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Most of the news items about the Big 3 automakers in Washington asking for money refer to it as the “bailout” for Detroit auto companies. It is not a bailout. They are asking for a loan. A bailout is what the financial companies got: billions of dollars with no questions asked, no strings attached, and repayment is optional.

The current Congress worries me a bit.  They are looking forward to setting up a new committee or appointee to oversee the running of the car companies. In other words, they are going to use this situation to expand government. They are going to take advantage of the financial crisis to add rules and power to Washington because they wouldn’t be able to get away with it in a normal economy.

The Big 3 car companies want a loan. They are going to repay the loan. They have a pretty good history of repaying the loans from the federal government. And the government has made a decent amount of money on previous loans to the car companies.  What happens once these loans are repaid? Is Washington going to disband the new car committee or car czar? Something tells me that this expansion of power will not go away as easily as it came.

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The senators and representatives seem to be fond of telling the car companies that their business plans are not sustainable and they need Congress to tell them how to run their companies. I would like someone to tell Congress that Medicare and Social Security are not sustainable and they need someone else to tell them how to run the government. Congress wants changes at the top of the car companies. Why don’t we also get changes at the top of Congress, particularly in the finance and banking committees that were supposed to be overseeing Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac? They were warned of their floundering finances, but did nothing to fix it. Why are those the people who are now, all of a sudden, responsible and knowledgeable enough to run car companies?

If the government wants to tell a public company how to run itself, it should follow the existing market methods. If the company is asking the government for money, there are three main options: gift, purchase, or loan.

• If the government wants to just give money away as a gift, then there are no conditions.
• If the government wants to help a company financially but wants a say in the matter, it should buy shares of the company. The more shares you buy, the more votes you get. It works well this way for everyone else.
• The third option is for the government to loan the money to the company. The company pays the government back, and there is no need for the government to force any changes in the company. If the company is being run poorly, then they will have incentive to change things so they can free up some cash to make the loan obligations. If the company can’t make it and goes bankrupt, then I am sure the government would arrange things with the bankruptcy judge so that they are the first to be paid. Even if they don’t get paid, how is this any different from the government’s grand plans to buy bad mortgage debt from the mortgage bankers? Washington was going to buy mortgages that were known to be bad, meaning they expected many of them would not be repaid. The car companies should at least be better than that.

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There are free-market solutions that the government can use to help the companies. Of course, a truly free market would not have the government get involved. And many people are arguing that government involvement was the root cause of this whole mess, so a truly free market would not have had the same problems that apparently only the government can solve. I vote for less government. Loan the money if you must, but don’t grab for power in the process.

“The rich rules over the poor, And the borrower {becomes} the lender’s slave.”
– Proverbs 22:7

It is cold and snowy outside, so I have started my beard, much to the chagrin of my wife. When some people, those who know me slightly, see me with a beard and they aren’t used to my having a beard, they ask questions. Oddly enough, the most common question is “What question do people usually ask you about your beard?” To which I reply “The one that you just asked.”

For those who are interested: the second-most common question about my beard is “How do you wash it?” And my reply is “I shampoo it occasionally.” Another popular one is “How long did it take you to grow that?” Of course, that answer varies depending on when they ask the question.

When my beard is just starting, or if there was a long weekend during which I didn’t shave, then there’s a good crop of stubble on my face. My kids used to be fascinated with that. They would rub my face with their hands and say “Daddy, you have ants all over your face!”

Tuesday night was crazy.  It was one of those nights that wouldn’t let me go to sleep.

I went to bed around midnight.  At 12:15, one of the neighbor’s dogs starts barking.  Very annoying.  It’s not a constant barking – somewhat intermittent, so I am able to start drifting off to sleep.  At 12:30 however, the dog is joined by a chirp from the smoke detector.  It has decided, just now, that its battery is getting low.

I remember that the smoke detector emits a short chirp every minute when the battery is low, but I also remember that it can be on the edge for a while.  I don’t want to leave my warm bed, so I gamble that the next chirps will not be very regular, and maybe I can fall fast asleep and will miss the next chirp. I win that bet, and am back asleep.

At 1:00 my wife wakes me with a “What was that?”  She then described a chirp-like sound.  I tell her it’s the smoke alarm telling us it thinks its battery is running low.  She asks how often it makes that sound.  I tell her “once a minute”, and the alarm chirps again, and again.  I give up and get out of bed.

I go downstairs and get the step stool, since our bedroom ceiling is at 10 feet.  The step stool is not tall enough – my reach is probably 2 feet shy of the smoke detector.  I try remembering how I did this before.  Then I recall that I use the small ladder from the garage.  But the small ladder isn’t in the garage anymore; it’s in the shed.  There’s no way I’m trudging through the snow to get a ladder just to change a 9V battery.

