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December 22, 2004
Wedding Planning? Use our spreadsheet as a starter.
The info in the Locations and Visits tabs alone will save you days of phone calls if you are planning a Chicago downtown wedding. Contacts, contact info, capacity, price, etc. Visits tab will guide you through the standard set of questions and compute the low and high spread out-the-door total price for a given number of guests.
I generated the Guests tab by exporting my Outlook contact book, which is sync'd with my cell. If your MS Outlook installation doesn't have the Export feature installed (Rebecca's didn't), just display your contacts folder with the "Phone List" grid-like view and right click the column labels to use the Field Chooser to get what fields you need. Shift-select all contacts, Ctrl-C, and you can paste that into Excel.
I already had a lot of people's home addresses and recent contact info because Plaxo rocks and it is not spam. And it's not annoying, Alex. :)
The Guests tab:
- Displays guest count for each side by priority groupings
- Categorize friends for later table assignment
- Displays running guestcount so you can sort them by group, then priority, and see who you can afford to invite
- Can adjust for people who you will invite but have varying chances of attending for accurate estimating
Also has a checklist tab with information from a very popular wedding site.
I'm sure as we get further along in this process more tabs will get added. I know it's geek, but I think it's kind of practical-overpowers-geeknees.
Posted by Jeff at 07:03 AM | Comments (4)
December 21, 2004
Various Tech Tricks and Tips
I received a lot of positive feedback about my info-packed bullshit-busting piece on diamonds, and I thought I'd share some of my recent tech discoveries. DONT BE INTIMIDATED AND STOP READING RIGHT THERE, KELLY/MALENA etc. This first one especially is practical tech that really has improved my life! Give it a try... develop a self-cultivated thirst for knowledge.
Rebecca calls me a "binge researcher". Old roommate Brett mercilessly gives me crap for spending a beautiful Sunday afternoon on google learning about feral children. It's best to share this.
- By far the most beneficial thing I've done lately is gotten into the habit of daily reading aggregating RSS feeds. It feels like I'm always up on the lastest of whatever I'm interested in. I don't want to take the time to fully explain it, but trust me, it will change your life (for the better). I got a 1GB USB Jumpdrive for $40 shipped from aggregating slickdeals.net. I have feeds for Kelly, Dave, Alex - if you have a blog I don't know about, let me know, thanks!
So far I like Sharpreader the best, but RSS bookmarks in Firefox seem to be popular too. The last version of Aggie I was using sucked.
I know I'm an early adopter, and not all of you guys that read this are - but Blogging and aggregating is simply such a great thing for keeping in touch with friends and still being effecient with your time. I was a naysayer at first (eating my words, Fashionfly). If you don't want to set up you own blog, use livejournal or xanga or something else free. And update it with snippets of useful stuff you find!!
- I installed my own blogging software, Moveable Type (thanks Alex). Coincidentally, Ventureblog just invested in the company that makes it, Six Apart.
- Google Desktop Search, Google Toolbar. I think google is incredible. They have so many other cool tools that so many people don't know about. I'd love to work at their labs.
- I've had problems with DNS behind my dad's Microtik router. If you need servers outside your ISPs, try these public dns servers. Don't forget about the "ipconfig /flushdns" command in XP.
- Cool, free utilities for system and network troubleshooting: FileMon, RegMon, TDIMon. Logs background changes to the filesys, registry, and tcp/udp packets, respectively. See what process is responsible. Lightweight. From www.sysinternals.com, and they have a ton of other tools too.
Future Projects
- I want to set up a wiki to coordinate the activities of my web developers for the school, but there are too many options. I might try twiki.
- I am going to try to learn about podcasting. Does anyone know any good electronica/house/techno blogs? Any that are MP3 blogs?
Posted by Jeff at 11:48 PM | Comments (0)
December 03, 2004
It's for the Children
Even in Guatemala, Santa is a fat, pink-cheeked white man.
