aubreyturner.org

I guess I’d have to rate the President’s performance at the press conference as a B or B-.  I had hoped to hear more of a reaction to the question about “American arrogance.”  However, I understand that he has to be careful of his words.  That’s just one more reason why I would never make it as President.  I don’t think it would play well in the press and around the world to tell a reporter that he’s an asswitted fool (or that the so-called “peace” protesters are a bunch of crunchy nutburgers).

On today’s range menu we have a main serving of S&W 22s with a side of Kimber Ultra CDP II.  Garnished with a heap of paper targets and served hot.

Update:  No joy.  The range was closed this afternoon because the padding on the backstop has deteriorated too much.  They’ll be replacing it tomorrow, although they don’t know when the range will be open.  At this rate, I guess I won’t get to shoot until Friday.

We spent the time at Bass Pro looking at guns instead of shooting.  I got my hands on a Ruger Single-Six (a single action .22 LR revolver with an interchangeable .22Mag cylinder).  I liked the feel of it as it fit my hand nicely and it seemed to point naturally.  I may have to acquire one of these little revolvers.

This is interesting.  I guess I hadn’t given that much thought to pricing before.  But with the ability of people to price shop in ways that haven’t been done before, businesses are having to become a lot smarter about their pricing strategies.

“Most retail companies still do a lot of things manually,” says Steven Schwartz, senior vice president of planning and allocation at the Casual Male Retail Group, a chain of 475 clothing stores. “Our buyers and planners got reports on sales and inventory weekly,” says Schwartz. “And they evaluated those reports, looking for what was selling, what to discount, and deciding the markdown. But they were going through paper 12 inches thick. We took a markdown. If it worked, great. If it didn’t work, we took another markdown.”

A couple of years ago, Schwartz began to look for a better way, and he found a half-dozen companies offering software to automate the markdown process. It works somewhat like airline-pricing software: The computers absorb several years’ worth of data, look at what’s in stores and how it’s selling, and spit out recommendations for prices on specific clothing items. Casual Male picked ProfitLogic, a company based in Cambridge, Massachusetts that is also working with the Home Depot, JC Penney, and Old Navy. During the first year, Casual Male did a test across six departments in all of its stores. Schwartz’s buyers would tell the ProfitLogic software what inventory they wanted to move, what the price was, and, most importantly, when Casual Male wanted to be sold-out ( or when the chain wanted to have a certain amount left to be sold at its outlet chain ).

ProfitLogic’s system not only gave guidance on what to discount, and by how much, it also allowed Casual Male’s buyers to ask their own questions, like, “What happens if we mark down 10% instead of 20%?”

The software inspired one basic change in the Casual Male markdown world: Discount less, but discount a lot sooner. “Merchants tend to get emotionally committed to what they buy,” says David Boyce, ProfitLogic’s vice president of marketing. “Buyers pick styles, colors. In general, they get it right, but once in a while, they don’t. They always say, ‘Just one more week! It will sell!’ ”

At Casual Male, the results were immediate. “Sell throughs”—selling all of something—“were much faster, much sooner,” says Schwartz. The clothing was still on sale—but not as deeply discounted as it would have been a month later in the season. Schwartz is protective about the exact improvement in profitability. But in June 2002, the software was rolled out for all items at all stores—after Casual Male upgraded its national point-of-sale system.

Maybe this is why I could never find the pants I wanted in stock at any of their local stores (or even on their website at times).  Of maybe I was just using the most popular size at the time*.  The situation seems to have improved recently, though.

Link via Slashdot.

* Yep, Casual Male is a “big and tall” outfit.  But since I’ve been doing the Atkins Plan since September, I may be able to kiss them goodbye at some point this year.  I’ve still got a ways to go before I finish, but the results so far are promising.

It looks like Kim du Toit’s been adding gunpowder to his Wheaties today.  I’ve been watching the sturm und drang over the libertarian question on his site as well as that of Mrs. du Toit.  I think the primary problem is that even most libertarians don’t know what it is.  There are a bunch of different subgroups who all claim that title for themselves.  To make things more fun, you also have the Libertarian Party to deal with.  I think Kim’s characterization of libertarianism as simply “anarcho-capitalism” is off the mark, but then they’re the ones that seem to get all the attention. 

Over the years I’ve played with a variety of forms of libertarianism.  There are some things that are appealing about anarcho-capitalism, but I just don’t see how it can be made to work.  Heck, the market can’t even restrain those damn vermin telemarketers.  That was one of the things that convinced me that a completely unregulated market was going too far.  But at the same time, I would like to see a lot of other regulations go away.  Government is a cure that is often worse than the disease, given the law of unintended consequences.  We must be careful of how we apply it and avoid using it willy-nilly for petty little things.

I think the final straw for me, though, was 9/11.  I’ve always been a supporter of a strong national defense, although I’ve been somewhat wary of some of the decisions that have been made in that arena (9mm pistols, V-22 Osprey, etc).  I’m in favor of any action that will make the United States safer at home, but I don’t ever want to see us trying to gain an empire.  All I want is to be left alone to live my life in peace.

