MONEY COMPLAINTS

So, more money complaints.  Now my condo association decided to whack my apartment with a $3,500 special assessment.  Ack.  Fortunately, I think I have a big tax refund coming to me. 

INTERNET RADIO

My brother introduced me to a very interesting site at http://www.pandora.com.  It's an automated internet radio, where you enter a song or artist that they enjoy, and the service responds by playing selections that it thinks are musically similar.

SPORTS AND VW FAST

So its March and there's no sports that I'm interested in to speak of going on, especially since I don't like college basketball.  I keep wishing that arena football would come to Boston.  It's the only top ten media market without one, and I live one T stop away from the Fleet center.  I guess there was the Olympics a couple of weeks ago, but the highlight of the games to me were the opening ceremonies and the Volkswagen GTI fast commercials

http://www.leftlanenews.com/2006/02/17/videos-volkswagens-bizarre-gti-fast-commercials

I thought these commercials were pretty creative, if somewhat misogynistic.  I even thought about getting a FAST to put in my car, but they are running hundreds of dollars on Ebay.  People are claiming that only 600 of them were made in total as a promotional to dealers.  It seems that this is not correct, as other sources are now reporting that they will be generally available.

http://www.leftlanenews.com/2006/03/10/500-for-a-volkswagen-fast-doll-think-again/

Actually, there are plenty of sports for me to watch, as I subscribe to the NFL Network, which means football 24/7.  The big news is the extension of the collective bargaining agreement.  This is the labor agreement between the owners and the players.  The prior deal was that a certain percentage (say 55%) of the Adjusted Revenue of the teams was allocated to player salaries in the form of a salary cap.  Adjusted Revenue was basically all of the money that the teams earned from television rights, tickets, etc., but not including certain things like luxury boxes, etc.  The salary cap for 2005 was about $85 million, meaning that each team was not allowed to spend more than that amount on its players.  The players union wanted to include all sources of income in Adjusted Revenue, and also increase the percentage of Adjusted Revenue included in the cap to 60%.  If an agreement could not be reached, it would mean massive player cuts and possibly a player strike in the future.  Fortunately, a deal was reached.  Basically, considerably more sources of income will be included in Adjusted Revenue, and the percentage will be raised to 59.5%.  The effect is dramatic, as the salary cap will now be approximately $102 million.  The Patriots are now in good shape, being about $10 million dollars under the cap.  They have at least two major players who could leave the team as free agents: Adam Vinatieri and David Givens, and they released Willie McGinest last week.