On the Road…Again…Revisited

  • by Drew

With all the RV hunting I’ve been doing of late, I’ve had a lot of questions. Here’s another one – what about motorhome insurance. I mean, these things ain’t cheap. Particularly the RVs that are standalones. The ones you can tow are way cheaper, even the ridiculously huge ones that could sleep that crazy ass family with the 80s mall hair that keeps having babies.

I wonder if you even need insurance for those or if you just get some kind of “crap I tow” rider on your regular auto insurance.

Am  the only one who wonders about this stuff?

On the Road…Again

  • by Drew

So I couldn’t help but do some RV pricing after my last post. Man, the nice ones are swank but they ain’t cheap. They’re like second mortgage if you’re lucky to have a ton of equity priced. I wonder if you they let you get PMI and borrow past 80% after the fact. Maybe I need to be checking mortgage insurance rates.

OK, I’m not serious, of course, but don’t you think it would be awesome to be cruising the highways of America in a $100k sleek ass silver and black swirl-paint-job recreational vehicle. In the words of my 7 year old when excited by an idea, “Oh Sweet Mama!”

On the Road

  • by Drew

I want a van. I feel like I’ve always wanted a van. And not some lame ass soccer mom mini van. Calling such a contraption a van should be illegal. I’m talking a cargo van with the back seat pulled out to make room for gear. I think it’s the almost-rcok star in me that loves the 4 wheel road asphalt camels with covered windows.

I’m fascinated by RVs and always hesitate when I get one of those four color brochures in the mail. I can just see myself tooling around in a motorhome, a guitar in the back with a couple bags of beef jerky, a jug of cheap red, and a notebook or two.

Of course, someone else can take care of emptying the chemical toilet tank.

Rock and roll, baby.

Untitled

  • by Drew

I may not know how to beat a traffic ticket.
I may not know how to reduce belly fat.
I may not know how to be a famous rock star.
I may not know how to distill my own bourbon.
I may not know how to drive stick.
I may not know how to finish semi-fictionalized 30-something year old’s pseudo-memoir.
I may not know how to draw comic book heroes.
I may not know how to code php.
I may not know how to start my chainsaw in the winter.

But I tell you, I do know how to make a killer sauce. You need some kick ass spaghetti? Like, spaghetti that makes a fantastic bottle of red like Trefethen or BR Cohn work to keep up with? I’ve got you covered.

Taxing

  • by Drew

Income tax filing time is here! At least for me. I’m not a waiter or procrastinator, I like to get started as soon as possible. I have the basics of my forms in place before I even receive most of my paperwork.

For several years now I have been using Turbotax, and I am a big fan. It is not a perfect system, but it is pretty good. And when I discovered that the tax guy I had been using for years had a program that was essentially the same, I figured I didn’t need him any more. Any way, he always made mistakes. I mean, the calculations were always correct, but he would invariably stick a number in the wrong box and it would delay my returns for months while they moved a subtotal from box 55b to box 55c.

The best part about Turbotax is the user Q&A in a right column as you use the site. the questions asked are often hilarious. The answers are usually correct, and usually culled directly from the pop-up help throughout the site. That is, when the questions are actually answerable.

Some of my favorite recent questions in their entirety:

– What is up with Turbotax this year?
– My divorce is almost final and my girlfriend is unemployed. Can I claim her as a dependent?
– I did my taxes wrong and filed them and my husband is mad at me. What do I do?
– How come Turbotax makes me wait 10 days for my refund? If they can deliver the goods quicker it may be time to use another service.

I’m waiting for something like “What movies are playing at the Duluth multiplex tonight?” or “Can you recommend the best weight loss product for inmates?”

a moment of robot talk

  • by Drew

Situation report. Rain outside. Slippery road. Car go fast. Slide in rain. Almost hit me. Skidding car. EZ Pass fall. Cloth shopping bag tornado. Coffee spill. Front seat shambles. Pulse race. Blood pressure rise. Perspiration. Face breakout inevitable. Need tool remove blackhead. Need run and hide from public. Why car go fast in rain? Why such rush. What is hurry? What so important? Does not compute. Does note compute. Does not compute. System shutdown.

Maybe tomorrow stream of consciousness Dylan style. Hibernate now.

Servicing the Masses

  • by Drew

I’m still a little worked up from that last post. As someone who has spent much of his life working for smaller operations, the assumptions and expectations of certain customers can range from unwieldy to complete unrealistic. I mean, in a small retail operation like the liquor store I was talking about, advanced POS systems are often out of the question. Not only are the upfront costs substantial and prohibitive, but with a business that has a constantly rotating inventory, the overhead involved in keeping it up to date is impractical.

I mean, I know how nice it is to be able to scan things in Target to see if they’re on sale yet and such, but in a small store, can’t you just ask somebody? I mean, in New York it is already a law that everything has to be clearly marked with either a shelf sign or a price tag on the bottle. A few years ago I read about a Wal Mart that was fined heavily for putting out merchandise without properly tagging it. So, isn’t that enough?

The customer is always…

  • by Drew

Right? I dont’ know if I believe that. I mean, the customer should always be shown respect. I might even go so far as to say the customer should always be shown patience and tolerance, even when the customer is completely wrong.

I was in a store the other day and witnessed a truly painful interaction between a store employee and her customer. Let me rephrase that. I witnessed an interaction between a patient, young woman and the brain dead simpleton who should have been shopping for the best wrinkle creams but instead was buying from the 4 for $20 wine rack with only three bottles in hand.

