- RT @Dave_Champion Obama asks DOJ to look at whether AZ immigration law is constitutional. Odd that he never did that with #Healthcare #tcot #
- RT @wilw: You know, kids, when I was your age, the internet was 80 columns wide and built entirely out of text. #
- RT @BudgetsAreSexy: RT @FinanciallyPoor "The real measure of your wealth is how much you'd be worth if you lost all your money." ~ Unknown #
- Official review of the double-down: Unimpressive. Not enough bacon and soggy breading on the chicken. #
- @FARNOOSH Try Ubertwitter. I haven't found a reason to complain. in reply to FARNOOSH #
- Personal inbox zero! #
- Work email inbox zero! #
- StepUp3D: Lame dancing flick using VomitCam instead or choreography. #
- I approve of the Nightmare remake. #Krueger #
Whose Line Is It Anyway? Why do some shows return from the dead?
Watching TV in the summer used to mean surfing channels of reruns, but lately there seems to be a slew of “new” shows that are repeating old ones. Networks and cable channels are bringing back previously popular shows such as “Whose Line is it Anyway?”, “Hawaii Five-O”, and “Dynasty”. While some people are thrilled that their favorite shows are back, a lot more of us are wondering why we need to keep rehashing the past.
The answer isn’t that the networks have suddenly become nostalgic. With increasing competition from internet videos and more cable channels, many TV networks have seen their profit from advertising drop in the past several years. More worrisome for the networks, many economists are predicting that the model of having companies pay for advertising during show breaks will become obsolete over the next decade.
These factors mean that TV stations are not very willing to take risks with new shows. A new drama or science fiction show can take millions of dollars to produce, and in some cases it will be pulled within a few episodes if it fails to catch on. When reviving an old show, a network has some guarantee that it will be popular. While not every remake catches on (Charlie’s Angels anyone?), a remake will usually attract enough interest to make the first episode a success.
The costs to produce these shows are also much lower than “new” shows. In many cases, networks already own the property rights to the show as well as contracts with many of the former actors, directors, and producers. In several cases, they also have access to props, costumes, and set pieces. Because of this, they can produce a pilot for a much lower costs than a “new” show.
Finally, advertisers like the idea of bringing back a show. While a network usually has to struggle to find sponsors for shows that don’t have a full season of Nielsen data to show, they can easily sell a show that advertisers are already familiar with. Furthermore, advertisers like that they know what to expect. Without seeing a single episode, an advertiser can accurately guess at the demographic that will be attracted to the show just by looking at the data from the original show. Because advertisers are familiar with the plot of these shows, they are also more willing to negotiate for product placement within the show itself. In some cases, advertisers have even suggested how their product could be incorporated into an episode before the first script is even finalized.
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Twitter Weekly Updates for 2010-07-17
- RT @mymoneyshrugged: The government breaks your leg, and hands you a crutch saying "see without me, you couldn't walk." #
- @bargainr What weeks do you need a FoF host for? in reply to bargainr #
- Awesome tagline: The coolest you'll look pooping your pants. Yay, @Huggies! #
- A textbook is not the real world. Not all business management professors understand marketing. #
- RT @thegoodhuman: Walden on work "spending best part of one's life earning money in order to enjoy (cont) http://tl.gd/2gugo6 #
Family Bed: How to Make It Stop
baby on the cheek.” width=”300″ height=”199″ />For years, my kids shared my bed.
When my oldest was a baby, I was working a graveyard shift, so my wife was alone with the baby at night. It was easy to keep a couple of bottles in a cooler by the bed and not have to get out of bed to take care of him when he woke up once an hour to drink a full bottle.
Then he got older. And bigger. And bigger.
We tried to move him to his own bed a few times, but it never worked well. He’d scream if we put him in a crib, so we got him a bed at 9 months old. That just meant he was free to join us whenever he woke up. Brat.
We finally got him to voluntarily move to his own bed after his sister was born. Shortly after she was born, I woke up to see him using her as a pillow. To paint the proper picture, this kid is 5’9″ and wears size 12 shoes. At 11. When I woke him up to tell him what he was doing, he decided to sleep in his own bed.
Method #1 to get your kids in their own bed: Have kid 1 try to crush kid 2 and feel bad about it.
Method #1 isn’t a great solution.
Soon, baby #3 showed up and we had 2 monsters in bed with us again. Once they started getting bigger, it became difficult for the 4 of us to sleep. We tried to get them into their own beds. Unfortunately, even as toddlers, my kids had a stubborn streak almost as big as my own. Nothing worked.
Eventually, they got big enough that I was crowded right out of the bed. At least we had a comfortable couch.
