Credit Card Changes Driving Customers Away

Hooray! We might be winning...

Credit Card Changes Driving Customers Away

Economics in One Lesson

This is one of those links you tuck away and revisit when you need a fresh perspective or a reset of values when things are hazy...

Economics is haunted by more fallacies than any other study known to man. This is no accident. The inherent difficulties of the subject would be great enough in any case, but they are multiplied a thousandfold by a factor that is insignificant in, say, physics, mathematics or medicine-the special pleading of selfish interests. While every group has certain economic interests identical with those of all groups, every group has also, as we shall see, interests antagonistic to those of all other groups. ...

Economics in One Lesson

So You Want to Learn Japanese

You’ve eaten at a few Japanese restaurants, seen some anime, hosted an exchange student, and had a Japanese girlfriend. And now, somewhere in the back of your tiny brain, you think that Japanese would be a good language to learn…

http://pepper.idge.net/japanese/

How Much Student Loan Debt is Too Much?

How much student loan debt is too much? Anything over $0.00 is too much. It's that simple. There is absolutely no reason (and no return on investment) for a student to go high into debt at an expensive school than to stay locally and pay in-state tuition at a state school. The differentiation between the education at the "upper end" schools (which are exponentially more spendy) vs. the traditional state schools is insignificant.

On average, tuition for in-state schools is around $6000 / year (two semesters). That's literally $500 / month. Who can't afford that? Simple budgeting and cash flow affords that education. For $12000 / year, or $1000 / month, a student can stay at the dorms with a meal plan. What's exactly wrong with flipping a burger or delivering a pizza while attending school? How hard exactly is it to earn $1000 / month??

See, the "entitlement" mentality is infecting us, and debt has become the facilitator to these entitlements. It's absolutely criminal that parents are setting up their children for a large debt obligation right at the start of their adult life. Student loans are particularly nasty, since they don't disappear during bankruptcies, etc. How many people do you know in their 30's and 40's still paying off student loan debts? I actually knew this number at one point, but have forgotten, but it's exceptionally high.

My children are going to earn their way through school. I hope to have saved a little up for them, of course, and I hope they get scholarships. But, ultimately I hope they learn the value of hard work, budgeting, and staying off the American crack which we call debt.

The New Urkel

Received this in my inbox... Pretty funny.

The Greatest Shortcoming of the Human Race

"The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function." -- Dr. Albert A. Bartlett

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-QA2rkpBSY

(this is the starting section of the whole video, part 1 of 8)

Ask a Ninja Identity Revealed

I've just revealed the secret identity of the famed ninja from Ask a Ninja... The voice and mannerisms are too close to be coincidence.

Start watching (and listening!) at around 2:13...

Elmo Live Reveals the Ninja's Identity

Note that the ninja in the opening intro sequence of all Ask a Ninja episodes has blue eyes, while the ninja in the actual episode has brown and is a little slimmer. This fits because the lab tech in the Elmo Live video clearly has brown eyes.

This will obviously be my last post, as I assume a painful and long drawn out death. Perhaps simply even typing these words, the power of the ninja will reach through the internet, up into my computer, and {#`%${%&`+'${`%&NO CARRIER

Proof of Global Warming

Daddy, is Santa Real?

What follows is from my archive (a previous blog) from 2006...

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I'm a proud father, though I'm frustrated too. What can you do about some things but to just shake your head and wonder.

I'm a member of the Ogden Athletic Club. One of the biggest selling points for the club (in my mind) is the nursery care they provide for young children. My experience with their childcare has so far been mostly positive, but I have to write about an incident that happened a week or two ago.

My daughter, 3 years old (almost 4), was in tears on the way home from the club. My wife had picked her up from the nursery and relayed to me what had happened that made my little princess so distraught.

A fellow boy had apparently mentioned something about Santa Claus, probably about all the toys Santa was going to bring him. You know, something typical and innocent to say around Christmas time. My daughter, with a pure heart and only good intentions, promptly informed the boy that in fact Santa wasn't real, that he's just make believe and that Santa would not be bringing him any presents.

What's a strong willed girl to do but to set the young man straight? It's my daughter's nature to try and help out when and where she can. She's very smart and understands things at a level most children her age don't. When someone says something she inherently knows is wrong, it's her duty in life to inform them the truth. What's a smart strong-willed 3 year old supposed to do?

