Look! I was productive. I was too!

I'm losing this week's i_contest! Uhm, okay, I'm ahead by one vote. The sudden rush of votes for the competitor seem a bit suspect. Hmmmmm. Oh well.

I've got an idea for the next contest. But.. I dunno.. it seems bland. *shrug*

Worked on Amber's site. Got the layout and general page stuff done. She's just gotta give me the okay and I'll start coding poems. Gonna have to work on darkstar's site too.

For now... bed! MTV Movie Awards tomorrow! Yay! Still annoyed it's not live this year. Bah.

Late morning....

Had planned to get up like 3 hours ago, but I dunno what happened. *shrug*

Got an unexpected IM from dignified sometime in the night. Said she liked my journal (gods know why.. all I ever post is crap. heh) She has a wicked lj layout and seems like a really cool person. So I added her to my list. Hellos!

Salam Pax, Baghdad Blogger, now has a fortnightly column at the Guardian. Here is yesterday's.

Bush vows to find Iraqi weapons - is that like when he vowed to find Osama Bin Ladin? 'Cause I do believe that one is still running around bmobing people.

*phew* Half an hour to read through my friends page. And I still have to check e-mail. Eesh.

Rob's Amazing Poetry Generator via iambliss

http://amezri.livejournal.com

livejournal the machine with the post she deleted
the Times Before everyone else but
I was all
intellectual property. Rights and then the
great convo. tooOzW 703 10:23am security: public
subject: ? with little
words. Just tested AIM
and if like the
products once a
year older... HAPPY about
it, and agreeing to
do was amusing watching adults
try to
beta The next
year..

Film stuff

Just watched discs 2 & 3 of the Black Hawk Down Deluxe Edition. I recommend it to fans of the film. Lots of docu stuff and background about the whole mission. The interviews with the cast are great. I especially like the retrospective bit at the end of disc 2 where the cast talk about how the movie changed their view of war or how they hope people will view the film. I'm probably going to rewatch and jot some of them down. Basically, most of them expressed the idea that Americans should see this film and realize that people die and war and it's not just the squeaky clean stuff they show you on CNN. One of the actors had said something like this event in Afghanistan changed American policy about going into other countries and the next time if we want to go in and meddle or try to depose a dictator, we better be damn sure that's what we want to do.

Uh. This was obviously filmed before Iraq (and 9/11). *cough* As Ewan said, "War is shit."

Just got "Titus" and "Plunkett & Macleane" in the mail. Bloody Shakespeare, Robert Carlyle, Alan Cumming, Jonathan Rhy Meyers, and Jonny Lee Miller. Woohoo! May watch thoe later tonight after the Movie Awards.

Elijah reads a storybook! His farewell at the end was cute. They have several other stories there, another is read by Sean Astin :) His is kinda patronizing, but I suppose it's 'cause he's reading to a 4 year old. *snerk* But.. he has props!

A quirky video set to David Bowie's "I'm Afraid of Americans" It's quite fantastic, especially the credits at the end where the author states "And anyone else I stole images from without permission. Bush invaded Iraq without permission. Fuck off."

More from Cafepress

So.. it may be that they're not so sinister.. and I may signup with them at a later date. All this online selling stuff still seems sketchy and I don't know if I made the right choice going to Zazzle.com. *shrug*

Hi Cyn,

Thank you for responding to me. I don't want you to think I will continue
to send you emails so please consider this my last email to you. I will
remove your account and information from CafePress. I just want to explain
a little more... to at least you give some of the reasoning behind some of
these changes.

Regarding the reason for the 5% fee: due to the growing productline we have,
we are seeing that people have marked their products up a lot. The increase
mark up on some products, along with fraud, is costing us money. We are
actually losing money on some products. The purpose is to charge 5% off the
mark up, which is $0.05 for each dollar, to cover the costs. We have
thought about raising the base price but the 5% fee is actually in the
member's favor. If we were to mark up a t-shirt by $0.25, that's actually
5% off a $5 mark up, which most people won't mark up to. The transaction
fee is something that is very common to other commerce sites such as eBay
and Amazon.

As for the $25 fee, it looks like we may be changing this. We have a post
open for suggestions on what we can do. It also offers a brief explanation:
http://pub80.ezboard.com/fcafepressstoreownersforumfrm28.showMessage?topicID=33.topic

Just to be clear, the $25 is not a fee that is charged each month. Itsimply zeros out the account.

Regarding the tax information, here is a Q&A that might help clarify the
reasoning... I'm not a tax or accounting person but I think this was
written for all to get a better understanding.

Why do we require tax information from all members?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
As many of you have noticed, we are now requiring tax information from all
our members. Believe me, we aren't doing this because it's fun! Many of
asked why - so if you are interested in the details...

- The IRS requires us to collect tax information or withhold earnings for
taxes from all members (US citizens) earning over $600 in commissions within
a year or $10 in royalties.

So here's where this post gets interesting (if you find accounting
interesting). We have done our best to make the argument that the
commissions we pay to our members are not royalties. You may notice that
Section 6.2 states that you give us royalty-free permission to use your
images - this is why we explicitly put that language in our agreement. But
our accountants feel the IRS might not believe that as standard industry
practice for selling merchandise involves licensing and royalties. So we
have to cover our butt to make sure Uncle Sam doesn't present us with a huge
tax bill for the earnings we are paying you.

-Some of the questions on the message boards have asked "Why not collect tax
info once a member reaches $600 in commissions"?

Two reasons. Number 1 is we are running into this $10 royalty issue
mentioned above - so we might be liable for your taxes once you earn $10,
and not $600. The second is that once a member reaches $600 in commissions,
we are automatically liable for $180 of their tax bill unless they are
willing to give us their tax info (30% x $600 = $180). While we love and
trust all of you - that's a big risk for us to take across our over 500,000
members.

As I mentioned, we've done our best to avoid this whole issue over the past
two years, but we've grown to the point where we need to collect this
information to keep Uncle Sam happy. Not that this makes it any better, but
other sites paying out money such as Amazon's Associates Program and
Commission Junction also require this information. Seems like its standard
practice.

Hope this helps!

So. What do you guys think? Are they just weaseling out of it or really trying to correct their errors? It seems a mix of both. I'd actually rather they just raise the base price of the product and not cut into my profits. If they get rid of the $25 thing I might think about going back.

Cameras

Looking for a new 35mm camera to take with me to NZ. The APS one, though I love it, is crap with image quality. Currently looking at:

+ Olympus Stylus Epic Zoom 80 Deluxe - double zoom 38-80 lens, multi-mode flash w/color balancing, visual confirmation finder, night scene mode, and fits in a pocket (139.99)
+ Olympus Stylus Zoom 140 Deluxe
+ Canon Sure Shot z155 - has closeup focus feature, as well as night scene

Sent Jeff and e-mail to see what he says about them. The z155 looks pretty good, actually. If I can find it for a bit less than $189, I might get it.