Hotel cost vs. enjoyment (2) Jan 5, 2011
I have a hard time paying more money for something when a reasonably good option is available for less money.  That might sound obvious, but I don't think everybody is with me on this.  For example, I recently traveled with some friends where we stayed in two different hotels on two consecutive nights in the same town.  One was $50 per night, the other was $100.  For me, a hotel is a hotel; it's a commodity.  Unless it's on a beach on a tropical island or you get the honeymoon suite on the top floor with free room service, a hotel room provides two simple services:  A bed and a shower.  Whether it has HBO or a curved shower rod, I couldn't care less, which is why my goal is to pay the lowest price possible, unless there's a strong correlation between cost and bug population.  Much to my surprise, my travel buddies had different values than me, which is fine, but one of those values meant we were spending the second night in a more expensive, quaint, lodge-type hotel.  "Quaint" is another word for "small and crappy," which is exactly how I would describe that $100 per night hotel.  To me, that extra $50, which in this case made it literally twice as expensive as the previous night, didn't represent a doubling of enjoyment.  And since I'm a nerd and think of everything in terms of math and practicality, that's why I stay in cheap hotels. #travel
VCRs are dangerous (4) Jan 5, 2011
Jack Valenti, president of the Motion Picture Association of America, testifying to the House of Representatives in 1982: 
I say to you that the VCR is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone.

However, if you are an advertiser who has paid $280,000 a minute to advertise, he feels a very large pain in his stomach as well as in his checkbook because it destroys the reason for free television, the erasure, the blotting out, the fast forwarding, the visual searching, the variable beta scans. The technology is there and I am one who has a belief that before the next few years the Japanese will have built into their machines an automatic situation that kills the commercial.
(via MarketWatch)

First of all, what a crybaby.  A technology that might take money out of the giant pockets of movie studios and advertising firms?  Boo-hoo.  Second, he was right.  Broadcast television used to be free; VCRs probably played at least a small role in destroying free TV. #entertainment