“Since when?!” she piped up.  I had thought new paperbacks were $6.99 or $7.99.  I knew they were at one point, but that turned out to be ten years ago.  New paperbacks are usually well over $10 now.  (Shows you how often I pay attention to the prices of paperback fiction.)

That’s pricey, but that’s probably the highest price I’d pay: the list price on the back of the book.  Here’s a list of places to get books, ranging from highest to lowest price (approximately):

• Retail, in a chain bookstore. This is the Borders price for a new book that isn’t a recent release or otherwise on special.  It’s the price on the back of the book.
• A discount seller like Amazon.com. Usually you can get a better price here for a new release: 20% or 30% off of the list price.  If you buy the right amount of stuff, or have Amazon Prime, you can get free shipping as well.
• On an e-reader like the Kindle. Sometimes you can get a break on the price of a new book if you have an e-reader.  Unfortunately most of the very popular books aren’t much less expensive in electronic form than in print form.
• A used book store. You’re likely not going to get the newest books, but you can get fairly recent books for Amazon prices.  There may be a few dog ears on the pages, but the words are still there.
• Used on Amazon. Amazon.com also has links to sellers of used books.  The price might be fairly good but there’s not much way around the shipping: $3.99 for a book.  That takes a bit of the fun out of it.  For more expensive books this could be only a small difference, though.
• Library book sales.  My wife enjoys going to these.  Our local library culls its collection of duplicates and takes donations of books as well.  The prices are really good:  $2.00 for five paperbacks, slightly more for hardbacks.  During the last days of the sale they’ll sell you an entire bag of books for $1.
• Borrow from the library or from a friend. This is free (as long as you return it on time!)  You might be waiting a while for a popular book, though.  There’s where the price is: your time, both waiting for the book and getting it in the time frame allowed by the library’s wait list.

What the price boils down to is how fast you want to have the book. If you want it now, you pay more than if you want it later.  If you want it the second you see it in Borders, you’ll pay the most.  If you borrow it at the library months or years later, you’ll pay the least.

The choice is yours!

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I’ve also tipped my hand as to what the best deal on gift cards from Swag Bucks is:  Amazon gift cards.  They’re only 450 SB for a $5 Amazon code.

SwagBucks has some really cheap gift cards, and some more expensive gift cards.  Why do some go for cheap and others not?

Let’s pick on Spaceland Recordings for a second.  They have the cheapest gift card now:  $3 for only 20 Swag Bucks.  This appears to kick Amazon in the butt for value.  And if you’re going for what Spaceland Recordings has to offer, it probably does.

The difference is in the restrictions.  Only one Spaceland Recordings code can be used for each purchase.  Amazon has no such restrictions.  I can use as many codes as I want for one purchase.  This lets me get really cheap Prismacolor pencils by knocking $40 off of the price, $5 at a time.

That’s why the Amazon codes are more “expensive” than others.  What’s more, if you want to get really expensive, you can snag $5 directly to PayPal for a whopping 700 SB.  But then, you’re not even tied to buying stuff at Amazon (which is not that much of a restriction, I think).

This is a good reason to double-check the terms of the gift card before cashing in your Swag Bucks.  Clicking on the image of the card in the Swag Store will lead you to these terms.

Are the bigger denominations better deals?  For Amazon cards, the answer, surprisingly, is no.  The $5 cards are the best deal (90 SB per dollar).  The $25 card is 3150 SB, or 126 SB per dollar.  The $50 card is 5900 SB, or 108 SB per dollar.  The only issue with the smaller denominations is that it’s only possible to claim a couple per day.  Hence, it may take a while to burn through your SB to buy the cards if you have a lot of SB.  I redeem as I go along, so it’s not an issue for me.

That’s a quick take on the ins and outs of gift cards at SwagBucks.  It’s easy and fun to earn great gift cards over there.

