Virginia trip

Last week, I attended a training class on QSM’s SLIM tool in McLean, Virginia. The tool suite is awesome, but this post is about something far more important…beer! Ok, it’s more of a stream of consciousness dump of my entire trip. But it’s mostly about beer. I was on the prowl for Weyerbacher Double Simcoe and Troegs Nugget Nectar.

I watched the new Star Trek movie on iTunes on the flight. Awesome movie! Upon landing, I immediately went to Brickskeller in Washington DC. They have the world’s largest beer selection, about 800 bottles but only 12 taps. It was a bit of a hole in the wall, but I like this sort of aged, disheveled appearance in a bar. I had a Brooklyn Blast Imperial IPA, Victory Old Horizontal Barleywine vintage 2003, and a buffalo burger. All were good. After dinner, I became hopelessly lost on my way to the hotel in McLean. It took me over an hour to make a 30 minute drive. Bring a GPS if you go to DC or Virginia.

On Wednesday night, I had dinner with my Uncle Terry and Aunt Carolyn. We had dinner at Artie’s in Fairfax. I had filet and crab cakes…mmmmmm. Everything was yummy, especially the crab cakes. I enjoyed visiting with my aunt and uncle, who I only get to see about once a year. We went to Total Wine together and I was pretty impressed with the beer selection and prices. I bought a sixer of Troegs Nugget Nectar.

I made a total of 5 stops at liquor stores. I was at Total Beverage 3 times and Norm’s Beer and Wine in Tysons Corner twice. Norm’s had big bottles of Weyerbacher Double Simcoe. These are unfiltered and even better than the regular ones. I think I bought about 6 bombers of Nugget Nectar, 6 fifths of Double Simcoe, a sixer of each, and a few assorted Terrapin. I was able to get 6 big bottles in my luggage and I shipped the rest home by FedEx.

On Thursday night, I had dinner at Dogfish Head Alehouse in Falls Church. I sat at the bar and ate crab soup and jambalaya – both were great. I had a taste of Worldwide Stout (18% alcohol) and a 75 Minute IPA. I’d never heard of that, so I asked the bartender…she said that they pour half a glass of 60 Minute IPA and half a glass of 90 Minute IPA. It was really good.

Class was done by 11:30 on Friday. I stopped at FedEx to ship the boxes, then headed to the airport. My American flight was leaving around 3:00. Unfortunately, we boarded the plane, entered the runway, and returned to the terminal twice. I was moved to a United flight and arrived in Chicago around 8:00 sans luggage. So instead of getting back to my house around 5:30, I arrived around 9:00. My suitcase (beer intact) was delivered to my house at 2:30 AM on Sunday.

- schneid

Lego Bionicles are being discontinued

My son Ben is sad that Bionicles are being discontinued. Please visit his petition http://savebionicle.blogspot.com and leave a comment on one of his posts to show your support. If you really like spam, you could go to http://petitionspot.com but we don't recommend it.

- schneid

Lucky To Be Alive

We were hit by a drunk driver on September 5. Only Suzette and I were in the car and we are both fine, just some minor cuts and bruises. We are very lucky. The red car is my car, the blue car was the other driver. We are thankful that the kids weren't in the car and lucky to be alive.

- schneid

Our new dog Capri

We finally got a dog! We picked up Capri on Memorial Day. She is a 10-month old purebred tri-color collie. She is small for a collie, about 40 lbs right now and won't get much bigger. She is very sweet and is adjusting to her new life as are we! Ben and Anna really like her as you can see from the photos.







- schneid

Don't buy Dark Lord on eBay

If you desperately need to get your hands on some Dark Lord, skip the details and go to the bottom of this post.

Dark Lord Day, the day each year when Three Floyds Brewery releases their beloved Dark Lord Russian Imperial Stout, is almost here. April 25 promises to be a fun day at the brewery. In addition to Three Floyds and guest brewery beer, music, food, and camaraderie among beer geeks, there will be beer as far as the eye can see. Hundreds of people in attendance bring their favorite rare beers to share with everyone. The picnic tables are literally covered with beer bottles.

In the past, each person in line could buy 6 bottles of Dark Lord. At $15 per 22-oz bottle, we're not talking about Miller Lite, but it's a reasonable price for such a great beer. Every year, they produce more beer. Last year, unfortunately, many hundreds of people didn't get any Dark Lord after waiting 5 hours in line. One reason is because many people only buy the beer to sell it on eBay. So Three Floyds came up with a new system.

