Monthly Archives: March 2014

Buy vs. Lease

Posted on Craig’s List:

What am I doing wrong?

Okay, I’m tired of beating around the bush. I’m a beautiful 25 year old girl. I’m articulate and classy. I’m not from New York. I’m looking to get married to a guy who makes at least half a million a year. I know how that sounds, but keep in mind that a million a year is middle class in New York City, so I don’t think I’m overreaching at all.

Are there any guys who make 500K or more on this board? Any wives? Could you send me some tips? I dated a business man who makes average around 200 – 250. But that’s where I seem to hit a roadblock. $250,000 won’t get me to Central Park West. I know a woman in my yoga class who was married to an investment banker and lives in Tribeca, and she’s not as pretty as I am, nor is she a great genius. So what is she doing right? How do I get to her level?

Here are my questions specifically:

  • Where do you single rich men hang out? Give me specifics — bars, restaurants, gyms
  • What are you looking for in a mate? Be honest guys, you won’t hurt my feelings
  • Is there an age range I should be targeting (I’m 25)?
  • Why are some of the women living lavish lifestyles on the upper east side so plain? I’ve seen really ‘plain jane’ boring types who have nothing to offer married to incredibly wealthy guys. I’ve seen drop dead gorgeous girls in singles bars in the east village. What’s the story there?
  • Jobs I should look out for? Everyone knows – lawyer, investment banker, doctor. How much do those guys really make? And where do they hang out? Where do the hedge fund guys hang out?
  • How you decide marriage vs. just a girlfriend? I am looking for MARRIAGE ONLY

Please hold your insults — I’m putting myself out there in an honest way. Most beautiful women are superficial; at least I’m being up front about it. I wouldn’t be searching for these kind of guys if I wasn’t able to match them — in looks, culture, sophistication, and keeping a nice home and hearth.

THE ANSWER

Dear Ms. Pretty,

I have read your post with great interest. Guess there are lots of girls out there who have similar questions like yours. Please allow me to analyze your situation as a professional investor. My annual income is more than $500k, which meets your requirement, so I hope everyone believes that I’m not wasting time here.

From the standpoint of a business person, it is a bad decision to marry you. The answer is very simple, so let me explain. Put the details aside, what you’re trying to do is an exchange of “beauty” and “money”: Person A provides beauty, and Person B pays for it, fair and square. However, there’s a deadly problem here, your beauty will fade, but my money will not be gone without any good reason. The fact is, my income might increase from year to year, but you won’t be prettier year after year. Hence from the viewpoint of economics, I am an appreciation asset, and you are a depreciation asset. It’s not just normal depreciation, but exponential depreciation. If beauty is your only asset, your value will be much worse ten years later.

By the terms we use in Wall Street, every trading has a position, dating with you is also a “trading position”. If the trade value dropped we will sell it and it is not a good idea to keep it for long term – same goes with the marriage that you wanted. It might be cruel to say this, but in order to make a wiser decision any assets with great depreciation value will be sold or “leased”. Anyone with over $500k annual income is not a fool; we would only date you, but will not marry you. I would advise that you forget looking for any clues to marry a rich guy. And by the way, you could make yourself to become a rich person with $500k annual income. This has better chance of success than finding a rich fool.

Hope this reply helps. If you are interested in “leasing” services, do contact me…

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Quick Hits

I’m Better Than You!

When I was a kid, “He knows martial arts” was impressive. When I was a teen I wasn’t impressed unless it was, “He’s a black belt in Okidoki.” I still have no real grasp of what the belt system is, but having a black belt must be impressive by the way people talked about it. Then somewhere along the line “degrees” were added. I’m no longer impressed by someone just having a black belt in Déja Fu*, but now they have to be a “fifteenth degree black belt” in order to be impressive. Again, I have no idea what the degrees really mean, but throughout my life the numbers I hear seem to be getting larger, so bigger must be better.

This trend seems to be happening in almost all aspects of life… We (and by “we” I mean “me”) demand to be impressed, awed by everything. I can’t just be impressed by a car, it has to have words like, “454” and “big block” and “hemi’ attached to it – as if I know what those words mean… (Well, I do, but you know what I’m getting at.)

The speedlight I bought for my camera is a YN565EX. Seriously, why the numbers? They’re made up – they don’t MEAN anything. And “EX?” There’s only one version of the 565, so why put the EX on the back? I guess to make it sound impressive…

*The martial arts Okidoki and Déja Fu belong to Terry Pratchett’s “Diskworld” series. Okidoki was described as “nothing really but a bunch of bunny hops,” and Déja Fu as “The feeling you’ve been kicked in the head before.” 

