As the title would suggest, I wish I had a studio; “o rly” one might say.  I came to this conclusion after trying to find a place to start brainstorming a competition I came across.  The project, to design a music studio in Haiti, seems like something I would like to be a part of.

But alas, like I said I have a problem.  I have no where to really do anything; my desk, which realistically is the only place to write or draw in loose-leaf paper, houses my computer and mountains of papers that have no rational storage elsewhere.

The only other hard surface in my room is my dresser, which is where my light is.  Not necessarily a problem in itself but once said light is turned on the brightness is overwhelming.  Plus there are other things stored on my dresser as well, which puts the actual surface space down to about zero anyway.

So what am I to do?  Nothing, I suppose.  I can’t really change the fact I don’t have anywhere else to put this stuff (a lot of which isn’t even mine, by the way) nor can I change the fact I can’t just add more surfaces to my room.  It isn’t nearly big enough.  If I had more money, I could add collapsible surfaces, but, alas, I’m a relatively poor college student.

Oh well.  I suppose I’ll simply continue to mope about all the stuff I need.  Its either that or actually getting the things I need – but that’s to hard.

Of course, I’m sure my position – or even the fact I have a position – on this issue will shock people.  I mean, as I Mormon never having a drink in my life supporting increased liquor sales?  Of course that isn’t normal!  But the issue at hand isn’t necessarily about wine or liquor but rather is about the supermarkets’ proprietor’s freedom to sell what they think their clients want.

I can understand why it failed; the liquor stores will – should the measure pass – face a decrease in sales.  That will, of course, cause the state senators and assemblymen/women problems during their re-election campaign.  Not gunna lie, kind of a bad reason to vote against something that will help consumers and the state coffers, but whatever.

Anyway, moving on; the biggest reason why the liquor store owners (aka The Last Store on Main Street – how subtle) are against this bill is that they will inevitably go completely out of business due to big grocers selling wine at a cheaper price and at greater convenience. Huh.  Run-on sentence aside, there really isn’t that much I can say to defend that statement.

Second, is the concern supermarkets will primarily sell wine grown outside New York.  According to an MPNNow article a review of the wine menu at Wegman’s Next Door Bar and Grill shows less than 5% of the wines available are produced within the State border.  I’m curious how much wine this group thinks New York State makes.  New York doesn’t produce the most wine in the United States.  We don’t even come in second place.  New York holds the high honor of third biggest wine producer. In the United States. Woot?

The shear fact of the matter is the Next Door Bar and Grill holds a spectacular percentage of New York wines.  Of course, it could be higher but when the United States as a country only holds a 3.8% market share on wine exports having a 5% of your menu devoted to local wines isn’t bad at all.  Even if only 3% of the wines available for purchase are made in New York, that is still more than – statistically speaking – should be available based on wine produced.

The last store on main street is also concerned stores will close and jobs will be lost.  No doubt stores will close but as grocery stores add new product they will need to hire new employees trained in wine.  If they don’t, liquor stores which remain open will have an intellect advantage and may even see improved sales as convenience shoppers move into the premium market.

As to the amount of store closings, I can’t say for sure.  Based on the shear amount of liquor stores (I can think of at least 5 right along the Pittsford/Perinton border) the damage will likely be minimal.  Perhaps, should grocers start selling wine, there will only be 3 or 4 in this tiny patch of land; but like I said, I can’t say for sure.

In conclusion, the market for wine is huge in the United States; the average American drinks 7-15 liters per year.  The shear fact of the matter is, grocer can’t devote enough shelf space to truly capture the market.  “Small” stores, with the ability to devote huge amounts of shelf space to wine, will still have a place in the market and still employee knowledgeable staff to help customers.

No, I’m sorry.  I’m joking, they didn’t cure cancer.  Instead what they did – and this is not a joke – was post their bra color as their status in an effort to bring awareness to this disease.

Now, I won’t lie, its a noble effort to bring awareness to unknown, debilitating, diseases.  But that being said, breast cancer isn’t unknown.  If anything it is one of the most well known diseases on the face of the planet.

The problem with breast cancer, like with all cancers, is that its cancer.  When you’re diagnosed there are no assurances – even with early detection – you will survive; that’s simply the sad state of cancer research.

I understand that, at this point, I’m going to be ridiculed, harassed, and so forth for this post but I cannot help but feeling as if this act won’t accomplish anything – because it won’t.  All it will do is make you feel as if you’re accomplishing something – in the absolute laziest way possible.

If you’re like me – that is to say you have no medical experience at all – to really help cancer research you should be donating money or what skills you do have to research organizations.  That will go a lot further in really making people’s lives better.

