I feel like I’ve come across another one of those market niches where I can’t find much of any competitors and as a result, am likely being ripped off. Reminds me of wedding planning actually (not that I paid for much of that). The industry: pet shipping. By that I mean we are going to Washington D.C., want to keep our car (at least for the beginning), but do not want to subject our two (awesome) cats to a cross-country trip in a cramped car.

I guess it makes sense that there is not going to be to many competitors--I mean how many times in your life do you really come into this sort of situation? The market must be low and you have to have people in all destinations in all parts of the country. Still, it looks as if I’ll end up paying as much as I would for a regular plane ticket for a human in order for my 15 pound cat to catch a ride on the same plane in the freight section (at least I assume this is how it all works).

The price is so extravagant we’re starting to reconsider the cats-in-the-car approach, but we’ve heard some bad stories about this choice. There’s the potential for meowing/crying, cats crawling on the driver when you feel guilty about keeping them in the crate and of course, no litter tray. For the time being, I’ll continue to sell the solution of ‘cat stew’ to my wife. I mean seriously, $350+? What have they done to earn their keep? Cows and chickens would at least give us milk and eggs in the morning.

I swear at times it really does seem to be true that when one thing breaks, everything breaks. A couple of weeks ago I somehow managed to lose my phone, presumably slipping out of my coat pocket at a movie theater (that’ll teach me to shut it off rather than turn it to vibrate). Within a week, while I’m continuing some hope of finding it, my wife’s phone does not slip out of her coat pocket while she gets into the car and the shuts the car door onto her pocket, phone nestled snuggly inside. Suddenly her phone’s display is completely out and it holds a charge for one, maybe two minutes at a time.

In normal circumstances we would just take out losses and buy some used unlocked phones off of Craigslist or Ebay and pay the $20 per phone activation fee to Verizon. However, just as we’ve done this, we are now sitting a mere 4 weeks away from the end of our 2 year contracts. You would think that surely Verizon would have some sort of method of pro-rating if something like this happens so that you get, say 23/24ths of a discount off a phone, alas, this is not the case. Instead we are caught between a rock and a hard place and living in the stone age of *gasp* no cell phones! How ever will we cope?

My good friend is leaving her job soon and recently discovered that the job is being offered for significantly more than she is getting paid (roughly a 20% increase). Perhaps this might be expected if they were looking to hire someone more qualified/educated or if a number of years had passed and they needed to keep up with living expenses, however in this case she has transformed the job to include a multitude of different responsibilities since taking it on—so much so that the position is now going to have assistants (paid as much as she is currently)—a mere 1.5 years ago. In fact, the replacement will not even be given as many of the responsibilities as she is currently, instead giving some of the responsibilities to the new assistants.

This brings up the question—is this fair? Does the employer have a responsibility to increase an employee’s salary according to their worth? From a strictly capitalist standpoint, that is of course not true. Employer’s pay as little to their employees as they can get away with and employees attempt to negotiate a wage as high as they can get away with. However, the not-for-profit world is a curious one which has many unwritten rules, such as: often working unpaid overtime to keep everything running in the understaffed office, buying small supplies needed out of one’s own pocket, and of course there is an understanding that you will not be paid as much as you would for the same amount of responsibilities in the private for-profit world.

The more cynical part of me understands that this underpayment is probably due in large part to her giving notice that she would leave for grad school within 1.5 years almost immediately upon hiring. Normally an employer would have incentive to give raises to a promising employee in order to avoid losing him or her to another company. However, given the short timeframe and inevitability of her departure, that incentive was pretty much non-existent for her employer.

At the same time, knowing what I know about the non-profit world, I think this was probably also a bit of poor management. Keeping an employee happy is not just about preventing her leaving, but also because happy employees are simply better employees. Even if it’s just a sign of appreciation and encouragement, a raise after a 6 months to a year was in order. Perhaps the problem was the her boss just knew her too well—that no matter what she was going to work her tail off until the end.

