Friends and loved ones, you know I like books, and right now you have the perfect book in mind for a gift. I’m looking forward to reading it. But don’t give me the book unless it would look impressive on a shelf (and very few books qualify). Instead, give me an Amazon gift card – or cash – and tell me what book you’re giving me. I will buy it for the Kindle and read it there.
Of course, if you do give me the actual printed book, I will still love you and be thankful and read it. But later on, when I’m moving apartments, I will lightly curse you because you’ve contributed to the amount of heavy stuff I have to pack up and transport, when it was totally avoidable.
Merry Christmas!
What do this striking young lady and this dapper gentleman have in common?
Post your best guess in the comments, then read on.
So, I recently saw this link on my twitter feed:
10 Things an Adult Man Should Know About Laundry … but Probably Doesn’t
I opened the link and skimmed the list. Clearly, they were writing this for other adult men 
But, way down on the page, they provided some bonus tips for “Washing your Girlfriend’s Stuff.” Here’s one of those tips:
5. Panties, pantyhose, and bras still need to be separated by color, but they also need to go into a little white mesh bag called a “delicates bag”.
I was reminded of a past girlfriend who always hand-washed her bras and hung them up to dry. Then I thought, “If this delicates bag is like hand-washing but inside a washer… could I use a delicates bag to machine-wash all my hand-wash only items?” Let’s find out! Read more…
Categories: Heh, Money, On the web
Tags: clothes, fashion, gloves, intersections, laundry, men, scarves, shortcut, useful, women
I decided to get McDonalds for lunch at the Pittsburgh airport before my flight home for Thanksgiving. Looking out the window at the airplanes while eating, I was reminded of the story where one airline saved $40,000 a year simply by removing the olive from its salads [1]. Looking back at my food, I thought… Hmm, what if McDs cut back on their fries by some tiny amount, so small that the customer wouldn’t notice it readily? And kept sale prices the same, so a cutback here = added profit.
Let’s say the cutback is by 5% (1/20th of the total) – how does this work out in terms of numbers?
McDonalds sells 9 million lbs of potatoes per day. Over 365 days, that works out to roughly 3 billion pounds of potatoes in a year. A quick look at this list of spot prices suggests that McDs can get their potatoes at $11 for a 50 lb crate. (It’s possible their scale lets them negotiate even lower prices.) $11 for 50 lbs = $0.22/lb. This means that McDs buys $660 million of potatoes each year.
So, 5% of that amount = $33 million
Pretty huge number. Does it matter to their operation? Read more…
