<b>Words</b>: 1900

<b>Average reading time (At 250 words/minute)</b>: 7.5 minutes.

<a href="http://www.sitdiary.net" target="_blank">www.sitdiary.net</a>. 'Tis an awesome blogging site, that I've been a member of for a while. (<a href="http://www.sitdiary.net/firestormx" target="_blank">My page</a>)

I write really long entries on there, and people actualy read them. (My more up-to-date entries have been around 8.5k words. I havn't written an entry there in…Holy shit, over a month now)

What was the point of telling you that? Well, I've got the creator of the site on my AIM list (He only uses crappy-ass AIM. Grr) And he helped me out with a bit of the coding on this site. (Most noteably, now to allow users to upload files larger than 2MBs, without modifying the php.ini file.)

That wasn't a very good reason to write that first paragraph eh? k, well, the reason I havn't updated my sitD blog, is because I've been swamped with math homework (Not swamped enough to make this site though. =P) and the entries I write there, take like 12 hours. (I once spent something like 36 hours straight writing one. Well, it wasn't ALL writing. I get distracted easily…But yeah, I stayed up all night, and all the next day writing an entry.)

Now, with all my math homework, I can't afford to take a whole flippin' day off math, and write an entry.

And I know if I try and write another blog entry here, I'll end up writing a really long entry (Look, I've already been rambling on for like 5 minutes. (Took you about 1 minute to read this far))

However, as a co-admin of this site, I don't think I should be letting members have way more blog entries than me. Soooo, I'm just gonna copy over part of one my entries that I wrote a while ago.

It's about…The price of Baby Bottle Pops. Yeah. You think of odd things to write about when you've been writing for 24 hours.

k, here goes (Anything past this point, is copied from this entry: <a href="http://www.sitdiary.net/firestormx/index.php?cmd=view_entry&eid=38" target="_blank">http://www.sitdiary.net/firestormx/index.php?cmd=view_entry&eid=38</a>):

…Anyway, I figure, you need to know something that you can acutaly use in today's modern world…How much candy should cost.

Have you ever gone to Rogers, or Blockbuster (Or wherever you get your entertainment) and see those bottles of coloured sugar?

<a href="http://www.wackypackages.org/realproductsscans/2004/jk/bottlepop_small.jpg" target="_blank">Like Baby Bottle Pops</a>, or those sour spray things?

Are they really worth two freakin' dollars?! I mean, you could feed some kid in Africa for two days, and all you can get here, is…is…half a cup of sour, liquified sugar.

Well, yeah, it's kind of expected that the food be over-priced. I mean, it's good marketing. "I'd like to get this movie…o0o0o, snacks! I'll probably get hungry during the movie."

Did you know that if you eat while reading, or watching TV, you just want more food?

I'm thinking that we just keep eating, because we want an excuse to keep reading/watching TV, and/or are so immersed in what we're reading/watching, that we don't notice how full we are.

Thus we all explode and die.

Anyway, the scary thing about all this, is that Americans don't know what Tim Hortons is, so they're forced to drink Starbucks coffee.

Wait, fuck, no, I was talking about the adult video section at Blockbuster.

So anyway, if you go to a convenience store, you can usualy find Baby Bottle Pops, for a few cents less.

But how much does it cost to produce these things, that's the important thing.

Actualy, the important thing here, is not to run through a dog pound naked.

Well, if we think about it, we'll probably start giggling. *giggles* Someone running through the pound, naked. *snickers*

k, anyway, how much do you think the plastic to make the bottles for baby bottle pops – Ya' know what? I'm just going to cal them BBP, okay?

The plastic can't be too much. Let's just say it's like 10 cents. (Hey, it costs a lot to have little plastic bottles shipped over from China -_-)

k, yeah, 10 is a lot. But whatever. This is just an estimate.

I guess the 10 cents would also cover the packaging, label, etc.

Anyway, yeah, so we've got a 10 cent container. Now we need need to put that thingy on the top. The thing on the lid…The thing that's fun to chew on…On real bottles anyway.

For those of you who've never seen those fucking stupid BBP comercials, what you do, is take the lid off, and there's a handle on the inside.

You take that handle, and lick the top part of the candy top thingy. Then you dip it into the poweder, in the bottle.

<a href="http://www.wackypackages.org/realproductsscans/2004/jk/bottlepop_small.jpg" target="_blank">Refresh your memory</a>.

Now, let's see, the top looks like a sucker right? Made of the same crystalized sugaryness…*drool*

OI! I SAW THAT! YOU WERE ABOUT TO SLAP ME!

<img src="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v631/PerfectGamer2005/pokeshake.gif">

So I figure, that it takes the same amount of that crystalized sugar stuff, to make 8 of those tootsie roll sucker things.

I don't know if you've ever gone to Dollarama (I love dollar store. So much candy, for so cheap ^_^) but they sell these suckers, with a tootsie roll center.

For a buck.

Now, assuming there's one tootsie roll in the center of each sucker, and there's 8 suckers, and each tootsie roll is usualy about 10 cents each. (10 cents! I can eat plastic AND a label for 10 cents!)

So, 8 * 10 = 80 cents.

100 - 80 = 20 cents.

