baltimoresun.com – A tale of customer service, justice and currency as funny as a $2 bill

PUT YOURSELF in Mike Bolesta’s place. On the morning of Feb. 20, he buys a new radio-CD player for his 17-year-old son Christopher’s car. He pays the $114 installation charge with 57 crisp new $2 bills, which, when last observed, were still considered legitimate currency in the United States proper. The $2 bills are Bolesta’s idea of payment, and his little comic protest, too. For this, Bolesta, Baltimore County resident, innocent citizen, owner of Capital City Student Tours, finds himself under arrest.

Interesting thing is I wonder how many people do remember that 2 dollar bills are legal.

Students ‘waste money’ buying internet essays Students who pay internet companies to write essays for them are not only cheating but could be wasting their money, according to a university professor.

An experiment at Loughborough University in which students were encouraged to buy essays from a number of ghostwriting companies found the results were of questionable quality.

I finally got around to doing a dump off the digital camera, and posted 30 or so new photos into Chris’s online photo gallery. He’s gotten to be quite active, creeping & crawling away. Hopefully I’ll have some new photos showing his new pastime of climbing on mommy and daddy soon. Enjoy!

DVD profit margins double that of VHS

The most interesting information details the strength of the DVD market. Between 2002 and 2003, MGM saw a 40% boost in DVD shipments in North America, and 53% increase worldwide. One slide shows just how quickly DVD has caught on: it took only five years for 30 million DVD players to be sold, compared to circa 8 years for CD players, and 10 years for PCs to reach that volume. All of this translates into a booming market, which helps explains the considerable profit margins attached to DVDs. This slide indicates that net profit margins on DVD sales are 50-60%, while the lingering VHS business sees 20-30% net profit. To put this into plain English, your average $20 DVD apparent costs around $9 to produce, advertise, distribute, etc., leaving about $11 on top as pure profit. For an industry supposedly under dire threat from piracy, things look pretty rosy.