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Planning A Trip to Yosemite

I was pretty nervous about planning a trip to Yosemite National Park due to the sheer size of the park and the kind of activities one can do there. When I just casually asked Chee-hoi and Michelle about what to do there, all kinds of advice on what we should do was dizzying; the overwhelming information made me procrastinate even more. But after spending a couple of days studying a book we bought on the park (in 2003 which we NEVER USED), I suddenly saw the light on what was said to me. And of course, reading about others’ experience definitely helped (bless blogs!).

A few things about planning trips to Yosemite on a budget with a baby though…. staying in and around the park ain’t cheap! The economics of supply and demand is all over the rates on the kind of facility you can afford to stay (and how far you are willing to travel). If you are looking to stay within the park, a “normal” hotel with 4 walls cost about $200 – $400 a night. But if you are like me, with everything on a shoestring budget, “tents” are the only options available… You can either buy your own and set it up at camp sites, or you can actually reserve pre-built tents as a regular lodging option and pay through your nose (ahem, more specifically, around $70 – $140 a night). I wish I was more handy like Chee-hoi then I’d probably just buy and setup my own tent….

Speaking of reserving for lodging at Yosemite, that’s another sore spot I have about the business of running national parks… The entire operation of lodging within the park is outsourced to a commercial hospitality management company based in Delaware. Now, there’s nothing wrong with this. But what sucks is that this company is totally awful at running the reservation system either online or over the phone! The lodging reservation portion of the website is totally 1995. It’s slow and uninformative.

I was looking at lodging outside of the park (you know, with actual walls and roof over our heads), but with the closing of SR-140, it made my affordable top choices too inaccessible. Plus there’s opportunity cost involved here: driving for 40 min to 1 hour more to go where I want to go, or bite the bullet and save the precious time to enjoy the whole experience more….

So I am happy to report that we have decided to stay at the tent cabin at Curry Village on Monday and move on to a river front unit of Housekeeping Camp on Tuesday. There was an option at Curry Village to include breakfast, but then they also charge for children (even for 1-year-old! What greedy corporate monsters!). So I politely said, ~~fuck~~ screw that, I will buy my own breakfast…

Despite the lodging hiccups, I look forward to a relaxing and, in Michelle’s words, “near-spiritual experience” trip at the park.

Car Rental

Some thoughts/tips/common sense on car rental after my back-to-back experience with several car rental companies since my mom’s arrival:

1. Avis can be cheap if you deal with independent Avis agents (outside of airports) during peak periods (i.e. Grand Prix week).

2. Car rental companies take turns to hand out deals; one week it could be Enterprise, the next week it might be Dollar… etc. Economically speaking, they are avoiding competing head-on with each other by taking turns to share customers. The only exception, I noticed, is Hertz… which almost never gives out deals. But then again, most of their clients are corporate customers who are less sensitive to price than average consumers.

3. Booking a cheap deal one or two hours apart often makes a difference: I saw a deal for weekly rate of $102 for a midsize car on Enterprise; but hours later, the deal was gone and the price went up to $200+. The same can apply when you make reservation before or after midnight.

4. You don’t necessarily get a better deal if you reserve way ahead of time; I have checked for deals for 2 weeks, 1 week and just days (sometimes hours) in advance with varying results.

5. Experiment with selecting different locations and see the prices change. Some locations, even under the same company, are more expensive than others. Prices can vary for as much as 50% on exact the same size cars, dates… etc.

6. Experiment with selecting different hours to pick up the car; in my experience so far, before 2PM seems to be cheaper than after.

7. Different dates, of course, will see difference in prices — sometimes huge differences. Just common sense.

8. After checking in at the rental counter, most companies either tell you where your car is or just hand you the keys. But Enterprise uses a tactic akin to car sales (which I hate). You go meet a rental agent at the lot where he will hand you a bottle of water and tries to sucker you in to upgrading to a better car for more $$. Only upgrade if you know it’s a better deal (i.e. check beforehand online, such as Expedia where they usually tell you how much each car class costs). Also, with the Enterprise agent on the lot, upgrade rates are ALWAYS negotiable.

9. Hotwire, Expedia, Travelocity… etc. — They are almost all the same, rate, availability and everything else.

10. Avis and Dollar do not have imports (specifically, Japanese) while Enterprise always has imports as an option for upgrade (or if you really bargain, sometimes they’ll upgrade while keeping the price the same!). Hertz also keeps a nice fleet of imports for rental.

11. The only Japanese import that’s not available for rental (as far as I know) is Honda. Toyota, Mitsubishi, Nissan and Mazda can be rented from most companies.

