I DON'T Have To Have That

My wife came up to visit me in my office at the end of the day today. She came by to tell me that she had just come from the bank and my debit card had been disabled. There were about $700 in charges made at gas stations and a Walgreens in and around Warren, MI. The two largest charges were at Walgreens for $306 and $311. What the hell can you buy at Walgreens that costs that much? I suppose it could be pharmaceuticals but wow.

The bank gave me paperwork I need to file a claim for each transaction. I have to do due diligence and contact the merchants, notify them that it is a fraudulent charge and ask if they will reverse the charge. I have to document what the merchants tell me and what action was taken, if any. What a pain.

My best guess is that my number was somehow captured from an online transaction. I don't use my card very much to begin with and don't shop online with great frequency (I'm too much into that instant gratification thing). When I do use it online, it is with familiar companies such as Amazon, Newegg, etc. I'm pretty sure I know where it happened.

I was cruising the deals.woot list last week and saw a USB cable that had 7 different ends, including iPod, mini and micro USB, Nokia, and Sony-Ericsson. Once I added shipping, the cable was about $7 so I ordered one. The site was called I Have to Have That (ihavetohavethat.com or ihtht.com). I had never ordered from them before but I saw a lot of their deals on the deals.woot list in the past. I didn't even think twice. In fact, I bought some dog biscuits from one of their partner sites a few days later.

My products arrived in a timely manner and I am satisfied with them for what I paid. But that is the only place I have shopped recently that I can even imagine would have skimmed my number. Oddly enough, the charge for the cable hasn't come through yet but the dog biscuits have. Of course, this is the last time I will ever shop I Have to Have That and, in the future, I will always use PayPal if that is an option.

Just because I'm mildly paranoid now, I also went through and changed all of my passwords for email, Facebook, etc. and scanned my systems for viruses.

These Aren't The Droids Deals You're Looking For

A few weeks ago, my wife discovered Swoopo. For those not familiar with Swoopo it is what is referred to as a penny auction site. The auctions run on a timer with a fixed bid interval (2¢, 6¢, 12¢, etc.). When you bid, just like in a real auction, time is added to the counter. In this way, you can be within a minute of the auction ending literally for hours.

The lure is that, sometimes (rarely, actually), the item goes for very very cheap. A Canon Rebel T1i 15MP Digital SLR for $6.80, an Acer 18.1" laptop for $3.20, and a 32GB iPhone 3G S for $1.14 are but a few of the extreme examples. But imagine that iPhone for even $263.88 (no contract required) - it's still a great bargain.

The catch is that it costs 60¢ to place each bid.

Some people have equated it to gambling and, honestly, the psychology involved is very similar and the site does a lot of things to enhance those effects. Having been a previous estate auction junkie, the psychology is very similar there, too.

After watching for a relatively brief time, the wife decided to jump in and give it a try. She bought some bids and started bidding on items. It took her a couple of days and a couple of bid packs to even start getting the hang of it and still she wasn't winning. She checked out the beginner auctions and won a 20-bid voucher for just under $2, I think. That got her back in the game and play the game she did.

Having been drooling over iPhones, I had been carefully watching the iPhone auctions. Looking at average prices, close times, etc. I registered so I could ad them to a watch list but I wasn't going to start bidding until I had a decent grasp of how things worked.

Then they got me. Do you remember me saying the site does a lot of things to enhance the psychological effects? They sent me an email telling me that "today and today only" the first bid pack I bought would include 25% additional bids for "free". Hmmm... I was planning on buying bids eventually anyway. Why not buy them now and get a little bonus? Which is exactly what I did.

I tried to be very judicious with my bids and was even bidding on bid packs to try to pad my stockpile. But, you see, they have this thing called a bid butler. You set a lower and upper limit and the maximum number of bids you want to allot within that range. The bid butler is guaranteed to place a bid for you within the last 10 seconds of the auction as long as the price is within the range you specified and it has not expended the allotment of bids you gave it.

Here's the rub. If I have an active bid butler set for, say, $5.00 to $15.00, the price is at $5.22 and my bid butler has bid for me in those "last 10 seconds" a couple of times already. Then, somebody else activates a bid butler starting at $5.24. His bid butler will make his first bid, the next bid, to which my bid butler will react and bid $5.26 (assuming a 2¢ auction) and what I have termed a Bid Butler Battle will ensue. The two bid butlers will continue to bid against each other (quite rapidly) until one of the contestents is out of bids or out of range. The bottom line is that a Bid Butler Battle can eat up bids very very quickly.

