About a year ago Jill sent me a blog post by Tom Davis and his work with children who have aged out of orphanages in Russia and other countries. He wrote a book called Priceless that I just finished reading about two weeks ago.

While fictional, it describes in frightening detail the experiences of many of those children. Most of them are simply dumped on the street with no resources or support to fall back on. Many of them wind up as sex slaves in prostitution rings.

As literature, the book was not great. I found the main character's story unrealistic and his inner dialog unconvincing. However, as a description of a real-world situation, the book made my blood boil and made me want to do something about it. I will be working with a small group of men I know to try to do something about human trafficking in Ohio.

Priceless is worth reading for an education on how the sex trade works in Russia and other authoritarian countries, but don't expect high literature from it.

Credit card and governnment debt

A couple of days ago a friend of mine wondered on his Facebook wall why people were so freaked out about the US debt. Wasn't it just like a person with a $100,000 salary taking out a mortgage and buying a nice home?

I commented that it is more like building up credit card debt. The friend challenged me to explain the difference. I thought it would take more than a Facebook wall post to explain why, so here goes.

	Individual	US Government
Income	Salary	Taxes, primarily income taxes
(Relatively) small expenditures	Food, clothes, gas	Parks, research, education, roads
(Relatively) large expenditures	Medical expenses, college	Medicare, Social Security, defense, Iraq, Afghanistan
Lenders	Banks	Bondholders, China
Raters	Experian, Transunion, Equifax	Moody's, et al
Financial engineering	Paying credit card with another card	Quantitative easing
What has happened in the last decade	Negotiated a drop in salary to keep job	Lowered taxes to get reelected
What has happened in the last five years	Employer cut salary	Income tax receipts dropped because of economy

I'm not saying (yet) that any of this is good or bad, I'm just trying to set up a useful analogy or model. One of my friend's commenters said that credit cards was not a good comparison to the US Federal debt since the government can get a much better interest rate for money loaned to it. No argument here, but that's just a difference in the value of one variable. I think this table demonstrates that both equations have the same terms and the same variables.

So what is my point? If an individual cardholder runs up debt equal to 100% of his or her income, much of it in the last 5 years, and seems completely unable to control his or her spending, what will happen? Maybe nothing. After all, the borrower has always kept his or her promises, never missing a payment. The credit rating agencies have a long, complicated formula to estimate how reliable a borrower is and therefore how much they can be safely lent and at what interest rate, and may favor on-time payments more than any other factor. But what if something goes wrong? What if the borrower's salary drops again? What if he or she has to make another big purchase? What if another borrower more reliability and the market decides to invest money there instead?

I get the argument that cutting back on spending and raising taxes will do harm to the economy. But our politicians have shown no ability to cut spending and raise taxes in good times or bad times for the last 40 years. I think we need to put and maintain pressure on them to do something anytime any of them shows the slightest willingness to do so.

Update to Sears Hardware story

For an update on my Sears Hardware story, I got another call from them yesterday, from an 888 number I didn't recognize. They told me the same thing again: they needed me to to approve the $90 repair bill that I had spent several hours last week seeking clarification on, and finally rejected asking for my lawn mower back. The person I spoke to said there was no record of my asking for my lawn mower back. I firmly and insistently (euphemism) repeated my request for my lawn mower back, saying this level of record keeping and customer service was simply atrocious.

Once again, if you value your equipment, don't let Sears Hardware do any repairs or maintenance on it! Link to this blog and tell all your friends to stay away.

Don't use Sears Hardware for your repair needs!

Hello, blogosphere. I haven't gotten as fast a start as I imagined. And I apologize, but my very second post is going to be a rant. However, apparently this is how you get the attention of corporate America nowadays, so here goes.

I encourage all of you to save yourself some trouble and not get any of your hardware repaired by Sears Hardware. I have had not one, but two horrible experiences with them, and have again resolved never to let them have an additional penny of my hard-earned money.

A few Saturdays ago I decided to give Sears Hardware a second chance. It was Saturday afternoon, nobody else that I knew was open, and this was the time I had available to deal with my problem, so I decided it was worth the risk. The only problem with my mower was that the starter cord would not retract after I tried to start it. I knew that Sears Hardware does not do any repairs locally and would instead be shipped out to a central repair facility, but it was late in the year and I decided I could do without it for a few weeks. I dropped it off at the local Sears Hardware store, told them the problem, paid $35 in advance, and left thinking everything was fine.

A couple of weeks later I got a phone message saying that the repair estimate would be $89.99 and include repairs to the wheels, the starter, and an adjustment bracket, whatever that is. Since I was on Thanksgiving vacation at the time, I didn't return the call immediately.

Starting Monday, November 28th and continuing through Wednesday, November 30th I tried calling once or twice a day to say that I wasn't willing to pay $90 for repairs that I hadn't requested. The first problem was that the voice mail at the number I was giving didn't have a clear option for my situation. Nevertheless, I was able to get through to a person, told my story, and got transferred to another department where I thought I could explain my situation. However, each time I got cut off or the phone never picked up, or something else happened that prevented me from explaining my situation.

Thursday I decided I had waited long enough and decided to persist until I got the situation resolved. What happened was a customer service and voice mail hell that I hope nobody else ever has to endure. Over the next two hours I called the 800 number I had at least 8 times, spoke to Sears personnel in Hilliard, Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, maybe Chicago, and Timbuktu as far as I could tell. As far as I can tell I never reached anybody close to the repair facility where my lawn mower was. Nobody that I spoke to seemed to understand what I was asking for, which was simply an explanation for why the additional repairs were necessary and the chance to accept or reject them after having full information. All the people I spoke to on the phone were kind and genuinely seemed interested in helping and not being obstructive, but my simple goal of trying to speak to someone who had actually seen my lawn mower was never accomplished.

After 2 hours or so I had had enough. I called the 800 number one more time and said I just wanted my lawn mower back. Nobody should have to endure this much misery just to get a little information about a repair bill. Sears, if you are reading, you need to seriously retool your repair system. Why call it a proposed repair bill if the customers can't ask questions to find out more about it? You might as well call it a ransom note for whatever they have asked you to repair.

What burns me most is the this is not the first time this has happened to, nor am I the only one it has happened to. So I will conclude the way I started: if you want to see your equipment in better condition than you started in, don't give it to Sears Hardware. You might never see it again.

First ever blog post

Hi! This is my first ever blog post.

Back in college we had the concept of an extrovert probe. Anytime we wanted to investigate a new situation we would send out the most extroverted member of our group to find out more. Well, my wife and I are interested in learning more about blogging. Even though I am not an extrovert, I am the more tech savvy of the two of us, so here I am out here to find out more.

I am somewhat of a Rennaissance man, a jack-of-all-trades and a master of none. I am interested in science fiction, fantasy, action-adventure, sci-fi, and fantasy movies, programming, politics, science, geekery, technology, roleplaying games, and many other interesting subjects.

I may post again soon, or I may get busy and not get back to this soon.

Happy Tuesday!
Proftodd