Charlie Lehardy

Why is rush hour rush hour? Wait, that probably didn’t make sense, so let me explain it this way… My experience during rush hour is that most people drive UNDER the speed limit (sometimes as much as 10 MPH under in a 40 MPH zone… *grumbles*). But overall, it doesn’t seem like people are in a rush. Quite the opposite actually.

So, why is it rush hour? Where’d the term come from? I’d prefer to call it very annoyingly slow and frustrating hour, but I think that’s slightly too long… Maybe @$!* hour would work… naa, not that either. Do you have any ideas?

Well, this rant truly is quick and more a complaint. This time it’s about FedEx vs UPS. Which do I prefer? Brown of course… The reason is simple.

If I order something from say… Amazon. It will generally be shipped from California (Los Angeles area to be exact) and I live in Tucson, Arizona. So, that’s a 7 hour drive between the two. Pretty quick. Now, lets say I were to choose standard ground shipping (which is 5-7 business days for both carriers) and had it shipped via UPS. Guess when it’d get here? That’s right 2, maybe 3 business days. Because it doesn’t take very long to ship between two adjoining states.

However, if I were to choose the same ground shipping with FedEx, guess when it would get here? 5 business days. Even better is that I get to watch it sit in some storage facility (well, watch b/c of the tracking) while the days tick by. Granted, I AM getting the service that I paid for. But really, does it do FedEx ANY good to hold the package for a few days and therefore annoy customers? I think not, but apparently they do.

So, the moral of the story is that every time I can ship UPS, I do. FedEx is the bane of my shipping existence (ok, well… USPS would be if I shipped anything through them). Which is why I prefer Brown

Yep, it’s that time again and this time it’s about my favorite topic… Driving!

First off, lets start with the basics. I consider myself to be a fairly good driver. Agressive, yes. But good anyway. I’ve never caused any accidents, have avoided numerous people who have tried to hit me (having a small car like I used to and driving on the interstate lends to people NEVER seeing you and trying to pull into the space you’re occupying… SCARY!), and have not had any driving violations for 5 years (I have had two tickets since then, but both were due to my registration being expired so… not driving issues).

I have hit one car once and unfortunately it was parked. In my defense, it was a dark night, black car and I was in a bad mood and NOT paying attention. So pretty much, it was COMPLETELY my fault, I admit that, but it was also an isolated incident that had never occured before and has not since.

Ok, with that out of the way, here’s what my major problem with many drivers (especially older ones…). I HATE it when they drive on the fast lane, otherwise known as the left lane. If they’re making a turn in the next 1/4 mile, ok… I can understand. Or of course, if you’re passing people, then by all means drive in the left lane. But for goodness sake, do NOT drive the same speed as the people in the lane next to you. ESPECIALLY if you’re driving at or under the speed limit. (oh yeah, that’s another thing I should have said up top. I do speed… but still I don’t get tickets for it so I guess it’s OK

This behavior is what causes people to get mad and start doing the whole finger-flipping, getting out of the car to pummel you kind of thing. NO, it’s not your fault they’re hot-heads (for the record, I don’t get mad like that, I just get annoyed and wait until I can get around while calling you nice names… :-)), but if you’re driving badly, then you’re certainly not helping the situation.

I was in Colorado a while ago and found out that they passed a law in Denver area that basically states that you can’t drive in the left lane. It’s reserved for passing ONLY. No ifs, ands or buts. I LOVE this law and I wish it would be passed everywhere else. Because that’s the point of multiple lanes. Letting the faster traffic move along faster than the slower traffic. Not so that the slower traffic can take both lanes and block everybody else up!!

So yeah, that’s my rant for today. If you’re one of those “bad” drivers, please think about it this way… If you were behind two people going under the speed limit next to eachother and couldn’t get past, what would you be thinking? Well, that’s what the people behind you are thinking about you… Just remember that!

EDIT: Just to be clear, I am in the same group of Christians I describe below. I really try to be good, but there are those times I fail and am NOT good. I’m no better than most Christians, but that still doesn’t make it right…

AMAZING! Two blogs in one day. Well, two in one day if I finish this in 15 minutes that is and I should since this one is pretty quick…

What’s it about? Well, it’s another rant and it’s about Christians and cussing. Call me a prude, but I consider your normal four-letter words to be taboo still. And I think that as Christians, we should ALL consider them taboo too. Do they mean what they used to? No… But they do still cause people to take notice and are considered offensive. Movies can still be rated R because of the language in them (although, it does take more now than before), so why do so many Christians think it’s OK for them to cuss?

We’re meant to be the salt of the Earth. The seasoning if you will. That means we’re supposed to be DIFFERENT. It DOESN’T mean we’re to act the same as everybody else. Am I in that boat? Sure, I cuss at times. I know this, but the difference is that I don’t WANT to and I try hard not to. Sometimes it slips out (especially when everybody at work cusses all the time), but that’s just what it is. A slip, not something I do on a normal basis. Is that good? Nope, but I think that’s the best anybody can expect from anybody else (it’s all I expect from my friends…).
Anyway, just something for you to think about.

