Monthly Archives: July 2007

Link Roundup

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Here are some links I think I should share:

If I Had a Million Dollars…

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…I’d buy a gas station and teach economics.

The two are intertwined, though. I don’t think running a gas station would be that fun, and I don’t know that I’d enjoy teaching economics either. But the two together could be interesting.

Gas, for example, strikes me as quite inelastic. Even when gas prices were around $3.50 out here, we bought it. I didn’t reduce how much I drove. And with gas prices still very high, I ended up taking a small hit in gas mileage when I ended up buying an SUV.

Economics is generally a boring subject. But what if you let your economics students run the gas station?

For example, what would happen if we one day, out of the blue, decided to charge $8 a gallon for gasoline at our station? Would anyone come? What would be their reasoning if they came? And then suppose, a few months later, we decided to go a little crazy and charge $1.00 a gallon, but not market it any way other than updating our signs. How quickly would the word spread? When would we have a line? Would we see an appreciable sale in other items (e.g., would sales of food and drinks inside rise?) Would absolute mayhem break loose? And could we then construct a demand curve for gasoline? And we could even note that it wasn’t as ‘perfect’ as the textbooks show it. What if we gave gasoline away for free one day?

Having successfully covered price elasticity of demand, we could move onto competition. What would happen if we opened up in view of another gas station, and always updated our price to be one-tenth of a cent less than the guys across the street? Would they catch on and update their pricing? Would we spur a price war? Who would win?

And then, what if we later (after letting things adjust) decided to charge the exact same price as the guy across the street. Would he undercut us, or would he keep his prices the same? (Some of this could get into more complex game theory stuff that I never fully grasped.)

We could also cover complementary goods by looking at trends in, say, how many bottles of oil and windshield-washer fluid we sell.

I know I’m a business geek, but tell me that doing all of this–without worrying about profit–wouldn’t be fun.

Hostile takeovers

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So I linked in my last post to the Wikipedia page on mergers and acquisitions, mostly just to clarify what M&As were.

But I ended up perusing the subject a bit, and it gets downright crazy. There’s a whole bunch of hostile takeovers. (Basically, where the board of a company doesn’t agree to be bought out by another company.) And there’s a whole section, Tactics against hostile takeover, which is an amusing read just for the names. A lot of them are downright crazy: the Scorched-earth defense has a company basically destroying its most valuable assets so that it’s less attractive for a takeover. (I’ve been looking for a reason to use the phrase, “Cutting off your nose to spite your face” lately. This is it.)

But the article, Nancy Reagan Defense began the best part. The Defense is to “just say no,” but this is where it gets crazier. They first cite the example of Comcast trying to take over Walt Disney (is this for real?!), and then quote an analyst who mentioned that and another defense: the Pac-Man defense.

The Pac-Man defense is maybe my favorite. When a company is attempting a hostile takeover of your company, your company tries starts buying up shares of that company, to keep them from taking you over. (So you’re basically doing a hostile takeover of the people trying to do a hostile takeover on you.)

My head hurts. I’m going to bed.

Money

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First off, I went to the dentist’s today. After my cleaning, I was waiting for the real dentist to come in and make sure the hygienist had cleaned my teeth properly, and it was taking a while. She offered me a magazine, and I told her I’d pass. A couple more minutes went by, so I went up and looked through the magazine rack.

It only occurred to me afterwards that it probably says something about me that I moved Sports Illustrated out of the way to reveal Worth magazine, and that I found the article inside about family businesses increasingly being taken over in the rush of private-equity M&As to be fascinating reading. I was disappointed when the dentist came in before I got to the other article I wanted to read, about how Native Americans are investing profits from casinos into a suddenly-very-diverse range of businesses. (It seems like there’s some racist assumption underlying that? I’d have been able to tell you if there was one in the article, if only Dr. Las [not her real name, but all she was identified to me as] hadn’t been so speedy with whatever it was that was keeping her from seeing me.)

Later on (post-dentist), I was counting a bunch of money. We had a new ‘pack’ of 100 $1 bills, but I needed a couple, so I had to remove the band from them. If you’ve never seen a stack of new bills, it’s really something you should do. (Maybe drop by your bank and ask to withdraw $100 in new 1’s. It’ll be worth it.) First of all, they don’t feel normal. We’ve all gotten a nice crisp $20 from the bank, but pulling money out of a bank-packed stack [not meant to rhyme] is entirely unlike that. It’s even nicer. You hold it in your hand, it the feel is just… strange. It’s almost powdery, and pretty rough. As you try to take one bill out of the pile, you’ll realize that it’s very hard to take just one. Unlike potato chips, it’s not because they’re so good, but because they’re practically cohesive. (When counting new 1’s, I basically ‘grind’ it between my fingers because, more often than not, I’ve picked up two or more without meaning to.)