So my wife walks in after the situation had apparently cooled down some, but there was still tension in the air. Apparently, many of the kids were offended by my daughter's words, they were yelling at her and she was left to defend her position basically alone. "Well, who brings us the presents then?" asked the boy.

"Our parents give us presents," was my daughter's reply.

One nursery assistant, having her own child in nursery that day, promptly grabbed her daughter and dragged her away from the situation. She was so afraid of her daughter hearing that Santa wasn't real, to hear the truth. Why not take that opportunity to teach the child? Teach your child that some people have certain beliefs, and that others have other beliefs, and that it's all ok for each to have their own.

I get the feeling that the nursery staff was a little peeved at my daughter's actions. My wife described the tension in the air, and I would believe it given that no teacher intervened in the verbal argument between my daughter and the rest of the class.

I can't expect her to know all the nuances and dances we perform to keep the cultural Santa mythology going. She's not a politician yet, she just tells it like it is; 3 year old's don't have a sense of political correctness. Just as true as it was in my daughter's mind that Santa wasn't real, it was true in the boy's mind that Santa was real. It's black or white for this age, there is no understanding of gray issues, political correctness, or historic fictional characters.

In my daughters mind, God is real and Santa is make believe, and I frankly like it that way. I can understand why the boy felt so offended and confused (my daughter contradicted the boy's parents). And I understand why my daugther was in tears over getting verbally ganged up on by her peers.

What I don't understand is why we continue to lift up Santa, yet put down God. Why do we lie to our children and let them so wholeheartedly believe in something that in a few short years they will realize is not true. Wouldn't it be better telling our children that Santa is just a fictional figure head, someone who is fun to talk or pretend about, something to tickle our fancy and imaginations like any good story book? As opposed to setting them up for disappointment and breaking trust in their parents?

I want my children to wholeheartedly trust me with everything. I will only ever tell my children the truth, because I want to model and teach them true faith, true trust and love. Setting our children up for disappointment by perpetuating a lie burns bridges and makes our children's hearts callus.

My biggest disappointment is with the nursery workers. Their inaction speaks volumes. Their inability to act and deal with the situation really demonstrates how sacred the lie of the Santa Christmas has become. The original St. Nicholas advocated people sell their goods and give to the poor. Shouldn't that be what Santa is all about? Shouldn't that be what we're teaching our children?

MPF File Extractor

I always thought that the .mpf file extension was a proprietary file format used with Microsoft's Clip Organizer product or via their online clipart gallery. In fact, it's not very exciting or difficult to extract clip art (or I assume other media) from the package file, since it's only an xml file with the clipart files encoded as Base64 inside.

I have a legal copy of the Clip Organizer product. However, I don't necessarily install it (nor want to) on every computer. But, I do make extensive use of Microsoft's online clipart gallery which means I get a lot of ClipArt.mpf files lying around.

Searching, I found a PERL script to extract mpf files. But, I don't use Perl regularly, so getting the right perl modules installed wasn't exciting. I decided it would just be easier to write a parser / extractor in Java. If you're interested, here is the (free) java source code.

The class requires the Apache Commons Codec library to be in the classpath.

Halloween Politics

Layman's Guide to Credit Default Swaps

This is a good video and introduction to the problem of credit default swaps, which is one of the primary causes in our current financial meltdown.

http://vimeo.com/1915392

Once a Month

Seems I'm on the once-a-month blog posting. Not bad really, but improvements could be made.

Well, lacking anything really insightful to post, here is a useful chart:
The Sarah Palin Debate Flow Chart

Quote of the Day

Another quote, this time from my very good friend and teacher, Ron H.

We were talking about the market and such. Especially after today's 7% drop in the DOW, I thought what he said was timely:

Doesn't much matter what the stock market, etc. does; the rivers still run and the leaves still change colors. Somebody else is in charge of that, so it still works.

He always makes me smile.

Quote of the Day

I've been reading a bit about Patrick M. Byrne (CEO of Overstock), in particular his campaign against naked short selling. This quote (from March 8th) comes as a response to a Business Week reporter. It made me laugh:

Since I think "EBITDA" is the stupidest thing I ever heard emanate from Wall Street (no small feat), I … don’t begin to know how to answer. I suppose I could go and recast all my numbers into EBITDA (or for that matter, "pro forma") but I think I’ll do something more valuable with my time, like alphabetize my CD’s by, "Name of drummer."

And, if you don't know anything about naked short selling, or of Mr. Bryne's "campaign" against it, try www.businessjive.com (a site of Byrne's).