Pwththth

Jeremy's birthday

pwththth@hotmail.com — Tue, 08 Jul 2008 05:24:01 GMT

So, here's the plan. My birthday is the 15th, and I'm going to celebrate it on the 17th (thursday), as that's when the new batman movie comes out.

Current plan:

Dinner at Beth's at 6ish, hang out with friends, have fun. Go to the Cinerama around 9:30-10:30 to get in line for the midnight showing of Batman.

Please let me know if you are coming, and if you want me to get you a ticket (I'll buy a bunch early so we have seats).

pwththth@hotmail.com — Sat, 05 Jul 2008 19:15:33 GMT

Anyone out there with decent photoshop skills want to help me lay out a board game some time this coming week?

pwththth@hotmail.com — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 01:44:13 GMT

Anyone care to suggest cool movies that will release on or before the 12th-13th of July?

Pop quiz

pwththth@hotmail.com — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 02:59:51 GMT

If you add 118 days to July 15th, what day is it?

pwththth@hotmail.com — Sun, 15 Jun 2008 00:58:52 GMT

What else should go with these images?

Thoughts?

mass email help

pwththth@hotmail.com — Tue, 13 May 2008 05:19:52 GMT

Ok, I want to be that guy. I have a list of email addresses (several thousand). I want to send a promotional email to each one. It's the same email, just going to every address. Anyone know of a good program or service for this?

pwththth@hotmail.com — Thu, 08 May 2008 21:13:20 GMT

Quote of the day: "It's called a period because it brings you to a full stop"

pwththth@hotmail.com — Mon, 05 May 2008 07:00:09 GMT

"To talk to a customer service person, press one. To go to our automated system, press two. If you do not have a touch tone phone, please hang up, go to the store, buy one, and call us back."

Less than helpful...

pwththth@hotmail.com — Fri, 11 Apr 2008 20:15:58 GMT

So Liz is trying to get turbotax to work, and was having issues. Microsoft live search was...less than helpful. She searched for File Extension .lif.

In addition to that data, it suggests related searches:

File Extension list
Change File Extension
File Extension Rar
Computer File Extensions
Bin File Extension
WPS File Extension
Dl File Extension
Hair Extensions

That last one should be really helpful...

Anyhow, anyone wanna call and help Liz beat up TurboTax and/or Microsoft?

In my ongoing quest...

pwththth@hotmail.com — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 20:47:40 GMT

to pick the brain of the internet, one of you wonderful friends of mine must know how to do this:

I have an excel spreadsheet with name/address/email data for my customers going back to 2003. I want to sort this to remove duplicates, then do a mass emailing with the email addresses and print postcard lables with the mailing addresses.

Anyone out there know a good way to do this? Or better, interested in renting themselves out for a few hours to help me do it?

pwththth@hotmail.com — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 18:51:58 GMT

I hate that every time I build an L5R deck the one thing that I cannot possibly find is the bloody stronghold.

Also, My contract Gig at microsoft has ended, so I have more free time now. Anyone want to book some of it?

Postcards

pwththth@hotmail.com — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 21:23:34 GMT

So I want to have some postcards printed...anyone care to recommend a print shop? I'm looking for about 2000, 2 sided full color. Full bleed is nice but not needed.

Also, any graphic designers out there want to let me rent them for a few hours to design the card?

ebay is full of hate

pwththth@hotmail.com — Wed, 19 Mar 2008 20:19:57 GMT

So, my ebay store has 2200ish items in it, most of them good till canceled items that auto-renew every 30 days. All of these auctions use the same template, with the name of the card changed, but everything else the same (a plug for my ebay store, shipping info, and so on).

Sometime in 2006 ebay made a change to its policies that sellers cannot accept US cash as payment (unless users are picking up an item in person). Ok, I think this is silly, but I understand the idea behind not wanting users to mail cash. Even so, less than 1% of my business is in cash, and with a 99.8% positive feedback with 2000+ unique, I like to think I have a track record of being good to my customers. The template for my auctions lists payment options. It recommends paypal, but says that I also take checks, money orders and “Cash, but you shouldn’t send cash in the mail”.

