Rancid 3, Reprise

Oh just a note for posterity's sake that I messed with Rancid 3 for all of 90 minutes after figuring out the last land mine because the Dell switch functionality just wouldn't work. So eventually I just gave up and transplanted a working 2.3.8 instance and reconfigured it.

So much for trying to stay current. I'll check in again once 3.1.x is in progress; maybe by then there will be enough web documentation telling us what the actual differences are and the Dell piece will actually work.

Greed

Every so often you wonder what is going to happen in the future.

Take the credit card business, for example. To my eyes this is nothing more than a naked, greedy grasp at people's inability to do basic math and plan for the future.

This week I received in the mail one of the inevitable flood of pre-approved credit card applications that flow past a homeowner like a river of sludge. And because sometimes I feel like wallowing, I opened this one.

This is a "premium" card, and it offered me such terms as:

• $22,000 credit limit
  
• travel reward miles
  
• other gooey goodness
  

...and for these benefits it was only going to cost me

• $120 per year
  
• ..+$95 for each other card on the account
  
• 19.9% APR on outstanding balances
  
• ... unless I miss some payments, in which case it jumps to 21.9%
  
• 1% transfer fee for any balance transfers in
  
• fees on cash advances plus a higher interest rate of 22.9% on outstanding cash advance balances
  
• ... unless I miss some payments, in which case it jumps to 24.9%
  

I was looking at all these fees and rates, and it occurs to me: this bank shows absolutely no qualms about demanding 20% interest from me when the prime rate is 1% (let's assume the bank didn't see last week's surprise rate cut coming). And back in 1990, a different bank gave me, a university student with no visible means of support, a credit card with an interest rate of 16.9%.

And what was the interest rate when they did that?

Look at 1990

Yeah, between 10 and 14%.

(Graph from here.)

Now I may be the only non-economist alive who remembers in 1988 that the econonomic world was slowly coming to a halt and everyone was hoping for a so-called "soft landing" that would let everyone catch their breath and then let everything move along again -- and by 1991 it was clear that while the landing was "soft", it kept happening ever deeper (picture an ocean liner piling into an iceberg as opposed to a plane hitting a cliff). So while there are larger economic indicators at play behind this picture, the fact remains that a credit card was willing to accept only 6% as a premium for lending to probably one of the biggest credit risks of the time.

Today? For a premium customer, with verifiable assets, measurably low debt levels, and a solid income stream?

18%.

What is going to happen when interest rates go back up to their historical average of 7%? And make no mistake, eventually they will go up. The current economic "emergency" can't last forever.

Will this same credit card company want to charge me a 18% differential? ie: 25% on the best debt you can have?

(Well probably, initially. I'm sure what they'll do is jack the rates and those who stay will keep paying it, while those who bail will be lured to other lower rate products. Why stop people paying for your ridiculously over-priced service if they are willing to?*)

But it all just smacks of naked greed to me.

*== This is why Rogers and Bell jack your rates by $2 to $5 every year, slowly boiling the frog until you snap and they offer you a "special deal" at a lower rate.

Rancid 3

WHAT. THE. FUCK. GUYS.

What I'm not seeing in the FAQ is a note that if you've been using 
rancid 2.x the router.db separator character changed from : to ; 

2.3.8 router.db: 
  cisco-router.domain.com:cisco:up

3.0 router.db: 
  cisco-router.domain.com;cisco;up 

Guys. Guys. Guys.

You don't just arbitrarily change the config division symbol. Who the hell needs continuity? Your user community, that's who.

If you really, really, really want to change something so fundamental, maybe you should cover the change with some code which says "looks like you are using an out-of-date config file format" or even merely a "hey, this config line is bogus, maybe you wanna look into that?"

But no -- lets silently do nothing. The absolutely worst result you can possibly have. It took me a month of fucking around with this to notice that it was diligently recording all my routers as down, which finally gave me the magic string rancid marking all routers down to google to find out what had been changed.

FUCK.

Stir-The-Pot-Tuesdays: ISIS

So Canada is over in the middle east because ISIS wants to kill us or something. Thing is, there's no declaration of war, so this is what, a police action?

