One of my online buddies, @bkGirlFriday, asked the following question on Twitter:
“Its date night and you only have 50 dollars. What can you do to keep you and your date entertained for the night?”
Interesting question! I thought about it for awhile and gave my one answer: bowling. Then I thought about it some more, and came up with seven things to do to stretch your dating dollar:
1) Bowling (what I said above)
2) Mini golf
3) DVD rental
4) Cooking at home
5) Hiking
6) Beach
7) Sharing a dessert with coffee
Do you have anything to add to my list?
I’m an AAPL shareholder which, technically, means I am a part owner of Apple, Inc. I take that seriously; if I own stock in a company, it better be a company that meets my standards, and if it doesn’t, I better sell that stock.
That said, I just received an iPod shuffle (two, actually) from Apple, Inc., covered by warranty, and one of them died within a day.
I went online and immediately scheduled a Genius Bar appointment (I happen to have three Apple Stores on island) for Sunday.
I’m not sure how I’ll be treated there; I’m hoping for a very quick fix and to be on my way to enjoying my iPod. I will let you know–because to me, this matters. I own part of this company, and the reason I bought in is because I like the company a lot. So their service needs to be up to snuff for me to feel positive about owning it.
It’s been quite awhile since I discussed snowflaking, the art of building up lots of small amounts of money into one large amount, here in this blog, largely because I haven’t been doing well at it.
One of the reasons why is that I’ve just been unable to get to the recycling station. I probably have over $50 in recyclables here. Additionally, I’ve been a bit behind on my blog billing (shock, horror!) and I haven’t gotten a payment from Google Adsense in quite some time–although one is on its way.
I was reminded of this because I just got a $50 Discover Card cashback bonus, which is kickstarting me into thinking about snowflaking again.
I’ll have to work on this harder in the next few months.
There’s a big move to “buy local”, both here and nationwide. The theory, I think, is that in tough economic times supporting small, locally owned businesses means more of the money spent stays local to you, rather than going to some large company that’s not anywhere near you.
It’s a great idea, but not always economically feasible. For instance, I would love, love, love to be able to buy bike stuff from one of my local bicycle shops, shorts, for instance. But when I can get six pairs of shorts from Performance Bike for what it would cost me for three locally of similar quality, I just can’t do it.
I definitely do what I can to buy local when it comes to food, for instance–locally grown produce tends to be a fine idea, and stores such as Crestek and McCully Bicycle are great places to shop, but it really still comes down to money. The first pocketbook I need to take care of is my own.
After Furlough Fridays (which affect just about all state of Hawai’i employees but most equate with schools), apparently it’s believed that more blood can be squeezed out of the rock that is known as the public school system.
The Hawai’i legislature asked for 5% more in spending cuts for public schools; they were presented with about half that. Which means $37.7 million dollars.
It’s hard to imagine that the schools can endure much more without considerably negative effects to the education of our schoolchildren. As they say in the poorest countries of the world–we can’t afford education, but we really can’t afford to be uneducated.
Many Geeks, myself included, use mobile broadband–quite frankly, for me, it’s a bit of a necessity given how often I’m on the road. There are national providers of such services (the big telecoms–AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, and TMobile) who typically charge about $60 for the bogus “unlimited up to five gigabytes” plans; I currently have a MobiPCS Hele which is truly unlimited (or so they claim) but not the best coverage–and restricted to the islands, but a lot cheaper at $30 a month plus tax.
Recently there’s a different option that’s become available here–Clear (formerly Clearwire) 4G, and they are pricing it aggressively. Currently, if I find a friend who is wanting to sign up as well, we can get two mobile connections for a fine price per month for life.
That might be worthwhile.
Clear is also available in other areas of the US, although not in nearly as many as the big players; for instance, I can get coverage in Philadelphia where I’ll be for the Livestrong Challenge, but not in California.
I’m thinking seriously about this one.
Government budgets continue to be ugly. Not only are our state employees furloughed many Fridays through our year, now programs are outright being cut. In particular, performing art programs.
For instance, the 127 year old Hawaii County Band on the big island is reported to be unfunded in the budget coming out on Monday, March 1, 2010, reducing their spending by 1%. Kaimuki High School’s performing arts program is reportedly facing a similar fate.
I’m sure there’s no one out there who is going to say they want these programs to end, but I’m also sure that something has to give and figuring out what it is is not an easy task for anyone.
Tough times call for tough decisions. What to cut, what to cut? It’s a decision that very few of us want to make.
Hawai’i dodged a bullet on Saturday when a tsunami passed through the islands with no damage reported. Positive energies to those in Chile and anywhere else that was not so lucky.
Having lived through a few other near miss tsunami warnings as well as a few tropical storms, hurricanes, and all day (or longer) island wide power outages, I may be better prepared for these disasters than many. Quite frankly, if you’re a Hawai’i resident, you better know the hurricane drill by now! A hurricane preparedness guide is available here and speaks of having enough canned goods for a few days, water, a first aid kit, flashlights, batteries, a radio, and lots of other necessities (and close to necessities). For some of us, our kits are more comprehensive, including a generator and camping stoves.
Interestingly, these are just about the same things needed for a tsunami.
So we were ready. And interestingly, so was much of the island. While I drove around a little to see if I could bolster our bottled water supply, traffic was mostly light, shopping center parking lots were a bit more crowded than average but people were courteous and polite, and only one rumor of illegal price gouging was heard. And Costco and Sam’s Club not only opened early but at least for awhile allowed non members to shop.
Fortunately, we didn’t need any of those things. But being prepared for a natural disaster is worth anything. I’m quite proud of how the people of Hawai’i did in this challenging time. Because sooner or later, there’ll be a bullet we don’t dodge.
In a social sense, inertia is the reason we keep doing whatever it is we’ve been doing: because it’s comfortable, easy, and what we’re used to. For instance, I’ve attended KansasFest every year since 1995. While I do enjoy the event, a lot of the reason I go is because I’ve already gone.
Inertia is evidenced in many other aspects of our life. For instance, I am not exactly what people would call a neat person. In fact, “slob” would be an accurate description. Every so often I make an effort to clean, but it ends up on my action list for months before I do any cleaning–however, once I start, I make a huge dent in things.
That’s inertia. Once I get going, I stay going. For quite some time.
Inertia can be positive and negative. For example, once I get into a groove with my workout schedule, I stay like that for months at a time, and it’s better for my health, my blood sugar, and my stress management. On the other hand, if I’m not doing something–say cleaning or going to the recycle center–I end up not going for long, long periods of time.
Knowing this, I have to figure out ways to make inertia work in my favor, rather than the opposite.
…and those times are mostly about economics, in my case quite often shipping. When I talk shipping I’m usually talking about relatively large items that are difficult to have shipped to here. For instance, the bikes at Bikes Direct.
Free shipping in the continental United States translates into $150 to Hawai’i. Now, the shipping charge is by no means awful, but it’s not quite up there with free shipping. And the shipping is variable from vendor to vendor–for instance, a similar bike from WalMart shipped to someone in Hawai’i for $25.
It’s not like I haven’t talked about shipping before, but yes, it’s a huge issue for buying things from here.
