Endless Gibberish

I got stimulated.

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I awoke this morning to find that the us government added $300 to my net worth. The reason I get $300 instead of $600 is I paid no taxes for 2007 (all federal taxes paid were refunded).

I’m not particularly short on cash these days as I still have money form my birthday last month in addition to my federal tax refund so this “stimulus” check will actually go towards it’s intended purpose.

What particular consumer industry will I be stimulating? Me and my friends are planning on going skydiving in the next couple of weeks. Rather then spend the money on trendy clothing or gadgets, I decided to do something I’ll remember for years to come. Maybe I’ll get addicted and become a hobbyist, who knows.

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Automatic savings still works! Emergency fund surpasses $2,500

I finally got around to upping my emergency fund contribution to $35/week. Upon checking my account balance it turns out my weekly contributions of $30/week have added another $1,000 to my emergency fund balance since Sept 07 when my emergency fund hit the $1,500 mark.

I’m setting a definite target amount for my emergency fund. The magic number is $10,000. If I continue at a rate of $35/week contributions it would take 214 weeks or so to accumulate $7,500. Interest accumulation here and there should cut a week or two off.

The most difficult part of saving is not touching the money. I use to have an obsessive habit of checking the balance daily but now I’ll check my balance once a month or so.

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Happy Marvel shareholder.

Back at the end of December I decided to open up a position in Marvel (MVL). Immediately afterwards the stock took a small plunge (which happens a lot with investments in retrospect). With the recent Iron Man success the stock is hitting new highs and I’m a happy shareholder. It’s pointless to be happy as I’m in this one for the extremely long term. Marvel deciding to finance and create their own movies was a great decision. Of course there are more risks than with just licensing the characters out but the rewards can be greater.

I got around to seeing the movie this weekend and can see what the hype was all about. Iron Man was ready to be marked off as another cheese comic book flick but I was proven wrong. I missed out on the after credits scene though. I guess somebody was kind enough to make a video it on their phone and post it on youtube.

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Happy Hours, Happy Days

Recently I turned 21 and discovered the whole “happy hour” experience. Those unfamiliar with “happy hour” concept can check wikipedia. When a establishment like the Olive Branch can offer $1 mugs and $0.50 pizza slices weekdays 4-7pm… you know i’m there.

There needs to be a collective source for information for all the happy hours that are going on around town for the frugal that like to go out and have a drink. The only decent website I found so far was unthirsty.com but that’s far from a collective source of information as they only list 1 bar by me.

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Comment Spam

If you posted a comment in the past week it might take a bit to get past moderation as my spam filter is doing a bad job of catching spam comments these days.

Each day I wake up to a hundred comments awaiting moderation, 99% of which are spam. Argh.

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Keyherb.com spams my blog!

Awhile back I posted about how keyherb.com doesn’t know simple business sense. I guess the people over at keyherb.com found my blog post and decided to spam my blog with 3 comments. The first attacks the customer they wronged the other two are “tesimonials” to how great Keyherb.com is.

These comments were submitted April 27th. Check em out:

Author : buster-Blues-max (IP: 75.46.196.96 , adsl-75-46-196-96.dsl.elpstx.sbcglobal.net)
E-mail : dfgf@aol.com
URL :
Whois : http://ws.arin.net/cgi-bin/whois.pl?queryinput=75.46.196.96
Comment:
WOW, so they refunded your money and you took time out to vent your loss. You must be a wonderful person to deal with in life. WHAT A WASTE OF TIME.

KeyHerb DOD is one of my favorite places to shop. Keep up the good work KeyHerb I really enjoy your products.

Author : sharron_43 (IP: 75.46.196.96 , adsl-75-46-196-96.dsl.elpstx.sbcglobal.net)
E-mail : xvsdfvfd@aol.com
URL :
Whois : http://ws.arin.net/cgi-bin/whois.pl?queryinput=75.46.196.96
Comment:
I love KeyHerbs porducts. Never once have I had a problrm with ordering from them. I LOVE KEYHERBS PRODUCTS!

Author : sharron_4334 (IP: 75.46.196.96 , adsl-75-46-196-96.dsl.elpstx.sbcglobal.net)
E-mail : vbnbvd@aol.com
URL :
Whois : http://ws.arin.net/cgi-bin/whois.pl?queryinput=75.46.196.96
Comment:
I love KeyHerbs porducts. Never once have I had a problrm with ordering from them. I LOVE KEYHERBS PRODUCTS!

I wouldn’t have found this worth posting if they didn’t feel the need to attack yet again the ex-customer they harassed in the first place.

I guess they only meant to post 2 comments as the third comment seems a re-post of the 2nd with a slight change in the comment author’s name. Either they’re spamming sites that cast them in a negative view or they really have repeat customers that “never had a problrm ordering from them” that don’t mind going around defending them.

So what’s the lesson here? Spend less time harassing customers or posting comments on blogs and try working on customer service. Also try posting from different IP addresses so your efforts look more legitimate. Seriously, if keyherb.com feels THAT bitter about giving somebody a refund maybe they should try their own products sometime. Maybe they don’t work that well?

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Recent changes at EG

Upgraded Wordpress to 2.5.1. Wordpress should implement an auto-update feature since new versions are coming out of frequently.

Changed the theme yet again just because i felt like it. The last one wasn’t quite doing it for me. I still need to get the contact form back online. The last one was resulting in me receiving 20+ spam messages a day.

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Pay money for a stupid shirt about a stupid story!

Once in a while I browse cnn.com for news stories and I’ve noticed that the quality and sophistication of CNN has degraded slowly over the years. Apparently a gas station that charges $5.40 for gas is considered newsworthy and front page material. This location is along a particular stretch of the Pacific Coast Highway in California. It’s literally located in the middle of nowhere. The nearest stations are at least 50 miles in either direction. They spend $4,000/day to operate the diesel generator for electricity for the compound.

So isn’t it obvious they have to charge a premium since their running costs are higher? This is sensationalist news reporting on the network I least expected to find it. It’s not like this gas station has always been cheap. Through the years they’ve always charge a percentage premium to the gas they sell and I’m sure they’ve been highlighted several times by news outlets that engage in sensational media reporting.

To top it off, for select stories, CNN will sell you a t-shirt with that story’s headline on it accompanied with the tag “I read it on CNN.com” for only $15. Apparently the title of this story is worthy of being on a t-shirt.

What the hell is wrong with CNN these days?

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Even I have my weaknesses.

Rockstar Games is releasing Grand Theft Auto IV on April 29th and I already pre-ordered it through Amazon. I swore that I’d never buy games again for $60 and that’s partly the reasons why I joined Gamefly (and canceled Netflix).

However I have a soft spot for the GTA games ever since I fell in love with the free roaming gameplay. So sadly I will be parting with $60 to fufill this “fix”.

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Having trouble purchasing a $10,000+ item?

I was browsing through FlyerTalk and came upon this thread in which the original poster is essentially purchasing a round-the-world ticket for $17,000 for her mom but doesn’t know how to pay for it since none of her credit card limits go that high.

I like the beginning part of the post: “OK, I know some of you can actually pay such an amount on a credit card, but for us “normal” folks our credit cards do not have limits that sky-high.”. I guess I’m not normal ;).

The solution is simple. Get a credit card with a revolving credit card with no real limit. My Citi Platinum AAdvantage card allows me to make purchases over my $12,000 limit (I haven’t even come close.) as long as I pay enough to get it back under $12,000 before my payment is due.. You really want to pay with a credit card as opposed to just writing a check because if things get messed up on your trip. You can dispute it a lot more easily with your credit card company.

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