Monthly Archives: July 2009

 

Man Charged $23 Quadrillion for Cigarettes

Posted on by in Five Minutes in My Head

I read in the news earlier that a man named Josh Muszynski was charged $23,148,855,308,184,500 (that’s over $23 quadrillion) after he purchased a pack of cigarettes at the local gas station with his debit card. When he was interviewed by WMUR-TV, Muszynski said, "I thought my card had been compromised. I thought somebody had bought Europe with my credit card. It was very concerning." When questioned, the bank forwarded information requests to the card company, and the card company forwarded them to the bank.

When the company responsible was interviewed by other sources, they stated that the cause of the issue was due to a programming error. If you take the overcharged amount and multiply it by 100, you get 2314885530818450000. If you convert that to hexadecimal, you end up with 20 20 20 20 20 20 12 50. This not only shows the language of the programming error, but why it happened. For those not fully capable of interpreting hexadecimal, most C programmers will tell you that 20 is the hexadecimal equivalent of a space. Instead of inserting zeros, spaces were used as placeholders for empty slots.

 

Adam’s Follow-up to Sugarcanes

Posted on by in Five Minutes in My Head

For two consecutive days, starting from five days ago, I posted two articles written by guest authors. I hand-picked these two people to write articles for me because I see both of them as intelligent people. One of them is very knowledgeable in topics I am highly unfamiliar with, while the other has proven their writing capabilities through multiple insightful pieces. Although the first article got an overall positive response, the second literally failed. As fast as I could instant message people asking them to read and reflect on the piece, I got new worthless comments telling me to come back and write my own pieces, or declaring how much the piece at hand sucked. I wanted my friend to get a good review of his writing from people that he normally wouldn’t receive input from. The input I got was not anything near what I was expecting.

If it makes any of you feel any better, both Roger Manarik (the author of the second guest piece) and I read through all the comments. Although I did not respond to all of them directly, and Roger didn’t respond to any of them at all, we tried to get the best out of as many of the comments as possible. A majority of them were directed at me instead of Roger’s writing as I would have rather wanted. I really thought about why the piece received so much criticism, and had a short discussion with Roger as well.

Essentially, the only thing Roger could come up with was that the piece was rushed and unthoughtful. I had requested the piece from Roger, and he felt obliged to submit a piece for me as soon as possible. Lacking thought and consideration, the writing turned out less influential than his other pieces.

Although I agreed with Roger at the time, I thought up of a better reason based off facts that I already knew behind the scenes that Roger would have no knowledge of whatsoever. Essentially, when his writings are posted on Facebook in the form of notes, the people Roger tags are his good friends – people who like Roger, who like his writing, and want to read what he has to say. When I moved his writing to a foreign area such as my blog, however, he had a completely different audience. The way he had to approach his readers was completely different, but the adjustment was not made accordingly.

According to my access logs, the group of people that read my blog is severely more diverse than the people who would ever have access to Roger’s Facebook notes. I have people coming to read my articles from my hometown in Illinois, United States of America, all the way to people from Russia on the other side of the Earth. The range of people I have to please is much wider than what Roger has to ever dream about doing.

This leads me to the importance of target audience. You see it all the time in commercials – depending on the type of show airing, the commercials change. You will never see a commercial for Teletubbie dolls during an R-rated movie, and you will never see a commercial for condoms during Barney. But is target audience more complicated than just who you want to read your content? What if you want more viewers? Does that mean you have to change your content to fall under multiple target audiences, and how does one go about targeting both infants and adults at the same time?

This is where you come in. I want you to comment for me and let me know why you either (1) like my blog and keep coming back for more, may it be because of entertainment or value of information, or (2) dislike my blog and avoid coming back to it at all costs. All one-line comments, irrelevant comments, or comments without valid email addresses will be rejected. You may use a nickname to hide your identity, but you must use a legitimate email address. Note that nobody except I will be able to see your email address.

 

Sugarcane in the Easy Morning

Posted on by in Five Minutes in My Head, Guest Author

Special Guest Article, Originally published on Facebook in a Note

Sometimes the best place to find inspiration is to revisit the place where one last felt inspired, rather than starting from scratch again. The past is there for a reason, and whether we like or not, it is here to stay.

