The SoapBoxers

This is a 2-fer Thursday – 2 posts for the price of one. We won’t have these every week, but every now and then, I’ll do one. After you read this article, scroll down to read the Sporting News post.

I was startled the other night when I realized that my box of corn dogs contained only five dogs. In the past, it had always contained six. Since I am in the habit of eating three corn dogs at once, this was a traumatic turn of events.

All across the consumer landscape, changes are afoot. The manufacturers are in a difficult position. On one hand, many of them are seeing steep increases in costs. On the other hand, they are hesitant to raise prices in this economy and lose customers to competitors who don’t change prices.

Caught in this bind, the companies have gotten creative. Many companies are retaining the same physical dimensions of the package, but reducing the quantity of the product. It’s not just corn dogs, either. Grab your jar of peanut better and flip it upside down. See that – the bottom is concave! Fun size candy bars? They have gotten even smaller – many of them are narrower than they have been in the past.

Even the Girl Scouts have are going this – you’re getting one less ounce in your box of cookies. Pay attention to the food you’re buying and you’ll see other examples of content downsizing.

Some people might shrug this off and see it as an effective involuntary weight loss program. Not me – I’m a thin person and I need my food to make sure I don’t blow away in the wind.

Companies – if you need to raise the price, raise the price. An extra fifty cents in the grocery store will be a lot less annoying to me that noticing one fewer corn dog when I open the box.

I started subscribing to the Sporting News a few months ago. The subscription rate was cheap, so I figured I would give it a shot.

I have been pretty disappointed. It doesn’t seem to stack up very well against other sports publications and web sites. In particular, its analysis of statistics can be rather poor at times.

The March 30th edition is a case in point. There is an article related to the shortness of a running back’s career. An inset box titled “built for the short run” shows the average years of service for the starters at various positions in week 1 of the NFL season.

I assume that we were to take these numbers and draw a conclusion about the average length of an NFL career for those positions – but I would be really hesitant to do that, since that would be a poor use of the data. It completely ignores bench players and the stage of a player’s career – maybe this year’s draft class just had a great crop of running backs.

Take this example: let’s say that every NFL team had a 10 year veteran at running back in week 1. Then, in week 2, they yanked the veterans and plugged in rookies.

If we run the Sporting News stat, the average years of service would be 10 years for the starters in week 1 and would then slide dramatically to an average of 1 year of service for the starters in week 2. Yet, the cast of players didn’t change, nor did the expected career length.

The model is simply a poor fit – it does not measure what the Sporting News is trying to make it measure. It would be like taking the three members of my family, calculating the average age, and declaring this to be the average life span.

(Note: this article was originally truncated. I apologize for the confusion)

Today’s guest post is from Phil Ossifer (not his real name), writer of the blog Chunga goes wild. Guest posts do not necessarily reflect the opinion of The Soap Boxers.

Phil works in IT, but his journey to the world of Information Technology was interrupted by a jaunt as a chef that involved training at the prestigious Culinary Institute of America and a successful career as a chef / ice sculptor. After mastering the world of food, Phil turned his talents to computers. In the process, he logged classroom time toward his Bachelor’s degree in four different decades. Last year, he gave the university an ultimatum – grant him tenure or give him his degree.

Without further ado … “Stop the auto bailout” by Phil Ossifer.

The U.S. Government is making a big mistake by providing additional $billions in another attempt to bail out major players in our failing automotive industry.

Why do we think a few more $billion will help? These companies were losing money even during the economic boom (GM and Chrysler are over $100 billion in debt at the end of 2008, and it has gotten much worse). All of this after already supplying them with $15 billion in 2008.

We should not continue to throw good money after bad in attempts to keep the industry afloat longer, since this will ultimately make our situation worse. It adds billions to our debt, extending the depth and length of the current recession/depression. Hey! National debt is not limitless – eventually, other countries would be unwilling to buy our debt. There are indications that China is already shying away from taking on new U.S. debt. Played out, this is similar to a large auto company failing – only this time it’s a nation.

I realize that there is much pain and gnashing of teeth that will result from a failure of GM or Chrysler, but unfortunately, I think our automakers are destined to fail in the face of superior competition. That’s not an anti-American slam; it’s my objective assessment.