Well, some Ebay trust and safety goon stumbled onto one of my auctions, saw this text, and noted that it was in violation of the policy.
What did they do next? Did they contact me to let me know there was a problem? Call me? Suggest ways I could fix this?

No. They did call me, but not till after the next step, which was to delete about 150 auctions.

When they called me to let me know this was going on, I asked if there had been any complaints or problems and was told there wasn’t. They just noted that the text was in violation. I said I would fix it, and asked how long I had to do so. I was told, basically, no time; they will delete these auctions as soon as they see them. It takes time to modify 2200 auctions. Rather than give me this time or work with me to fix the problem they deleted 100-150 auctions about every 24, finally closing my store and suspending my account. I had asked the person who did call for the contact information of the person who would be making the decisions about my account, and was told he could not give it to me. I asked that that person call me, and got a “I’ll pass that along”.

Anyone who has ordered from me in the last month is getting emails telling them that my listings have been removed. Needless to say, they are wondering what’s up, and ebay is making me look like an idiot.

To say that I’m irate understates the issue. This demonstrates to me that ebay really cares not at all for sellers, and I’m glad I’m transitioning off to my own site. That said, I had expected to have more time to do so, and to get everything posted to playccg.com. As it is, I’m now in a big hurry, wanting to have it full of product and useable asap so my customers have somewhere to go.

Anyone want a job?

pwththth@hotmail.com — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 19:05:39 GMT

So my time with microsoft is coming to a close, and I'd be happy to recommend people if anyone wants to replace me. It's a 40 hr/wk a- 1 year contract position. I don't know if they are keeping the same payscale, but its overpayed for the amount of work you are actually doing, and the people I work with rock.

Short form job description: Pre-Moderate posts to a forum for kids so that they don't say anything that gets Microsoft sued.

Additional tasks based on your skills and interests.

Also: If you are looking for short term (3 month or so) work, this might be a great fit.

Interested?

Shoot me an email (jeremy at playccg.com).

Saddest. You-tube video. Ever.

pwththth@hotmail.com — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 22:14:16 GMT

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sdUUx5FdySs

Things I did not know about cuttlefish

pwththth@hotmail.com — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 18:21:47 GMT

Ok, I'm sure it's an aside to your day, but I think it's cool. So the Cuttlefish is a squishy little critter, related to squids and octopi. They can change color very well and very quickly, to the point that even the professionals studying them in the wild have to keep a careful eye on them or they will change color and get lost. They can reproduce also any color or shade. There was a great image in this morning NYT of one sitting on a chess board, with very clean lined white and black squares on its back. If you put one in a tank with sand it will go all sandcolored. Drop in a few white rocks and the cuttlefish adds a white patch to its back within seconds.

The cool part?:

They are colorblind.

What?

Yes, the best color changer in the sea can't see color. From wikipedia: they can "perceive the polarization of light, which enhances their perception of contrast."

Neat.

Pop Quiz

pwththth@hotmail.com — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 17:05:24 GMT

Name mad scientists from literature/film that aren’t white males. The definition of ‘mad scientist’ is pretty flexible. I’ll start:

Dr Delia Surridge (V for Vendetta)

Quantum Tic Tac Toe is cool

pwththth@hotmail.com — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 00:00:35 GMT

http://www.paradigmpuzzles.com/QT3Play.htm

Weird.

I need a shelving unit and a lot of 5 row card boxes

pwththth@hotmail.com — Sat, 02 Feb 2008 07:47:07 GMT

I need a shelving unit with a large amount of shelves (which can be as little as 6-7 inches tall each shelf) and about 50 five row cardboard card boxes. Anyone out there have extra?

Why you should vote for Obama.

pwththth@hotmail.com — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 19:40:35 GMT

Oh. My. God.

Ok, anyone out there not know who Ann Coulter is? She's a far far right wing republican talking head/lunatic.

Some quotes of hers, just for perspective before I get to my point:

"I think the government should be spying on all Arabs, engaging in torture as a televised spectator sport, dropping daisy cutters wantonly throughout the Middle East and sending liberals to Guantanamo."

"Not all Muslims may be terrorists, but all terrorists are Muslims. "

(On Islam) "We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity."

The last is perhaps her most famous quote.

