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I work in an industry that admittedly does not have a good reputation. I am a cabbie. Before you roll your eyes and label me as a rude SOB, maybe you should know that not all cabbies are rude, most are honest, and many can be downright friendly. Most of the time it is what you bring to the table that will determine how you are be treated by a cabbie.

Now, I know that sounds like a cop out, but it really isn’t. You see, fares can be broken down into three distinct categories: The Talkers, The Squawkers; and The Stalkers.

Obviously we cabbies like The Talkers most of all. These people engage in conversation and allow the cabbies to impress you with local knowledge or maybe a joke or a story. Generally rides with Talkers are a lot of fun, and usually most productive for the cabbie and the rider.

The Squawkers present an interesting challenge for the cabbie. If a squawking person (someone who complains about everything) can have a grievance addressed and remedied, the cabbie can look like a hero and the rest of the ride can go well. Sometimes it is all a matter of resetting expectations, “You didn’t think you would come to Las Vegas and walk away a millionaire did you?” This line gets me into a lot of fun stories and usually by the time the ride is over they are not squawkers anymore. In fact, the nicest compliment I got was from a Squawker. He said, “You know, I usually hate Las Vegas, have a terrible time, but you and this ride made the trip bearable and a pleasure.” At this point he threw me an extra $20 for tip. Mission accomplished.

Both the hardest and easiest fares to deal with are The Stalkers. These people get into the cab, give a destination and then do not respond to anything. I usually give three tries to engage people, “So, how’s Vegas treating you?” “You know a lot about Vegas, are you a native?” “So, how’s the weather where you’re headed?” or some such leading questions. If after these there is nothing to talk about, it is a quite ride to the drop off. These are unsatisfying and frustrating fares to deal with and the cabbie usually feels screwed no matter how good the ride was monetarily.

OK, that covers the basic types of fares and how good cabbie deal with it, but what about the rude cabbie that are rude for no particular reason. Well, there are several type of these: The Inattentive, The Jaded, and The Peeved. All three have a common root as to why they are that way, and all three are hard for a rider to deal with. The root of rude cabbies is money, specifically not enough of it. Let me explain:

It is a false but widely held belief that cabbies in Las Vegas make a lot of money. In fact you go on the internet and look how to treat and tip cabbies you see the mention that we have a high paying job and lots of tips. This is not true. If a cabbie does $30 on the meter in an hour he may wind up with about $7.50 of that. If you add $2.00 per tip you would assume that he is then making $13.50 an hour. But at the rate you are talking only $27k a year. Is that really a lot of money? But here is what you are not counting, he has to pay for his gas. He has to pay taxes on those tips. As much as we dread them, we all get tickets, they are part of the business and those fines need to be paid.

There are other costs and expenses along the way, hidden costs that eat into his job, like dead-heading back from a long drive. Not only does dead-heading cost time not on meter, it costs fuel. If the ride out did not tip well, the driver could literally be losing money for taking a long ride. Consider a 30 mile ride in a cab that gets 10 MPG (yes, the cabs suck in this department). The meter would be about $65, a good ride for about 40 minutes work. But the tip is $5, ouch. Well, the cost for fuel going back is going to come to about $8 and a loose of about 40 minutes. That trip did not pay for itself. What do you get? A grouchy driver.

In fact, most of the time the rudeness comes because the tip received was to low. Too low may seem a relative term, but to a cabbie it is anything below 22.5% of the meter. Why 22.5%? Simple, that is what we pay in taxes for tips. If a cabbie takes a $10 ride and the tip is $2, you have shorted him, yet this is exactly what the internet sites and tipping guides say to do. If you do not tip at all, we still get taxed as if you did, a fairly raw deal.

On slow days, the hourly on the meter may drop to as low as $5 an hour. That is one trip in an hour and usually the tip there is just $1. This means the cabbie made a whole $2 for the hour. Could you live on $2 an hour? This is time that can not be made up. Time is a cabbies most precious resource, once it is lost, it is forever gone, and so are the potential earnings. Once again, you could get a crabby cabbie.

Let us dispel a myth: At one time cabbies did receive kickbacks from certain gentlemen’s clubs, but that has not been the case for a while. These kickbacks were generous and may be the root of the false belief that cabbies made a lot of money. But even when they did pay, they did not pay in daylight hours, and there were never enough rides for these extra kickbacks to be a substantial part of a cabbies income. They were a bit of added sweetness, not a living.

