SIRIUS - XM merger proposed

I received notice from SIRIUS via email about the same time I saw a post at Eric's blog about this. From the news release at the SIRIUS web site:

XM Satellite Radio (Nasdaq: XMSR - News) and SIRIUS Satellite Radio (Nasdaq: SIRI - News) today announced that they have entered into a definitive agreement, under which the companies will be combined in a tax-free, all-stock merger of equals with a combined enterprise value of approximately $13 billion, which includes net debt of approximately $1.6 billion.

My initial reaction is disappointment because I liked the fact that the younger, upstart SIRIUS was obviously outpacing the more corporate XM. Competition is usually good for fostering further innovation and spurring complacent competitors. I think it's good that Mel Karmazin, the current SIRIUS CEO, will remain the CEO of this newly proposed entity because he seems to really "get" the freedom and consequent potential of satellite radio.

From the email I, and probably all SIRIUS subscribers, received:

After shareholder and regulatory approvals, we anticipate that the combination will be finalized by the end of 2007. Until then, both companies will continue to operate independently.

Much needs to still occur before this becomes a reality, but the companies appear determined to make this happen. Key language from the news release identifies how SIRIUS and XM will be positioning their merger to garner federal regulatory approval:

More Competitive Audio Entertainment Provider -- The combination of an
enhanced programming lineup with improved technology, distribution and
financials will better position satellite radio to compete for
consumers' attention and entertainment dollars against a host of
products and services in the highly competitive and rapidly evolving
audio entertainment marketplace.  In addition to existing competition
from free "over-the-air" AM and FM radio as well as iPods and mobile
phone streaming, satellite radio will face new challenges from the rapid
growth of HD Radio, Internet radio and next generation wireless technologies.
[emphasis mine]

According to a recent article on Bloomberg, current FCC regulations do not allow such a merger as a condition of the two companies being given approval to operate. The language above indicates the two satellite companies are reframing what competition means in this industry, i.e., it's not anticompetitive for there to be a single satellite radio provider when there are so many other "radio" and music/talk choices available to listeners.

It will be interesting to see how things play out. I like that Mel will be at the helm, but there are just too many unknowns at this point to know for sure if this will be a good thing. There are over 100 comments on this story over at the unofficial Sirius Backstage forums.

It was time

Today I finally removed my "FREE HOWARD STERN" sticker from the rear window of my pickup:














I mean, come on, he's been free for over a year already.

I had expected to have to employ a heat gun in conjunction with a razor blade, but the razor alone did the job just fine. In the warmth of the sun the blade slipped easily beneath the lettering, separating each Latin symbol whole from its smooth, tinted substrate.

Related post: Chevy S10 install

Sony unaware of Metal Gear Solid 4?

Yes, it's true. I am a member of the "Playstation Underground." Pretty top secret, I know. I'm one of those types that likes to register things when I buy them, so I signed up for it when I bought my PS2. Every once in awhile they mail me stuff and today I received a nice, big (9 X 12) glossy pamphlet about the PS3 with all the reasons I shouldn't be able to resist buying one.

Anyway, the point of this post is that I can't add Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots to my Playstation Underground game "wish list" because the game doesn't seem to exist anywhere within the US Playstation web site. Strange considering MGS4 is one of the most anticipated titles for the PS3 later this year.

What's weird is the game also doesn't appear on Konami's (the game's publisher) US web site. Maybe things are just being kept quiet until there's real news. Even the game's developer, Kojima Productions, has little info on the title. When all else fails, there's Wikipedia.

Data provide a glimpse of my routine

A collateral benefit of my SIRIUS tuner's memory and the fact that it is powered via my cigarette lighter is that I can measure how long it takes for me to do certain regular recurring tasks as I drive around running errands. If I stop for gas or check my mailbox I press "pause" on the tuner before I turn the ignition off and then resume listening once I've started up again. Below are some things I've done over the past week and approximately how long each one took.