This year, just to have the opportunity to buy Dark Lord, you had to purchase a Golden Ticket. One person can purchase two tickets, with a maximum of four tickets per household. Each ticket costs $10. All you get for the ticket is the right to purchase your allotment of Dark Lord (ok, you also get a cup of Dark Lord on tap and to me, that's worth $10 right there). Proceeds of the Golden Ticket sales are going to charity, which is pretty cool. We don't yet know how many bottles you can purchase per ticket, but it is probably about 3-6. The tickets went on sale in the wee hours of the morning on March 17. I decided to check before I went to work, and it's a good thing I did...I purchased my tickets then, and by the time I arrived at work, they were sold out.

This is a great improvement because now you won't stand in line for hours and NOT get your Dark Lord. Unfortunately, it's not stopping the eBayers because now people are scalping the Golden Tickets! I think it's unfortunate because there is no reason to pay $100+ for a Golden Ticket or upwards of $300 (in the past) for a bottle of Dark Lord. Since the production of Dark Lord has increased, the bottles have only been going for $50-60 on eBay. But there's an even better way to get Dark Lord if you can't go to Dark Lord Day.

Go to ratebeer.com or beeradvocate.com and trade for it. Simple. If you want to drink Dark Lord, you can find someone who will trade. The trade market will be flooded with it soon. Beer trading is good for your beer karma. eBay is bad for your beer karma.

- schneid

P.S. Suggestion to 3F for next year: print the Golden Tickets with each person's name and last 4 digits of their credit card. You must either show a photo ID or the credit card with those numbers. If I want to give the tickets to my friend, then I'll have to give him my credit card too.

Dine with Top Chef Dale Levitski at Relax Lounge

For Suzette’s birthday, I wanted to do something fun. We are huge fans of the TV show Top Chef on Bravo, and we’ve been dying to have a meal prepared by one of the chefs. After some extensive research (i.e., Google), I learned that Stephanie Izard (Season 4 winner) and Dale Levitski (Season 3 runner-up) hadn’t opened their new Chicago restaurants yet. Stephanie’s new restaurant is called The Drunken Goat and will open in Fall 2009. Dale’s restaurant, Town and Country, should open in 2009.

With a little more digging, I found out that Dale Levitski is cooking at Relax Lounge on Thursday nights – they call it Dine with Dale. It's a three-course dinner for $30 per person. I was surprised that I could get a reservation on short notice, but it’s not well-known yet. So we made plans to go into Chicago on a Thursday night (March 12, 2009), which for us is unheard of.

Relax Lounge is a long, narrow space. Foremost it is a bar, with bar food and not much dinner seating – there are about 12 tables. They have a tiny kitchen which turns every Thursday into a Top Chef challenge for Dale.

We sat at the bar and ordered some interesting drinks – mine was a Calientini made with Absolut Pear, St. Germaine, jalapeno, and cucumber; Suzette had an Eau de Veev made with Veev (acai vodka), Domaine de Canton (ginger liqueur), pear, and grapefruit. I know they sound strange, but they were really delicious. They were savory and not sweet, with the alcohol in perfect balance with the flavors.

We were soon moved to our table where we finished our drinks. We thought we might feel a bit out of place in a bar for hip, young people. After looking around, we could see the other dinner patrons were almost all over 30 and probably Top Chef fans as well.

The first course was a salad with smoked salmon, avocado puree, bacon, corn salsa, and a matzo cracker balanced on its side. The salmon was delicious and avocado was smooth and silky. You could taste each individual component and they were all really fresh.

We each ordered a glass of the recommended wines: a Hess Chardonnay and a Santa Julia Malbec. The Malbec was very fruit forward and easy to drink, and matched the entrée really well. The Chardonnay was better with the food than without, but I wasn’t crazy about it.

The entrée was Chicken Marengo, crawfish, tomato, and olives with a chicken breast atop a potato. I love comfort food and this was it! The Malbec was a perfect match for this dish.

Dessert was a brownie sundae. When I read the menu, I thought dessert wasn’t as exciting as some of the previous weeks’ desserts, such as cardamom brulee, lingon berries, and lemon crepe. All doubt was erased when our dessert arrived. The brownie had huge chocolate chunks, the whipped cream was so light, and the chocolate sauce was delicious. It was chocolate heaven!

