I’ll preface this post by pointing out that, no, I’m not actually going to do anything more about this little bit of amusement apart from posting this blog entry about it. They earned the eighty cents just with the phone call I had with them a moment ago about this. My only “revenge” will come when the officially sanctioned (but not developed in-house) tethering feature is made available, and I use my G1 for internet access for my laptop, just to ride as close as possible to that 10GB-per-month soft cap. Since I don’t live in a 3G area, and the “penalty” for breaking the 10GB cap is a drop in speed back down to EDGE speeds, my effective penalty is “nothing happens.” Heh!

It’s funny, but I don’t think I’ve actually mentioned here on the site that I recently acquired a T-Mobile G1 — the first Google Android-based mobile phone — and have been getting used to it and enjoying myself immensely. It’s a seriously slick phone.

This post isn’t a review of it, though. Instead, I’m going to prattle on about the seriously funky billing trick T-Mobile just pulled on me, successfully dinging me for 4 SMS messages at $0.20 a piece despite being on a billing plan that includes at least 100 free texts per month (now 400 because of the G1’s data plan). Read the full story...

Technorati Tags: Frugal Living Silly

Apparently one of the most highly-coveted “status symbols” among wealthy Americans isn’t a car, an airplane, a building, a gadget, a golf course, or some other kind of realty. Instead, it’s just a black credit card with an American Express logo emblazoned on it. It used to be “offered” on an individual basis, by invitation only. How “exclusive.” Now that the American economy is essentially tanking, the think tank at Amex has decided to throw open the gates to their most coveted of plastic trinkets to anyone who qualifies — I guess they’re hoping more wealthy folks will decide “yeah, I’ve totally gotta have that thing before I can really claim I’m wealthy.”

Accordingly, here are helpful guidelines to qualify for the American Express Black Card. The article itself is obviously astroturf or an ad (or at least it reads like one, with such copy as “enjoy the privilege that Black Card offers you”) and presents useful information if you really do care about getting your paws on one. In a nutshell — to “earn” a Black Card, you need to not actually need it. Minimum income of $250k per year, immaculate credit, and a $5k “initiation” fee. We can only assume there’s one hell of an annual fee to go along with it.

The “benefits” of possessing such a miraculous piece of plastic? American Express always claims that their cards have no preset limits (which is bullocks since the one I had a few years back had a very firm limit clearly printed on my monthly statements), but apparently the Black Card actually doesn’t have one, or if it does, it’s really, really high. Black Card holders are assigned a personal concierge, who seems to handle all account inquiries, issues, and billing (so you don’t call a phone bank, you call a single person). It’s claimed that your personal AmEx butler can get you in at all the trendy restaurants and shows (even the overbooked ones — I guess next time you try to watch a show and can’t get tickets, it’s because big companies like AmEx have bought all the tickets to resell to their Black Card holders) and even send someone to “help you shop” when you need it.

One of the more amusing tidbits from the article though is the one that prompted me to start this entry:

You might have won the lottery and landed with a lot of cash, but if you have a terrible credit history; you might want to rethink about dreaming of an American Express Black Card.

This makes me laugh my ass off. Nobody sane (with any kind of legitimate financial sense, anyway) actually “dreams” of credit cards (either at night or when they’re awake).

I can assure you if I ever win the lottery (or experience some other kind of windfall), I will retain (in advance, in cash) the services of an attorney, an accountant, and a financial planner, all at different firms, in that order. The absolute last thing on my mind will be “gosh, I wonder how much money I can borrow now?” Given that I don’t play the lottery, I’ll actually have to go work for my windfall (dammit ).

If you’ve won the lottery, you already have plenty of cash — you don’t need the assistance of a big corporation to get into the “good” shows, as you’ll have plenty of invitations from everyone who wants your cash already. Once your net worth hits the seven digit range, your credit rating becomes a smaller part of the “bigger” financial picture for you, and as the net worth grows, the importance of your individual credit score diminishes even more until it doesn’t matter at all anymore. Think about it — once you reach a point where you can quite literally pay cash for almost anything you can imagine, why bother borrowing money unless it can eventually make (or save) you money?