Well after putting it off for quite some time, we finally got a laptop yesterday. This is also my first interaction with Windows Vista. Most of the press I’ve read has been largely negative e.g. it is overpriced, it is buggy, it is slow, it is not enough of an improvement.

Personally, I don’t think the overpriced thing is very warranted. Sure if you compare it to Linux it’s very expensive, but the hassle of finding compatible software for Linux is the same reason why I was so eagerly looking forward to switching from a Mac to a PC when I left high school. Since laptops have to come with an OS I had to buy something whether that be Windows XP or Vista Basic and the $40 upgrade to Vista Premium doesn’t seem that crazy for the additional tweaks it provides to the operating system. I imagine the people complaining about the price are the same people with BitTorrent running 24/7 on their computers.

I’d like to tell you whether it is buggy or slow, but right now I cannot give the opinion at all. This is because Dell has flooded my computer with a monumental slew of adware, spyware and demo programs!! Perhaps if I was more computer savvy I would know exactly which programs were necessary (such as those that need to run in the background for the soundcard, video card, modem, etc.) and which ones are completely superfluous, but I think that might take some time, unfortunately.

The final criticism is that Vista is not enough of an improvement over XP. From a first impression, I’m inclined to agree with this. When you look at past jumps from Windows 95 to Windows 98 to Windows XP, it just seemed like there was more there in the progressions. That said, there are definitely some aspects I do appreciate, such as improving on the nested menus from the start menu which I never liked dealing with before, the instant search function right on the start menu, the ability to click on a specific section of a file path in the explorer window to go to that folder, and finally, yeah, the (admittedly-gimmicky) way of scrolling through windows with Windows+tab keys is pretty neat.

I was intrigued when it was first released that Microsoft was about to unveil a ‘top secret’ product. I have to say though, it was a bit of a let down (as these revealings often are) when the Microsoft Surface was unveiled. First there is the problem with the orientation. Perhaps I am a bit biased due to suffering from whiplash this year, but there is a reason why computer monitors, television sets, chalkboards, mirrors and other objects you need stare at are parallel with your eyes. Who in their right mind would want to awkwardly bend over a table for an extended period of time. In what has become a very rare occurrence lately Tom Cruise had the right idea:

I mean, I know standing up is a passing fad these days, but is it really worth this hunching over?

In one of the main promo photos, they even have one of the models kneeling on the floor to avoid the hunched-over look:

But perhaps most importantly of all, what is the point? Since when did sorting through photos with a mouse (or alt-tab or arrow keys) become so cumbersome that I need to buy what surely must be a table costing thousands of dollars? Sure the technology looked pretty, but at the end of the day, all it seemed like was using your fingers as a cursor to select different windows and expand or reduce them and the part where you place something on the table and it connects is not much of an upgrade from current Bluetooth (or other) wireless technology.

It’s possible that maybe I’m looking at this too much from a home consumer perspective rather than a business perspective, but until I see some concrete actual examples of why this would at all practical, I’ll stick with my now horribly outdated flat-screen high-contrast high-resolution monitor, thanks.

Continuing on from my previous post of packing and moving is a resource I should really come back to in a couple of months at wikiHow: How to clean an apartment before moving out. I’ve definitely had some very interesting experiences in that awful situation that is retrieving your damage deposit. My first experience with this was with 4 college football-playing roommates who, in an alcohol-infused haze, decided to commemorate their victory over a division rival by writing the score on the wall in permanent marker and then signing their names underneath. Unfortunately for me, in another alcohol-infused haze they also got themselves kicked out of the dorm, leaving me to do all of the cleaning at the end of the year, including painting over their chef d’oeuvre.

My next house had a pretty hilarious situation where my roommate's fiancée, who had lived there rent-free for the past few months, put herself in charge of divvying up the cleaning responsibilities. Her solution? One person clean one bathroom, one person clean the other bathroom, one person vacuum the stairs, one person clean the living room and one person clean the kitchen. Anyone who thinks that sounds like a fair distribution clearly has never done the latter before leaving an apartment (think fridge, stovetop, oven, cupboards that had hardly been cleaned in 2 years, all with everyone's stuff still in them).

