This has been my daughter’s first year as a Brownie scout, so we’re currently experiencing first-hand the annual selling of the famous Girl Scout Cookies. She hit up the usual suspects (friends, neighbors, and family members) and we also spent time at our troop’s cookie booth the other weekend in front of a local grocery …
Continue reading ‘Girl Scout Cookie sales in the internet era’ »
This past Saturday afternoon I received an automated call from my credit card company saying that there were some suspicious charges that they wanted me to verify. The computerized voice dutifully read off the past three transactions and asked to confirm that I recognized all of them. Unfortunately, there was one I didn’t: a $1 …
I subscribe to the slickdeals.net RSS feed and have found quite a few great deals on it (for example, the 20% off coupon that helped me get a new Dell PC for under $500) and the occasional cool gift idea. Today’s gem: a tiny USB Bluetooth adapter for $3. I’d been thinking about getting one …
Today is the 8th anniversary of my very first Amazon.com purchase. On May 7, 2000, I placed my first order on the book-selling web site for a paperback edition of Neal Stephenson’s “Cryptonomicon.” At that time I had no idea just how much stuff I would end up purchasing from Bezos’ brainchild over the next …
Continue reading ‘My first Amazon purchase … 8 years later’ »