CK Blog

I have finished my taxes of 2007! Last year I decided to do the responible thing and make sure I had the proper amount withheld from my taxes. I went to the IRS’s W4 calculator and entered my information and it gave me the correct number of withholdings and amount to have withheld from my paycheck.

It ended up being pretty close. I am getting a small refund back which is better than owing right? Still before I did my calcuations on the tax form, I had it in the back of my head that I would get an amount similar to what I had in previous years and starting thinking about what I would do with that money. Put a little aside in a emergency fund? Throw a little at some debt? Buy a Playstation or sofa? Of course with the amount I am getting back, none of that will end up happening. I may add it with the emergency fund, else I will keep it with my general funds as an extra cushion. It was nice to dream for a minute though.

As part of the whole process of moving, I took a look at the various books that I had on my bookshelves and stacked in various boxes and thinned out to a shelf of books that I really enjoy and want to keep. That means I have about 8 boxes worth of books that I am not so in love with. Some I would probably never read, so I enjoyed the first time but once was enough and some I can part with if I don’t dwell on it (the bandage effect).

I have been going through the boxes and inputting the ISBN numbers into an spreadsheet as an inventory method. I then have been searching places like Amazon and Half.com to get idea of the prices and what I find is depressing from a seller’s prespective. So many of them are going for $0.75 or less, lot of times a penny. The sheer amount of volume only would have to sell to make a decent rate when you consider postage and envelope costs along with commissions. As a buyer, it of course is nice to get a bargain like that. Of course whenever I am looking for a book though, it seems like noone is selling it for a penny.

Of course money is money and if you watch your costs, you’ll come out with a little extra from selling assuming someone buys your book eventually, but running some quick calcuations it looks like a lot of effort for very little return.

Can someone please explain to me something that I’ve noticed on eBay? I saw an item of Amazon.com that I was interested in, but could not justify the expense to myself. I got to thinking of ways I could lower the cost such as cashing in little contest and survey points for amazon certificates and also looking on eBay for people selling their gift cards.

For a variety of reasons such as people winning the gift cards in contests and wanting to turn them into cash, people will auction off their gift cards and you can often get them for about 80% of the face value depending on the card. Looking at the Amazon.com certificates listing though, I was noticing people bidding up to the face value or even more for the cards. Where is the point in bidding $31 for a $30 amazon.com certificate? Why not just go to Amazon or whatever store and buy one and save the extra cash? Personally unless I’m saving 15-20% off the face value, I don’t really find it worth the hassle and potential risk of buying the certificates off eBay.

I guess maybe if you’re using a stolen paypal account or are just dumb, it doesn’t matter how much you bid, but anyone have any idea what the reasons would be for people paying face value or more for gift cards on eBay is?

Every so often, you will read or hear something that burst a little bubble in your subconscious. It is usually something simple that you should have already gotten, but in your nice little innocent world, it did not occur to you. This happened to me over the little endorsement blurbs on the back on books.

When scanning over a shelf of books trying to decide if I should pick up a book that I might not be familiar with, I will be the first to admit to being swayed by a endorsement on the back of the book. After all, if an some and so thinks its a good book, why not take a chance on it? I know that is consumer psychology 101 and all, but it does work.

Still one day I was reading something that now escapes me, but it mentioned among other methods that how as a author you can pay someone a fair amount like $5,000 and have some famous author talk about how fabulous your book is. Now this is no different than various other endorsement situations, but I guess the bibliophile in me just shutters a little bit at this. Maybe it is because in other endorsement situations, it can be easier to tell when someone is compensated for their positive spin versus wondering if Steven Levitt of Freakonomics fame really enjoyed that new economics book on the shelf or something greased the words. Its like I know when Paul Harvey is waxing poetically about the new Bose Wave system, it is a commercial that he is being paid to endorse the product. But now I often wonder about those little blurbs on the back cover.

I do not mean to imply anything about Mr. Levitt by the way; he was just an example of someone I have seen several books recently. In fact, I selected one book on economics from the library based largely on his endorsement on the back of the book. I guess they really do work, huh?

Still one day I was reading something that now escapes me, but it mentioned how as a author you can pay someone a fair amount like $5,000 and have some famous author talk about how fablous your book is.

I am in the process of moving for the first time in my life. I am leaving the house that I grew up in and venturing to some new place that will now be called home. My parents are also moving at the same time so I have stayed behind in the old house to get it finished packed and cleaned up while they are getting settled in their new place. My stuff has mostly been boxed up already and I moved a good portion of it today into storage until I get into my new place. The thought that struck me when I was loading boxes into my car is how much I haven’t missed basically anything that has been in these boxes for probably two weeks now.

