Gas Prices Reach $5.00/gal In Arkansas

I guess this was bound to happen.  I once speculated about it, but I never thought it would happen so soon.  Right now as we speak people are lined up for blocks at all the gas stations in my town, and prices have risen more than $1.00 in the last 24 hours.  Our Governor has declared a state of emergency with regard to this:

http://www.kait8.com/global/story.asp?s=8999291

All of this because of the hurricane and the subsequent shutting down of refineries in Texas.

Price gouging in my state appears to have some repercussions as the attorney general made this statement:

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) - Attorney General Dustin McDaniel is asking Arkansas consumers to e-mail or text any evidence of price gouging at gas pumps because of Hurricane Ike.

McDaniel said Friday his office has fielded a number of calls complaining about hikes in gas prices because of the hurricane bearing down on the Texas coast. He said his office will look into the claims.

Now, I don’t fully understand the laws regarding this, but I do have a problem with people raising prices in times of crisis just to increase profit.  All it took today was for one gas station to raise its price to 4.40 from 3.60.  People around town found out about it, started a panic, got everyone out trying to fill up their tanks, in turn causing a huge surge in demand….. It’s a self fulfilling prophecy in a way.

My opinion is that if no one raised prices, that everyone would have bought gas as they normally would instead of rushing out and trying to top off their tanks.  Our supply probably would have lasted through the hurricane, and no one would have had to pay any increased prices.  Instead, prices went up, people frenzied, are currently buying all the gas around for miles, and I expect that we will run out completely before gas stations get refilled.

People will pay $20 more today for a tank of gas than they did yesterday and I think they will be HAPPY that they were able to get gas at all.  All because 1 station raised its prices and caused a panic.  I do have to admit that its a really interesting phenomenon to observe.

If you notice price gouging in your area, you can report it here.

Fringe: Promising New Show On Fox!

Fringe: Promising New Show On Fox!

I was able to catch the pilot of this show and I have to say that It kept me interested.  I don’t know if I’m an ardent fan, but I will definitely be watching next week.

The show has an x-files esque feel to it, but tries to be a little more mainstream.

I encourage you to head over to fox here: where you can check out the full HD piolot episode.

I also want to mention that I love the scientist that plays one of the main characters in the show.  They bring him out of a mental institution and he definately has a great personality.  As they are driving him from the mental institution he decrees that he seems to have pissed himself… and then continues on like nothing happened.  We catch him later enjoying sponge bob.  But if you doubt his leet science skillz… well you’ll just have to watch the show.. but it involves making LSD in the basement at a prestigous university where his lab was many years ago… what could be better than that? How about using that LSD to connect one person’s thoughts to a person in a drug induced coma?

The Epic Battle: Everyone Vs RIAA And MPAA

NOTE: This is a Rant.  The opinions and content within are only that. Opinions.  This is not intended to be an article of facts or truth, but instead is only a rant of the thoughts in my head.

To the RIAA & MPAA, please don’t sue me. If your going to sue me anyway, please read the next line, if  not, please skip it.

FUCK YOU RIAA & MPAA.

Why?

On the seventh anniversary  of 9/11, I see an article regarding the founders of EliteTorrents and today’s sentencing of Daniel Dove to 18 months in prison and a $20,000 fine.

The truth is that Daniel could have gone to the nearest big box retailer, stolen all the movies he could carry, and started handing them out on the nearest street corner, and received a lesser sentence than he received.  I have seen drunken driving manslaughter cases where the perpetrator was given a slightly lesser sentence.

I could have my car stolen and if they caught the guy he would not get this kind of sentence.  But this is nothing like stealing my car.  This is like taking a satellite 3D model of my car down to the coffee cups and Twinkie wrappers and making an exact duplicate of my car, and then giving it away to someone.

The MPAA and RIAA use their money (money = power) to influence our government.  They are basically paying Mickey and Joey to come over to your house and rough you up a little bit.  Only it’s Big Brother instead of Mickey and Joey, and instead of outright payment it’s much more subtle.

The MPAA and RIAA have business models that are outdated and they have to be adjusted to fit our times.  Use that money that your pressuring the government with and paying all your lawyers to sue everyone to hire some nerdy geniuses from cal tech or MIT, and have them teach you how to change your business to fit the world the way it is today.

Where Do You Get Your News?

To us, information and the understanding of that information is one of the most important things in all of our lives.  We have come to a place in our society where information is available to almost everyone at the touch of a keyboard.  Your children will never have to go to the library and thumb through old yellow cards in the library’s card catalog to find information on a particular subject.  Instead they will type a few words on a computer and have more information at their disposal than contained in even the largest library in the world.

I think many of us don’t watch the biased network news and instead look to the internet.  It’s easy to find first hand eye wintness video and commentary when there are millions of bloggers out there, every cell phone has digital video recording capabilities, and everyone in the country has access to computers with high speed internet.

Physical newspapers are on the way out ( and I believe they will be in the next 10 years).  They are too slow.  Near real time reporting on news stories has almost become too slow for us.  We as a society crave information, and we want it now.  There has never been a time in recorded history when information was so available.  What we do with that information will define us and the future.

