Here's a cool invention from someone that used to go to LSU, and my high school, Belaire High in Baton Rouge. Pete Bush calls his invention The Bam Vino. It is a one-of-a-kind, conversation piece wine bottle holder. They sell two versions. One is an LSU player and the other is a generic bronze version. The price is $49.50. They are in the process of creating versions for other schools.

On Friday, I posted a project at GetaFreelancer.com to create a new logo for Gremillion Consulting. (We've been in business for over 10 years and never had a logo!) I received 14 bids within 5 or 6 hours of posting the project. The average bid was $38. Before going to bed, I picked a designer. They had over 830 positive reviews and their bid was only $30. By the morning they had accepted the project and the money was put into Escrow. Within a few hours they had 5 or 6 concepts ready. Later that day, the project was completed, only 24 hours later. Here's the final logo: The next step is to post a project for a business card design...

Here's a version of the Solomon Grundy poem by Ken Holtgrewe and I. Coda Wont Rundy, Programmed on a Monday, Debugged on Tuesday, Compiled on Wednesday, Deployed on Thursday, Crashed on Friday, FUBARed on Saturday, Outsourced on Sunday. This is the end of Coda Wont Rundy.

A couple of weeks ago I watched an ESPN show about car auctions. During the program there was a nice old car on the auction block. The high bid was $30K. They put the BIN at $39K. The high bidder kept asking the auctioneer, "what's real money", "what's real money". He spoke to the camera, "the last time I overpaid $100K because they had me bidding against myself!" Which brings us to domain name negotiating. A couple of weeks ago I made an offer on a domain name. On Monday, the seller came back and said the BIN was $1000 more than my offer. I was tempted to buy it for the BIN but I resisted. I kept thinking about the guy on the car show and how he was bidding against himself. So I stood my ground with the original offer and saved $1000. I wonder what would have happened if I had let it go, I might have gotten it for even less than my original offer. At the very least I learned my lesson and didn't bid against myself!

This week someone left a message on my answering machine that they wanted to sponsor ColorCombos. We were pretty excited after receiving this message. It turns out that they wanted to give me free hosting in exchange for a link on the front page. Since I use Dreamhost, I have no need for free hosting. I might have gone for it if it was for dedicated hosting. If you were to buy a link on a PR6 page from text-link-ads.com, it would probably cost you a minimum of $50 per month, or $600 per year. Hosting in comparison can be as cheap as $8 or $9 per month. So in essence, he was trying to buy a $600 per year link for $108. If you consider the actual cost to the hosting company, it is probably worth less than $3 per month, or $36 per year. It gets even better if you consider that I don't need hosting, so it would cost them $0 per year. The guy couldn't believe that I had turned it down. He said, "it's only a small link". I told him that there has to be value on both sides of the trade. I don't blame them for doing this. It seems like a great link building strategy. Still, I can't believe others would sell their links so cheaply. All of this reminds me of the time someone tried to pay me with ski lift tickets, another service I have no need for!

If I were doing affiliate marketing, I would watch this video every day in the morning.

Saw this story at Yahoo Finance today. Tesoro Corporation Terminates Rights Plan Last year Tracinda offered $64 per share for Tesoro. Then Tesoro implemented this plan to dissuade a takeover. Now that the stock is floundering around the low $30's, they must be hoping that Tracinda or someone else will be templated to pick up a bargain. I'm doubting they will get the $64 price in this environment.

I think the iTunes movie rental prices are too expensive. Let's say you wanted to rent The Brave One, starring Jodie Foster. It would cost you $3.99 on itunes. Since I don't have Apple TV, it isn't easy for me to watch it on my TV. If I went to Hollywood Video, the movie would probably cost $4.50 or so. In Houston, we have RedBox, which allows you to rent a movie for $1 per night. I love RedBox. It is so convenient and CHEAP. Since they have them at the 24hour WalMart, you can rent and return a movie 24 hours a day. I would love to know the overhead costs per movie at Hollywood and Blockbuster. That amount should be subtracted from the iTunes rental prices. If RedBox can deliver a physical disc for $1, then iTunes should be able to at least match that.

Chris Perruna analyzes Chipotle Mexican Grill and compares it to CROX. Basically, institutional investors are slowly heading for the exits. Click here for the article.

The Tesoro Hawaii refinery was shut down due to a fire over the weekend. How much more financial pain will this unit to continue to inflict?