I am all that is Dork!

So, as you all know, or should know, I was robbed. Twice. In the first robbery (evidently if you are not home, it is burglary, but it is cooler to say robbery, makes it more dramatic) the sons-a-bitches got my lap top. Now, losing my tax returns, having my accounts and passwords on there, various games loaded on there, and such was bad; but the worse thing was that all of my iTunes songs where on there. That sucked.

I was/am lucky that my iPod was in my truck for both break-ins. So, all of those songs that I purchased are still on my iPod. However, here is the problem, wait for it, steady: your iPod is sync’ed up to a particular version of your operating system. If you lose your computer, crash the hard drive, upgrade Windows, and various other calamity, you will not be able to get you songs from your iPod to your computer; and vice-versa.

This was the situation I was in. Now, there are several shareware, open source, and third party vendors that have programs that will ‘rip’ songs from you iPod to your PC; but I’m a cheap bastard (more truthfully, I couldn’t get them to install on Vista) and so I typed in “How to get songs from iPod to Computer Vista” into the Google search bar. After wading past all of the adverts and such, there was a nice Yahoo thread that told me to do the following.

1) Connect iPod
2) On iTunes control panel, select the iPod on the left pane
3) In the iPod section make sure that the “Enable Disk” function is checked for your iPod (evidently this selection makes it necessay to use the ‘Safely Remove Hardware’ utility for USB devices
4) Open Windows explorer and select the iPod (called USB mass storage device, usually drive F:)
5) Under options for the select ‘Show Hidden Directories’
6) Go to the following Directories -> iPod Control -> Music
7) Copy the entire Music directory to a point on your hard drive
8) Open iTunes, go to the file button, select Import Files, browse to the new music directory, open each of the sub-folders (names F00, F01, F02, etc) and copy all of the files.
*Note: iPod gives the files random names, but it will be able to figure them out when it uploads them to iTunes.

Well, it took me more time than I would like to admit to figure that out (the whole ‘Enable Disk’ thing was beyond me); but I figured it out. So I am happy, because I saved all kinds of money in recovering the songs and I defeated the smarmy iTunes, and I remain King Dork.

Later,

B

So, what number do you choose?

So, I am reading the Freakonomics blog and they are discussing the Prisoners Dilemma game. They had an interesting couple of blog posts as to what question would you ask the other prisoner if you, yourself, were the other prisoner.

A brief aside: The Prisoners Dilemma is as follows: Two suspects are arrested by the police. The police have insufficient evidence for a conviction, and, having separated both prisoners, visit each of them to offer the same deal: if one testifies ("defects") for the prosecution against the other and the other remains silent, the betrayer goes free and the silent accomplice receives the full 10-year sentence. If both remain silent, both prisoners are sentenced to only six months in jail for a minor charge. If each betrays the other, each receives a five-year sentence. Each prisoner must make the choice of whether to betray the other or to remain silent. Each one is assured that the other would not know about the betrayal before the end of the investigation. How should the prisoners act? (Shamelessly lifted from wikipedia)

What happens in a one round game of the Prisoners Delimma is that each guy rats on the other, and both do 5 years; whereas, if they both trusted each other and shut up, they’d each do 6 months. The purpose of the questions of the blog is to use the best question to get enough information from your fellow prisoner to make the best decision for you. Here are the top 5 questions:

1. “How old are you?”

2. “What is the number of ethics courses you’ve taken, minus the number of economics courses you’ve taken?”

3. “Given that you are in a bar, would you prefer to pursue the most attractive person in the bar, or would your efforts focus on someone less attractive?”

4. “What is the name and address of your most cherished family member?”

5. “Have you read Freakonomics?”

My favorite is #4 (the eventual winner) because it really doesn’t seek information, but rather communicates a sociopathic warning. Which question do you like? Can you think of a better question? How do you rank the questions? Mine is 4, 2, 1, 3, and 5. I think #4 is the best for the stated reason; #2 is next because there is a working theory that people who take a lot of economic courses are cold and calculating and people who take lots of ethics courses are more cooporative (according to the people I know, people who take a lot of accounting and finance courses are boring); #1 is next because older people tend to be more cooporative than younger people, #3 is next because this is an incorrect demonstration of the Nash Equilibrum from the movie a beautiful mind; and, lastly, #5 because it was included in the list cause the guys at the Freakonomics blog are self-agradizing,

I think my claim to King Dork is safe.

