Lessons

I have never really used bulk purchasing sites as of this writing.  My wife has and I know for a fact that my sister uses them extensively but I have been reluctant up to this point.

I very nearly pulled the trigger recently on a deal for horse riding lessons that came to me in an email for groupon.  This seems like something my oldest daughter would really love.  The only thing that stayed my hand was the fact that we have friends that would probably teach her for free or failing that, I would rather give them the money than someone I don't really know.

As it stands though I can totally see the usefullness of such things.  Theoretically the seller gets extra noteriety for offering the deal even if they just break even on it.  The long term goal obviously is to get their name out there and establish a brand.  The consumer gets things they want for a cheaper price and gets introduced to new services and products that they may not have known even existed.  It feels like a win/win on paper.

So why haven't I tried it yet?  To be honest, it's a visibility thing.  I don't see the deals all that often and I'm too lazy/private to set something up to attempt to sell me a new product every day.  I don't want to wait around for the right deal to just happen to fall in my lap.  I look for the best deal AFTER I decide that I need something.

I know that groupon does have more than one deal per day and that you can search for things but again, I just don't find myself drawn to it for some reason.  Not really sure why.  Perhaps I'm just slow on the uptake as most people that use it seem to think it's really good and works really well.

Maybe I should start giving it a bit more of a chance.

I Quit

I officially quit as a Browns fan.  Trading Trent Richardson was the last straw for me.  From now on I am a Broncos fan.  Go Denver!

PC Mechanic

Computer maintenance is annoying because even as a programmer, the people that are trying to mess it up are smarter than me.  I use defrags and virus checkers and even the occassional spam checker and thankfully most of that can be automated.

If you don't want to mess with that there are plenty of sites like http://www.iolo.com/ that will help you out.  It can be a pain but a well maintained computer will keep performing well for a much longer time over it's lifespan.

Cutting Boards

I made a couple of nice cutting boards in my shop recently and I can't seem to sell them for anything.  It's frustrating because I had hopes of using the profits of my woodworking to help pay for the supplies I need to do the woodworking.

So far not so good...

Take The Plunge

Thank goodness for lateral spring plungers and frankly all plungers on behalf of a Dad who wouldn't want to deal with some of the toilet disasters that I have had to in my time without one.

My son still measures the amount of toilet paper he uses in pounds, and despite only being 5 has an advanced proclivity for clogging up toilets with his daily constitutional.

So from us Dads who always get called in from the bullpen to save the day when a toilet is clogged, we say thank you to the humble plunger

Let Me Down

Apparently some guy wrote in his will that he wanted to have 6 Cleveland Browns players as his Pall Bearers so that they could let him down one last time, LOL

As a Browns fan, it's hard not to laugh at that given what we've had to put up with since the late 80's.

Hopefully, unlike him, I will live to see them good again. 

Fizzling Passions

One of the things that has bitten me over the years is my desire to know how to do everything.  I take it as a personal fault if there is something that I am not good at, even if it's something I'm not really interested in.  To that end I have bought a lot of things over the years that I ended up selling later after the bug of interest wore off and I moved on to the next thing.

I'm hoping that the current hobby of woodworking won't be in that category as it's in my dna and has been a dream of mine for a very long time.  Only time will tell and no one would be surprised to see me selling all my saws for an american dj comscan led system 3 years from now if I suddenly decide that that is my new passion.