In Search of the Perfect Investment

My local upstate country store loves their Square installation. Their customers love it. I love it.

After I spent the grand sum of $16.96 there, I received this email:

Three things to note:

+ I only entered my email address once. Now every time I use my MasterCard on Square, I get a receipt.

+ I can make comments. Steve, the proprietor, tells me he reads his customers’ comments.

+ The store’s croissants are the best in the entire world. They come fresh out of the oven at 7:30 AM each morning. I’m there every morning.

Here’s SQ compared to Amazon this year. Puts Amazon to shame.

I read this somewhere. It’s charming.

In 2006, Mark Zuckerberg gave up coding to focus on running the business of Facebook. When visiting Nigeria in August 2016, he admitted publicly that giving up coding to manage his company was “a little sad”.”

“There is an elegance to writing code that I miss,” Zuckerberg said during a Q&A session with tech entrepreneurs and developers in Lagos, Nigeria. “The code always does what you want — people don’t.“

Readers Digest scoured Amazon for the “best” product reviews:

BIC Pen

Works fine with my right hand but when I used my left hand my writing came out looking like the work of an imbecile. I assume that BIC created a right handed-only pen.

UFO Detector

Amazon describes this $87.66 product: UFO Detector – Internal magnetometer interfaced with microcontroller for 24 hour/7 days a week monitoring for magnetic anomalies that have been reported with many UFO sightings. It has 160 reviews and 16 answered questions. You can buy your very own UFO Dectector here. 

The review read:

One star is too much for this product. I don’t know if this is a scam or what, but it doesn’t work. I am still being abducted by UFOs.

The bucket list (courtesy Readers Digest)

Topping Marc’s bucket list was parachuting from a plane. “Don’t worry,” the instructor tells him. You have a main chute and a reserve chute just in case. When you land, there’ll be a truck waiting to pick you up.”

Reassured, Marc leaps out of the plane, but his parachute doesn’t open. He deploys the reserve. That fails too.

As he plummets to earth, Marc says in disgust, “Just as I thought: The truck’s not there either.”

The refrigerator magnet

When I came home from playing gold, my wife had left a note on the fridge, “It’s not working,” she wrote, “I can’t take it anymore. Gone to stay with my mother.”

I opened the fridge. The light came on and the beer was cold. I never did find out what she was talking about.”

The only person who can stop North Korea.

I think this is funny.

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)-Education Secretary Betsy DeVos is being dispatched to Pyongyang in what the White House is calling a high-stakes mission to reverse North Korea’s years of progress in math and science.

DeVos, who is expected to arrive in Pyongyang later this week, plans to throw a monkey wrench in North Korea’s swiftly advancing nuclear program by replacing its current system of training scientists with a dizzying array of vouchers, sources said.

According to the White House, it is hoped that, after a few weeks in North Korea, DeVos will succeed in returning that nation’s nuclear program to pre-1970 levels.

At a press briefing announcing the mission, the White House deputy press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, called DeVos “our nation’s best bet to stop North Korea.”

“If anyone can get North Korea’s missiles to start blowing up on the launchpad again, it’s Betsy,” Sanders said.

Harry Newton, who had a wonderful day biking around New York City yesterday, shopping for his dinner at Shake Shack and Whole Foods. This afternoon I’m playing tennis with a Ukrainian lady pro at Riverside Clay Tennis, located at 96th and the Hudson River. The trip up by bicycle along the Hudson River is to die for. This is REALLY what it looks like.