So this weekend, in between all the craziness, I managed to finish the final episodes of Buffy that I began watching here. Maybe I'll throw up a review sometime. And let's just say I'm not the biggest fan of Marti Noxon's influence.

Having only seen a few episodes (and none of the arcing plot lines) before I tackled all seven seasons, I can honestly now say that they were, on the whole, some of the freshest writing around.

Yeah, I hate cash. But until the day someone jams an RFID chip in my hand and I can remove all my cards, I'll need to carry some credit. But as this story in the Post indicates, there are still some idiotic merchants out there:

For years, Marcia Levi refused to accept either credit or debit cards for purchases under $10 at her downtown gift shop, Chocolate Moose. Customers complained. She lowered the threshold to $5. Customers still complained, so two years ago she gave up on any minimum.

"People come in and charge $2.25 for a card or $1.75 for jelly beans," said Levi, who co-owns Chocolate Moose with her sister Barbara. "It's annoying. In the past two years, they've just whipped out the card without thinking about it, no matter how small the purchase."

Yeah, you see "without thinking about it" means "not willing to pay cash for an item that costs the same with a credit card". Got it? Why wouldn't they pay with credit? Because it hurts your feelings? Later...

The mentality "absolutely drives me nuts," Levi said. That's because each time shoppers like Keo swipe plastic at her store, Levi pays a hefty fee.

And later

Levi said she easily pays 55 cents in fees on a $2.25 greeting card, depending on the brand of credit card used. That's more than half of her $1 profit margin, she said. For debit cards, she pays a flat fee of 35 to 45 cents per transaction.

"It may not sound like much, but if you do that 100 to 200 times a day, that really eats into your profit margin," Levi said. Her best hope is that the larger purchases offset losses on the smaller ones.

Okay, so I've heard this argument before. 55% of your profit is a large chunk to see go unused. (Although to be fair, the fact is she's normally making a 44% profit off of each card she sells...down to 24% with a credit card, which isn't that ridiculous at all.) So lets see, what if someone offered her a much lower merchant fee? Would that make a difference? Say they offered the ability to aggregate purchases (slap a whole bunch of those cards together into one mega-purchase and the 55-cent fee suddenly isn't that large anymore...)

For merchants who don't have that kind of volume, third-party vendors have stepped in to fill the void. Among them is Peppercoin Inc., a two-year-old firm outside Boston. Two leading U.S.-based banks now promote Peppercoin's services to the merchants they work with, a sign that the bundling idea may be catching on as a mainstream concept, Kountz said.

Levi, the card shop owner, said she considered aggregating but found it prohibitively expensive. (Peppercoin, for instance, charges 5 cents per transaction for its services.)

Until the banks lower their fees, or the aggregators drop their prices, Levi copes with micropayments as best she can. She gently nudges shoppers to consider cash. Or she gives them "the look." Occasionally, if the item is particularly inexpensive, she even pays for it out of her own pocket, she said, figuring it's all the same in the end.

"People just don't have as much cash in their wallets as they used to," Levi said. "I don't have much choice."

Hmm. 5 cents per transaction. That would mean that gift card went from being a 44% profit to a 42% profit. Seems smart enough to me. It certainly seems far from "prohibitively expensive". In fact, it makes Levi look like a chump. How much lower could you get? 3 cents per transaction? I mean...an aggregator has to make money somehow. (With a 5 cent fee, an aggregator would need to combine at least 11 purchases per transaction just to break even on the aforementioned gift card)

All things being equal, I think Levi needs to wake up and realize that in the system of capitalism the consumer is king. If she doesn't offer credit card support, I'll go somewhere else. Actually, just reading this article made me never want to shop at her store again. To think that after I purchase an item, she's slipping money into the till....how idiotic is she?

Helena's visit, a big party and a lengthy recovery. All part of a fun weekend. I'd post more, but pizza and Tuesday Salon beckon...

We're having a party this weekend. You should come. If you're someone we don't know, and you actually find me, I'll give you a present. Like that's going to happen...

Okay, I figure it's time for me to chime in with one of my own. So here goes.

