Wisdoma by Brian Kindsvater

I was reading about this lady in South Korea who has failed a written drivers test 771 times. She only needs a 60 percent to pass.

Statistically, it seems impossible to fail that many times. Maybe she should move to San Francisco.

When I was taking the written driving test in SF (and passed) there was an Asian lady there who failed. She maybe had 25 percent correct. So the DMV marked in red the wrong answers, circled the correct responses, and then gave her the same test again to do right. Unbelievable.

$5.58 for a box of Mini Wheats! And that’s just a sampling of the outrageous price gouging recently seen at Raleys. During the past couple months Raleys has silently been jacking up prices throughout the store.

That box of Mini Wheats is more than $2 cheaper at Wal Mart. Put another way, Raleys is charging about 40 PERCENT higher for the same product. Ridiculous.

A couple years ago Raleys started to rapidly lose market share because its prices were too high. Ironically, its prices for cereal boxes were over $5 a box and clearly not in line with the market. So Raleys reduced its prices to be competitive, proclaiming an Every Day Low Price strategy.

“What we’re offering is fair, consistent prices every day,” Raley’s president and chief executive Bill Coyne.

Raley’s promised “permanent” price cuts.

“Permanent” that is, until they assume enough time has passed and no one is watching. Those cereal prices are now back over $5.

Worse, the economy is in the worst recession since the Great Depression.

According to the United States Department of Labor in its January 16, 2009, Economic New Release regarding the Consumer Price Index summary for 2008, grocery store food prices nationwide rose 6.6 percent in 2008. Except at Raley’s, where they are skyrocketing. Do the private owners at Raley’s need to make up for their stock market losses?

A 40 percent markup is simply inexcusable.

The economic and market share reports for companies like Raley’s and Wal Mart should be interesting this year. While Raley’s may try to blame the economy, in reality any problems are their own doing.

Almost a decade ago Circuit City tried to promote DIVX – an ill though-out technological disaster that started the company spirally downwards. Circuit City never recovered and is now being liquidated.

After DIVX, scores of customers stopped visiting Circuit City, including yours truly. And they never went back, after discovering Best Buy and then cheap electronics deals on the Internet.

DIVX was a proprietary rental format like a DVD that required a special DIVX/DVD player to view. After paying for the movie, once you started watching it you only had a day or two before it locked and was unplayable. Another fee had to be paid to watch it again.

Even worse, the DIVX player had to be connected to your phone line so Circuit City could keep track of what movies you had, when they had been played, if your time was up, and if you had paid the proper fees.

Needless to say, no one signed up.

DIVX was not something investment money had gone into to create by a technological company, or anyone that knew what they were doing (Sony, Panasonic, or think of a hundred electronics brands). Instead, DIVX was bankrolled and created by Circuit City – so Circuit City had huge financial losses as a result. Not a smart move for a retailer to try and create a technology that competes with the wholesalers supplying the goods the retailer sells.

Sure, going back a decade is long-time to pin the company’s downfall. But if you track the success of Circuit City and when it started to lose market share, before fighting to stay relevant, until it finally declared bankruptcy, you will see that DIVX was the breaking point. And of course a moronic management team.

Let’s do a quick review:

Worst economy since the Great Depression 70 years ago. The economy collapsing with shrill government claims for a trillion dollars to keep everything afloat. Stores closing. People unemployed. The economy suffering under the largest run of red ink in history – almost $500 billion in debt just this year. Ouch.

So what does Bush do a mere two weeks before leaving office?

Buys $485,000 in new White House china!

Of course. Makes sense.

The Obama’s will need some new china.

Bush. He never got it. Still doesn’t get it. Never will.

Doesn’t care.

The Sacramento Kings are losing games at a rapid pace in an apparent attempt to secure a high draft pick. How else can you explain this?

With a couple seconds left in the game last night, down by 3, and obviously needing a 3 pointer, the Kings instead drive into the lane for a school yard layup and – shock – miss it.

Its no secret that some teams, especially in the NBA where small rosters magnify the impact one player can have, will tank to try and obtain a high draft pick. That is why the NBA initiated the lottery, because teams were losing on purpose (while trying not to appear they were losing on purpose). But as the lottery has developed, with questionable ping pong balls going to big market teams (possibly favored) by the NBA, the lottery has been skewed so that there is still a significant incentive to have one of the worst records in the league. A bad record will not do. That does nothing for team.

So I’m writing off the Kings for the year. Its a battle right now for the worst record in the NBA and the Kings have stiff (limp?) competition.