• Pick up shirts at drycleaners: 2m 16s
• Make three copies and fax three pages at copy shop: 16m 10s
• Park & run into post office to send letters: 1m 50s
• Pick up razor refills at grocery store: ~5 to 6m (approx. since I had to go to two stores to find them)
• Put $20 gas in my truck: ~3 to 4m (est. since I didn't actually do this this week but recall from past fill-ups this is about right.)
• Buy sandwich at a drive-thru fast food joint: 4m 7s

I thought it was interesting to see that some of the things I do don't take as long as I perceive them to take. Filling up with gas particularly. I used to think when I was cutting things close with time and my gas gauge was approaching "empty" I wouldn't have time to stop to fill up. The truth is, even 5 bucks will ensure I won't run out of gas going anywhere in town and I can be in and out in two minutes or less. Also, as my brother Brian has said to me, can you afford to not stop for gas? If you actually run dry there's no question you'll be late.

Laserdisc gaming -- Cliff Hanger

A recent article on Gamepolitics reminded me of this classic gem. The game's page on Wikipedia had some interesting info and a few additional links. I can still remember playing the car chase scene where you had to weave your car back and forth to dodge grenades tossed by the car you were chasing. Also fighting ninjas. Lots of ninjas. And scuba diving -- it's slowly coming back! Apparently the game was created using clips from several Japanese anime cartoons.

I had no idea the game was so rare -- apparently only 550 arcade cabinets were manufactured -- and we had one in rural Cave Creek, AZ back in the 1980s. Man, that was a great gameroom, attached to a pizza joint of course. I spent countless hours and quarters playing Donkey Kong, Mario Bros., Donkey Kong Jr., Joust, Congo Bongo, Dragon's Lair and many others. Those were the days.

Sac Natural Foods Co-op to close Elk Grove store

I was sad to learn that the Sacramento Natural Foods Co-op is closing its Elk Grove store at the end of January. I found out while shopping there in the first week of the new year that the Board of Directors had voted at its January 2 meeting to assign the store's lease to a new grocery store, Grocery Outlet. The Co-op has held several public meetings over the past week for shoppers and Co-op owners to attend and learn about this decision. The first two were on the evenings of Tuesday and Wednesday at the Elk Grove and Sacramento store locations, respectively. The last meeting was yesterday, Saturday afternoon at the Elk Grove store.

I went to the first meeting last Tuesday night not only because I'm an owner of the Co-op, but also because I was curious how such a beautiful store with great product and amazing staff could be closing after only 18 months of operation.

The meeting was much more than just a presentation by the Board of Directors. There were about 40 owners and a few shoppers there and we all sat in chairs in a large circle. It was actually quite personal and everyone had a chance to say what they were feeling and to ask any questions. In addition to the Board members there were several employees there who had invested quite a bit of their lives in the Co-op and the principles it stands for. Many of those present were quite emotional when they talked about what the store means to them. I'm sad to see it go because not only is the food they sell superb, but the entire staff is knowledgeable and clearly passionate about the ideals behind the Co-op. I always left the store with a positive feeling.

The Board went through a summary of the reasons they had thought a store in Elk Grove would work, the multiple marketing studies done to analyze possible locations, and the extensive community outreach and advertising that was done to promote the Co-op to Elk Grove. Employees even took wage and benefit reductions to reduce expenses. Everything that could have been done was done. The sad truth appears to be that there simply wasn't enough time to build a sufficient customer base who came in on a consistent basis to make the store profitable.

Even though it is sad and disappointing to see the store close, some good will still come out of having built and opened it. The building itself is the most environmentally "green" in Elk Grove and maybe in Sacramento, from having energy efficient cooling, heating, lighting and refrigeration to using recycled and natural materials throughout the structure. Hopefully that building along with some of the Co-op's principles of sustainable grocery practices and cooperative community support and involvement are new seeds that will germinate and spread new ideas about being mutually beneficial and responsible consumers and community participants.

P.S. -- mention was made of a final celebration, likely to occur near the end of January, so keep your ears open and I'll post any info I find out. Also, inventory is being cleared over the next several weeks, so there may be some good bargains to be had.