Around 8:30, people started trickling in for the second seating. By 9:00, it was just slightly crowded. During the evening, we had a few glimpses of Dale working near the kitchen. After everyone received their dessert, Dale came out and chatted with some of the guests, but didn’t make it past the third table. He needed to prepare for the next seating. Fortunately, they were very accommodating and we were able to sneak into the back to compliment the chef and have our picture taken.

The pace of the entire meal was unhurried. At the end, I was surprised that two hours had elapsed. Two hours for a three course dinner may sound like a slow pace, but it didn’t seem like that at all.

The food was fantastic, service was great, and we really enjoyed the entire experience. Get a reservation and give it a try! If you are a foodie, you won’t regret having a meal prepared by a Top Chef!

Here are some links to good interviews with Dale Levitski:
Interview: Dale Levitski, "Top Chef" Finalist
Dishing With Dale
Life after 'Top Chef': Where's Dale?
Chicagoist Re-Grills: Top Chef Finalist Dale Levitski

- schneid

Ponzi Schemes

It's amazing how Ponzi schemes can happen right under your nose. Then things get bad and everyone tries to get their money out. But they can't because there isn't enough money! This is happening to everyone you know. It's called banks. If everyone tries to get their money out, the bank goes out of business. Sounds like a Ponzi scheme to me.

- schneid

It's Tuesday...It Must Be a Blizzard

I'm getting tired of these Tuesday snowstorms. On the first day of my new volleyball league, December 9, it snowed during the afternoon and rush hour. It took me about 30 minutes to drive 2 miles on my way there. The next week, it snowed so badly on December 16 that we decided to cancel. On December 23, we were planning on going to my mom's house for dinner - but we couldn't due to another snowstorm. We didn't play volleyball again until Tuesday, January 6 - guess what - more snow that day.

Now we have a game tomorrow January 13 and they are predicting a blizzard starting today. However, we might not make it to work due to the weather, but it should be cleaned up by game time.

- schneid

Keep Governors Out of Jail

In the wake of the arrest of Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich, now is the time to start an aggressive program to keep our governors out of prison. We must reach out to this at-risk group, help them stay out of jail, and show them how to become productive members of society. The following graph shows that governors are now incarcerated at a higher rate than whites and hispanics.


Convicted US governors from the past 30 years:

Governor	State	Term	Notes
John Rowland	Connecticut	1995-2004	resigned in 2004, convicted and sent to prison
Don Siegelman	Alabama	1999-2003	convicted in 2006 on corruption charges and sent to prison
George Ryan	Illinois	1999-2003	convicted in 2006 on corruption charges and sent to prison
Bob Taft	Ohio	1999-2007	convicted of misdemeanors for failing to report gifts, remained in office
Fife Symington	Arizona	1991-1997	convicted in 1997 and forced to resign, conviction was eventually overturned
Jim Tucker	Arkansas	1992-1996	convicted in 1996 and forced to resign, received probation and house detention due to poor health
Guy Hunt	Alabama	1987-1993	convicted in 1992, sentenced to parole, later granted a pardon by the parole board based on innocence
Edwin Edwards	Louisiana	1972–1980, 1984–1988, and 1992–1996	convicted in 1998 and sent to prison
Marvin Mandel	Maryland	1969-1979	convicted in 1977, sent to prison, conviction was overturned in 1987
Rod Blagojevich	Illinois	2002-present	arrested on December 9, 2008

Please help keep our governors out of prison!

- schneid

Fitness notes 12/5

I worked out 2-3 times the week before Thanksgiving, swam and went on a hike during the week of Thanksgiving, and worked out twice this week. This week really should've been 3-4 times, but it's a start. I'm going to start playing volleyball with my friend Tim next week. It has been, oh, almost 7 years since I've played regularly in an indoor volleyball league. It should be fun and I'm looking forward to it.

And if it ever warms up to 50 (it's like 12 degrees today), I'd like to start running with the other Tim again.

- schneid

summer blend gas

I love that term - "summer blend gas". Whenever I think about it, I'm reminded of one of my favorite lines from Seinfeld. Jerry is buying a car from David Puddy, and says "That undercoating, that’s just a rip-off, isn’t it?", and Puddy says "Oh, we don't even know what that is."