This is not the first time we’ve had a painful parting with a traditional industry that we needed at one time. Over the decades, we’ve had many changes (e.g. outsourcing of manufacturing, toy-making, etc) that have led to job loss and other trickle-down effects. Example: The Japanese beat us at consumer electronics manufacturing and we ended up turning away from that industry. It would have been foolish to try to keep it afloat by adding to taxpayer debt. We had to change, and we have to continue to change to compete in the global economy.

What the U.S. is good at – and has to keep doing to survive – is innovation. We invent something new, lead the pack, then inevitably a competing country beats us at our game, and we re-invent again. Doing this starts with solid education. This process is not something to be feared, because 1) it is inescapable, as more developing countries get in the game, and 2) there is a lot of good in this process – quality improves, choices improve, and prices drop.

I realize that this does not provide any help for the many autoworkers, supporting sub-industries – and trickle-down effects like adding to the mortgage default rate, reduced spending, etc, etc.and I do not have an answer for that.

But let’s not delay the inevitable. The loss of our automakers is pain that we must go through, because our alternatives are either 1) go through the pain now, or 2) go through the pain a little later, but with of billions in new debt. These continued bailouts can hasten the pace towards financial insolvency, and I for one don’t feel like learning the Mandarin language just yet.

I admit that this may be easier for me to say this since I’m more removed from the direct effects of the failing auto industry. I don’t like it, but I think that it is our reality.

My daughter is 19 months old. She has a quite a few toys, some of which are pretty cool – such as a rocking eelphant and a stuffed dog that can sing a bunch of songs (incredibly, the dog is still on it original battery, in spite of the fact that it is constantly turning itself on). Most of the time, however, she will eschew these toys in favor of her favorite non-toy items.

Whenever I am lying of the floor, she loves to crawl across my legs repeatedly. Sometimes she will just lay with her torso across my legs. She’s perfectly content to stay in that position until daddy’s legs fall asleep – or even longer.

She also likes paper. I don’t just mean wrapping paper or other colored papers. She also loves plain white printer paper. We can’t even leave paper loaded in the printer, because she’ll take it out and try to play with it.

My daughter eats these little Gerber dinners in a box. They are essentially a miniaturized TV dinner. She absolutely loves playing with the little box the meals come in.

We have coasters on the end tables. Well, we try to have coasters on the end tables. We have little fabric coasters and the thirstystone coasters – she loves all of them.

We try to keep the remote control out of her reach, but if it gets left too far toward the front of the end table, she’ll notice within seconds and grab it in an effort to change the channel to something better.

She’ll leave the cordless phone alone for long stretches, and then suddenly will be grabbing at it constantly until we put it out of her reach. She had attempted to dial a few times, but has not yet successfully completed a call.

She also loves to get into the phones books – particular the big yellow pages. The handful of takeout menus near the phone books are even greater prize.

Hey, you can see through them, and they make cool noises when you hit stuff with them. What’s not to like?

It’s a cliché, but I sometimes wonder why we even bother to buy the toys. She would definitely be happier with the boxes.

The Rocky Mountain News recently won an award for overall excellence from the Society of American Business Editors and Writers (SABEW) in the category of large circulation newspapers. Unfortunately, the award will ring a bit hollow for the Rocky Mountain News, as the newspaper ceased operations permanently on February 27, just a bit short of its 150th anniversary.

This is an award winning newspaper with a lot of fans and a long history, unable to find a buyer. The writers of the Rocky are trying to get enough financial support from the public to continue operations, launching the site www.indenvertimes.com. The baseball writers who cover the Colorado Rockies (my favorite team) have launched their own site, www.insidetherockies.com. I like what is being done on these sites – lots of good ideas.

The plight of the Rocky is hardly unique. A number of large newspapers are in bad financial shape. Is this merely a temporary down turn due to the poor economy, or is the printed newspaper becoming the buggy whip of the 21st century?

I hate to say it, but it may be the latter.

When newspapers first became popular, they were the only way that most people could receive the news. They had a virtual monopoly on news.

The radio came along, and then the television. They provided breaking news in a timelier manner than the newspapers, but the newspapers still had a very distinct advantage. The consumer could decide when they wanted to read the news in a newspaper, whereas the radio and TV stations dictated the time of their news.

