A Pile Of Blog

How To Find Cheap Tires

If you wish to stretch your budget on your next set of tires you’ve got to do a little analysis before you can drive into the local tire store. Otherwise you will get stuck in that familiar pattern and end up paying more than you really wanted. You know the way it goes. You get to the front counter, someone shows you some tires, you pick the cheaper ones, they don’t keep these things available, you pick the next cheapest, then the salesman points out how this *really good* tire is barely a few dollars more, on special. You start feeling peer pressure with there being people in line behind you therefore you just say “OK” and find your wallet and start the entire process of convincing yourself that you really did get a good deal.

Ask me how I know.

If you wish to avoid the usual, in order to avoid spending almost $700 on a set of tires for a little sub-compact, you’ll need to be ready and you must give yourself time. I love to use Discount Tire as it is convenient and they really do have good service. I have gotten many flats fixed or repaired in the past, and air pressure, rotation and balancing are all included if you get your tires from their store. And they usually give a decent discount when you bring in a set of tires that may have worn down ahead of their normal warranty numbers. And yet I really did spend nearly $700 for my last set of tires, which will have maybe 500 miles on them when I sell the car this month. No, I didn’t do my research, did I?

Your first problem here is the vast amount of tires that are available. Dozens of manufacturers and brand names are out there, and each one of these has a bewildering array of sizes and types and tread patterns. The easiest choice is whether to buy a passenger car or truck tire. Once you are past that, you need to think about the weather where you live. Dry weather and wet weather have different needs, but all tires need to be able to handle water on the road. The farther north you live, the more you need to consider all-weather or winter tires. And if this vehicle regularly goes off of the pavement, that’s another entire category of tires. After that, most of the choices are marketing hype and prices and mileage warranties.

A good place to start is Consumer Reports. They do unbiased testing on tires. You will have to pay, but you can purchase an online subscription and keep it for 30 days for under $10, well worth it to help you narrow down your choice for cheap tires. As recently as October of 2010 Consumer Reports showed that even a good ultrahigh performance tire could be found for around $100. They also noted that prices differed from outlet to outlet and, seemingly, week to week. 

Twelve Years of Stock Market Misery

If you invested in an Index Fund based on the S&P 500 Index on May 1 of 1998, congratulations.  Your portfolio has neither lost nor gained a penny — of course if you factor in inflation, you’ve actually lost a lot of money.  Twelve years, nothing but losses.  Whether you were just getting started investing or you were entering your golden retirement years, that is one helluva plateau for the markets!  Let’s look at the numbers across the major indices during the last twelve years:

S&P 500 - 1121 to 1117

Dow Jones-  9147 to 10450

Nasdaq - 1873 to 2309

Do the calculations and you will get anywhere from a very slight loss to a 1.9% annual gain, assuming you invested on May 1, 1998 in a lump sum and neither added nor subtracted.  It’s even worse if you made regular contributions!  For 9-10 of those years you bought in at levels higher than the current level, so you are actually looking at quite a loss.  Factor in an average inflation rate of 2.7% and it gets even worse. 

I really don’t see how this is any better than gambling, and I definitely don’t see why I should do anything other than fixed interest investing.

Trip recap

Just some factoids

8 days - 2969 miles
Average miles per day - 371
Acres of wheat in Kansas - 8.6 Million
Nights in Motel 6 - six out of seven

Android’s Nearly Impossible Obstacles

I’m so tired of hearing everyone refer to Android as an ‘iPhone Killer’ - I sincerely doubt I would ever leave my iPhones behind for a linux-based phone OS.  Here are the reasons why I, as an end-user, see no appeal in an Android phone:

1 - Head start - the iPhone was two years old by the time the first Android phones hit the market.  Android will be playing catch-up for a long time.  I don’t want to go backwards in time.

2 - App Store - I love the App Store concept so much, I wish I had one for my Mac and for my work PC’s -who will set up and maintain dominance in an open-source environment?

3 - iTunes - apps, music, video - it’s all right there, accessible from desktop or mobile device - dead-simple, fast, mature

4 - iPad - all my apps, music, video are shared with my phone - one purchase, multiple platforms -

5 - Design and Usability - mature and professionally designed UI and hardware - many patented features that will never be duplicated in other platforms - Version 4 rolling out while Android is barely out of beta

Now those are *my* reasons, but many of them apply to the big picture as well.  Android is competing with a worldwide user base approaching 100,000,000 — all using one-click features to purchase items with their credit cards.  There is no single ‘Android’ entity behind the platform, although Google is spearheading efforts.  They have an app store, there are at least two others.  They seem to be available only through the phones. 

But the app stores have bigger problems.  Developers that are making big money with iPhone apps make almost nothing when porting a version to Android.  Without well-paid developers, Android will be a flash-in-the-pan.

And the truly big issue is this:  Android is open source software, and must be customized for each hardware handset it runs on.  The hardware manufacturers are often the ones doing the customization, but this fractures the market.  Apple controls both OS and hardware in the iPod/iPhone/iPad universe.  Android can, by design, *never* achieve that level of integration.  On top of that, each hardware manufacturer is free to use whatever technology they desire for their touchscreen material, further fracturing the user experience. 

So sure, if you live in NY or San Francisco and have horrible AT&T reception, or if you are unable or unwilling to leave Verizon, or if you are an open-source loving Apple hater — sure, get an Android phone, enjoy it.  But don’t be surprised if Android ends up going the way of Windows Mobile…

from my iPad

So I have a blog, I have an iPad, I have an Apple wireless (bluetooth) keyboard. Might as well make use of it, no?

Definitely easier to type this way, compared to the on-screen keyboard.

*LIKE*