Goodsol Solitaire Blog

Weekend CatBlogging

It's a little late for Friday CatBlogging, so here is Weekend CatBlogging.

Some pictures of the cats getting used to the new house:

Pumpkin marks a window as hers.

Ace is now once again sleeping on the couch.

Inquisitor on a chair in the sunroom.

One Time Inconvenience

To control spam, I now allow incoming messages only from senders, who are friends or relatives, whom I have known for a long time, or senders from whom I have made a recent purchase.

If you would like to be added to my list of approved senders, please fill out the short request form (see link below). Once I approve you, I will receive your original message in my inbox. You do not need to resend your message. I apologize for this one-time inconvenience.

I believe I have now suffered this one time inconvenience about ten thousand times.

Pretty Good Jewelry.com

For the first time in awhile, Anne has some new necklaces up at PrettyGoodJewelry.com.

Programming Quote

Here's a great quote about programming.

Mysteries of Pricing

Here's a couple of interesting posts about pricing:

Why Do Prices End in .99?

A typical bookshop will experience a certain amount of shoplifting, especially of products as tempting as my book. Nobody is better placed to benefit from shoplifting than the shop assistants.

If books — or any products — were roundly priced at £10, £15 or £20, then customers would frequently offer the correct change. In such cases it would be simple for the shop assistant to bag the item without ringing it through the till, and to pocket the cash.

And another: Brevity is Best

Consumer researchers know that people are terrible at remembering store prices: two seconds after taking a product from a shelf, the average person has roughly a 50 percent chance of remembering how much it cost. But few researchers have examined why some prices are more memorable than others.

According to a new study, it is a matter of syllables. Each extra syllable in the price reduces the chances of it being recalled by 20 percent, according to the study, which will be published in the September issue of The Journal of Consumer Research [JCR]. In other words, someone faced with a $77.51 camera (eight syllables) and a $62.30 bookshelf (five syllables) is about 60 percent more likely to forget the camera’s price than the bookshelf’s, after half a minute.

Answer: 82 Degrees

Question:  What was the water temperature in the pool today?

Most Popular Solitaire

Yesterday I released a new version of Most Popular Solitaire.  That is our small collection of 30 of the most popular solitaire games.  It is a minor update, just some bug fixes plus changes in marketing screens.  Also,  the trial version is now limited to only games numbered 1 to 30 of each game.

A new version of Pretty Good Solitaire is in the final stages of beta testing for release soon.

Friday CatBlogging: Exploring the New House

Last night the cats started to explore their new home.  This is Ace on the stairs looking down.

And today they are discovering the windowsills.  Here's Ace walking the office windowsill.  Note my disassembled desk in lower right.

Moving Day

Moving day arrived on Wednesday.  It was a very hot and long day.  Apparently the temperature got up to 98 degrees.

We filled up the entire moving van and still had stuff left over, so we aren't entirely done moving yet.  But everything important got over here.  Now there are piles of boxes in each room.  After the move was done, we went back and brought over the cats.  They cowered in the laundry room for awhile, and then we brought them to the bedroom.  They promptly all went under the bed.  They pretty much stayed under the bed for a whole day.

My office is not yet fully functional as the movers had to take apart my desk to get it out the door and I'm not sure if I'm going to be able to get it back together again.

Closing Day

We closed on the new house yesterday.  Today we are doing the final packing for moving day tomorrow.

This is the view out of the window in my new office:

That's the executive swimming pool.  Note the large windowsill where the cats will be able to observe.

Below is a picture of the sunroom with its two stories of windows.  The photo was taken from the interior balcony above the sunroom: