Tonight, I'll skip the Viagra

Today I am a man.

Last winter we had a late cold snap that killed one of our Redbuds in the front yard. Today, after removing the festive lights, I started hacking it down with a 20' tree trimmer. After about 2 hours of agonizing labor, I had taken off about a couple twigs. Then, a kind neighbor came to my rescue. He offered me some help. He had a great deal of experience with cutting down trees and took down that sucker in about 5 minutes.

Then, he handed over the gift from the gods. The Poulan Pro 250 chainsaw. He gave me a brief tutorial and sent me on my way to shred the remains of our tree. After putting on my eye and ear protection, I hacked through the limbs like they were butter. I think my testosterone plasma level tripled after the first rev of the throaty engine. I dragged the shredded remains to the side of my home and soon I'll rent one of these babies to cut it all up into firewood.

It was an amazing day.

Gassing up: when it's cold or hot?

A friend forwarded me an email the other day for my perusal. Someone suggested there was an advantage to filling up your car with gasoline in the morning (colder weather) compared to the afternoon (warmer weather). The principle behind this strategy is when the gas tanks below ground are cooler, say 32-deg-F at their coldest (probably warmer due to insulation in the ground), the fluid is more dense and you get more kilograms of fuel per unit of volume registered on the gas pump. Then, upon warming, the liquid expands and you get a greater volume of gas and go more miles.

The temperature dependence on density is a fact. But, what's the magnitude of the effect? My intuition led me to believe nil. So, I made a few assumptions and decided to figure out how much the magnitude of the effect was. I asked about 15 Ph.D. chemists (including myself) how to find the density of gasoline at 32-deg-F and no one knew. After I recovered from the embarrassment, I continued looking.

I Googled "buy gasoline during the coolest time of the day — early morning or late evening — while the gasoline is most dense", (this phrase was reported to be found in The New York Times, September 24, 2001) and stumbled on a flow meter tutorial. While it was published on a corporate site selling flow meters, it seemed convincing; pumps are fitted with temperature compensating flow meters. The tutorial is pretty interesting.

Another source stating essentially the same result is from Edmunds.

I'm convinced these flow meters do what they are supposed to do, but I'll keep hunting to find more support for this.

I'll also be hunting for the density of gasoline, 2,2,4-trimethylpentane (isooctane), or any other similar hydrocarbon at low temperature to see what the magnitude of the effect WOULD be (probably less than a cup of Starbucks).

Thanks for the question Tina.

Suze and her stocking.

Suze and her stocking.
Originally uploaded by Seligman's Dog

Suze had a good time today.

here it comes

-As of 6:45 am this morning, Giant Eagle still has toilet paper!
-I'm also watching NBC and I don't see Jym Ganahl! We suspect he's in a bunker 75 feet below ground level watching maps and getting ready for an afternoon appearance.
-Still no signs of Ganahl! He's missing the disaster of the century.
-161 is FILLED with shoppers and SUVs.
-I've shoveled once already.
... more updates as they become available.

Stupid Human Tricks Part II

My recent $5 experiment revealed a most irrational consumer behavior. Someone, in the last 20 seconds of the auction, sniped - raising the price from $4.99 to $5.24 to pay for a five dollar bill.

Immediately, I began dredging Ebay manually (someday I'll learn Python) to observe similar phenomena. Saturday, I mentioned these ridiculous observations to a friend and exaggerated a bit. I searched "gift card" and found many selling for greater than face value! The exaggeration I mentioned was "all of them sold greater than face value." Not true. Here's a bunch of real examples I tabulated in order of increasing value of the card.

While they don't ALL sell higher than face value, it's fascinating that ANY do.

Other noteworthy observations:
• Cheaper cards tended to sell for the greatest profit. PROFIT! Even frigging McDonalds!!

• The more expensive gift cards (>$100) seemed to sell consistently at a discount. I am astounded at the existence of a $500 dollar gift card. Purchasing a commitment to spend $500 in Wal-Mart for a steal of $475 isn't a bargain, it's a sentence in hell.

• The Sharper Image was an anomaly selling at a significant discount, but, has anyone ever bought their useless shit? I thought Sharper Image was just a place to stop in and play with their overpriced toys and sit in one of those massage chairs to take a load off during shopping.

• "The WalMart Effect" (you heard it here folks): If you conduct an Ebay search for Walmart, then refine the search from the sidebar by "Gift Certificate", you'll see some 60 something auctions at any one time for Walmart gift cards. For gift cards of less than approx. $150, the final bid is almost always greater than the face value of the card. It seems to happen more for Walmart than any other peddler of crap. Try it. It's amazing. (NOTE: you must mark the items "Watch this Item" so you can see the post auction final price or the item disappears, seems Ebay protects their post bid auctions quite carefully)

Gift Card Card Value, $ Bids Final Price,** $ Change, % $5 bill 5 8 5.24 4.80 Outback 10 8 10.00 0.00 Bath Body 10 13 10.52 5.20 Sharper Image 10 7 5.79 (42.10) Bath Body 25 6 25.01 0.04 Bed Bath.. 25 8 26.00 4.00 BestBuy 25 12 24.99 (0.04) Itunes 25 10 23.00 (8.00) McDonalds 25 15 25.22 0.88 Olive Garden 25 14 23.00 (8.00) Amazon 30 9 30.01 0.03 WalMart 40 28 45.00 12.50 Macy's 50 12 46.00 (8.00) Target 50 20 50.03 0.06 Red Lobster 50 21 50.55 1.10 CrateBarrel 50 10 44.50 (11.00) Starbucks 95 17 77.00 (18.95) Exxon Gas 100 9 99.44 (0.56) Home Depot 100 10 91.05 (8.95)

Home Depot 100 8 91.03 (8.97) Home Depot 100 5 91.50 (8.50) Macy's 100 3 87.88 (12.12) Olive Garden 100 25 95.89 (4.11) Home Depot 150 13 142.00 (5.33) Toys R Us 200 19 173.00 (13.50) Lowes 226 15 202.52 (10.39) Home Depot 500 22 460.00 (8.00) WalMart 500 28 475.00 (5.00) WalMart 500 25 476.00 (4.80) **Final Price includes shipping but seller still pays ca. 3% fee.

