Bank Closures as a Sign of Impending Greek Exit from Euro

Once again I learned something while reading Mish. Greece is, of course, going to leave the Euro zone soon. What I hadn't thought about was the very likely preliminary step of freezing bank deposits just before it happens:

Your country is part of a currency that holds value pretty well
Your country is about to leave that currency
Your new currency will be worth less
You want maximum value for your money, so
You pull your cash out of the bank denominated in the old, more valuable currency
So does everyone else
The banks have maybe 5% of their "deposits" in cash on hand
The banks cannot pay out the deposits everyone wants cashed out
The bank closes, totally bankrupt
This happens at every bank
The banking system collapses
The nation grinds to a halt
This takes maybe a week, start to finish
With a now totally-defunct banking system, there is no way to stay in the old currency

To prevent this very ugly kind of withdrawl from the Euro, bank deposits must be frozen. When that happens, stand by.

But of course, America's economy is decoupled from Europe's! No worries, here!

Chevy Volt Has Higher Carbon Footprint Than Anticipated

TWO garages have caught fire in homes equipped with charging stations for Chevrolet Volt electric/hybrid cars. Carbon footprint: about the size of your garage if you're lucky, the size of your house if not.

Expect to see more of these stories. When you draw lots of current (as when an electric car is being recharged), wires get hot. Old wires running too hot inside old walls not built to current code may just decide to catch on fire. If you get a charging station put in your house, I strongly advise you to have an electrician install a "home run" with wire larger than is required by your local building code. This means paying A LOT more for wire, as well as the installation of conduit and a circuit breaker - in addition to the cost of the charging station itself. I am guessing the cost would be lower, however, than the re-purchase of everything that burned in these poor peoples' garages.

You've been warned.

Hat tip: Instapundit

Daylight Savings: Still Lame

There is no compelling argument for it. Therefore, Congress should not make a law and force the changing of clocks at gunpoint. That is all.

PayPal Sucks, Problem Solved Edition

They had sent the funds to an old account. Once I got to an actual human at paypal, it was fixed in a couple of minutes. I had to think faster than their phone robot to get to a human. Good luck getting into your account with NO clue what information you used to sign up for the account!

Hint for getting past automated phone robots: this worked for me. While the robot was asking for the last four digits of some number I presumably used to know, I pressed zero to get to an Operator and it waited until I hadn't entered the rest of a number. Voice prompts it is, then. I said "agent" and waited a second - the machine kept talking. I said "representative" and waited again, then said "operator" and the machine paused. It started talking again and I said "operator" again a few times, interrupting the machine each time, until it changed tracks and asked a different question. This time to get off the question it was asking, I had to repeatedly say "agent." If I didn't know this tune it would be hard to dance, but thanks God I'm up on things.

PayPal Sucks

Step 1: Don't sell stuff very often
Step 2: Sell something on eBay from one verified eBay user to another verified eBay user
Step 3: Buyer pays
Step 4: Shipped the same day
Step 5: Buyer gets product
Step 6: PayPal holds funds just in case there is a dispute. Waiting for a + feedback, 21 DAYS to pass, or a delivery confirmation
Step 7: USPS marks status delivered
Step TWO WEEKS later: STILL no funds. Paypal sends "your funds are available" email and . . . STILL no funds.

You SUCK for this, PayPal.

You Can Fight City Hall . . .

. . . but you WILL lose if the University of Texas brings a copyright infringement suit against you!

Today in the shop we had a particular piece of exercise equipment to market for resale. It came from UT and had not just the name but the oh-so-well-protected UT Longhorn logo on the sides. We had purchased it from the University, so we were pretty sure the sale would be recognized as legit by the UT legal staff. So we whistled past the graveyard a bit.

Talking about the possibility of winning in court against the University I was heard to say, among other things:

"We'll see who has deeper lawyer pockets. . . oh, wait . . . ."

"I'm pretty sure they could buy us with one day's worth of legal fees."

This machine is the thing a football player runs into with his shoulder and it measures his blocking/tackling power. It is missing the padded dummy, and the striking surface is a steel cylinder. We were talking about testing it, and Guido said to NP: "I'm gonna let you run into the steel pole by yourself first"

Madness at Work!

