penn jillette: there is no god

"You can't prove that there isn't an elephant inside the trunk of my car. You sure? How about now? Maybe he was just hiding before. Check again."

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circuit city rules

Circuit City has discovered the secret to capturing my hard earned dollar. They now offer the ability to purchase a product online at circuitcity.com and pick it up in the store half an hour later. You've probably seen TV commercials hyping this. At first my reaction was, "Why the hell wouldn't I just go down to the store and buy it?" And then it hit me: Salespeople.

Somebody at Circuit City HQ realized that many people (like myself) do their electronics research and purchasing online to avoid the hassles of dealing with salespeople (see earlier post on Best Buy). Sure, sometimes you can find a better deal looking around online. But sometimes you can't. And sometimes you just want that immediate gratification. Sometimes your schedule requires you to fill that electronics void TODAY. Basically, sometimes it makes sense to pay retail.

I'll give you two examples of things I've purchased recently, and why Circuit City got my money.

1. DVD player. They had the model I wanted, a Sony changer with Super Audio CD capability. I could have ordered from several places online, or checked around to see what stores carry it and find the best price. But I needed it now and honestly, at that price, I wasn't going to find a much better deal.

2. Subwoofer. My big ass new Infinity towers are little too power hungry to fill the room with rich warm bass off my 75 watt per channel Onkyo. So I needed a sub and my budget was already at the max. Luckily I found a 12" sub by MTX. Since it got good reviews (and was all I could afford anyways) I decided to give it a try.

Now both of these products were at the low end of the price scale for their category. That means extra incentive for a salesguy to bump me to another product and/or add on useless extended service plans. For someone who knows exactly what they want without the hassle of the salesman, Circuit City's program is freakin' awesome. (Yes, I realize the irony that I've worked in retail electronics sales for years now. I still can't stand salespeople).

Plus, if for any reason the products don't work out, I can return them to the store instead of shipping them back and waiting a week for my refund.

Quick product review: I'm very happy with both the DVD player and the sub. I don't think I could have done better for the money anywhere. Now I can feel my insides vibrate while I watch Star Wars. Yes!

last day at work

So today is my last day in retail electronics. It's hard to step away from the security of a job I've had for 5 1/2 years, but I think it will be good for me. I have a few different things going on to bring in the cashola, and it will give me time to focus on my video production business and the film we're trying to shoot and edit before Sept '06.

Plus, this will be the first holiday season I can remember where I'm not bound to working a holiday. That means we can take a Thanksgiving roadtrip and I can be a part of all the family Xmas festivities. And snowboarding. Lots of snowboarding.

9 reasons to pay a lot of money for these awesome DVD’s

I don't know this guy, but he has a pretty funny auction. Considering most of these can be purchased for less than $4.00 each, he's pushing the boundaries of a good value here. Still, you gotta respect the effort. Good luck on your house dude!

(But still no match for Joey's waterbed auction.)

link revenue from video

I've been goofing around on a site call Revver that attaches a single frame text ad to the end of your uploaded videos. Anytime your video gets download from their site (or any site for that matter) and someone clicks on the ad, you get paid. How much? Who knows. The site is pretty vague about what kind of revenue the ads offer, but the idea is pretty cool.

Right now the site is in Beta, which gives them an excuse to have broken links all over the place and an overall crappy setup. For example, I uploaded a couple of videos and it wouldn't let me edit the metadata. Searching for my videos produced a "Page not found." Beyond the broken links there may be a way to pull up my profile including my videos and current number of ad clicks, but I sure as hell couldn't find it. And wading through all the broken links made me give up trying.

Overall though I think this is a great idea. Their tags supposedly follow the video wherever it is traded, and the ads stay current for eternity. The best part is that the ad is at the end. I hate trying to watch videos that have those 30 second commercials in front of them.

Check it out.