Although Santa is a gringo-gordito, even the North Pole knows that using local labor markets is cheaper. Here we have a Guatemalan elf that drank a little too much Electric Koolaid before choosing her outfit today. That's a red hat, orange coat, yellow tights, blue socks, and white high-heels.
Posted by Jeff at 07:22 AM | Comments (1)
December 02, 2004
Tetrahedral Covalent Carbon Network
That was the subject line I used in emails to friends about diamonds and rings so that Rebecca wouldn’t know what the email was about.
The next best experience to the proposal itself was being accused by two jewelers in the Washington DC area of being an industry insider who was out collecting competitive intelligence. If you read and absorb the information below, it will not be hard to find a jeweler who is less knowledgeable on the science of diamond beauty than you are. Jewelers are a certain breed of people-persons who will feel you out, compliment you, use cheeky clichés when talking to you, personify little pieces of clear carbon (“…this one’s a hottie!”), and try to establish that rapport that sends shivers up your spine. Don’t be seduced.
For any guy who will need to pick a diamond some day, here are hours of research in one article… It became an obsession. I spent over 40 hours across 4 months looking at diamonds in stores, reading online, asking questions in online forums. Why? Because diamonds have almost no personal worth to be - there are much better status symbols to be had, if that's your thing - but it's still an essential evil of loving a woman. The most common thing I hear form guys who are searching is "My friend knows a guy...", and let me tell you, everybody knows a guy, and that guy is still taking a lot of your money for being a middleman in a information-starved market. Here’s a summary of what I learned.
Websites
www.pricescope.com – Best education section on diamonds, great discussion forum. Unbiased because it is run by appraisers, not sellers (the second best discussion forum, diamondtalk.com, IS run by dealers, so be wary). Pricescope is most useful for three things: Its online diamond price metasearch (web crawler), the price report it can generate (a pseudo-rappaport style), and the free HCA score computer. HCA stands for Holloway Cut Advisor and is a good way to predict brightness based on cut angles.
www.goodoldgold.com – This is where I bought mine from. If I had to do it all over, I would have gone with Union Diamond even though they didn’t have the same level of data available as Good Old Gold (my customer experience with Good old Gold was fantastic though). Good Old Gold brands itself as the “ultimate diamond information site” and yes, they have a wordy but complete education section. Check out the example of all the info they will put online for you at:
http://www.goodoldgold.com/0_97ct_h_vs1_h%26a.htm Perhaps the most important of these are the idealscope (detects light leakage) and H&A viewer (shows optical symmetry).
www.niceice.com – Jewler in Oregon where there is no sales tax (legally). Otherwise, when you buy out of state, you are technically supposed to claim it on your state tax return (and end up paying the tax to your home state anyway). Prices aren’t that great though.
www.uniondiamond.com – Cheapest online, trustworthy sales reps with good eyes, huge inventory, wholesaler. BUY FROM HERE (I almost did). Cannot, however, provide idealscope and H&A images online or via email.
www.eightstar.com – Relatively unknown, but they make the worlds most perfectly cut diamond (brightest, perfect symmetry). Ideal proportions and the world’s best Hearts and Arrows cutters (they invented it). 30% price premium for the best.
www.mervisdiamond.com – This is the only jeweler I found that would discount designer brand prices for the setting (band) itself - and it was by 25%! Every other dealer I contacted haggled down to the “minimum allowable price that our agreement with [designer] allows”.
Buying Strategies
First, a note on new "cultured" or "man-made" diamonds: Keep your eyes out for developments from Apollo and Gemesis – two companies that are very close to producing man-made diamonds that are indistinguishable by most of today’s jewelers. Gemesis has successfully made beautiful yellow fancies. Debeers is scrambling and lobbying its ass off to make sure that the major diamond distribution points and grading labs have multimillion-dollar equipment that can detect these "fakes" (please – get over your artificial monopoly and marketing hype), and they are trying to make laws that require these gems to be laser inscribed as man-made. Be objective: if it’s the exact same chemical substance, indistinguishable in a jewler's eyes, and half the price – you are a fool for buying a "real" one. Hopefully that day will come soon.
