General Gripe #5: "Cornblah"

Things that I Love about Cracker Barrel:  

Biscuits
Side Dishes
Friday Fish Fry
Dumplings
Cottage Cheese
Fast Service
Iced Tea
Mac and Cheese
All-Day Breakfast

Things that I Hate about Cracker Barrel:

Nasty Children Fighting over Big Checker Boards
Waiting to be Seated (in their crammed "Retail Store")
"Cornbread" (the worst ever)

My dining experiences at Cracker Barrel have lead me to conclude that putting a yummy item (Biscuits) on the same plate as a nasty item (Cornbread) can ruin the whole dining experience.  As you can see from the two lists above, the positive aspects of the Cracker Barrel experience greatly outnumber the negatives. Yet I find my pleasant Cracker Barrel experiences being compromised each time by one of those negative aspects.  The fighting children and waiting in line are typical occurrences that I have learned to accept when I dine at the Cracker Barrel.  But I will not accept their horrible cornbread!!  It is always dry and flavorless - two qualities unbecoming of cornbread. 

How is it possible that their "cornbread" is so utterly bland when the biscuits are so good!! Their biscuits actually make butter obsolete, where as I need five pounds of butter before I can consume tolerate their cornbread!!  In my honest opinion, "cornbread" is not an appropriate word to describe the counterpart to the biscuit on Cracker Barrel's bread plate.  I think many people would agree that Cracker Barrel's cornbread is barely edible.

Since Cracker Barrel will continue to serve a paltry cornbread in the future, it is only right that I give it a naming more becoming of its characteristics.  From this point forward, Cracker Barrel's "cornbread" shall be called...

Cornblah 

2010/2011 Salary Table - Wizards

Looks like the Wizards put themselves in a good position for 2010/2011.  They can sign three mid-level free agents, or one big free agent and another mid-level free agent during this summer's free agency period.  Of course, this is all dependent on a big name free agent wanting to play in DC...

Imagine if they find a way to void Gilbert Arenas' contract.  They would have less than $20 million devoted to the 2010/2011 payroll before the draft and the start of free agency.  I call that the dream scenario. 

See the side bar to access the entire excel file or click here to see the full table as web page.

[Updated 4:30pm 2-18-2010]
Dominic McGuire has since been traded so I removed him from the excel file.  The option columns complicated the look of the table so I took them out.  The Wizards will still be $29 million under the luxury tax for 2010/2011 after signing their draft picks.  If they resign Josh Howard and Mike Miller, it should cost no more than $14 million.  That would leave additional $15 million to use on an A or B list free agent.

Road Rage #7: When a belt is not a belt...

Picture of a Belt

Picture of DMV's I-495 (Capital Beltway)

Using the word "beltway" to describe DMV's (DC, MD, VA) I-495 is theoretically correct since I-495 is an encircling road that closely resembles the shape of a belt, but how would commuters of the Capital Beltway describe its shape?  Some I-495 commuters would probably agree that the Capital Beltway is an encircling road that closely resembles a belt, but numerous others would strongly disagree with that assessment because of one particular area of Capital Beltway outer-loop just before the I-270 exit in Silver Spring, Maryland.  I have dubbed this area as the "Turns of Death".

Turns of Death near I-270 Exit

As you can plainly see from the picture above, the area before the I-270 exit on the outer-loop of the Capital Beltway breaks away from the "belt" shape.  It is a maze of twists and turns.  The development of the beltway in this area was devised with a complete disregard for human safety and well-being.  It is hard to distinguish from the picture, but these twists/turns on the Capital Beltway's outer-loop before the I-270 exit are quite severe in many locations, and it requires drivers to navigate them at a disproportionally high speed.

According to Wikipedia, the I-270 exit off the Capital Beltway is considered the 3rd worst bottleneck intersection in the nation.  There is no doubt in my mind that most of the problems with this intersection should be attributed to a high volume of cars, but also I see how the Turns of Death before the I-270 exit are the primary precursor to intersection's volume issues.  Officials have proposed metro changes (creation of the purple line) and have recently started building alternative roads (Inter-County Connector) to curb the high volume issue, but what about the Turns of Death?  Nothing is in the works to eliminate the Turns of Death, even though the same types of weaving issues were resolved on the Beltway near I-95, I-395, and I-495 in Virginia with the completion of the Springfield Interchange in 2007.

But why do I care? I don't even live there...

Obvious answer, I love to gripe, but I have to deal with the horrific driving circumstances created by the Turns of Death every time I want to visit friends from Montgomery County or ski in the mountains.  Maybe it's bad luck, but I have to yet to experience a "clean" trip from home to anywhere on I-270.  90% of the time, the problems occur around the Turns of Death before I reach the I-270 exit off the Capital Beltway.  It amazes me how that road will find a way to be congested at two am in the middle of the night on a weekday!!*

*It's pretty obvious to me that this is a result of too many DC commuters/visitors living in Montgomery County, but I'll gripe in more detail about that sometime in the future.

The easiest way to survive the Turns of Death is to develop incredible patience as a driver - accidents are not occasional here, they are constant.  If one cannot achieve epic patience as a driver, then avoiding the Turns of Death is your only other option.  Heed my warning or suffer dearly...