American Cancer Society
Susan G. Komen – For the Cure

All that needs to be said.

Awesome.

Regardless of any argument anyone may ever make, prioritizing presents, gifts, or anything else over the true reason of Christmas – the birth of Jesus – can never be considered good.  It is this time of year we must move our attention to others rather than ourselves; or in the case of us business owners, our profits.

Nevertheless, the slight commercialization of Christmas can indeed be a good thing.  This is the season when individuals give gifts to make other people happy.  In order to give these presents individuals first must find gainful employment to acquire the resources to either purchase or manufacture the gift.  Typically, this means getting a job, rather than foraging for wood, metal, or other resources.

As this individual is employed he or she will manufacture a product for someone else to purchase, who will also need to be employed, and so on.  This will increase the standard of living for all those involved; the gift recipient, the gift giver, and all of those who are indirectly involved in this process.

Of course, my point is moot as generally people must be employed to, y’know, eat, but just some food for thought.

Its bad that your Web site gives me absolutely no information about how to deal with my issue.

Its very bad how the “email us” doesn’t allow me to select the proper problem I’m having.

Its just terrible that the CSRs are also completely unable to help as well.

Now, the obvious thing to think is “Wow, I’ve got some real big issue!” Wong.  I just can’t migrate my account from one Xbox to another.  I tried and tried, but nothing I did worked.

So I called Support.  I could barely understand what the person was saying!  She could barely understand what I was saying.  The only help I could get was what email address I used to sign up for the account.

It was something, though, so I decided maybe I could login to Xbox.com with that email address and retrieve my billing information that way.  I thought wrong.

Quite frankly I don’t think its worth the trouble anymore.  I don’t know how much time I’ve spent trying to solve this problem to only wind up no closer to a solution.

The shear fact of the matter is, I don’t play on XBL that much as it is – even though I’ve faithfully paid the $6.95/month access fee whether or not I use it.

But, given the fact that I cannot rely on Microsoft to provide adequate support, I think I’m leaving XBL for good.

Which leads me to my next problem.  How do I cancel my account through Microsoft?  The CSRs that I cannot communicate with or the Web site where I cannot access my account?

Forget it, I’ll just go through my bank.

Why?  You think university/college tuition is slavery.

You have the audacity to compare being kidnapped, being stripped of all rights, and then forced to work against your will for some slaver owner to freely entering into a contractual agreement to pay professors for their time.

I cannot even fathom how you can possibly dare to compare those two things.  One: a horrible act of violence against another.  The second: a generally well accepted idea that you pay someone for their goods and services.

It’s like when PeTA compared eating chicken to the holocaust.

I… I…  I honestly cannot think of anything else to say, please, just grow up.

Warm regards,
Greg.

P.S. I know what you’re trying to accomplish: getting the government to pay for the tuition for you.  But don’t get me wrong, I still hate you.

Its really a bad idea, but, since you all seem to be against a little thing called “research” I’ll provide some relevant facts:

First, there is no free lunch, or free breakfast, or in this case no free tuition.  Money has to come from somewhere and it will either come through inflation (like with Healthcare) or through new taxes.  Either way, you’ll end up paying for the professors, classroom resources, and a boatload of government bureaucrats.

Second, the rise in tuition costs are largely due to the increase in people going to school.  Figure classrooms, dorms, and the surrounding communities can only support a limited amount of students.  As more students converge on a given campus prices rise due.  It’s simple economics.

Third, government subsidized loans are a huge reason for the increase in tuition costs. As the cost of money for students is cheap, students typically can safely borrow more money and be able to pay it back.  The obvious benefit: students can pay higher and higher tuition costs.  The drawback is with students being so flush with cash universities have no reason to control costs.  Instead, the university can charge ever higher premiums and know students will just borrow the money.

Fourth, you have proven, beyond a shadow of a doubt a college or university education makes anyone smarter.  Tuition as slavery?  I know, I made a huge deal about it before, but, still.  Maybe we should just abandon universities and actually make stuff in factories (which, by the way, pays more than you might think), instead of whining the “problems” we do or do not face.

Like I said before: I hate you.

What was interesting in that article is how building occupants vacate a building faster with an obstacle (in this case, polls) directly in the path of the fire exit rather than just having the fire exit unencumbered.  Unfortunately, there are rather large issues with having objects in the path of emergency exits; would people see them?  Could individuals be trapped trying to avoid the obstacle?  Would people still be able to see the exit?  Plus, having any object in front of an emergency point of egress is in violation of building codes (NYS Fire Code [ICC Based] 1014.2).

The possible solution?

