Wednesday, April 11, 2012 (0)
Facts About You
Your brain has the potential to remember everything you have ever experienced, read, heard and seen. The only problem is you can't recall it, but it's all in there somewhere.
Your body is constantly replacing cells, so much so in fact, you have a completely different body than you did seven years ago.
The amount of information your brain can hold is believed to be up to 1,000 Terabytes. The IBM Super Computer Watson the one Jeopardy! contestants competed against, has 16 Terabytes of RAM (Dumbass).
With the sperm in your testicles right now (guys), you could repopulate Dallas, and it would take you 6 months to repopulate the entire planet.
Everyone in your dreams you have seen while awake at some point in your life.
In your lifetime you will eat about 50 tons of food. (Fat Bastard)
To excercise your legs the same amount of excercise your eyes get, you would need to walk 50 miles every day.
In the next four years, you will shed your body weight in dead skin. (gross)
Your hair grows about 12mm a Month. (time for a haircut)
You constantly sweat. (about 2 pints a day)
Pound for pound, when you were a baby, you were stronger than an ox.
You react at speeds of 170mph.
25,000,000 cells of you died while you read this sentence. The good news is your body made 300 billion more today, so don't worry!
You were one cell for about a half an hour.
.::. 
.::. 
Twits
Tuesday, March 27, 2012 (0)
The REAL Mitt Romney
.::. .::. Friday, March 02, 2012 (0)
Driving in the Snow
Holy...
.::. .::. Tuesday, January 24, 2012 (0)
$4174.20 in prizes
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.::. .::. Wednesday, January 11, 2012 (0)
The Stranger Among Us
A few years before I was born, my Dad met a stranger who was new to our small town. From the beginning, Dad was fascinated with this enchanting newcomer and soon invited him to live with our family. The stranger was quickly accepted and was around from then on.
As I grew up, I never questioned his place in my family. In my young mind, he had a special niche. My parents were complementary instructors: Mom taught me good from evil, and Dad taught me to obey. But the stranger... He was our storyteller. He would keep us spellbound for hours on end with adventures, mysteries and comedies.
If I wanted to know anything about politics, history or science, he always knew the answers about the past, understood the present and even seemed able to predict the future! He took my family to the first major league ball game. He made me laugh, and he made me cry. The stranger never stopped talking, but Dad didn't seem to mind.
Sometimes, Mom would get up quietly while the rest of us were shushing each other to listen to what he had to say, and she would go to the kitchen for peace and quiet.
(I wonder now if she ever prayed for the stranger to leave.)
Dad ruled our household with certain moral convictions, but the stranger never felt obligated to honor them. Profanity, for example, was not allowed in our home - not from us, our friends or any visitors. After our long time visitor stayed longer he became more daring however, and even got away with four-letter words that burned my ears and made my dad squirm and my mother blush. My Dad didn't permit the liberal use of alcohol but the stranger encouraged us to try it on a regular basis. He made cigarettes look cool, cigars manly, and pipes distinguished. He talked freely (much too freely!) about sex. His comments were sometimes blatant, sometimes suggestive, and generally embarrassing..
I now know that my early concepts about relationships were influenced strongly by the stranger. Time after time, he opposed the values of my parents, yet he was seldom rebuked... And NEVER asked to leave.
More than fifty years have passed since the stranger moved in with our family. He has blended right in and is not nearly as fascinating as he was at first. Still, if you could walk into my parents' den today, you would still find him sitting over in his corner, waiting for someone to listen to him talk and watch him draw his pictures.
His name?....
We just call him 'TV.'
He has a wife now....we call her 'Computer.'
Their first child is "Cell Phone".
Second child was named "I Pod "
Third child is Video Games
.::. .::. Wednesday, November 02, 2011 (0)
The Two Percent
.::. .::. Monday, October 10, 2011 (0)
Students v. Prisoners
A Comparison of Spending Priorities
| Students | Prisoners | |
|---|---|---|
 | Free Health Care |  |
| Internet Access | |
| Weight Room | |
| Cable Television | |
| Access to Libraary | |
| Free Sports Programs | |
| Computer Lab | |
| Laundry Services | |
| Funding to earn a degree | |
| Free Housing | |
| Three square meals a day | |
| Clothing | |
| Free Dental Care | |
| $9,575 / yr | Average Spending | $28,570 / yr |
.::. .::. Friday, October 07, 2011 (0)
Steve Jobs
.::. .::. Thursday, September 22, 2011 (0)
Life Lessons at School
In September of 2005, a social studies schoolteacher from Arkansas did something not to be forgotten. On the first day of school, with permission of the school superintendent, the principal, and the building supervisor, she took all of the desks out of the classroom. The kids came into first period, they walked in; there were no desks. They obviously looked around and said, "Where's our desks?"
The teacher said, "You can't have a desk until you tell me how you earn them."
They thought, "Well, maybe it's our grades."
"No," she said.
"Maybe it's our behavior."
And she told them, "No, it's not even your behavior."
And so they came and went in the first period, still no desks in the classroom. Second period, same thing. Third period. By early afternoon television news crews had gathered in the class to find out about this crazy teacher who had taken all the desks out of the classroom. The last period of the day, the instructor gathered her class.
They were at this time sitting on the floor around the sides of the room. She said, "Throughout the day no one has really understood how you earn the desks that sit in this classroom ordinarily. Now I'm going to tell
you."