First of all, the clerk politely pointed out that it was a 4 for $20 promotion, that some of the wines in the sale went for $7.99 or $8.99 on their own. I thought this was a good bit of info, as someone who tends to buy booze in bulk.

The customer made a nasty reply of the “if I wanted 4 I would have picked 4” variety.

The clerk did not seem taken aback at all, a surprise since I felt like I should be apologizing for the customer’s remark. She then said that “technically” the customer was supposed to buy 4 bottles to get the sale price, but she could take care of it.

The customer said something like “whatever” in her ongoing posture of hostility, suggesting that money was no object. Now I had seen her shopping a few minutes earlier and was pretty sure she had intentionally gone for the cheap stuff, but clearly she felt it was important to affect an air that said “money is no object.”

The clerk started entering the prices on the cash register and the woman gave her a glare. “Why don’t you just scan them in.” The clerk explained that they do not have that sort of system. The customer shook her head at this clear failure.

Here’s where it gets funny. When the clerk told her the total, which was $16 and change, the woman got pissy again. “I thought I was getting the deal,” she snapped.

The clerk finally seemed to be losing her balance. She indicated that she did not understand and the customer gave her a math lesson. “4 for 20 is 5 bucks a bottle, right? So 3 should be $15. You said you were giving me the deal price.”

“Yes,” the clerk said. “But there’s tax.”

Then there was a diatribe on tax and how liquor should not be taxed because it’s not taxed in other states and New York prices are already ridiculous blah blah blah.

Obviously I have a lot of reasons to dislike this customer. She was browbeating the clerk, she feigned not caring about price when clearly it was among her primary motivations, she disparaged the shop and its processes and systems. And she was really mean looking too.

Not to be a hater…

  • by Drew

I guess I could correct that to Haiti-er, but I feel I should mention something. I’ve been hearing a lot of hoopla about the ridiculous amounts of money that credit card companies make from charitable donations. By now I know most of them have promised to waive those fees on donations to Haiti charities and and relief, but there’s a bigger issue here. I mean, I don’t want to totally side step the tragedy in Haiti, but there are a few things to consider.

First, this is neither the first or last tragedy of its kind. The credit card companies made a mint on Katrina and the tsunami and countless other tragedies. They make a mint from any charitable donations made using a card – year round. You give to your alma mater? You’re also padding the bonus of a credit card company CEO.

But that’s not the worst of it. These guys take a healthy chunk from retailers as well. Now, you may not care if Walmart has to pay a percentage of its net to allow for the convenience of accepting credit cards and not having to deal with cash. But do you know they pay lower fees than little mom and pop shops? Yup, it is a fact. Merchant fees care completely negotiable, and the better rates the big boys get, the crappier rates available to the little guys.

It’s a tough time. Lots of people need jobs, health care, debt relief, basic necessities. So if you’re going to get all pissed about credit card companies making money off a tragedy, remember that their standard business practices are often unfair to small, local businesses. Every day.

I “Like” It

  • by Drew

I, like many of you I’m sure, am on Facebook. I was actually an early Facebooker from back when you had to log on with an actual college email address proving your alumni-cred. Any of you remember that? It used to be much harder to join Facebook. Yes, it was actually hard to join if you didn’t use an alumni email address as your primary email address. I mostly joined because my employer provides a wide range of services to nonprofits, many being schools. We did some early application integration with Facebook, and it was helpful for many of us to register.

I did have my famous ex-sort-of-girlfriend slash stalker slash confessional meth user slash wildly inappropriate hussy incident, and was turned off good ol’ FB for some time. Then I connected with some old friends, some genuinely good people, and things started looking up.

Now I am a somewhat casual user. I probably average a couple checks a day as long as my iPhone is handy. I rarely open the site in an actual browser. But I get the status updates, the real meat of the experience for me. One of my favorites is what I see as a fan of NPR. With a very small number of exceptions, I actually do not usually “fan” anything or anyone, but since I was doing some design work for an NPR project, and Facebook integration was of peripheral interest, I went ahead. Now I am treated to a variety of teaser headlines and article stubs, usually several times a day.

Then there are the inevitable comments – NPR has a lot of fans. Very vocal fans. And not always as intellectually impressive as they seem to think. I actually would have hoped that fans of NPR would be a little better with the grammar and spelling than fans of, say, Bubba Ho Tep. Not so.

Today I saw an amusing article. It was about court case over the gay marriage ban in California. At the time I saw the post, it was only about fifteen minutes old and there were already several dozen comments. There were also about 50 people who’d ticked that “Like” button giving the article a thumbs up. The funny thing to me is that the article did not take a stance on the issue. It was about problems with the case on both sides. Props and criticisms from both sides of the argument. So, I wasn’t sure if they “liked” the fact that the ban is being challenged in court or if they “liked” the fact that the ban was being defended in court. Very interesting, indeed.

Maybe this is how we can all come together and deal with our differences. I mean, I’m a total northerner and even though I loved visiting my brother’s vacation house in Raleigh with the family, and can’t wait to go again and again, I’m not exactly ready to start pricing NC Health Insurance. It’s a different culture and I’m not sure I’m  ready or willing to change the rules…my rules.

Still, if all the people with different ideas about a particular topic can come together and “like” the fact that the topic is under discussion, in a more or less neutral journalistic process…maybe there’s hope. Maybe we can see that the vinegar and vitriol of the shear op-ed outlets like Fox News and the like are not helping anybody, whether or not you agree with their politics. Let’s learn the lesson here. We “like” the fact that issues are being discussed and we don’t need to “hate” everybody who disagrees with our individual, personal views and belief systems.

Right?

© 2026 Drew Bancroft. All rights reserved. Totally.