Thursday, November 11, 2004

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Hail Damage Gets Free Siding Apparently there was a hailstorm in our area a few years ago (before we moved up here). In the last couple of years, literally dozens of houses in the area have gotten new siding. The way it works is that a contractor will stop by. He will mention that there was a severe hail storm a few years back, and that the "statute of limitations" for getting remediation paid for by insurance is running out. How about a free inspection? Of course, they find damage 100% of the time. Not that any reasonable person would ever have noticed. So, we know lots of people who have gotten a free (less deductible) cosmetic update to their house in this manner. For some reason, the insurance companies seem to pay with nary a whimper. No wonder our insurance is 60% higher here in Minnesota, than it was in Indiana (more of a no-nonsense state about such things, I think). I bumped our deductible up to $5000, just to get back to a reasonable premium (in 15 years, I've never filed a claim). 10:01:11 PM    comment []

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Why are digital projectors so expensive? I haven't followed the market closely, but it looks like they are well over the $1000 mark. They just don't seem to be following the typical electronics price curve. Maybe because volumes are, relatively, not that high? 9:50:59 PM    comment []

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Legal-size paper--what an abomination! Yeah, yeah, I know, you can fit more stuff on it. But not that much more stuff. It's too incremental to be worth the terrific hassle of dealing with a different size. Legal size--the name says it all. It's exactly the kind of efficiency-draining thing that would be foisted on us by the legal class. 9:47:56 PM    comment []

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Consumer software product upgrades are a joke these days. I bought PhotoShop Elements 2.0 a few months ago, for $35 with an Amazon rebate. Admittedly that was an extra-good, short-lived deal, the going price was $50. Anyway, guess what Adobe offers you as an upgrade deal on their site? $20 off the already low, low (not!) price of $99. 9:45:04 PM    comment []

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I think an adjustable seat height will be a must-have in any future car purchase. My little Ford Focus has one (albeit manual), while our big Grand Caravan does not. The result is, if I sit up very straight, actually, even if I sit up just plain straight, in the Caravan, I can't see out the window--my eye level is the gentle downward curve where the roof meets the top of the windshield. 9:38:32 PM    comment []

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I've been reading AnchorDesk since its inception, which I think is about 7 years. Back in the Jesse Berst era, and much of the David Coursey era, it had good, fresh content. I could always count on finding at least one, often more, interesting, worthwhile items to read. No longer. The "calling all cat lovers" is an all-time low. AnchorDesk had very substantial mind-share. Many people had it emailed to them every day. When ego-surfing on Google, the results for my AnchorDesk talkbacks were always very high. So I wonder if the apparent decision to quit investing in AnchorDesk is really a depressing commentary on the difficulty of making money on internet content. It can't have been about lack of eyeballs. 8:38:42 AM    comment []