Charlie's prison audit.

[reddragdiva]

• Being a pack of twunts, SixApart think this is a fabulous idea. To opt the hell out, log in to all of your accounts in turn, go to the admin console, enter the text set opt_exclude_stats 1 and press "execute." And spread the word.

• I mean, they could just have used this.

• How to make £5 steak taste like £50 steak.

bmovie was the night out I needed. I LOVE YOU ALL. Lotsa pics to go up when I get 'em done. I'm sorta busy.

Work is GODDAMN INSANE. One guy's last day was on Friday (and I'm sure HR will approve the job description, which hasn't changed in the year since I was hired, before the end of time) and one is on holiday, so there's three and a bit of us in the office dealing with mountains of crap. Today's special joy: installing a new version of something from a source RPM on a dev playpen box with three previous versions in various states of repair installed from source. Break out the big spanner and the dodgy library symlinks! And $PATH had /usr/local/bin before /usr/bin, and the same for libs. (You are not expected to understand this. The tone should be clear.)

Freda is fractious, with teething and growing pains, so the girls are exhausted dealing with her all day and I get home and exercise my l33t Daddy p0w3rz of cooking and dandling. Yeah, I'm loving it.

I have failed to beg off Saturday's on-call. BOTHER. So I will be at home, arkady and Freda will be at a one-year-old's birthday party and redcountess and mirrorshard aim to rep-ra-zent tha cru at Polyday. I welcome visitors next week, day or evening.

Comments

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

So explain what's so awful about the Omniture thing. I mean, sure, i already block hitbox, but that's mainly because their cookie use is so obnoxious.

[reddragdiva]

I think the general rule "if SixApart think it's a good idea, that starts it at minus ten points" applies.

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

It sucks when you're right.

[siani-hedgehog.livejournal.com]

How much

£10 for waged people and £5 for unwaged. There are no advance bookings; simply turn up and pay on the day.

*vom*
usually i have to at least get past the first screen before a poly thing makes me feel ashamed to be associated.

[thekumquat.livejournal.com]

How would you prefer the organisers ensure they cover the costs of the venue, publicity, etc?

[siani-hedgehog.livejournal.com]

by charging everyone £7.50.

[vatine]

That'd probably lead to less over-all income. Saying that, I don't have employment statistics for poly people in general, but I would be surprised if (on average) half of the poly people in and around London aren't in paid work.

[secretlondon.livejournal.com]

I would expect most poly people to be employed as it seems to be a middle class thing..

[thekumquat.livejournal.com]

Mainly middle class possibly, but that includes lots of students, sixth-formers, homemakers, people not working for disability or sickness reasons, not to mention unemployed.

[siani-hedgehog.livejournal.com]

i would personally be suprised if only half weren't in paid work, tbh. as [Bad username or site: the kumquat @ livejournal.com] says below - homemakers, students, people on disability, etc. it may be my skewed internet geek perspective, but well over half my poly friends are not employed.

[vatine]

Most of the people I know are in paid work. Some aren't. I haven't actually run the numbers and I don't really track who's poly and who's not (I'm non-poly and married, so it'd be silly tracking it). I guess the ticket split at PolyDay would be an interesting datum, though.

[dennyd.livejournal.com]

I'm intrigued - what's your objection to a two-tier pricing scheme based on what seems like a fairly reasonable rule-of-thumb guess about how much money people are likely to have?

I'm employed, I have no objection to paying more than someone who's not employed... my disposable income is probably 2 orders of magnitude greater than theirs.

Recalling the state of my finances when I was unemployed, that price differential would probably have made the difference between me being able to go or not, and I'd have been very grateful for that. Was, with regard to other events with similar policies.

I really don't see the problem. Unless you're assuming 'cut off my nose' levels of pride on the part of the unemployed.

[secretlondon.livejournal.com]

To be honest on £50+ a week people on JSA would be spending 10% of their income on entry, and then you have all the other costs.. (food, drink etc).

I'm not going and I'm lucky to get a slightly higher level of benefit (as I'm on incapacity) but discounts do affect whether you can attend or not.

I suspect the original poster thought it was rewarding the unemployed for being "dole layabouts" or something..

[siani-hedgehog.livejournal.com]

nah, i'm assuming that most of 'em are a bunch of slackers who ought to pull up their socks and get a job, actually, and that those who aren't would very likely be a bit embarrassed by the show of charity, or by having to say "i don't work" in front of people.
i DO object to subsidising them. i ALREADY voluntarily subsidise quite a few less-monied friends by paying their share at fairly priced events. and i already subsidise those on benefits with my taxes. i object to any form of double taxation.
i also disagree with the assumption that anyone in employment has a greater disposable income than anyone not in employment. that is manifestly untrue, especially in London.
i additionally find it vaguely insulting that by having the policy, the event implies that a) being poly means you're likely to agree with it, and b) being poly means you're likely to be unemployed.

[emarkienna.livejournal.com]

Surely plenty of events have "concessions"? I don't see anything poly-specific about it, nor is there any implication that people are unemployed.

Also, it's not necessarily as simple as paying for other people. I imagine the variable costs for this event are fairly small, and it's mainly fixed costs (the venue, etc). In which case, you're not paying for that person to come along, rather you're all paying towards the fixed costs. Consider that the price that maximises the amount of revenue from employed people will be higher than the price that maximises revenue from unemployed people (since the latter are less willing or able to pay a higher amount). Therefore having a single "average" price would mean the revenue would lower, so to compensate the price would have to be greater than whatever the average price is. In an extreme case (if most unemployed people couldn't afford more than 5 pounds), you could end up with the single price figure being above 10 pounds due to the lower numbers.

