Archive for April, 2017

Book Review — Dan Brown’s “The Da Vinci Code”

Last week I finished reading The Da Vinci Code, the second story in the Robert Langdon series of novels by author Dan Brown.  I finished reading it right before Easter.

Taking place about a year after the events in Angels & Demons, The Da Vinci Code begins with the sudden murder of a museum curator in Paris, France.  Specifically, the man murdered was Jacques Sauniere, the curator of the Louvre.  He was shot in the abdomen by Silas, an albino Catholic monk.  Before succumbing to death, Jacques positioned himself in a unique position designed to get the right kind of attention.  He also left behind a note that included the line, “P.S. find Robert Langdon.”

Dan Brown — The Da Vinci Code

Thankfully, art historian and religious expert Robert Langdon is in Paris on a speaking tour, and that very evening he was scheduled to meet with Jacques, although Langdon didn’t know the specific reason why Jacques wanted to meet with him.  He presumed it had to do with a new book that he was getting ready to publish.

Anyway, the French police quickly locate Langdon in a nearby hotel, and he’s taken to the Louvre to help examine the uniquely positioned body of the late museum curator.  The police show him that Jacques also left behind other notes as well as a sequence of numbers.  What it all means though is rather puzzling.

Police cryptographer Sophie Neveu arrives and she secretly tells Langdon that his life is in danger.  She helps him ditch the police and sends them on a wild goose chase, allowing Sophie and Langdon privacy to examine the crime scene.  It turns out that not only is Jacques Sophie’s estranged grandfather, but he was also the leader of a secret society.  On top of that, he was known for his puzzles and riddles, and he frequently used words and phrases with double meanings. Read more…

Think your job is stressful? Guess again.

You don’t know stress until you’re the general manager of a fast food restaurant that continually earns several million dollars each year on revenue, but is desperately understaffed and operates with an unreliable skeleton crew.

Late last summer my wife was finally promoted to the position of general manager after being a restaurant manager (a.k.a. assistant manager) for several years with her current company.  The promotion initially sent her to a store located fifty miles away from home (yes, that’s fifty miles in each direction).

While the drive to and from that store was literally a pain in the ass (the hour-long commute was making her back problem worse), and the store was not only ancient but also in a bad part of a poor town, and homeless people used it as a place to hang out each day, she made it work.  She cleaned the store, managed to find and hire decent workers, and the place improved.  The store always had enough inventory in stock, the speed of service times improved, and business increased.  Of course, that’s the pattern that she had already been setting whenever she was transferred to a new store.

So how does the company reward my wife’s performance after turning around the worst store in the district?

Why, they sent her to another store, of course! Read more…

Are Companies Shorting You In Bags of Potato Chips?

Last week there was a news story about people filing a lawsuit against Wise Foods, claiming that the company is basically being deceitful and tricking customers into purchasing what they think is a large amount of potato chips.

Perhaps the real question here is, How much empty space is acceptable in a bag of potato chips?

We all know that bags of potato chips are never filled to the top of the bag.  First, the air in the bag acts as a cushion and helps prevent the chips from being crushed.  And second, chips settle and sink to the bottom of the bag, whether it happens at the food production plant, or during any phase of transportation all the way to your home.  The more that you move and shake the bag, the further that the chips will settle towards the bottom.

Still, despite knowing that, it’s disappointing opening a large bag of chips only to see that more than half of the bag appears to be empty.  This is a common problem with almost all manufacturers of chips, though some companies are worse with this problem than others.

Wise Foods

We, the consumers, want to have an amount of chips in the bag that clearly reflects the bag’s size.  So why is this such a problem today? Read more…

Book Review – Dan Brown’s “Angels & Demons”

Last week I finished reading Angels & Demons, the first book in the Robert Langdon series of books written by Dan Brown.

Over ten years ago I got caught up in the craze and read The Da Vinci Code right before Hollywood made it into a movie.  While I don’t remember the details of the book, I do remember that it was an interesting story and that I enjoyed it.  After waiting for too long, I finally decided to go back and read this series of books, starting with the first one, Angels & Demons.

Dan Brown — Angels & Demons

Angels & Demons begins with the murder of one of the top scientists at the CERN research facility in Europe.  Physicist Leonardo Vetra was brutally murdered and his chest was branded by a symbol once used by the Illuminati, a secret organization that waged war against the Catholic Church hundreds of years ago.  To help him investigate the murder, CERN director Maximilian Kohler flies in Robert Langdon, an expert on artwork as well as religion and secret societies such as the Illuminati.

Langdon quickly discovers that the symbol is authentic, and that it appears that the Illuminati are back.  Leonardo’s daughter Vittoria was called back to CERN after the discovery of her father’s murder.  She arrives just as Langdon and Kohler are analyzing the Illuminati symbol.  When the three of them examine Leonardo’s office, nothing seems out of place.  Vittoria informs them that her father had a second laboratory at CERN, a place where she was helping him research antimatter.  They access the second lab and discover that a canister containing antimatter is missing. Read more…

Book Review – John Douglas & Mark Olshaker’s “Journey Into Darkness”

Back in late February I finished reading Journey Into Darkness, another set of brutal and horrific true crime stories from famed FBI Special Agent John Douglas.  This book goes along with his previous book, Mindhunter.

Just like Mindhunter, Journey Into Darkness takes a look at a few bloody and brutal cases that John Douglas either worked on personally, or that he had heard about during his time with the FBI.

John Douglas & Mark Olshaker — Journey Into Darkness

This time around, authors John Douglas and Mark Olshaker seem to be generally focused with sex crimes and the murders that accompanied them.  The book begins with a short story of a man abducting and killing a young lady in the Marine Corps, told from his point-of-view.  We later learn that the story is what Douglas believes happened as he helped investigate the crime and placed himself in the killer’s shoes, searching for his motive and methods in an effort to later capture him.

Like in Mindhunter, Journey Into Darkness has several true crime cases.  Most of these tend to showcase the murders of women and young children, and most of them were sexually assaulted as well.  Some of it is quite graphic as we read about what monsters can do when they strike and release their rage. Read more…

Running a High-Volume, Low-Profit eBay Store

Right now almost all of my time has been dedicated to my eBay store.

I’d rather not post a link to it just yet, but I’ve been successfully doing business on there for over a year and a half.  My techniques have continually been adjusted as I’ve been learning from mistakes and learning how to do business better.

My store is a cliche with used clothing and basically “thrift store flipping” that so many people jump to when it comes to online selling.  Selling clothing is fiercely competitive.  It’s also critical to get the items as clean as possible as well as having great photos and accurate measurements.

On top of that, you also need to have low enough prices to encourage people to purchase from you.  I’m pretty sure that some of my prices were actually so low that people bought from me and then re-listed the items in their own eBay store for higher prices.

One of my problems is that I have a limited area where I can store my clothing once it’s been cleaned, photographed and measured.  Because of that, I’m listing and selling items for extremely low prices to keep my inventory moving.  This creates a high-volume but low-profit environment.  But it’s still income, and my business model works as I’ve got a source where I can purchase my inventory for ridiculously low prices.  I can still make profits selling items as low as $1.99, and that’s including deducting the item cost, the PayPal fee, and eBay’s fee at the end of the month. Read more…