Good Night

A popular topic in the children's book genre is bedtime. Among the most popular titles is Good Night Moon. I suspect any parent reading this will smile as they recall their sleep-deprived years. The book can only be described as soothing with lovely illustrations and makes one want to curl up and go to sleep.

The parent - will want to sleep.

Reflecting on the early months of parenthood, I now understand why this niche is so popular. Your child is at the larval stage, could care less about the content of what you're reading and the book was simply marketed to you with the hope it might, in some way, facilitate her going to sleep easier and alleviate your agony from 18 hour days. Books like this are undeniably beautiful and Frankie's copy will be archived with her other precious effects. Unfortunately, they don't work. We've all learned the painful reality that sleep is actually something they learn. And, it sometimes takes a long time.

I apologize for dragging you, once again, into my current ebay obsession, but I found a copy of this book in good condition at a thrift store the other day for a quarter and couldn't resist. I cleaned off the "stuff" on it, packaged it up for 1st class mail and listed it. It's currently at 99¢ and there's about 7 bleary-eyed parents individuals watching it (it sells on Amazon used for 1¢). Should be a fun auction.

⇒ Nifty link: Auction Sniping, a practice avoided on trademe.

Stupid Human Tricks

As I mentioned in a previous post, a colleague of my wife's (a psychologist) described an experiment where a 10 dollar note was put up for auction. It was bid slightly higher than $10, demonstrating some irrational consumer behavior. I haven't been able to locate a citation for the experiment and decided to toss $5 in to see if this could actually be true. Obviously, this experiment is designed to:

a. lose money
b. (potentially) make me look stupid

Never being afraid of the latter in the name of experimentation, I didn't hesitate. Listing fees for the $5 auction were 10¢ and I'll pay about 3% of $5 for the final sale. I set shipping at 45¢. Lots at stake. Here goes.

NOTE: this widget will self-destruct in 90 days

The auction is HERE. Bookmark it and stay tuned. Should be fun.

Addendum: My wife informed me the phenomena is known as Sunken Cost. Some economic thing. I've read the entry a couple times, but don't quite understand it yet. As of day 1 of the listing, I'm out about 22¢ for listing and sale fees but have broken even on face value. I defrayed some of the loss by padding the shipping by 3¢, heh, heh, heh.

OOPS: A co-worker provided me with a description of the experiment called the The Dollar Auction. I got it completely wrong. It'll still be kind of fun to see how this winds down, but The Dollar Auction is fascinating reading.

Update: It sold for $4.79 + $0.45 = $5.24 (minus $0.42 to ship). During this time, I also noticed quite a few gift cards selling for a few percent above face value. How bizarre.

See also Escalation of Commitment for another interesting read.

I Heart Ebay

I've had quite a bit of luck lately clearing out our basement and selling the stuff using Ebay. Several hundred dollars worth of luck (not including postage and auction fees). It's not so much the money as the human behavior observed watching the auctions wind down. People get frantic and bid irrationally.

A typical auction lasts 5-10 days. The first 95% of that time is simply to show your item to window shoppers. Bidding primarily takes place in the final 20 minutes. That final 20 minutes is a hoot. During the window shopping period the seller can see how many "watchers" there are (people who've bookmarked your item because they are in some way intrigued by it, no matter how useless it is). This is an indication of the interest. Greater than 4 watchers and you can nearly be guaranteed there'll be a last minute frenetic scramble to "win victoriously." I reluctantly parted with one of Frankie's items we purchased 5 years ago for $150. Up until 20 minutes before the auction ended, the bid was $20 (2 bids) and there were 12 watchers. In the final 10 minutes there were 7 bids by two people and price ended at $81 - and that was a local "pickup-only" because the item was too big to ship. It's hilarious to watch.

A friend asked me the other day why don't I just put the item up for a "buy it now" price (rather than auction)? I think it's because when you start an item at 99¢ (the price I start all auctions), buyers are lured into thinking there's a chance of getting a bargain, whereas if you place a simple price on the item based on what the market will bear, no interest - no sale.

The most valuable thing I've learned from selling is how amazing our country's post office is. If you learn the workings of usps.com (NOT .gov), you'll learn that the post office will send you mailing supplies (boxes and envelopes) for FREE, allow you to print shipping labels from your cheapo printer, pay postage online and even schedule pickup. Mail fees are often flat rate and dropoff can be made at any 24 hour center (like at Henderson and High) or can be picked up from your front door - FOR FREE! Used properly, you may NEVER have to interact with a human again for most of your postal needs. It's amazing.

Ebay's not just a marketplace but a platform for interesting human behavior experiments. Stay tuned for a fun experiment I'm repeating after some conversation with a psychologist I spoke with today at a birthday party Frankie attended.

My Ebay tip: I end auctions on Friday between 12 and 1. People are happy, bored out of their mind, and not exactly on task at their day job.

going once, twice ...

ps Seth Godin has a great post on the irrational behavior exhibited at auctions.