After that delightful situation was a summer apartment where I somehow managed to forget to clean the oven (though I thoroughly cleaned everything else). My landlord’s response? She kept the entire damage deposit, claiming she had to pay over $150 for someone (read: her friend) to clean the oven and the rest of the deposit she kept in order to replace the garbage disposal that I had requested over a month ago for her to repair! It was at that point that I decided to really do some digging into how Tenant Law worked and found, to my pleasant surprise, that at least in Seattle, they are written rather largely in favor of Tenants. So, with the law on my side, I waited 14 days for the legally-mandated itemized checklist from her, received nothing and wrote a letter informing her of this requirement she had not met. In less than a week I received 90% of my damage deposit back in a mailed check with no note attached.

My last painful clean-up job was with roommates who were an unfortunate combination of lazy, dirty and conniving (they were in charge of divvying the remaining deposit money and I still suspect they received a larger deposit back than they claimed before giving me my 'share').

Thankfully, now I live with my lovely wife and the only damage deposit I foresee myself losing will be due to a pair of mischievous cats who insist on breaking every blind they can get their paws onto!

Well, while I am still carefully considering which direction to take my career, whether that be business school or whatever else, my wife has decided to attend law school in Washington D.C. starting this August. This is great step for her, but the first step, moving cross-country, will be quite a difficult one. Our first reaction was to look into the classic U-haul approach. However, once we started to add up the costs of such a rental considering the enormous mileage we would need to pay for as well as the trailer we would need to tow our car with (my wife doesn’t drive unfortunately), we started to really contemplate just how much of what we have is actually worth. This of course doesn’t even cover some of the horror stories I’ve heard from sources regarding the reliability of these moving trucks and the nightmare that would be breaking down on a 100+ degree day in the middle of Kansas.

In retrospect, it was a very good idea from a financial standpoint for us to buy most all of our furniture used from Craigslist since now we don’t even need to consider the enormous cost of moving furniture across country. Now however, we have a very finite limit of what we can take (what we can fit into the car without putting too much of a load on the poor vehicle) and it is always amazing to see how many possessions one accumulates in such a relatively short time. Furniture is not the only item we will need to sell or give away through Craigslist. There are paint supplies, kitchen appliances, weight sets, camping equipment and host of other items that start to really add up. We would consider sending some possessions through slow shipping media mail or freight shipping if we had an address to send it to.

Another possibility to consider are these containers like Pods and Upack, but for now we’re just going to focus on achieving a Zen-like detachment from our possessions and toss them into the vortex that is Craigslist.org.

An old adage is that the best way to effect change is with your wallet. It's nice to see consumers of XM satellite radio following this often unheeded advice.

Last week, radio shock jocks Opie & Anthony were 'suspended' for 30 days (and according to some rumors, possibly even fired) after a guest on their show made what XM deemed 'inappropriate' comments on the satellite radio channel that has until now prided itself on its lack of censorship. While it is possible that this was just a reaction to the recent uproar and eventual firing of Don Imus due to inappropriate over-the-air radio comments, speculation is abound that it was in fact due to the possible impending merger between satellite radio companies XM and Sirius which would need approval from government regulators who might not take kindly to the obscene comments made that detailed fantasies of sexual violence towards government officials.

While recently sponsors withdrew following the comments of a shock jock (Imus), in an ironic twist now sponsors and consumers alike are withdrawing following a parent company’s disciplinary response to a shock jock's comments. It is impossible to be completely sure of what caused this situation to be reacted to in a completely opposite manner than the Imus situation. Perhaps it was Imus' declining popularity, a different attitude of his audience, or even the specific subject of his comments (does our society have a higher tolerance for misogyny and violence than racism?). However the consensus seems to be that Sirius and XM's appeal has not just been its lack of commercial breaks or original programming that it also has proudly advertised, but perhaps most of all, its role of serving as a safe haven from the ever-reaching arm of censors.