When people who haven't watched any anime are introduced to it, it's often through one of two movies, either Ghost in the Shell or Akira. There's a bunch of hype out there about both of them, but Akira especially.

Akira was the love-labor of Katsuhiro Otomo who is currently working on the upcoming Steamboy (which I'm extremely excited about, especially since one of Jenna's friends mentioned an interest in it). Otomo had a great series of ideas, but his work isn't "beautiful" like Miyazaki. Instead, Otomo is best at making a series of scenes seem impressive. An action packed cycle race, or a crazy series of mutations all are visually stimulating, and serve to

The film deals with biker gangs and some telekinetic humans. That's pretty much it. Throw in some violence. Add some military people. Mix in some "rebels". And secret projects.

Akira isn't for everyone, and thus, I feel somewhat annoyed that it is often recommended to people like me as "the coolest movie ever". It's not. It's far from it. The plot (it was adapted from a lengthy manga (Japanese comic book)) is somewhat tedious and nonsensical. The pacing is simply awful. The philosophy is unnecessary. At the end of the film, I'm sure many people have thought, "so what happened again?" If you watch it a second time, you'll appreciate the cool parts much more, but the bad will seem even worse.

In short, if you've never seen any anime, skip Akira. Otherwise, dive right in.

It's official: Social Security reform is dead.

The House's top two Republicans swiftly rejected an idea floated by President Bush to raise the ceiling on wages subject to the Social Security payroll tax, with Speaker J. Dennis Hastert and Majority Leader Tom DeLay saying yesterday that they would consider that a tax increase.

Underscoring the fluidity of the debate over Bush's proposal for restructuring the 70-year-old retirement program, DeLay (Tex.) said Congress should look at a more flexible retirement age. But he flatly opposed subjecting more of the earnings of higher-income people to the Social Security tax.

You see, the best, easiest way to get the Dems to cave on Social Security would be to press them to raise the payroll tax cap to, say, $120k. That would take care of almost all of the long term problems in the system. It would mean that those earning over $90,000 would see a chance, but no one else.

So, for a few days, I was worried that the Republicans might do just that which would leave us flatfooted with no room to fight back. But if the DeLay is against the idea, we can continue to press for it, knowing the GOP would rather lose a vote than go down that route.

We just won...

I like lists. Most of mine are mental, but the whole idea of LISP-style schemin' appeals to the Haskell in me.

Thus, enter TaDa List. It's online and free. From the guys who built basecamp. Over 10k people have joined...which makes it seem less cool, but I suppose it's better to be late to the party than to never arrive at all.

"Bar Pilar" is set to open next to St. Ex.

If they have outdoor seating, I'll be psyched.

Everyone should head over to Senator Schumer's new Social Insecurity Calculator and give it a whirl.

I lost 30%! What about you?

I just discovered Richard "The M is For Misunderstood" Stallman has his own blog. It's more like an online diary, really.

The new Free Software Foundation website is pretty nice, too. Go check it out!

This story is why I like Rendell. He just tells it like it is:

Social Security, I mean, we think of it as an entitlement, but it shouldn’t be an entitlement. It’s a safety net.

And you know, this argument that people know best how to handle their own money – if that was the case, why would we have ever needed Social Security in the first place? Right? If people were doing such a good job handling their money so they had no nest eggs for retirement, why would we ever have needed Social Security in the first place? Well, there you have it.

My argument exactly: people aren't smart enough to handle their own money. And by "people" I mean "people like me". We'd just spend it.

Go tell JMM to remove Ed from the faction.

So the new NID will be John Negroponte. Hmm. I can't say I"m happy. You'd think Bush would've chosen someone who wasn't in Honduras from '81-'85. His deputy will be the current head of the NSA, which I guess makes some sense, given that the NSA has tons of money to throw around.

On the bright side, I did consume half of a half of an extremely tasty salt bagel that Nicole brought me. And I did get to laugh at Bush looking awkward during his press conference, sans "Jeff Gannon", who was roasted last night in a hilarious Daily Show episode.