[UPDATE - THURSDAY, 1/18] I went to the Elk Grove store last night and apparently there has been a 20% off sale all this week. The store was mostly empty, and all of the fresh/perishable food areas (deli, dairy, meats & seafood, produce) were already cleaned and closed. I'd say there was about 20-30% of the store's product remaining. It was slim pickins, but if you're looking for some frozen goods (including a number of turkeys!?), beer/wine, dry goods or other non-perishable groceries it may be worth your while to browse what's left.

1-9-07 -- The Revolution Continues On

Today marks one year since Howard Stern officially began his satellite radio career. Despite what his detractors say, Howard's venture into this new medium has been an unqualified success. The growth of new SIRIUS subscribers has exceeded all expectations since Stern signed on, blowing through the projected number for the end of 2006 of 3.5 million subscribers by over 2 million for an estimated total of 6,024,000 subscribers as of December 31, 2006. SIRIUS had 600,000 subscribers in 2004 when it signed Stern.

SIRIUS announced today that Stern will receive yet another incentive payment as a result of this record growth. Anyone who thinks Stern would even consider leaving this sweet gig just isn't paying attention. No censorship and multi-million dollar incentive payments? Are you kidding?

My personal experience with SIRIUS has been nothing but positive. I had wanted to try satellite radio for several years before actually subscribing in December 2005. I listened on and off to Stern's terrestrial radio show for probably ten years and had become a regular listener again during his last few years on that medium, so my choice of a satellite radio provider was simple once Howard announced he was going to be on SIRIUS. I listen mainly in my truck, but I can take my tuner anywhere with a SIRIUS boombox (thanks to Eric) and can listen at any computer via Internet radio. In addition to Stern's two channels the music, talk, entertainment and sports content variety seem endless. A partial list is here.

One of the things I love about listening to Howard is that he puts all aspects of the show on the air. When his producer Gary screws up the timing of bringing a guest in the studio or forgets to tell Howard something related to running the show, or Scott the Engineer (yes, "engineer" should be capitalized) can't make a piece of equipment work, the issue isn't just passed over and dealt with off the air. Howard brings the offending person into the studio and hashes it out on the air, usually involving all members of the show in the discussion and ultimately goofing on the person until they can't stand it anymore.

A shining moment recently was when Stern was set to interview Pete Townshend and Roger Daltrey of The Who and Pete Townshend backed out of the interview literally minutes before it was to begin. Not only was this during the much promoted two-day SIRIUS "free preview," but it was also supposed to announce the new Who channel (98) on SIRIUS. Stern ended up talking just to Roger Daltrey, talked about Townshend walking out, and turned it into an interesting interview.

In addition to giving listeners a glimpse of what goes on silently at every other radio program, which is in itself fascinating, Howard's tirades and criticisms often make for hilarious bits for the show and just great radio.

In the week before Stern's first official broadcast on 1-9-06 he did several test broadcasts to check sound levels and try out all of the equipment in the brand new studio. That probably could have been done by engineers or other staff, but Howard chose to bring in the whole regular show staff and they actually broadcast several mini shows to try everything out, even taking phone calls.

Today after the regular show SIRIUS replayed the 1-9-06 show and then ran the top 10 moments of the past year as voted on by listeners.

Related posts: Howard's first broadcast; Stern still has it; "satellite radio" posts

Migration to New Blogger complete

I've taken the final step of fully converting to The New Version of Blogger, namely selecting a new template. On the outside it doesn't look like a new template, but the inner workings and widgets are certainly shiny and new. There's a few new template designs that were tempting, but for now the added functionality for me and useability for my readers is enough.

The template upgrade process was fairly painless. Blogger keeps a copy of your old template, but I made a copy of the HTML myself before upgrading so I could cut-and-paste anything the conversion process dropped. One cool thing is that it allows you to preview new templates with your actual current blog content, not just generic placeholders, so you have a good feel for how it's going to look.

Pretty much everything transferred over, though I had to add back in any java scripts (remember your site statistics scripts!) from the old template and any other custom HTML I had that was outside of the basic page elements. My lists of links, friends' blogs and gaming blogs all came over. I had to futz around in the template HTML to adjust my margins again and it's not quite right yet, but it's pretty close. Each section, or page element, of the blog (i.e., header, outer, main, sidebar, footer, etc.) has its own "wrapper" parameters to be adjusted.

