Jiffy Lube Scam and why you may be better off just driving your car into the ground

Back in October of 2001 I had a radiator flush done by Jiffy Lube. Problem was, the geniuses there forgot to tighten the hose clamps and a couple of days later one of the radiator hoses just fell off, spewing radiator fluid everywhere!

Fortunately I was near a strip mall where I could get some more radiator fluid and continue on my way.

But it’s always been a concern for me. Too many uninspired people too isolated from the customers to feel any responsibility for their actions. You seldom see or meet the people working on your vehicle anymore. I often think that the risk of the damage they are doing to my car through carelessness might outweigh any good I’m doing by following my car’s maintenance plan.

I’ve had someone forget to tighten my oil pan screw and had the oil literally flowing out of the oil pan onto the garage floor. I always open the hood and inspect the work that’s supposedly been done, but who can tell if the valves have been properly shimmed (I used to be able to tell when I’d adjust my tappets on my motorcycle – apparently car valves make just as much noise after they’ve been shimmed as before). Anything other than newly replaced oil filters, or wiring is pretty hard to spot when you’re anxious to get on your way.

I once brought a car in because there was a strong smell of gasoline in the passenger compartment when I would brake hard. After a full servicing, the mechanic said he could find no cause for the smell. Getting off of my butt I went over the engine and found… the PCV valve was just sitting loosely over its rubber seal. Pushing it properly in place made the smell go away permanently.

I could go on and on, but I *hate* taking my car in for servicing. I have no problem paying the money but I want to feel confident that the car will be somehow improved afterwards.

One of my friends’ folks used to buy their cars and just drive them until they stopped working. The last little while with those cars was simply miserable (I recall when their little car only had 3 cylinders firing). OK if you’re a starving student, but not if you’ve got a family to haul around.

Anyway, here is Jiffy Lube being caught red-handed. I especially liked the chickens#!t district manager who kept pretending he wasn’t himself. Those unethical buggers need to be slapped upside the head and then forced to work for minimum wage for the next 15 years with all proceeds from their work that would let them enjoy life taken from them and passed back to the people they bilked.

Dolphins Play with Bubble Rings

There is a real level of sophistication in the way these dolphins interact with these bubble rings.

Probably it’s a matter of primate bigotry, but I’ve never really subscribed to the notion of dolphins being one of the more intelligent beings on this planet (aren’t they supposed to be 2nd or 3rd in line after Homo Sapiens?). But watching them at play can be pretty compelling…


Dolphin Play Bubble Rings – The most popular videos are here

Swiss Chalet Fries – Possibly the best in North America when done right

French FriesSwiss Chalet is a franchise available almost exclusively in Canada. There are a sorry few (3 as of this writing) stores in the United States, but generally you need to travel to the GWN to sample the Swiss Chalet cuisine.

As of late, the past 5-6 years, Swiss Chalet has become less and less dependable for good food or service. But when it’s good it’s *really* good. Their strip fries are slightly greasy with crispy portions on the outside and wonderfully greasy inside. They hold their own against ketchup or their wonderful Swiss Chalet sauce (both at the same time if you are adventurous) and rate a solid 5 out of 5 on Marc’s french fry scale.

Are airports destined to be the bus terminals of the future?

Airport to Bus TerminalI was discussing airplanes with my father earlier today and how the advent of smaller, more affordable jet aircraft will likely affect air travel of the future. Right now such aircraft are so expensive that only very wealthy folks or corporations can afford to take advantage of them. But with new “air taxi” services starting to come online hosting fleets of smaller, much more affordable aircraft, and with our wonderful TSA with all their extremism, I can see a stratification of air travel on the horizon.

Right now we have the big, stuffy common carriers – who fight tooth and nail to ensure that there are no laws to protect the rights of the traveling public – and the more agile economy carriers – who work hard to keep air travel at reasonable prices.

The Achilles heel of both carriers is that they must operate out of airports that are governed by, with all due respect, unimaginative, pandering dolts. There is a tremendous potential market growing out there as America’s super-affluent middle class decides that it would much rather not be caged in airplanes waiting for delayed flight slots or trapped in airports after having surrendered dignity and just-as-valuable time to get past the uninspired, callous, rude and ineffective security systems.

I am predicting that regional airports in America need to gear up for a boon in business as America’s middle class begin to discover affordable air transportation alternatives in their local cities while the poorer classes become relegated to the airports for long-distance travel much as the current underclass are today relegated to bus terminals for their travel needs. Just as with the bus terminal class, poorer folks do not have options and cannot exercise their power to shop elsewhere. But many Americans have more money now than they know what to do with. It will be interesting to see how much dignity is worth in airfare price premium.

*Update* Just saw this story about folks being kept on a Delta plane for 7 hours on Friday… *sigh*

Wildest Police Videos – Who thinks those special effects are helping the show?

John BunnellHoly cow! My TIVO offered me “Wildest Police Videos” today in the suggestions section so I thought I’d take a peek. The special effects are even worse now than they were before when I gave up watching it a couple of years ago.

I really enjoy watching the type of videos presented in this show, and host John Bunnell, while a little big on himself, is an entertaining enough host/voiceover. But who is the genius who thinks that every time a car moves there needs to be the sound of screeching tires, or whenever a tractor trailer is shown that we need to hear a truck horn sounding.

Also, I think a good quarter of television viewers these days must have some kind of DVR unit now where they can replay these videos as they see fit (if not, and they want the replay ability, they can buy one). I think it would be useful to replay the action now and then for some crucial segment to make a point, but pointlessly replaying the entire video segment by segment over and over again is obviously just trying to fill up the timeslot with no value-add to the presentation. Even cutting to the host and having him stand there and describe the action is preferable to those terrible effects.

I finally got fed up with the excess and just deleted the program without even getting half way through it.

What is really needed is to have the already great action sequences with John’s description of the circumstances (largely what he’s doing now) and then, to fill in the time freed up by not replaying each scene a half dozen times, have some follow up to the action. You know, “Was sentenced to 5 years in jail.” or “The policeman was injured but returned to work after 3 weeks.”.

This stuff is already sensational enough, it doesn’t need any help. Just some context.

“David Blaine’s” Street Magic

This spoof on those street magic videos is great. What do you think would happen if someone *really* could do the tricks that those street magicians do… and doesn’t stop doing them?

The two hapless marks in these videos are a riot, and “David Blaine” takes himself *almost* as seriously as the real thing…

The other videos in this series are here and here.

How to fix choosing the wrong CDDB album when ripping CDs in iTunes?

RecallI run Vista Home Premium and am using iTunes 7.5 as I write this.

I’m currently ripping the latest Harry Potter audiobook so that I can listen to it on my iPod. For most discs I am prompted to choose which “album” I wish to use. For consistency I am going with each track named as a chapter/letter (i.e. 1a, 1b, etc.).

Somebody, with a different numbering scheme inadvertently used the identical album naming convention so, for one of my discs I had to guess (hey 50% odds, not bad right?) when I chose the “other album” I ended up with different chapter names.

Now, when I pull the CD out and re-insert it, iTunes has locally recorded the incorrect track names for me and associated them with some unique identifier on the disc. How to remove the association between an CD and the CDDB album information once you’ve selected it?

Since I don’t really use CDs except to rip them to my collection, losing that information is not a big deal for me. So I just shut down iTunes, went to “C:\Users\\AppData\Roaming\Apple Computer\iTunes” and deleted the “CD Info.cidb” file.

Start up iTunes, insert the disk and *presto* I’m again prompted for the album. I will, of course, be prompted for every audio CD I stick in my CD player going forward, but again, that’s not an issue for me.