Luke ‘n’ Bill

So the other day I was reading about the confirmation of water on Mars and it got me thinking, well some day I guess they really could plant someone on Mars. Which led me back to the thought of…well some day they’ve got to try to put someone on the moon. Which led me to the thought of….Who owns the moon?

Traditionally throughout history, the first time someone “owns land” is when the civilization that killed off the last civilization was organized enough to do some type of surveying to lay claims on the land. For example, North America. Indians follow the mammoth in, kill them off. Europeans run into the side of the continent and kill the Indians off. Europeans survey it and lay claim. After that it can really all be summed up with this great excerpt from Eddie Izzard.

Now this brings me back to a thought I had a while ago…who owns Antarctica? I can’t remember how I found out back then if I just asked someone or what, but my good friends Google and Wikipedia can give some answers to that. Apparently somewhere in the early 1900’s countries started laying claim to territories on Antarctica up until the 50’s when they started signing treaties on it. What I find interesting is this:

In 1991, 24 nations approved a protocol (addition) to the treaty that would ban oil and other mineral exploration for at least 50 years.

So I’m going to go ahead and make the call…I’ll give it 10 years before the US starts drilling there (5 before they start exploring for it).

But all of this still doesn’t answer the question….who owns the moon?

I had wanted to write just a quick “general complaint” for a while about government as a “business”.   Every job out there works with “customers” at some level or another.  Your customers may be employees of the same company in a different department or even the standard definition of customers being the general public.  The first thing you are taught going into these jobs is that the “customer is always right”.  No matter how dumb their request is or how ignorant they may be you always…even in the worst cases, need to sugar coat it when you tell them they are wrong.

This all boils down to what drives businesses to be better, if the customer doesn’t spend their money with you, they’ll spend it somewhere else.

Somewhere where this is turned on its ear is government.  It really started to annoy me for the first time when I sat in a line of about 15 people at the DMV waiting for 2 totally incompetent and lifeless individuals to “help me”.  I watched as the most mundane tasks, which a mentally handicap chimpanzee with a limp could have completed in record, took them forever to complete.  After sitting in line for entirely too long while the line moved 1 person, I decided I could not wait another 3 hours for this, I needed to go back to work, for a real company that had real customers.

The next place that I saw this was the licensing center.  This was a much shorter wait due to the fact that no one was in there however I had to deal with the same quality of individuals.  I sat there listening to how Sally had talked to Edna and oh my goodness… yada yada yada….not work appropriate and someone shoot me in the face this wait is painful!

The painful truth that is evident in both of these locations was that their pay checks are not dependent on their company surviving.  Their paychecks are depending on the fact that everyone doesn’t want to get arrested for breaking the laws of proper licensing.  They do something that all of us have to pay for both in taxes and in the fees we pay for these “services”.  If these were services that were done in the general business world they would have been automated years ago to streamline the process but they do not need to be, because of the lack of competition.

Moral of the story….there is no moral to this story, I’m just ranting.

Oh and…maybe lick your drivers license before you hand it to them so that they might catch a cold tomorrow….making their day horrible tomorrow in return for making your day horrible today!

Ok, so a couple weeks back Lisa and I were on our way up to visit her parents and happened to notice this hideous convertible on the road next to us.  I can’t remember what make/model of car it was, but it was something like either a 90’s Cavalier.

It made us start naming off what we thought were some of the most ridiculous convertibles out there.  Cars that you have to wonder, what the heck is the market out there for this car?  Granted, cars like an 80’s Mustang is yes, ridiculously ugly and lame, but there are still people who buy it because it has a chromed plastic horsey on the side of it.  Even though there is no way I would drive a trailer park Ferrari (unless it was a decked out Shelby version, etc), I can still understand that there’s a market.  Anyways, in going through our list of ridiculous convertibles, the top of my list was of course, the Geo Metro convertible.

Lisa didn’t even believe me that it existed.  The idea is so far fetched it seems, even I wouldn’t have believed it if I wouldn’t have seen one myself.  To me it’s like a Flavorite brand humidor.  I’m not sure what the market is, but apparently it sold.  Anyways, here is a good look at a beauty I found on a google image search that you need to check out.  The first paragraph of this page is priceless.

Official GM Photograph from the General Motors Media Archives of a 1991 Geo Metro LSi Convertible. This image is available as a framed or unframed museum quality archive print that will last a lifetime and be a personal treasure of the history of General Motors.

My mug should be here in 10-14 days.  Not even a posed picture of it on the beach can make it look appealing!

Last weekend I was spending the weekend out at Lisa’s parents in Paynesville, MN.  It is really just the same as every small town in Minnesota.  As everyone from a small town knows, in order to be considered a town (in the midwest)…you really only need two things… 1. A bar and 2. a church.  After that, you’re officially a town!

One thing that I didn’t realize was something that made every small town in common, was the auction!  On Saturday us guys headed down to a local auction while the ladies had a baby shower.  It had been quite a few years since my last auction; however, it was really the same scene that it had been 10 years ago.

All of the local town people get together to chat and throw in their bid on whatever they may need or happen to have catch their eye at the auction.  Half of the people there are really not there to buy anything in specific, but really just there for the social aspect.  Now if they are serving chips and sloppy joes….it’s a party!

Now if you’re actually there to bid on something…you’ve really got to set your price before you get there.  The auctioneers really have an uncanny ability to get people to start throwing out the next highest number to get that bid rolling and really 75% of the time a piece of machinery that is 20 years old will go for 80% of the price that you could buy a new piece of machinery.

But all in all it’s a great way to either get in some conversation with the guy down the road or…in my case a great way to step back into time.