Ok, so we have established her far right credentials. She is a regular talking head on Fox "News", and was discussing the possibility of the race being between Hillary Clinton and John McCain. In that race, she (again, this is on Fox) said she would be willing to vote for, campaign for and promote...Clinton!

Oh god, what?

Form CNN, quoting her:
***
"If you are looking at substance rather than if there is an R or a D after his name, manifestly, if he's our candidate, than Hillary is going to be our girl, because she's more conservative than he is," Coulter said. "I think she would be stronger on the war on terrorism."

Coulter took aim at McCain's positions — particularly his fervent anti-torture stance — and said he and Clinton differ little on the issues. Coulter also said she is prepared to campaign on Clinton's behalf should McCain win the party's nomination.
***

So, wait, the woman who described Bill Clinton as "a very good rapist" and thinks Democrats in general should be in jail, she's going to back Hillary?

Ok, I know that this is all about the republicans trying to unseat McCain because they didn't appoint him, but come on folks. If one of the biggest republican talking heads is honestly describing Hillary as to the right of the GOP, I think we need to look at that...

I have other reasons for hoping Hillary is out, but this is my new fav.

Thoughts?

I don't get it.

pwththth@hotmail.com — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 19:39:14 GMT

So, the New York Times had an interesting article in the business section about the economy and its effect on the middle income luxury consumer. There has been a big trend in stores convincing shoppers to buy name brand and 'high end' items as status symbols, and as the economy cools off there is concern that they may be less willing to "buy tons of crap they clearly don't need at inflated prices"*

The line that really got me was something along the lines of "While in the last few years middle income shoppers have been willing to stretch to buy $200.00 jeans, with the economy cooling off $100.00 jeans start to look much more reasonable."

Really? Huh?

It went on to talk about the worries of people passing on the $600.00 handbags and only buying the $300.00 handbags.

Is this the big worry of the season? People buying crap they don’t need aren’t bleeding as much for it? Why is there never an article about what a good idea it would be to get the average credit card debt per household out of the high four figures? Perhaps I should take it as a sign that the economic sky really isn’t falling…that will wait for the ‘brokers jump out window’ stories.

Am I from a different planet or what?

*This may not be an exact quote, I'm typing from memory here.

pwththth@hotmail.com — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 18:17:46 GMT

I know this may not be of interest to many of you, but I love it:

So over the weekend and on Monday the international stock markets (Hong Kong, London) took a big hit, dropping by as much as 8% (which the press insists on referring to a catastrophic drop, thus making anyone who remembers black Monday laugh). This is an abnormally large drop, and was probably brought about at least in part by worldwide concern about the US economy. The US markets were closed for the MLK holiday, but short term futures (essentially a way to trade stocks when the market is closed) predicted a sharp drop as soon as the markets opened.

The Federal Reserve has been concerned about the markets and the overall economy (that'd their job) for a while. The main way they control the economy is to set the federal fund rate, which in turn determines credit card rates, mortgages and so on. They usually telegraph any moves so they don't shock the markets, and raise rates to fight inflation or lower them to fight recession.

What they don't usually do is make either large (greater than 1/2$) changes, or do so without warning. They did both this morning, lowering the fed rate by 3/4% to 3.5%.

To put that in English, this is the fed trying to talk to the market before it opens and going: "No, the sky isn't falling. Really, It's ok. Don't look up."

So far the markets are giving them the finger and dropping like a brick anyway. Saying 'the sky isn't falling' isn't very reassuring.

What this means to you: If you happen to have any money to invest (even a couple hundred bucks) I predict the stock market will look pretty damn tasty here soon, as the panic causes people to oversell.

Prove me wrong

pwththth@hotmail.com — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 23:48:01 GMT

I have a theory. Tht theory states that despite the desire and deep dark weirdness of the world, even porn has its limits. As far as I can tell, there is no such thing as Dental Porn. The dentist chair is too creapy even for the SM freaks.

True?

Prove me wrong.

Well, it's a start...

pwththth@hotmail.com — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 21:30:40 GMT

I've just finished fully alphabetizing 100,000 l5r cards. Whee ha. It feels good to be done with that.

Question one of the "Class" questions

pwththth@hotmail.com — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 22:01:56 GMT

What is Middle class?

What does it mean to be a middle class american?