According to recent data, sales of the Hummer H2 fell 27% last year which was preceded by a 22% drop the previous year. Is this it? Are consumers finally turning green? After its original monstrosity, Hummer came out with a reduced-sized model, AKA the H2. That still wasn’t enough and more recently there has even been the yet smaller H3. Is the impending discontinuation of these models a sign that consumers are beginning to be environmentally conscious? Honestly, I extremely doubt it. Just like recent radio actions, the only motivation that consistently moves people is money. I complain about $50 fillups at the pump, but that’s is a bargain compared to what these guys are paying each week.

So why am I so skeptical about people’s motivation? For the same reason Fox News is so popular or why some watch the Daily Show every night but no other news program or paper, or why the people in my office who watched An Inconvenient Truth in the break room during the lunch hour were people who already whole-heartedly accepted the theory of Climate Change while one of my co-workers, who was immediately disdainful of the movie because of it being with that “Gore” guy and believed Climate Change was really ‘more of a religious question’ sat at her desk.

My point is, people in this day and age only expose themselves to a specific segment of media with a truncated range of ideas. As such, only in extreme cases do people have a large shift in their beliefs and priorities. The people buying hybrids are coming from Civics, not Hummers. The people coming from Hummers are probably limiting themselves to bastions of efficiency like the Navigator or Explorer. Environmentalism (with the exception of protectionism) only really began in the last 30-40 years. Its going to take much longer than that before a real paradigm shift occurs.

I have to put the word out about a GREAT movie I saw last night that just came out: Hot Fuzz. I hadn't really hear anything about it until we decided to go see a movie and saw it was playing at the local theater. It had very good ratings from IMDB and Rotten Tomatoes so we took a chance and it certainly paid off! A lot of it is a satire of cop movies from the 80's and 90's, but it's much more than just that. I can't remember the last time I laughed so hard throughout an entire movie (though Borat certainly had its moments). I forget sometimes that although the price of movie tickets can be so expensive nowadays, the audience factor can be so great on a movie when an entire crowd of people is laughing together (the laughtrack effect--though I hate canned laughter on TV shows). So go see this movie in a theater while you still can!

So who else tried to make that argument in math class "How is this practical? When am I ever going to use this?" I know that I did and had fellow classmates who wholeheartedly agreed. Unfortunately for future defenders of this point of view, there is a clear cut example of just what math can do.

James Simons, a math professor and now head of a leading fund manager earned $1.7 BILLION last year. And this is not one of those cases of a CEO rolling in bonuses while the company flounders. His fund has earned upwards of 34% annual returns.

This scenario begs the moral question of whether these hedge funds (and other technical analysis traders) are contributing anything to the market which they profit from. They might argue that they are filling gaps created by market inefficiency while increasing the liquidity of financial markets, both of which can positive benefits. Federal Reserve chieftains of past and present have referred to it as 'greasing the wheels of capitalism'.

Others argue that it is manipulating wealth in a secretive manner to create more wealth while providing no good or service. It can't be said there is no argument in in this viewpoint---the methods are secretive and it is a process which leaves no tangible byproduct. It is interesting to note that the fund managers featured in the Alpha magazine report refused comment to the New York Times which might be an indication of their belief in how much water their defense holds...

When did we seem to just stop paying attention to these gas price increases? It somewhat reminds me of the casualty numbers in Iraq which were reported on a daily basis at first but then gradually slipped outside of the media's blinders. I know that some SUV or other large car owners probably won't be sympathetic, but my sedan was $1 short of 50 yesterday! We went out for dinner and a movie and the gas was more than both of those put together (even with these ridiculous $10 movie tickets nowadays)! I just looked around and apparently there are reports now that gas will soon be hitting $4 a gallon. Is there any end in sight? At least I can take solace when observing my English in-laws, some of whom pay upwards of $150 at the pump!