Later,

B

A Big Dream

I have a plan, idea, dream, whatever; and it is big. It is still in its infancy, so I can not go into too much. Should the plan progress, I am going to fully pursue it. When I do people are going to say things like “Wow, do you really think you can do that?” “That’s a HUGE risk.” “Why?” “What if things go wrong, what will you do then?”

I know my parents will think I’m nuts. I’m pretty sure my sisters and my brother will shake their heads in disbelief. My friends will think I’m being grandiose, but they might think I can pull it off. I have no clue what my colleagues will say, but by then, their opinion won’t mean quite as much.

I know this, yet I still want to pursue this big dream. It isn’t so much that this has been a life long dream, and that somehow once this thing is done, I’ll be fulfilled. But, rather, it is going to be a monumental thing to pull off; and I want to achieve something that 99.9% of the people in this world wouldn’t dream of doing, much less do it. I can tread water in life, and achieve modest gains professionally and personally; or, I can swing for the fences.

I will take my swing. I will do it because a life of incremental gains seems inadequate to me. I feel if I strike out, I will only do so professionally; the risk taking, the work involved, and the willingness to let go of the safe route will be personally fulfilling no matter the outcome.

Yeah, I’m going to take my swing.

Later,

B

I am nerd, hear me roar

So, I play Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game (MMORPG) World of Warcraft (WoW, for short). This game is nerdy and addicting, so I am all about it. This game is based on two factions, the Horde and the Alliance, completing missions and fighting each other. As a person's character (an avatar, if you will) completes missions, kills monsters, etc he/she gains levels and gets cooler weapons, spells, abilities, etc.

I’ve taken my WoW nerdiness to a new level: the economics of a Netherweave Bag. A bag, in WoW, is like any other bag, it is something you carry items in. A Netherweave Bag is a 16 items bag: one can carry 16 swords, flowers, pigs heads, etc in this bag. It is one of the best bags for an avatar to have.

How does one get a Netherweave Bag? Great question! One’s avatar must have tailoring as an ability, build up that ability to a high skill level and have to appropriate materials to create the bag, or buy it from another player. The materials to make a bag are bolts of Netherweave and rune-thread. Bolts of Netherweave are made from Netherweave cloth and rune-threads are bought from vendors. It takes 24 Nethwerweave cloths to make the requisite number of bolts of Netherweave, and 1 rune-cloth to make these nice bags.

Gee, Brian, that’s great, but that’s nerdiness that is inherent to the game, how do you increase the nerdiness level? Another great question! It is all about how much one can auction the Netherweave Bag for, and how much it costs to make one. (Quick side note, money in the game works as follows: 100 copper pieces = 1 silver piece, 100 silver pieces = 1 gold piece, pretty simple) The costs of making a bag are as follows: a rune-thread cost 42.5 silver, netherweave cloth either costs the time to kill enough bad guys to loot 24 netherweave cloths, or purchase 24 netherweave cloths from other players at the auction house. Now, I choose to purchase the cloths from other players, and I usually pay between 12 and 15 silver pieces per cloth. Doing simple math, that means I spend between 3 gold, 30 silver, and 50 copper pieces; to 4 gold, 5 silver, and 50 silver pieces per bag. The nerdy part comes in when I acution the bags for between 5 gold and 50 silver pieces to 7 gold and 90 silver pieces per bag.

