Dumb, dvd on wheels, GW, experiment

When we bought our last car, the 2003 Sentra, I was really dumb about it. Incredibly dumb if you factor in the fact that I sold cars for over a year and a half so I know about how it all works. We bought the car on a whim and basically just went in and looked to be at a certain payment amount, a cardinal mistake but I figured that the dealer wasn’t going to be able to do it. Well they did and we happily signed the papers and went on our merry way. The entire deal left a bad taste in my mouth for several reasons but this week I found one more thing to be pissed off about. On a urge I called NMAC to check the interest rate the loan was at. 7.5%!!! With today’s low rates, 7.5 was close to being highway robbery. Those son of bitches, of course I really can blame noone but myself. Well I promptly called the credit union and refinanced the car for 3.9%, saving me a couple months on the term of the loan as well as dropping my payment 25 bucks a month. Now those Nissan creeps won’t be making any financing or service dollars from me. Although I have been generally pleased with the Nissan’s I have owned over the last 5 years I won’t ever buy another new one as a result of the BS I have had to put up with from the 3 different Nissan dealers I have had to associate with.

You know when I first saw manufacturer’s putting DVD players in vehicles, I thought it was incredibly cool. Watch a DVD while in a car, how great huh? I wanted such a vehicle for a short while even though the reality that I drive 99% of the time when we go anywhere, which would mean that I would never actually be the one to watch anything. They are commonly used to pacify children. Throw in the Lion King dvd and let the kids mindlessly stare at it while mom drives to her errands. I must be getting old fashioned but something about this bugs me. Why do kids need to be entertained every waking second? Whatever happened to staring out the window, daydreaming, taking in the sights, and just wondering about stuff? I know many parents that use the TV as their baby sitter. While this is convenient, it certainly is not an ideal way to raise a kid in my opinion. I know it is odd to hear such an opinion from someone that watches more than his share of TV but I’m an adult, right? 🙂

I saw about half of GW’s news conference, that was enough. It was more of the same with the normal share of George stumbling and bumbling for answers and falling back on the old stand by’s like “Stay the course….” Wait, didn’t his dad use that line too? It was funny when he was questioned about why he and Cheyney are going to appear together in front of the 911 commission instead of separate like was requested. I joked to Ali that George would say “It’s because Dick is a much better talkerator…” The classic Bushism for the night was “…you got me under the spot.” Hey I don’t think I would be able to answer questions off the cuff in an intelligent manner either, but this is the President we are talking about here. For me, the entire event just further reenforced my desire to get rid of this guy, soon.

I found an interesting study in human behavior that I passed on to Keener. He duplicated the experiement in his work environment with staggering results. The experiment is very simple. Take the bottle of handsoap from the sink in the company lunchroom, put a sign on it that says DO NOT REMOVE, and put the soap dispenser in the fridge, yep in the FRIDGE. This is a test of common sense versus the urge to do what a sign tells us, no matter how non-sensical it is. There is no logical reason to leave soap in a refrigerator, right? Well the soap has been in there for almost a WEEK! Evidently the urge to follow a sign is greater than the implementation of common sense. Try this experiment in your workplace and report your results.

Wonder where the blog gnome has been…..