Category: opinion

Sometimes, my brain needs a break. Lately, to give it that break, I’ve been rewatching M*A*S*H. All things considered, it is probably my all-time favorite TV show. The show first aired the year I was born, and I remember watching it (and its reruns) as youngster. Hearing the theme song bring a kind of comforting feeling to me that no other show manages to achieve.

Watching M*A*S*H as a kid, and as an adult, are two very different experiences. I laughed at the physical comedy as a kid. I still laugh at that, but I also laugh at all of the jokes that I didn’t get when I was 8, 9, 10 years old.

I’ve been watching an episode or two each night. The last few nights I’ve watched a few more as an anodyne to the pain from my wisdom tooth extraction. It relaxes me, puts my mind at ease, and give me laughs.

This evening, I will likely watch the final episode of Season 3, “Abyssinia, Henry.” And while I’ve seen that episode countless times, I always get a little anxiety as I approach it. Of course, it’s a remarkable episode, but I don’t think I realized just why it hit me so hard until this current pass through the series. I always thought that my favorite character was Hawkeye (Alan Alda), but I’ve recently decided that the character that makes me laugh the most, is Henry Blake (McLean Stevenson). No one on the show comes close to his physical comedy. He was a genius as a physical comedian. But he also has impeccable comic timing. He delivers his Henryisms perfectly. He is, by far, the most likable character on the show, at least for me.

Then, too, the end of Season 3 marks the end of the pure genius episodes of M*A*S*H. Seasons 4 and 5 are still exceptionally good. After season 5, while I still enjoy the show, it is clear that it is not what it was in its early days.

In any case, I’m having a blast watching the show. My brain is getting needed rest. For the longest time, I never owned Season 11, but this week, I corrected that. Along with it, I finally did something I’ve wanted to do for a long time. I got myself a M*A*S*H t-shirt.

Dear Congress,

I write this note with all due respect. Here are some observations by a relatively optimistic guy from whom you have  sucked away the belief that Congress as an institution has the ability to do anything except pose for cameras and point fingers.

1. My son’s t-ball team, a diverse group of three, four and five-year olds seems to me to act with better reason, maturity, compassion, and good-nature than what I observe coming out of Congress. Except when they are on the ball field throwing dirt at each other. Then it is hard to tell the difference between them and you.

2. When I read the news these days, I am reminded with increasing frequency, of those pissing matches that used to take place in high school on the quad or over by the flagpole. Yeah, we get that you are are big and powerful (and probably a little insecure). We get that you have “integrity” and you dig in. I just wish you had little less big and powerful and little more intelligence. I refer you, again, to the kids in my son’s t-ball team, who come across substantially brighter than Congress.

3. I think we paid something like $30,000 in federal taxes last year and I don’t see it doing much good in Congress. If you were my employees, behaving as your are behaving, I’d fire you without a second thought, and without regard for political affiliation. If only there was some mechanism whereby I could do this… hey, wait a minute, there is! Mid-terms!

4. Even if by some miracle, you manage to avoid a government shutdown, don’t think for a second that you will come across looking like heroes that saved the day. You don’t get to call yourself a hero when you averted a problem that you caused in the first place.

5. I know I’ve said this before, but grow a backbone! I haven’t seen such cowardly behavior since, well, possibly ever. Your behavior disrespects the courage of our founders (think of Ben Franklin’s quip about hanging together and hanging apart) to say nothing of the men and women putting their lives on the line every day so that you guys can bicker like spoiled children. These men and women are willing to make the ultimate sacrifice. You don’t even seem willing to sacrifice a single corporate donation for the greater good.

6. In other words, stop worrying about the next election and worry about getting real work done. “But,” I hear you say, “I can’t govern if I am not in office.” And my response to that is: Well, someone else can, and probably do a better job, since the slightest effort will earn something more than the failing grade that you are getting today.

7. Perhaps I am misunderstanding the situation. Perhaps I don’t have the full picture. If so it is because you manage to muddy the picture so that our view of the political process is seen through stained glass.  I’d ask you to clarify things for me, but as far as I am concerned, it is too late for that. Regardless of the reality, perception is everything and my perception of Congress at the moment is that of two groups of cowardly bullies seeing who can come across as the least cowardly bunch while still remaining in office. But I could be wrong.

