Category Archives: Random Access

Random Access, the op-ed.

Used Car Dealers

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Join me now for wondrous a ride in the Way-Back machine as we visit that time in the distant past when I built boats. Boat building is a wonderful business, full of some of the nicest people you’d ever want to go broke with.

Selling boats, not so much.

Like most folks in the business, I subscribed to several of the trade mags including Boat and Motor Dealer. It’s a good rag, full of how-to articles as well as profiles of the successful traders who would sell my wares to the unsuspecting public.

The advice? Emulate a car dealer.

Have you bought a car recently? After arm wrestling the salesman to a draw, you’ll be presented with a contract that is for a wee bit more than you might have thought the F&I manager promised.

Oh, the price of the car won’t have changed but that ain’t the amount on the check they want you to write.

Car dealers have mastered the hidden fee and the mysterious charge in the sales process: Some are inevitable, some are questionable, and many are just plain bogus.

Sales tax: There is no escape from death or taxes.
Title fee: It’s a tax. You’re stuck.
Vehicle registration (the license plate): Ditto.
Vehicle registration, part II: Florida residents adding a vehicle are assessed an additional $225 fee. Just because we can. Bogus but it’s a tax so you’re stuck.
Doc fee/conveyance fee: This so-called “documentation fee” pays for the paperwork every other business calls the overhead to record a sale. Dealers have just figured out that you should pay their overhead. Bogus.
Prep fee: The dealer preparation fee is assessed to cover the cost of preparing the car to hand over. The factory covers the prep fee. Really bogus.
Delivery charge: The factory already adds a “destination charge” to the invoice. You’ll notice that if you buy a model car from Wally or a kumquat from the grocery, there is no “destination charge” to cover freight. Other businesses eat that cost. Many car and boat dealers tack on an additional delivery charge of their own. Doubly bogus.
Advertising fee: This one’s extra tough because you’ll notice again that if you buy that model car or kumquat, there is no “advertising fee” to cover the cost of enticing you to the store. What, are they nuts?
Facility fee: This is a really, really good one. You get to rent the chair you sit in the waiting room. B-O-G-U-S.

The Airlines definitely read the playbook. They charge you for your ticket. Fine. They charge you for your meal. Ehh. They charge you to check your bag. Not so fine. And now they charge you for your “better” seat on top of charging for your flight.

Hospitals apparently read Boat & Motor Dealer, too. Here’s what the Miami Herald had to say yesterday on page one, above the fold:

Like baggage fees for air travel, healthcare may come with hidden costs called facility fees, and not all insurers pay them.

The Herald story details the unpleasant surprise a Miami woman had with the University of Miami’s network of clinics and hospitals. She had some testing done at one of their outpatient clinics. Her insurance paid for the tests but not the $210 bill from UHealth for “hospital services.” The hospital labeled it “Room and Board – All Inclusive.” She never set foot in any UHealth hospital or spent the night at the clinic.

She probably did sit in a chair in the waiting room, though.

Not all insurers pay them? Why should an insurer pay a new, extra facility fee? Why should the patient pay a new, extra facility fee?

Our South Puffin hospital owns several physician practices and has an urgent care center. Our North Puffin hospital has also bought or started physician practices, built a rural health center network, and a new urgent care center. I don’t know if either charges a facility fee. I’m afraid to ask.

I do know that SWMBO had to visit the North Puffin urgent care center over the weekend. She tangled with a piece of sheet metal in the barn and needed four stitches.

They did a great job.

They didn’t give her a bill.

Doctors have no idea how much a “procedure” costs. Hospitals can never tell you what it will cost to visit them. I do not understand how any business can get away with that.

“We’ll just bill your insurance,” they said.

Not giving her the bill may have been wise. See, I won’t pay a “facility fee” and do typically argue a bill line by line because the overreach of government and the malfeasance of the insurance companies aren’t the only reasons U.S. health care needs to be burned down and rebuilt from scratch.

If they had given me the bill, her insurer would have never even seen the bogus charges.

 

Thoughts for President’s Day

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Banks and post offices are service businesses, same as movie theaters and restaurants.

Liz Arden and I both ordered new phones. Hers is scheduled for delivery today; mine allegedly shipped today. And a laptop SWMBO ordered is sitting at the post office. We can’t pick that up until tomorrow.

“I think FedEx does not necessarily follow bank holidays,” she said.

