iTunes Rental vs. Blockbuster Express

Why is it that I can go down to Publix to a Blockbuster Express kiosk and rent a new movie like Alice in Wonderland for $1/night but I can only buy it on iTunes for $15? I can’t even rent it from iTunes at the overpriced, overprotected $4.

Apple, please get these movie publishers under control. We, the consumer, want to buy from iTunes, but the prices are not competitive and the selection is not good.

I love my Apple TV, just wish it actually had content at reasonable prices to rent or buy.

Speaking of Blockbuster Express, check out these free rental coupon codes when renting online at Coupon Dad. A free movie rental and a bag of popcorn make for a cheap date night at home.

Life is like a game of Scrabble.

I was flying home from Milwaukee with my wife, Claire, and we were playing Scrabble on the iPad (very fun by the way). As I struggled to keep up with her words and complained about the letters I had in my tile rack, it struck me, life is like a game of scrabble.

You see, we all get different tiles. Sometimes all vowels, sometimes all consonants, sometimes the awkward Z or Q that you can’t find a place for, sometimes there seems to be no place on the board to squeeze in a word. Sometimes you draw a F when you need an A and rarely do all of the pieces line up for a perfect score.

The difference in successful people, in Scrabble and in life, is not what tiles they get, but how they play them. It is true that some hands are easier than others, but every hand has opportunities, it’s just a matter of looking hard enough, being patient enough, and being prepared to take advantage of those opportunities.

It’s been said before in other ways, but the illustration is no less true. The moral of this story is simple: let’s all stop complaining about the tiles we have and start looking for opportunities to score more points.

America, Roosevelt, & Immigration

An interesting quote from Theodore Roosevelt in 1907:

“In the first place, we should insist that if the immigrant who comes here in good faith becomes an American and assimilates himself to us, he shall be treated on an exact equality with everyone else, for it is an outrage to discriminate against any such man because of creed, or birthplace, or origin.  But this is predicated upon the person’s becoming in every facet an American, and nothing but an American.  There can be no divided allegiances here.  Any man who says he is an American, but something else also, isn’t an American at all.  We have room for but one flag, the American flag.  We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language.  And we have room for but one sole loyalty and that is a loyalty to the American people.”

The Tax System – Explained In Beer

I had a friend share this with me and I thought it was worth passing along. Sad, but true story.

Suppose that every day, ten men go out for beer and the bill for all ten comes to $100. If they paid their beer tab the way we pay our taxes, it would go something like this:

The first four men (the poorest) would pay nothing.
The fifth would pay $1.
The sixth would pay $3.
The seventh would pay $7.
The eighth would pay $12.
The ninth would pay $18.
The tenth man (the richest) would pay $59.
So, that’s what they decided to do.

The ten men drank in the bar every day and seemed quite satisfied with the arrangement until one day the bar owner said “Since you are all such good customers, I’m going to reduce the cost of your daily beer tab by $20.” Drinks for the ten will now cost just $80.

The group still wanted to pay their bill the way we pay our taxes. The first four men were unaffected, they would still drink for free. But what about the other six men, the paying customers? How could they divide the $20 savings so that everyone would get his fair share?
They realized that $20 divided by six is $3.33. But if they subtracted that from everybody’s share, then the fifth man and the sixth man would each end up being paid to drink his beer.
So, the bar owner suggested that it would be fair to reduce each man’s bill by roughly the same amount, and he proceeded to work out the amounts each should pay.
And so the fifth man, like the first four, now paid nothing (100% savings) The sixth now paid $2 instead of $3 (33% savings).
The seventh now pay $5 instead of $7 (28% savings).
The eighth now paid $9 instead of $12 (25% savings).
The ninth now paid $14 instead of $18 ( 22% savings).
The tenth now paid $49 instead of $59 (16% savings).

Each of the six who had paid before was better off than before. And the first four continued to drink for free. But once outside the restaurant, the men began to compare their savings.
“I only got a dollar out of the $20,” declared the sixth man. He pointed to the tenth man,” but he got $10 !”

“Yeah, that’s right,” exclaimed the fifth man. “I only saved a Dollar, too. It’s unfair that he got ten times more than I did!”

“That’s true!!” shouted the seventh man. “Why should he get $10 back when I got only two? The wealthy get all the breaks!”

“Wait a minute,” yelled the first four men in unison. “We didn’t get anything at all. The system exploits the poor!”

The nine men surrounded the tenth and beat him up.
The next night the tenth man didn’t show up for drinks, so the nine sat down and had beers without him. But when it came time to pay the bill, they discovered something important. They didn’t have enough money between all of them for even half of the bill!

And that, boys and girls, journalists, politicians, moaners, gloom and doom merchants, political activists and college professors, is how the tax system works.
The people who pay the highest taxes get the most benefit from a tax reduction….. It’s simple Math.
Tax them too much, attack them for being wealthy and they just may not show up anymore. In fact, they might start drinking overseas where the atmosphere is somewhat friendlier.

For those who understand, no explanation is needed. For those who do not understand, no explanation is possible.

A slippery double standard…

Our country, specifically those in the mining and oil industries, experienced horrible catastrophes recently. Men who have much more dangerous jobs that I, ended up dyeing due to accidents or explosions.

Both of these stories are tragic. The lose of American lives while hard at work in freak accidents. What is interesting is the response from the media and politicians. With the mining accident, all of the focus was on the lives of those lost. The President even attended a large ceremony in their honor. In the oil rig accident however, very little has been said about those that died. Don’t they deserve the same respect?

