Nobrainer’s Think Tank

My connection from Vegas to Portland has been cancelled, as has just about every other flight to Portland (and apparently Seattle, too). We were told we’d be helped at a nearby gate desk. After waiting in line for 30 minutes or so without seeing any movement in the line, I just started walking around the concourse until I found a gate desk without a line. Fortunately the person there was able to help me and get me tickets to Reno tonight and tickets from Reno to PDX in the morning. I know that doesn’t sound like a great deal, but there are absolutely no available tickets to be had that fly direct from Vegas to Portland for at least 2 days.

And right now the flight to Reno is already delayed by over an hour.

But all things considered, I am pretty happy. Basically, everything is all messed up and I think we’re in much better shape than a lot of the people here.

MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYBODY!

Bloomberg regularly polls oil analysts about their expectations of upcoming oil market activity. More often than not, the results of the poll strike me as being laughably inaccurate. Perhaps “more often than not” overstates the problem a bit. From the horse’s mouth today:

The oil survey has correctly predicted the direction of futures 50 percent of the time since its start in April 2004.

At least they’re somewhat honest about it.

TicketMaster sucks. You know it. I know it. If I ever meet someone who works for TicketMaster I hope I have the courage to beat them to a bloody pulp; the death penalty would be worth it. Seriously, how can you be asked to pay $4 for email delivery of tickets on top of $25 of other fees and not be irate?

I’m turning into a real search snob. Unless the tools exist to let me search on the internet in just the way I want, I get upset.

For example, I recently mentioned that I did like the Carmax site for how easy they made it to track down cars with certain qualities.

However, I realized their site has one drawback: it can be difficult to find a car without certain qualities. For example, I like cars without sunroofs, but there is no “without sunroof” option.

The world of searching and querying on the internet still has a lot of room for improvement.

Earlier this week 2 things happened, each of which tends to increase oil prices. However the market has largely yawned

Chairman of the Federal Reserve Ben Bernanke lowered interest rates to basically zero. This has combined with a perceived gain in stability in other world economies to cause the dollar to retreat quite quickly from recent highs. The dollar is down 11% versus it’s recent peak on November 21st, and it’s down 8% versus December 9th. Over the last several years, oil and the dollar have displayed a pretty strong inverse relationship. So it is surprising to see that oil is trading right at $40 this morning.

OPEC also moved. As you can imagine they’re none to happy about oil at $40, particularly those nations who built their ’09 budgets around much more expensive oil. They announced an additional cut of 2+ million barrels of oil per day beginning in January. That puts their quota over 4 million barrels below what it was in September. It’s quite a move. It may prop up the market at a later point, but for now it seems that everyone thinks it is either too little too late (which adds credence to the OPEC ministers who were largely against production increases earlier in the summer) or that the OPEC members are going to largely ignore the official quotas.

Very interesting stuff.

While I certainly hate winter for its cold weather and lack of sunlight, it does have some upside. For example, when the average temperatures are low, the water coming from the cold tap is actually pretty cold. That isn’t necessarily good for much, but I certainly appreciate it when I rinse off my face right after shaving… just one of the best parts of my day. Unfortunately I still haven’t a frickin’ clue what the lack of sunlight is good for. Vampires maybe?

Another thing I like, which is not particular to winter, but which shows up often in winter, is the ability to track packages on UPS. I still get excited every time I see that a package I’m expecting has crossed the country and is out for delivery.