Ah-ha!  We have tall stools in the kitchen for sitting at the counter.  I bring one upstairs, and now my reach is only 1 foot shy.  Hmm…   I grab an end table from the upstairs landing.  The kitchen stool plus the end table is tall enough, if slightly unsteady. But at this point I don’t care.  Swap the batteries, leave the stack of table and stool, and turn out the lights.  Finally back in bed, heading off to sleep at 1:30.

The kids wake up at 6:30, at least an hour earlier than usual, and they’re hungry for breakfast.  If nothing else, that was a training run for when the new baby arrives.

“Come to Me, all who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest.”
– Matthew 11:28

Now that it is December and snowy outside, it is time to update Some Blog Site’s background photo.  In this case, it is part of an old skiing photo.  I plan on having a new background each season.

The Some Blog Site calendar is as follows:

• Winter – December, January, February
• Spring – March, April, May
• Summer – June, July, August
• Fall – September, October, November

I know that doesn’t exactly align with the solstices and equinoxes (what is the plural of equinox? equinoxen? equinice? equinoctes?) and what-not, but that’s how I have chosen to update my backgrounds.  Why do some businesses and government agencies have their fiscal years end in September?  Because they can.

It has turned cold outside, but our furnace is working, so that means it stays warm inside. Why do I bother telling you that? Because that means that the mice have moved back inside our house with us. But not for long.

We had been trying for a couple of days to catch the mouse. He is obviously in the kitchen. By “obviously”, I mean that he leaves a trail of pellets so that we can see where he has been. My wife was quite annoyed, because he kept getting in her stuff. She had to throw out a bottle of paprika. Paprika! The lid was chewed open and paprika was everywhere. The other spices were left alone.

So I bought some glue traps and placed them in an apparent path of his, and then I went to bed. In the morning, the trap was on the floor. There was a bunch of fur (and more pellets) in the glue trap, but no mouse.

After finding the empty trap on the floor, I threw it away and got another two more from the package (four per box). I put them in the same place, figuring that he wouldn’t change his commute, and went to bed. In the morning, the trap was moved and contained fur and pellets again, but no mouse. He must be a quick learner, but not quick enough to avoid the trap in the first place. With all the fur that’s being left in the traps, eventually we’re going to have a bald mouse running around.

Not impressed with the weak glue in the traps, I recalled that last year we had success with the Tomcat-brand glue traps. This year’s traps that are 0-for-2 so far are the d-Con brand. A friend picked up some of the Tomcat glue traps, and the third night had a Tomcat trap next to a d-Con trap, both in the mouse’s path.  And we got the mouse no problem with the Tomcat trap.

I set another Tomcat trap the next night, just to be sure we got all the mice. That first night there was nothing – no mouse, but no sign of any struggle. The second night we got another mouse. By my count, that makes d-Con 0-for-2 and Tomcat 2-for-2. We have another Tomcat trap out there still, waiting for any other intruders.

You can’t tell by the pictures, but the Tomcat trap has a thicker layer of glue. By thicker I mean deeper, not more viscous. The d-Con traps are about 4″ by 4″, and the Tomcat traps are about 3.5″ by 4.5″.

I didn’t set out to write an un-biased review of glue mouse traps, but I guess that’s what this post is.  I recommend the Tomcat traps. I also recommend using peanut butter for bait.

A previous post mentioned how some people have problems with percentages. Now there should be fewer problems with percentages, since there is a Percentages Calculator to help everyone get their percentages right. You can go directly to the calculator, or you can visit the calculator entry page that lists some equations and tries to explain how to use percentages.

Enjoy!

We don’t vacuum under the bed much. Recently though, a friend rearranged our bedroom furniture slightly and so some of it got cleaned.

A couple of days later, I was vacuuming the living room and the vacuum was smoking. That’s not a good sign, so I leaned closer for a good look. No, nothing bad happened. But I did see that it wasn’t smoke – it was dust. The vacuum was just throwing dust around instead of sucking it up. I figured the problem was that I hadn’t changed the bag in a few months. But my wife informed me that they changed the bag when they cleaned the bedroom. So it wasn’t the bag.

I then flipped the vacuum up slightly to check the rotating brush thingy. That was spinning like it looked like it should. I took the wand thingy and tried that. It worked great – pulling in all the pieces of debris that I put it near. So I put the wand back, and the sound of the vacuum changed, like the wand was plugged.

I flipped the vacuum over (after turning it off) and traced the path that dust would have to follow to go from the floor to the bag. I found a connecting tube from the brush to the wand, and the tube was full of dust/paper/hair/etc. The tube is on the left side in the picture below.  I cleaned that out (needle-nose pliers are your friend) and the vacuum worked again.

So clean regularly, otherwise the build-up of dust can overwhelm your vacuum cleaner. I suppose the alternative is not to vacuum at all. That will also keep your vacuum cleaner in good shape.