So at the end of the night, I had to count some unknown quantity of 1’s. I had 11 ‘old’ $1 bills that I had taken in, and some unknown quantity of new bills. I bemoaned the fact that I was about to have to count what was probably $75+ of them, which would be incredibly tedious. But then I remembered the other neat quality of brand-new bills: they’re sequentially numbered.

So I looked at the last three digits on the top bill, subtracted it from the last three digits of the top bill, added one*, and knew how many there were.

I wonder if I can start requesting that the bank give me only new, sequentially-numbered bills. But bank tellers, like chefs, are probably people you don’t want on your bad side. Especially the passive-aggressive ones.

* Because 700-699 = 1, but you have two: 699 and 700.

Writing Code

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A few things I’ve learned in writing code:

  • $huge_array is a perfectly valid name for a large array… Until you realize that you were actually trying to create a hash, which is apparently not a PHP feature at all, in which case you suddenly realize that you’re going to need like six $huge_array’s… In which case I broke down and gave them decent names.
  • To determine if something is sound programming practice, try it and see if the program crashes, or, in my case, if PHP throws errors. If not, you’re golden.
  • The PHP.net manual is amazing. I just learned how to use foreach() tonight.
  • Coding is like swimming: even if you’ve gone years without exercising the skill, you can pick it up in no time. And also like swimming, if you’ve sucked at it all your life, you’ll still suck at it just as much later on.
  • When you can’t think of a good way to code in a feature, just put in a comment indicating what it should do. (So far, though, the PHP compiler hasn’t done a very good job with filling in code based on my comments…)

Tests

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So I’ve got this enormous set of questionnaires on management styles, and it’s one of those things, “Rank from highest to lowest the following.” And I’m left wondering a few things:

  • Do many people try to ‘psychoanalyze’ the test? I almost always know what each question is trying to judge. (And if I don’t, I skip it and go over the others, look at the end, and figure out what it’s asking.)
  • Do many people get hung up on technicalities? On a question that was judging me on six different ‘qualities,’ including practical, economic, religious, and artistic, I ranked Mother Teresa highly as one of the most interesting people to meet. This raised my score in the “spiritual” category. I just think it’d be neat to meet her, religious or not.
  • Does anyone else almost always have their answers, on large numerical scales, gravitate towards the middle?
    • Does anyone ever think that, on a scale of 1-4, they’re really a 2.5? A 2 is too extreme one way, and a 3 is too extreme the other way.
  • Are people really so oblivious that they don’t realize that all 20 questions on these types of things are getting at the same thing, just paraphrased?
    • What I find most interesting is that the test just goes for the total… It should really look at the anomalies. I scored very low on the ‘spiritual’ category, except for the Mother Teresa question. Someone who actually cared about the results might wonder about this and wonder about it. But nope, it just means that I’m three points more spiritual.
  • Who writes these things? The questions are always so vague. For example:
    • Faced with a problem to solve, rank, highest to lowest, the following ‘methods’ of solving the problem:
      • Accomplish goals
      • Develop thoughts
      • Weigh evidence
      • Follow instincts
    • Shouldn’t you do all of them? The, err, goal, is to accomplish the goal. In doing that, you must weigh the evidence and develop thoughts, and let your instincts weigh in too. How is this any different from asking:
      • You’re driving along and a car runs a stop sign and pulls out right in front of you. Which of the following do you do?
        • Hit the brakes.
        • Swerve away from them.
        • Beep your horn.
        • Try to avoid crashing.

        The question makes no sense! You’d probably do all four. And the last one is a summary of them all.

  • The questions make no sense!
    • What ranking do I assign to “Developing thoughts.” I’m always developing thoughts, whether I try to or not. Cogito ergo sum.
    • In solving a problem, how important is “performing deeds?” What is that even supposed to mean?
    • “Being aware”–again, cogito ergo sum.

I want to write these things. I could have a field day.

Rank, from highest to lowest, which skills you used while reading this blog post:

  • Reading
  • Converting written words into mental images and ideas
  • Digesting lunch
  • Being aware
  • Performing deeds
  • Breathing
  • Blinking
  • Developing thoughts
  • Reading this post

Should I?

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I’m often the one to close up at work. We share a long ‘driveway’ with another business, which is now out of business. From time to time–maybe about two times a month–there’ll be a car sitting, facing us, in the parking lot of the neighboring business. They’re far enough away that I’m not too concerned for my safety: if they were to come after me, I could get into my car long before they got to me/it.