So, the solution… whenever you read the same old lines about a $2 tip for cabbies (written about 10 years ago and copied ever since from Berlitz) change it to a more up to date $5. This is especially true on slow days and short rides. In any ride over $20, be a little more kind because the cabbie is going to have to dead-head. You will never get a rude comment from a $5 tip, and in fact you will probably get a smile, a kind thank you, and some wish to return or have a safe trip. Trust me when I say it will be worth it. I will explain later.

So, how do you handle rude cabbies? Simple, if they do not offer to handle your luggage, open the door for you and treat you with respect and kindness, you can treat them as rude cabbies and DO NOT TIP THEM. If they take you on a trip that is way too long and over charge you on the meter, DO NOT TIP THEM. If they take you for a ride and the meter is not on, technically you do not have to pay them. However, pay them up to about $15, but no more and DO NOT TIP THEM, they are stealing from the cab company and call the Taxi Authority (the number is on the Hack Permit at the front passengers seat) and tell them the cab number and the route you took.

Warning: If you make a power play and threaten to call the TA and the driver says go ahead, you will be in the wrong and the TA will side with the driver. The drivers know all the laws (they have the permit after all) and know when they are in the wrong. You on the other hand could be arrested for petty theft of services if it is found that you did not pay.

In short, if you get good service, a safe ride, and pleasant experience from your ride in a cab, tip the driver and do not cheap out on him/her, they will be thankful. On the other hand if you have a bad experience do not tip and tell them you had a bad experience. It is that simple. It is those people who treat a driver proportionally with a tip where trouble occurs. Very small tips are considered insulting and the driver could drop the bomb on you, and you do not want that. So, tip well or not at all is the rule.

The Bomb: I alluded to the fact that there was something a cabbie could do that you really would not like, it is called The Bomb. Here is how it works: So, you have had a decent ride, the cabbie did a decent job and feels that you insulted him with such a low tip. If you have any emotions at all, the cabbie could pull this line, “I hope you feel so good about yourself, because you have come to this city and treated an honest, hard working, fair and polite person serving you well with disrespect and loathing. I hope you feel good about that because you can and there is nothing I can do about it. I hope you feel good about that.” Believe me when I say a line like this can ruin a perfectly good and wonderful vacation, because when you think back to your time on that vacation you will only remember the fact that you treated someone like dirt, nothing else will matter and the good memories will be tainted and the money you spent to get them down the drain. Think about it, would you really want a cabbie to drop The Bomb on you?

Today is my daughters’ birthday and I am 280 miles away and can do nothing about it. She turns thirteen years old today and it shocks me to think I now have a teenage daughter, but I do and I can’t be there for her today.

I will call her today and talk with her, see if she likes the Calvin and Hobbes collection I got her, but I would have preferred to be there with her to pick out a gift. It is hard to know what to get you teenage daughter, they are all so unique with tastes truly their own. It would have been better to be there with her and have the joy of walking through the mall to find something special, but I can’t be there today.

To be with my daughter, just be with her on this special day would have been all I could ask, but life and the court system are at odds with me and I can not see her. Her mother is a heartless person and will not allow it because of a technicality, and my lawyer who was to help me with this has not lived up to her promises again. What am I to do?

And now, as she is entering a new world, one in which she may need a father to give her some advice and guidance, I am 280 miles away and sometimes a phone call can not help nor convey the expressions of love and clarity I wish to impart.

I know this day should be about her, and I want it to be, but to share with her and make it hers I have to be there to love her. I feel bad about this and there is nothing I can do today, nothing I can do by tomorrow, but maybe soon. Maybe soon I can be with her, as I keep telling her in a strained and helpless feeling refrain.

Maybe soon, but for now I have a teenage daughter.

I have been blogging now for over a year and I have decided that there may be too much of me going around. I currently have blogs on Blogspot, Yahoo 360, MySpace, Adult Friend Finders, and of course here. In addition I am syndicated through every major blog aggregator on the web. I am seeing about 25,000 hits a month on MoM not to mention all the other sites. With all that traffic, I think I do not need to be everywhere. I think I will cut my writing back to MoM and AFF where appropriate.

Why bother with all the others (although I will leave the Yahoo site since it updates automatically via RSS) and waste so much time? I was writing entries and then reformatting them a dozen different ways to fit the other formats. What a waste. I care not anymore, this will be my outlet from now on.

It is already me anyway. The look, the feel, are all from my head. Why not just leave it and let those who really want to look into this sordid life of mine come to me. You got to admit, I do a lot of personal writing, and this would be as personal a forum I can come up with.

So, public excess is still granted to readers of Miasma of Musings, the rest of the world can access me here if they want, I will not be going to them anymore.

OK, I gave in to the popular trend and got an iPod Nano. I got the 2 gig version in black and thought it was so cool when I got it, but you know what, it is a lot of hype.

