I've been a bit busy lately. Just relaxing at home with family. Some of you may have noticed that my site was down. I have disabled open comments until I have finished safeguarding my site against unwanted comment spam. Recently, the problem has escalated.
People know me to be very frugal. I take great pleasure in keeping my living expenses as low as possible. Additionally, I routinely challenge all of my vendors (ie utilities, cable, cellular,etc) for cost savings. I'm clear that most consumers don't realize the power that they have at their disposal. Moreover, it is not necessary to become a sacrifical lamb, simply because you cannot perform a desired service yourself. Use your collective bargaining power to drive cost for service down through healthy competition.
For instance, I received an unsolicited offer for a teeth bleaching service from a dental office seeking to grow its business. The price point of $100.00 was much lower than that of my personal dentist. He charges $350.00 for the same service. So, I immediately informed my dentist of the offer made to me, and requested that the same service be rendered for the equivalent cost.
Naturally, I had to make several phone calls to the dentist office, in an attempt to get someone to relay my request to my dentist. The phone tag went on for a few days. The average consumer probably would have given up on the whole idea. Not so for Mr. Frugality.
Finally, the receptionist decided to make a call to the other dental office to gather information on the offer. Once she learned that the offer was legitimate, I was told that my dentist probably could provide the service at the same price. Apparently, it was too low to cover the cost of the supplies (mold resin, upper and lower trays, hyrodoxide gel). The receptionist offered to do the job for $100.00 for upper and lower trays. Total of $200 for the service. I countered by promising to call the other dentist to determine what one would receive for $100.00. I discovered that the offer was simply a home teeth bleaching program. Both the upper and lower tray was $100.00, no x-rays or special work was required for a customer to receive this offer.
Again, I make the call to my dentist office, to confirm the offer. Now, I begin to understand that the receptionist had not yet asked the dentist for permission to perform the work. Well, after the last phone call, I was told that my dentist wishes to retain me as a customer and would be happy to perform the work to keep my business.
I went in for the teeth impressions for the bleaching trays the very next day. Mission accomplished.
As stated earlier, not very many consumers would push the envelope. At worst, I would've had to go to the competing dentist for the work, I really had nothing to lose by making the request.
After the work was completed, I personally thanked my dentist for his support and understanding.
Where is your power ??
The third such film based on the Marvel Comics character Blade. For those that are not familiar, Wesley Snipes plays the character who is part vampire and human. He is also known as a 'day-walker'. I have seen all three films, and the Trinity is by far the worst in the trilogy.
I found it to be very commercial. If I ever see another shameless plug for Apple Computers, I will scream. The film has too many sub-characters, and I don't believe that there should be another sequel.
The martial arts stunts shown in this film were not on par with earlier Blade films.
I won't add very much detail, but I will offer a suggestion. Don't waste your loot, get the torrent.
Hold your applause, but I have posted my monumental 100th blog entry. Well actually, I have posted a total 130 blog entries. 100 of those entries have been with my preferred MT Publishing Engine and the other 30 entries were done with the older Blogger service. I left Blogger awhile ago because it wasn't very extensible and suffered from security flaws. Basically, I was lazy and the old Blogger tool made publishing fairly thoughtless. Movable Type and Wordpress are the leaders in blogging tools.
Allow me to share another tidbit of helpful info with you. Have any of you ever visited a site only to be prompted to sign-in menu? In most cases these sites have public domain information (ie online magazines or newspapers). I find these sites to be major pain in the ass. I despise websites that require registration to view public domain content. The online edition of the New York Times is the latest to draw my ire.
Alas, there is a solution to this annoyance. It is called Bugme Not. Essentially, the script works directly with your web browser to allow safe passage past compulsory, meaningless website registrations.
Give it a try, I'm sure you'll love it.
Far fetched maybe not. It seems that after Rice was selected to replace Powell as Secretary of State, the Republicans could possibly select her run for Prez or VP.
If they pull it off, it could spell trouble for the Democratic Party.
The Democrats have come to expect votes from the black community, but recently have suffered demoralizing defeats in national elections. This occured despite record numbers of black voters going to polls to vote in major urban centers. So, what is the last stronghold which will sustain the Democrats ? Your guess is as good as mine.
So, one might ask. What would occur if the right-wingers offered up Condi for a bid to the Presidential seat? Understand, that there will be some who will vote for her simply because we have never witnessed a black female running for president or VP. Perhaps the Democrats could counter with Carol Moseley Brown and Barack Obama? I'd love to see that ticket.
Anyway, The article below offers one possible outcome.
Demise of Democratic Party
I spoke about Wikipedia several months ago. It appears that the mainstream audience is warming up to the idea of this collaborative tool. I happen to use it exclusively. The article below discusses how Wiki is used in business circles.
Socialtext and Wiki in Business Week
Lately there has been an outry for tremendous regulatory restrictions within the digital realm. As I've stated in an earlier essay, we are facing a rare time in history. In that, the growth of emerging technologies are being constrained by lobbyist and commercial interests. Never before in the history of our nation has this previously occured.
The Napster experiment leveled the playing field between the consumer and record labels. Introducing P2P as a viable means of distributing music at no cost, forced the music distributors to revamp their archaic business models. Arguably, P2P is a Killer App, that became a Disruptive Technology to the RIAA and MPAA.
So, now that I've set the historical context, I want to share another bit of information.
The Free Culture lecture that I referenced earlier, speaks indirectly to another forthcoming conflict, the Digital Liberation Television Front.
What I find most interesting about the discussion is that HDTV recording will become illegal in 1st Qtr 2005CY. So, if you buy nothing else this year, make sure you purchase a HDTV tuner card.