If you’re not at a point where you can actually qualify for a Black Card, being driven by an intense desire to have one falls squarely in the category of “you’re doing it wrong.”

Technorati Tags: Frugal Living Money

Sadly, my Canon Powershot A570 IS camera kicked the bucket over the weekend. It’s now unwilling to reliably extend and retract the lens; since that’s sort of a vital function, it’s not strictly usable or reliable in its current state. The good news is Canon will repair it (it’s under warranty, after all), so all I had to do to kick start that process was ship it to them so they can check it out and fix the beast.

I have an account with DHL, a very good shipping company and courier, who are a decent amount cheaper than FedEx and UPS, and more reliable (and faster … heh, go figure). In many cases they’re even faster/cheaper than the United States Postal Service for similar service (in-state, DHL is cheaper by about fifty cents and faster, as in “it’s there the day after you send it,” than the USPS’ Priority Mail service, which can take up to a week despite the short distance). Since their offering met Canon’s requirements for the shipment (must include tracking and shipment must be insured for actual camera cost), they were my first choice to get this thing into Canon’s hands.

The bummer was I didn’t have the right size box or the packing materials to adequately protect the camera on its way in for repairs. I figured I could swing by the drop-off spot I use for normal DHL shipments, buy a box and some bubble wrap from them, and have them ship it themselves. I’ll never do that again.

While the shop’s packaging materials were fairly cheap (two bucks for a box and some bubble wrap isn’t a colossal ripoff), they really bent me over on the shipping. Had I just sent it myself with my own DHL account, the shipment would have cost a whopping $6.50. This place charged $12.04 for the same exact shipment (I just punched in all the info from their own receipt/copy of the waybill and got my own quote to confirm). Spending $14.15 to have a camera less than six months old serviced under warranty annoys me, but if it comes back in working order, I’ll accept it and move on. And I probably won’t be buying any of Canon’s smaller cameras anymore — they’re just too fragile. Since eventually I want to move up to a digital SLR anyway, I’ll be in a different market by the time I’m ready for a new camera in a few years.

The lesson learned here is it’s ultimately worth it to always keep a few of the boxes that random stuff you order online shows up in, because it can be reused to send to someone else if you need to. It also pays to deal with the shipping companies yourself, and skip these stupid shipping shops. They can’t resist skimming some pure profit off the part of the business they have the least direct involvement in.

Technorati Tags: Frugal Living

About a year and a half ago, a client of mine sent me an unexpected gift in the form of five books: Ender’s Game and Ender’s Shadow by Orson Scott Card, and Titan, Wizard, and Demon by John Varley. The three Varley books were a trilogy, and I actually really enjoyed it. The two books by Card are the first in their respective series of books set in the Ender’s Game universe … I’ll let you guess which one started the whole thing

It’s important to note I didn’t pay for the books. They were shipped to me straight from Amazon, so it’s clear they were brand new, but money didn’t leave my pockets to cause those books to land in my possession.

I actually read the Titan trilogy first — when I realized how big the Ender’s Game series was, I decided to tackle a smaller pile of books first. When I finally got to Ender’s Game, I absolutely loved it, and immediately set about acquiring the rest of the books in both Ender’s Game series and the Ender’s Shadow series. To do this, I went to half.com … no point in paying retail for six books when I could snag them all for under $20 (including shipping). Read the full story...

Technorati Tags: Content Cartel Frugal Living Money Politics Rants

Well, it’s been awhile since anybody’s sued me for calling their bullshit what it is, so I figured I’d trot out this ridiculously overpriced 128MB SD card with a pretty “sporting goods” brand label on it (they want $20 for this thing!). The site even helpfully offers this “advice” about your new technological acquisition:

To avoid missing any trophy shots it is helpful to have two SD cards. Once you are ready to check your pictures, simply replace the full card with a blank card; you can rest easy knowing you are not missing any pictures while you check your photos.

You’ll need this advice with any reasonably-modern camera with this $20 128MB SD card in it — with my new camera shooting pictures that, on the “highest compression high resolution” option, chew up 800KB a piece on average, you’ll only get about 150 pictures or so on a card before it’s full.