CalendarThat’s right. FedEx and UPS both provide normal pickup and delivery service on these national holidays:
Martin Luther King Jr. Day
Presidents’ Day
Good Friday
Columbus Day
Veterans Day

Today’s holiday was changed to the third Monday of February in 1971 in compliance with the Uniform Monday Holiday Act. Advertisers morphed the name into “Presidents’ Day” because the federal observance of Washington’s “birthday” must fall between February 15 to 21 and never include Lincoln’s birthday nor Washington’s.

Public Law 90-363 amended the the United States Code to move holidays on Mondays. The Act moved Washington’s Birthday (originally February 22), Memorial Day (May 30), Columbus Day (October 12), and Veterans Day (November 11) from fixed dates to designated Mondays so federal employees could have more three-day weekends.

Members of the Armed Services don’t get three-day weekends.

“Thank goodness they don’t drag me out on Monday mornings,” Phil told me earlier this year. If Candle Mas Day is bright and clear, There’ll be two winters in the year. I guess even Congress was smart enough not to condemn us to a Monday and six more weeks of winter all on the same day.

There was a time, back before you were born, back when I walked to school, uphill both ways, that most companies followed the same holiday schedule as the federal and local governments and that schedule matched actual birth and event anniversaries.

“Not so much any more,” Ms. Arden said. In fact, her workplace has pared official holidays down to New Year’s Day, Memorial Day, Fourth of July, Labor Day, Thanksgiving Day, the Day after Thanksgiving, and Christmas Day.

They did give back, with three or four “floating” holidays. Some employees use them for celebrations like One Ring of Sauron Day. Others bunch them up around Christmas.

I liked that change as long as they didn’t shortchange us in the process. We’re (mostly) still getting 10 days off which was about the norm I remember. We’re paid for 260 workdays in a non-leap year but we typically work no more than 240 of them and usually have some paid “sick” days as well.

“I do like the flexibility,” she said but it irks her that not to get mail delivery on days she has to work, and the bank is never open on a day when she needs to replace a lost credit card. “I want everyone to follow my schedule, dammit! Except, of course, if I’m taking a holiday I want businesses I use to be open.”

A decommissioned Russian satellite is headed for home and an asteroid the size of three football fields will do a flyby today.

Today is also Rene Russo’s 60th birthday and not George Washington’s no matter what they said in Congress or on weather.gov.

And despite all that, I still need to write a blog and a newspaper column and do laundry.

 

I Need a Dog

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I saw Dan walking Bridget’s tan dog-shaped-dog yesterday. Dan is my neighbor to the south, Bridget to the north. I didn’t quite get why Dan was walking Bridget’s dog but I got a puppy fix nonetheless.

I grew up in the middle of farming country where we always had dogs and cats who could be outside whenever they wanted. I’ve never quite figured out this walk-around-with-a-plastic-bag routine people without room for dogs to run engage in.

As a wee child, I ate Fig Newtons and pulled the tail of Jason, a great, golden-fleeced tomcat, on my grandmother’s bed. Jason tolerated that until I started to walk. Then he beat me up. I still like cats.

We can’t have another cat, though. Every family has one perfect one. Ruff (pictures here) was ours.

We rented Ruff to a friend when we went on vacation one year. He immediately trained his temporary owner by finding a hiding place. Temporary Mom went ballistic trying to find him.

“We moved every piece of furniture 300 times,” she said. “And we ran up and down the roads calling him until midnight.

“I couldn’t sleep. Every time I heard a noise, I’d have to get up and look for him. By 4 a.m., I had decided to tell you I took him back to your daughter’s and she lost him!”

Darn cat came out, “Meow?” from hiding about breakfast time.

His temporary mom not only allowed him to sleep in her bed after that, I suspect she doubled his rations, too (that means two scoops of kitty kibble and all the mouses he could eat). Ruff is the only cat I know who has lost a dead mouse. It confuses him terribly when that happens.

We always had dogs as I was growing up. Monty was a mutt who knew to lick the butter off the toast and bring it back for more. Misty (Christmas Mistletoe) was a beautiful collie who fell in lurve with Marshall Jones’ magnificent farm collie up the road. The result was a litter that included Ferocious who went to friends and Rover who was mine. Rover had some cognitive problems after the incident with the eggnog, but that’s another story. He was a sweet, lovable, perfect dog for a boy with a bicycle.

My folks changed to labs after I went away to college.

I split the difference when we moved to Vermont and found a puppy from a tri-color collie bitch in her first heat who showed a champion yellow Lab field dog a good time in the dark of night. We named that puppy Dogg (the second “G” showed his class).