Stories are popping about about the Microsoft Zune rebooting then simply freezing at midnight.

Big surprise. This from the same people who brought us years of aggravation with Microsoft Windows. (Ironic how the programs that seem to crash and be most incompatible with Windows are other Microsoft products, but that’s another story.)

There is no reason to buy a Zune, unless you’re being cheap and trying to save a few bucks off an Ipod / Itouch. How much is your sanity worth?

By the way, the Itouch is incredibly cool.

Your life will be much better if you try to avoid Microsoft products. Trust me on this one.

Yahoo has published a story saying that Twilight was a bigger hit than the Dark Knight in 2008 because, get this, its earnings were PERCENTAGE-wise higher than those of the Dark Knight.

Here’s Yahoo’s logic:

Twilight cost $37 million to make and earned $167 million. Its earnings were thus 4 times its costs.

Dark Knight cost $185 million to make and earned $531 million. Its earnings were thus only 3 times its costs.

4 beats 3, so Twilight must have been a bigger hit?

Right? Dead-bang wrong!

The Dark Knight made about $350 million in profit. Twilight only made $130 million in profit.

Which movie is the bigger hit? Duh, which movie would you have rather made the profits on???

It’s no wonder Yahoo continues to lose market share, revenue, and respect to Google.

There’s probably some service that costs $1 with earnings of $10 that Yahoo will jump at – wow 10x cost, while Google grabs a service costing $50 with earnings of $100 – a mere 2x costs. Yahoo makes $9. Google makes $50. No wonder Yahoo will not survive intact much longer as an independent company.

The Oakland Raiders have now officially laid claim to being one of the sorriest, crappiest, most pathetic and worst teams ever to pretend to be a professional football team.

No team has ever lost at least 11 games for 6 straight seasons. Until now.

Anyone who follows the NFL, and is not a moron, knows that there is but one person responsible for the girls in black. Thank you Al Davis. May you live to be at least 100!

Signed:

Denver Broncos Fans

Just got back from the Sacramento Coin Show at the Red Lion Inn. It was a complete waste of time and I wouldn’t recommend that anyone visit a Sacramento Coin Show until they clean up their act.

The show was advertised to last from 10 a.m. until 5:30 p.m. So after the Broncos beat the Chiefs I headed on over and arrived at about 4:20 p.m.

Upon arriving the lady at the door to take my admission fee seemed perturbed that my presence would be interrupting her conversation with someone else. She then said – ‘Well, better late than never” indicating that the time of my arrival was an annoyance for her. Finally, handing me my admission ticket, she said, “But I guess we did advertise that it was open until 5:30.”

Needless to say, I was feeling a bit deflated walking into the show.

That deflation quickly turned to extreme disappointment, frustration, a twinge of anger – and ultimately this blog post.

Half the vendors had already packed up and left – leaving empty tables.

Most of the remaining vendors were packing up. Even though me and other people were looking at their items, it did not stop them from picking their wares – right in front of us – to pack into boxes. Incredibly rude.

And what was left to see was boring, boring, boring. Everyone had the some coins. Mainly, silver dollars. That was mostly it. Certainly nothing interesting.

Obviously, there was no one buying. Who would?

Hello, Sacramento coin show promoters, here are some tips:

1. Have the lady at the front door taking admissions fees be cheery and to try and generate enthusiasm for the show.

2. Contractually require your vendors to be present and to not pack up their items until the show closes.

3. Get a variety of vendors. A mall would not allow ten shoe stores side by side, and a show should not allow ten silver dollar dealers side by side. If that is all merchants are selling then they will soon be out of business anyway.

Next time, I’ll just be shopping on the Internet. If a Sacramento coin dealer ever tells you the economy is bad or they are having a hard time selling product (or have some other excuse other than themselves for low sales), first point them to this post, then tell them to complain to the coin show operators, and finally, suggest they attend a basic marketing course.

Fox News was ridiculing a lawsuit allowed to proceed in Washington by an employee who was subjected to blonde jokes. I’ve told a few of those jokes, so let the litigation commence. They had a few zingers worth remembering:

You’re so blonde it takes you 2 hours to watch 60 minutes.

Why do brunettes tell blonde jokes? So they’ll have something to do on Saturday night.

Why are blonde jokes so short? So brunettes can remember them.

And then there is my favorite blonde joke:

In California one blonde says to another blonde, which is closer – the moon or Florida? The other blonde says, duh, the moon of course. Can you see Florida from here?

Now, if the courts would allow bald jokes I’d be rolling in the dough!