I kinda feel bad for them…

…but it is kinda funny.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JYXCC9o1zuw

 

Can someone tell me…

…why we need to interfere with Crimea’s decision to merge with Russia? It’s not like Vladimir Putin sent in 500,000 troops to take over Crimea – the Crimeans themselves held an election and opted to break away from Ukraine. This really isn’t our business.

Look at it this way. Pretend the US got embroiled in a political upheaval. Congress has been dissolved, people kicked the President out of office, there is no government, but there is economic chaos happening throughout the land. The Maine state legislature gets together and decides, “Hey, we really have more in common with Canada than we do with the US. Most of us have family there, we all speak Canadian already, and we generally identify more with New Brunswick than New Hampshire. Let’s let the US have its revolution, we’ll just quietly join Canada if they want us.” The people of Maine voted 95% to join Canada, the Canadian Prime Minister said, “Sure, sound good, eh.” If that scenario would play out – how would we feel if, say, Russia were to step in and say, “No, you can’t do that, and if you do, we’ll invade.” Seriously…

 

I like these people

This could change disaster relief for the better!

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Cookies

I’m in a bit of a funk. It’s been a long, dry winter, money is going out faster than I can bring it in, and Beloved Wifey broke her foot. If anyone needs me, I’ll be in the other room baking cookies*. I find that when I’m in a funk it helps to do something like that.

*It should be noted that “baking cookies” isn’t quite the right term, as there’s no actual baking in this recipe. It’s super-easy. I’ll wait while you go get a pencil to write this down. Okay, ready? You’ll love this. You’ll need a package of Girl Scout Thin Mints, a bowl of peanut butter, and some Nestle’s Quick. One by one dip the Thin Mints into the peanut butter, then coat them with the chocolate powder. IMPORTANT – These cookies can go bad rather quickly, so it’s highly recommended that you eat them immediately. In fact, don’t even set the cookies down, just dip, sprinkle, eat. Dip sprinkle eat. Dip sprinkle eat. 

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Whammo!

I positively, absolutely HATE “ambush-ware,” (a term I just made up).

Okay, I’m working on a project for a friend. He needs some video clips converted to a certain format, and a DVD made. A few years ago I’d take a day or two and use Adobe’s neato software to put together a custom animated DVD menu in After Effects, process the audio in Audition, put everything together in Premiere Pro, then author the final DVD in Encore. Except Adobe quit supporting Encore, the software that actually creates the files necessary for a DVD – they say. “The trend in the video and broadcast industry is moving away from physical media distribution. The future is in cloud and streaming content. Therefore we are focusing more on products that deliver to streaming services. For example, Adobe Media Encoder and Adobe Premiere Pro CC include a new feature allowing users to create iPad-ready video with QuickTime chapter markers.”

Okay, I can go back and download an older version of Encore that may or may not work properly, but I don’t really have time for that. So I turn to my old standby, iDVD. I know Apple stopped providing iDVD a few years ago for the same reasons Adobe stopped selling Encore – people tend to look at video online now rather than on DVDs, but I managed to keep an old copy, and it works fine… Except, well poop. Okay, it WORKED fine, now it doesn’t. And Apple doesn’t support the software any more.

Okay, I just need to find a way to author my friend’s DVD. I work with video every single day, but it’s all online stuff. I’ve not burned a “you need to put this disk in a DVD player” kind of DVD in years.

A quick search online gave me a lead to some free software that looks like an iDVD clone of sorts. Swell, I don’t have much time, I’ll just download that quick, burn the disk and be on my way. It’s free, so I expected it to be ad-supported – but I was pleasantly surprised when I opened the software to find that it wasn’t all cluttered with ads and it worked just fine. It’s a very simple program, I figured the company released it to showcase their more advanced stuff. I was reasonably impressed. It took me an hour to get everything all figured out and ready to go, and within another half an hour it had rendered the files and burned a disk. I was giddy with glee. Giddy.

Until I looked at the final product.

There’s a watermark. Not just a little logo in the corner, but a HUGE watermark across the entire screen that makes the entire disk unusable. Turns out that you need to pay $50 for the “pro” level of the software to get rid of the watermark.

Supercrud. This has happened to me before, and I should have seen it coming. Ambush-ware. “Okay, you’ve spent a considerable amount of time downloading the software, learning how to use it, getting your project to look exactly right – NOW we’re going to hold you hostage for money. If you don’t pay us, all that time has been wasted.” Back to their website. Yep, the software is clearly labeled “FREE.” Now I’m getting angry. No, I shall not pay fifty bucks for your software, dammit. I’ll find another way to do this…

Pushy, sneaky sales tactics will make me walk away every time. Every. Time.

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