Being the paranoid person I am, though, I always worry that they’re waiting until I leave to rob the place. So I’ll typically drive away and then come back a couple minutes later, although I don’t drive up the access road/driveway, I just carry on the main road as if I weren’t snooping on them. They’re often there for 10-15 minutes, and, when they’re gone, I’ll drive back up to make sure they’re not somewhere on our property. Tonight I was able to jot down their license plate, although I worry they may have noticed that I drove by at like 2 MPH and noticed me noticing them.
This time, as I drove by after leaving, I noticed another car pulling in. I drove by a bit, turned around, and went by again, as the two cars were leaving.

It’s not always the same car(s), but it is always the same spot. They’re clearly not (thus far) looking to rob me / my business, nor are they doing anything else obviously nefarious. However, it still seems incredibly suspicious to be waiting in your car in the parking lot of a deserted business at 1am.

So here’s my question: what do I do? I’ve been tempted to call the police and report it as a suspicious car, but I can never decide if I should.

  • They may well be doing nothing wrong. The police would be obligated to check it out, in which case I’m sicking the police on people who are doing nothing wrong.
  • They may well be doing something wrong. It’s not breaking into my business, and it’s not mugging me, but it’s really pretty suspicious. (Selling drugs seems the most likely explanation, although all the evidence I have of that is that they’re sitting in an abandoned parking lot and meeting someone at 1am… Hardly proof.)
    • The police would be obliged to investigate and would probably catch wind of what was going on. A vote for calling them in.
    • It’s not like the suspicious cars don’t know where I work and what type of car I drive… Even though I always park right in front of one of the security cameras, I’d still hate to come out of work a few days later and find my tires slashed and my car egged.

So do I call the cops next time or not?

Computer Liquidation

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I’m not positive I’m going to go through with this, but I thought I’d see if anyone was interested first… I’m eager to clear some stuff out and buy a new machine:

  • Dual 19″ flat CRTs (Samsung 955DF), great shape. Shipping is maybe not such a hot idea, as they’re big.
  • Two 17″ LCDs, one a Samsung, one a lesser-known brand (MAG?)
  • My old desktop: dual 1.4 GHz Athlons, 512 MB RAM, 200+40+60 GB (I think) hard drives, DVD burner. Currently set up as a MythTV box under Ubuntu, with the TV tuner and remote control maybe included. (Depending on interest.)
  • My old laptop: Compaq Presario 900, big 15″ LCD, a 1.53 (?) GHz AMD processor, 512 MB RAM, and a 40 GB disk. No built-in wireless, but I’ll include a PCMCIA card. Windows XP Home Edition. In fairly good shape, although the screen hinges have some ‘give’ so it wiggles a bit, and I think there’s a crack in the frame. (Doesn’t impair anything.) Battery doesn’t seem to hold a great charge.

C’mon, you know you want them.

Computer Pricing

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Back maybe in early high school, I decided to build a new desktop system, and scrapped together enough money to do so. I built what was then a monster of a system: dual 1.4 GHz Athlons, a gig of RAM, and a 40 GB hard drive.

Today, my laptop is faster: Core2Duo 1.833 GHz, 2 GB RAM, and a 60 GB disk at 7200 RPM.

But what interests me most is how cheap things are these days. Looking through this weekend’s CompUSA circular, I’ll point out a few interesting ones:

  • $400 (after a big rebate) buys a laptop with 15.4″ LCD, dual-core Pentium processor, 512 MB RAM (bah), an 80 GB disk, and Vista Home Basic. It’d be a bit of a downgrade for me, but to those who don’t have a relatively new, tricked-out machine, all that, in a laptop, for $400? It’d make a pretty good computer (juts upgrade that RAM!), and it’s only $400. That’s what I’d expect to spend on a peripheral or two.
  • $600 gets you a 17″ notebook, dual cores, 160 GB drive, Vista Home Premium, and a gig of RAM. Now you’ve got a nice machine. For $600.
  • I’m desperately trying to justify to myself a new desktop system: $1,000 buys a quad-core 2.4 GHz processor, 2 GB RAM, a 500 GB disk, a 22″ widescreen monitor, and Vista Home Premium. (With a 500 GB disk, I could say I had Vista and yet really run Linux. *grin*) If you asked me, without having looked at the circular, I’d have told you that such a machine would probably run $3,000 or more. (A printer is apparently also included, although since they scarcely mention it, I don’t have high hopes for it.)

Anyone in the market for a dual 1.4 GHz AthlonMP system, 512 MB RAM, 120+60+40 GB drives, and a pair of 17″ LCDs? 😉