Now don’t get me wrong, the iPod does for me what I need it to, get me through the days of long driving, but it is the promise of what more it could do that fall short. And that is the problem, the device is fine, but the service and manageability of the device is hell.

What do I mean by this? Well, I had ripped all my CD’s to my computer through Windows Media Player, and that worked out well. Even version 11 of Media Player is not too bad and adds some functionality that I like, but it is not convenient to use with iTunes supplied with the iPod. I even updated iTunes to the latest version (ver 7) and that did not help.

So what is wrong? One, I cannot update the iPod with Media Player. Two, I cannot get Media Player to understand that it has to convert songs from WMA to MP3 to put onto the iPod. Three, I cannot figure out the iPod internal structure and naming conventions to fake updates. Four, songs and albums I buy from iTunes can only be played by iTunes and the iPod and I cannot rip then to a CD (EVEN THOUGH I HAVE BOUGHT THE ALBUM). This lack of cross compatibility is a HUGE flaw in the iPod. Five, iTunes converts my ripped music to AAC and takes up space again. Why am I storing two versions of the same data? Six, the iPod interface with iTunes is not very navigable. I never know what I have on the thing exactly, and podcast management is lousy even though I have set the way I want it. Podcasts sometimes show up as albums, sometimes as podcasts.

You know what I would love to see for device management? I simple two paned window, on the left you available media that is playable on the iPod, and on the right what is actually on the iPod. You can add automation for updating podcasts, but visually see the new entries going to the device and old entries being deleted. Sounds a lot like an FTP program, doesn’t it? It should, I think FTP programs like WSFTP are just about the best interface for managing remote sites, why not work it on an iPod too. Seems reasonable.

Data should be stored logically. I like a directory for the “main artist”, the sub directories for each album, and the songs in each album directory. Want to transfer all the “Traveling Wilburys” to the iPod? Drag and drop the Wilburys directory. Want to drop the “Volume 1” of the Traveling Wilburys, just drop the subdir and the iPod sets up the directory structure. Same would apply with individual songs… how easy is that?

Of course you can have a separate little database that can manage all the ancillary information that goes with the artist, album and track, like cover image, guest artists, genre, etc. But the transfers would be simple and direct, why bother with dragging and dropping and not knowing what is or is not on the device.

What it is is feature’idis. These programs have to make things so seemingly simple that anyone can use them. What happens is that they make it so simple that it becomes hard to comprehend what is happening. What these program designers forget is that the human mind questions what is happening. If the processes are so transparent it becomes confusing. I for one do not like it running a program and hope that everything works right, I like to see that it is working right.

I think, ultimately, this lack of cross-compatibility of iTunes and the iPod will be the undoing for the device and service. If I buy songs, I want to be able to use them any way I want to. I have bought them, I have paid the rights to use the songs. The music is not cheaper because they are of limited use, so why limit my use? If I want to burn a CD with the purchased music, say because I am taking it in my car that is equipped with a CD play and not an iPod interface, I should be able to. Hell, if I want to record it to and 8-track tape, I should be able to do that. I know I cannot resell the music, but then again, I could not do that before legally either, that is called pirating. I just want to play purchased music my way.

Also, let’s face it, the selection of music is limited. Have you tried to download any Beatles? Bet you can’t find the real thing. I was looking for Abby Road the other day… nada. Looked for “The Traveling Wilburys” and Jeff Lynnes’ “Armchair Theatre”, again, no go, nada, zip, zilch, bupkis. How many more albums are NOT available, I am afraid to ask, but I bet most of the offbeat stuff I listen to is not available. I even requested the albums and I am still waiting to hear from anyone at iTunes about the status of the albums at all. Hell I would not mind getting a form letter stating they will not be able to get the rights for the albums, at least I would see a proactive attitude on iTunes part.

I love it, these services claim “Millions” of songs available, but let’s look at that a second. 1,000,000 songs is about 80,000 albums. I bet I could name off from memory about 3,000 albums I want. That is a pretty good percent but they would not match up with even half of what I want. I could not find out how many albums have ever been recorded, but the number must be staggering. When you think of all the genres and languages, you realize that what is available online is just a small fraction of the popular material that has been produced.

Interestingly, some of the least likely stuff IS online. I though that someone like Herb Alpert would have been forgotten, but there he is and ready for download. Other stuff, especially mid eighties stuff is not. I can’t explain it.

So, I will continue to purchase CD when I can find them, this Digital Download trend is not up to snuff yet.