So, why use bid butlers? Because if you look at the ended auctions you'll see that the majority of the winning bids were placed by a bid butler. At any rate, I burned through a couple of chunks of bids before deciding I didn't necessarily want to use bid butlers anymore.

So, there I sat, placing bids now and then on this item or that (not simultaneously) until I had only a single bid left. I was just going to let it languish there until, on a whim, I took a look at the beginner auctions. Beginner auctions are reserved for those who have not yet won any auction. The participant pool is limited and the experience level is lower but you also won't find any big ticket items there.

At any rate, I was perusing the auctions and across the top the site was showing four or five auctions that would be "ending soonest" and I saw a 20 bid voucher counting down. 5... 4... 3... 2... 1... I clicked the bid button, I saw the bid amount flash and saw the timer jump up but my bid count didn't go down. I quickly clicked the title to go to the actual item page and discovered that my bid hadn't registered. So I waited a few more seconds and 5... 4... 3... 2... 1... bid! My bid registers, timer jumps to 20 seconds, and I watch it count down to zero. I won the 20 bid pack for $1.20 ($1.80 when you calculate in the cost of the bid). I was back in the game!

So here's what's happening. When you go to the site, you see a lot of shiny, valuable objects being auctioned off at very low prices. Those low prices are attached to a counter that is ticking away ever closer and closer to zero "Oh my God! I'm going to miss out on a fantabulous bargaination! I better get in on this before it gets away." Then they start enticing you in with special promotions and special deals and before you know it, they have you hooked.

So, I had my 20 bids and decided I might as well use them to try to get that iPhone. I got up this morning and started watching one who's timer was counting down. I bid very very carefully. The competition was tough but I was still in the fight. I had about 5 bids left and decided that I was going to use them up and be done with it. If I won with those 5 bids, so be it. If not, I was out.

Then I saw it. On the lower left of the bid button there were three little people figures. They had closed the auction to new bidders. It was just us now (however many that was). If they've closed the auction, maybe it's almost over. Well, I just have to stay in it now... so I bought another bid pack [hangs head in shame]. I actually made a good show of it but when the sale price got within a couple dollars of $100, I had to back out. The competition had gotten too rich for me.

Now, here's what I figured out. I went to the AT&T site yesterday and found out I can get a refurbished 16GB iPhone for $299 ($317 w/ shipping/tax/fees/whatever). Knock off the $100 gift card I got when I won the Matrix pro and that brings it down to $217. I sold the Matrix Pro for $182, leaving a manageable balance of $35. But because of the shiny psychology of Swoopo, I no longer have all of that $182. I still have a decent chunk but not enough to make as big a difference. So, I'm letting my wife use up my remaining bids and I'm walking away for good. If I ever win big in the lottery I may go back because the bargains are good if you can stick it out but the site sure isn't losing any money. Let me show you what I mean.

Let's first look at one of the cheap auctions. Remember the Canon EOS Rebel T1i I mentioned going for $6.80? Swoopo puts the MSRP for that particular item at $819.99. Now assuming it was a 2¢ auction, that means there were 340 total bids placed on that item (6.80/.02). At 60¢ per bid, Swoopo collected $204.00 (340*.60). Add the $6.80 and they sold that camera for $210.80. Now, Swoopo probably got it for wholesale so they're not losing the $609.19 it looks like they are but they've taken a loss on that camera.

Now, let's take a look at an iPhone. Swoopo puts the value of a 32GB iPhone 3Gs at $898.00. Looking at 27 sales over the past week, the average selling price comes out to be $124.03 (including one for $1.14 and another for $309.42). Let's just give the benefit of the doubt and say it's a 6¢ auction. Using that average selling price and dropping a penny to make the math come out even, that's 2,067 total bids. At 60¢ per bid and adding in the $124.02 selling price, Swoopo took in $1,364.22 for an $898.00 iPhone that they didn't pay $898.00 for. That's a little over 1.5 times the MSRP. And if you use the high-end number I quoted, you're looking at a raw selling price 3.8 times the MSRP (309.42/.06=5,157*.6=3,094.20+309.42=$3,403.62/898=3.8 times MSRP).

Whoever came up with this concept is a genius! I applaud you but I have to stay away.

It's Not Easy Being Green

It has happened once again. The multi-colored NBC Peacock has turned green. It's green week on NBC and all of their networks (it's part of an Earth day thing).

When I turned on the TV this morning, the Today Show was running a story about people in Miami who were saving buckets of money by installing a meter or some sort of device that regulates their energy usage throughout the day. Basically it limits usage during peak times and allows usage during off-peak times.

I don't understand how this works. I get the mechanics of it, I don't get the economics of it.