The best features of this new template are two new page elements that add extra useability for readers. The first is the labels index, allowing easy sorting for a particular subject. The second is a revamping of the archive which now allows readers to "drill down" to see a list of posts made in a particular month. I'll continue experimenting, so you might see slight changes here and there from time to time. Let me know if anything looks amiss and what is good, too.

Related link: Blogger Beta conversion

Sacha Baron Cohen interviewed on NPR's Fresh Air

You probably know him as Borat, the star of the recent movie Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, but he is also Ali G and Bruno.

I thought the interview would be boring since Cohen was interviewed out of character as himself, but it proved to be both funny and interesting as he explained some of his comedic process and some behind-the-scenes things from making the Borat movie.

You can listen to the whole interview on NPR's web site as well as see a picture of Cohen as he really looks.

Artie Lange's Beer League DVD released January 2, Lange on Letterman January 3

Widely available, but I picked up my copy yesterday at Circuit City. It's a "Collector's Edition 2-Disc Set" and they have a promotion that includes a free Beer League t-shirt. I'm not sure if the free t-shirt offer applies with an online order, but the offer is in their weekly ad. There was a box of the shirts at the cash register when I checked out in person. I haven't watched the movie yet, but I'll put up a few words once I do.

Circuit City has a separate promotion, also in the weekly ad, for Sirius tuners that gives the purchaser of any tuner a free copy of the Beer League DVD.

On a related note, Artie will appear on David Letterman's Late Show tonight, January 3.


Related posts: Boycott Beerfest, see Beer League; Artie on NPR

Microsoft set to lock down Office docs; enforced with encryption and DMCA

Ok, this is too much. Via Linux Journal I found an article in InformationWeek about MS's new Vista OS and how it will enable MS to criminalize open document readers and consequently kill open standards computing.

The gist of it is that Vista will enable Information Rights Management (IRM), a feature available since Office 2003, to control the hardware (yes, you read right -- see "trusted computing" below) and software required to open a document created with Office running on Vista while also allowing control over whether that document can be printed, edited, copied, forwarded or any number of other possibilities. These rights can even be "managed" remotely, though I imagine that would require being on a common MS network using Outlook or the network to obtain the document.

The Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) is invoked by the use of encryption to enforce the IRM. In short, bypass the encrypted formatting and break the law. The IRM features can be incorporated with "trusted computing" principles to completely lock down the documents at the hardware level of your PC.

The InformationWeek article talks of losing open document standards, but the Linux Journal article predicts much more dire consequences: the possible forced obsolescence of Linux and other open standards-based OSes. If most of the computing world is standardized on Microsoft platforms and products and it is illegal to even duplicate MS functionality for common document use, how useful will Linux be?

If Microsoft successfully implements these "features" then it has truly missed the boat of the Internet with a capital "I." The value of the Internet is that it does not matter what client you use as long as it supports the common and public standards the network (i.e., "Internet") uses to move data around. Once documents created with Microsoft products can only be opened or manipulated using Microsoft-approved systems, we've reverted to the earliest Apple/IBM incompatibility headaches and corresponding lack of sharing, communication and creativity among users.

Successful implementation may also create a pseudo net neutrality advantage to Microsoft users. Imagine corporations, who are by the way huge users of MS products, which will not accept documents unless they are submitted in a protected MS Office format or will only make press releases or other company information available in that same protected format. Who cares if your Linux box has as much bandwidth as some other guy's Windows machine -- your Linux-created document simply isn't getting through.

Such a corporate lockdown is not unrealistic given the fact that corporations' IT departments like the consistent, easy-to-manage, standardized (ironic, no?) infrastructure that a MS network provides, plus Microsoft sells IRM as a "company asset" in its description of the feature. What corporation or IT manager does not want "Information privacy, control, and integrity" incorporated into network management?

