If you are like me, you aren’t pleased when the price of stamps goes up.  Here in my desk drawer, I still have about ten 34cent stamps, twenty 37cent stamps, and fifty 41cent stamps!  None of those will be usable starting next week.  I’ve been gradually using those 34cent stamps since 2001!

Fortunately, the Post Office has finally created the Forever Stamp - a stamp which will always be good for a first class stamp, regardless of rate increases.  Needless to say, I marched myself over to usps.com and bought myself a 10year supply of stamps!

I estimate that I use about 50 stamps per year.  I then looked up the historical prices of stamps, and projected postage through 2018.  I then calculated the amount of money I’m going to save with these wonderful Forever stamps - (not to mention that I won’t have a drawer full of useless stamps).   My savings - $28.80.  Woo hoo!  To those who don’t stock up - suckers!  OK - I’m actually aware that if I put the $205 I just spent on postage into the bank at 3% interest in the end, I’d actually spend less money.  But - that’s not the point!  Think of the bragging rights when I bring out my 41cent stamp in 2018 to mail a letter! 

I read this article today about how Yahoo lost its way by “coddling” Google.

You could take the article, roll the clock back by 10 years, change the quotes, and replace Yahoo/Google with Netscape/Yahoo.

Yahoo, like Google, was founded by a couple of Stanford computer science geeks.  They got their start not only via a business deal with the then-giant Netscape, but by having Netscape actually host Yahoo’s servers… 

Fate, it seems, is not without a sense of irony.

What some writers will do to make a headline!  Well, it works, which is all too sad.  Today, InformationWeek’s Thomas Claburn writes yet another piece of trash.  His article, Thieving Third-Party Gmail App Highlights Google Security Worries, speaks for itself.

Claburn’s ridiculous argument is that some guy wrote the combination to his MasterLock on the lock itself, and Claburn think’s it’s MasterLock’s fault!

Ok - well now I remember why InformationWeek is free.

This year, Valentine’s Day landed on Thursday.  Valentine’s Day is a day where we buy lots of perishable presents - flowers, candy, etc.  So of course, the stores have all the Valentine’s Day items at 50% off even today…  they don’t save until next year.

By celebrating on Friday instead of Thursday, we had the luxury of going out on a weekend night instead of a weekday night.  But I also saved 50% on the gifts.  Totally cheap?  Probably; but I bought twice as much stuff…. I think I’ll do it again next year.  Unfortunately, Feb 14, 2009 is a Saturday.  So I’ll have to come up with a new excuse for waiting an extra day…

Hurricane Katrina struck the US in August 2005.  That’s 2.5 years ago.  Today, FEMA is finally kicking people out of 35,000 trailers from that event.  Occupants of those trailers are mad at FEMA.  They’ve been living in the trailers for 2.5 years while simultaneously claiming that they want to sue as a result of their health problems from living in the trailers.   If they know of the health problems, they should, uh, maybe leave?

This raises several questions.

First, why are these people getting free housing for 2.5 years?  Free housing is not a federal responsibility.  2-3 months should have been the limit for people to find new housing.

Second, why should we provide housing even for temporary relief?  If you provide victims with nothing, they can’t sue.  If you provide them with trailers that they claim are unhealthy, they can sue you for being negligent.  These people are whiners and users.  No matter what you give them, it’s never enough.  Fine, give no federal aid anymore for this type of tragedy.  It’s better than dealing with the ungrateful.

Of course, the lawyers are to blame; the American Bar Association even set up a whole website to help the “victims” sue somebody.  Not sure who to blame?  Ask the ABA!

If the victims had any money, I’m sure a smart lawyer would help me sue the victims.  After all, why did I have to spend billions of tax money just because these people were too dumb to move out of a flood plain which nature clearly wants to cover with water?  Don’t spend money on the levy; this will happen again.

As politically incorrect as it is, I finally got around to doing my google search for “Osama Obama” today.  It yields some very funny stuff.

In the process of updating our living quarters, I had the opportunity to use both SelectBlinds.com and also Blinds.com for different window coverings in our house.  Since my carpet review of Home Depot and Empire Carpet was so popular, it seems that people want to hear about this.

Blinds.com

Blinds.com was the first company we did business with.  We ordered about 20 1″ wood blinds.  The total cost was about $1000.  The blinds arrived promptly - within about 2 weeks of our order.  The blinds look great, and we haven’t had many complaints.  Within a few months, one of the blinds that we ordered had the string break; we barely use the blinds, so we’re pretty sure it was a manufacturing issue.  We contacted the company, they sent out a new one, and everything is fine.  Overall, I think we got a really good price and the company honored their promises.  Great.

SelectBlinds.com

I used SelectBlinds on a secondary order because this type of blind was cheaper than via Blinds.com.  We wanted the honeycomb shades.  These take a little longer to order, presumably because they sell less volume.  They estimated 2 weeks.  After 3 weeks had gone by, I hadn’t heard anything, so I contacted them via their website.  No response.  Instead, I called their 888 number, and the support person was fairly nice.  She indicated that they’d have to contact the manufacturer, and then find out what happened - as our order had already passed to the manufacturer.   They then did reply via email that they had contacted the manufacturer and that the order would be mailed “any day now”, and the order was finally processed over a week later.  In all, it took about 4 weeks to get the blinds.  Once finally received, the blinds were great; we like them and they installed fine.

Conclusion

Both companies provided what we asked for and the blinds look great.  Blinds.com had a one low quality blind, which they fixed without trouble.  SelectBlinds was a little late with delivery, but the blinds were less common ones.  Overall, I think the two were exactly the same.  My conclusion:  use whatever coupons you can find and just pick the cheapest.  The product, ease of installation, and promises on goods delivered is about the same.

For the intelligent readers of this blog, this entry is just a rant.  I heard a segment on the radio tonight about “Should you Refinance”, and I was pretty appalled at the advice given.  The expert on the radio said, “If you are already well into your loan, one drawback is that you’ll reset the clock for 30 years with your new loan…”

Ok, well its true that you generally get 30 more years to repay.  But since when is that a drawback?   His statement reflects the underlying principle of how Americans view loans - and it is very troubling. 

Refinancing shouldn’t be about getting a lower monthly payment unless you simply can’t afford your current loan (should be rare).  Refinancing should be about saving money because you are paying less in interest each year and paying more against your principal instead.  It’s pretty simple.

Are we so stupid that we think we have to put the dollar amount that is on the payment slip each month?  Yeah, I guess we are - welcome to the land of the ‘interest only’ ‘30 year loan’.

In stark contrast to yesterday’s photos of Hillary Clinton, here are the Barack Obama results.  Again, these are only plucked from the first page of results.  There were no pictures with popping-out eyeballs, rage, pointing fingers, grimaces,  expressions of disdain, surprise, or disgust.  Just an all-around, likeable guy.

Unfortunately, on average, people don’t read papers past the pictures.  That’s why the USA Today is popular!

I’ve noted before that the press loves publishing horrible photos of Mrs. Clinton.  They pick on her like no other.  We’ve seen so many of these pictures, we’ve now begun to think she’s the dragon lady.  Maybe she is.  What do I know.   I did a Google image search for Hillary Clinton, and here is what I saw.  Every one of these is from the first page of results:

No wonder we find her unappealing.  Tomorrow, I’ll post Barack Obama’s pictures.  Who do you think the press wants for President?  Who do you think really controls your vote?