The plunging oil prices made me think of that. Watch out, by the way. We're not even close to the bottom of this recession. Unemployment, housing, stock market, and everything else are still on their way down. Why? There's no reason for them to go up. There are a lot more people that are going to default on their mortgages and lose their jobs. You can't improve the economy if people aren't working, regardless of what Wall Street or Washington would have you believe.

- schneid

Thanksgiving 2008

I really need to catch up on the last 6 months, but maybe I should start with the most recent events since those are fresh in my mind.

Due to the bad economy, we decided to drive to North Carolina for Thanksgiving this year instead of flying. This was the first time we drove there with the kids. We gave Anna an early Christmas present, a Nintendo DS and some games.

The kids occupied themselves with their games, books, and DVDs. We spent some time sitting in the back with Anna and keeping her busy. The first day was an easy one, a 5 hour drive to Bloomington, Indiana to visit Kevin, Amy, Carter, and Archie. We hadn't seen them (I think) since our 20 year reunion in August 2006.

We arrived around 2:00 and stayed until after dinner. Ben and Carter were excited to see each other, almost as excited as Sweetness the attention-starved (or so he would have you believe) beagle was to see us. The kids (that sometimes includes Kevin) ran around and had fun while the adults (that sometimes includes Kevin) caught up. We had fun playing Wii Rock Band and hanging out. We had a great time - thanks Kevin and Amy!

We spent the night at a hotel in preparation for our 6:15 wakeup - because I didn't want to hit the mountains in the dark that night. We did wake up on time but didn't leave quickly due to a leisurely breakfast. It had been beautiful and sunny the previous day. This day it was dark and rainy.

We drove on some winding roads back to the freeway. It seems like Bloomington is up on a hill. This was the start of hilly driving which continued for the next 7 hours until we past Asheville, North Carolina. We did get some daylight in the mountains. And mostly is was drizzling, so the drive wasn't too bad. We arrived in Clemmons around 7:30 PM.

The kids were excited to see Nana and Zadie (and Tigger and Eeyore, their cats), and vice-versa except for the cats. After a day or two, an adult would be able to rub the cats into a purr-induced coma so that the kids could pet them. The cats referred to Anna (or at least we imagined they did) as the "Pink Thing". They would take off whenever the kids were moving.

We went to Sci Works in Winston-Salem with Zadie on Tuesday. It's a nice science museum for kids and we enjoyed it. On Wednesday, we went swimming at the YMCA with Nana. Debi and David arrived with Genevieve that day. On Thursday, we visited a couple of Zadie's homes for sale and had a big Thanksgiving dinner at home. Of course, that was not much different from every other night that we had a big dinner, except that Nana did all the work on Thursday. We ate and drank too much the entire week. On Friday, we went hiking at Pilot Mountain. It was a nice sunny day and maybe 50 degrees up there. In fact, it was sunny and warm the entire week. Near the end of the hike there was a lot of grumbling, but we had fun and needed the exercise.

Nana and Zadie were gracious hosts as always - it's not easy to have a houseful of people for a week. Nana's brother also came on Wednesday and left on Friday, so they had 8 guests! I think everyone had a great time. It was fun to add Genevieve to the mix. The kids liked having another kid around and Anna really liked doing things with her.

Now that we were leaving on Saturday, of course the clouds and rain came back, although it only rained for about 3 hours on the drive home. We left before noon and drove straight back home. We spent about 12 hours driving and 2.5 hours on stops. Anna fell asleep around 8:30, but Ben was so excited to go home that he didn't fall asleep until about 9:30. We took turns driving and it went fine until we hit the wall around 9:30. The next hour or two were excruciating until the caffeine set in. The last 4 hours were tough. We were really sick of being in the car and ready to get home. We arrived around 1:30 AM. We were all happy to be back in our own beds!

Airfare was about $425 each, plus we needed to rent a car, so it would've cost a minimum of $1900. With the price of gas as low as 1.54 (in Indiana) and an average of about 1.79, we only spent about $150 on gas. We spent one night at a hotel and had some meals. The whole trip cost less than $400. Good deal. I did have one splurge - I bought a Garmin Nuvi 650 GPS before the trip. It worked very well and I left my stack of maps at home.

- schneid

again

Another day, another workout. On Wednesday, I attended a yoga class at work. I am very sore from the Tuesday fitness class, so that was perfect. The stretching felt great. Then I had a big salad for lunch.