What do you get with shared server resources? Well, if you do not know the other people on your server, generally you get Server Pigs. Server Pigs are people or companies that decide that what they are doing is the only thing that should be on that server. They use all the bandwidth and CPU cycles and no one else can get their sites to run. They crash everyone around them and continue to spew their spam or landing sites up to the web. They are pigs and it takes away from me.

That is what is happening right now on my server. A couple of people are spamming from my IP and slowing the server to a crawl for everyone else. The worst part of this particular abuse is what may spill over to me. You see when an IP starts spamming the IP is blocked and it is likely that all the honest sites on this IP will be blocked too. That means I may not be able to send any email soon.

I talked to the Techs at Blue Host and they confirmed what I had guessed, Server Pigs. They promised that they would throttle their bandwidth slowly and restore the server to a more balanced state, but until then things will be dicey. I hate when this happens, I would just shut the offending pigs down, but there are contracts to uphold, so I guess they have to do it this way.

Ah, the Internet, the wild west of the electronic frontier. Time for a round up, anyone for fresh bacon?

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You know something, some people are so narcissistic they think that everything is done for them and to change something without notifying them is a crime against them. This is exactly what has happened since I too this blog to a one person forum.

When I started this site I had a core set of people that would write and share here. Since then the number of contributors has dropped to practically none. It became so bad that there was just no reason for me to support additional bloggers, especially those that do not know any HTML and cannot follow simple instructions. Why am I bothering? In short, I’m not anymore.

So, I posted a brief message that I would discontinue the multi-bloggers on Miasma of Musings and waited for a response. There was none. I closed the site to bloggers other than me.

The worst part about it is the some people think I did it to spite them. That they could just willy-nilly come here and post something as they pleased and everything would be ok. I started this site to get good writing away from AFF, that did not happen so why wouldn’t I close the site.

Besides, I do not get paid for this and in fact it costs me money to run this (these) site. If anyone wants to contribute real money then maybe I will consider opening it up. After all, I had intended to charge blogger to enter on this site. Did you know this site is pinged and logged by all major search engines AND blog directories? Do you know how much time it took to do that? Does anyone have a clue as to the amount of work I had to go through to get this site to look as good as it does? Do you even know that I had to write three pieces of software to do it? Did you know that these software modules are now used all around the world?

So, I will do exactly as I please and NO ONE has the right to bitch or complain, especially fair weather friends that promise to support the site with writing and never do. Those that promise to comment and be a part of the community and never comment or be part of the community are completely without justification when it comes to how I will run this site.

This was a refuge for those who wanted it, but if it was rarely used what did you really expect? For months I have been the only one blogging here, so that is just the way it is. The topics I cover are not fluff and sweetness, but rather I look at events and true emotions and creative writing. I am done with fluff, I am done with worrying about what junk may end up being posted here.

To that end I know I have my readers. I know there are about 600 people that continually show up and read what I have to say. Few comment, but I see your IP and I track you. So keep reading and I will keep writing. Oh, and thank for the trackbacks on Salon, MSNBC, and Hardblogger.

This is my site. You, the complainers, do not have the right to make me feel bad about it.

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Ok, so this may be a petty thing to think about, but I do. Have you ever being “The last Guy” or “The Last Gal”? What I mean by this is have you dated someone and the next person they date is “it”, their match? How did you feel knowing you were the “last guy’?

In all fairness I am very happy for her, that she found the person she wants to be with, but what was it that didn’t work with us? Was it me? Was it her? Was it karma? What ever it was I can’t put a finger on it and it is weird knowing I am second best. Not that I have not been second best before, but never in this manner.

If we were not talking as happens so often when two people break it off I guess I would not be wondering about it. But we have remained friends and we check up on each other from time to time. So I guess it is only normal to wonder about it. I am not sure I can put a finger on the feeling but to say that there is a feeling there.

Maybe I am jealous, after all I did not want to end the relationship. Maybe I am a bit envious too, he’s getting what I wanted. Whatever, it is subtle and there and hard to grasp.

Maybe I just need to get over it, but that is going to take time.

Well, Miasma of Musings has been around for over a year now and the interest in it has waned to an all-time low. So it is with this knowledge that I have decided to make this a blog of one blogger only and that is me.

What has been published here of late has not had anything of substance and really not of interest to anyone. I guess you could say that my views have not been of interest to anyone either, but then again this is my blog and I will write whatever I want. So, as of this morning you are going to notice that all other bloggers have been removed and that will be that.

Users can of course comment all they like and log in to comment which will make it easier, but as for posting new entries, that is a thing of the past.

When I started this project over a year ago I had promises from many people that they would blog and do some wonderful writing and help generate interest in the site. Obviously this has not happened so I now turn this into an individual blog as opposed to a community of bloggers.

I do hope you all will continue to read and comment.