She went over to the door of her classroom and opened it, and as she did
Their teacher said, "You don't have to earn those desks. These guys did it for you. They put them out there for you, but it's up to you to sit here responsibly, to learn, to be good students and good citizens, because they paid a price for you to have that desk, and don't ever forget it."
[Trust but Verify]
.::. .::. Friday, July 15, 2011 (0)
Netflix Pricing Changes
[Source] NSFW!! So reposting here.
Netflix's current pricing plan: The $9.99 I pay each month which buys me unlimited streaming of their movies, plus as many DVDs as I would like each month, but only 1 DVD out at a time. They offer 2-3-4-etc DVDs at a time plans, but eh, most of the stuff on DVD that I want to watch is pretty eclectic and only comes along every so often, so so why bother.
Netflix's new pricing plan: it will cost $7.99 for unlimited streaming, plus an additional $7.99 for the 1-DVD at a time plan.
Although existing customers are grandfather in until September 1st, obviously my first reaction to this gigantic rate hike was to have an aneurysm and vomit all over the place. But being the empathetic soul that I am, tried to look at this from Netflix's point of view. What prompted such a drastic shift in their priving scheme? Well, it's a two folded problem. First, let's look at the new challenges that now face their streaming side of the house.
When netflix first started streaming, the likes of Hollywood folks such as Stephen Spielberg, Michael Bay, and James Cameron weren't entirely sure if streaming movies was just a passing fad or not. So when Netflix approached them asking to license their media, eh, it was more of an experimental gestures on Hollywood's behalf. In 2010, the cost for Netflix to license all of their streaming movies was around $180 million dollars in fees paid out to Your Favorite Hollywood Entity. But with DVD/Blu-Ray sales down, now Hollywood sees that streaming media is indeed the way of the future and with more streaming players in the market (Hulu, Amazon, Apple, Google), rights to streaming media are becoming a rather lucrative commodity. What cost Netflix $180 million in 2010, is expected to cost them $1.98 BILLION in 2012. For those of you keeping score, that's an ELEVEN fold increase in licensing costs.
Now let's look at the mail-order DVD rental side of the house -- which I just want to go on record as predicting to die off within five years. Anyway, when Netflix first opened their doors back in 1999, the cost of mailing out one movie was $0.33 each way. Now twelve years later and it's $0.44, that's a 33% increase in costs. So every time Netflix mails me a movie and I sent back to them in their pre-paid envelopes, it costs them $0.88. Where I live, the turnaround time for a movie is two days after I order it -- so if I order it on Monday afternoon, it's in my mailbox on Wednesday afternoon. Let's say I watch it that night, and mail it back on Thursday -- if I get it into a mailbox before 10am, Netflix will receive it on Friday and mail me out another movie that afternoon. Lather, rinse, repeat. Turn around time for a movie: 5 days. Number of DVDs I can get mailed out in a 30 day period: 6, although 7 isn't unrealistic if I'm quick about getting the movies back out the door. But let's use 6 DVDs per month x $0.88 per DVD (not including their purchase price) = $5.28 in postage costs per month. Subtract that $5.28 from the $9.99 I'm paying now and Netflix gets paid $4.71 to let me stream their entire movie collection.
In 2010 it costs Netflix about $0.05 to stream a high definition movie, and predictions are their licensing fees for streaming media are going to increase to eleven times what they are now, it will soon cost them $0.55 to stream a movie to your living room. Let's say you only stream 3 movies per week -- that's 12 movies per month -- equals $5.28 in postage fees + $6.60 in licensing fees = $11.88 Netflix needs to take in, just to break even. Not pay the employees, or keep the lights on, or make any profit. That's $11.88 just to break even. So if they continued their $9.99 plan, they would be losing $1.89
per month, per customer... all ten million of them. Now how long do you think Netflix would be in business if they lost almost $19 million dollars each month?
So here's how the profit from their pricing plans today, versus what they're going to and why they have to do it:
| Subscription Type | Streaming cost for 12 movies | Postage cost for 6 movies | monthly subscription fee | profit per subscriber |
| Old All Inclusive | 12 x $0.05 = $0.60 | 6 x $0.88 = 5.28 | $9.99 | $4.11 |
| If they continued old All Inclusive | 12 x $0.55 = $6.60 | 6 x $0.88 = $5.28 | $9.99 | $-1.89 LOSS |
| New Streaming Only | 12 x $0.55 = $6.60 | $0.00 | $7.99 | $1.39 |
| New DVD Only | $0.00 | 6 x $0.88 = $5.28 | $7.99 | $2.71 |
| Both Streaming and DVD | 12 x $0.55 = $6.60 | 6 x $0.88 = $5.28 | $15.98 | $4.10 |
So if you were to sign up for both packages and fork over $15.98 to Netflix instead of the $9.99 you are now, they will actually making the same profit each month ($4.11 vs $4.10) that they are today. Netflix is not not jacking up prices to cornhole their subscribers, they're simply passing their cornholing on to us. If you want to blame someone for the price increase, blame Hollywood (receiving 82% of your subscription fee) and their $100 million dollar movie budgets and actors that command $25 million per film, or the postal service (receiving 66% of your subscription fee). But isn't Netflix's fault.
.::. .::. [ Back to top ]
