- BensBargains Delivers me a great GPS deal – My mother wants a GPS for Christmas, so I went to look for a good deal on one. My first place is usually BensBargains, because you can click on just about any category and find a decent deal that hasn’t expired. It happened to have the brand she wanted with the features she wanted at $100 savings via NewEgg – a retailer that I had a Google Offer for $40 off (which I paid $20 for). By the time I was done with the coupon codes and discounts, I was out the door paying under $75 for something that was originally $300 (though that’s a very inflated $300 price).
- Subway and McDonald’s Eat-in Tax Solved! – I wrote about the McDonald’s Eat-In Tax more than 3 years and after having a conversation with a Subway employee got an answer – at least for California. If you choose to eat the food in the restuarant, you’ll automatically get charged tax. If you get it “to go”, you may get charged tax; hot food is and cold food isn’t. So at Subway meatball sub to go is taxed, but a cold cut combo to go isn’t – at least in California. But don’t go toasting that cold cut combo or the state will want more money from you. Now that makes sense…
- Technical Update – If you tried to visit this site yesterday and couldn’t find it, I apologize. In an effort to give you the best performance possible, I switched my DNS provider to use Amazon’s Route53 service, but I made a cut and paste error which took the site down. If you don’t understand what a DNS provider is, be thankful, you probably have something of more practical significance occupying that space in your brain. Go onto the next bullet. Still here? According to these DNS comparisons Amazon’s Route53 will save the average visitor a few milliseconds.
- Help with Dog Green Eye – Anyone have an easy way to remove green from pictures of a dog? I spent an hour on this last night and websites such as Picnik and Pixlr didn’t help. I tried to edit them myself, but putting a brown spot over the green looks even more fake.
- Open Sourced WebOS – I’ve been a big proponent of webOS for some time now. On Friday HP announced that they intent to open source. Later in the day (before any code was actually open sourced) a developer showed off an Android phone running webOS. I love where this is trend is going. Consumers should have more choice on their operating system, phone hardware, and carrier – and be able to mix and match them to suit their needs and workflow. (Of course phone hardware in some cases is tied to a carrier such as CDMA and GSM). In other relevant news, I noticed this article today, How Android is Not Really all the Open. Gives you something think about a few years down the road when you are choosing between Apple and Google, and, maybe, Microsoft. Just like how I run Firefox now, I could see myself running webOS.
- Tebow! – In what is becoming a common occurance in this space – Tebow! The Tebow magic this past week took a pair very long field goals from the Denver Bronco’s kicker. I didn’t catch much of a mention of that kicker on SportsCenter, but Tebow had half the show. How amazing is the Tebow story? My wife is actually interested in watching next week’s game against the Patriots. That’s the first Patriots game she’s interested in this year – coming from a near lifetime Bostonian who is a Red Sox fan. He makes people who dislike football watch. I’ll give credit for that.
and for the personal finance links:
- Digerati Life presents 10 free ways to market & promote your website.
- My Dollar Plan talks about 5% Amazon discount using price check.
- Money Smart Life asks what is a good credit score worth?
- Free Money Finance discusses tattoos and your career.
- Len Penzo dot Com posts marital bliss and the hunt for the best thermostat setting.
- One Frugal Girl wonders do you restrict the number of gifts your children receive?
- Money Ning writes what to do immediately after we become debt free.
- Get Rich Slowly blogs on why financial literacy fails (and what to do about it).
- Dough Roller says why credit card minimum payments will maximize your financial pain.
- Humble Savers blogs worried about your finances?
- The Simple Dollar on saving pennies or dollars: home photo printing.
If I lived in California I’d always order my food to-go.
I predict that the Patriots will stomp the Broncos. Tebow magic will come to an end.
I always order to-go as well. However, it really only helps if your food is cold. Guess that could be some good savings on sushi.
I hope you are right, the Patriots had their hands full the last couple of weeks with teams (Colts and Redskins) that were a combined 4 and 19 (or something close to it).