I say this because that’s how this note has to start.

It has been requested of me to write another philosophical piece, and being the person I am, I said yes. However, it has proven to be a challenge. No matter how I try, I could not seem to find anything meaningful for me to write about. And I told this person that multiple times, and they kept responding by telling me to keep trying. And when I finally come up with an idea, it dead ends and has no where to go. I have gotten to a point where this person suggested I write about random stuff, and I suggested bananas as a joke. Needless to say it was a poor joke, but it still wasn’t enough to get me started.

So I finally decided to just start writing with a phrase like "My friend wants me to write a new note, so here it goes." Not the best opening line, but passable. At this time, I opened Facebook and went to my notes section to write a new note. Before I did so, I decided to look at my old notes because I didn’t remember writing one (which is because the post date is incorrect for some reason).

It was "A Penny For Your Thoughts."

So I read it, recalling the time when I wrote it and why I did so, all this time listening to the song Northern Downpour, which is very peaceful in the beginning. It thus embodied the same feeling I felt months ago, and sparked in me a desire to continue off of that feeling somehow.

And this note was born.

It came about not because I came up with something new or something incredibly creative, but rather because I revisited my past work. But this note isn’t about how beautiful the world is, or how I am reflecting on my past successes and failures in the way its predecessor was. It’s more about not forgetting what I’m made of. I was sitting at my computer, lying in bed, working, golfing, playing video games, hanging out with friends trying desperately to come up with a brilliant new piece, and that never happened; each night I went to sleep feeling that I failed.

The true failure was my ignorance.

In a way, this note is declaring my hypocrisy,as I wrote something about my needing to experience what the world has to offer, not let it pass me by. I needed to slow down and get back to basics, as does anyone when they lose their way. I had strayed to far from myself, and thus I had no ideas or inspiration. And while we all need a cleansing experience where we drop everything and leave for a week or two, it cannot be permanent. We all need to stick to the tried and true, whatever it may be.

We all need those epiphanies where we finally realize why we messed up or why we were stuck in a rut. We all need that moment in time where it all clicks back together and it feels the same as before. We all need that time to rediscover the inner beauty of who we are, who we were, and who we will become.

The past is defined as what has happened to us all, and sometimes we just need to take a step back and draw on it to get us going again, or for the inspiration to move ahead.

 

Making Money in Today’s Economy

Posted on by in Five Minutes in My Head, Guest Author

Special Guest Article: To provide a wider range of content on my blog, I have invited a special guest author to write about a topic I am unfamiliar with – the stock market. Please visit and read the mentioned links in addition to this article to get a better understanding of the concept.

I have been bugging my dad to open me a brokerage account for a few years now. He always responds by saying that “it’s too risky” or that the stock market is “rigged by a small group of individuals.” I agree with him that there are a few fatcats that control over the markets, but I do believe that there are ways to minimize risk and still make money. In my opinion, most individuals who invest in stocks are suckers. The risk is too high and the reward is too low—especially in today’s volatile economic environment. Many peoples’ portfolios have halved in recent years. Jim’s Cramer’s strategy of buying a small portion of the stock back when the stock is low and selling off some when the stock is high is better than just letting the stock channel—but it’s not much of an improvement. Here are a few Money Market strategies that I have uncovered over the years that could potentially reap good returns with smaller than normal risk.

Day Trading (Buying) Options: You can learn all about stock options here.

Bottom Line: A safe tragedy would be to buy options and reap small profits when you see the market is moving in a certain direction. Indicators like volume can solidify your confidence in the market’s direction.

Selling Options: Selling options can also earn you decent profits.

Bottom Line: This is an interesting strategy because when you first sell the options—money is instantly transferred to your account. In today’s environment, it would be wise to sell calls (bet against the market) for stocks that you do not believe will reach a certain price for the time that the option is still good. There are also more complicated strategies called: Bull Put Spreads and Bear Call Spreads that can be used to minimize risk when selling options. You can learn about these strategies here.

If you have a substantial amount of money and are looking for guaranteed profits, then I would recommend you look into Swiss Annuities. There are many different types that you can choose from to fit your needs/situation.

Hopefully you learned some decent money-making strategies that you can potentially put to good use.

-Garret Erb