Being Number 1 In Search Results Dosen’t Make You Number 1

I was reading an article over at:BruceClay.com about The Importance / Lack Of Importance In Being #1 For A Search Term.

I personally think people focus too much on being #1 for a keyword or two.  I think people should instead focus on their users.  Provide great content to your users.  Some of my favorite blogs seem to just be.  I don’t think they focus on ranking for certain keywords as much as they focus on making their users happy.  I think metrics like the time the average user spends on your site, conversion rates, average page views, etc. are much more important that ranking on a specific keyword or overall traffic.

I compare this in a way to the fact that I can advertise nude photos of celebrities and make photos in photoshop, and I can get tons of traffic.  That traffic will be useless.  It will have zero stickiness ( no pun intended) and  as soon as those people realize my sites content has nothing to do with what they are looking for, they will never be back again.

I would take one happy RSS subscriber who will blog about the great posts/articles on a particular site over 10,000 visitors looking for Angelina Jolie Naked Photos.

So my point is that being #1 for keywords is great, but it’s just a small part.  Other things are just as important and in many cases more important.

Real Networks Is Still Alive?

I saw this on digg today, and as I began reading all of the comments on the digg article, I came to the same conclusion that many of the digg users did, and that is surprise that this company still exists.

For a company that began in 1995, they may have been off to a good start with their RealAudio compression, but their software package haunts my nightmares. They produced some of the hardest to remove bloatware on the market for their time.

I feel like one digg user described my feelings the best with his/her comment:

• Laminarcissus
  5 hr 43 min ago

  And, because it’s RealNetworks, it will also install fifteen other programs that stay resident via a special rootkit, back up your registry to their servers, reassign all your file association to their software, and make you whisper “I am Real’s bitch” into your microphone every time you start Windows.

This is how people still view RealNetworks years later. So I think it is important for software companies to not forget this lesson, because the users out there sure won’t.

Where Does Your Website Content Come From?

Content is King.  We hear that phrase over and over again.  Where does your website content come from? The way I see it, there are two types of content: content you generate yourself through research, interviews, and your own time, and then there is content that is generated by the users of your website.

You may not realize this, but with most of my favorite blogs, I will spend much more time reading the comments on a particular post than I do reading the post.  Those comments are content that was generated by the users of your website.  The comments often generate comments.  This additional content gets the users involved, it generates more revenue from your website, more subscribes, etc.

Some of my favorite strategies that I see websites do to generate content are to have contests like on smashingmagazine.com where they will have a contest to generate icons, or take photographs of textures for example, and then they release all of those to the community to use for free without restrictions.  This is an amazing marketing strategy because it gets their users involved in the contest, and it gives all of them something valuable to use after the contest is over.

Some major websites only write their own content, don’t allow users to comment, and don’t give anything back to their users.  These sites have a thing or two to learn in my opinion, and if they don’t change they could find themselves losing out.  Get your users involved, make them happy, and they will be loyal to your website, they will give you link love, and they will make you money.

How To Remove Duplicate Rows In Excel

The Duplicate Master has really helped me out! It does exactly what I need, even finding duplicates across multiple sheets and 200,000+ rows.  The site for the plug in is here:

http://members.iinet.net.au/~brettdj/

The website seems to be down atm so if you can’t get the plug in from there, send me a message and I’ll see if I can help you get it.

6 Websites You Should Be Visiting Daily

1. Digg.com This is one of the few sites that I visit many times each day.  I would describe digg as a community driven news site.  Stories, links, videos, etc. are submitted by users, and users digg stories they like.  Stories with the highest number of diggs get displayed first. It’s a little more complicated than that, but thats the general idea.  If you can get your website listed on the homepage of digg.com, it will generate tons of traffic for you.  I see many sites make the home page and end up crashing because the server can’t handle the load.  This is one of the few ways you want your server to crash.

2. SmashingMagazine.com I found this site through digg.com.  Many of their articles make good impressions on digg.com. The site is focused on website development and graphic design mostly.  They have great contests that generate free stuff, like icon design constests that they then release for free.  Who dosen’t like free icon sets? or free textures? how about free GOOD quality wordpress themes? Not only do they have all these things for free, they also have some good articles on things ranging from CSS to icon design.  They also update their site on a daily+ basis (typically).

3.  CodingHorror.com Jeff’s blog is not good because Jeff is the best programmer in the world.  His blog is good because he writes thought provoking content and has an amazing amount of knowledgeable readers who post comments.  The comments section on each post is a gold mine.

4.  CodeProject.com If you are a programmer and you don’t know this site, stop what you are doing, and go there now.  If you want to learn something in the programming world that you don’t know how to do, you can find out how here.  If you know everything there is to know, then please write an amazing article and include all the project files, code, samples, etc.  One of the best ways I have found to learn something is to teach it to someone else, you can really improve your coding skills by participating in a community like this one.

5. Break.com This is a fun way to kill 10-15 minutes.  They feature user submitted video’s and photos, think America’s Funniest Video’s without Bob Sagget.  They also pay cash for video’s that they use, so if you have something funny.. you might give it a try.

