70 degrees this morning, possible high or 90 or so. Walk of 58:25 this morning over what is becoming my “normal” route, which is all on neighborhood streets now. 40 sit ups, started lifting barbells of 20 libs.
Rode my bicycle for the first time since late June yesterday. There was a little damage from the move which I will need to get fixed, at least at the next routine maintenance visit. Felt good to be on the bike again. Just rode for a short while through the neighborhood. Never did find my air compressor, so I bought another one. I liked the old one because it was just a good basic air compressor. The new one has more bells and whistles but is a little rinky dink, made out of plastic, an extremely short cord etc., but otherwise has some good features, like digital readout, stops at preset pressure, car current plug etc. It will do fine and I probably will eventually start liking it as well as my old one.
If you have a metal picture of a huge tank (or even a small tank), you are thinking of the wrong size of air compressor! It is a small, but very capable compressor, with no air tank etc.
As part of our move, we are getting rid of a lot of obsolete financial and medical records etc. After looking at various shredding services, we decided to just buy another shedder and shred the items ourselves (Aliene is actually doing much of the shreddingI). We had kind of worn out our current shredder, so we bought another one.
Anyway, I found out that shredders are rated (in part) by how long they can run without shutting down for a cooling period. For example, the shredders we looked at ranged from being able to run from 10 minutes to two hours without a break. Interesting that they are rated that way, I had never seen that before.
Time for another rant about the pricing practices of car rental companies, the extortionist taxes on travel by local government and “private equity”!
I need to rent a car in the future and I got quotes from Hertz. The lowest rate was around $143 per day, which is rather shocking, since I am used to anywhere from $24 to 50 (more one weekdays, which is understandable). I tried to use my “free” points, but was blocked from some unexplainable reason and only couldn’t use my points.
I didn’t really want to walk or hitchhike the whole time we are in Memphis, SO…..I went to plan “B” and submitted a bid of $15 per day for a car for the same length of time. (Same as the quote for Hertz, asked for airport location, full size car etc.). I get back a price of $19 per day, which I grab. Guess who the vendor is? Right, Hertz! I feel is it a sad commentary on business practices when businesses would actually charge someone at least 7 times what they actually will take.
Worse, the “airport and local government fees” (this I Memphis/Shelby County) ARE HIGHER THAN THE TOTAL RENTAL!!!! Rental fees are $56, fees and taxes are $73!!! They should be ashamed of themselves. There is no relationship between renting a car and building a basketball palace for some private business. (Or renting a hotel loom for that matter.). Dallas/Fort Worth is even worse. Good reason not to travel there. In the interest of avoiding the 19% hotel tax, I am staying in an area where a more reasonable hotel tax is charged. (Also, I use “points” for free stays, so avoid the tax completely!)
I don’t object to paying some taxes for the cost of services for the airport, city streets etc., but expecting someone passing through Memphis or Dallas or wherever to subsidize a professional sports team is insane.
Now on to “private equity” firms. While they have their place, some have financial practices I consider to be akin to thieves who are subsidized by a special income tax rate even! Basically, one of the worst practices, is the “private equity” firm buys a company, fires a lot of people to temporarily increase profits, borrow money against the company to declare a huge “dividend” to themselves, otherwise gut the company.
The private entity firm makes the firm look as profitable as possible and then quickly “go public”, again making a huge profit from unwitting investors. The now “public” company can’t make it due to the huge loans, and reduced personnel and declares bankruptcy. How the banks are fooled by this is beyond me.
Anyway, as I noted yesterday, “what is, is”. At least whenever I avoid the schemes by (what I call) guerrilla tactics, (by using “bid your own price” services and using hotel points to avoid high taxes) I get some satisfaction out of it!
That’s it for now, Sunday, August 3, 2014.
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