Recent comments

  • Attempts to Escape the Clutches of Online Data Aggregators   15 years 44 weeks ago

    Thanks for the information -- while I knew that there were companies data mining I didn't know how many there were.

    OTOH, even just from the free information on those sites I only found one that was even remotely accurate. For my name at my current address most had the wrong DOB (though the correct age), wrong income, wrong age for the house, wrong occupation, et al. They even had pictures of some other person. One had a "deep web" search that merely took me to the first google entry for my name plus my state. Whoever is paying for these searches is sure not getting their money's worth!

  • Uglify Your Stuff To Keep It Safe   15 years 44 weeks ago

    This is about the dumbest thing I've heard of. I've had a bike stolen that was rusted, dented, no chain and had a plant covering it! My old, beat up crappy car was broken into, not once but several times while the new cars on the block were untouched-older cars are easier to steal as they are less likely to have alarms or special keys. I live in a house with an overgrown yard and peeling paint-we've had to put locks on the gates and barbed wire on the gate to prevent people from just taking anything not nailed down-including the trash someone stole before I could carry it to the trashcan!! I don't know where ya'll live but here, crappy bikes, crappy cars, crappy phones are stolen at the same rate if not higher rates than new stuff. Some people will steal anything.
    Forget talking to the co-worker, our co-worker just laughs and eats your food in front of you! The other day he offered me some of MY yogurt!!!

  • A Cheapskate’s Guide to Eating Out   15 years 44 weeks ago

    I am a server as well I was trained in a five star restaurant with three star prices. During our training, it was pointed out that people could make and serve their own food at home. They go out to eat for the convenience of having someone else prepare, serve, and clean up afterwards. They are paying for a pleasant, clean place in which to eat and pass the time in conversation. A servers job is to do all the convenient things that someone doesn't want to do for themselves (that should not include baby-sitting, however). So tip if they handle all that.. If they can't handle that, tell a manager. I can't stand when people say "I got bad service so I didn't leave a tip." instead, you should say "I got bad service, so I talked to a manager, moved to another servers section and had fantastic service"

  • Armor Etch can be a cheap fix for your scratched eyeglasses   15 years 44 weeks ago

    I too purchased glasses online and have scratches on one of my lenses that is affecting my vision. I haven't even had them for a year yet! It must have been fate that I happened upon this post. I'm definitely going to try it.

  • Do You Practice Math When You Leave a Tip?   15 years 44 weeks ago

    Have you ever trained an animal or small child? The time for proper correction is at the time of the no-no, not long after the fact. If you want to rub the waiter's nose in it, take your payment (and the pitiful tip you chose to leave) to the manager. Tell the manager why you're leaving a piddling 1% tip or whatever, and have them ream out the server door forgetting your straw or sugar packet or whatever. Problem will be solved, and some managers will even comp your bill so you won't have to pay for your food at all! The cost of the entire meal can be taken out of the servers pay instead, and they'll be taught a lesson they won't forget in a hurry.

  • Do You Practice Math When You Leave a Tip?   15 years 44 weeks ago

    Why go out to eat if it's not in your budget? What are you paying any money at all for, if you can make the same meal at home for a fourth of the cost? I agree, if you can't afford to tip, don't eat out.

  • Do You Practice Math When You Leave a Tip?   15 years 44 weeks ago

    Not all restaurants work this way. Some send their servers home with cash every night. But every credit card company charges a vendor a certain percentage of each transaction. Most of the time, this comes out of the tip total. So it costs the server money to run your credit or debit card. Cash everything is better, because the vendor dosent incur those charges and it's easier to keep track of your buget that way. Why pay interest on your purchaces?

  • Do You Practice Math When You Leave a Tip?   15 years 44 weeks ago

    I'm a college grad with 12 grand in student loans, and an abysmal job market. I wait tables because I can get a job waiting tables. Simply being employed is a blessing. If you can't afford to leave a tip, don't eat out. Make your own food at home, cheapskate.
    I AM being paid for my work by tips. I kind of prefer being paid for the work I do, rather than the hours I'm physically present. After all, I work 100% of the time that I'm on the clock. How many office drones take long lunches or surf the Internet instead of doing the work they're paid for? How is that fair? That's exactly why waiters deserve a tip. Also, if you don't leave a tip, the server will just insult your predecessors, shrug, and move on. If you are truly dissatisfied with the service they've given you, to ensure it dosent happen again, tell a manager exactly why. That way, the server will be reprimanded or fired, you'll get preferred treatment for being an a$$, and you'll do away with the passive aggressive bull. The tip part comes at the end of a meal, long after the time when a server can correct their behavior. By speaking up, you can get what you want instead of quietly seething until you decide to "inform" them of their poor life choices by cheating them out of their wages.