Or you could just take that same $20 and buy a 2 gigabyte card — holding 2,560 images at the same settings on the same form-factor card, for the same money. Read the full story...

I’m not going to link to this particular asshole’s website because I’m not interested in providing him any more hits or business, just in case someone reading this actually decides to “give him a chance” anyway.

ChexSystems (no, they’re not getting a hotlink either) is a remarkably scummy “system” — in theory, it’s a good idea, but, as many things end up, its execution is remarkably nasty in reality. The theory goes like this: if you ever bounce a check at a bank, or if you somehow otherwise screw up on a checking account in a way that ends up costing a bank money, you can be “reported” to ChexSystems. It’s superficially similar to the credit reporting bureaus, like Equifax, TransUnion, etc., where creditors report your (good and bad) accounts so that others can judge whether you’re worth lending money to.

Like a credit reporting company, ChexSystems tracks not only “reports” about you from banks, but also some limited information on whether you’re made good on any of the supposed strikes against you. Unlike a credit reporting company, though, no “good” information is stored about you — banks don’t report good accounts, only bad ones. The trouble gets nastier though, since reporting is only part of the problem with ChexSystems.

The big problem is that this whole thing now ties into the U.S. banking system, nearly completely infiltrating it. For the most part, if you walk into a bank or credit union and apply for a checking account, the bank will run your name and social security number through ChexSystems. If you have even one entry (even if it’s been satisfactorily resolved to the reporter’s satisfaction), the bank will refuse to open an account for you. Burn one bank, and they all turn their backs on you, essentially.

That sounds fine on paper, but there’s some pretty evil flaws with this “system.” Read the full story...

There is exactly one thing that I have to spend money on every month that goes straight into a mass-media coffer — broadband service. I use Skype for free unlimited outgoing calls (the cell phone is only for emergencies and the few times I’m out and about, need to call someone, and don’t have the laptop with me), so I have absolutely zero use whatsoever for a landline.

When I first moved into my apartment here in Melbourne, I was told (apparently errantly) by the landlord that I had to pay a fee (over $50) just to get the landlord to “flip the switch” permitting the local cable provider to bring cable modem service to my apartment. Read the full story...

About a week ago I wandered my way through the nearby Wal-Mart store to get a quick snapshot of current grocery prices (I’m still getting the hang of this coupons thing, and I do see how there are ways that coupons can drop “name brand” products below generic pricing when the manufacturers get desperate enough to knee themselves in the nuts to try to win me over as a customer (sorry, but on groceries, price trumps all else; generic chopped ham, milk, bread, cookies, crackers, tuna, pickles, ketchup, etc., is just as good as name brand stuff)).

Milk is $4.27 a gallon there now. Holy … shit. I guess somebody heard me bitching about the “parity” between gas prices and milk prices, and bumped the price up. It’s a sad, sad day when a place like Walgreens beats Wal-Mart by over 20% on a breakfast standard (they wanted $3.29 a gallon). Read the full story...

Disclaimer: This is a sponsored review.

I’ve used compact florescent light bulbs and done lots of studying and experimentation through my years of apartment (and house) living to reduce my electric bill, so I know a lot about saving money on the electric bill.

I was pointed to a post on another blog that outlines a lot of the ideas I’ve put into use in dropping electric consumption in the average household. The article very simply and aptly describes how to set up a green home. Read the full story...

…and it’s a very, very good thing.

Computers Get Faster & Cheaper

Six years ago, I built the desktop computer that’s still crunching away under my desk. It’s a dual P3 1GHz machine with 2GB of RAM (so, theoretically there’s 2GHz of horsepower under this hood). It’s got a pair of 250GB disks and an older 80GB disk (it used to have all 80GB disks), with a new DVD+/-RW drive. Compared to more “modern” computers, it’s monstrously temperamental and finicky, and it doesn’t support things like USB 2.0 and bluetooth (though it’s got PCI slots available and such support could be added if needed). It runs Linux, because all its parts are just esoteric enough that Windows XP never could run on it. Seriously. Not joking. I suspect Vista would be an equally hilarious walk down Futility Lane. Read the full story...