Please read both of the articles mentioned in the first paragraph and become informed about what software and computing companies are doing. Even if you are only a Microsoft user you should be concerned about your shrinking choices and limits on your free use of your own property.

The new Blogger beta

Seeing as how this new beta version was declared "feature complete" as of November 2, I figured I'd jump in and convert. The process was easy, I just clicked on "Update my blog" from the old dashboard, signed in with a google account and the rest was all on google's end. The conversion took 3 to 4 minutes and I was notified at my gmail address when it was done.

So far things on the admin side look mostly similar, just more polished and with more features more easily managed. As far as I can tell, the blog's appearance to the outside world is identical to how it looked before. I look forward to organizing my posts by labels.

[UPDATE] The only suggestion I will make to potential converts is to consider whether you want to associate your new Blogger beta blog with a google account that is different from your primary gmail account. This is because unfortunately, when you sign out of Blogger beta you are signing out of your google accounts entirely, also logging you out of any other google services you are currently using.

Actually I just tried and confirmed, and this really sucks, that you can't be logged into two different google logins at the same time at all on the same computer. Well technically you can use a browser to monitor one gmail account and monitor a different gmail account via Gmail Notifier in your taskbar, but that's not really what we're talking about here. If you're like me you have gmail open all the time, you use google's personalized homepage, gcal and google maps often all at the same time, so inadvertently logging in and out of all of that is a hassle. It's best to have a separate google account solely for your Blogger beta blog so you only have to worry about that one thing.

I suppose you could use your main google/gmail account with Blogger beta so that you can stay logged into everything all the time. I hestiated to do that because I'm uncomfortable with my personal gmail data being so closely stacked in the "Google identity silo" with my blog posts.


Related post: Blogger beta hesitation

Kathy Griffin at the Crest

I'm not sure why I didn't post this earlier, but my girlfriend and I went to see Kathy Griffin here in Sacramento on December first. Griffin did two shows that night, and the later 10:00 show we went to lasted an hour and forty minutes! Great stuff, she is a hilarious stream-of-consciousness comic, mainly focusing on her interactions with "A" list celebrities as a self-proclaimed "D-lister." Topics ranged from Britney to Lohan, Clay "Gayken" (allegedly) to Kathy's parents behavior on her reality show on Bravo.

Interestingly, the stage at the show was completely bare except for a stool with several water bottles on it and a microphone stand. This is a 36' X 24' stage in a 975 person theater and the place was sold out. It made me realize just how difficult it must be to build up a routine to the level of being able to keep a paying audience entertained for a full show.

She'll be on tour in California through January 12th before heading to the Northwest and then east again if you'd like to catch a show.

Howard Stern TV media blitz this week

Stern is hitting the "Big 3" networks this week for a Sirius holiday promotional push.

Last night Stern was on Letterman's show (CBS).

Thursday night he will be on Conan O'Brien (NBC, 12:30a Friday, technically).

Friday night he will be on Jimmy Kimmel Live (ABC, 12:05a Saturday).

The Letterman appearance was cool. Howard was wearing a Santa robe with bare legs, and came bearing gifts. He gave Paul and Dave each a new Sirius Stiletto, the latest and greatest portable tuner/mp3 player from Sirius, and then gave everyone in the audience satellite radios with free three month subscriptions! No doubt a more basic model, but how cool is that?

Howard had stories about his and Beth's recent attendance at Bryant Gumbel's Christmas party, showed a video clip of Jeff the Drunk falling down, and talked about a few other things that have been going on since he moved to Sirius. Some more info is on Stern's site since they commented on it quite a bit today. Also, the Lateshow site has a transcript of the entire show. Apparently Regis Philbin heard that Dave actually shook Howard's hand backstage after the interview (a rare event as I believe both Howard and Dave are germophobic) and was so amazed by the occurrence that he may confront Dave about it when he is on Letterman tonight (Wed.).

Conan is great, though I think Howard is lukewarm about him. We'll have to see how the appearance goes. I'll be taping it for sure.

