Mike Schubert

This past Friday I started to notice a rough shifting experience on my Xterra when I was above 50 mph. At first, it sounded/felt like I was running over a rumble strip on the road, but eventually I realized that it wasn't the road. It seemed to be happening only when going into overdrive.

Monday I took the truck into my Nissan dealer to have it diagnosed. I took it out with a technician so he could experience it first hand. It sounded & felt like it was going to be expensive. I got the call later in the day that not only did I have to replace the transmission, but the radiator as well. It turns out that the transmission cooling system had a hose or gasket that failed and leaked coolant into the transmission. Total bill - around $3000. Yikes. I've never taken it off road, never towed anything, and just had the 90,000 mile service this year where the transmission was serviced.

I Googled the phenomenon and found numerous people who have experienced the same thing with various models of Nissans over a number of model years. This is sad. I was so enamored (and really still am) with my truck. But I'm going to have a difficult time buying another when the time comes since it seems Nissan is not interested in fixing what seems to be a pretty big design flaw.

There is a new form of auction site catching hold around the world that is somewhat difficult to explain. Sites like Swoopo call themselves "entertainment shopping". I call them a ripoff. Let me explain.

On the surface these penny auction sites don't look all that unusual. You place bids in preset increments, usually somewhere between 2 cents and 15 cents. Whoever has placed the highest bid when time runs out buys the item at the price the bid. 

That is where the similarities end. To place a bid - YOU HAVE TO PAY. That's right, every time you place a bid, it costs you money. Right now, Swoopo is charging 60 cents per bid. The second, more perplexing twist is that with every bid, the auction end time is incremented by 5-20 seconds. That's right. So if the auction ends in 5 seconds and you bid, the end time is pushed back by up to 20 seconds - giving more people an opportunity to bid. Below is a screenshot showing the truly bad deal of these auction sites. This one individual won the auction and paid $144.35 for a $900 camera. In order to win that bid, the individual placed 1852 bids at 60 cents each. In total, the person paid over $1500 for a camera he could've bought for $900 retail. 

When you do the math, you will see that the site hosting the auction generally makes a hefty profit. Even when you see the camera below sell for $36, the site has covered its costs. For every time that the bid increases 2 cents, the host makes 60 cents. Entertainment shopping? Hogwash. Its a ripoff and you should avoid it.

When you have a 14 hour drive, all sorts of random and sometimes deep thoughts cross your mind.

Wind farms don't seem to be ugly. I've always heard that the aesthetic aspects are what makes them undesirable. I seem to recall an effort to put them on Martha's Vineyard some years ago and the Kennedy family saying that they are great as long as they can't see them. So much for being a friend of the green environment. There were several such installations in Northern Illinois and they broke up the corn nicely. I tried to get a picture, but every time I snapped one with my iPhone a mound of corn stalks rose up and blocked the view.

Speaking of corn - Holy Corn, Batman! What on earth do we do with all this corn? For HOURS it was just corn fields as far as the eye could see. I thought we were paying farmers NOT to plant this stuff. I have heard of government cheese (aka gument cheese), I wonder if there is government corn? I did notice signs encouraging the development of motors that could run entirely on corn ethanol (if that's what it's called).

Speaking of signs, I guess having frontage on an interstate highway is akin to having a broadcast radio frequency. There were many messages along the way. There appears to be a call for alcohol reform in Wisconsin (probably those pesky college kids causing problems). There are also some folks who want to carry concealed weapons. Their signs read: When you outlaw concealed carry <next sign> Only outlaws will carry concealed <next sign> Guns Save Lives. 

Speaking of lives, I have compassion for people who have lost loved ones prematurely due to accidents. BUT, what's up with all the road-side memorials? This is what cemetaries are for, people! This activity causes two problems. First, the memorials themselves can be very distracting. Pile up a bunch of balloons, flowers, and teddy bears and everyone will ogle assuming that a child lost his life. Second, the people setting these up are stopping on the highway and creating obstacles. At one time I heard a proposal that would set up periodic memorial stops for families who lost someone between miles x and y. Sort of like a rest area but for grieving. Weird.

Speaking of weird, who names fireworks stands? Has there been market research to indicate that I want to buy fireworks from Crazy Eddie? I think I would rather purchase my explosives from someone named Cautious Carl, but maybe that's just me. One thing I did notice was that you don't see any Four-Finger Freddie's fireworks stands. 

That's about it for now. Off to get in an open water swim in Lake Monona!

2009 has been a much different year than 1999 was.

Microsoft is working with Intuit to help develop a file conversion process that will help Money customers more easily convert their existing data files to Quicken. Both Intuit and Microsoft hope this will be ready to go for the new release of Quicken this fall.

I never thought I would see that coming. Money management seems to be as equally pervasive as the need for the Office suite. Perhaps even moreso.

Read More -> Microsoft Discontinues Money Programs

This woman kills two cyclists while driving under the influence of morphine and barbituates, after shoplifting at the local Safeway. She gets 3 years in jail. WTF? I am beside myself right now. She had a summons to appear for a hit-and-run incident she was involved in two years before.

Thomas struck and killed the men at S. 26th Street, minutes after leaving the West Colorado Avenue Safeway. Police said she had been shoplifting and banged into a man's car in the parking lot before driving off. The man followed her and saw her hit the bicyclists as she tried to turn left onto Westend Avenue -- without yielding to oncoming traffic -- in her 1986 Ford F-350. Police found her speech slurred and her eyes bloodshot, according to an arrest affidavit.

Read for yourself -> Woman gets 3 years in death of bicyclists