So you have a budget, now how do you maximize it?
If you want the biggest diamond possible that isn’t visibly ugly, and looks as bright as everybody else’s, it’s very easy: you need to buy an SI2 clarity, J color, non-ideal, non-H&A. Set these specs on pricescope.com, sort by total price, and find the biggest rock in your budget.
Whether shopping for size or beauty, you’ll want a diamond with a certificate. If it’s a big purchase, a laser-inscribed serial number on the girdle (really thin perimeiter of the circle part of a diamond) will ensure you are getting the same rock that the certificate refers to. The certificate can be from EGL, EGL-USA, GIA, or AGS labs, but with AGS you’re paying a 15% premium for the AGS name vs someone like EGL-USA. In a later paragraph, you’ll see why. See http://diamonds.pricescope.com/labs.asp
If you want a noticeably different diamond that is shockingly bright, and can sacrifice some size, it’s more complex.
Still choose your rough sze range first once you have an idea for the general price ranges of ideal cut stones. .95-.99 ct and 1.2-1.4 ct are difficult ranges to find supply. Keep in mind that a .8 ct rock looks very similar in size to a 1 ct. rock but is much cheaper. Be aware that PPC (price per carat) increases with total carat size (i.e. it’s not linear like .5 ct = $2000, 1ct = $4000, and 1.5ct =$6000...) There is also a little price spike just above 1 ct (demand from “size queens”).
I’m going to talk about cut first – it’s the most complex, and the hardest to rate scientifically.
The aspects of beauty in a diamond effected by the cut are Brilliance (optical light return), Fire (prism color dispersion), and Scintillation (contrast between light and dark flashes when moved). "Ideal cut" is a shaky term that refers to ranges for table, depth, pavillion and crown proportions. The precision to which it is cut, namely the crown and pavilion angles, has the most influence over beauty than any other factor, even color! You will find that many online sites and even diamond certificates, including the common GIA certificate, do not list the critical crown and pavilion angles (sometimes expressed as percentages of nominal diameter instead of an angle) – don’t buy without knowing these! Update, 2006 - The GIA lab certificate apparently has a new cut grading system that incorporates these factors, and includes a more scientific/objective cut rating, as AGS has had for years. If there certificate does not have these angles, ask the dealer to have it analyzed on a Sarin machine or Megascope. You then take these crown/pavillion angles along with table and depth percentages and use the HCA score tool on pricescope.com to rate the cut. Trust me: regardless of size, if you’re a beauty-over-size buyer, you want to buy a rock with an HCA score less than 2. An HCA score of less than 2 usually means it would qualify also qualify for a AGS certificate cut rating of "0" or the AGL " 1a" range. You do not need a “Triple 0” or “Triple Ideal” – these terms include factors that are not detectable to the eye like polish, [point facet] symmetry, and clarity. Some people’s definitions of “Ideal cut” differ, so use HCA score as the authority, and place more importance on this score than other cut rating systems such as the "AGS 0" rating.
The only clarity a smart buyer wants is SI1, or an “eye-clean” SI2, none other. What the microscope sees is a scam – you want the crappiest, most "included" stone that still looks perfect to the unaided 20-20 eye.
The color range where people can’t detect any color with the naked eye (it looks completely clear) is D through I (the jewelry store pamphlet will say D through F) – you should know that color grades in the 1ct-SI1 range tend to be about $500 per grade – and honestly, ask someone if an I color stone is perfectly clear and they will say yes. You can only detect the color difference between F and I when referenced side by side, and viewed on a white background through the diamond’s side (as opposed to the top where most people view diamonds).
