Archive for August, 2011

Mortgage rates still in the basement: When to pull the trigger?

Thursday, August 25th, 2011

One of my office mates recently got another house that was closer to his family's activities.  From the looks of mortgage rates now it seems like he could have gotten quite a deal, even now!  Rates have stayed down for quite a while -- quite a bit longer than I ...

Keep your house from going up in flames — and reduce your electric bill

Tuesday, August 16th, 2011

Our clothes dryer had been not doing its job for the past few months.  It would take a couple of cycles to get the clothes passably dry.  It wasn't like this when we first bought the dryer. We checked the parts we could see first.  We were regularly cleaning out the ...

What to do with an old cashier’s check

Thursday, August 11th, 2011

Yesterday I received an unexpected surprise: a cashier's check for $87.50.  It was for a gig I played almost a year ago, and I had since practically forgotten about it. What was a bit unusual, though, was that the check didn't have a recent date on it.  The date was in ...

Costco does generics right

Wednesday, August 3rd, 2011

(Hah ... the WordPress text editor is telling me that it's "Saving Draft" ... that's actually what I'm going to talk about!) This past weekend I took a trip to Costco to pick up a few things.  Some places my wife and I hesitate to get generic (store) brand because it ...