8. There probably are good intentioned people among you. But they are completely washed out by the rest of you. I feel for them, but then I remind myself that you all chose this path and ultimately, we all chose you. I guess the joke is on us, right?

9. There really is something to that old quip, “If pro is the opposite of con, what is the opposite of ‘progress’?”

10. Finally, when my kids misbehave, they get a timeout to think about their behavior and what they might have done differently. I’m hoping that the voters, at least, have the courage that you lack, and come the next election, they give you all a timeout–a time out of office where you can think about your behavior and what you might have done differently.

I make this observations because I still care, because change is needed, and because my perception is that members of Congress are not part of the solution, they are part of the problem.

Respectfully yours,

Jamie Todd Rubin

We refinanced our house recently and it was done through Wells Fargo and they did a terrific job, While the process took a while, there was very little paperwork involved (discounting the 146 pages we had to sign at the closing) and our mortgage guy was very, very good. We were happy with the results.

Not long after the process was finished, I got a cold call from Wells Fargo. They noticed that I had an auto loan with another bank. They could do better, they said, and it would be convenient to have the mortgage and car loan in one place. So I told them to run the numbers, make a proposal and get back to me. A day later, they came back and told me that, in fact, they could not match the deal that I currently had on the loan. Fine. No big deal.

A few days after that, I got another cold call from Wells Fargo. I am eligible for free checking with them. How would I like to switch my account over? No thanks, I explained. I was very happy with my current bank and besides, it would cost me a pretty penny in my own time to get everything transferred over. There was nothing in it for me.

And then yesterday, I got another cold call from Wells Fargo. They noticed that I was in good standing with the mortgage and they would like to offer me the opportunity to transfer my other banking to them. Well, this time I lost my patience a little. Mind you, I was very polite on the phone. I explained that I’d received several calls already. I explained that Wells Fargo offered to get me a better rate on my car loan–and then failed to do so. I explained that they offered me free checking, but it wasn’t worth my time. So I said, “I’ll tell you what. We can make it worth my time if you can give me a good interest rate on the savings account, say 5%?” Of course, they weren’t able to do that.

Wells Fargo, I appreciate the great job you did on my mortgage. Nice work, kudos, etc., etc. But please stop poaching me for other services, especially when I come to find you can’t even match the deals I am already getting. This is an obnoxious way of annoying customers, which I’m sure is not your intention, but which, at least in this case, is the result.

Now, who wants odds on me getting yet another cold call from Wells Fargo in the near future?

As everyone now knows, GoDaddy suffered a major outage yesterday,  which caused this site to be down for four hours.

It wasn’t that big a deal for me. I maintain this site as a labor of love, not as a business, so I didn’t lose any money over the outage. For others, that wasn’t the case. Still, I was surprised by the vitriolic response by many people. Frustration forced people to jump to conclusions that didn’t necessarily have evidence to back them up. For instance, a lot of people blamed Anonymous for the hack. They did this because someone on the Internet with a Twitter handle that had the word “anonymous” in it claimed to be the attacker. With no evidence. It could have been just a person in a room being a dick. Who knows!

What bothered me most about the outage was the barrage of ambulance-chasing hosting companies that came out of the woodwork to kick GoDaddy when they were down. Kind of sad that they would do this, but I think it shows how desperate they are for business–which is probably not a good sign for their future outlook.

I don’t agree with all of GoDaddy’s decisions and positions, but my purpose in switching to them last year was to avoid the maintenance headaches and outages I had with my previous hosting service.  And since I have switched to them from my previous hosting service, I have not had any problems and not had to stress that my site would be down. Yesterday was the first time. And I would point out that GoDaddy advertises 99.9% uptime. Over the course of a year, there are 8,776 hours. A 99.9% uptime means that a service is only unavailable for 8.7 hours for the entire year. GoDaddy was down for 4 hours yesterday so–at least for me–they are still well within their 99.9% uptime threshold.