Link: CNN.com - Author Hunter S. Thompson commits suicide - Feb 21, 2005.

I think we all need to be challenged a little more in our lives.... to have people pick our snowglobe world up, turn it upside down, and shake it up a little.  We cast aside and discount a lot of the people who push limits... who think out of the box, but they're the ones that really keep things interesting, and I think, in a way, we secretly envy them.  Its comfortable to think of ourselves as "regular" and to think of people who walk through life turning over unturned stones as some sort of fringe element.  This way, it makes us feel as if we're not missing out on anything by not testing the limits ourselves.  Its like when someone blows past you on a highway.  You yell at them and say they're going to hurt someone, but part of you wants to know what its like to drive that fast.  Sometimes, when you do that, you realize how little of the world we've limited ourselves to makes sense, and how the far the accepted reality is from where you think it should be, and that's where it takes a toll.  It took a toll on Hunter Thompson yesterday.  Yesterday, the wave finally broke and rolled back.

"There he goes. One of God's own prototypes. Some kind of high powered mutant never even considered for mass production. Too weird to live, and too rare to die."

Link: Regis High School.

So, I may have found the answer to my recent banishment to the sidewalk since I turned in my GM car....    Regis is auctioning off a Mercedes C 230.  The price?  $500 a ticket.   hmm....    Feelin' lucky?

I hope the judge finds Citigroup and the traders 100 BILLION DOLLARS and then sticks his pinky up to his mouth...

Link: WSJ.com - Bond Strategy Haunts Citigroup.

The Daily News has a listing of 100 places to eat for under $10.  I haven't been to a single one of these places, but now that I know where they are, I'll be sure to check them out.

Ben from Church of the Customer, an early member of the Industry Blog Index at my Success Blogging site, has written an open letter to movie theatre owners in an attempt to stop them from forcing us to watch commercials.  Its a nice thought, but its not going to happen unless we walk with our feet.  How about a comprimise?  Why not but real commercials before the movie starts, instead of those silly movie quizes and actor name jumbles.  For the most part, we all get into our seats at least 10 minutes before the movie starts anyway.  At least then we don't feel ripped off because we know we're there early, so we don't feel like we're paying to watch commercials.  In fact, you could sell 15 minutes straight of commericals, with each slot getting more expensive as it gets closer to the movie.  In Manhatten, for example, people are in their seats by at least a 1/2 hour before big movies and we just sit there watching the same "Who said that?" ad four times.  I don't blame movie theaters for trying to increase revenues... but they're missing out on one revenue opportunity and annoying us with another.  How about switching?

Mena (Mee-na?  Meh-na?) posted about great customer service and I agree that excellence should be rewarded.  (And perhaps I'll write a Time Warner Broadband bashing post at some point as well, too.)  My best customer service experience, by far, has been with Factset.  Factset is an online financial data provider used by many large institutions to get stock prices, income statistics, etc.  Sure, we do pay a lot for the service, but there are a lot of services that we pay heavily for that don't have the kind of support that Factset does.  Many times, I've relied on representatives from Factset to follow up on problems, and while they can't always answer a question right away, they'll always get back to me that day with a status update.  The most impressive work came from another service rep there who was guiding me through a process to build some customized groups of companies.  The work was very tedious and after he showed me how to do one group, he offered to actually do the work for me!  I must have had 21 customized groups of 10-15 companies each... easily would have taken me about 2-3 hours to do and he had it done by the end of the day.  I'm sure he was able to do it faster, but still.  Once I e-mailed him an Excel file of how I wanted the groups set up, he did all of the necessary work on Factset.  I nearly fell off my chair when he offered.  I've got to believe that with service like that, their retention rate is extremely high.

The snow is from yesterday, but the picture is from today because I left my camera at work.   I couldn't find enough snow to write a goofy snow tagline, so I resorted to writing in curbside residuals.  I can't wait until this weekend's blizzard.  I feel like I'm the Marty Stouffer of snow.

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Imood has a chart of what moods people have recently selected....

At this moment, TIRED and SICK are the top two choices.  That's awful.  HAPPY is number three, followed by BORED.   What's going on?  Winter getting people down?

I just signed up...  I think it will be interesting to track my moods over time.