12. Some rental companies will take Costco and/or Sam’s Club membership for a small discount. But you have to ask because it’s never advertised. Some credit cards offer exclusive deals for discounts with certain rental companies. “Sometimes” it’s worth it to check for deals. But most of the time, Expedia’s deals are better.

13. Renting through Costco is NOT cheaper than Expedia (though logic may say otherwise).

14. Most companies offer spouse as a FREE add-on driver.

15. Extending the same car for another fixed period (another 3 days, another week… etc.) usually means you get to keep the car at the same rate but not always. Sometimes it could be cheaper to go through the reservation process again to get an even cheaper rate (either from the same company or a different one (per #2).

16. Weekly rates are sometimes cheaper than if you rented the car for just 3-4 days. So if you need a car for just 3 or 4 days, check for the weekly rate anyway.

My humble experience for the past 2 weeks.

Proof of What I’ve been Saying about American Media

I found this via digg and felt glad that I, among a few of my friends, am not the only one noticing this.

It’s frustrating to know that the majority of American news stations are feeding garbage news to the people of the most powerful country in the world, the same people who put an idiot like George W. Bush in power, twice…

What the Future Holds

Brian got me hooked on Ray Kurzweil a couple of months ago. Now I see his name everywhere.

On the way back from lunch today, NPR broadcasted an interview with him on Talk of the Nation. The interview was a response to an article he wrote earlier.

He sounded very enthusiastic and optimistic of what the future holds for mankind and what technology will ultimately do for us — cures of the worst diseases we experience today, super-smart “beings” that are part organic and part machine… etc. In light of how fast human genes are being patented for corporate profit today, I am not so sure just how quickly his vision can materialize even if technology progresses as quickly as he predicts. As long as there’s profit to be made out of anything from major corporations, these changes will be slow in manifestation. Why would a pharmaceutical company release a cure to cancer when it can milk billions more out of dying patients by slowly “upgrading” cancer therapies and treatments? Then again, maybe it’s just the drug companies that are evil. And he’s right about technologies being increasingly more affordable and accessible over time. Maybe in the future, we won’t be so caught up with the things we are so worried about today… Maybe it will be genetic terrorism, knowledge-based diseases and some other ingenious ideas future ultra-humans will come up with to kill off each other. But then again, according to Kurzweil, everyone’s supposed to know everything about everything… So it will be a battle of Spy v.s. Spy.

Anyway, Kurzweil’s interview is wicked cool.

The End of My Hotmail Account

Every single piece of mail disappeared from my Hotmail account one day. They were just gone. Vanished. Disappeared. Lost. Misssing. Vaporized…

After a few prompt emails with the Hotmail tech support girls (they were ALL women’s names…!!! Girl Power!), I decided there’s really no point in getting them to even try to retrieve them for me. After all, it IS free, and they ARE Microsoft, and they don’t really, in Kyung’s words, “give a rat’s ass” as to whether I continue to use Hotmail. And I am just way too lazy to post my correspondences with them here… which in themselves is pointless because I kept on getting replies based on exact the same template of wordings plus maybe 2 sentences that were actually typed (or maybe “intelligently” generated by she-bots. But who would know?).

So now I can finally cut clean with Hotmail, an account I have had for almost 10 years before Microsoft even knew what Internet was. But anyone who means anything to me knows my gazillion other alternative contact information anyway… So… whatever…

Market-Driven Capitalist System Failed Poor People

There, I said it.

But I am not alone. Two of the richest people in the world agreed.

So maybe economics, afterall, is not the answer to all problems as economists would like to belive it (does that include you, Mark?)

The first day of my economics class, the instructor promptly used variously examples to show that the essential purpose of economics is to solve basic problems of the world — food, shelter, clothing… etc. for people. But yet in a capitalistic system, it’s been theorized that 80% of the people would be poor if market were to determine everything.

A scary thought indeed.

The Fall of Pixar

I guess the title of this entry is a little misleading. So let me explain.

I don’t mean that Pixar’s latest movie is a flop or that the fact that now it’s in the fold of Disney, it will seize to be the greatest animation studio that ever was…

Oh… wait, I did mean the second half of what I just said…

Here’s how I figured Pixar is going to be Pixar no more. Shortly before the Pixar “merge up” to Disney, I started noticing something that Pixar has never done before, advertising partnership with Yahoo! SBC (now Yahoo! AT&T). While I was shopping for deals for my DSL renewal, Pixar’s Cars characters were all over the Yahoo! SBC DSL site. I didn’t think much of it then.

