Nevadans get clean air

January 24, 2007

District Judge Doug Herndon ruled Tuesday that the Nevada Clean Indoor Air Act is indeed constitutional and can be enforced. Herndon reiterated his previous finding that the criminal provisions were unconstitutional but that the civil penalties under the law are constitutional. While the case was pending many southern Nevada businesses flaunted the voter's call for clean air. As of today the Southern Nevada Health District has a complaint form online to report businesses that are not complying with the law.Nationwide smoking bans have been a boon to tavern owners as customers who formerly chose to stay away return for drinks and food while existing customers who are smokers go outside and smoke.

Slick criminal stories

January 22, 2007

According to the Boulder Daily Camera thieves made off with a 2-foot plexiglas display cube containing more than 40 iPod nanos. Somebody in loss prevention has to be pretty nervous about their position. Perhaps the clever crook will return it for a refill.

Nevada Clean Air Act takes effect

January 18, 2007

Recently Nevada's smoking ban took effect. The ban makes many bars face the choice of continuing to serve food while asking their smokers to smoke outside or taking the revenue hit of not serving food any longer. There are, reportedly, a number of business owners who haven't taken a look at the research from other venues suggesting that the smoking ban will lead to an increase in same-store sales. Instead the chicken-little crowd is lining up to rip out every vestige of restaurants from their establishment. A couple of creative local bars have suggested they will pay customers' costs for ordering delivery.As with many business obstacles this is really an opportunity. A bar wanting to keep smoking in the bar (though why is another question entirely) can wall-off the kitchen. The kitchen already has an entrance to the rear of the building. Setup a delivery business of comfort and bar fare out the back door and instead of watching revenue decline there will be the opportunity to have competing neighborhood bars pay your delivery fee for their customers. It seems that this minority of business owners is more interested in playing the wounded business owner card instead of figuring out a solution.

Compact fluorescent light

January 7, 2007

"How many bloggers does it take to screw in a light bulb?" Seth Godin asked last week. Godin's post is an attempt to virally blog the benefits of compact fluorescent light bulbs. Compact fluorescent (CF) light bulbs were once more expensive up front but money savers long term. Today they are not so expensive up front (averaging $2 each) and as Godin puts it "If we switched all our bulbs, we could stop importing oil altogether. Without giving up one Hummer."

I'm afraid we won't be adding to the numbers of CF bulbs in use. That comes from the fact that all the bulbs we can use CF bulbs in are already CF. The one that isn't is the light in the oven. A few small desk lamps also run bulbs that there is no CF equivalent for. As those lamps are replaced the bulbs will be of a type compatible with CF bulbs. Read more about Compact fluorescent light

Silly limits

January 1, 2007

Google's Apps for Domains has been in beta for a while now. The service is a nice way to combine several great Google services with one's own domain. Personalized start pages, calendars and email are a few of the services available. Nevertheless, Google also makes some silly choices. For example in signing up for a new domain name today the following email arrived:

Thanks for your interest in Google Apps for Your Domain. Unfortunately, we are not able to invite your domain example.com into the beta at this time, because you have reached the maximum number of domains per administrator. If we increase this limit, we'll let you know by email.

Now I wonder how they imagine this actually works. Do they imagine that people who are astute enough to reach the "domain limit" will balk at having more than one Google account to sign up additional domains with? That domain administrators reaching this limit do not have more than one Google account already would come as a bit of a surprise. Read more about Silly limits

Cars make final exit in 2007

December 28, 2006

Several cars sold in the United States won't make it to 2007. Gone are the awkward Honda Insight, the ostentatious VW Phaeton's $70,000 price tag didn't sit well with consumers and the the gas and repair bills for those Hummer H-1's left it seeing sales slumping as gas prices soared.

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