on that in a second. Have a series of local races. The drivers have to own their cars for a minimum of one year, as the rules are currently written for C4C. The owners forfeit their auto insurance (of course most of these cars probably only have liability coverage) and have to drive their cars on a track with 100 other clunker drivers for 12 hours. The estimated MPG wouldn't matter because the cars are given based on driving not a number that is questionably calculated.

Depending on the total number of races, there might need to be additional races, but the basic idea is that the winner (or top three if you are feeling generous) get brand new cars. Even a cap of $20,000 for that car, would be reasonable or the winner can add their own cash to buy a nicer car. Those are just details.

And just think of the TV coverage. All the networks would be lining up to broadcast these amateur smashup races. Hell some sponsors might even decide to give a car to the audience favorite or something. I know I'd be watching it!

Ok so there are some downfalls to this. People could get hurt for sure. Most of these people would have little to no real race experience. The cars would not be designed for racing and thus would be more prone to bad accidents. It's unlikely that you're going to put a roll cage in a car, just on the off chance you might win a new one.

The incentive to put your crummy daily driver into this situation would have to be high. If it's your only means of transportation you won't be so likely to risk it. Unless you are dumb, cocky, or actually a talented driver.

That brings up another downside, for the drivers, but perhaps an upside for society. There would be a lot more people without cars afterward. Public transit isn't great in many cities, but that's partly due to the fact that so many people have cars and prefer to drive. No car? Bus ticket! On the upside, that's less gas guzzling broken down heaps driving on the road. You know the ones I'm taking about.

So put them on the race track. Let them fall apart there where there will be ambulances and tow-trucks standing by. Let some fools spend money to upgrade their breaks or wheels or some such. It stimulates the economy!

32 bit vs 64 bit OS leason - Photoshop

I just upgraded to Windows 7 RC1 from the Win 7 beta. In the beta I had the Adobe Creative Suite CS2 installed. Everything worked fine but as I recalled during the install, it barfed on the "(x86)" part of the install path.

Last time I simply removed the parenthesis and everything worked fine. This time I thought I'd be clever and just remove everything just leaving, "C:\Program Files". That was my mistake.

Under 64bit Windows, the OS is expecting 64bit applications to be installed under Program Files and 32bit applications to be installed under Program Files (x86). Since CS2 is 32bit only, it royally borked my install, forcing me to completely uninstall and reinstall. This time I'll install into "C:\Program Files x86" which will work just fine.

Lesson learned? Don't install 32bit applications into the 64bit Program Files folder.

Kitchen - Before and After

So here is what our kitchen looked like when we bought the house:

And here is the after shot, from the same location:
What a difference a few months can make!

Kitchen Remodel - DONE!

Finally done! Here are some pictures.

Kitchen Remodel - Backsplash!

Click for larger view

Well hopefully this is the final weekend! The sink went in on Wednesday and I put on all but two handles on yesterday (Thursday). Tonight we started on the tile back splash. We'll have to get more tile because we changed our plans. We were going to use 2 inch tiles, but we changed to the 6 inch tiles. I think it was a wise choice. They look great. (note there is another row that is missing in the picture. The tile will go all the way to the bottom of the wall cabinets.)

After the tile there is just a bit of trim work and it's done! We are both really happy how things turned out.

Kitchen Remodel - Update

We are still waiting for the counter tops to be installed. Hopefully this week!

We got the appliances back in place. It's pretty clear that when we get a new refrigerator that we'll have to measure it to fit a closely as possible. The one that came with the house fits very loosely in the hole and just looks odd.

I need to finish installing the handles. It's been easier this time with templates. No measuring. Just find the holes that line up with your handles, mark them with a Sharpie, then drill. Much safer than measuring yourself and risking a misaligned hole. The cup style handles for the drawers are more work than expected though. Not just one bit to drill there. I also have to trim about 1/8 inch off the end of the attachment bolts. Nothing hard, just time consuming.

We also got the rest of the trim for the first floor. That'll make things look SO much more finished. So along with that I need to install the toe kick in the kitchen. I should be able to get most, if not all, those projects done this week.

Mergers!

It's in the works for Oracle to acquire Sun. While I don't really care about these two specifically it's reminded me of something that irritates me.

Why must companies acquire one another?

I'm not saying Oracle and Sun (or other companies) don't have good reasons to merge. I'm also not saying there are never times when it makes sense. However, I am saying that too many companies seem to do it these days.

There is often market consolidation as that market grows. Initially there will be a lot of players, with the weaker ones dropping out or being bought out. Then things level off. Sun and Oracle have been loosing market share to IBM and Microsoft for years, but they are important to the market. Perhaps they feel they have a better chance together than alone.

Is the technology market uniquely built to funnel business into two or three large competitors? Who does this make the most sense for? Businesses who use the technology, the customers or the businesses that make the technology, or the investors? In other markets I'd say the customer looses, but in technology, having fewer competitors makes for better interoperability. Does it need to be this way?

There are standards for technology. Philips head screws, standard/metric bolt heads, common dimensions for lumber, standard light bulb sockets, etc. All of these things could have been proprietary and thus we'd be stuck with a few manufactures who controlled them. Since they are registered and open standards anyone can manufacture those items. It makes the market larger and more competitive giving customers choice and lower prices.

When it comes to computer technology there are some standards, especially in hardware, but software is really still up in the air. In large part because the standards are not standard. Microsoft has a choke hold on the Word document format, even it's new, 'open' .docx format. There is an open standard document format but Microsoft doesn't want to adopt that because it could hurt Word's dominance. If an open source application worked with their documents as well as their own, suddenly there is competition again. That's good for customers, bad for Microsoft and it's investors.

The same could be said for Oracle buying Sun. Last year Sun acquired MySQL, the open source database engine darling loved by many Internet businesses. Because it uses standard SQL it is enterprise friendly. Microsoft, Oracle, and IBM each have their own database engines that they sell, for a premium. MySQL cuts into their bottom lines. They can compete against each other based on many other propritary software packages and the like. It's a lot harder to compete with free. So if Oracle buys Sun, it could crush MySQL, start charging for it, or change the code to be more compatible with the Oracle database engine, breaking the openness that MySQL currently enjoyes.

Again the customer looses.