But then just last week I started seeing even more Cars characters showing up on TV commercials, most noticeably promoting State Farm for auto insurance. Well, sure, Cars promoting auto insurance — very cute and fitting. This is very uncharacteristic of Pixar since I have never once seen Woody or Space Ranger selling anything else but Toy Story movies and merchandizes.

And of course, it’s only business, right? It never occurred to me that when Pixar was independent, it never really “prostituted” its characters until Disney took over. And now millions of adults and kids will be bombarded with Pixar’s creations until its pristine brand becomes moldy and Disney’s corporate types weasel into dictating how stories should be told — hence the end of Pixar.

Now truly, everything is a commodity, even cartoon characters that once were just part of a well-told and superbly-animated story.

The “FreeCycle” Experience

I wrote about FreeCycle earlier this month. So far the experience has been mostly positive. But I thought I’d share some insights I have over our experience with FreeCycle.

The thought of taking and getting “free” stuff almost invariably triggers the idea of “greed”. Brian and I debated over the nature of human a while ago. My position being that the world would probably go into chaos if there was no law imposed upon us. Human greed for power and money alone will probably swallow us whole. And I thought this FreeCycle thing couldn’t idealistically exist in a world of material needs.

I guess I underestimated human nature (or maybe it’s just when the sample size is so small, it skews the objectivity). It turns out that people do give away free and wonderful stuff that they truly don’t need. And as for us, we only take what we truly need and find use in. I mean, what am I going to do with that free book shelf or that free closet… or that free weight bench with weights… etc. if I don’t need them or don’t have a place for them? And I also found out that there’s a moral code of ethics in this FreeCycle community as well — if you were going to sell what you take, you’d have to be upfront about it to the giver so that s/he can decide if you can have it. I guess apparently people do follow that code (as far as we know anyway).

So my conclusion is: when anything and everything is free, maybe the society will be better off. My reasoning is that, because there’s no reason to take more of exactly what you need in the exact amount, there’s no reason to waste anything and there’s no reason to rob, steal or kill over resources. And because you got everything free in the first place, there’s no reason NOT to share whatever you don’t use with others for free! With petty pathetic issues out of the way, maybe then mankind will be able to solve real issues like hunger and poverty (because then there’d be no hunger OR poverty). And because you can’t really sell or buy anything, the “greed” factor just goes away. But of course there’s always the economics of supply and demand… But now I am beginning to think “economics” is actually quite evil because it effectively promotes (and celebrates) greed and unnecessary needs.

This reminds me of one of the StarTrek movies where one modern, naive Earthling asked a Trekkie: “How could you ever afford to build a spaceship like this?” (or something to that effect) The reply was: “In the future, the concept of money doesn’t exist. Everybody works towards the common good of the humanity.” (or sosmething like that). Maybe it’s that kind of idealism that keeps Trekkies like Murdza in the loop of StarTreks.

The Rich and the Military

While driving to my consulting gig today, NPR aired an interesting piece on how the composition of the U.S. military personnel today has affected how the military and its engagements around the world are reported, portrayed and politicized.

The thesis of the book the program was based on is that everyone should serve in the public services to really fully be a citizen of a country, but the authors of the book happened to choose the military service because of their personal ties to it and using it as a magnifier to put a few interesting ideas in perspective. One of the examples used was the contrast of the number of students from Princeton enrolled in the military 20-30 years ago (about 50% of all undergrads) v.s. today (exactly 10). The premise of the argument: Should the United States keep a military? If yes, who should serve?

It turns out that back in WWI and WWII, the Rich and the Powerful and their children were drafted to serve in the military for those wars. And as such, those who were in control, namely the politicians and other stakeholders of a war, were very careful on what to do with military deployment, precisely because they had someone very close serving in the military. Even the media reported wars differently because of own personal ties. And as a whole, the society took it personally when the nation waged wars.

While the book does not try to bash the Republicans or the Bush administration*, it points out that because today’s political and economic leaders don’t have a personal stakes and connections to the military (the example was that 70% of the Senate members 50 years ago were veterns v.s. only a handful or so today), when they wage a war or deploy troops to protect U.S. political or economic interests, they tend not to take it personally the human consequences of such actions.

I remember there’s a scene in Bowling for Columbine where Michael Moore was going around the Capital Hills trying to enlist children of the Senators and Congressmen, but nobody dared to so much as to talk about the subject. The underlying message was clear: we need a military to protect our interests as long as it’s somone else’s children doing it.