6. Cracked.com Funny articles. Sometimes thought provoking, but mostly just entertaining.

Going In The Exit Door…

As Dennis Miller would often say, I don’t want to go on a rant here but.. Some stores have two automatic doors next to each other. Above one it says “EXIT”, and above the other it says “ENTER”.  If you choose to use the wrong door, and then look at me like I’m an idot when I run you over with my shopping cart, I will continue walking without the tiniest thought of remorse.  How difficult is it to walk 2 feet the other way and use the correct door?

and another thing… You know those places you think are really good parking spots but then when you get to where you can see them better are actually for you to put your shopping cart in when you are done with it? You do… Well then why when I come back out of the store do I notice that you left your shopping cart directly behind / up against my car?  Is your fat ass so lazy? Honestly?

Comcast Is The Devil

A recent article over at PC World explains how Comcast will restrict bandwidth for 10-20 minutes whenever the hell it feels like it.

n an interview Bloomberg, Mitch Bowling, Comcast’s senior vice president and general manager of online services, announced the introduction of Fair Share, a new traffic managing system that will reduce the top internet speeds for targeted customers for periods between 10 and 20 minutes.

My thoughts on this are as follows:

Why do people create business models where they sell the use of a product but can’t support people using it? Several examples come to mind involving the same thing: banks, insurance companies.. etc.

If I purchase internet access from Comcast and they say I get 2MB down, then I want 2 down, and I should be able to use it 24/7.  If they can’t support people actually doing this, then change the limits.  I would rather be told I can have 256KB down 24/7 than a theoretical Max Down of 2MB that I will be punished for using.

I would not use Comcast unless I had no other choice, especially after they were caught manipulating torrent traffic and even had an FCC ruiling against them recently for “unreasonable network management practices”.  So to Comcast I say.. Watch Your Back.. Someone Might Throttle You.

Poker Forum Shout-outs

I just want to give a quick shout-out to pocketfives.com and the twoplustwo forums.  Both of these sites have helped my game tremendously although I am mostly just a lurker on both.  I may begin posting more on both soon as my game improves more.  I would go far enough to say that no matter who you are, you can learn something that will help your game on these sites.

Mini Laptop Is Definitely My Next Buy

These things are so amazing!  There are several different models, This one being in the middle-low area.   All of these use solid state drives, and most of them come pre-installed with linux.  Most of us would of course wipe this and put a different flavor of linux.  These little guys start at around 299 for a 2gb model, and 399 for the 4g.  You can expand these with SD cards.  USB 2.0 ports, wireless… what more could you want.

100 Buy-In At The Goldstrike

I decided to go to Tunica saturday afternoon and play in the $100 buy in NL tournament.  This particular tournament has a $10 dealer toke that gets you an extra 2k in chips, bringing the starting stack up to 6k.  The tournament got under way with about 60 players.  My table was probably standard, mostly soft except there were two guys who where 2/5 NL regulars.

I made it through the first hour and break, up to around 8k in chips.  When we came back, the blinds were 200/400 with a 25 ante.  I started leaking chips around this point, folding to a couple short stack all ins, etc.  So toward the end of this level I’m sitting at around 5k in chips in the big blind.  There are two folds, and the next to act is one of those two 2/5 NL regulars, these guys had been stealing very often.  He makes it 1200 to go, and it folds back around to me.  I look down at AKo and insta push, hoping to get the guy to fold.

He thinks about it for about a minute, says call, and says “I hope you have high cards”, and flips pocket 6’s.  The flop comes K 10 J Rainbow.  The turn is a 6, and the river a blank.  So I get up, say nice game to everyone, and leave.  I could have folded there, waited on a different spot, but I felt like I had good FE against that guy b/c of how often he had been stealing, and I really don’t feel bad about taking a coin flip in that spot.

Your A Professional What?

I love poker.  I hate poker.

Poker can be compared to life in many ways, because we must make decisions based on incomplete and often innacurate information.  Life is not like chess where you can see every angle, every position on the board, and the player with the most skill wins.  I have been reading StevesBets blog  because I want to get more insight into what it is really like to be a professional poker player.  For many of us part time poker players, this is our ultimate goal.

I wonder if that really is the best route for most of the people who claim the title.  Playing poker for fun on the weekends and a few hours a day online for extra income is fun.  Grinding out a living playing 8-10 hours a day may not be so much fun.  Imagine working for a month and losing money.  Even people with commission only jobs don’t get paid negative money.  But it is a common occurance for a poker player to have a negative month.

My biggest fear if I ever tried to play full time would be killing the pleasure that I currently get from taking down a monster pot or making a few thousand dollars on a saturday.

I know many players who try to go pro end up going bust instead, but I wonder how many more just can’t take the grind.  I know that to be successful long term, you have to stop seeing winning and losing pots, and see only +EV and - EV moves.  If you win a 10K pot with a hugely negative EV, you should be mad at yourself for making a bad play, not congratulating yourself for winning the money.