  • How To Get A Big Payoff From College Scholarships   15 years 44 weeks ago

    Very nice site and article

  • How To Get A Big Payoff From College Scholarships   15 years 44 weeks ago

    Thanks for sharing.

  • Personal Finance Lessons from Online Adventure Game (RuneScape)   15 years 44 weeks ago

    Hey, I played runescape and they rock. Better than wow. They are going down after been in the business for a long time. Kudo runescape.

  • Personal Finance Lessons from Online Adventure Game (RuneScape)   15 years 44 weeks ago

    You know what? I don't want to sound bias but WOW is my top pick. Runescape is just not my cup of tea. Compare Google with Yahoo. Google by far the best search engine but Yahoo is catching up or... Anyway, what I mean is choice that people have.

  • Travel and Money: Using Your Credit Card on the Road   15 years 44 weeks ago

    Another excellent article as usual, Nora.

    Funny, how different travelers use different systems. As we approach our 5th year of our open ended, non-stop world travel as a family, we have almost NEVER used credit cards because of some of the down sides you mention. The currency conversion surcharges can be VERY painful when you are in countries that have a much stronger currency ....even with the best of them.

    I don't think we could travel as luxuriously or as cheaply as we have in Europe ( 23 dollars a day per person for many years) had we used our credit cards, especially when the dollar was so low compared to the euro ( most of the time we were here).

    Of course, we do extended travel, so our needs are different than someone coming her for a two week holiday or vacation.

  • How to Make Moonshine   15 years 44 weeks ago

    Dear Z,

    So Aging is really only for pot stills that carry flavors thru the distilling process along with the product? Not for pure ethanol/vodka ?

  • Swoopo - great auction deals or great scam?   15 years 44 weeks ago

    Nice blog!! i also know a very good site for penny auction

    Bidzillion.com !!!!
    Save up to 99% off retail at BidZillion.com online auctions

  • 8 of our Favorite Fitness and Diet Smart Phone Apps   15 years 44 weeks ago

    To be beautiful, please show position of Tang, in order to become a handsome guy, please use the position show hall. To view the related information, please visit 2daydiet-green.com.

  • Europe has the Euro. Are you ready for The Amero?   15 years 44 weeks ago

    War in Iraq Defies U.S. Timetable 传奇私服 for End of Combat. President 传奇私服 Obama has set an August deadline for 传奇私服 the end of the combat mission 传奇私服 in Iraq. Here at this makeshift desert camp in the 传奇私服 insurgent badlands of northern Iraq, 传奇世界私服 a mission is under way that is not going to stop then: 传奇sf American soldiers hunting 传奇sf terrorists and covertly watching an Iraqi checkpoint 传奇sf staffed by police officers 私服 whom the soldiers say they 私服 do not trust. “They’re not 私服 checking anybody, and they’re 最新私服 wondering why I.E.D.’s are getting 最新私服 in to town,” said Staff Sgt. 最新私服 Kelly E. Young, 39, from 英雄合击 Albertville, Ala., as he 英雄合击 watched the major roadway that 英雄合击 connects Baghdad with Mosul, 私服传奇 regarded as the country’s 私服传奇 most dangerous city. He referred to 私服传奇 improvised explosive devices, sf the military term for homemade sf bombs. The August deadline might sf be seen back home as a milestone in the fulfillment of President Obama’s promise to end the war in Iraq, but here it is more complex.

