Pricing Policies
Why does the downloadable full version of Adobe Photoshop CS3 cost US $649.00 in the Adobe US online store, and € 689.00 in the Adobe Portuguese online store? Both before taxes. With the US dollar at this second at 1.3312 to the Euro, that’s € 487.53 vs. € 689.00 – a 41% difference.
If you assume a 7% sales tax when buying in the US, vs. 21% VAT in Portugal, the difference is of € 521.66 in the US vs. € 833.69 over here – € 312.03 more, or almost 60% more expensive. For the same binary, probably downloadable from the same server. Sometimes I hate living in Europe.
Quick and Dirty ATV tire repair
Got a flat ATV tire? No repair supplies? No problem!! *
You need:
- Screwdriver
- Old shoe laces (the softer the better)
- Rubbery glue
Cut the shoe laces in small strings (around 8 cm in lenght); join two or three strands side by side, pour glue on, make sure they stay together while drying; don’t wait until the glue is completely dry; try to stick some glue inside the puncture hole; double up the glued shoe lace strings, and with the screwdriver stick it inside the puncture, try to get about 2 or 3 cm in; pump some air into the tire; put some more glue on the outside; let it dry! You should cut the excess length after it dries, about 1 cm from the tire.
* I will not be held responsible if it doesn’t work for you, either right away or with catastrophic results while riding. The lawyer in me made me write this. Now seriously, don’t do this with car or regular motorcycle tires, ATV tires are much more resistant to DIY “treatments”.
100 Words
Via kottke.org, this list of 100 Words That All High School Graduates — And Their Parents — Should Know, according to the Editors of the American Heritage Dictionaries
Here’s the list, with my comments as follows:
- words I know and use – 55%
- words I know and don’t use – 15%
- words that look familiar, but I don’t know exactly what they mean – 20%
- words that I don’t know – 10%
abjure
abrogate
abstemious
acumen
antebellum
auspicious
belie
bellicose
bowdlerize
chicanery
chromosome
churlish
circumlocution
circumnavigate
deciduous
deleterious
diffident
enervate
enfranchise
epiphany
equinox
euro
evanescent
expurgate
facetious
fatuous
feckless
fiduciary
filibuster
gamete
gauche
gerrymander
hegemony
hemoglobin
homogeneous
hubris
hypotenuse
impeach
incognito
incontrovertible
inculcate
infrastructure
interpolate
irony
jejune
kinetic
kowtow
laissez faire
lexicon
loquacious
lugubrious
metamorphosis
mitosis
moiety
nanotechnology
nihilism
nomenclature
nonsectarian
notarize
obsequious
oligarchy
omnipotent
orthography
oxidize
parabola
paradigm
parameter
pecuniary
photosynthesis
plagiarize
plasma
polymer
precipitous
quasar
quotidian
recapitulate
reciprocal
reparation
respiration
sanguine
soliloquy
subjugate
suffragist
supercilious
tautology
taxonomy
tectonic
tempestuous
thermodynamics
totalitarian
unctuous
usurp
vacuous
vehement
vortex
winnow
wrought
xenophobe
yeoman
ziggurat
