09:25 – Barbara is doing well, and Colin is delighted that she’s home. The only thing I’m dreading now is Barbara returning to work after Colin having several weeks to get used to having her full-time attention. He’s always demonic on Mondays, after having her home for just two days, so I suspect he’ll take a long time to adjust after she finally returns to work.
The news is full of articles about Netflix’s reversal of its split. The general attitude seems to be that Reed Hastings is incompetent and that Netflix has made huge mistakes from which it may not recover. My attitude is that it’s a mistake to assume that a smart guy like Hastings has suddenly turned stupid. Everyone seems to think that the decrease in Netflix’s subscriber base is a Very Bad Thing, which simply shows that most people can’t think. Netflix may have lost something like 3% of its subscribers, true. But those 3% were mostly subscribers that Netflix didn’t want, ones that were actually costing it money rather than contributing to its profits. Ones like me, in other words.
If Netflix had left its pricing unchanged and somehow still gotten rid of those 3% of undesirable subscribers, they’d have increased their profits. As it is, they also increased their prices, which means many of the remaining 97% of their subscribers are paying significantly more than they had been. Much of that increase will be spent on licensing additional programming–Netflix has added about 3,500 new TV episodes in just the last couple of weeks–but no doubt some of it will go to the bottom line. Netflix will be much more profitable than they otherwise would have been. Which is why it’s stupid that the stock price crashed. It should have skyrocketed. And it likely will, once the market realizes what just happened. As I said, Hastings is a very smart guy.
11:00 – I just ordered a cane for Barbara from Costco. She’s currently using a walker frame that belonged to my mom, but she’ll probably be off it and using a cane before too much longer.
We actually had a big argument about which cane model to buy. She ended up getting her way, and I ordered her a plain old cane-cane for about $18 with shipping. I tried to convince her to go with an upgraded model with a built-in 12-gauge shotgun, but she flatly refused. So I went to Plan B, and tried to convince her to go with a model with a built-in 32″ (81 cm) sword blade. She wouldn’t go for that, either, so I went to Plan C and tried to convince her to get one with a built-in tear gas dispenser. No dice. So she’s getting just a plain old cane-cane.
11:53 – Barbara has been using the regular toilet since she came home, so we moved the potty-chair frame into the shower in our master bath for her to sit on while she showers. I didn’t want to move it, so I just took a shower in the downstairs bathroom, next to my lab. There was already soap, regular shampoo, and so on in that shower, but I happened to notice a bottle of oatmeal and baking soda shampoo with a picture of a pretty Golden Retriever on the front. It promised a smooth and glossy coat, so I decided to give it a try. Sure enough, when I came upstairs, Barbara commented, “You sure have a smooth and glossy coat”. Or something like that.