Welcome to Something for Nothing

I know you are telling me that Halloween doesn’t happen until the End of October. I know I know. You must not understand my wife. The fact that my wife still hasn’t selected Halloween costumes already is astonishing for me. She just loves to plan Halloween costumes. She’s even made a few, but lately she’s been all about purchasing a nice costume. It’s even gotten worse since we had our first child. I can’t imagine what will happen when our second kid arrives. Can you just imagine the baby Halloween costumes she could buy?

It’s hard to decide. Take a look at just a few examples of things she could choose from:
pirates (even Capt. Hook), Robin Hood, Sleeping Beauty, Rapunzel, Snow White, Cinderella, Dorothy, Good Witch, Tin Man, Scarecrow, and many more.

I decided to make it easier. I’ll post a few choices so she doesn’t have to stress over it:

Fireman Costume(Great Since 9/11)

Doggy Costume

Our good friend Travis Wall from So You Think You Can Dance has a nice video of him teaching people to dance. All you Travis Wall lovers will love this video:

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I don’t know why the past 2 days I’ve gotten questions out of the blue from people I know about creating a webpage and optimizing it for search. In one email I got they asked if I could get them to the top of Google. If I wanted to be quick I would have just said, “Sure, just sign up for Google Adwords and bid on a keyword and you’ll be at the top of the search.

Of course, that wouldn’t have been very nice of me and would have given them a simple answer for a much more complex question.

A better answer would have been to point them to a white paper on paid search. Here’s some of the major topics the white paper covers:

1. Natural Search vs. Paid Search
2. Narrow match is much better than Broad Match
3. Measure your Results
4. Calculating Bid Limits

After reading this we could have a much more intelligent conversation on getting their webpage to the top of Google.

I’m not a big history nut. In fact, I hated all my history classes. However, I do find stories interesting. So if you take history and wrap it in a story then I like it. I also like knowing interesting facts.

Well, I just said all of that for no reason, because this post is about a website that shows a picture from American History every day.

I normally don’t care too much, but the 2 that I’ve looked at were quite interesting. Here’s today’s picture:

I wish I could find an archived list of the pictures.

I can tell you right now that I am an expert on student loans and even a greater expert on Student loan consolidation. Why you might ask am I an expert on student loan consolidation? I’ll tell you why. I am a student and have plenty of experience with student loans. My experience dates back to my own father having heavy student loans being paid off until I was in my teens. Sure, many of you might think that is not that common. However, you must understand:
1. I’m his fourth child
2. He only did an undergrad.

I won’t bore you with the rest of my experience. Let me just tell you that you are absolutely insane if you aren’t consolidating your student loans. There are a lot of great loan consolidation services out there to help.

Take a look at just a few of the advantages you can gain from consolidating your student loans:
* Reduce your monthly payment by as much as 60%!
* Receive an interest rate as low as 3.5%!
* An additional 1.25% interest rate reduction through our borrower benefit program
* No penalties for early repayment!
* Improve your credit score,
* Simplify your monthly bill-paying paperwork with one payment a month
* No credit check, no co-signers needed, and no fees!
* Consolidation Loan interest is Federal Income Tax Deductible.

I recently ran across a rather addicting Flash game. All you do is move around this robotic arm picking up a ball. However, you have to be careful where you move the ball so that it doesn’t hit obstacles. The hardest part is remembering which arrow key moves which direction. Trust me. The game is completely agravating and addicting. Enjoy!!

I think one of the best parts of the internet is that you can get some pretty good online coupons all available free online.

Here are a few examples:

Dell Coupons and Discounts - A nice Dell Laptop or desktop at a great price with the coupon.

Gap Deals - Please don’t show my wife these coupons and discounts.

Target Discounts - This is a good set of coupons for those who buy a lot at Target.

I think this picture says it all!! Does anyone else miss So You Think You Can Dance?

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eBay to me has become such a phenomenon. People never cease to amaze me on what they sell on eBay. Some of my favorites are a tatoo for Golden Palace casino on your forehead, earwax, and even an entire business. The one that takes the cake for me was when someone sold a box containing Ben Rothlesburger’s Helmet after his accident on a motorcycle that sent him to the hospital. For those who may not understand the joke, Ben is the quarterback for the Pittsburgh Steelers and got in an accident on a motorcycle when he wasn’t wearing a helmet. The box is EMPTY!! GENIUS!! I think it sold for a few thousand dollars.

Well, despite all the funny things that are sold on eBay you can now get just about anything you want on eBay. I have friend who only purchases clothes from eBay. In fact, he’s able to get Armani suits for really cheap on eBay. He listed off a bunch of other name brand dresses to me that he purchases for cheap on eBay. I unfortunately can’t list them here since I don’t know women’s dresses. Another friend buys all his computers on eBay. It’s really quite amazing.

However, if you are the average user on eBay you might just get ripped off. Don’t worry though, there is a great automatic eBay bidder tool just for you. Here’s a short review of the tool.

This tool features 3 great features and a number of other minor features.

1. Automated Bidding - Occassionally people will end a bid in the middle of the night. Unfortunately, if you want to make sure you get the final bid that means you have to stay up and watch the bidding to see if you want to purchase this item. With an automatic eBay bidder that concern should be gone. Just set it and forget it. Well, you probably don’t want to forget it, because tomorrow you’ll want to know that you indeed got the item you bid on.

2. eBay Snipping or Bid Snipping - This term refers to when you bid on an item at the last second leaving no time for anyone else to bid on the item. Sure, you could wait until the bid is almost over and do this yourself. However, a computer is much better at it. Also, see item 1 for why you might not want to do this yourself on late night bids.

3. Auction Reminders - The program reminds you of auctions ending soon by alert or free text message on your cell phone. In fact, the program is becoming so robust it can handle all of your scheduling needs.

Here’s a few other features to think about:
- easy adding of items: importing from „my eBay“ or open Internet Explorer windows
- manual bidding and Buy-It-Now straight out of the program
- no need to open the eBay Web site
- automatic Internet dial-up function with dial-up guardian
- bidding groups: prevents double buying of similar items when auto bidding
- search function for eBay
- administer multiple eBay accounts - no ads, no popups, no spyware

Did you know that Travis was a star in a commercial long before he was on So You Think You Can Dance?

The cool part is that I remember this commercial. This is a good whatever happened to.

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