Found via Esbee is this incredibly cool project that converted an old cigarette vending machine into an art vending machine.
Art-o-Mat
Leave a reply
Razor Genius
I've never met him, but I have to assume that Jeff Hagan is a genius. Why? Because according to this story in the Wall Street Journal Hagan "bought 100 Gillette Mach3 blades. Then he found oil that helps double the blades' lifespan." Mach3 is my shaver of choice and though I don't much like the expense of the blades, I've found they give me the best shave, much better than the newer four blade shavers, and I'm worried that they blades will go away or get even more expensive.
Mr. Hagan's genius is revealed in this excerpt:
"I'm basically investing in blade futures," Mr. Hagan remembers telling onlookers at Costco as they marveled at the pile of cartridges in his car. "That's my hedge against forcing to upgrade."
I can't really afford to get 100 blades at once, but if add one pack of blades (the Costco packs hold something like 28 blades) every other time I go to Costco I should be able to build up a stockpile pretty quickly. Now I just need to find that oil and I'll be golden.
“The rich are different: they are more ruthless.”
Two sayings I've always associated with the rich are: "Only play with other people's money" and "Never touch the principal." A new one might be, "When the going gets tough, walk away."
Money quote from the story: "The rich are different: they are more ruthless."
Benefit Second Harvest and Take In a Ballgame. Also, Is Winston Better Than Greensboro?
The Triad Apartment Association (my employer) is hosting a food drive to benefit Second Harvest and one aspect of it is that we're having a competition between the Winston-Salem Dash and the Greensboro Grasshoppers to see which team/city can raise the most food for one game. The Dash game is next Monday (July 12) and the Grasshopper game is next Wednesday (July 14). We have slightly different arrangements for each game but the basics are that we're encouraging folks to bring food or financial donations and then stick around to enjoy the ballgame. Here are the details:
Winston-Salem Dash, July 12
Bring food or financial donations to our table by the entrance and you'll get a voucher for a free Dash baseball cap. Your donations will be counted towards the Winston-Salem total.
Greensboro Grasshoppers, July 14
You can bring food and financial donations to our table, and on top of that if you buy your ticket to the game from us $2 of the ticket will go to Second Harvest. There will also be prize giveaways throughout the evening. Your donations will be counted towards the Greensboro total.
Last year our Food Drive raised almost 210,000 cans of food and we're determined to beat that this year. I hope to see many of you on either Monday or Wednesday!
Final note: I'd like to personally thank Mayor Joines, Mayor Knight, WXII, The Dash and The Grasshoppers for partnering with us and Second Harvest to help feed the hungry in the Triad. Here's the commercial we all collaborated on the promote the event:
$608?
So I got a call from my wife letting me know that my daughter's routine wellness visit to the doctor was going to cost someone $608. I say someone is going to pay it because it won't be just us. Our insurer will be picking up a healthy chunk of the bill, as they should since that's why we pay them ransom premiums every month, but the interesting thing to me is that the only reason we actually know the cost is because the doctor's office still has us in their system as an "out of pocket" patient and they send the bills directly to our house. The reason for this is we used to have an HSA plan so all the bills were paid directly by us, but we've been on our current "regular" insurance plan for over a year so we shouldn't be getting these bills. Can we say inefficiency?
You have to wonder how we've gotten to the point that a simple wellness visit that takes 15 minutes and involves a routine vaccination can cost north of $600. Sheesh.
But wait, there's more. It ends up that the doctor's office billed for something they didn't do. When my wife called they said that the thing they billed for was a standard part of a wellness check, which is why they billed it even though they didn't provide the service. They assured her that it would be removed from the bill that the insurer receives. Riiiight.
Here's my questions: What would have happened if we'd never seen the bill? How often does this kind of thing happen and what is it costing on a state or nationwide basis? When did practice managers start going to the same management school as car dealership repair shop managers?
What a cluster.
Men Who Iron Are More Attractive? I’m Gonna Call BS on That
A survey commissioned by an appliance manufacturer says that men who iron are more attractive to women than men who send them chocolates. Ignoring for a moment the inherent bias of the survey's sponsor I'm going to call BS based on the following anecdotal evidence: I couldn't repair a cardboard box, much less a car, but I can rock some laundry and I've never once in my life had a woman, particularly my wife, say, "Baby, seeing you do that ironing is soooo sexy."
Oh wait. I think Hollywood disagrees with me:
Local Pastor vs. NC Legislature
A local Baptist pastor was invited to offer the NC legislature prayer for a week. He was told what the approved method of prayer was (in a nutshell, non-sectarian) and that if he didn't adhere to those standards he would be uninvited to pray. He refused to adhere to those terms, which is his right, and the legislature uninvited him, which is its right. Now the pastor wants an apology and the opportunity to open a legislative session with a prayer in the manner he sees fit. A quote from the story:
"I was made to feel like a second-class North Carolinian when I was told that my services would no longer be needed if I could not offer the opening prayer in the manner prescribed by the House of Representatives, rather that in the manner my biblical faith requires," Baity said.
I guaran-damn-tee you that he's on the side of the sectarian prayer advocates in the case being fought here in Forsyth County. To refresh your memory the pro-sectarian prayer folks are saying that they should be able to pray in whatever manner they wish, much like the pastor is arguing here. The anti-sectarian prayer folks are saying, no, you can't because then the government is put in the position of endorsing a specific religion.
Here's the irony to me: what the pastor is saying, that he's being made to feel like a second class citizen, is exactly how people who don't want to be forced to hear sectarian prayer at a government meeting feel when a clergyman is invited to give a sectarian prayer to open the meeting.
Walk a mile…
The Things I Do for Work
Some days at work you just gotta do what you gotta do, like reading this sentence:
While cap-rate centric institutional buyers mindful of market fundamentals are balking at cap rate compression, opportunistic private investors and opportunity funds with aggressive yield expectations and the underwriting to match are standing 20 and 30 bidders deep to pay what the market demands on a price-per-unit and price-per-square-foot basis.
I think I sprained my brain.
BP Bustin’ Up?
Things in BP-land ain't looking too good:
THE British government is drawing up contingency plans for a possible collapse of BP.
This is amid mounting fears that the oil giant could be broken up or taken over in the wake of the Gulf of Mexico oil disaster.
The talks, which are being led by officials at the Department for Business and the Treasury, reflect growing concern within Whitehall about the implications that a corporate failure of BP, formerly Britain's biggest company, would have on British interests domestically and around the world.
Oo-la-la. Is it possible that a corporation behaving badly could actually be held accountable for its bad behavior? Well, duh:
Prime Minister David Cameron and Energy Secretary Chris Huhne are set to discuss BP's future with US officials during a trip to Washington on July 20.
Speaking in Toronto at the G20 on June 25, Mr Cameron warned that BP faced potential destruction unless US authorities stepped in to prevent its compensation costs escalating out of control.
Government supplication to petroleum purveyors begins in 10, 9, 8…
Befuddled 