Thank goodness!!! NOt sure if you have heard, but there was this judge in Washington D.C. who apparently lost a pair of pants in a dry cleaning shop. After some back and forth with the shop owners (first they could not find the pants, then they did) the judge decided to sue the shop owners for damages in the millions, over 60 million to be precise which was later reduced to 54 million. WTF. The guy based his case on a sign inside the store that said "satisfaction guaranteed". He argued that because he wasn't satisfied that this is a case of fraud and sued for damages. He even threw in some $10,0000 or more for future rental car costs because he will now have to go to a dry cleaner farther away. WTF again.
And according to some of the news reports he even rejected settlement proposals from the dry cleaners ranging from $3,000 to $12,000. How dumb do you have to be?
Anyway, the judge in this case denied him the millions claiming that this was unreasonable. Really? I don't think this required a trial to find this out. Nobody got hurt (at least physically) and if a loss of a pair of pants is mentally a desaster for someone then that person should seek some other help than money. Anyway, finally common sense won over one of these dumb lawsuits. And the guys who sued is a judge which makes it even more ridiculous. Just do a Google search on "washington pants lawsuit" to read all about it.
Thursday, June 28, 2007
Wednesday, June 20, 2007
Environmentally Friendly
Today, I did a good thing for the environment. For the first time I refilled the fuel tank of my little 2003 Volkswagen Golf TDI with biodiesel. It was B20, meaning it's a blend of 20% biodiesel made from soybeans and 80% petrodiesel. That's the recommended blend to start with before moving on to B99 or even B100. Felt good, and didn't cost more than regular diesel. Rotten Robbie is one of the first chains to run a few gas stations that sell biodiesel. Anyway, what are the benefits of biodiesel? Check out biodiesel.org for all the details. In a nutshell:
- Pure biodiesel reduces CO2 emissions by up to 78%.
- The CO2 released into the atmosphere when biodiesel is burned is recycled by growing plants, which are later processed into fuel.
- According to biodiesel.org, scientific research confirms that biodiesel exhaust has a less harmful impact on human health than petroleum diesel fuel.
Contextual Shortcuts (my former Yahoo! project)
Today, Yahoo! turned on Contextual Shortcuts in Yahoo News. It's pretty cool and good to see that my former project remains alive and that the work I did lives on. Check out the Yahoo Search blog post about it.
Thursday, June 07, 2007
Another one that falls into the "ridiciulous" category ...
Almost forgot to write about this. A few weeks ago my wife and I decided to go out and buy a new mattress. Our old one had served its purpose and started to become uncomfortable. We kind fo knew what we wanted and headed over to one these mattress chain stores. We settled on a Tempurpedic which is really nice and cost us about $1500.00. Not cheap, but hey, sleeping well is important. But if you think this is expensive, think again. I tried a mattress which cost $15,000. How ridiculous is that? And it wasn't even more comfortable. Kind of squishy and you kind of needed a ladder to get on top of it because it was so thick. Apparently, it's so expensive because it is handstitched. Who cares, it's covered by sheets anyway, so you won't even see it. Maybe they last longer? The mattress we bought is supposed to last 10 years, to make up the difference in price through longevity, the super-ridiculously-expensive would have to last 10 times as long, which comes out to 100 years. That's too long for my taste.
Saturday, June 02, 2007
Heavy Machinery
Ben, Chris and I were making a run to the Guadalupe Mines in San Jose, dumping some old concrete. There was this big loader and we enticed Ben to sit on it so we can take a picture ... Don't we all love heavy machinery?
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