The advent of the internet was concerning to the print media, but for a while, there was relatively limited information on the internet and there were large portions of the population who did not have access.

Today, the internet has incredible coverage of almost every topics, and nearly everyone has access, often 24 X 7 access, and sometimes on their cell phone. With the popularity of WiFi, people can surf news websites while eating in a restaurant. I have not yet done this – I actually grab a physical newspaper if I am going to ready while I eat – but I have seen numerous examples of “surf and turf”.

Advertisers have been following consumers and have also flocked to the internet. In the early days, only the big sites had advertisers. Even sites with a decent following (such as my Alabama site) didn’t have advertisers because the operators were unable to navigate the hoops necessary to procure advertising.

Times have changed. Today, people will jump through the hoops for you. This little blog has advertisers (most notably, Tyson Chicken seems to pop up a lot). What did I do to see this up? Not much. I clicked a few buttons. Google (which owns blogger.com) finds advertisers via their AdSense network (they take a portion of the revenue, of course). The advertisers can bid on certain key words, and in the future they will be able to target people based on their browsing histories (see the “privacy” box on the right side of the screen if you have concerns about this).

Today’s internet advertisers can even target their ads for particular times of the day. I see the Tyson ads – on my blog and other places around the internet – very often during prime eating hours. This makes a lot of sense. Advertising a food product at 5 PM makes a lot more sense than advertising it at 10 PM. Also, most of the ads are on a “pay per click” basis, meaning that advertisers don’t pay a penny unless someone actually clicks on the ad and goes to the advertiser’s web site.

Given these factors, how can newspapers succeed? First of all, keep the customers you have. Until recently, my wife and I subscribed to a local newspaper. However, the carrier was horrible with his aim, only rarely delivering the newspaper to the doorstep. We made repeated calls to the newspaper, but the problem never went away. Finally, we got annoyed with constantly digging through the bushes to find the newspaper and canceled it. We felt that the newspaper was completely ignoring our complaints; thus we felt that it was only fair that we completely ignore the existence of their product.

Beyond avoiding alienating customers, what can the newspapers do? I’m not an expert on the industry, but this is what I see from the point of The Soap Boxers:

First and foremost, you must have an online presence of some sort. If people can’t find news stories on your web site, you’ll be perceived as a dinosaur.

You should focus a large amount of effort on the coverage of local stories. People aren’t going to grab your paper to see your version of the latest national story. There are hundreds of place where they can find this information online. Coverage of local news and local sports is different, though – people have a limited number of sources for this information.

Finally, use teasers. Perhaps you could have a three part biography of a local hero. The first part would be available online, but the rest would only be available in the print edition.

I really started getting serious about my writing about six weeks ago. At the time, I set goals for my word counts in future months (I’m somewhat obsessive about that). At the time, I expected to start with 8500 combined words in February for the blog and a few other writing projects. By August, I hoped to build up to 17,000 combined words per month for all of the projects.

Well, it’s March, and the other projects have been shelved for now – but I have managed to hit the 17,000 word mark, well ahead of schedule. Considering how little free time I seem to have most of the time, I’m pretty happy with that. I hadn’t written consistently in about a decade and was worried that I would quickly run out of things to say – but my head still seems to be full of words (probably because of all the games of Wordscraper I play on Facebook). Overall, I’m happy with the writing aspect of the blog.

I have a handful of loyal visitors and a bunch of other folks who drop in from time to time. I’m not quite where I hoped to be in terms of numbers of readers, but I’m not overly disappointed. Quality over quantity, right? ☺

February’s posts skewed toward sports a bit more than I would have liked. To be certain, there will always be a large chunk of the blog devoted to sports, simply because I am a sports nut. However, I will try to mix in a few more topics on a regular basis.

During the next month of two, the blog will be gaining a bit more structure. I will try to set aside certain days of the week of month for specific topics. I have already begun this with Fiction Fridays. I will attempt to write a new short story to be published on the blog every Friday. This might be overly aggressive, but I’ll give it a shot. Sports will probably take up residence on Mondays (and probably one other day a week) because this is a topic where freshness is important, and weekends tend to be a bit better for writing. I’m sure you are stunned to find out that some of the content (the fiction, for example) is written several days in advance! It is also quite possible that I might need to scale back to 5-6 articles per week. I have a full time job and family obligations, and can’t always set aside time to write.

