Another Wierd Dream about a Rich Dude

Dreams are so strange. Last night I had a dream that I was hanging out with Bill Gates and he started to tell me about his heritage. He told me that his lineage went back all the way to the start of Princeton, to a family in France and an a family in England, in the 1500s. (My wife went to Princeton, but it wasn't founded until the 1700s I believe, though it was 4th college in the United States). The strange thing was that he was very impressed that the family in France that he descended from held land for the King of France, and never gave up any land in 500 years.

I went on to tell someone else about Bill Gates' heritage, and how it really was impressive that through all the wars the family never gave up any land.

What does it all mean???

Sheldon Adelson

Just read an interesting article on Sheldon Adelson. He's the third richest person in the world, and getting rich at quite a clip. I guess he's made a bunch of money in Las Vegas, and also Macau, probably in real estate. He also founded and sold Comdex, the computer exposition.

Sears credit card by Citi interest rate went up for me!

Recently I requested a credit line increase on my Citi-issued Sears card. Whoops, they looked at my credit file and found that I owed too much on my other cards. They not only denied the line increase, but also increase my default APR. Doh!

Oh well, the debt I have with them is at a great APR and I have the money to pay it down so I'm not too worried about it.

Congrats to Deval Patrick

The Democratic party gubernatorial election was won by Deval Patrick today: way to go Deval! Good luck against Kerry Healey.

PayPal Buyer Credit

I have a personal PayPal account, and my business has a "business" PayPal account, and somehow both my accounts have the same ssn #, even though I put my ein # in the business account. This has caused some problems, such as a debit card getting denied over and over. I finally called and found out why: the duplicate ssn #s.

I'll close my personal PayPal account, and be done with it.

While I was at it, I tried to figure out why my recently approved buyer credit didn't work last night when trying to buy some low cost keyboards. Today when I tried to call and ask about the problem, they asked me a few questions, which after I responded correctly, they froze my account. Great, well I had to spend another 2 hours on the phone trying to get through to find out which credit bureau they got the information from. So a letter goes out to Equifax requesting corrections to be made to my report. We'll see what happens, and then another call to GE Money Bank to try and figure out what caused me to get reported to fraud in the first place.

Painting the office

To save a couple of bucks, I'm planning to paint the walls in my office. They are currently an off-white color, and I'm thinking of changing to a brighter white. Thanks to Google, I found this helpful page on how to paint a room:

How to paint a room.

It says to buy high quality paint, so I guess I'll be buying some more expensive paint to put on the walls. Unfortunately I don't even know how to judge paint quality. My friend Gary used to work at a paint store so maybe he knows a thing or two. He even recommended a painter, but I think I'm going to pinch some pennies and paint the walls myself as it will be more good practice in managing a medium sized project. (I need the practice!)

First thing I'll need to do is create a budget. The office consists of 5 rooms, and two bathrooms. I'm not sure about how big each room is, so it will be difficult to estimate the amount of paint to buy. The office came with some paint so I might be able to use that, too. My parents have a lot of equipment that I can use, so perhaps I'll check out what they have before going shopping myself.

Cheap drink, returnable cans, and rewards

Hi, I drink Diet Coke. I drink a lot of it. Sometimes it makes me feel queasy, sometimes it makes me feel jittery.

Beyond that, I drink it because it is cheap (I try to get 12 packs for less than $3), usually amounting to about @0.25 per can, plus $0.05 deposit. I always turn in the deposit, so it doesn't really count.

Nowadays I've been entering my coke rewards codes. This is where Coke really makes their money: marketing. I'm sure that the companies that are giving away stuff for Coke rewards are paying Coke. Amazing.

I think I'll use my points to get either a large print from Kodak, or a discount coupon for an online retailer. We'll see.

Massachusetts Gas Prices

Just found this great website:

Massachusetts Gas Prices

Their content is awesome, and the software setup is very smart - they've really created incentives to contribute, which is the lifeblood of the site. And its smart that its local, too wide an area would be tough to manage.

The interface is a little busy, but at least entertaining. Maybe it can save you some dough on gas!

Sportingbet Arrest

If you've read the news lately, you likely noticed that the CEO of sportingbet was arrested recently. The reports claim that the arrest won't bode well for the business of online gambling.

Online gambling, and gambling in general, is not my cup of tea. I would sooner play the stock market, and much more likely learn about probabilty. Those are much more entertaining to me, and will probably make me wealthier, faster.

To those of you who love to gamble, take it easy. Its all sizzle, no steak.

TD Banknorth Online Banking Down

It's 10:08PM on Thursday night, and the TD Banknorth online banking website is down. Another strike against them.

Good places to buy cheap furniture

My wife and I have been on the lookout for good cheap new furniture. So far we've scoped out Jordan's Furniture in Avon, Massachusetts. It wasn't too cheap. Then we went to Ikea just up the road, which was cheap and good and new, but not in stock. That experience was frustrating. Lastly we surfed online and found Target. My wife has bought furniture from them before and the quality impressed me.

Hopefully the clothes chests were looking to purchase will also be good quality. No sense in buying junk, even if its cheap. Any suggestions?

Business Credit Cards

I have a bunch of business credit cards, some of which are good, some of which are not good. I'm unhappy to report that my CapitalOne Business card now falls in the latter, not good, category.

I checked their rewards when I first got the card, and it listed the possibility of getting a $100 statement credit for 10,000 miles, or 1% rebate. I hoped to add this to my Visa Extras for abuot 1.25% discount. No such luck. They recently changed their rewards program, removing the statement credit, and now only offer gift cards worth about 0.5% the volume of purchases made on the card. Considering the card limit is only $600, I think I'll sock draw it now in lieu of the new Home Depot mastercard I got for my business. It has a limit of $5500, and 1% rewards for standard purchases, as well as 2% rewards for Home Depot purchases. Good stuff.

Energy Efficient Hair Dryers

On the quest to find an energy efficient hair dryer, I found another person looking for them too:

Energy Efficient Hair Dryers

Hair dryers are expensive to boot. Ooof.