Friday 17 May 2013

Rant 1137 / Cold Showers For Hot Weather











Dem subtle gay lyrics.













I almost started this rant with, "It's time to finally concede that I cannot live on a mere thousand bucks a month."

Then while making coffee (instant coffee because I don't take coffee often enough to buy fresh coffee beans these days), I realized (again) that my net income was my gross income minus my expenses, and my expenses included my taxi fares.

I had been neglecting to keep my work money separate from my personal cash because I'd always had this impression that I am the business, therefore work money is the same as personal money. Well, legally speaking, that's exactly what a sole proprietorship is.

But practically speaking, that makes things a little different for a sole proprietor. For one, I do not have to pay cabbies with personal money, even if both are drawn from the same account. Therefore I do not deduct cab fares from my net revenue, but my gross.

What's wrong with me?

I need to redo my math again, this time with the expenses appropriately separated.

But regardless, I don't believe I can afford a new fridge. One of the separators (or whatever those sheets of plastics that create the compartments) is broken and I think we'll eventually have to buy a new one. This fridge is at least 3 years old, and that's my bad long-term memory talking.

For all I know it could be 5 years old or more, and I don't have the documents for it.

I told my bro we'll split 50/50 when the time comes because that's fair and I can't easily afford 100%. He then surprised me by offering to cover 100% since her parents want them to buy new furniture when they get married, but I told him that he can cover 100% for everything they buy for their own room while for anything outside, we'll split 50/50.

And I know he's not making a lot at the moment, just not sure why he's so willing to spend his savings.





























I think regardless of what they say, our system does not work.

It works like this: people work in hopes of getting a raise. From the government, they want more welfare. Over the long term, costs go up. Companies have no choice but to increase prices to cover costs; governments have to increase land prices.

So all products cost more. How can companies compensate? By increasing their quality. But the quality does not increase proportionally to the prices. It costs a lot less to create a quality product than the price implies. Much of it goes to the costs of maintaining after-sale services and R&D of future products. And the bonuses and dividends.

Eventually there comes a point when somewhere in the world, the people are willing to work for a lot less in cheaper real estate. Costs go down, and suddenly regardless of the pride everyone has in their quality products, we all realize we just want generic crap at low prices. Quality isn't really important to the average joe unless it's something important to him.

The point is, quality is overrated. Prices aren't going up because we want better products. Prices are going up because everyone wants more money. Prices also go up as wealth diffuses from the old money to the new money in China and everyone wants a large pieceof the pie.

There will come a time when the entire world is as developed as it can go. What then? There won't be another China opening up its backward lands to become the next "factory of the world", so we'll go back to the old days when we all convinced ourselves we should buy things for their high quality. Exactly how things were back when China wasn't in the picture.

This means something nobody seems to be saying.

We are all indirectly causing everything to cost more because we want more. Greed is not good. Greed is the reason we fear not having enough.

Greed causes more greed.

The solution? The solution takes a lot of time. Generations, even.





















Tried playing a new MMO and I'm having mixed feelings about it.

On one hand, I like it. On the other hand, I makes me less interested in my work. Worst thing about it is that I can't just stop at any time.

People who can enjoy MMOs all day long without disruption don't know how awesome their lives are. Seriously, I can't focus on defending myself in a dungeon when a business call smacks me back into reality. Neither can I just go to the door when the postman rings the doorbell when I'm soloing.

However, Neverwinter is not too bad. I heard endgame is terrible so probably, I'll try Rift next month. Right now, Neverwinter isn't that bad. In PvE, it's so hard to die with my cleric companion; in PvP, I'm only good for 1v1 because my block only works on frontal attacks.




















So one of my buyers decided to make a larger initial order of my latest batch of sweaters. This implies that she actually trusts my taste as much as she did my mother's.

Let the hip thrusts begin!


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