Let me just say that the official Conan O'Brien web site is woefully underutilized as far as upcoming guests go. I actually had to go to frickin' tvguide.com to confirm Howard's appearance tomorrow night. Further exploration on nbc.com revealed listings for the whole NBC network which included Conan's upcoming guests, but logic and good sense requires that such things be right there next to Conan's smiling face. Woe be upon those who underutilize... web things. We shall never speak of this again.

Kimmel and ABC have done it right. Upcoming guests for the whole week are right there on the front page. Actually the next two weeks. Kudos to you, Kimmel, and all those who make your web presence possible. Kimmel and Howard have a great chemistry which should ensure a great appearance.

Graphological Initiative

So the October 2006 issue of Wired had a full-page ad for TUL pens paired with an additional cardstock page with a postage-prepaid postcard that could be torn out. Both pages show a "Dr. Gerard Ackerman" looking at the camera with some sort of an "I'm smarter than you" smirk on his face, holding a metal clipboard, seemingly daring readers to mail in the attached postcard for a free graphological analysis. The part of the card stock page that one doesn't tear out has text on it that says "Share your handwriting with me and discover who you really are."

What one does is write a specific phrase on the card, I truly need a new pen., include an email address and mail in the card for analysis. I knew it was just a promotion for these pens, but TUL (really OfficeMax) had already paid for the postage, so I did it. I also thought they might send me a free pen. I received the email with a link to my "results" last week and would like to share.

UPDATE: email actually received the last week of October. I've had this saved as a draft for awhile.

The email was short and pretty much just contained a link to click on. "Results" is in quotes above because what I was given is not a personalized analysis of what I actually wrote on the postcard. This was disappointing, but what could I have expected, right? It's free. The general web site is here, where you can have your own handwriting "analyzed" without mailing in anything.

The web site gives its analysis of your handwriting by asking you a series of questions about the characteristics that appear as you write the phrase I wrote on the postcard. The characteristics are 1) Slant; 2) Size; 3) Spacing; 4) your capital "I"; 5) your lowercase "t"; and 6) your lowercase "y." I won't bore you with the respective options for these characteristics, but suffice it to say there are quite a few permutations that TUL had to make separate results videos for.

My results

My handwriting slants to the right (extroverted, emotionally responsive, trusting) and is medium-sized (average) with narrow spacing (conservative, inner strength, uptight, inhibited, aloof, emotionally remote, frugal).

For my capital "I," the tail of the "I" is dominant (dominant father and a lame who's your daddy with pimp graphic joke in the video). My lowercase "t" has a short crossbar (matter-of-fact, efficient, proficient) and my lowercase "y" has a full, almost voluptuous loop (physical, imaginative, flexible, uninhibited, direct).

Putting all that together for a coherent profile is pretty much impossible. You can see from my results that I am both emotionally responsive and emotionally remote, extroverted and uptight/aloof, inhibited and uninhibited, and trusting and frugal. I'm not sure how to add in the other characteristics, but I'm sure if I consult my astrological forecast I'll be pointed in a direction.

Any direction.

Of course the good doctor uses the results to make a particular pen recommendation using his apparently summarizing title of my characteristics, "Captain of the Boardroom."

No free pen.

My favorite pen right now (yes, it changes. Past honors have gone to the Uni-ball Vision Exact and Uni-ball Vision) is one I received as a promotion from my investment advisor at a brokerage firm. Of course the firm's logo is laser engraved on the cap, but the pen is solid brass, so it has a nice weight and balance to it. It's the BL8650S: Latitud Rollerball Pen of the Basics line offered by Logomark, Inc. It has nice, smooth rollerball ink and a consistent ink flow for easy writing. And it came with a certificate for 5 free refills. The site has a "refill wizard" and appears to have refills to fit lots of different pens, not just ones from Logomark. You pay shipping, but $4.95 isn't too bad for some quality ink.

Do I think too much about pens?

Colbert is absolute gold

You must check out this video of Stephen Colbert boxing newly elected Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi -- using custom Mii avatars on Nintendo's Wii Sports boxing:




If for some reason the YouTube video does not show up, click here. Colbert puts more thought and effort into his show than almost anyone I've seen.

For a moment there...

