Business week on so called option ARMs.
I always thought that ‘interest-only-loans’ would be a scary thing to sign.
Those poor people that will loose everything and then some. Many of them probably have jobs that require lots of time and effort to make some money. All they probably wanted to do, is to get ‘in on the action’ during that housing boom that is now so clearly over.
Autoblog reviews the Bentley Continental Flying Spur
Nice read if you like cars. The 2 door cousin “Continental GT” is kind a ‘dime a dozen’ car in some parts of LA. The Warner Brothers parking lot for instance. The price tag hovering between 1 and 2 hundret thousand US$ scheds a completely new light on situation in some parts of the economy.
Glad I read the review, so that I can hold of the purchase until they get a navigation system that can compete with a Camry.
Just got a quote. As a pdf. Which is a great start. Everybody should send quotes as PDFs, not as word documents. That one should be pretty obvious, but sadly it is not. I tell people by now that I will not be able to read their Microsoft Word Documents. They often don’t even know what they have sent. They think that Word Documents are the only way to store text on a computer.
The second issue with attachments is much easier to fix since it happens on a logical level: Name the document so that it makes sense on the hard drive of the receiving end! Don’t send me something called ‘quote.pdf’. Or ‘wacker.pdf’. That might be interesting for you, but not where the document will be used and found: On my drive.
Do yourself a favor and call it: “source.function.date.dpf”. “Function” being “quote” or “invoice” or “memo”. Source is you, so that I know where this came from. And then date. Date I would always express as year-month-day. With leading zero on month and day. This will be recognises as the same date on both sides of the Atlantic and Pacific and it sorts files nicely by, gasp, date in any text listing.
But PDF instead of Microsoft Word is really the most step forward into attachment sanity.
coding, tetris, nicotine and lots of other things:
siebzehnter juni
back in germany the first thing to notice was the presence of national flags. “Schwarz Rot Gold” is as omnipresent as the star spangled banner in October 2001 in the US. This time it’s about soccer. Most of the country is delighted that the german team seams to have survived the first round. And that there are three soccer games a day. At a decent time in day.
It’s nice to see this happy kind of flag waving. When I grew up the national flag was something that only pretty right wing people would be seen around. And those are particular disgusting in Germany. There was simply no positive identification with the country.
The 17th of June used to be a holiday: “The day of the german unity”. As long it did not exist the western side devoted one day or mourning and speeches to this thing that we all thought would never be a reality again. It was kind of like a tombstone.
Germans love flags. Not only during those dark days between 33 and 45. The market for advertisement on flags is supposed to be 100 Million Euros a year. (according to the Suedeutsche Zeitung). Commercials in cinemas were 86 Million Euros in 2005. There are easy 20 minutes of commercials before the movie starts.
Der Spiegel writes in its usual way about the flagststyria 2006:
First they find a CDU politician for a stupid quote: “Die ganze Stadt soll ein schwarz-rot-goldenes Fahnenmeer sein.” Basically somebody wanted to make flags mandatory for public buildings until the end of the worldcup.
Then they go on how all those flags are made in China. That not enough will arrive since till the end of the tournament, they claim that aircargo would be too expensive. Then they go on that the car flags that had not been seen in Europe before would be made for 17 cents (too high) and would be sold for 5 US$. They also say that they not really survive the Autobahn. Which is probably true. If they would employ a pocket calculator they could see that even in their way to conservative 30 to margin for something that weights less than 10 grams. it took 3 minutes of googling to find that it would cost you 0.16 US$ to ship those flags to Frankfurt by air. That would explain why there was never any shortage on car flags in the US after 9/11.
Canon makes the cameras that I do like the most right now. As much as they products are great their US service is sucks. A little SD20 of mine failed: The lens is not able to open anymore and i get the dreadful E14 error. Canon says that this is due to sand. One could argue if putting a small camera into your pocket is considered use or abuse. But I did not want to argue. I just wanted to pay the 109 US for the repair. They have in theory a web interface for paying repairs. In reality this is a waste of time. Actually I feel not so good to have given this piece of web-junk my CC info. Despite 5 attempts with two different (and working) CC cards the site was unable to process my request.
The usual problem: Canon makes great products in Japan. Their US service part can be broken around the fringes: Will not put them out of business. Just a shame to see a world clas maker of amazing equipement having a website that works less than that of the muffler shop around the corner.
Not sure when this will happen, but I am pretty sure it will. Unless mankind abondons culture and civilistation for whatever reason.
When the trash can will be picked up it’s contents will be read via the RFID tags that every product will have. Now that makes for ample opportunity. The trash collectors can recycle, locate misplaced things for you and can sell your complete consumption profile to everybody who could benefit from it. From here it is pretty easy to figure out if you should change your diet or drink less. If your trash and credit card records don’t line up then that could mean allot of things.
A garbage truck costs tens of thousands of dollars, the technology needed to implement this will be only a few hundred once RFID tags are every where.
I’d say we better get the NSA back in check before they can wrap their -granted limited- imagination around these possibilies.
So I thought I get myself a bluetooth headset:
I know: headset’s are really stupid.
This one is the least stupid one I ever saw.
It’s pretty much original size in this image.
Weighs less than 10 grams.
Decent Battery life, although the Razr drains it’s battery faster.
Audio quality is ok, so I hear. I don’t talk to myself.
Have not tried it with skype yet.
Usability is great: 1 button.
1 led.
That’s enough to do voice dial, switch between calls etc etc.
Then I read that you can use any mp3 as a ringtone.
It works as long you don’t have a bluetooth headset.
Yepp, that is right:
If you have a headset then you can only use the standard
ringtones. Somebody gotta explain that one to me.
Motorola, not really known for being smart …
#12 on the Sharper Image sales list.
smile if you see this alarm clock.
Interesting image on their website that suggests that this device will help you to find out when the baby steals the necklace.
It’s a gorgeous clear day here in LA. Sunday. No traffic. Just great. At 3pm work is done and get I a bite to eat.
I dragged my laptop with me. Hoping that I could get some non-internet work done. Of course there is wifi
here. From somebody. How am I supposed to kick the internet addiction if it is everywhere I go?