Lawler's Rule

Arrested Development is the best show on TV right now although its ratings haven't measured up to its reviews. I'm doing my part here to spread the word since Fox seems intent on doing everything it can (pre-empting it every other week, switching time slots, etc.) to destroy a budding audience. That's OK though, it's a show that needs to be watched from the beginning anyway because there are a lot of jokes that reference prior episodes. So start with the DVD of Season 1. Plus, that way, I'll know that Fox counted you (if you are in a Nielsen household, contact me, I have questions).
Meanwhile, the Onion AV club is running an solid interview with the creator of AD, Mitchell Hurwitz:

David Cross didn't want to do television. He really avoided it. We were really lucky, because he really responded... to the money we offered. The script factored into it, but, boy, he really perked up when he heard about the money.

I had developed an idea that was fairly similar, and was kind of a rip-off of a J.D. Salinger short story—it took place in New York with this intellectual family. Then The Royal Tenenbaums came out, and I thought, "Well, that's it, I can't do that anymore." About a year later, I got a call from David Nevins, who's president of Imagine Television. I had worked with him on Everything's Relative. He said Ron Howard had this idea to do a single-camera comedy that was as funny as a multi-camera comedy, which sounds sarcastic, actually.

Beware of the new Amazon Prime program; it is addictive. I've already placed 3 orders since I signed up 3 days ago.

I now understand the rational behind the program, which allows unlimited 2-day shipping for you and 4 other friends or family members for $79 a year. I had questioned how it would be profitable for them since it seemed that customers who spend well over $79 a year on shipping would quickly opt for the deal whereas everyone else would pass, resulting in decreased margins. It makes sense that people would buy more if they didn't need to worry about shipping costs (or accumulating enough items to qualify for SuperSaver shipping) but it appears that the elasticity of demand due to shipping is a lot higher than I had thought. At least for me.

Update: Order tally is now 4 in 4 days.

Inc article on former CEO of Tripod. He agreed to a 2yr lockup and his stock went up tenfold during that period. He then sold all his shares once the lockup expired which happened to be in 1999 and near the peak of the Bubble. Wow.

[W]hen smart, inspired people gather around a fundamentally innovative, morally compelling, and philosophically positive company, they work very hard. And when smart, inspired people work very hard, serendipity ensues. Serendipity -- the faculty of making fortuitous discoveries by chance -- causes lots of unexpected things to happen to a company. Some of these unexpected things are good. Some are bad. But because no one planned for the good things to happen, they appear as luck. In other words, the best way to ensure that lucky things happen is to make sure that a lot of things happen. It's really that simple.

After reading this post praising the features of VOIP, I realize that I want it....except I don't currently have a home phone or plan to get one.