Dogg raised our kids, swam in an innertube, and was always, always at my side. Except when he slept with Ruff. He was bumptious and Lab-smart, but he looked like a big, black, farm collie.

I almost gave up on having dogs when he finally wore out.

Wendy's Better SideRuff made me change my mind. He was lonely.

The local used dog store had a fine weekend special: take a dog home for a test drive. Daughter Kris called us to say they had a Golden Retriever with my name on it so we brought her home for Ruff’s approval.

She whined. She didn’t bark. Ever. I had to teach this dog to bark.

Her name tag said she was “Dandy” but she wasn’t. We renamed her Gwendolyn Dandelion Whine. Wendy Whiner for short.

We once rented Wendy to a family in Burlington. They had recently lost their own dog and wanted to “try out” having another one underfoot. She was the kind of dog who is underfoot all the time. She leaned, she coaxed, she whined, she hoped. She ate with them, played with them, frolicked in the rain with them, ate their popcorn and table scraps, and slept in their beds. Guess where she expected to sleep ever after?

Daisy at the BeachI need a dog but I travel. SWMBO travels. We’re just not in one place enough to be fair to a dog.

So Dan was walking Bridget’s tan dog-shaped-dog yesterday. Another friend, Katie, is down from the U.S. for a while and has a gig dog-sitting for a family the next street over. As far as I can tell, they have five dogs, all large.

I don’t like walking and poop-scooping for dogs. I like playing catch and lounging. I’m thinking every neighborhood should have borrowable dogs — real ones, not these yappy little rats-on-leashes you see here — that we could simply check out for a quick romp, then return. Berners and Collies and Goldies and Labs and Newfies and Shepherds. Dogs with fur. Dogs with personality. Dogs who understand roughhousing.

Meanwhile, if you see a bearded man shambling down the street and groping every dog on the way, be kind.

 

Hold the Mayo?

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I forgot the mayonnaise.

I hate it when that happens but that’s not (exactly) what this story is about.

Lunch. Kay Ace came over for lunch. I carved off some roasted turkey breast, some not-too-too-bad cheddar cheese, one of the marvelous Homestead tomatoes we picked up at the Flea Market, and sliced some of the faux sourdough bread I made in the bread machine the day before.

Kay is nuts. I’m not sure if I had made that clear before. She asked for mustard for her sandwich.

Mustard.

On tomatoes.

And turkey.

Nuts, I tell you.

Liz Arden poked her head in about then. “Mmm. Mustard on tomatoes and turkey. Mmmmm,” she said.

Nuts. I’m surrounded by them.

Jar of MayoI was so befuddled, I forgot to spread the mayonnaise on my own sandwich. It was a little dry but that tomato is so good, it was still right fair. I recognized what I was missing a couple of bites in. Remedied same. Lunch was sublime even with the slight, sharp aroma of mustard wafting from the other side of the table.

Mustard has its place. Any food that begins with “ham” needs mustard which is why hamburgers need mustard (and ketchup). Ditto hot dogs although they are mostly chicken. Brats and kielbasa and soft pretzels. Meatloaf sandwiches. Cheddar cheese on Ritz crackers needs just a tiny dab and a sweet gherkin pickle or two. And one should combine it with the mayo in potato salad. Not on ice cream, though.

The Romans mixed “must” (unfermented grape juice) with ground mustard seeds to make mustum ardens which translates as “burning must.” It’s also how we got the name “must ard.”

On the other hand, Kay puts mayo on her fries. That’s just wrong.

Mayonnaise is mostly fat; a single tablespoon serving contains 90 calories. No wonder we like it so much.

Mayo does go on turkey or chicken sandwiches and is especially perfect to bed slices of hard boiled egg. One could even add slices of bananas to that. Grilled apple, bacon and provolone sandwich is made perfect by mayo. It is the basis for tartar sauce, Thousand Island, and ranch dressings. I mix it with ketchup and Worcestershire sauce to make my “Russian” dressing.

For the record, if you put mayo on steamed broccoli it tastes a little like an artichoke.

Homemade mayo will spoil after 3-4 days but the commercial concoction uses pasteurized egg yolks and has so much acid and preservatives that it will extend the life of unrefrigerated sandwiches and salads by killing bacteria.

Now to the point: the vast squeeze bottle conspiracy.

I finally went back to the kitchen and put a dab of mayo on my sandwich.

