Just wanted to help circulate this image:

http://imgur.com/j9wrB.jpg

The world is really, really gigantically large. I think about it every time I'm driving on the highway, whipping past endless empty patches of woods at 70 miles per hour.

I just wrote my second grease monkey user script, called TweetQ. When someone links to a netflix movie page, the script adds a button so that you can add it to your queue without leaving the page.

The script is here: TweetQ

And you'll need Firefox and Greasemonkey, which can be found here: Greasemonkey, customize web pages.

Also you might want to check out the tens of thousands of available scripts at userscripts.org

Enjoy!

Firstly note, the title of this post is more for SEO than because I'm irate in any way. I imagine more people will search for "cafepress.com scam" then "clever title that Travis came up with".

Let me explain their business model. They let you use web tools to upload graphics that they then print on t-shirts. Sounds simple, but the key differentiating factor is that they'll print as few as 1 t-shirt, which is perfect for novelty t-shirt ideas for you and just a friend or two. Most other t-shirt design companies, online or off, require orders of 20-50 to do a run.

They also offer you the opportunity to 'mark up' the price that they charge for t-shirts. So, if a t-shirt costs $14.99, you can sell it for $17.99 and you get a 3 dollar commission. It sounds like a cool idea, until you realize that no one is going to pay $14.99 for a t-shirt, never mind $17.99. More to the point, no one thinks your design is clever and so no one is going to buy it anyways.

So basically, that's the plan: Everyone buys their own shit at insane markups, and generally everyone is happy.

The problem is that, at some point in the summer of 2006 (when I set up the shop), someone from the Boston ruby user group bought a 10 pack of my clever and exquisitely designed "I'd Rather Be Using Ruby" button. I happened to make a princely $5.51 off this sale. Which I thought was neat, but never really thought about again.

You see, I had forgotten to enter address and tax payer information on the site, so they could never mail me a check. But more to the point, my amount was always under the $25 'minimum' payout amount, so they never intended to mail me anything anyways.

Okay, so that's the obvious scam: minimum payment amounts. I worked on a PayPal integration, you can pay people automatically via computer with them and it costs about 15 cents per transaction. I'm not an accountant, but it seems that they must have a HUGE amount of liability on the books for the millions of people, like me, to whom they owe less than 25 dollars. The only reason they have this shitty system in place is because they want to dodge that liability.

But liability is a real thing in accounting, and you can't just let it sit around forever (for tax and other purposes). So, after 2 years of 'inactivity' (which means no sales, not no logins), they will eventually send you a check. Okay okay, so I had to wait 2 years but hey, at least I got someone money. Penny saved, something something.

But here's the bullshit part. Cafepress.com, after making you wait 2 years for a check, proceeds to AUTOMATICALLY charge a $5.00 'processing fee' for all the steep toil and hardship it takes them to print a fucking check. No matter what their service agreement says, legally they owe you that money. So I imagine that this is a blanket policy to protect them against people demanding their money and them having to realize their epic liability. But automatically? That's where they really cross the line, in my opinion.

Anyways I called, and the customer service representative tried to explain that the check would only be for $0.51 and I should probably just wait until I had made more earnings. More to the point, there was the issue of whether I would get the check 2 years from NOW (when I finally entered mailing/taxpayer information) or 2 years from 3 years ago when I became 'inactive'.

She eventually decided to escalate my issue, because she honestly didn't know the answer. She also told me should couldn't tell me at the moment when I'd get my check. I told her that I hoped it would be soon, because there's this really nice gumball that I've had my eye on for a while.

She didn't laugh.

For some reason, I'm more interested in the passing of Millvina Dean than Arturo Gatti, neither of whom I had heard of before today. Of course, it seems like The Washington Post had never heard of Gatti either, because their reporting of the story is a tasteless 'double feature' with a picture of Steve McNair's mother attending the football star's funeral.

The reason I bring this up is to point out the ridiculousness of public grief over celebrity deaths. Now of course I understand that Ms. Dean's passing, though notable, was pedestrian (she was 97) while that of Gatti, McNair and Michael Jackson were tragic. No, I don't share the view that 'all death is a tragedy', nor even the stronger 'all human death is a tragedy'. Personally, I believe that death is intrinsic to the very existence of life, exactly as winter is to summer. I don't fear death, for I believe that an infinite time of human consciousness would be worse than any Hell human religions provide. This belief forms part of my rejection of Christianity, since in this view Heaven is only the lesser of two eternal hardships. The fact that humans couldn't possibly enjoy eternal existence of their consciousness in any reasonable manner that would also preserve it, for me, exposes the foolish belief in anthropomorphic gods and goddesses. Although, technically speaking, death is a privilege reserved for those who have lived, it seems clear to me that we will be no more dead after we are buried than we were before we were born. And it didn't seem to bother anybody then!

The real tragedy is the importance that people seem to place on death. Although funerals and memorials are important parts of the grieving process, and quite useful in preserving (and in most cases, shaping) recorded history, I can't help but feel some form of pity for those who would place a paid death notice. Meanwhile, I can't help but feel the same disdain for those who show excessive remorse for the death of celebrities as I feel for those who consume gossip news (though I imagine it's the same contingent). The lives of those who perform for us on the field and on the stage, while notable, are really no more important than those of the rest of us.

As the title of this article says, I want you, oh humble reader to stop. Stop right now.

Because if you are an average American, then the odds are nearly 1 in 4 that you're currently watching television.

That's right. Somehow, some way, Americans manage to spend a quarter of their day watching TV. ON AVERAGE. So please just stop.

Listen, I'm not the most educated, insightful, creative guy out there. I'm not toiling away at inventions and ideas that benefit the whole of mankind. For someone who has a crumb of musical talent (a minor in music, to boot!), I don't spend much time practicing it, or even listening to it. When I read, it's largely articles on web blogs, wikipedia, and online equivalents of print publications.

But I certainly don't spend anywhere near-- checks website-- 353.1 minutes ON AVERAGE watching television. Here are a list of things you could do, Mr. or Ms. Joe Average, if you turned off the television for even a single day:

• Write 4 blog posts


• Learn jQuery


• Burn 300 Calories and subsequently significantly reduce cancer risk


• Save the planet a couple of times


• Advance the visibility of atheism in America


• Learn to play the guitar


• Hug 765 people


• And still have 10.1 minutes remaining to listen to Bit Bop Three 2.62 times

Not to mention all of the time you could spend keeping up with local and national news from your local newspaper or its equivalent website, keeping track of the actions of local politicians, checking in with friends and relatives, telling a story to your child, learning more about a cause that you care about, etc etc.

I'm sorry, but television is simply one of the greatest wastes of time there is. Which, I imagine, is probably the reason why so many Americans spend so much time with it. I have the impression that people largely don't like their jobs and when they get home they'd rather 'veg out' in front of the television because they can't motivate themselves to do anything that would be productive or enriching to their own lives or those of others. Please, please...I want to challenge myself and everyone out there to fight the urge to passively consume useless media like television, and instead take up an activity or two that actively engages your mind, talent, and personality.

We'll all be better people for it!