Has there been a time when I probably could have used a thing or two in one of the boxes? Sure, but for the most part I could have taken all of it to Goodwill instead and not missed any of it. What does that say for importance placed on that stuff? Is it just cluttering my life and I should just get rid of it? Probably. I’m going to take a close look at stuff when I unpack it and try to weed out a lot of stuff I have outgrown or just don’t plain need.

Maybe you should try something similar? Unsure if you should just get rid of some stuff, why not try putting into a box and putting into the back of the closet or garage for a weeks and see if you really need it. Chances are you’ll probably forget about even having the items let alone missing or needing them. Why not then give them a new life by selling or donating them to someone else who could use the stuff. It clears your space and helps someone else out at the same time.

Part of my problem is a lot of the boxes I put away were full of books. I love reading and have spent a nice little amount of time scouring the shelves at Half Price books and other stores looking for gems to read. But I’ve read the majority of the stuff or honestly will probably never get around to reading some of them, and they are taking up space. I went through my two bookcases and gave each item a hard honest look. I could eliminate about two bookcases worth of books down to about one shelf if I just kept the books I really cared about.

What to do with the rest of them? Selling them is tough thanks to the oversupply of the market leading to little resell value in a lot of books. I could always take them to Half Price, but usually they will offer you a laughable small amount and from what I understand reading online they end up throwing away or recycling a decent amount of books that they “buy” back. I might list some of them on Amazon or Half.com, but you never know how long if ever it will take to sell a book. They might go in a week or sit listed for years if the market is not there for your book. In the end, I’ll probably list some on PaperbackSwap and whatever else is left, I’ll donate to my local library who will probably sell themselves at a friends of the library book sale.

Why not try looking at the stuff you have surrounding you and ask if it really is bringing something into your life? Maybe its time to box it up and send it on its way.

I am not much of a gamer these days. I have a copy of Sims 2 that I’ll play every once in awhile, throw in a game of Wall Street Raider or if I’m really bored, I might wander around Second Life but I haven’t really got the appeal of that game up to this point. Mostly though my gaming adventures mostly consists of a few card games or a good Sudoku puzzle. I have no big desire to rush out a buy a new sparking Playstation 3 or Wii. I did get cheated out a free Wii once, but thats a story for another post.

Its not to say I wouldn’t play one of those systems probably if I had one, but the desire just isn’t there. Even when my brother lived with me that had a Playstation 2, the times I did play I mostly stuck to one game. I do have some fond memories of games past though. I remember growing up with my original Nintendo playing games such as Wall Street Kid, Techmo Football or Bionic Commando (and of course Super Mario Brothers). We did upgrade to a Super Nintendo and I had a few games to play on there as well, but the memories of those are not so vivid. I am sure Halo is a great game with awesome graphics, but I think sometimes I’d still rather play Maniac Mansion or SimCity.

I did get my old SNES games out that I still have and played a few, it was still fun to play them. They are past their prime and I probably wouldn’t play them very often, but its nice to take a stroll down the old days back and relive a few memories.

Hey!

I finally got this blog back working again! I made a change to my hosting setup and couldn’t figure out how to migrate my WordPress database from the old setup to the new one, but finally got around to messing with it tonight and got it working!

Now I just need to sit down and starting figuring more about some of the advanced features and oh yeah, write a bunch more!

Btw, as a followup to my post about the car payment blues, I did pay my car off in December. I had some overtime and wanted to knock it out even if it did make me cringle a little to write a large check like I had to than I would if I would have waited till the loan was offically due. I know I would have paid about the same amout, give or take a few dollars in interest, but it was the psychologically hit of giving up the security of having that little extra cushion in the checking account.

Comment Spam just plain sucks.

That is all.

(At least I finally found Akismet so I don’t have to delete so many of them)

It seems that in the process of updating the theme in the blog (WordPress) software, somehow the formatting on the posts went all kinds of wacky. It does not seem to want to let me indent or add lines easily for whatever reason. I’ll play around and see I can figure out what the deal is, but I didn’t want someone to come along and look down upon my lack of formatting.

You are ‘French’. In the nineteenth century, it
was the international language of diplomacy.
It is a ‘beautiful’ language, meaning that it
is really just a low-fidelity copy of Latin.

You know the importance of communicating
‘diplomatically’, which for you means both
being polite and friendly when necessary and
using sophisticated, vicious sarcasm when
appropriate. Your life is guided by either
existentialism or nihilism, depending on the
weather. You have a certain appreciation for
the finer things in life, which is a diplomatic
way of saying that you are a disgusting
hedonist. Your problem is that French has been
obsolete for a long time.

What obsolete skill are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

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