Author Archive: Paul Epps

Baggage Buddies: How to Save $3,500 on a Flight from OC to SF

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A large group of kids from the music program at Northwood High School are traveling to San Francisco next week. Half are flying up on United and half are flying on Southwest. As you probably know, Southwest doesn’t charge for checked luggage. United does. Each kid on the United flight will give his or her suitcase to a “baggage buddy” on the Southwest flight. Each Southwest kid will check two bags while each United kid will check none. Using this arrangement on both legs of the trip cuts the travel cost by $3,500. Read more →

I Won’t Be Living Here Anymore

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Somewhere in America, a boy — a high school senior, college bound — says to his mom, “You don’t need to renew my magazine subscriptions because I won’t be living here anymore.” His mom, who already knows this but is momentarily stunned by the clarity of it, starts to say, “When you have a three-day weekend, come and visit us” but can’t get through it without crying . . . Read more →

Everything Must Be Replaced

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Uh oh, it looks like the wireless connection here at EppsNet headquarters just went down . . . “NOTHING MAKES ME ANGRIER THAN AN UNRELIABLE NETWORK CONNECTION!” my son yells. “WE NEED A NEW ROUTER! WE NEED A NEW MODEM! WE NEED A NEW SERVICE PROVIDER! WE NEED NEW COMPUTERS!” “We don’t need new computers,” his mom says. “YES WE DO!” Read more →

My Kid is Going to Cal

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I always kind of assumed that the boy would follow in his pappy’s footsteps at USC, but he just sent in his intent to register at Cal, thus ending (effectively) a journey that started on his first day of kindergarten last week. It wasn’t last week? It was 13 years ago? It seems like last week. I picked him up after school and he sat in the back seat of the car sipping a juice box while we talked about his day. I have a video of it. There are three schools in California that you could plausibly go to ahead of USC: Stanford, Cal Tech — two small, private schools with ultra-low admit rates — and Cal. Cal has a better academic reputation than USC. USC has cranked up the academics over the last 20 years, and especially over the last 10 years, to the point where if you… Read more →

Pushing the Avocado

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The girl at Subway was really pushing the avocado today . . . the third time she asked someone, “Do you want anything else on your sandwich? Some avocado, maybe?” I asked her, “Does the avocado cost extra?” “Yes,” she said. “Do you want some?” “No, but I was thinking if it was free it would be a good deal. If I liked avocado.” Read more →

The Price of Taxing the Rich

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Nearly half of California’s income taxes before the recession came from the top 1% of earners: households that took in more than $490,000 a year. High earners, it turns out, have especially volatile incomes—their earnings fell by more than twice as much as the rest of the population’s during the recession. When they crashed, they took California’s finances down with them. — WSJ.com Read more →

There Will Be No Additional Rules

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Welcome to Nordstrom We’re glad to have you with our Company. Our number one goal is to provide outstanding customer service. Set both your personal and professional goals high. We have great confidence in your ability to achieve them. Nordstrom Rules: Rule #1: Use best judgment in all situations. There will be no additional rules. Please feel free to ask your department manager, store manager, or division general manager any question at any time. — Nordstrom Employee Handbook Read more →

Meeting Ron Artest

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My kid and a few of his high school friends are on their way to see Ron Artest at Living Spaces in Irvine. He’s doing a meet and greet from 3:00 to 5:00. What kind of advertising is that? Those kids don’t have money to buy furniture. Read more →

What Is Government?

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To be GOVERNED is to be watched, inspected, spied upon, directed, law-driven, numbered, regulated, enrolled, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled, checked, estimated, valued, censured, commanded, by creatures who have neither the right nor the wisdom nor the virtue to do so. To be GOVERNED is to be at every operation, at every transaction noted, registered, counted, taxed, stamped, measured, numbered, assessed, licensed, authorized, admonished, prevented, forbidden, reformed, corrected, punished. It is, under pretext of public utility, and in the name of the general interest, to be placed under contribution, drilled, fleeced, exploited, monopolized, extorted from, squeezed, hoaxed, robbed; then, at the slightest resistance, the first word of complaint, to be repressed, fined, vilified, harassed, hunted down, abused, clubbed, disarmed, bound, choked, imprisoned, judged, condemned, shot, deported, sacrificed, sold, betrayed; and to crown all, mocked, ridiculed, derided, outraged, dishonored. That is government; that is its justice; that is its morality. — P.J.… Read more →

EppsNet at the Movies: Out of the Past

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Kathie Moffat: Oh, Jeff, I don’t want to die! Jeff Bailey: Neither do I, baby, but if I have to, I’m gonna die last. The absence of sentimentality is essential to the film noir. Everyone was so young in this one: Robert Mitchum, Kirk Douglas. Great black-and-white cinematography and a classic final scene with the girl and the kid at the gas station. Rating: Five stars (out of five) Read more →

How to Be a Genius

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You have to keep a dozen of your favorite problems constantly present in your mind, although by and large they will lay in a dormant state. Every time you hear or read a new trick or a new result, test it against each of your twelve problems to see whether it helps. Every once in a while there will be a hit, and people will say, “How did he do it? He must be a genius!” — Richard Feynman Read more →

A Couple of Schillers

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A couple of Schillers resigned from NPR after one of them said (among other things): Tea Party people aren’t just Islamaphobic, but really xenophobic, I mean basically they are, they believe in sort of white, middle-America gun-toting. I mean, it’s scary. They’re seriously racist, racist people. Well really . . . I haven’t been this shocked since Claude Rains discovered gambling at Rick’s Cafe. It shakes my belief system to the core to think that someone who works at NPR believes that Tea Party members are scary white gun-toting racists. Although come to think of it, everyone I know who listens to NPR believes that Tea Party members are scary white gun-toting racists. These guys really need to give up the federal funding. They could go full bore in promoting their mission and stop pretending to respect the common folk, who in turn would be relieved of the burden of… Read more →

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