I thought Google was forcing Blogger users to switch to "the new version of Blogger." The above image is what I saw at 6:51p tonight when I tried to view my blog. I saw the same error message for my friend Chad's blog, also on Blogger. All seems ok now, but Google sure does want us to switch as the first thing a user sees in the current Blogger dashboard is a "Your new version of Blogger is ready!" message and a prompt to make the switch.

I haven't done it yet because there were issues with the new version such as not being able to edit the HTML code, but apparently all of the original features of the old Blogger are now included plus some new ones like labels for posts, dynamic serving (no more "republishing" for each new post and pages are dynamically served from a database instead of a static HTML page) and more site feed options like the ability to have RSS feeds for comments. Cool stuff for sure, but for now I'll keep up with the Known Issues for Blogger in Beta blog and stay where I am.

UPDATE: Well, there's the answer, straight from the Blogger Status page:














No details, but it has been fixed. Apparently if I had been using the new version of Blogger I would have been unaffected.

Harrumph!

Amazing argument for not going in to work

The cost of driving to and from work can be measured by more than just dollars per gallon. Until I saw this post on the blog of an attorney who works from home I had not seen just why it can make so much sense to work from home. The key concept here is opportunity cost, the value of the next most valuable alternative forgone in favor of the choice made. After computing the formula there really is no argument.

In the example the author references, a couple has bought a house that requires a 1.5 hour commute each way and being skilled technology workers they earn $100 per hour. From his post, here's the formula and how it works out:

(Commute time * Productivity per hour) * Days Commuting per year

(3 * 100) * 230 = 69K

Based on similar formulas I calculated the following numbers:

• Yearly opportunity cost - $69,000
  
• Lifetime (30 years) opportunity Cost - $2,070,000
  
• 8-hour work days spent commuting per year - 86.25
  
• Lifetime (30 years) work days commuting - 2587.5
  
• Number of work years spent commuting - 11.25

That’s right! They will spend the equivalent of 11.25 work years driving to and from work. I defined a work year as 230 8-hour days.

Even if you're just one person earning $50 per hour and commuting only half an hour each way, that's (1*50)230 = $11,500 per year, $345,000 over your work lifetime! I don't know about you, but that would give a tremendous boost to my IRA/401k/life insurance.

Plus, the person in my example with a more modest commute would have the equivalent of an extra 28.75 eight-hour work days each year and 862.5 eight-hour work days over 30 years, adding a total of 3.75 work years if commuting was eliminated from the day. If nothing else such a reclaimed opportunity cost could help relieve some billable-hour pressure. Pretty cool.

This one's for you, Eric.

Yes, you.

Voting Accomplished

Remember to vote today, if you haven't already. Polls are open until 8p.

For those who want a quick reference for the Sacramento area:

Sacramento News & Review's recommendations; and

Sacramento Bee's endorsements.

Popcorn & This Old House

It really doesn't get any better. I am at the midpoint of the This Old House hour where the work on the project house for this week has been documented and we are about to begin the Ask This Old House portion of the show. This week, TOH did some serious work on their project house in East Boston, consisting of demolition in the kitchen involving asbestos-tainted floor removal, knocking down a wall, and replacement of a sewer pipe that had become clogged with the roots of a nearby tree. They actually had the city come in with a backhoe to dig up the sidewalk and dig down to the sewer main to replace a section of pipe that had been compromised and clogged with roots. The backhoe operator was, as they said in the show, friggin' surgical. He pulled up a three-foot square section of sidewalk in one piece and put it right in the dumpster still in one piece.

If this doesn't excite you as much as it does me, maybe you don't appreciate circular saws, sledgehammers, 6-mil plastic liner, hepa-filtered exhaust fans and triple-chambered isolation tunnels. Oh, and I'm eating popcorn that is goooood! This is my specialty snack and just can't be beaten. First, I pop my corn old school, you might say, popping kernels in hot oil right in a saucepan -- no microwave for me. With the popped kernels still piping hot, I add Jolly Time Buttery Seasoning, which just makes it simply heavenly. It's like friggin' bacon. I can't give enough praise.