Little Big Planet update

I posted an auction for 2 more billboards that I found, but under the guise that I was only selling 1 and keeping the other.  Long story short I got market price on the sale and a local person was the winner of the auction.  I asked them if they'd like to see both and decide which one they liked and they asked if I'd sell both for the $100 winning auction price (actually it was $102.51 but paypal would have charged transaction fees so I said $100 cash was fine) and I said sure, since I don't think future ones will be going for quite this much (one recently ended at $62).  So here's my newest breakdown:

Sale      - $200.00

ebay fees - $6.40
Net       - $193.60

Not bad if I do say so myself.  I still have one left, so I might wait until all the other ones have disappeared off ebay to try to sell it.  

The Great Depression

This is a link from a finance blog I read.  It's a very entertaining look at some bullish headlines regarding the stock market, before, during, and after the impressive drop in the stock market.

Apple vs. Microsoft

The "I'm a Mac, and I'm a PC" advertising campaign has always been a little bothersome to me in its snide presentation but I think the November election is infusing the PR group with that little something extra that typically only comes out during dirty political campaigning.

The most recent ads show PC (it's actually Microsoft they're after but whatever) budgeting for Vista's flaws by piling a huge amount of money for advertising and very little to fix the flaws, and then after talking this strategy over with Mac, pushing all the money in to advertising.  This is exactly what I would expect from a dirty political campaign, which knows that you can say pretty much anything in a public advertisement and get away with it even though it's obviously not factual.  I don't have to know a Microsoft programmer to know that Microsoft is spending millions and millions on Vista updates, and I know after using Vista for a year that I haven't run across any of these supposed flaws, which Apple has never actually identified in their commercials, only spoken vaguely about.

I hope that this is the precipice of a backlash over this type of dirty campaigning.  People only have so much tolerance for mudslinging when it starts to ebb into the realm of unreliability and I think Apple is starting to cross that line.

Ultimately, it's the elitist nature of Apple, charging more for their systems than the equivalent PC (running an MS product or linux) that hurts them and keeps their supposedly perfect operating system out of the hands of the masses.  Sure, people have accepted paying $50 extra for a well designed MP3 player, but they're not paying $300 for a new computer, so ultimately Apple is failing.  Instead of trying to scare people into paying more maybe they should make themselves more accessible and see if they remain unblemished with a 20% market share rather than the 8% market share they've been hovering around for years.  

Starbucks packed at 9:30AM?

I don't know what this world is coming to when I think I'm strolling in late to work and the line at Starbucks is nearly out the door!  Much busier than it usually is around 8 when I normally walk by.  It begs the question I always pondered walking around San Francisco; What do all these people do for a living?

The crowd was younger and many had laptops, but we're not talking college students and downtown Pasadena is not a college town.  My best guess is that before the mall actually opens at 10, maybe all of the employees head over to Starbucks to get a pick-me-up before starting a day in retail.  I guess maybe the economy isn't that bad after all!

Hummingbird

Walking to work this morning I had one of those amazing human/animal experiences that really make you appreciate life.

A hummingbird who was going about its business drinking nectar from flowers stopped, flew over to me and hovered two feet from my face and right at eye level.  I paused for maybe 15 seconds and it just continued to hover there.  Then it dropped a little hummingbird poop and flew back up into the tree.  A very nice way to start a Sunday.

I don't have much sympathy

The linked article is about Fannie Mae trying to foreclose on a house that was behind payments (deputies had delivered over 30 notices of foreclosure) and a woman shot herself when they were trying to evict her.  She lived, and is in the hospital and Fannie Mae has decided to sign over the house to her.  This all just tells me that the world is a big joke and irresponsibility rules and will be rewarded.  I hope that there are 10 million copycats also in foreclosure who all think this will get them their house for free...  That would pretty much be the best possible outcome.

Just think for a second about the actual implications here.  A government body has just decided that they will individually take pity on individual people and hand over government assets on the taxpayers behalf to those pitiful individuals. It is one more example that makes me wonder why I live within my means when seemingly the majority of people do not.

I do not approve.

Toilet Seat Protectors

I know that the part has to hang down otherwise it would never get sucked into the toilet automatically, but damn it's annoying when the toilet seat cover falls in when you first put it down.

Stupid design award goes to the automatic toilet which one time sensed me placing the toilet seat cover and thought I had sat down so when I stood up it sucked the toilet seat cover into the abyss.  Someone should really have tested the logic on that thing if you're only tripping the sensor for a few seconds.  Not that many people can get their business done that fast.