Smashies edition

Sometimes at work, something that looks like it is worth money, actually ends up being worth negative money by the time someone gets through looking up its value. Then it gets put on a shelf to go to be recycled, and the guys in recycling see it looks like money so they send it up to be looked up. Then it is looked up.

And then what?

And then it repeats!

And then what?

Then it repeats!

So today, a piece of marginally-valuable scrap came through in a pile of marginally-valuable things of the same type. LB dropped one by accident and it broke. It still looked like it was worth money. The thing to do is put it on a recycle cart, but then it would come right back again. The solution: time to "oops" it with a hammer.

As LB was oopsing the now-junky junk, management came around the corner and there was a deer-in-the-headlights moment, but it was already seen. I walked into the room at this point and started laughing out loud.



So LB hit it with a hammer on the floor a couple of times in front of t3h b0ss. Then because that's what you can do in this particular "different kind of" small company, I stole it with my foot and JUMPED up and down on it. Then it was well-and-truly oopsed and headed for the recycle rack. My laughing got louder, and I was not the only one laughing by the time I landed.

I had been on my way out to the warehouse to help freight buddy with a freight shipment question, so I kept walking out the door, laughing my head off. Having exited the more-civilized air conditioned space, I laughed louder. Way 'way down at the end of an aisle of pallet racking, Clipboard Buddy #1 and Clipboard Buddy #2 were walking around with clipboards and they heard me bellowing laughter and turned around. They gave me a look like I was losing my marbles, which was of course hilarious so I started laughing harder.

God only knows what they were thinking, but as they walked out of sight around the corner, Clipboard Buddies #1 and #2 heard me shouting laughing about as loud as my laugher could go. My laugh was all the way up to eleven.

I walked back inside after I had helped Freight Buddy, and one of my co-workers said they had heard me laughing all the way inside, two rooms past the door to the warehouse.

Now THAT was the most fun I've had all week. Even better than playing peek-a-boo! with my one year-old hiding behind Mommy. Small company, big fun!

Herman Cain and Troublesome Wymyn

Until you come up with something more substantial than un-named sources supposedly hiding behind confidentiality agreements, this is a non-story. If the story turns out to be some hag got her thong in a twist because she can't take a complement, this is a non-story. If the story turns out to be a mis-interpreted well-intentioned non-sexual ANYTHING took place, then Cain comes out the winner and Politico is (again) the Loser here.

If the supposedly offeeeeeeended female(s) involved took money in exchange for shutting up and going away, I hope they are forced to give up 100% of the money they received, if they come out from behind their confidentiality agreements. If they don't, the story is 100% dead and you can know for certain that the only reason any "news" agency reports on it is because they are terrified that Cain will actually win the White House. Need I remind you how President "Slick Willy" Bill Clinton got that nickname? Gee, I wonder which side of the political aisle the alphabet networks prefer.

I think we've all seen how little it takes to get a sexual harassment case brought up for serious consideration. Prove it is all I've got to say.

Bucking The Trend

Going to bed before 01:30 for the first time in a while.

In related news, we just bought another 3lbs. can of coffee grounds and it doesn't even matter what the stuff costs.

Finally, Some Genuine "Unexpectedly" Economic News!

The stage was almost set for a bail-out to dig Greece deeper into its hole of debt and everyone would pretend the problem was solved for another week or two worth of stock trading days. The deal was contingent on Greece following through on an austerity package which would require only giving everyone in Greece nine free cupcakes at taxpayer expense instead of ten. The Greeks, being Greek, have been rioting over the proposed too-small-to-solve-the problem cuts in government services and benefits.

The Prime Minister actually got me. I didn't see one coming for the first time in a while! He decided to punt and put the austerity measures to the People of Greece in a special election. Then he dismissed the top brass in the Greek military. My first thought was that he probably fears a coup d'etat, but he could also be planning one. Either way, the stock traders didn't like this news at ALL. So we'll see: either the deal is on and the Greek economy is sunk less quickly as part of the Euro zone, or the deal will be voted down and Greece will have rather more of a "hard default" than had been anticipated, and get kicked out of the Euro. They would likely pick up the Drachma again, which would immediately be worthless. Their unsustainable government would be forced to shrink, and the Greek economy would be sunk more quickly than otherwise.

Then Portugal, Spain and Italy will hold hands and hope together that nothing bad happens for long enough that their economies will recover . . . somehow . . . .