One of my current interests in my spare time is currency trading. I find the whole field of technical analysis of markets quite fascinating. One of the major characteristics of Forex (foreign currency exchange) is that the huge volume of the market creates extreme liquidity where one can buy and sell millions of dollars worth of currency in a matter of minutes. This 24 hour market holds many traders who make their living holding positions for just 3-5 minutes at a time, shooting for a small gain combined with the large leverage many brokers offer nowadays. This is why one trader who makes posts on some currency exchange message boards is beginning to stand out. "Jacko" as he is called, uses the single-minded strategy of only trading his favorite currency pair (the Euro/US Dollar), only in one direction and only at round numbers (1.3100, 1.3200, etc.) as well as the occasional buy on dips in the trend and 50% retracements.

Now some might be skeptical at first, saying that this is really just due to the bullish run of the Euro in recent years, but he is certainly no Monday morning quarterback, as you can see in a post he made last year predicting the huge run we've seen for over the past year.

He is a breath of fresh air among the day trading scalpers who make thousands of trades every year.

Having somewhat 'grown up' with the rise of the internet (I can remember computer labs devoted to teaching my classmates and I how to use it back in 1994), I can remember when it had an extreme biased towards younger people. As a result, your online persona never would really interact with the older generation. When Myspace, Friendster and Facebook initially came out, this seemed to be the case as well. However, as my generation has grown up and the internet expands to a larger and larger cross-section of society, this is certainly no longer the case.

Increasingly prospective employers are looking up their candidates online to gather more information on them which might not be known. This New York Times article from last year gives an example of a recent graduate who had been hearing no responses from job applications until he removed a satirical essay he had written online under his real name.

It doesn't just stop at jobs either. My wife, who recently has applied to law school, is part of an online community of fellow prospective students. Even at such a relatively small online community (at least when compared to mega sites such as Myspace), many suspect admissions committee members browse the site, connecting members accounts with their application, sometimes to adverse results if they speak ill of the institution or anything else inappropriate they might have said while under the mistaken assumption of anonymity.

Some tips when using an online persona:

1) Google your own name--make sure nothing that comes up (that you can have an effect on) puts you in a bad light professionally.

2) Keep online personas anonymous whenever possible. If you feel the need to put your last name there so that people can find you, look into making most of your info available only when someone has been confirmed as a 'friend' through the site (an option most social networking sites have).

3) If the above two options are not heeded, at least BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU SAY ON THE INTERNET

Sincerely,
Anonymous

Obviously an important question to ask myself when pondering attending business school is what job I want out of it? What type of job that an MBA will help me get is desirable. I found an interesting sample of some of these jobs that are recommended for twenty-somethings looking to begin their career. In other words, me. For if I don't find something in a listing of "Top 20 Jobs" that I would like, I should really reconsider what I'm heading towards.

Thankfully there definitely are some jobs in there that look interesting. The first one listed in fact, Product Manager, sounds great to me. Although it sounds like one of those jobs with a crazy amount of work, it looks like a job where I could be able to use my creativity, problem-solving and general business skills (which I assume will have been augmented after going through an MBA program.

Of course, all this is easier said than done. I imagine a job with that level of responsibility is rarely simply handed over to fresh grads...

As I pay my taxes this weekend, numerous complaints about our insane taxation policies come to mine, but the following just seems like there could be no earthly reason to justify: why can we no longer file taxes online for free?? Starting this year if your household adjusted gross income for a joint filing is a hair over $52,000, you are no longer allowed to use a free filing service. So let's get this straight. I have to PAY, in order to GIVE MONEY to the IRS in a method that makes it EASIER for them!? By submitting my taxes digitally, the IRS gets to: handle less papers that take up physical space, they can easily crunch numbers for statistics, they can easily crunch numbers to determine whether an audit might be advisable and most importantly of all, it would cut down on errors on both sides since numbers are automatically calculated for taxpayers and automatically transcribed for the IRS!! I can only come up with two possible reasons why this policy is in effect:

1) Tax preparation companies such as H&R Block and Jackson Hewitt have spent a great deal of money and effort lobbying the Ways and Means committee and others.

or

2) The IRS is a bureaucracy like any other, i.e. they have an inherent bias to either grow or at least maintain the status quo. After all, it would be very likely that an increase in efficiency for them would mean a reduction in employees and budget.

