Archive for February, 2008

In case you haven’t got enough to occupy your brain cells, here’s a question for the moment:

Is this extra day of February profitable or not?

Here’s my thinking. Some revenues and expenses are monthly, so they’re the same in a regular February, a 29-day Feb, and in regular 30 and 31-day months. Other items are hourly or daily or usage-based, and therefore earn or cost more in leap Februaries than in regular ones. Let’s stipulate that February 29 does not fall on a weekend, or at least that it’s a business day.

For most people and businesses, rent and payroll are the biggest budget items. Rent is pretty much always monthly and the same every month. Ditto mortgage payments, assuming interest is compounded in equal months, which I think it is. That makes February, leap or not, more expensive on a daily basis, but makes a leap-Feb a little cheaper. For example, $1,000 in rent is $32.26/day in 31-day months, $33.33 in 30-day months, $34.48 in a leap-year February and $35.71 in a regular February.

Payroll is more interesting. Those on annual salaries see the same effect as rent – you earn a little more per day in February compared to other months, but a little less per day if there are 29 days in the month. If you work an hourly job, you earn one an additional day of pay in a leap year. Of course, you also work one more day. If you earn commission, you have one more selling day in February to make your number.

Back on the expense side, some monthly charges are constant – insurance, cable TV, tuition – but others are more use-based and will cost more in a leap-Feb – food, electricity, gas – although they should still be cheaper than in 30 and 31-day months.

So, as a business, should you open or close on 2/29, and as a worker, should you bother to go to work on leap day? We’ll restrict our analysis to comparing a leap-year February to a regular one, and not compare any February to any other month.

As a businessperson, my biggest expenses (rent and payroll) are monthly constants, and the leap day gives me an extra selling day, so I should be happy to open on 2/29. Even with hourly workers, the extra selling and constant rent should make the leap-Feb more profitable than a regular one. Unless, of course, the business is operating at a loss – in that case, the leap year February is more UNprofitable than the regular one.

As an hourly worker, the leap day is a small windfall. I get paid for another day’s work, maybe earn more tips or commission, and my biggest expense, rent, is constant for the month.

As a salaried worker, my calculus is trickier. If there’s commission at stake, I’m more like the hourly worker and should consider 2/29 a good deal. If not, then all my large expenses – and my monthly pay – are constant, and it goes to the small stuff to decide. For example, if I have a commute using expensive gas, the marginal profit on the day starts to slip away. On the other hand, staying home on a cold February day could run up your home heating bill compared to enjoying free heat at work.

On balance, I find that the leap day is marginally profitable and will not advocate for its abolition on economic grounds, nor will I incite leap-day strikes. In fact, I rather like the leap day. It’s an example of the uneasy truce between the human desire to put rational order to things and the universe’s insistence on being just the way it is, a reminder that our planet zips along at its own pace no matter what the pope or the IRS says.

Happy leap day.

Tonight I had the privilege of hearing (and seeing) Photographer Arno Minkkinen speak at the Photographic Resource Center’s Polaroid Spotlight Lecture. If you haven’t experienced Minkkinen’s photographs, please immediately go outside and prance around naked in the snow. Or buy one of his books right away. Your choice.

Plenty of others have analyzed and praised his photographs better than I can, and I’m sure many will for years to come. I’m going to try and reproduce an anecdote that came from Arno the teacher, something I’m calling the Minkkinen Helsinki Bus Station Theory. It goes a bit like this:

When you’re a student or otherwise starting out, your work – be it photographic or otherwise – will probably resemble that of an influential practitioner who came before you. Wanting to be original, you’re likely to try and break away from that influence. And you’ll probably end up showing some other influence.

Ready for the heady metaphor? Good. Here it comes.

Pretty much every bus line in Helsinki starts at the central bus station. And many bus lines travel the same route for some distance from the central station before eventually diverging. If every time you see that your bus is traveling along another line’s route, you go back to the central station and get on a different bus, you’ll never get out of town.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but at dinner after the lecture, I found myself seated across from Adam Marcinek, a local photographer. I recognized the name because I had bought one of his prints at an auction a couple of years ago, a piece that reminded me a lot of the work of Aaron Siskind. Of course it’s not fair to either artist to dwell too much on one phase or type from their varied bodies of work. I certainly can’t afford a Siskind, but I wonder what my Marcinek will be worth when Adam finds his bus’ final destination. I’m enjoying it right now in any case.

<->

Adam Marcinek, Untitled 2004 <-> Aaron Siskind, Kentucky 5

I’m not sure if I’ve done justice to Arno’s anecdote or his philosophy, but I hope the germ of the idea gets through to those who need it. If you happen to stop by the PRC’s Student Show, you can try and figure out what bus lines those kids are on, and also marvel at how far out of town some are already. When you’re done making nekkid snow angels, get over there – the show closes March 16.

Gotta love startup office decor.  Put that in your Aeron and smoke it.  Whatever the furniture, there’s no substitute for a gridded notebook, a sturdy Thinkpad, and a cup of Diesel mocha soy chai.

The ergonomic controversy goes on.  Metafilterers seem to love the ball, although some have clashed with HR over it, while Ergoweb experts predict dire spinal injury.  Me, I just worry about static buildup and accidentally rolling over.

I don’t remember how I first discovered SurveyMonkey, but it was years and years ago, and I’ve used it again and again since. Just recently, two completely random projects had SurveyMonkey components, reminding me of the quality of the service and affirming its success.

The monkeys have been busy, and the site – and the surveys it makes – are looking much more polished these days, but oddly enough, the pricing is still pretty old-fashioned. Try as I might, it seems to be impossible to pay more than $200/year for unlimited surveymonkeying. And that includes actual email support (not that I’ve ever needed it), branching logic, randomized choices in response order, unlimited questions and respondents, and all kinds of customization. This is truly a professional-grade tool, even if it has a goofy name.

Listen up monkeys, there must be a way to get more upside from your bigger customers who can afford it. I know there’s competition, but so far as I can tell, none of it measures up, and the true business user is likely to put a higher value on what you can deliver.

Just remember who gave you the good advice, and cut me a nice discount when you wake up and charge what you’re worth.

I’m seeing intermittent errors when posting comments. Please help me troubleshoot. Please try to comment on this post and include your browser and OS in the comment text. If you try to comment and fail, please email me at dkarp at limeduck dot com. Thanks for your help.

UPDATE:  still can’t figure this one out, seems to happen only with the second (and subsequent?) comment on a single post.  I’ve seen it on other hosts and with other themes.  Disabled and re-enabled plugins, etc.  Anybody in the wordpress world know what’s going on?  I guess I just have to wait for v2.5