Furthermore, I have seen much discussion from the left, saying that we should never be drilling offshore and this is proof of that. I even saw a sign from a protestor at a congressional hearing that said “spill, babu, spill” (mocking the previous “drill, baby, drill”). Does this make any sense at all? Because of one accident (regardless of the size) that we should just stop production completely? If this is how we operated everything, we would not drive in cars, fly in planes, ride a bike, produce food, or just about anything else.

Just because there is an accident (or a mistake), you don’t just stop. You learn from it, make improvements, and move forward.

The oil spill is a major problem, no question about that. We need to put all of the resources we have forward to protect the gulf, the wildlife, and the beaches, but we also need to be smart about what happens next. Work to determain what caused the accident, find ways to make it less likely to happen again and move forward.

Taking time for what matters

It’s easy. Easy to get caught up in work, in things, in stuff. Things that matter, but not as much as we often think they do.

Running my own business and having an office at home makes it too easy to never leave work. I often say that the great thing about working from home is that you never have to go to work, the bad thing is that you never leave.

I enjoy my work and that can make it difficult to put down and focus on what matters. I look around and I see people loosing their jobs in massive numbers, I see the headlines that unemployment is at 10% or more…  so I work, I work hard so that I may not end up in that statistic. Working hard is good, but I have to constantly remind myself of what is really most important in my life.

Last week I spent 72 hours by my grandfather’s side as he took his last breaths. I held my grandmother’s hand, prayed with him, sang to him, and sat silently with him. In those moments, the square footage of my house, model of my car, quality of my watch, speed of my computer, or size of my television lost all value. What mattered was time.

The things I remember most about my grandfather are not the things he bought me or money he spent on me. They are not the car he drove or how fancy his house was (or wasn’t). What mattered was the late night trips for pizza and the early morning trips for doughnuts. What mattered was watching a baseball game together, spending time together, and enjoying family. I may not have had the exact same views as a twelve year old, but in retrospect, those were the things that really stay in my mind the most.

My work is important to me. I love what I do, want to be great at it, enjoy helping businesses with their design and web site needs, and enjoy making money while doing it. But what really matters to me is my wife, our three boys, our friends, our families, and the almightily God.

I say that, but don’t always live it. It is easy to forget what really matters, but I hope that in the end, as I take my last breaths, I am surrounded by a family that is thankful for my time more than anything else.

Be reminded to work hard, but don’t make the mistake of working just for money’s sake. Work for something that matters, I will try to do the same.

The Apple iPad

It doesn’t have flash, it doesn’t have a USB port (without an adapter), it doesn’t do “multiple-tasking” (yet), it doesn’t do back flips or allow you to run some customized, hacked up OS, BUT it will change the face of consumer computing fo years to come. There seems to be an overwhelming amount of comments about what the new Apple iPad doesn’t do. Similar to the complaints about the original iPhone not having 3G, copy and paste, or MMS. People said the iPhone MUST have these features to be successful and yet it changed the landscape of mobile phones. I believe the iPad will do the same for mobile computing and in a big way. Oh, and about the name, iPad. Many people seem to think was a bad choice and just plain silly. While I also prefered some of the other names floated around (like Canvas), iPad fits in better with the iPhone and iPod family. I also thought Wii was a horrible name and that seemed to work out just fine for Nintendo. The iPad is to computing what the Wii has become to gaming. It has lowered the barrier of entry, removed the mouse, keyboard, and “stuff” that has become so common with desktop computing. It takes away the clutter and does the basics so elegantly. It allows people to focus on the things they do the most: e-mail, internet, photos, movies, and document creation. For many people, this may be the only computer they need. The iPad is a revolution of the way we think of personal computing. Clearly there is room for growth and improvement, as their was with the original iPhone, but this is an incredible start. 59 days and counting…

Resolution #2: Read More

FACT: smart, wealthy, and wise people read – a lot.

There is so much knowledge stored in books.

I have never been a good reader. I have bad eyes, I am easily distracted, and I rarely have the book with me that I want to read at the time I want to read it. Excuses, excuses, excuses.

This Christmas, my wife bought me an Amazon Kindle. The Kindle is a popular ebook reader. Think of it like an iPod for books. The Kindle solves two of my biggest issues with ready. First, it allows me full control over the text size. When my eyes are a little tired, I just bump the size up a few levels and it makes things much better. Second, it gives me access to a library of material at anytime. As I said, I am easily distracted while reading and reading what I am interested in at the moment is very helpful in staying on target. If I want to read the Bible, I can, if I want to read a business book, I can, if I want to read some fiction, I can. It’s great.

The Kindle will help me resolve resolution #2 for 2010 and that is to read more. Read a lot more. Last year I couldn’t even tell you what books I read all the way through. This year, I want to read at least 2 new books per month.

I have committed to reading, now the question is, what to read.

#1 – The Bible. For years I have said I wanted to read the bible all the way through, but never have. It’s time to make that happen. Claire (my wife) and I are going to read through the bible together each night. I just downloaded the ESV Study Bible on my Kindle.

#2 – Business & Technology Books. I love business and technology. The more I can learn, the better I will be. I have built my business without a college education in part due to knowledge on the internet and books. I want to learn more from books. I am starting with Bit Literacy from the Personal MBAlist and working from there.

#3 – Parenting & Relationship Books. There is nothing more important to me than my family. I want to read books that help me be a better father and husband.

#4 – Politics & History. The direction of our country, where we have come from and where are we are going are always interesting topics to me. If you know me at all, you know I am about as conservative as they come, but I am interested in all views.

Do you have any suggestions of good books in any of these categories (or others)? I’d love to hear it – just leave a note in the comments or drop me an e-mail.

Resolution #3 coming tomorrow…