Sleeping on a couch gets old.
When the girls got old enough to reason with, we had a choice: We either had to find a way to convince them they wanted to sleep in their own room, or we had to have a fourth brat for them to attempt to crush at night.
We went with bribery. Outright, blatant bribery.
We put a chart on the wall with each of their names and 7 boxes. Every night they slept in their own beds, they got to check a box. When all of the boxes were checked, they got $5 and a trip to the toy store.
It took 10 days to empty our bed and it’s been peaceful sleeping since. That’s $5 well-spent.
Have you done a family bed? How did it work? How long did it last?
More Debt
Even though we just paid off our credit cards in August and have started competing to pay off our mortgage, we opened a new debt account on Monday.
We’ve been shopping for a new(to us) car for a while. Simply put, we’ve outgrown our current vehicles.
As I said last week, these are our needs:
- We have 5 people in our family. My 13-year-old son is bordering on 6 feet tall and shows no sign of not growing.
- Every weekend, we have at least 1 extra kid, sometimes 2.
- We still have a giant(24 foot) boat that we won’t be selling until spring.
- My wife wants to lease a couple of ponies next summer, which will mean a horse trailer to haul them in.
We were looking for a GMC Acadia, which would meet our needs, but after talking to my brother–an Acadia owner–and the dealer, we decided it wouldn’t be the best fit. It would be marginal for towing the horses and the back row of the older models isn’t as roomy as the new one I sat in.
Saturday, we went to test drive an Acadia, which is where we had the conversation with the dealership. We ended up test-driving a Chevy Tahoe instead of the Acadia. With the options and mileage, it bluebooks for $27531, but they were using it as an online price leader and had it priced at $25000. Maybe I missed something, but the thing ran well, handled great, and the engine sounded good. As a way to get people on the lot, it worked.
Our plan was to put $5000 down, and see about trading in our Dodge Caliber and Ford F150. We brought the Caliber with us. Its bluebook value is $9,969. They offered us $5500, so we went home.
Sunday, we decided to sell the car and truck ourselves. We texted the salesman and offered $24,500. He accepted, we got a new truck that will fit our family and our needs.
With taxes, fees, and our down payment, we now have a car loan for $21564. Our plan is to sell the Caliber for $9500 and the F150 for $6800. That will leave $5354. We have a beneficiary IRA that has to be cashed out relatively soon, so we’re planning to do that early in January to push the tax burden to next year, which will end the loan.
Effectively, we’re paying about $300 in interest to give us a chance to move our assets around to take advantage of an SUV meeting our needs for $3000 under blue book. Yes, we could have waited until the assets were ready, but this truck wouldn’t have been there, so we jumped on it.
My Favorite Present
My favorite Christmas present this year was the one I gave to my 13 year old son.
Allow me to walk you through his evening….
First, he opened one of his presents. It was just a small box, about 3 inches by 4. A Japanese puzzle box. Inside the box was a note that read:
Closed off in the smallest room you will find a clue to bring you closer to your prize.
When he checked the cabinet below the sink in our basement bathroom, he found another note that sent him to my business website one a page with a url that contained “the square of my children”. When he eventually figured out that I meant their ages, not their quantity, he found a clue on my website.
This lead him to a section of his Minecraft server. It’s effectively a no-man’s land because he and his friends set off a nuke and turned it into a giant pit. They fall down and die there. Inside the pit was a cave. Inside the cave was a clue. The clue read:
Grandma and Grandpa love you.
What do you do when someone says they love you? You either get scared of the commitment and end a perfectly good relationship, or you say “I love you, too”. When the kid finally called his grandparents to tell them he loves them, they told him to give his parents a kiss.
I’m a jerk.
He came over and gave me a hug and a kiss. I handed him a piece of paper. When he looked at it, he asked if it was supposed to be torn in half. I reminded him that he has two parents, so Mom got a hug and a kiss, too. The resulting clue read:
The Answer to the Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything
Naturally, this points to The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, but the boy hadn’t read far enough into the book to understand the reference, so he had to hit google. After spending time looking for chapter 42, he finally thought to look at page 42, which had this clue:
My Little Pegasus
Two steps to the right
Two steps forward
Two steps up
This clue started at the My Little Pony I set next to a Pegasus in my daughters’ room. The boy was in dense mode because he had to ask his sister what a Pegasus was. She also had to suggest he open the closet door when one step forward made him bump his nose on it.
For all of that work, he got the Ticket to Ride game. He laughed the entire way through the treasure hunt, then decided he hated the whole process. However, for two nights running, he’s stopped the video games to play his new game with his family.
It’s a present he’ll remember forever.