- schneid

another workout

I worked out again today. Woohoo, two days in a row, it's a new record. I didn't work up a sweat yesterday so I decided to try the fitness class today. I have never attended a fitness class. It was not fun. I had 12 lb weights in my hands for almost 45 minutes. My stomach muscles were cramping from all the abdominal work. I know I sound like a wimp but it's pretty tough when you're this out of shape.

Thank god it was taco salad day in the cafeteria. It was almost worth it. Fortunately they have yoga tomorrow. I'll go to class and just lay on the floor.

Can't wait to try it again next week! Buy some Advil stock.

- schneid

I worked out

Yes, believe it or not, I worked out. I've been slacking off badly. I worked out hard a couple months ago and ended up with back spasms. That wasn't fun. I'm feeling better now, including my ankle, so I'm going to get back in the groove. Hopefully I can hit the gym at least 3 times this week, especially since next week is Thanksgiving. I also ate a salad for lunch. Pathetic, I know. But it's a start.

- schneid

Swoopo - wish I'd thought of THAT!

These is this ridiculous new auction site called swoopo. The company itself is auctioning all the items. In some auctions, the bid increments are 1 or 15 cents. And the winner of the auction generally gets a TV or laptop or whatever at a good price.

Here's the catch...it costs $1 to place a bid! Suppose they auction off a TV worth $1500. Let's suppose that 100 people bid about 50 times each for this TV. So the TV sells for $750. Someone gets a $1500 TV for $750 (plus their $50 in bids). 99 people are out $50 each. And swoopo makes...drum roll please...$5000!!! (OK, they had to pay $1200 for the TV which they sold for $750, so they made $5000-1200+750 = $4550 profit.)

They also have automatic bidding so sometime near the end of an auction, automatic bids come fast and furious. And every time someone bids, it adds time to the clock!

Sometime they even auction off CASH. That doesn't seem legal. It's basically gambling. The whole thing seems borderline illegal and unethical. They are making money like crazy. Wish I'd thought of it!

- schneid

Creating tabs in SharePoint using Javascript and CSS

I couldn’t find an example of this, but I was determined to make it work. Here is the result.

I wanted a set of tabs where clicking on a tab would change the category but stay on the same page. Also, I must be able to pass in that category through the URL.

For example, I might have a web page http://...describe.aspx. I want to display information from several SharePoint lists. However, if I use the
URL http://...describe.aspx?animal=cat, then I only want the information about cats, and if I use http://...describe.aspx?animal=dog, then I only want the information about dogs.

Data views in SharePoint Designer will be used to display the desired information, using the animal variable. The method for that is not described here.

So I need to somehow read the variable from the URL using JavaScript. Then I need to highlight the tab corresponding to the variable. I found the code for that here: http://www.dynamicdrive.com/forums/archive/index.php/t-11883.html

It doesn’t look that great in the screenshots, but when you put the code into a SharePoint web part, it looks better. Here is the code:


<style type="text/css">



span.class1

{

float: left;

padding: 4px 0px;

font-size: 1em;

font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif;

border-right: 1px solid rgb(123,166,225);

}



.class1 A:link

{

background-color: #ffffff;

padding: 4px 10px;

background-image="url(/sites/_layouts/images/topnavunselected.gif)";

background-repeat:repeat-x;

}

.class1 A:visited

{

background-color: #ffffff;

padding: 4px 10px;

background-image="url(/sites/_layouts/images/topnavunselected.gif)";

background-repeat:repeat-x;

}

.class1 A:hover

{

text-decoration: none;

background-color: #FCE293;

padding: 4px 10px;

background-image="url(/sites/_layouts/images/PortalTabSelected.gif)";

background-repeat:repeat-x;

}

.class1 A:active

{

background-color: #ffffff;

padding: 4px 10px;

background-image="url(/sites/_layouts/images/topnavunselected.gif)";

background-repeat:repeat-x;

}









</style>





<script type="text/JavaScript">



// set the color of the chosen tab

// the tab is chosen by appending ?page=cat to the URL



function change(page)

{

document.getElementById(page).style.backgroundColor = "#7BA6E1";

document.getElementById(page).style.backgroundImage="url(/sites/_layouts/images/topnavselected.gif)";

document.getElementById(page).style.backgroundRepeat= "repeat-x";

document.getElementById(page).style.fontWeight= "bold";



}



// runs a function at page load time



function addLoadEvent(func) {



  var oldonload = window.onload;

  if (typeof window.onload != 'function') {

    window.onload = func;

