November 16, 2006

No luck going out last night with my friend. He got stuck in the office so when Dominica got home we just ran out to IHOP for a quick dinner.

After dinner we can home and Dominica did some work on her Java work. After that we watched some of Rowan Atkinson’s The Thin Blue Line. I haven’t seen that show in years. Dominica has never seen it.

I got to sleep in with Oreo this morning. He has been so exhausted this week. He really needs a day of rest. He has been tired that last several days and Dominica practically had to carry him into doggie daycare yesterday.

Today is my work from home day as I usually do on Thursdays. It is “doggie/daddy day” when Oreo and I just chill out all day. He stayed in bed for quite a while this morning and then eventually came out and passed out on his car seat that he loves so much right beside my chair.

Dominica sent me a note today that her sister had to be evacuated from the school where she teachers near Houston, Texas because of a fireant infestation! That would be the bad kind of fireant and not the good kind of FireANT. No word yet on how that is going. We did find out that Dexter really liked his birthday card which was made out of rawhide. Dominica found it at Doggie Paradise and sent it to him (it is a regular birthday card that dogs can eat!)

Tonight is the big Sony PS3 release night that all of the people camped out on streets (supposedly) are waiting for. Andy and I are not convinced that there is going to be the rush that everything thinks that there is going to be and that there will likely be plenty of units left in stores tomorrow. But we will see. When the Sony PSP released there was so much comotion and then, the next day, people were just strolling into stores and buying the units as no one had bought any at all. There was no rush whatsoever. I won’t be surprised if the PS3 isn’t nearly the same. The price is just too high for average consumers to be running out to get one.

Here is my economic theory on the PS3 (which is risky, of course, as it will be releasing in just a few hours and everyone will know if I was right or wrong very soon.) The PS3 is releasing tonight at midnight. All of the big stores are opening at midnight to sell the few units that they will be getting. Everyone is convinced that they will sell like hotcakes. But if they are going to sell like hotcakes let’s ask ourselves an important question. Why would the stores be opening early if they are absolutely sure that all of the units were going to sell? It doesn’t reduce the time for people waiting in the lines, it just shifts it earlier. It doesn’t raise the price. In fact it costs a lot of money for Walmart and Electronics Boutique and other sellers to staff their stores and open late at night with only a handful of units to sell. And the profit margins are extremely low – remember that Sony itself is taking a loss on the units.

So why would the stores spend all of the extra money to open early just to sell a handful of PS3s? Simple. Because they are afraid of opening late and having all of the people who want units satisfied early. If you are the last store to open you might get stuck with your entire inventory because a few stores opening early could potentially satisfy all of the demand! If everyone opens early then the inventory that is left over is more likely to be more evenly distributed and no retailer is taking too much of a risk. Everyone is opening early because they are afraid of being left holding the bag. If they were confident in the inventory selling without a hitch they would just opening normally. So I feel confident that there will be Sony PS3s left tomorrow morning when the sun rises even if some shops sell out there will be many that do not.

PodOmatic has turned on enhanced reporting statistics for their podcasts and we are thrilled to discover that the SGL Podcast has listeners all over the world! Maybe the biggest surprise is that we appear to have a serious contingency listening to us fron Shanghai in China as well as some more casual listeners in Bejing. Sweden and the UK would appear to be our most popular locations in Europe and Louisville, Kentucky is the city in the US that loves us most which is really funny since my family is from Louisville, Ohio! Coincidence? I think so. It is fascinating to see listeners tuning it from all over the world except, it would appear, from Africa. There are no listeners showing up from Africa. Now keep in mind that this is only our podOmatic listeners and not people listening through SGL or OurMedia so there could easily be tons of people that we don’t know about.

Oreo didn’t get up until almost two in the afternoon and when he did he was definitely ready for me to take him for his walk in Military Park. We had a nice walk although it is extremely windy. Not too cold but the wind is something. When we got back I discovered that we are under a tornado warning until six this evening.

Seth Webster who went to college with me in the music performance program at MCC in Rochester’s band Heatseeker has an album due out in a few weeks on Surface Records.

Dominica got out of work and accidentally went to doggie daycare to pick up Oreo forgetting that he was home with me. She even went into the daycare and talked to the people working! They all had a panic for a minute before Dominica realized that Oreo was with me. So that ended up tripling her drive time to get home. Normally Thursdays are her chance to get home early. 🙁

By the time that Dominica got home the wind was blowing even harder and rain and started and there was some lightning visible to the south. This is some weather that we are having today.

Our first order of business this evening is working out in the gym. I didn’t do any gym time today so that I would be ready to go when Dominica got home. Dominica was feeling better today after having taken the day off yesterday. I managed to put in over an hour on the elipital trainer today. I am happy with my progress. Even if I keep gaining weight instead of losing. We went early enough that at least there were old reruns to watch. Better than new stuff.

After the gym Dominica cooked dinner and we watched Haley Mills in The Trouble with Angels. I watched this movie on television when I was young but it has been a really long time. I couldn’t remember the movie hardly at all until we had started watching it then it all started coming back to me. It is amazing how many scenes of the movie were ones that I could vividly remember while not remembering the thread of the movie at all. It is a classic.

Weight Loss: -4.0lbs 🙁

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