<71% of televisions sold at a promotional rate during the first quarter of 2022>
I bought a 43" Amazon Fire Omni TV on Prime Day (last week) for $245. This replaces my 2008 Panasonic 42" plasma TV which cost $900 (and still works fine except for blacking out of the lowest 3" which hides subtitles). The Fire TV is capable of doing Zoom, which obviously didn’t exist in 2008.
So, I get to take a couple out to a restaurant on Monday. We haven’t been to a local restaurant in two years and, upon checking various menus, I’ve come to the conclusion that their prices have increased about 50% over the past couple of years. And the acceptable tip amount seems to have stayed at the same level (about 20%).
Back “in the day” there were numerous cafeterias as well as a chain of “Automats” spread across the city. Those business models have disappeared and I’m guessing the price/volume curve for restaurants may be continuing to challenge many who are not in the tourist trap or Michelin star class.
I am involved in revamping my PC stuff - which was functional, but based on an updated Dell from 2012. You get a hell of a lot of PC for the buck and SSD’s have plummeted in price. But replacement batteries for my UPS’s have increase in price by about 35%.
To be honest, I don’t know if the cruise lines are currently profitable, but the “secret” (sort of a double-think think) is that COVID should be assumed to be a close companion on any cruise ship nowadays. Nearly all cruise lines have dropped testing, masking and distancing requirements and most are allowing “10%” of the passengers to be non-vaccinated (which risks their lives more than it does their companions’. This could be the basis of a new normal.
Human DNA does not change very quickly for major changes in only a few generations.
Viruses can shift in a season of propagating. The people that are vaccinated do not exert pressure on the viruses to change. The unvaccinated that die of Covid exert a little bit of pressure on the virus to be less lethal for the virus to survive. A dead host is a dead virus that can not spread.
I am involved in revamping my PC stuff - which was functional, but based on an updated Dell from 2012. You get a hell of a lot of PC for the buck and SSD’s have plummeted in price.
Did you see that Windows 12 is due out in a couple years?
Neither of my current 2016-2017 generation PCs can run 11. One lacks a security chip on the motherboard and both have processors that are not supported for 11. I don’t like the current generation of Dell desktop, so considered grabbing an 8930 off of eBay that has a supported processor. Now that 12 is in the works, I will assume it is going to pull the same unsupported processor stunt that 11 does, so an 8930 with a processor that 11 supports will probably be another dead end. So, I’ll run the two that I have past the end of support for 10, then consider options. Besides, the Canon printer I found in the trash last year works fine on 10, but Canon says it has no intention of supporting it for 11, or newer, OSes. “Procrastination is a virtue”
So, I get to take a couple out to a restaurant on Monday. We haven’t been to a local restaurant in two years and, upon checking various menus, I’ve come to the conclusion that their prices have increased about 50% over the past couple of years. And the acceptable tip amount seems to have stayed at the same level (about 20%).
Did they have a 10% COIVD fee on top of the total? Many places in NYC had that for a while.