  } else {

    window.onload = function() {

      if (oldonload) {

        oldonload();

      }

      func();

    }

  }

}



// run this function at page load time



addLoadEvent(function $_GET(key_str) {

if(window.location.search) {

var query = window.location.search.substr(1);

var pairs = query.split(/&|;/);

for(var i = 0; i < pairs.length; i++) {

var pair = pairs[i].split("=");

if(unescape(pair[0]) == key_str)

return unescape(pair[1]);

}

}

change(pair[1]);

}

);



</script>



<span class=class1>

<a href="default.aspx?page=cat" id=cat>cat</a>

</span>



<span class=class1>

<a href="default.aspx?page=dog" id=dog>dog</a>

</span>



<span class=class1>

<a href="default.aspx?page=horse" id=horse>horse</a>

</span>





- schneid

The Salesman at Home

I was wondering what life might be like for the salesman at home.

Customer (Billy): cries and screams incoherently.

Salesman (Dad): "OK, I understand. I'm sure we can do that, let me talk to Engineering. No problem."

Later:

Dad: "The customer would like the system to produce chocolate milk. When can we have that implemented?"

Engineering (Mom): "I'm pretty sure that's impossible".

Dad: "3 months then?"

Mom (exasperated): FINE.

Dad: "Also, a stretch goal would be a baby brother, can you squeeze that in? It's a nice to have, but would really help our customer relationship. The customer really wants that."

Mom: "I think we need more time to consider the implications of that. And we're going to need input from sales. It's going to take 9 months, at least."

Dad: "Can't you work harder and move some things around? We really need this or we might lose the customer. And we need it in 3 months."

Mom (giving up): "Sure."

- schneid

Anticipating the Great Taste of the Midwest 2008

I love beer festivals. Granted, I haven't been to many, but when it's love, you just KNOW it, you know? The Great Taste is a terrific beer festival for so many reasons. It's really well-organized and reasonably priced at $35. They only sell 5000 tickets, so it's not overcrowded. It's held at a nice park on the lake in Madison. The people are friendly and the food is good. Best of all, every good brewery in the Midwest is serving beer. You can sample some rare beers that are almost impossible to get, such as barrel aged Dark Lord and barrel aged Darkness.

I can't wait for August 9!

- schneid

Why did the caribou cross the road?

...because their habitat was destroyed by profit-mongering US oil companies! Gosh, that's not very funny.

Yes, the price of gas is very high right now. That sucks. Most everyone would agree with that. But will drilling for oil in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Reserve solve that problem? No.

Here's the premise: we need to drill for oil in Alaska to lower gas prices!

And here are the reasons that will not work:

• It will take years to get any oil from ANWR, so why would that help oil prices now?
  
• The total oil coming from ANWR will be about 1% of the world oil supply. Why should we think that will affect oil prices by more than 1%?
  
• OPEC controls the world's oil prices, so if we actually manage to produce more oil, they will just produce less, keeping the prices the same.
  
• Even if somehow we could put a dent in the oil supply, why would Big Oil give us a break on the price??? They could do that RIGHT NOW! But do they? NO! They continue to make record profits while we all suffer the consequences.
  

Congress could force oil companies to charge less money for gas. But they won't do it, because they get big campaign contributions from Big Oil!

Big Oil could charge less for gas, and maybe just for one quarter they could have just average billion dollar profits, rather than record multi-billion dollar profits. But they won't do it, because then where would the CEos get all the 100 dollar bills to light their cigars?

Good potential solutions may be:

• alternative energy sources
  
• drive less
  
• more fuel efficient cars
  
• take public transportation
  
• 4 day work week
  

Unfortunately, those things won't happen soon enough, because Americans like to drive their gas guzzlers. And this problem hurts the lower class the most. After all, $400 per month for gas hurts a lot more if your gross income is $2000 per month than if it is $6000 per month. So politicians don't give a crap because they all make tons of money. The US auto industry is reacting too slowly and they will soon be gone because of it.

Didn't we encounter the very same problem in the 1970s? Everyone was going crazy about solar power and other alternative energy sources. Then we were all fat and happy in the 80s and 90s and forgot all about it. Maybe if we spent billions of dollars on research instead of war, we would already have an answer.

Maybe McCain will follow Bush's lead and send everyone an extra tax refund - an economic incentive. Unfortunately, that's just giving you back your own money.

- schneid