Scott Gruby's Blog

This past weekend, I was in Santa Cruz with my family for my in-law’s 40th anniversary. While we were sitting in traffic, I saw the passenger of a car get out (traffic was stopped), goto the trunk, open it, open a cooler and pull out what must have been a beer and then got back in the car. That was the first time I’d ever seen anything like that, but it didn’t stop there. A few minutes later, the passenger of the car in front of the cooler car, got out, went to the trunk of the cooler car, got something out of the cooler and walked back to his car.

My wife said “only in Santa Cruz”. I’ve only been to Santa Cruz once before, so I don’t know if other people do this. It seemed quite strange and depending on if the beverage in question was the alcohol variety and was opened, it could have been illegal.

The other day I saw a sign in front of a house advertising the company that was putting the new coating on a house. The sign said “woman owned business”. That kind of sign irks me because I’d hope that a company can compete on the quality of its product, the price, and the service it provides. I don’t really care if a business is minority owned or woman owned; if two products or services were identical, maybe I’d go with a minority owned business, but why advertise this on a sign?

Years ago I read an article about a husband and wife company (the husband was African-American) who did work for the government. As a minority owned or woman owned business, they would have potentially been awarded more government contracts. The husband and wife would not shift ownership the 1 percent needed to qualify for either minority owned or woman owned. To me, that shows great ethics and I have a lot of respect for them.

While I’m ranting about this, it also reminds me of my #1 choice for colleges. I applied to Rice University and really wanted to go (not sure why now that I look back at it), but was denied admission because they “wanted more women in engineering”. There are a few ways to interpret this; the first is that they gave women a head start on whatever scale they used or that if women had equal qualifications as men, the women would get the spots. I have no problems with the latter interpretation, but I really suspect the former. I ended up going to Harvey Mudd College which, at the time, was rated as the top engineering school in the country. I’m pretty sure that they didn’t accept more women into the engineering program to even out the program as my class was 1/3 female.

I’m all about competing based on merits and if 2 companies or people have the same qualifications, use whatever method you want to decide who gets the job or position in college.

On Saturday I was driving down interstate 8 and noticed in my rear view mirror, a car that was swerving across all the lanes. As the car was heading back towards the number 1 lane, I saw the logo on the side of the car. It was a CHP officer doing a traffic break.

I expected to see something in the road or an accident up ahead, but saw nothing except for some appliance on the side of the road with no one around. Why was the officer doing a traffic break? I don’t know, maybe he was bored or his information was old. In any case, if you’ve never seen a traffic break, it’s kind of odd the first time seeing the officer go across all the lanes of traffic.

Some time ago, I heard that the remote control in a hotel room was one of the dirtiest things one could touch in a hotel. I even saw “sleeves” you could buy to put over the remote so you didn’t have to touch it. Well, I have a cheaper and more convenient solution. Hotel rooms have plastic laundry bags, so just slip the laundry bag over the remote and use it. I only use the volume up/down, channel up/down and power buttons, so I don’t have to see the buttons. The infrared of the remote goes through the bag, so presto, a cheap and easy solution to not touching the dirty remote.

I’m in Phoenix (actually Scottsdale) for business and have one big question. Why do people choose to live here? I knew the temperature before I came and prepared accordingly. As my hotel is only 3/4 mile from where we are having meetings, I thought hoofing it wouldn’t be all that bad. Well at 10 am and then again at 8 pm, it wasn’t all that pleasant.

This is a desert; there are green lawns and other non-desert plants! Is there really enough water to go around? If I thought we had problems in San Diego, there must be bigger problems out here where the low temperature is 84 degrees!

I’ll cross Phoenix off my vacation list for the middle of the summer.

Yesterday I was reading an article by Walt Mosberg and read his code of ethics where he says that he doesn’t accept money or products (to keep) from companies whose products he reviews. This is quite admirable and lets him say whatever he wants. I, on the other hand, will accept money or products from anyone that wants to send them my way!

This doesn’t happen all that often, but recently I was paid for an ad on my blog (it didn’t change anything I had to say) and was just offered a product to review. I’ll be writing a review once I receive the product. Will the review be swayed because I receive the product for free? Absolutely not! I can already tell that there are things that I won’t like about the product, but I’ll try to be as fair and balanced as possible.

Before I sold ReceiptWallet, my blog was running on the same server that my ReceiptWallet web site was on, so there was no added expense to have it up. Now that ReceiptWallet is no longer mine, this blog costs me money every month. The cost is offset by advertising (I do accept advertising if anyone wants to advertise, but I make no guarantees that you’ll always like my content) and affiliate links. Right now I have affiliate links for Amazon and MacUpdate Promo. If you like my blog, please use the Amazon link; just enter your search and start your shopping from here!

So the question for the day is, does advertising or free products influence a good journalist or blogger? (Did I just call myself a journalist or a good blogger? That must have been a mistake; I’m just a guy writing random thoughts.) I think the answer to the question depends on the individual. As I don’t make my living through this blog, advertising and free products won’t influence me because I write this blog even without advertising and free products. For those that make their living from writing, I could see how it could be an influence, but if you’re good at your job, it shouldn’t. While Walt says he doesn’t take free stuff from companies, would people respect him less if he did?

Today I’m traveling for business and neglected to print a copy of my boarding pass (I didn’t save my boarding pass to a PDF, but printed it directly to my printer) for my expense report (I’m on Southwest where they collect boarding passes), so I went to the counter and asked if I could get a receipt. The agent, with a straight face, told me it was going to cost me $5 for it. I fell for it, hook, line and sinker! With airlines charging fees for everything, is it all that unreasonable that Southwest would charge for a receipt? I didn’t think so. The ticket agent got a good laugh out of it; I’m glad she got a good laugh out of me!