  • How Online Job Boards Can Actually Help A Job Search   15 years 44 weeks ago

    The "black hole" concept is so true. However, the level of pickiness from companies is even more unbelievable. I remember much like some here when you would post your resume of a site like Monster and get contacted shortly thereafter. Today however, even applying directly through a company's career page yields no responses for the most part. Even now phone interviews have come back as preliminary screening process. Unfortunately sometimes once you have spoken to them about their openings, that same person that was so easy to contact to schedule the phone interview, has now become a on-going call to the person's answering machine. You leave a message but no one calls back even though you're often told to call back if you don't hear back within a specified time frame. I've called back like a collector would call multiple times to see if maybe I can reach the person I spoke to. Of course never leaving multiple messages. As for why I think they're a bit picky, I finished a phone interview that went well until the person told me that although I had say 8 of 10 bullet points, it was those two that disqualified me from further consideration. What got to me more as I tried to stay calm and not "burn any bridges" was that these two specific points were nowhere in the resume that the person used to contact me. In fact, the interview was over before being scheduled and providing a false hope of being able to get out of this miserable situation. Obviously I'm no corporate recruiter but is it me (please forgive the sports analogy) or are these company's acting like NBA teams that are hoping that after dumping all their salaries in lay-offs, they can now find their next All-Star in the unemployed ranks? Speaking for myself I say you're more likely to find a lot more team players to develop for every LeBron out there plus the likelihood of these companies having laid off these "10 bullet point" ,"specialized industry experience" personnel is quite unlikely. To further underscore the feeling of underachievement" in this resume process is the fact that companies containing positions that fall under the "underemployed" category will often hire those candidated that are more less likely to leave when the job market starts to turn (many seem to think it'll happen the day after your potential hiring date) as they fear that "corporate" candidates are not worth the risk in training and so these jobs have now become as hard to get as the one you were let go from. So while you do your part to re-join the work force, others with the power to assist in this situation have become more reluctant. I miss the days when 80-90% match between your resume and job description was enough to get you in. I just wish that in a country by the people and for the people, we weren't required to have our names on buildings to be heard and helped out as many of us were let go just before the multiple extensions were passed and will soon have nothing left to build a future on. As for the tips in the article, I've tried them all..revising the old resume(done), calling back(often get answering machines but no responses), plus some of the other advice seems a bit common from what I've read on other sites. For as long as companies feel that the 100% match person is out there, it seems that they will rule out everyone else until such a person is found and need be re-post the same position months on end. I hope that all of us here will soon start earning a living soon once again because for as much as the so-called unemployment rate skews the results by not counting those of us who gave up...we will continue to be just that...a missing stat.

  • Dealing with Nasty Debt Collectors   15 years 44 weeks ago

    Nora,

    Having had experience with debt collectors, I no longer make arrangements with them cause all they want is your checking information. I simply send them all a certain amount every month and the calls still come 24/7 - starting at 8am. You would think that these companies would be happy that many of us are trying to pay our debts. Go figure!

  • DIY Shampoo: The Baking Soda Experiment   15 years 44 weeks ago

    My wife made me a solution of baking soda and tapwater and put it in an old shampoo bottle. She also made a "conditioner" with apple cider vinegar with some drops of lavender and rosemary essential oil. She told me to always use the conditioner after the baking soda otherwise it wouldn't work. She also said it made more sense to wash my hair every other day rather than daily.

    I won't be going back to shampoo. This totally works. I can barely smell the vinegar over the lavender and rosemary and the baking soda doesn't feel weird at all...it just feels like I'm pouring water over my head. There's no fizz or anything, although a slight tingle when I put on the conditioner. The results are always squeaky clean hair that feels very healthy.

    I almost feel cheated that I've spent the last twenty-two years of my life paying for something that was probably toxic and damaging my hair.

  • Why You Don’t Need Mortgage Life Insurance   15 years 44 weeks ago

    A friend of mine told me about a site that offer 40% discount on health insurance.I tried this company.They are great.You can check their site.

    www . MyBestHealthInsurance . Info

  • Feeling Stuck? 100 Ways to Change Your Life   15 years 44 weeks ago

    ALAURA, That was really rude.

  • Uglify Your Stuff To Keep It Safe   15 years 44 weeks ago

    I just went to my travel list for Columbia and Ecuador and added two big rice bags with holes precut for fitting around my elderly but super fine Eagle Creek Switchback Max 22" and it's detachable day pack. What a fabulous idea! I don't want to ride a bus looking like some "rich American." Will be using removable tape with personal artwork around my camera and laptop (if I take it, which I probably won't). I will most likely just take a big flash drive to store lots of stuff from my hard drive to access at internet cafes.

    I have previously primarily traveled in Europe, Argentina, and Uruguay. Argentina is so different from Columbia. I never had to worry there about my nice bags or things.