Therefore, it costs about 20 cents for the top thingy of the BBP. (I'm going to assume the paper stick thingies on the suckers is free…Or covered by the taxs)

So, so far, we've got 30 cents worth of stuff.

That means, we've to 1.70 to spend on sugar! =O

However, for a 1.70, I'd better be getting cocain or something.

btw, there's about 3/4 square inches of this stuff in the bottle.

So yeah, that's gotta be some damn-good sugar, to pay 2.25 dollars per square inch of it.

Now, lick 'n' dips, you get two whole packages, with about 1/2 square inches each, as well as the licking stick (perves) for 89 cents.

Now, assuming the licking stick is free, and the price is rounded to .90. That means, that for one square inch, it costs about 90 cents. Or, (90 / 4) * 3 = 67.5 cents, for 3/4 square inches of sugary goodness.

However, we can't forget the 15% law, or whatever it's called. You must make at least 15% profit from every product you make. (Not a legal law, but if you want a sucessful buisness….)

so 15 percent of .90 is .14 cents.

So .90 - .14 = .76 cents.

(76 / 4) * 3 = 57 cents.

So we've got 57 cents of crack–I mean, sugar.

As well as 10 cents of packaging.

And we can't forget 20 cents of crystal meth/sugar.

All in all, it adds up to about 87 cents.

Which, btw, is how much skittles cost at most convienence stores.

Now, the 15% law, will tack on another 14 cents, to bring it to a full dollar.

So what happens to the other dollar I'm paying?

Well, it goes towards paying the employees, paying for the cost of machinery, paying for electricity for the machinery, and paying for repairs to the machinary.

And then there's the whole "shipping it out to convenience stores, and over-priced video stores" deal.

Also, the company producing these products can't be the only ones making money.

Blockbuster needs to make money off this too.

And, they probably get these things whole sale, but if they don't, Blockbuster would also need to pay the middle man, etc.

<img src="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v631/PerfectGamer2005/pikaslap.gif">

No, these pictures have nothing to do with this rant.

So, I'm going to make an uneducated guess here. I've never seen statistics for factorys of any sort. If anyone knows any, let me know ^_^

k, so anyway, here's my naive little assumptions:

Say there's 50 employees, who make 50k/year.

The machinery, is like 100,000 dollars to start with. Then, it's about….Well, my family uses up 10k worth of electricity…so I'm going to estimate something like 50k/year on electricity. About 5k on maitnance.

About 20k on shipping.

All right, let's make this into an alegraic function.

First, we divide these up into two catagories.

production costs, and yearly costs.

<b>Production costs</b>

57 cents on powder, 10 cents on packaging, 20 cents on the top thingy = 87 cents.

We then, subtract 200 cents from the cost, to make the cost -113 cents.

<b>Yearly costs</b>

50,000 on employees, 50,000 on electricity, 5,000 on maintance, 20,000 shipping = 125,000 dollars

So, for the profit function, we have

p(x, z) = 1.13x - 125,000z, where P is the profit, x is the ammount of products sold, and z is how many years, the company has been operating.

But wait, what about the 100,000 dollar machinary?

Since, it doesn't fit into either of the catagories (I'm explaining this, assuming that you havn't passed grd 9 math =P) and since it won't be changed by anything at all (They're not going to charge you 100k every year for it, or anything like that…Unless you're renting it…Or didn't pay it all off at once, and you're paying interest on the payments…) it is simply "-100,000"

So here's our function:

p(x, z) = 1.13x - 125,000z - 100,000

Now, you're looking at this funciton, and going "Croiky! In the first year they have to pay of $225,000! That means they'll have to sell 225,000 / 1.13 = 199,116 products to make 96 cents worth of profit!"

Well, that's partialy true.

Except that technicaly, the company that makes the BBP don't actualy get all $2.00. Remember how Blockbuster has to make some money too?

"Wow! So you mean, that they have to sell even more?!"

Well, pretty much all buisnesses start out like that.

I mean, look at Blockbuster. How much do you think each movie costs? Well, when they first get them, it's probably like 50 bucks or something…I don't know..I've never bought a movie, and never been around when my parents bought them.

So anyway, 5 bucks, means that for each movie, you need to rent it out 10 times, before you can start makign profit.

And they have like 5 of each movie.

You have to rent it out 50 times!

Now, off the top of your head, can you name 50 people who would want to rent Napolean Dynamite?

I can't either.

But there's gotta be 50 people who want to see it.

Anyway, so yeah, in year one, they would be making a profit when….

p(x, 1) = 1.13x - 125,000(1) - 100,000

0 < 1.13x - 125,000 - 100,000

0 < 1.13x - 225,000

225,000 < 1.13x

199,115.0442 < x

I already told you that, but whatever.

So they would have to sell two hundred thousand in one year. Damn.

Now, let's assume there's 500 Blockbusters out there.

200,000 / 500 = 4.

So if each Blockbuster only sells 4, then the company will be sittin' pretty.

Plus, we can't forget all those convenience stores out there.

So yeah, in the big picture of things, it really doesn't take much to make a profit.

Did ya' see that?

Math fucking pwns j00 Geography.

<img src="http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v631/PerfectGamer2005/napoleon.gif">

So in short, go live in africa. You can get enough food for two days, for the price of an over-priced candy.