Here’s an idea so crazy it just might work.

What if one store chose the week before Christmas to have a Week Before Christmas Anti-Sale? The price of everything in the store would be marked up by 20%, and the employees would get a bonus for working that week. It markets itself: “Stressed out by holiday crowds? Come to our store’s anti-sale! Everything is marked up by 20%! It’s peaceful and quiet in here, and all the employees are happy! Isn’t your peace of mind worth it?”

Seth Godin wrote about the gift card scam:

Along the way, we bought the story that giving someone a hundred dollar bill as a gift (”go buy what you want”) is callous, insensitive, a crass shortcut. Buying them a $100 Best Buy card, on the other hand, is thoughtful. Even if they spend $92 and have to waste the rest.

I see Seth’s point, but I want to make a counterpoint. If someone gave me a hundred dollar bill as a present, I might feel guilty if I spent it on something other than bills, food, or savings, depending on how my family’s finances were doing at the time. Yes, there is a hidden cost to gift cards, but Seth neglects to mention the benefit — the benefit of no guilt.

That said, I admit that the fact that guilt farming is an $8,000,000,000 industry says sad things about the emotional state of this society. It kind of reminds me of modern-day indulgences. If we could just let go of our shame about money, then Seth’s idea would be a strict win. Just give cash instead of a gift card, maybe add a little note saying “Please spend this on unnecessary frivolity, and enjoy!” and trust the recipient to be a big boy or a big girl.

So let’s work on this. Let’s help break down the social stigma around money, the social stigma that gives the guilt farmers their power over us. Let’s be open, honest, and unashamed about money. Let’s tell the story that giving money as a gift is nothing to be ashamed of, and that spending gifted money is nothing to feel guilty about. I like that story a lot better. (:

We’re currently using MS Access for our accounting database, at least until I have time to rewrite it in Rails. All the export options built in to Access totally suck. RTF, HTML, Excel, they all come out looking horrible and ugly. I wanted to save the invoice report as some file type that we could email to our clients, so I needed it to look good. After a bit of googling I came across PDF995, a free PDF maker. It produces pretty good-looking PDFs and doesn’t stick an ad at the bottom of the file like some other free PDF creators I found out there. It has some annoying pop-ups when you run it, but that’s far less annoying than watermarking the actual PDF file. I just wanted to share what I found, since a simple google search didn’t immediately answer my question.

This list of cognitive biases is an excellent resource for anyone who wishes to improve the quality of their life. It’s a list of common fallacies that people fall into, and familiarizing yourself with them can help you see past your bias to see what’s really going on.

The Usual Error itself is, of course, on the list, as “projection bias”:

Projection bias — the tendency to unconsciously assume that others share the same or similar thoughts, beliefs, values, or positions.

Super Mario Galaxy (Wii): Totally awesome. Very innovative, almost as innovative as Mario 64 was. It’s the first game of its class in which I never once wanted to move the camera. That in itself is a laudable achievement. I also think the co-op mode is really innovative; they perfected a way for players of different skill levels (or interest levels) to play together, by having the second player be a backup that can help the first player out and doesn’t (often) hinder the first player. This is totally awesome — a game that parents and kids can play together and enjoy!

Cave Story (PC): Really great, and free! Kind of reminds me of Metroid. It’s even got replay value if you’re super hardcore and want to get to the secret ending.

Portal (PC): Very cool, but unfortunately evil.

DROD (Deadly Rooms of Death) (PC): Totally awesome. I heard about this game a lot but never saw what all the fuss was about. It’s just an overhead turn-based puzzle game, right? What could be interesting about that? Well, DROD is excellently great. It’s actually got a plot! (Well, moreso in the sequels, but still.) And plenty of interesting new monsters, traps, and new game elements on each level. I’m currently frustrated with level 16, but I’ll pick it back up again. I haven’t gotten a hint yet, and I’m just being stubborn. (:

Donkey Kong Barrel Blast (Wii): Horrible, uninteresting, and boring.

Mario Party 8 (Wii): Strangely compelling, if you don’t care about skill being much of a factor in the outcome of the game.

Metroid Prime 3 (Wii): I usually don’t like FPSs a lot, but this one was quite well done.

Here’s a cheap and simple lifehack that has improved the quality of our lives: Wrap a piece of dark-coloured duct tape around your toilet seat. (Make sure the edge is on the underside so it won’t stick to you.) That way, even when you’re stumbling around in the almost-dark, you can easily tell whether the seat is up or down. It sounds stupid, but if you try it, I bet a time will come when you’ll be thankful for it. (:

Why don’t toilet manufacturers make their seats a different colour from the rest of the toilet? I’d think this would be a cheap and profitable innovation opportunity.