Consequences may include stress, yelling, lateness, anger, fatigue, loss of mind, heart attack, stroke, dementia, headaches, sexual side effects, diarrhea, dry mouth, and/or nausea . Take the Turns of Death only when you have at least three extra hours to devote for travel.  Talk to your doctor before taking the Turns of Death, the #1 cause for road rage.

General Gripe #4: Very Long Wait

The Problem - When do I get to see The Hangover?

I've had The Hangover at the top of my Netflix queue since the Blu-Ray came out on December 15, 2009.  It seems like everybody else has seen it at least 10 times.  To start with, I'm going to go out on a limb here and figure that Netflix bought as many copies of The Hangover as they did Night at the Museum 2.  Why would you buy the same amount of DVD's for both of these movies when one is best selling DVD ever and the other is a run of mill, boring family night snooze fest.  Please enlighten me on your thinking there Netflix!?!?

Another possible reason for me not receiving The Hangover is the lovely concept of "throttling". Most Netflix subscribers have had at least one run in with the throttling feature.  See this article for a full explanation of Netflix's throttling method.  Laura and I are not psycho movie returns, i.e. people who receive a movie, watch it immediately, and return it the next day.  We have the two-at-a-time Blu-Ray plan, so we usually receive two movies in the mail around Wednesday or Thursday, watch them over the weekend, and mail them back on Monday morning.  Not excessive/psycho renting in my opinion, but it is my belief that Netflix starts to view us as "psycho" subscribers near the end of our billing cycle, and "throttles" us as a result.  They prevent us from receiving more new releases because we have already received our "fair" amount of two new releases for the billing cycle.  I find their "fairness" profit algorithm baseless and moronic.  Diligent movie watchers, who have paid their subscription fees, should not be punished because other subscribers sit on movies for weeks at a time.  Do not judge me based on their minimalistic standards!! Punish them instead for being slow!! As always, slow people are ruining my life!!  But I digress, because there are bigger fish to fry in the Netflix world...

The Bigger Problem - Limited Availability and Price Increases

Sometime in mid-2008, Netflix added the Blu-Ray option, but since Laura and I did not own a Blu-Ray player at that time, we did not give it a second thought.  With Laura gifting me a Blu-Ray player for Christmas 2008, we decided to upgrade our Netflix two-at-a-time plan from DVD's to Blu-Ray discs since it was only a one dollar more per month.  From that point on (January 2009) until April 2009, the queue image from above was commonplace.  The amount of available new release Blu-Ray copies was so low that we would have to wait for the movie to be out at least two months before receiving it in the mail.  Thankfully, Netflix noticed this problem, and came up with the solution...

Anybody want to guess the solution?  Think Capitalism...

By email, Netflix told us they were raising the monthly subscription price for Blu-Ray customers from an extra $1 ($15 total) to $3 ($18 total)...

My initial complaint with the above email is Netflix automatically enrolling every Blu-Ray customer into the price change.  It is a bad business practice, in my opinion, to assume a customer will accept a price increase.  Subscribers that are okay with the change should be the ones having to take action, not the ones who disagree with the change.  I know, stupid thought, but I just wanted to throw it out there.  Here is my major problem with the email...

When I received this email on March 30, 2009, I was not totally thrilled about the price increase, but from my viewpoint, Netflix had a legitimate right to make this price increase.  Retail Blu-Rays are much more expensive than DVD's (about 35%), and it is only fair that I would pay about 35% more than the DVD subscriber with same type of plan.  And in actuality, Netflix Blu-Ray subscribers were getting a unbelievable good deal before this email appeared; the $1 price difference for Blu-Rays only equates to a 7% increase over the same DVD plan.  Even with the DVD/Blu-Ray price difference increasing from $1 to $3 in May 2009 per above email, a Blu-Ray subscriber was still only paying 21% more for Blu-Ray versus the same DVD plan - still a good deal in my opinion.  From May 2009 until November 2009, the Netflix Blu-Ray subscription was working quite well with good Blu-Ray availability and very few "Very Long Wait" situations.  Then came November 2009...

With all of the early summer mega-movies setting their DVD/Blu-Ray releases dates around November, the amount of new releases in Blu-Ray format being sent to us began to shrink considerably.  Hence the queue image from above - lots of "Very Long Waits" that never go away.  There are at least five new releases from November that Laura and I have not seen yet (despite their presence at the top of our queue), and it's February!!  This is an unacceptable situation that feels eerily similar to the one that led to a Blu-Ray subscription price increase in March 2009.

I would not be shocked if I have an email in my inbox by the end of February stating a monthly increase of $2 to Blu-Ray subscribers.  If my math is correct, a Blu-Ray subscription would then be 35% more than the comparable DVD plan, which is right in line with the retail cost difference between Blu-Rays and DVD's.  I would, again, be perfectly okay with this increase, but why must we have to deal with months of limited Blu-Ray availability before the problem is noticed?!?!

I think Laura and I should be entitled to a reward for dealing with limited Blu-Ray availability over the past three months.  Our extra payment of $3 per month is for Blu-Rays, but over the past three months, Laura and I have only received about five Blu-Ray new releases that we wanted to see.  Every other Blu-Ray we have received since November only came to us because something had to be in the queue.  We shall wait and see what happens...based on our current queue, I do not think the situation can get much worse...