Back in the day of analog cellular technology there was no such thing as a subsidized phone and you paid by the minute - every minute - for service. You would get a bill showing that you had used X minutes during the day at 50¢ per minute and Y minutes on nights and weekends at 25¢ per minute. I understood, and still understand, that the cellular companies charge more for calls made during the day than in the afternoon. My electric bill isn't like that.

My electric bill says I used X kilowatt hours of electricity at Y cents per. That's all. It doesn't mention peak and off-peak usage. I understand peak usage times (there are more people using more energy during the day) but I don't understand, based on the billing model, how these devices save the consumer money nor why there is a delay button on my dishwasher. Is it just that other municipalities bill differently and do differentiate between peak and off-peak usage? Or am I missing something?

What Does One Trillion Dollars Look Like?

It looks very impressive.

Kinda puts perspective on the whole thing, don't it?

Small Victories

When I got home from work this evening, there was an envelope sitting on my side of the bed. I asked my wife, who was sitting on her side of the bed working on her laptop, "What's this?"

In a thoroughly confused voice she replied, "It's a check."

Oddly enough, getting a check in the mail lately has not been good news. A particular group managed to screw up some insurance coverage I had and sent our premiums back. (long story that's not worth telling) So I carefully peered into the envelope thinking to myself, "what now?" As I slid the paper out, I read the word "Google" on the top and, for a brief instant, became extremely confused as to why Google would be sending me a check. When I actually looked at the amount of the check it hit me as to what it was and I just had to laugh.

In October of 2004, I signed up for Google AdWords. You know those relatively unobtrusive and easily ignorable "ads by Google" ad banners you see spread around on quite a few web pages? Those are Google AdWords. The site creator chooses to put those on his/her page and each time you or someone else clicks on one of those ads, he/she gets a credit. If enough clicks happen in a specified period of time during which there have been a particular number of impressions (displays of ads), those credits translate into real money. The month after your account credit reaches $100.00 or more, Google cuts you a check. Unless you have an imensely popular page, the credits don't rack up very quickly but they do add up. I got my first Google AdWords check today! To understand why I started laughing when I realized what the check was, I refer you back to the first sentence of this paragraph that mentions that I signed up for AdWords four years and three months ago!

Now, I told you that story to tell you this one.

If you've been following along, you know I am migrating my sound archive to a different management system. The sound archive has been the only one of my sites that has contained the AdWords banners. I have been debating whether or not to place them on the new site and receipt of the check closed the deal.

Not knowing enough about CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) or the CMS (Content Management System) I'm using and how it is structured, I knew that placing those banners where I wanted them to be on a page would be a challenge. Think of it this way. If you've been to the site, there is a menu that appears on the left side of pretty much everything but the home page and a few select others. I have had no idea what piece of the puzzle told it to be on the left and allow the page content to be just to the right of it.

You see, the only web technology I really ever learned was HTML. Programming and scripting languages are much like spoken languages in that, once you learn one, you can use it to relate to the others. In other words, if you know what the 'print' command does in language A, you know it's very similar to the 'write' command in language B which is similar to the 'echo' command in language C, etc. HTML is pretty specific about page layout. You [can] basically tell an element (text, picture, whatever) exactly where it is going to be on the page and how it should relate to the elements around it. When you're using CSS, you tell your HTML code to go ask the style sheet how things should look, where they should be placed, and how they should relate to the elements around it.

With that in mind, I went trudging through the CSS looking for the part that said 'the menu goes on the left, give a little bit of space, then put the page content to the right of it.' I couldn't find it. In HTML, you might use a table to accomplish this so I was looking for something similar. Finding the section that specified how the menu should look/act was easy enough but it didn't contain any code I could recognize for positioning.

After a couple hours of pulling my hair out (and those of you who know me are aware that I ain't got all that much left), it finally clicked. When it did, I began to understand how the CSS and the HTML related to each other. I built a little piece of code to to tell the provided AdWords script how it should display then told the core page types to utilize it. After a bit of fiddling with positioning in the layout and positioning of the command within the page, I had it right where I wanted it! Since I understood how it worked now, I made a coule of other minor changes to the layout while I was at it.

I'm not ashamed to say I'm proud of myself. I've been able to build this CMS from the ground up (you have to) and have managed to get it acting the way I want it to. And, given historical data, I should be receiving another $100 check in April of 2013.

Black Friday Warning - Rebates May Be In Jeopardy

Have you already seen some good deals that will be available for Black Friday? Do any of those deals include a mail-in rebate? Is the item still a good deal without the rebate?

You may want to ask yourself that last question while you're out shopping. CPG, a company that processes rebates for a large number of major retailers and manufacturers (see a list here) has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. From what I have read, many of the client companies will be covering the rebates themselves but the safe bet is... don't count on the rebate (even more so than usual).