One caller mentioned a book, “Starship Troopers” (which was made into a 3rd rated movie in the 90s), where the social structure only allowed a person to become a “full citizen” after s/he has engaged in some kind of public service. I thought that idea is pretty interesting and intriguing. It’d force each individual to partake in the business of the society, not just selfishly minding one’s own business from birth to death. That kind of experience would make someone more conscious about grander social issues than pathetic personal problems (boo-hoo, Jane broke up with John).

Sometimes I wish I can just keep driving to enjoy the road and listening to NPR when they have interesting programs on….

* One of the authors is a Democrat while the other is a Republican, but both have someone they are close to serving in the military

FreeCycle

One of Grace’s mommy friends told her about an interesting online (but yet local!) community called FreeCycle. The free service is basically a collection of local residents in your area who are part of a larger collective “recycling” community. The idea is to recycle what you don’t want and give them to someone else who may find good use for them. Almost every major city in the world has a FreeCycle group (yes, even Freehold, NJ, Murdza!).

I thought this is better than Craigslist in that when you join this group (more than 5000 members for San Jose), you know what you give/get would be free in the spirit of recycling and sharing. Grace got a saucer and a doorway jumper for Bryan when someone was giving them away. I also posted a “wanted” entry for a keyboard tray for my desk, and immediately someone offered me one for free! But it turned out that the tray is kind of heavy (all metal!) for my cheap IKEA desk…. 🙁

All in all, it’s a pretty cool community of folks… And I am glad, for once, this is not a corporate commercial venture (something I can see eBay doing). The website relies on ads and donations to keep going.

Killing Bugs with Nature

C|Net has an interesting article on companies using organic methods to repel or eliminate undesired bugs for argricultural purposes. Great idea!

Organic biopesticides comprise only a small fraction of the overall $30 billion pesticide market, but they are growing rapidly–22 percent a year thanks to technological, regulatory and market forces. By 2010, biopesticides could account for more than $1 billion in revenues, according to some estimates. Other companies in the field include Valent Biosciences, Suterra, Certis and Nutra Park.

The business has come a long way from previous years when biopesticide scientists were viewed as modern-day snake oil salesmen. A number of start-ups formed in the 1990s were based on sound science from university labs but cratered in the dot-com meltdown.

AgraQuest, which has $10 million in annual sales today, was one of many companies that, back then, canceled plans to go public. But now new investors such as Texas Pacific Group Ventures are aiming to rapidly grow the companyâ€™s revenue by expanding relationships with farmers and retail outlets like Wal-Mart.

To maximize agricultural production, pesticides are not going away. But instead of using harmful chemicals, leveraging nature against nature is probably the best and sustainable way to go! I mean, how much longer will it take for those commerical chemicals to reach a level where all food chains are contaminated with them that we won’t be able to eat anything without dying from one disease or another caused by the chemicals?

When Good Things Are Not Priced for Good People

Shopping for baby products can be an frustrating experience sometimes. The market is flooded with inferior (and sometimes just plain dangerous) products with extremely poor designs. Just about the only thing good about these products is their price — they are all dirt cheaply made in the great manufacturing capital of the world, China.

Because of that reason, I am always on the look out for great designs priced for everybody. Not having visited Daddytypes for a few months, I hopped over to the site and found an article mentioning the Orbit Baby Infant System. It’s a company founded by a couple of Stanford grads with ideas to make transporting babies safer. Great ideas with a good cause, I thought. The design is delicious and the concepts look wonderful… Wonderful until I saw the price, that is. At about $900 a pop, this “safe and good looking” product is effectively priced out of reach for most working class parents.

That’s what I don’t understand about innovative products like Bugaboo or the Orbit Baby. Do the rules of economics not apply to those systems? Can they not find an equilibrium where they can manufacturer something innovative and affordable all at the same time? I mean, it’s not like there are no substitutes out there! Why can’t there be an Apple in the baby products market? Why can’t there be a Target supermarket for babies?

Now that I Know how much the Orbit System costs, I feel like a snob just by drooling at the pictures. Is it true that maybe the manufacturing cost is just so high on such a well-made and designed system that the product can be justifies at that price point? Or is it simply a “Stanford” thing that it’s OK to be snobs because this is the Bay Area where most people make lots of money from the high-tech industry anyway and can afford to spend that kind of money? Maybe the profit-making scheme is blinding their noble objective to make the safest baby transpotation system? Or maybe they think being safe should always come at a price (only the rice should be able to survive a crash in their system)? I just don’t get it.

Maybe more classes in economics will help me see the world more clearly.

Blah… Just another rant from a financially strained parent…

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