I will also try to add a few more fun things for the readers. In April, three well known personal finance bloggers will swing by TCO to participate in a contest. I’ll keep the details minimal, just to keep you curious.

As the future direction becomes clearer, I’ll provide more information. There will not be drastic changes – for the most part, I’ll simply be realigning the schedule. If you have any suggestions, feel free to drop me a line at Kosmo@ObservingCasually.com

The sky is falling!

My projected national champion Memphis and runner-up Duke lost within minutes of each other. My bracket is ruins … once again, I’ve have to wait until next year.

I’m glad that baseball season is almost here.

Unbeknownst to many people, there are two NCAA basketball tournaments underway. Everyone knows about the men’s tournament, of course. There is also a women’s NCAA tournament underway.

The women’s tourney has had some interesting games already. #2 seed Baylor had to go to overtime in the first round again #15 seed Texas San Antonio and escaped with a two point win against #9 seed South Dakota State in the second round. #1 seed Duke was beaten by #9 seed Michigan State in the second round. Texas A&M had 20, yes 20, steals in a win against Minnesota. #7 seed Rutgers clobbered #2 seed Auburn in the second round, although it’s difficult to list a C. Vivian Stringer win as an upset, ever.

Perhaps the biggest shock of the tournament was the early exit of two time defending champion Tennessee. Tennessee was a very young team, with a “low” #5 seed as a result. However, Tennessee had never lost a first or second round NCAA game, so their opening round loss to #12 Tennessee was a stunner.

My alma mater, Iowa State, is in the Sweet 16. The #4 seed Cyclones won handily in the first round, tying a tournament record with 16 three pointers in a rout against East Tennessee State. Oddly, South Dakota State also tied the tournament record in their win against TCU. The Cyclones road in the tournament has been smoothed a bit by upsets. In round two, they faced #12 seed Ball State (instead of #5 seed Tennessee). Ball State hung around for quite a while, but Iowa State pulled away in the end. In the next round, the Cyclones will face #9 seed Michigan State instead of #1 seed Duke. Can this be a Final Four run for Iowa State? I sure hope so.

I have been to at least four NCAA women’s tournaments (my memory is getting hazy with age – was there a fifth tournament?) – three times to first/second round game and once to third/fourth round games. The tickets are much cheaper than men’s tickets and much easier to get. Some of the cities that get the women’s games would never have a chance at men’s tournament games.

I really enjoy the atmosphere of the tournament. The game on the floor is good, too. The women’s game is a lot more true to the fundamentals instead of the highlight show that the men’s games can turn into.

My best moment from an NCAA tourney was when I had to sell some unused tickets (I bought extras anticipating that some friends would be able to join me). I sold for below face value and was honest about the fact that the seats were not very close to midcourt. The couple that bought the tickets was actually happy with the location. Their son was a band director (or something similar) and the seats gave them a great view of him.

Sneak peak ahead
Details will soon be unveiled about a contest that will feature some popular personal finance bloggers as contestants.

Today, I’m going to provide a few tips on car safety. I’m far from a automotive expert, but I have picked up a few things over the years.

AAA is great to have, but do you want to be completely at their mercy? Changing a tire was a mandatory part of the curriculum in Driver’s Ed when I was in school.

When pulling over to the side of the road, pull over to the side of the road that shields you best from oncoming traffic. You want to be as far from the traffic as possible. I goofed once and pulled over to the wrong side – it is pretty harrowing to have semis whizzing by at 70 mph when you’re changing a tire.

Keep something in the trunk that will allow you to clean up after changing a tire. I hate getting dirty hands on my car interior. Paper towels and bottled water work great. Additionally, the bottled water can be used for drinking if you are stranded. Baby wipes also work very well.

The jacks that come with today’s cars, quite honestly, suck. Spend a few extra dollars and get a hydraulic jack. I have a bottle jack in the trunk of both of our cars. I think they cost me around $20 each. One of the jacks has unfortunately been used quite a few times. It is much easier to work with than the jacks that come with the cars. Bottle jacks are quite small and should fit in a crevice of your trunk.