Meanwhile, it seems all I can really do is cling to my pipe dream of the Fair Tax where this annual headache and waste of time would be abolished.

The now-infamous Aqua Teen Hunger Force bomb scare in Boston has brought to light the recent increase in guerilla and viral marketing techniques from companies. The move makes sense really when you look back at the evolution of advertisements. It began with the simple testimonial approach at the beginning with '9/10 doctors agreeing', celebrities telling you their product of choice, or fellow 'housewives' telling the audience what products work from them. Then around the 80/90s there seemed to be a move towards simply placing products next to sexy images (to the point where advertisers such as Budweiser were satirical of themselves in years to come). It makes sense that this gradual move towards subtlety would eventually result a new emphasis on Word-of-Mouth Marketing (WOM). I can't help but feel this really caught on with Ronco infomercials and his "if you promise to tell just 3 people..." sales pitches.

It's even got to the point where entire companies are devoted to increasing this WOM advertising, such as BzzAgent where consumers are paid to conduct WOM advertising among friends. Does this bring up an ethical question? Companies like BzzAgent claim that there is no condition that forces the product 'ambassadors' to give positive reviews--but is it not somewhat implied? When someone cooks me a free dinner, I don't give them an objective critique of their product. Heck, even at the grocery store where they are giving out free samples, I feel it impolite to say anything negative about the free food I was just given (as if the employee heating the product up in the microwave cares!).

At the end of the day though, as long as people are not being seduced into pyramid-scheme rip-offs or products dangerous to their health, does it really matter? If my friend subconsciously influences me to buy a diet Pepsi instead of Coke next time I'm at the vending machine, does it hurt anyone? (well besides Coca-Cola that is!). Perhaps the best argument against it is that we may be at beginning of a dangerous downhill slope?

Reading about successful business entrepreneurs, the lesson that seems to come through the strongest is that contrary to some public perception, having a successful business is not a easy path to riches, but one of tireless work, long hours, concentration, patience, and absolute commitment to success. Attempting to start one's own business with anything less than 100% commitment to the endeavor is the surest and quickest route to losing one's business, savings and mind. This is nothing new of course in the arena of entrepreneurship as we see in this old photo of an inventor selling his new "bulletproof" vest to the police department.

An interesting article in the BBC news today how a simple foreign accent can impart so much meaning to someone’s perception of a person, particularly in America. I was lucky enough to do a bit of traveling after high school and it was very interesting at the hostels how the Americans seemed enamored by British/Australian/New Zealand accents while the reverse didn’t seem to be true much at all. My theory is that its due to the overwhelming exportation of the American entertainment industry where other English-speaking countries are inundated with American accents to the point where it’s commonplace. Conversely, in America we only come into contact with the occasional accent in the media and it’s often used purposefully to add something to personality/character, whether the stuck-up Brit Simon Cowell, the friendly Australian Claire (Lost), the English gentleman Jude Law or the posh Robin Leach on Lifestyle of the Rich and Famous. This is where the article is particularly interesting when they interviewed a former real estate agent who used it to market a product to appear upscale which is not a rare occurrence when you think of everything from Lexus car commercials to even Sheba cat food!

I don’t like to mix politics into this blog too much but I feel like this is something any American should be educated about. Whether for or against the current action in Iraq, it is surprising how many of us (government officials included) know so little about the differences between Sunnis and Shiites (or ‘Shias’). This is a great summary of some of the primary differences between the two groups of people who we are fighting and/or helping over there. Surely a better education on this can only help general understanding of the issues often being discussed such as federalism, multiculturalism, secession, civil war, etc.