So, I now find myself without a political home.  I find almost everything the Democrats stand for repugnant to my beliefs.  The Republican party has potential, but they tend to shoot themselves in the foot trying to out-socialist the Democrats (and don’t get me started on their religious fundamentalist fringe).  The Libertarian party lost me with their stand on the war.  The Greens are a bunch of socialist nutbags (green on the outside, red on the inside). 

In many ways, I think I’m a constitutionalist.  I’d like to see us uphold the Constitution as the Law Of The Land.  I don’t want to get too deep into this, but I’ve often wished we could bring back a few of the founders to examine our current federal government.  I’m sure they wouldn’t have much use for the DEA or BATF or any of the other alphabet soup agencies that plague our country (although I suspect that they would take one look at our government and run screaming from the room).  Having said that, though, I’m not interested in the Constitution Party either.  They’re just as bad as the others in using the government to regulate every aspect of the lives of other people.

Maybe I need to start a “Leave Me The Hell Alone” party.

Update:  I’ll probably take Kim up on his quest to get everyone to buy just one more gun this year, though, even if he doesn’t like libertarians.   But then, I’ve always had a soft spot for all those sad little guns I see at the gun show with no one to take them home.  It’s such a shame that so many of them don’t have good homes with owners who will take care of them.

“When authorities warn you of the sinfulness of sex, there is an important lesson to be learned. Do not have sex with the authorities.”
     —Matt Groening

Cox & Forkum have started their own site.  It certainly looks to be off to a good start (be sure not to have any liquids in your mouth before clicking).

Link via Little Green Footballs.

Lexar will be introducing flash memory cards with 2GB and 4GB capacities.  This means that you could take a tremendous number of photographs with a digital camera before having to download, even at the highest resolutions.  My 2 megapixel digital camera can store approximately 400 pictures on a 256MB flash card at the highest quality and resolution.  My recent experience with a film camera has definitely brought me back around to the digital camp.  There is no developing cost, no waiting for the pictures to come back, and with large memory capacities you can take lots of pictures in the hopes of getting the shot that you want.

I noticed last week that Glenn Reynolds gave blood.  I was reminded of it by this post over at Misha’s site.

When I was in college I tried to give blood, but it was not successful.  After a few minutes the blood flow stopped.  I had only filled a small portion of the bag.  The technician tried moving the needle, but it still wouldn’t flow right.  By that time I was tired of being stuck with the needle so I gave up and left.  A couple of years later I had a burst appendix.  During my two stays in the hospital (the first for the operation, the second for a bad post-op infection), I had a total of 14 IVs inserted.  The problem was that after a short time (ranging from a few hours to a day), the IV would infiltrate and have to be moved to a different location.  I suppose it’s good that I’m not afraid of needles.

The lesson that I learned from all this is that my veins don’t like having foreign objects inserted into them.  So, as much as I’d like to help out, I won’t be attempting to donate blood anytime soon.  They had enough problems just getting a vial of blood for the lab tests on my last trip to the doctor (and it left a festive purple bruise on my arm for about a week).

Having returned from my little trip (just over 300 miles), I’ve got some road related stuff for a Sunday evening.

• Note to truckers: Some of us four-wheelers are listening to you.  You should be ashamed of yourself for those nasty things you were saying about the drivers on I-635 on Friday afternoon (around 2:45pm), even if they were all true.
• On the other side of the coin, thanks to the truckers for blocking the obnoxious “last-minute merging fools” on I-20 Eastbound in the construction near Canton.
• When the sign says “Right lane closed ahead”, it’s just good sense to get in the left lane (or stay there), rather than staying in the right lane (or diving for it).
• It is good manners (and good karma) to move to the right if your vehicle is not capable of maintaining the posted speed (or if you are not willing to do so).  Speeding up when being passed is bad karma.
• Why are the worst maintained vehicles always the ones loaded past their rated capacities?  Perhaps there is a correlating factor here…

I’ve been working from home all this week, and I don’t see how people do it.  I’m about to go nuts here because there’s no one to talk to.  For all my curmudgeonly ways, I still find that having interaction with other people is necessary.  Maybe that’s the secret.  Most of the people I know that are successful at working from home are married (and most of them have children).

Even so, I may work from home more often in the future, since I still managed to get the work done.  I just won’t be making a habit of doing it for more than a couple of days at a time.  The main benefit is that I get back over an hour a day that I would otherwise spend driving (30 minutes each way).  This means that I can start at 7:30 and quit at 4:30 or so.  Of course, that may be overly optimistic.  The project I’m working on will be doing system and performance testing in March.  This phase is always an opportunity for copious amounts of (unpaid) overtime (I’m not going to complain much, though, because the job keeps me in guns and ammo ).

I’m going to take the opportunity to go back to East Texas for the weekend before things get too hectic on the project.  So I’m off tomorrow and I’ll be away for the weekend.  If the war starts in the meantime, I’ll keep a good thought for our troops and the Iraqi civilians.

See everyone next week.