I was at the supermarket earlier today and as I walked out I saw a credit card cut up into two pieces and discarded on the street. The first thought that ran through my mind was hopefully the person canceled the card instead of just cutting it up. The card still had the visible name, card # and security code on back. Perhaps with careful glueing the card could actually be used again?

Add to the fact this person littered! Tsk. tsk. Everyone knows to never litter things that could be traced back to you.

I was flipping through the channels and CNN had day 2 of the DNC and they were interviewing former basketball star Charles Barkley. Barkley was commenting on how he use to be a Republican but he’s supporting the Democrats this year and considers himself an independent. The quote went something like this:

Barkley: “My kids said republicans are for rich people. I had to break the news to them that we are rich.”

I laughed. That is all.

Flexo over at Consumerism Commentary gives me a mention in his post about Kiva. I’m glad Kiva is getting more exposure and it’ll get tons more exposure on CC than here.

I discovered another blog I like. It’s called Wisebread: “living large on a small budget”. Two articles I particularly like are Fake it Till You Make It: Thrift on the Sly and top 10 homemade drunk snacks.

I had a awesome weekend. Friday was a trip to the beach because summer’s almost over. Trips to the beach cost $8 admission, 1.5-2 hour drive’s worth of gas, and then overpriced food at shops along the water. All in all, it’s a cheap way to have fun for 8 hours. Saturday was errands in the city and then the 17th Annual Brewfest in Adamstown, PA. For $28 you get to experience 30+ beers and a German buffet. The place was 2.5+ hours away and I think I got up to 22 or 24 beer samplings before I called it a night. Then I woke up and had a Smorgasbord buffet for lunch and then visited the Amish. That about sums up my weekend.

I strongly believe too many people are not competent enough to vote. I won’t go into any poltics here but I guess that’s a fact of life.

Back in September of 2006 I signed up for the Chase Cash Plus Rewards Mastercard as a backup card in case Citi decided to end 5% rewards cards (which they did). The card got me 5% back on gas, supermarket, and pharmacy purchases.

Today when I logged into my chase online account I got a screen informing that Chase kindly “upgraded” my card to earn 3% in top everyday categories. I don’t know why they have to call it’s the complete fucking opposite. Seriously.

I’d appreciate it if they were honest and just sent a letter that said “listen, we’re not making any money off of you. All you do is actually use this card for gas and supermarket purchases… not to add that you pay the balance in full in month”.

The Discover Open Road Card offers 5% back on the first $100 in gas and auto maintenance purchases each month. I hardly ever spend more than $100 in gas a month so this card might be perfect for me. I don’t have a Discover card yet and gas stations are one of the few types of places that always take Discover.

I’m writing this post from my Opera web browser. It’s fast and sleek… everything Firefox use to be for me. It seems with every update and new version Firefox became more memory intensive and slower. Fuck features. All I need is tabbed browsing. Simplicity is king.

I think one of the problems is Gmail and firefox. Whenever I leave a tab open with Gmail long enough the browser will freeze up for a couple minutes and then display a message asking if I want to stop running the script on the Gmail website. Whenever I load up Gmail in firefox the memory usage of firefox shoots up considerably. I really don’t know what the deal is.

I do have a triple monitor setup. Perhaps I should run Gmail with Opera on one monitor seperately.

Ac ouple days ago I went to my local Citgo gas station for a fill up and saw on the huge sign they were selling gas for $3.62 a gallon and next to the price was a sign indicating it was a “cash only price”. I had to drive up to the pump to find out the credit price was 10 cents more expensive per gallon at $3.72. I opted to use my credit card to pay for my fill up.

10 cents off $3.72 is a 2.7% discount. If your credit card gives you a higher percentage off it’s obvious to go with the credit card. I’m assuming the gas station basically giving you the discount on what they pay for taking credit cards. I didn’t take too long to decide to pay with credit as 5% of $3 is already 15 cents.

Another annoying factor when I use to pay with cash and got a fill up is the gas station attendent always pumped enough to round up to the next dollar which is basically wasted money and gas. This was back when gas was less than $2 so pumping a extra 50 cents was over a quarter of a gallon. I could smell the wasted gas if I kept the window rolled down while driving off. FYI it’s illegal to pump your own gas in New Jersey because of outdated laws from when gasoline use to be dangerous to handle. It’s mighty convenient when the temperature outside is 10 degrees.