First Things First: All Hat Tips to Tony Poshek, The Satirical Sourcerer
  (formerly known as The Cynical Sorcerer, but it seems only us bloggers got the joke)

How’s that invoice payment system working for you?
“Defense Contractor Was Paid $1 Million to Ship 2 Washers“

A South Carolina defense contractor pleaded guilty to bilking the Pentagon out of $20.5 million over nearly 10 years by adding hundreds of thousands of dollars to the cost of shipping spare parts such as metal washers and lamps. The parts were bound for key military installations, including those in Iraq and Afghanistan. In one instance, in 2006, the government paid C&D Distributors $998,798 in transportation costs for shipping two 19-cent washers.

This only goes to show why it pays to have a rules-based e-Procurement system in place that only automatically approves invoices if the amounts are within expected tolerances and routes those amounts, along with corresponding invoice information, that are not within tolerances to a human operator.

Well here’s a new market to profit from, that I bet you never thought of: A man in India is apparently charging people to spend time with his iPhone. Not to buy it mind you, just spend some time to touch/see/feel it. Apparently ~$12 will get you 15 minutes.

At least it’s an iPhone and not a blackberry … otherwise, Dictionary.com might have to create a new definition for RIMming …

Sometimes auctions provide miracles:
An 18th-century painting went into a small U.K. auction house estimated to be worth a couple hundred pounds. It turned out to be a Renaissance masterpiece worth millions!

Just goes to show that you should always research what you buy … or sell.