It Is Still Government Motors

Just heard a mind-bogglingly stupid news report on KLBJ-AM at the bottom of the hour. It was embedded in a stock market update, where it was mentioned that the new GM stock was trading up at around $35/share, compared to under $1/share when it previously went bankrupt.

Brilliant.

As if the old price could in any way be compared to the new price. This makes it sound somehow as if GM is suddenly 35 times more valuable than it was before. The crisis is over! But wait...how about a few questions, like: how many shares exist now, compared to back then? What is the market cap now, compared to back then? What assets does the company possess now, as opposed to back then?

So many morons on the Democrat line of C-SPAN's Cavalcade Of Idiots, er, Washington Journal believed somehow that because an IPO had gone out, somehow that meant that we had recouped the GM bail-out money. Misleading reports like this just serve to reinforce that incorrect belief.

DVD Spending Tab III

An early Black Friday-type sale at Walmart yielded a couple of Blu-Ray 2-packs:

Rambo/First Blood (Blu-Ray) - $10

Terminator 2: Judgment Day/Total Recall (Blu-Ray) - $10

There's also a 2-pack out there that includes The Forbidden Kingdom, if I can find it.

Yearly total: 7 movies, $32.59 total, $4.66/movie

Tis The Season, Apparently

Let it be known that yesterday, November 3rd, was the day I heard the first Christmas (oops, sorry - holiday) oriented radio ad.

Ho Ho Ho.

Stay Classy, San Francisco

Here's some footage from the first episode of the new AMC series, The Walking Dead, where zombies attack someone trapped in a car.

Video link

Oh, wait...sorry. That's actually the fine, upstanding citizens of San Francisco "celebrating" the Giants victory over the Texas Rangers. By attacking someone trapped in a car.

Tell me yet again...why in the hell would anybody choose to live in San Francisco?

Oh, and this would not have happened in Arlington or Dallas. Guaranteed.

And Now For An Important Mess...

Lord knows I don't know much about web design - I am, after all, a coder primarily, and if we were left in charge, most web sites today would still be black text on a plain gray background.

But I do know that I don't like this:

This is a weather alert box on The Weather Channel's web site. If you can't read the text, it says "Severe Thunderstorm W....".

Now, there are two possible endings to this phrase: "Watch" or "Warning". And they mean two different things. One means that it could happen, one means that it is actually happening or is imminent. And you should take different action depending on which one it is.

Unfortunately, the way they chose to lay out this text makes it impossible to tell. Yeah, you could click through - in the grand scheme of things, not a big deal - but that's an extra step you have to take to view one of the more important pieces of information this web site actually provides. It's the difference between good design and adequate or poor design.

Of course, the cynic in me then realizes that having an extra mouse click means they get to serve up another set of banner ads. I've really got to work on that cynicism.