Why do I say that? Well, I’ve been searching for a new car to buy. No, not a brand new car, I don’t want to mess with the depreciation. But a good used car. What I REALLY want is a Honda Accord Coupe V6 with a 6-speed manual. However, those pretty much don’t exist used so I’m mostly looking at 4-bangers with the 5-speed manual transmission.

But finding one in Tucson or Phoenix that’s a good price and certified used is REALLY hard. And some of the people I’ve dealt with are, shall we say, less than honest at times. For instance, there’s a large dealership here that has a 2003 Honda Accord Coupe 4-cyl with a 5-speed manual for sale. I first looked at the car a little over a week ago and test drove it and it wasn’t too bad. However, it has one of those big-ass mufflers on it that (sadly) my generation typically put on them. You know the ones, they make a bunch of noise and piss everybody else off.

Anyway, the dealer’s story on the muffler is that an older (well, not 20’s) person owned the car and hit the original muffler and punctured it while backing up. Where he was, he couldn’t buy a normal one, so it was the choice between a chromed-out one that was really annoying, or the one that’s on the car now.

Ok, fine, I guess I can deal with that. But at $17,123 (well, I think they quoted me $17,233, but it was listed on their website for $17,123 so I was going to push that price to start with if/when I started bargining), I wanted to wait a little bit (just didn’t like that muffler and there are a couple scratches on the back bumper).

So, over this weekend I found out that they still had the car and so I went over to look at it again. I test drove it again and started talking to them about actual prices and stuff. Brought up the $17,123 and we started from there. But I found out that it’s NOT certified used (despite them being a Honda dealership) because of the muffler. Of course, THEY claim that the ONLY thing that kept it from being certified was the muffler but I’m sure that the guy doing inspections saw that muffler and said no and moved to the next car without checking anything else. I mean, would you see something like that muffler that is an automatic rejection (not a factory install, not a Honda part), but continue to do the rest of the check for the heck of it? I didn’t think so…

Anyway, that made their price about $1,000 too much because it didn’t have the warranty. I told them that and they said they couldn’t drop that much and so I said bye (well, I actually said it was $1,500 too much because it had a new paint-chip taken out of the passenger door and so that combined with the scratches on the rear bumper amounted to $500 to me).

So now we’re at yesterday (Monday). I did a search for more Honda’s in the area and that car is still available but guess what? The price is NOW $16,188 (was $17,123 if you remember). Amazing! They dropped the price by $1,000 (or close enough). Wonder why that is… But I didn’t call them or get ahold of them at that point because I figured that it didn’t hurt to wait a bit (getting bad feelings about the car as time goes on).

So last night I get an email from the salesman. He said that he’s willing to take another $495 off of the price of the car (in addition to the $400 he originally said he’d take off) because that’s how much they paid for the certification and so that would make it (according to him) $16,338 (do the math by the way… $17,123 - $400 - $495 != $16,338) .

So I was then pretty happy to email him back and ask a simple question: I’m confused… I was just looking at your website and the price quoted is $16,188. But you just quoted me $16,338. What’s the difference between those quotes?

No, I have not heard back from him yet (to be fair, I did write last night at 6 PM or so). But I’m hoping I’ll hear back from him today to see how he responds. But it makes me realize how much I really can NOT trust salesmen. This whole experience has shown me a LOT of ways that they play with the figures and try to get the most money from you (or me I guess) as possible. Yes, I knew they did that before, but I guess I didn’t realize the extent that they’d go to try and rip you off!!

New experiences. Guess those are the best way to learn

Over the last year or so I’ve been trying to keep up with world events and how they are progressing as time goes on. But what I’ve found is that no matter WHAT organization you choose to read the news from, there’s some sort of a slant to it.

This of course doesn’t come as a surprise to me. What DOES surprise me is the number of people that don’t know this themselves, or at least don’t think about it. Journalists are people (duh!) and as such they are not perfect. This means that they can make mistakes and also report events and write articles in ways that slant things in a way that makes more sense to them. OR so that it benefits the people that they support more.

Usually, this is done without the reporter even knowing it happened. Those times are of course understandable. But there are those that will do it on purpose and without any system of checks to ensure that the information is at least valid. And THOSE are the times that the industry scares me. Whenever I am reading up on a topic that is fairly large, I ensure that I read multiple papers (online generally) to get a wider viewpoint.

I also try and get an understanding of who the paper is and what their viewpoints are overall. This gives me a better idea of what way they might slant. Put all of that together with a large handful of salt and I’ve got my unslanted viewpoint of what’s going on. Well, that’s not true because through the entire process, I’m putting my OWN slant on things because I’M human and I’M not perfect and I do have an agenda of my own.

Anyway, I guess my main point is that WAY too many people take what they read and see on TV at face value and don’t think for themselves. I guess that’s just the way the world is going these days, but it’s REALLY frustrating to see. So yep, that’s my rant. Pitiful I know, but I’ll do better, I promise!