    I seldom carry a day pack or bag in the daytime. I keep most money in soft bra pocket created by sewing two Tactel soft bra length camisoles at the bottom with elastic thread. They fit over my real supportive bra. It creates a pocket for all kinds of important "thin" things. I hang my tiny camera case (which will soon be uglified), a feather weight tote in a pocket for purchases, and anything else I REALLY NEED on my elastic belt. I often wear a big wide scarf tied loosely to cover what I am carrying. That way I can just relax and enjoy walking and seeing everything. I have never had anyone attempt to steal any of my things and hope to keep it that way. These are fantastic ideas!

  • The vicious Home Rental Scam – don’t get conned.   15 years 44 weeks ago

    Craigslist advertisement - $1000 / 2br - LOVELY 2 BEDROOM/ 2 BATHROOM HOME (Wheaton, IL 60187)

    here is the response I received after inquiring about this house.

    Thanks for your interest in our house.

    Firstly i will like to introduce myself, I am an Engineer by profession (retired) originally from Florida FL. I and my wife acquired the house recently and decided to rent out the house but due to our busy schedule,and the fact that we are retired we decided to go on a 3 years voluntary missionary trip in association with Christ embassy to Africa.

    We are looking for a responsible people that can take good care of the house in our absence. Our house is still available for rent and the house rent includes all utilities.The house is not furnished because we have already moved our stuff to the storage before we left for the journey.

    Please we want you to note that we are kind and honest people,we will want you to take absolute care of our house,we want you to keep it tidy all the time so that we will be glad to see it neat whenever we visit.

    So if you are really interested in the house, we will want you to fill out the rent application form below.

    RENTAL APPLICATION

    The undersigned hereby makes an application to rent the following property: 109 S Sumner St Wheaton, IL 60187.

    Anticipated move in date of ___________________at a monthly rent of $1000 and the term of tenancy will be renewed automatically every year or monthly.

    TENANT INFORMATION

    Applicant (A) Full Name__________________________
    _______

    Phone (_____) _____________________

    Other Phone (_____) ________________________

    Age_________________________ _

    Marital status___________________

    Do you have a pet___________________________ ________

    Do you have a car___________________________ ___________

    Driver's License #_____________________________ ___

    How many people will be living in the house_________________________ __

    PREVIOUS RESIDENCE INFORMATION

    1) Previous Address ______________________________ ________________________

    City: ____________________________ State :______________ Zip:________________

    Length of occupancy _____________________

    Landlord's Name: ______________________________ ________

    Phone (_____) _______________________

    Reason for leaving ______________________________ _________________________

    Rent Payment $_______________

    Looking forward to hear from you with all this details so that we can have it in our file for record purposes. We are waiting your urgent reply so that we can discuss on how to get the house documents and the keys to you. NOTE:The keys and documents of our house are here with us in west Africa, please we are giving you the house based on trust.

    You will only be able to drive by the house for now but you will not have access into the house until we have sent the keys and documents of the house to you, the requirement for getting the keys and documents of the house is the rent payment which is refundable should in case you finally gain entrance into the house after receiving the keys and documents and feel unsatisfied or uncomfortable with the interior,but i am giving you my word that you will love everything about this lovely house.

    Please note that your rent starts counting from move in date so you need not to worry about making the deposit payment now and not moving in immediately because all you're doing is securing the house in your favor in order not to loose it to other interested applicants.

    DESCRIPTION: THIS 2 BEDROOM/ 2 BATHROOM HOME OFFERS A NEW ROOF, NEW WINDOWS, A HUGE LOT, AND A GREAT DECK FOR BBQ'S AND THAT IS JUST OUTSIDE. THE HOME HAS UPDATED MECHANICALS. THE KITCHEN IS BRAND NEW WITH UPGRADED APPLIANCES, 2 BRAND NEW BATHROOMS, NEW FINISHED FLOORS, NEW CARPET, AND NEW LIGHT FIXTURES. HUGE WALK IN MASTER BEDROOM CLOSET. PETS OK . THE HOUSE IS AVAILABLE NOW AND THE HOUSE RENT INCLUDES ALL UTILITIES.

    You can contact us on 011 then 234-813-843-8217 or +234-813-843-8217.

    Thanks and hope to hear from you soon.

    Remain blessed
    Mr. Michael and wife Mrs Jennifer Carr.

  • Ask the Readers: What Makes You a Cheapskate?   15 years 44 weeks ago

    I'm a cheapskate because I cook at home instead of going out. I save a lot of money and there are no "surprises" in my food. :)