As you can see, there isn’t a drastic change to the emergency exit, however, there is a wall separating the two paths of traffic flow – increasing exit speed.  Obviously, this is a variation on the idea of having an object in the path of human traffic, but this appears to be complaint with the current code implementation.

You may also notice a complete lack of dimensions on this drawing – that was intentional.  Everything was code compliant (read: the doors are at least 32″ wide, etc) however, I don’t know how a variation of the width of the hallway, doors, or the wall separating the two paths would affect the flow of traffic outside.  This is because that wasn’t part of the study which this is based on and further research is necessary.

One thing that is totally awesome about my birthday is the meteor shower that happens every year.  Its like God wants to give me fireworks to celebrate – or something like that but less blasphemous.

Around 6:20 She (who I will refer to as “Ana”, the first name on the 2009 hurricane name list) entered queue and proceeded to put her items on the conveyer.

When it was her turn to be rung up, she preemptively apologized for being “my worst nightmare” – which didn’t seem out of the ordinary considering she had a few dozen items, most of which were air fresheners or pet treats.  Considering these items were on clearance and relatively complimentary, that aspect didn’t seem to out of the ordinary either.

Before I was able to start processing her transaction, Ana requested $400 in gift cards, which is a lot, but she said she was doing this as a fund raiser, which seemed to make sense considering gift cards make good raffle prizes.  Once these were put in the register, she immediately put the cards in her purse.

Here’s the scam: It adds $400 to the total, which is important in this situation as you will see later.  Additionally, she may have thought if she was caught and had the transaction canceled (which is what happened) she could quickly exit the store and have the gift cards still work, though they do not.

While I was ringing up her items, Ana was more talkative than the average customer; which isn’t bad.  She asked questions about where I lived, where I was going to school, what major I was in, how busy we were, and how long I have been working at the store.  It was actually sort of nice, considering how long her transaction was.

Here’s the scam: A few things are happening here.

First the small talk forces the brain to focus on the conversation and the guest – rather than the prices of the products being rung up or the $400 worth of gift cards which are no longer in sight.

Second, she’s sizing up her competition: me and store security.  Knowing how long I’ve been working allows her to have a better guess of my ability to catch a coupon scam.  Knowing how busy we are gives her a better guess of whether or not we would just “let it slide.”  The other questions and small talk are simply there to act as filler to hide her hidden motives.

Once all of her items were bagged and in her cart, Ana once again apologized about her transaction and presented a stack of coupons.  I don’t have an exact number of coupons, but there was at least 2 dozen.  Her coupons were a mix of “Buy 2 Get 1 Free” for both the pet treats and air fresheners, which was a really good deal considering how many she had purchased.

She said every single one would work, and sure enough they all did – our registers reject coupons where the required items are not present.  After her coupons had been entered into the register, I turned on the “Help” light at my register to get clarification of the coupon policy.

Val, the acting front end manager at the time, verified the policy but with one caveat: the air freshener coupons were for singles, rather than two packs.

Though, technically, Ana could use all of her coupons since she was purchasing the required products, the shear number of coupons concerned Val to the point where she called for Craig, the store manager, to the register to make sure everything was ok.

At this point, Ana stated she “was in a hurry and [she] didn’t have time for this”, requested her coupons and left the store taking only her coupons.

Here’s the scam: Remember the gift cards which “added to the total” and the that the items where on clearance? Each coupon was subtracting close to $10 from the total – when they should have subtracting around $1.50.  This resulted in the bill being $16.52 – when at the very least it should have been $400.  Had Ana not had those gift cards, I would have owed her money – increasing the chances I would have known something was wrong.  Since I forgot about the gift cards – due to the small talk – the result seemed normal.

Now, in a typical scam operation the guest would simply return the products for cash or store credit, since the registers do not factor in coupons during returns.  However, there is something rather odd about this instance: most “buy X get X free” coupons require me to enter the amount of the coupon into the register and may even require a manager to sign off on the coupon.  This time, these coupons subtracted an incorrect amount automatically.  I have to believe that Ana somehow knew this would happen, because scamming $1.50 clearance items simply does not pay off well.  It is, therefore, my opinion this was an inside job as only someone who works with the company would know about this coupon error.

For those who are worried about this post helping “the bad guys”, I wrote this on the basis that full disclosure can result in fewer successful scam payoffs in the future.  Understandably, this post may help the amateur scammers, but this information is already out there and well known to professionals.  But the information here can help “the good guys” close security holes and prevent scams.

Update
I was informed that coupons can have a value of up to $10.00 embedded in the bar code.  It is very possible these coupons were “pre-programmed” or even altered to talk off the specific amount.