Actually, that’s not exactly true. I tried to put a little dab of mayo on my sandwich and ended up with a monstrous glob of the stuff in the shape of the Great State of Texas on the bread.

I am disappointed.

The mayo folks have learned what the mustard folks have known for years. Why sell 32 ounces when you can sell 24 for the same price? In fact, why not water down the product a little so it squirts easier? After all, we’ll sell more.

<sigh>

In our next episode, Why doesn’t chocolate cake batter taste like chocolate cake?

 

Chuggita Chuggata

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Floating objects we call “chugs” wash up from time to time on the beaches here in the Keys. Cuban boatbuilders work with materials scavenged from junked cars, crates, roofs, packing.

Google Cuban Chug ImagesThese almost-boats are small enough to build in the sheds and garages of Cuba where craftsmen keep ’53 Chevvies running and can make a Vermont farmer cry with their ingenuity to recycle and repurpose and reuse 60-year old iron.

Then 20 or 30 desperate people crowd aboard for a journey of days or weeks across open ocean, dodging Cuban and American patrol boats, huge, blind cargo ships, go-fast drug boats, and other sharks.

The salvaged engines have only one direction: north. The engines run at a chuggita chuggata low speed slowly propelling people who hope for the best when they leave everything behind.

In spite of our political malfugalties, those 20 or 30 people are desperate to get one foot on American soil.

Many chugs look like boats for obvious reasons. Humans arrived on Borneo by “boat” at least 120,000 years ago. Egyptians knew how to sew wooden planks into a ship hull as early as 3000 BC. Boats have evolved since then but most still have a pointy end to go through the water first and a hull shape that is easy to push. Most chugs are like that.

A different chug arrived on Coco Plum last Fall. It is unique in construction with a welded rebar space frame, metal roof panels hammered into shape, and styrofoam blocks as flotation and deck combined.


Cuban Chug Collage

The boatbuilder impressed me for inventiveness and resourcefulness. Many of these unseaworthy boats sink; the Styrofoam blocks might have been awash under the load, but they would support it. The lightweight roofing protected the flotation from abrasion. The rebar frame kept the people aboard and kept the boat together.

I’ve wandered over to Coco Plum to photograph the chug several times, including yesterday, and ended up with a pleasingly good batch of images. I had pre-planned, so I knew what I wanted to compose. And I checked that the tide would be out at the time the light was right. The vessel was a little higher on the beach than I remembered so the background was within the Depth of Field zone but I stood in the water and shot with the 100mm lens. The detail is so fine that you can count the threads on the rod used to secure the hull to the top frame.

I like these images; this album will continue to grow.

I’m thinking we want anybody that resourceful to live and grow here, too.

The “wet foot, dry foot policy” is the Cuban Adjustment Act of 1966 that permits that anyone who flees Cuba and makes it onto United States shores can to pursue U.S. residency a year later. Any Cuban caught on the waters of the Florida Straits (hence the “wet feet”) are sent home or to a third country. Any Cuban who makes it to shore (“dry feet”) can stay. The law provides for expedited legal permanent resident status and, eventually, citizenship.

News:
A Key Largo man tired of “illegal immigrants” was jailed for threatening a man with a knife after asking a group of people for “their papers.” (The 50-year-old construction worker he pulled the knife on is from Miami and was born in the United States.)

At least 18 Haitian migrants died on Christmas day as their boat carrying 50 people capsized off the Turks and Caicos islands. Eleven Haitians died in 2012 when a boat carrying 28 people from the Bahamas to Florida sank.

Forty residents of Perico, a town about 100 miles southeast of Havana, drowned at sea on a failed attempt to cross the Straits in 2007. The group included between nine and 12 children and expected to make landfall in the Keys.

We have an interesting way of enforcing national immigration policy here in South Puffin. The Key Largo man was arrested for aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, burglary, battery, and criminal mischief. His bond was set at $114,000 but we give the few illegal immigrants we catch free room and board before sending them back.

Over on another border, Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio offered to detain illegal immigrants his Tent City because U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials announced they would release a number of illegal immigrants held in immigration jails. See, the Feds needed to cut costs.

Can you spell Immigration Reform?

The muttonheads we sent to Washington to fix laws like this are too stupid to fix the problem but men and women and children from every country in the world will risk their lives to get here anyway. Just think how much we could accomplish if people like this chug builder could build real boats here.

On the other hand, I don’t have much use for pictures of cruise ships but I’ll have plenty to photograph as long as people are willing to come here on boats like these.