April 30, 2008

Money-grubber

In my everlasting struggle to spend no money, I have come across a money saving tip for the cash-strapped college student. The post office will give you free folders. OK, that's a lie. Let's just say you don't have to pay for Priority or Express envelopes until you actually send them...

April 11, 2008

Tip: Save on Ink

Ink is one of the big expenses of the computer industry, and is tightly controlled by printer manufactures. He are some tips for saving money in this area:
You can save a lot of ink by fine-tuning your print settings. Only print with the quality you actually need. For example, my printer has the following options: "Quality: Fast draft", "Color: Grayscale", "Black Print Cartridge Only", and "Light" ink volume. Personally, I see little difference between enabling all of those and the default settings. However, it saves ink, uses only black ink (cheaper on many different levels), and prints very fast (almost violently so).
Also, I recently had to get new ink for my printer - and, as I said, ink can be really expensive. So I started looking around and found I could save a ton if I went with "recycled" ink cartridges (listed on Amazon Used and eBay). Truthfully, I thought the concept to be a bit absurd. But it seemed no one had any complaints (in fact, there was a lot of praise). So I took a chance and got some. It works great. There are a few quirks - I had to tell the printer to disregard the fact I was putting in a non-new cartridge, and it thinks the cartridge is low all the time (but since I usually disregard that warning until I notice quality loss, it doesn't really matter). Considering the next-lowest cost was manufacturer direct (due to free shipping), 20% savings is pretty good.
They're you go - tip served! (I'll expect a check for 10% of the value saved as projected across the rest of your life.)

April 3, 2008

Thrashed

No, it's not just you - my site is missing navigation and is full of banner ads. Blame GoDaddy - they figured out I was blocking their ads, and were going to suspend my account, have me upgrade to a non-free plan, or keel-haul me (OK, I made that last one up).
I'm going to have to figure out a new approach soon...

April 2, 2008

Take a Break - Play a Game

In one of my classes I was told to "make a game". So my partner and I did Rush Hour. Check it out.