Always carry a set of jumper cables in your car. If you have a dead battery, someone else might have cables, but why leave it to chance? Also, if your battery is showing any signs that it may be dying, replace it! Batteries aren’t cheap, but do you really want to be stranded in a parking lot in the freezing cold because you were trying to squeeze another year out of an aging battery? Don’t be penny wise and pound-foolish.

Replace your windshield wiper blades at least once a year. If your car is outside a lot, they might need to be replaced more often. I replace mine in late fall to ensure that I have new blades during the winter. Blades are pretty cheap, and they are pretty easy to install once you figure out the trick. Don’t throw away the old blades – toss them in the trunk. They take up virtually no room, and come in very handy in an emergency if you break a blade while scraping ice from the windshield. Not that this has ever happened to me, of course …

I really hate to say this. I would hope that the vast majority of people that pull over to offer aid are truly trying to help. However, it is prudent to stay alert in case of predators. On the flip side, you should also exercise caution if you are the person stopping to give aid. Most likely, the person actually is a motorist having a problem – but be wary of a carjack scam.

I began college in 1993. Holy cow, that’s more than 15 years ago … how time flies.

Anyway, back in 1993, the world wide web was in its very infancy. The number of web sites were a tiny fraction of what is available today. The sites that did exist were mostly text based, with occasional pictures.

During this time, I became familiar with Mosaic (the precursor to Netscape, which was in turn the precursor to Mozilla and Firefox). However. Most of the time, however, the actual computers on campus were occupied. I would often hang out in little rooms that had some dumb terminals that would allow me to connect to the university’s UNIX network. However, the functionality of these terminals was purely text-based activities. I could check email, chat online on IRC (on a channel with the friendly name of “love2chat”), and even surf the web. It wasn’t pretty, but it was functional.

In the fall of 1994, I became disappointed with the lack of information about the country music group Alabama on the web. I took it upon myself to launch a website. In 1994, this was a lot more work than it is today. After entering some cryptic UNIX commands, I eventually had a web site. I went to work. The first thing I did was to create a discography that listed every Alabama album. I gave a short review of the album and rated each song on a star scale (5 being the highest, I believe).

Over the next couple of years, this became a labor of love. With the assistance from Sly in the computing center, the site grew and attracted thousands of visitors per month. Eventually, the web site was migrated to its own domain (alabamafans.com) and Sly and I became full partners on the site. We had a email list of people who shared memories and opinions of the group. We even had some song snippets in a new format called “MPEG-1 audio layer 3”. The format was not universally known at that time, so we had links to sites where people could download software to play these files. MP3, as it is now known, has become a bit more popular over the years.

From a financial perspective, the timing was horrible. Hosting fees were much higher than they are now, and we weren’t able to get donations through Paypal – because Paypal did not exist. We poured hundreds of dollars a year into what was essentially free advertising for a very successful band. Was it worth it? Certainly. The interaction with other fans over the years was a great reward. My memorabilia collection grew, as a few folks sold things to “the guy who runs the site.”

The crowning moment, though, was the Illinois State fair in 1997. I had just moved to Illinois after graduating from college (and have since moved back to Iowa). I learned that Alabama would be at the fair. A couple years earlier, a guy who worked with Alabama saw the site, liked it, and told me to come backstage if I was ever at a concert. I gave a note to a security guard (and crossed my fingers) and he relayed it to the guy. Within minutes, I was back stage.

Although I didn’t get to formally meet Randy, Teddy, Jeff, and Mark, I did get to meet several of the musicians who played with them. I was in the middle of the stage chatting with people shortly before the concert was scheduled to begin.

As the time of the concert became imminent, my friend said something to the effect of “hey, I bet your seat is in the nosebleeds. I can find you something better.” He pulled up a stool on the side of the stage and I sat there – mere feet from the stage – during the entire show. Kenny Chesney was the opener and Alabama had a great show.  Jeff Cook changes instruments a LOT, by the way – he passed by me every time he needed a different one.  Afterward, my friend gave me the drumsticks that were used during the show.

What ever happened to the alabamafans.com website? It no longer exists. Eventually, Alabama, like every other organization, had its own official site, and my site was redundant – but it was a lot of fun while it lasted.