So rather than looking at it that you're paying for other people, look at it that this means they can get a load of revenue off of unemployed people who otherwise might not have been able to come.

[reddragdiva]

You realise of course that you are explaining basic market segmentation to a capitalist.

[emarkienna.livejournal.com]

Heh, I didn't. I felt like explaining it anyway as I wanted to remind myself how it worked ;)

In that case I shall be curious as to why it's a bad thing, even if there are economic reasons for doing it.

[reddragdiva]

I must admit, you're the first capitalist I've ever heard argue that good old market segmentation is actually ideologically offensive, rather than an almost universal way of maximising business revenues. I suppose this is the capitalist equivalent of the sort of socialist who thinks it's evil kids get different grades in school.

[(Anonymous)]

I suspect it's not market segmentation but the segments.

Concessions for 'the Unwaged' may overlap conveniently with those for students, home-makers, the retired, the disabled, and might even save ink, but they are not the same - basic set theory. How does one prove that one is unwaged? For twenty seven quid I told a stranger I ejaculate Haagen Daz. Hell, to save $1 CANADIAN I claimed to be a student when in fact I was not, and that's a closer match. For £5? I mean, if I'm out and proud about subverting the dominant paradigm of monogamy, why should I sweat stretching the truth regarding my financial status as a student who is also in employment, say?

£7.50, however, is a bad price. In fairness, one should calculate the proportion that the unwaged are likely to represent (which is unlikely to be 50%, even amongst your subscribers), and adjust the price accordingly. Then ignore it, bump tix to £8.30, and trust in folks' assumption that an obscure price reflects a meticulously calculated costing.

I suspect the scrupulous honesty inherent in the community has blinded them to the potential for missed revenue they have exposed themselves to.

[xandraius.livejournal.com]

And $PATH had /usr/local/bin before /usr/bin, and the same for libs.

apt-get install clue failed

unmountable wetware volume

[reddragdiva]

Work is all CentOS and Fedora.

rpm -i clue
rpm -i --force clue
rpm -i --force --force --FORCE clue
rm -rf /

Dev playpens are expected to be like this (as I said to the dev when he apologised for the state of the place). Staging and live are allegedly better

[theemptied.livejournal.com]

The "clue" package is not available as an RPM.

:P

[the-macross.livejournal.com]

Sixapart is employing the breakage strategy - apparently theyve been studying how rebates "work".

Quote:

How to make £5 steak taste like £50 steak.

I'm literally doing this right now. Two less than ideal cuts are laying in salt and spice on the kitchen counter.

[reddragdiva]

breakage strategy?

[the-macross.livejournal.com]

Here in the states, at least, mail in rebate forms are made as convoluted as possible and processed against strict guidelines in order to facilitate the highest per centage of breakage - improperly filled out forms, etc - as possible, thereby minimizing the amount of rebate monies that actually get paid out.

It's great for profits. Make it difficult to do something, even when it will cost the consumer more money and the lazy consumer will skip it in order to see whats on television.

[hellsop.livejournal.com]

Yup. The rebate-fulfilment houses actually advertise on the their higher rates of flunking customers' rebates.

[greylock.livejournal.com]

I'm going to do it tonight.
I have a slice in the fridge defrosting.

I'll probably have to use sea salt, so hopefully there isn't a difference between table and sea salt that I can't overcome.

Do let me know how it goes.

[the-macross.livejournal.com]

Sea salt is what you wanna use.

I just finished eating and goddamn. GOOD EATS. I'll post a full write up in a few minutes on my lj.

[greylock.livejournal.com]

*nods*
*prints out website*
*dies a little seeing garlic truffle fries*

[wendolen.livejournal.com]

I LOVE Jaden's Steamy Kitchen. Yay!

[redcountess]

Girls? ITYM wimmin! (Waits for A's "but I'm not a feminist")

[ajohnymous.livejournal.com]

I welcome visitors next week, day or evening.

At what time do you usually serve the l33t cooked meals?

I usually shoot for arriving about 5 minutes before dinner is served.

[hellsop.livejournal.com]

How to make £5 steak taste like £50 steak.

Wow. Someone rediscovered the dry rub. What's next? Is he going to invent aged beef?

[xlerb.livejournal.com]

It might amuse me more to have 6A gather stats from me than not.

On that note, I think I need to go subscribe a few more penis-photo comms... oh, but they say they won't instrument private posts. Bah. Surely I can find *some*thing.

[loopzilla.livejournal.com]

PATH=/home/loopzilla/bin:$PATH
export PATH

Quiche eaters.... !!!!!!!

[dennyd.livejournal.com]

I'm not particularly bothered about LJ tracking my clicks through and off of LJ. I'm currently undecided on whether I should stop them tracking other people's clicks through and off my LJ as a courtesy to those who read it.

[secretlondon.livejournal.com]

There is no such command 'opt_exclude_stats'.

[reddragdiva]

set opt_exclude_stats 1

[secretlondon.livejournal.com]

Bah! I suck again..

User property 'opt_exclude_stats' set to '1' for secretlondon

Yay!

[liz-lowlife.livejournal.com]

It won't let me.

[reddragdiva]

See secretlondon's experience, above. The text you enter is:

set opt_exclude_stats 1

then hit the button.

[emarkienna.livejournal.com]

I finally got round to trying the recipe - I think it was the most delicious steak I have tasted :) Thanks for the link!