If you have a size, ideal cut, color, and clarity set, and you have more money to spend, the first thing to do is to go back to cut: find a Hearts and Arrows. Hearts and Arrows means it took a lot more skill and time to make, and has superior symmetry on minor facet alignment. It's named after the pattern it makes in a special viewer, you can't see the hearts themselves in the ring. This H&A symmetry is NOT the same as the "symmetry rating" that’s shown next to polish rating on certificates – those polish and symmetry ratings are in fact visually indistinguishable above “vg – very good”. A H&A diamond is usually also ideal cut, and displays much better scintillation (flashes of white/black). Especially on larger rocks, the contrast effect is amazing. See http://www.goodoldgold.com/hearts_and_arrows.htm at the bottom of the page.
Unbranded H&A is cheaper – discussion at http://www.diamondtalk.com/forums/showthread.php?threadid=2070. They are also sold under brand names like SuperbCert, Hearts on Fire, A Cut Above, AGLAIA, Love Diamond, and Cut by Gauge.
More money? Improve your color, but don’t go past F. If you still have more money, go for a lower HCA score or buy an 8* (Eightstar).
Here is a sample email that I sent to Union Diamond:
Hi,
I've been watching the loose diamond market for a few months, and I'm ready to buy within the next two weeks. I've been really impressed with your reputation. Here are my criteria, I'm hoping you can send me some suggestions:
Total $4800 or less
Price per carat less than $5000
.95-1.1 ct
H-I color
I'm looking for the lowest clarity grade that is eye-clean. I expect this to be in SI1 and some SI2.
Holloway Cut Advisor score of 2 or less (based on crown, pavilion, table, depth). Usually these stones will also be VG/VG or better symmetry/polish and within the AGS 0 or AGL 1A ranges. I'd prefer to not pay the premium though for the actual AGS or GIA cert (which is why EGL-USA and EGL certified diamonds are attractive to me).
I really just want the brightest diamond possible without paying for things that most people cannot see (like higher clarity).
Ideally it also displays a good H&A pattern (don't need a brand name here, better without). I'd consider a $500-$700 price per carat (PPC) premium for a H&A.
So that's my list! Thanks for your help. I would pay in full by whatever method is most convenient for you - wire, credit, check, money order, whatever (and be shipping to Chicago, so no sales tax), so please take that into account when pricing. I will never share your quote with other dealers or publish it on the internet, so extend me a deal with that confidence in mind. Thanks!
There is one more tactic worth mentioning for buying beauty-over-size if you are not comfortable dealing with the science, but it has pitfalls. Have your (accommodating) jeweler "call in" as many stones in your price range as he possibly can, and just choose which is visibly the brightest! Be sure to ask them to switch off that dreamy low-voltage halogen bulb that makes a piece of plastic look like a sparkler with more colors than the rainbow. Try to judge them in direct and indirect/ambient light. Try to see them in incandescent, fluorescent, and sunlight if possible. Judge them without the magnifying loupe – why pay for something you can’t see! Pick your favorite. Don’t be surprised if you can’t see much of a difference - welcome to diamonds! Your eye will get better with time.
Why doesn’t everyone do this? Well, basics of business say that you don’t want to have a large inventory, especially slow moving inventories like diamonds. So most jewelers are actually trying to minimize the amount they have on hand, without having a really poor selection. Usually they get spec sheets and "call-in" rocks from wholesalers that the jeweler doesn’t actually own (but could, right before they sell it to you). (I know what you're thinking, and no, 99% of the time you cannot deal direct with the wholesaler.) A wholesaler will get annoyed at any jeweler who calls in a huge batch just to pick one stone because it makes them temporarily unavailable for other buyers. Also, the price will not be as good as via the internet – it’s can’t be! Somewhere in the pricing structure you have to pay for that person’s time, the insured shipping of calling in stones, and the brick and mortar of the store. When you pick a rock, the jewler will probably look up the "market" Price Per Carat for that color/clarity/size range on a Rappaport Report ("rap sheet"), and sell it to you at their standard "discount" (read: markup).
I hope this little tutorial will help all guys out there to decipher things past the "Four C’s" - the educational opiate of the diamond world.
Jeff
Posted by Jeff at 07:03 AM | Comments (3)