How is that nerdy? Well, for no more than the quick couple of minutes it takes me to purchase the material, create the bags, and send them to auction I make between 2 gold, 19 silver, and 50 copper pieces profit, and 3 gold, 87 silver, and 50 copper profit. I realized that there is a mispricing between the cost of the materials, and the price people are willing to pay for the bags. This pricing scheme give anywhere from a 66% to 117% profit margin; this has to be making economic profit. A 5% to 10% profit margin could be seen as a just recouping the cost of capital; but at the stated profit margins: marginal revenue is much greater that marginal cost. I theorize that it is because the people who auction off the Netherweave cloth are under pricing their goods. I, and the others who auction off the bags, are consistent about not going under the 5 gold, 50 silver price for the bags; so while the price of the bags might be high, not enough competition has come in to drive prices down; so the mispricing must be on the component side. The price of the rune-thread is set by the system (the vendors are Non-Player Characters, NPC’s, who don’t change their prices and have an infinite supply) so the only variable is the netherweave cloth.

I am King Nerd, because not only do I play the game, and make gold making these bags,; but, I get a HUGE kick out of charging and getting paid too much for the services rendered. This is not a true arbitrage situation, but it feels just about as good as one.

Later,

B, the Big Nerd

I Like Electricity

I like Electricity

So, in an effort to avoid being robbed again I moved in with an old college buddy. He is renting a room (a small one) at a reasonable rate. The nice thing about renting with Damon is that his house is nice, has plenty of room, and he has a great entertainment system. His house is located in a neat section of Indianapolis, 75th Street and North Meridian Street.

Well, I had spent the last week of May moving in. After a full day’s work Friday and finishing up some of the move, I decided to relax Friday night. All was going well, I was playing much video games, the evening was cooling off, and the storm was not producing hail that would damage my truck. While I was playing World Of Warcraft (and talking to Luke through the game) the lights flickered, and zzzziiittt, out goes the wireless connection at 10:00pm. I figured this was no big deal, so I start playing FreeCell and watching Rush Hour 2. Right around Midnight, some crappy movie was starting on TBS when I saw the sky turn white from lightning, just about got rocked out of my chair by thunder, heard a buzzing sound, and the neighborhood went black. Meh, a night without power, there’s worse outcomes.

Saturday morning I wake up, mill around, notice no power, talk to my house mate, inspect the basement, and proceed to go to the apartment to move the last stuff and clean. The basement flooded (DAMNIT) Saturday afternoon because the power didn’t come back on and the water table kept rising 12 hours after the storm was over. We broke out the generator and got the water out of the basement.

As day turned to night, and the house stayed dark and HOT, I decided to give Indy Power and Light a call. Not only was power not on, but it might not come back till late Monday night. Needless to say, I was un-impressed. As I was already scheduled to be at a friends house to watch the fights Saturday night, I wasn’t too miffed.

As Sunday dragged on, and still no power, I got this terrible feeling that something was amiss. So I called IPL and heard that not only was power not going to be back on Sunday, that now it could be Tuesday night before power was back on. Before I went out to a sports pub to watch a second night of fights I found out another disturbing fact, even thought a hot water heater uses gas, it controls are electric. Nothing beats finding this out as one showers. We were lucky in that the controls for the heater run off of 110v and that the generator could run the sump and the hot water heater.

Monday morning sucked. Had plenty of hot water, but shaving and getting ready in the near dark is about impossible. Add on top of that, that I was butt-ass tired from having the uneasy sleep of a hot, humid, and breezeless room to sleep in (the basement was beginning to smell like mold), and Monday sucked. The call to IPL on Monday was disheartening, now it could be late Tuesday before power was back on.

I woke up this morning, Tuesday, and the lights were still out. G*DDAMNIT! I made the executive decision to not shave. I got in the shower, still groggy from the restless sleep, and thought to myself: ‘IPL gouges the crap out of it customers, where does all that money go? Surely, they have the money to pay people to fix this and buy spare parts.’ As I was cinching my belt I hear a strange noise, it was the security system beeping, why, I hadn’t heard that since Friday evening; then I heard relays starting to throw. My heart leapt, could it be?!!! Then my ceil fan started to spin, my alarm clock start flashing, the lights we on, the AC kicked on, and all was right with the world.

You don’t know how wonderful electricity until you haven’t had it for three hot and humid summer days in Indiana. I have never had so much simple joy in my entire life. (Well, there was this girl in college, but my parents read this blog every once in a great while.) Long live the AC. Long live electricity. Heck, long live IPL.

Later,

B