The Prophet, Arthur

I told you I might pop in a bit. I just read something... eerie?, disturbing?, bizarre?... and wanted to chronicle it so I thought it best to put it here.

Several months ago, I read, finally, Rendezvous With Rama by Arthur C. Clarke. I enjoyed it very much and recently came across a copy of Rama II, its sequel. Rama II was published in 1989 so maybe this wasn't as prophetic as I first thought... maybe it was a warning. Here is what I read:

The surge of unabashed self-indulgence on a global scale was easy to understand. Something fundamental in the human psyche had changed as a result of the encounter with Rama I.... Thus it was easy to comprehend why the life patterns of most human beings suddenly veered toward self-gratification....

An unrestrained burst of conspicuous consumption and global greed lasted for just under two years. Frantic acquisitions of everything the human mind could create was superimposed on a weak economic infrastructure that had already been poised for a downturn in early 2130, when the first Raman spaceship flew through the inner solar system. The looming recession was first postponed throughout 2130 and 2131 by the combined manipulative efforts of governments and financial institutions, even though the fundamental economic weaknesses were never addressed. With the renewed burst of buying in early 2132, the world jumped directly into another period of rapid growth. Production capabilities expanded, stock markets exploded, and both consumer confidence and total employment hit all-time highs. There was unprecedented prosperity and the net result was a short-term but significant improvement in the standard of living for almost all humans.

By the end of the year in 2133, it had become obvious to some of the more experienced observers of human history that the "Raman Boom" was leading mankind toward disaster. Dire warnings of impending economic doom started being heard above the euphoric shouts of the millions who had recently vaulted into the middle and upper classes. Suggestions to balance budgets and limit credit at all levels of the economy were ignored. Instead, creative effort was expended to come up with one way after another of putting more spending power in the hands of a populace that had forgotten how to say wait, much less no, to itself.

The global stock market began to sputter... and there were predictions of a coming crash. But to most humans... the concept of such a crash was beyond comprehension. After all, the world economy had been expanding for over nine years, the last two years at a rate unparalleled in the previous two centuries. World leaders insisted that they had finally found the mechanisms that could truly inhibit the downturns of the capitalistic cycles. And the people believed them....

Terrestrial affairs were dominated by the emerging world economic crisis. On May 1, 2134, three of the largest international banks announced that they were insolvent because of bad loans. Within two days a panic had spread around the world. The more than one billion home terminals with access to the global financial markets were used to dump individual portfolios of stocks and bonds....

By the end of the week two things were apparent - that over half of the world's stock value had been obliterated and that many individuals, large and small investors alike, who had used their credit options to the maximum, were now virtually penniless. The supporting data bases that kept track of personal bank accounts and automatically transferred money to cover margin calls were flashing disaster messages in almost twenty percent of the houses in the world.

He goes on to explain a situation of electronic gridlock that causes delays in transaction processing that I don't feel is possible given the ruggedness of the internet and automatic safeguards that have been put in place to halt trading.

My point is that much of this sounds very familiar. Some of it has already happened. Some of it in the same order, some of it in a different order. Some of it hasn't happened yet. Some of it probably won't happen. I think the key to avoiding a total disaster is in the very first part of this passage. We must address the fundamental economic weaknesses or nothing we do is going to solve the issue, merely, perhaps, postpone it.

For a good breakdown of how we got to where we are now and exactly how long this has been brewing, check out this article by the daughter of one of my coworkers.
http://ultimate-resumes.blogspot.com/2008/10/end-of-world-is-not-near-tips-for.html

Quick Update

• Aware that I haven't been around much
• Settling in at the new job
• Still not exactly sure about the extent of my responsibilities
• Have written several blog posts recently
• They leaked out of my head before I could get to the keyboard
• Eager to see the debate on Friday
• Will be pissed if it gets canceled/postponed
• Freaked about the economic situation
• Heard something this morning about each household having to shoulder $10K of extra debt?
• I'm having enough difficulties, thank you, I don't need any help in that area from the entire country/government
• Gonna have to check out that $10K thing
  
• McCain is making too many bold statements that he's having to backpedal on
• He doesn't backpedal well
• Obama is being too quiet
• But what do I know from politics?
• SURVIVOR STARTS TONIGHT!!!
• Glad to see some of my favorites of the new shows that got sidelined due to the writers strike will be back this fall (among them, Life)
  
• The jury is out on Fringe
• Only saw the one episode so far but that's what they get for programming it opposite Eureka
• Too many shows to watch - I need one of those DVRs that will record 4 programs @ once