Thing is, if ISIS came over here and actually killed a Canadian, we would catch them and put them on trial and lock them up forever -- but we wouldn't be putting them to death.

So why is it OK to go over there and kill them (plus civilians and support people) without a trial? Isn't that basically what we're accusing them of wanting to do to us?

A little bit stir-the-pot, yes, but also a little serious.

Boring Sunday: Ten Car Garage

As a wise man once said, everyone must have a perfect ten car garage. That wise man was Jeremy Clarkson, but moving on.

(From Jalopnik).

Well this Sunday is boring, so why not indulge in a little day dreaming? This is just off the top of my head, and in no particular order:

• Toyota Sienna V6 AWD minivan customized to be a limousine inside, including drinks, TV, and internet. Sometimes you don't want to drive or you want someone else to drive so you can work, read, or sleep. And since I won't be driving it, I don't care that it has the handling characteristics of a shopping cart. But still AWD so it can go places I might reasonably want to go even in poor weather.
• Subaru Impreza with CVT and the paddle shifters as a daily driver. I'm old and lazy now and can't be bothered to row my own gears any more. So no STi. The CVT paddle shifter is a nice compromise between play and work, and can be ignored completely when I am lazy. I'm not 100% sure about this car, really. The last Legacy and Imprezas I drove had really vague steering. Cars like the Mazda 3 have much more responsive steering and just feel more fun to drive, even if they are ultimately less capable in the bad weather.
• BMW 325 xiT -- for things that don't fit in the Subaru.
• Mazda Miata or Honda S2000 -- because convertible. I am told I probably wouldn't fit in the Miata so I would try them both. If I don't fit in either I might look at a Ferrari California or something even though that's more of a cruiser than a "sportscar".
• 1992 Audi ur-Quattro -- both the first, and last, of the first generation of 4WD rally cars on the street. The Group-B monsters don't really count for me because they were not really offered for sale beyond the ridiculous homologation requirements.
• 1985 Toyota Supra -- I have lusted after these cars since they were new.
• Acura NSX -- if there is a mandatory super car requirement, we might as well have one at is easy to drive.
• Ferrari 328 GTS -- one that is rough enough to be driven and won't have to be a garage queen. You have to have a Ferrari or Porsche on lists like this, but I would like one that I wouldn't have to treat like it was made out of porcelain or something.

Frankly after this point I'm padding. I might be padding with the BMW, even. Things like the Nissan GT-R might appeal to me in a visceral way, but I can't see any reason to have such a ridiculously overpowered car. I can probably have more fun, more safely, in something like a Miata than in a monster like the GT-R.

The one thing that strikes me about this list: only two garage queens, the Audi and the Supra. Everything else I would expect to drive regularly, normally, on every-day streets.

Probably the only other addition would be kind of bending the rules -- a specific 1960 Austin-Healy Bug-eye Sprite. My dad has this car in his garage and although it probably needs more "restore" than "repair" at this point I would love to get it fitted out and then put it back in his garage. If money was no object I would certainly offer to do that for him.

Okay, that's another Sunday killed.

Review: Interstellar

Just because, I went to see Interstellar again. Unlike last time we were in a tiny theater, so no IMAX.

(Oddly enough, I think there were more people at this showing, post-oscar-snub, than there were when we went to the IMAX showing.)

Anyways, I found that the visuals held up pretty well on the much smaller screen, and the LOUD IMAX sound was much less loud.

One thing that was interesting is that I saw a review somewhere that commented that in future viewings "the first hour would probably really drag". With that in mind I noticed that A) it was only about 40 minutes of possibly draggy prequel story, and B) it didn't actually drag.

I remain convinced that this movie will one day be mentioned in a complementary way in the same breath as 2001.

Review: Sherlock Holmes

(DVD) I have to say, of the three iterations of Sherlock Holmes I've seen, this is my third favorite. Not to say that it is terrible, no -- it is just that the others are better. Robert Downey Jr is many things, but British isn't one of them. He does convincingly play the I've-just-been-hit-in-the-head-and-am-rather-dazed role, though.