Well it’s that dreaded time a year again when the government robs us of an hour of sleep in the name of energy savings. Yep, I’m talking about daylight savings time. It wasn’t too bad when the changed happened in April and back in October. Now thou it’s done in March and November so now we are on DST for more the 60% of the year.

The in the fall when we go off DST isn’t too bad and I get use to it pretty quickly. But, when it comes to the spring forward it usually take me two or three week to adjust to the change. This year I got kind of lucky and the time change came on the start of my days off from work. So I got a couple of extra days where I don’t have to get up by the alarm clock and get to work. I still kind of me wish I was living in Hawaii with my nephew thou as they are one of the few places in the US that doesn’t go on DST seeing as their day length is a lot more uniform, being nearer the equator and all.

Well boys and girl (well I hope there is at least one girl) it’s time to brighten your week and give you something for you viewing pleasure. As it Symmetrical Docking Friday!!!

This weeks SDF features, according to the tags at sankakucomplex.com, a couple of girls from Super Robot Wars. I went with this one for this week as the artist went a little away from the standard SDF side angle
and put the ‘camera’ down low to give us a bit of foreshortening to the look. Am always on the look out for SD images that break the trend.

image via sankakucomplex.com

Kick the kids out of the room and grab the bab… oops almost went too far on that one. But, anyway its once again for that time of the week where I bring you something for your viewing pleasure Symmetrical Docking Friday.

This weeks girls are from A Certain Magical Index and A Certain Scientific Railgun. While have figured out (as I have not watched the anime) where the Magical Index comes into play the Railgun leaves me a bit baffled.

image via sankakucomplex.com

In the vain of better late then never I bring you this weeks, Symmetrical Docking Friday. I would like to take the time apologias for the lateens of this weeks SDF. I am still fighting off a cold from last week and when I go home last night I ate a bit of dinner and went straight to bed, then I over slept this morning. Put those two things together and you have me doing the SDF when I get home from work, so here it is.

This weeks SDF is couple of cute girls in swimsuits. But it seem neither girl is quite human. The girl in the blue suit, Youmu Konpaku, is half human/ half phantom and the girl in the white suit, Yuyuko Saigyouji, is a 1000 year old ghost. The girl are from the Touhou Project series of shooter games.

image via sankakucomplex.com

Ok why is that every time is the last few months when I find a figure that I want an can afford budget wise, when I go to put in a preorder she’s sold out.

Current case in point Max Factory’s figma: Rider. She was announced on Goodsmile’s site just six days ago but every place I’ve been HLJ, Hobbysearch, and AmiAmi are all ’sold out’. Even Kidnemo, who has her priced out of my budget, is ’sold out’. She is slated to come out in May with a retail price of 3,000 yen but you can find her is a store in Japan your just SOL. My only hope is that they will do a reissue in the future.

I think Rider is my favorite Servant from Fate/Stay Night. Don’t know what it is but there some thing about a charter that doesn’t show their eye that’s both interesting and bit creepy at the same time. Must be why I liked Levy Face so much.

Well fans of Metal Gear Solid might want to skip this weeks Symmetrical Docking Friday, for it features a Rule 63 version of Raiden. (I’m not really up on MGS so anybody know who the other girl is?)

Rule 63 is one of those strange artifacts of the internet age. When Rule 34 is just not enough bored artist will do the ol’ gender switch. It’s usually boy to girl (mainly because most internet artist are guys) but girl to boy exists as well. Of course it’s just not bored internet artists. The ol’ gender switch is in main stream manga as well with titles like Ranma 1/2, Maze, and others.

image via sankakucomplex.com

Ok it’s lesson time. I am going to explain to you why you should never buy any type of computer or video cable at a major retail outlet.

Now the last job I had was working for a Office Supply store and one of the things we were always ‘graded’ on was attachment rate. You know when you buy say a printer the sales person will try and get you to buy the extended warranty, paper, ink, and a printer cable. So why are they alway trying to get you to buy the extras, after all you just dropped a couple of hundred on a new printer. It’s because there is very little money to be made in selling printers. A $200 printer only has a margin of 10-15% making the store $25 or so, and a cheap sub $100 printer is even worse with margins in the 5% range. So to increase the stores margin (ie profit) they try and sell you other things that have higher margins. Now a lot of people think it the extended warranties that are really high margin and while a $20 warranty will make the store $10 it’s cables where the real money is at.

So at at my last job we sold a 6ft store brand USB printer cable for $20. And what do you think the margin is on that? Well if you were thinking anything less then 90% you were wrong. Yep that’s right on a $20 cable the store made $18. If you think thats bad it only get worse when you start talking premium cables the 12ft cable with gold plated connectors retailed for $35 and cost the store less the $4.

So what’s a guy to do when he needs a lot of cables to clean up the rats nest that is behind his computer. Why you head on over to Monoprice.com. Where for the price of two 6ft USB cables at my old store I got:

1 6ft Stereo M/M Cable
2 6ft USB Extension Cables
4 3ft USB Cables
4 1.5ft USB Cables
2 1.5ft HDMI Cables
3 3ft HDMI Cables
3 3ft RCA Dubbing Cables
3 1.5ft RCA Dubbing Cables

All that for a little less then $45. Now several of those cables I don’t really need at this time but because monoprice gives discounts for quantity I went ahead and picked them up, and they’ll go into my box o’ cables for when I need them. That is the only down side to ordering off the internet, it takes a couple of days to get the cables. If you need a cable NOW your going to have to pay the price. So do what I do and get more then what you need, spending a couple of bucks now will save you more later.