Blog.amhill

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Posts Tagged economics

Cultures of No

Feb 28

Posted by Aaron in Musings, Rants | No Comments

Prohibited Signs (from iStockphoto.com)We have a local pizzeria called “Joe’s Pizza.” For a while, Joe’s Pizza had a satellite establishment at our campus cafe. I believe their contract was for 1 year of service, with potential for future renewals.

In the beginning, it was great — they were very busy, sold a lot of food, and from the outside they appeared to be doing well. It seemed like a win-win situation for everyone. As an employee, I didn’t get a discount, but we could order full pies at a discounted rate.

Midway through the year, things changed. I think management changed, actually. With that change of hands came a change in culture, and not for the better. Read the rest of this entry »

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Outsourcing & the Karmic Egg

Jan 16

Posted by Aaron in Geekery, Musings, Sustainable Living | 1 Comment

So Melissa and I have finally decided to officially start our own publishing company.

She thought of the name “Karmic Egg” (the “egg” being short for “egghead”, I presume). We registered the domain karmicegg.com a couple days ago, set up a Twitter account, Facebook fan page, and I transferred my development wiki to the new domain.

Melissa designed this really awesome logo, as well! I’m not totally settled on the typography, but the graphic itself is wicked awesome.

Our Publishing company will be an outlet for both of our collective hobbies involving publishable media (ie. not her crafties, but any books, writing, cards, games, etc. that we may produce). She is currently shopping around for a printer for her Melissa Lenormand divination deck / art project, and I’m in the playtesting phase of one game and nearly there with another (two others are still in early development).

The company is still in its infancy, but we’ve already had an absolutely surreal experience. Read the rest of this entry »

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Book Review: Free Lunch

Jan 12

Posted by Aaron in Reviews | 1 Comment

Free Lunch, by David Cay Johnston, is subtitled “How the wealthiest Americans enrich themselves at government expense (and stick you with the bill).” Yes, it’s one of THOSE books.

I’ve read and watched a fair share of media concerning how Corporate America ™ is bilking the Middle and Lower classes, so I honestly expected to not see anything I hadn’t seen already. But once I started this book, I couldn’t stop. Johnston’s ability to investigate, research, and synthesize this topic is astounding. The only thing that could have made this book better is a “happy ending,” or sense of resolution, at the end of each chapter; But that would just be sugar-coating the reality of things.

This book is not for the faint of heart, not for those that can’t tolerate the raise in their blood pressure from anger & aggravation, and certainly not for those that cannot deal with harsh realities. Read the rest of this entry »

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Credit, pt. 1

Jan 14

Posted by Aaron in Musings | 1 Comment

As the beginning of my last undergrad semester looms near, it’s time to buy books.  Books are expensive, of course (I only needed two textbooks: “The World of Cell” and “Elementary Differential Equations”, and it cost just shy of $300), but receiving a fat student grant makes it far more manageable.

As is my tradition, I apply the leftover grant money (the bulk of it anyways) to my credit card.  This time around, I was able to pay off half of the remaining $2,600 balance with grant money. 

I have had an active line of liquid debt for 11 years — it has never once been zero’d out completely. In fact, if you think of a credit card like a stack of plates, where each purchase gets stacked on the next, and you pay them off by removing plates, then the first purchases I made 11 years ago are still waiting to be paid off!

This isn’t a “stay away from credit cards, they are TEH DANGERUZZ!!!!!” post, although I do believe people should have a healthy respect & awareness for the amount of debt they accrue. 

There are a few things I think every consumer (i.e. you) should know about credit debt, and I say this as someone that has been almost obsessively debt-minded (ask my wife) for a little over 5 years. Read the rest of this entry »

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On Piracy

Nov 18

Posted by Aaron in Geekery, Musings | 2 Comments

On a recent slashdot thread, there was some discussion about the issue of piracy. (The thread was specifically referring to Xbox360 modchips, and piracy in the gaming industry). One commenter in particular had the most insightful thoughts on why computer piracy exists. I’m going to re-post it, verbatim, here (after the jump): Read the rest of this entry »

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