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But if that sounds like way too much work, there’s always the chance you can hit the jackpot by suing the entity that consumed most of your time for an obscene amount of money.  That’s what Craig Smallwood is doing to NCSoft, creator of Lineage II, a 3-D massively multi-player online role-playing game.  Allegedly Mr. Smallwood spent 20,000 hours playing the game from 2004 to 2009, and is now suing NCSoft for damages under the guise that he wouldn’t have started playing the game had he known that he would have become addicted to it.

First, let’s break this down a little bit.  How much time is twenty thousand hours?  If we take the time span (generously) to be six full years (January 1st, 2004, to December 31st, 2009), 20,000 hours is over nine hours per day, seven days a week, 365 or 366 days per year, for six full years.

That’s mind boggling, but not nearly as mind boggling as (a) his allegations that this stupendous waste of time wasn’t his fault, (b) the fact that this lawsuit wasn’t thrown out immediately, and, most importantly, (c) how far ahead he’d be now if he even played that game just five hours a day and invested the difference in himself. Five hours a day is still way too much time, but there’s a whole lot someone can learn in about 9,000 hours.  It’s enough time to not only become proficient at, but completely master a skill, or maybe two skills!

What’s the alternative to hoping for a misguided jackpot judgment like this guy is?

I’ll let you in on a little secret.  I have a very addictive personality.  I’ve spent more than my fair share playing mindless games and surfing sites that I really shouldn’t be surfing.  The only thing that’s really helped me battle the game sites and other junk was installing a content filter and having my wife be the only one who has the password to change the permissions and delete the surfing logs.  Before, I could pretend like I wasn’t spending all of this time, but now I can’t.

What’s even better is that the best one I’ve found is free:  Blue Coat K9 Web Protection.  In addition to categories aimed at protecting children from content related to violence, drugs, hate, adult content, etc., and categories that should be limited or controlled (chat sites, social networking, peer-to-peer, etc.), it also can filter a whole bunch of (potentially costly and/or damaging) time-waster categories:  gambling, shopping, and games.  In addition to the bad sites, I block the game sites.  I know that how I spend my time is my own responsibility, and that I have to ask for help if I can’t use it productively.  Suing MiniClip.com for my lost productivity makes about as much sense as suing McDonald’s for not telling me that I could burn my legs if I spilled their coffee on them while I was driving.

So, the main point is this:  If something is eating up a lot of your time and affecting your finances and even your life, don’t blame or sue someone else.  Own up and get it out of your life.  Get help if you can’t do it yourself.  Those who depend on you and love you will thank you.

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If you haven’t yet signed up for Swagbucks.com, then you can snag a little bit more if you sign up through August 15th, 2010 before midnight PDT. All you have to do is head over to Swagbucks.com and enter the code BackToSchool when you sign up.  You’ll get a total of 70 Swag Bucks out of the gate.  A $5 Amazon Gift Certificate is only 450 Swag Bucks, and other gifts are even less!

I do searches over at SwagBucks a few times a week, and it doesn’t take a gazillion searches before I win some Swag Bucks.  I average about 10 Swag Bucks per win, but I’ve seen people win 50 Swag Bucks at a whack.  And I’ve never, ever had any problems whatsoever with their codes.  They deliver as promised.

So sign up with SwagBucks.com and promotional code BackToSchool to get some easy discounts just for searching the web.  It’s a lively, swaggy place!

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We had walked only a few houses down the first bend when we saw a gas grill and a patio furniture set lined up at the curb.

With a cardboard sign duct-taped to the table that said “FREE.” Man, I love that word!

The grill was in pretty rough shape inside, so we passed on that, but the patio furniture (four chairs and a metal table with a translucent glass top) was in pretty good shape.  Some of the chairs showed some rust, the cushions needed cleaning (as did the glass table top) and there was no umbrella.  The rust on the chairs wasn’t that serious (nothing that a couple cans of Rustoleum® couldn’t take care of.

So we made a couple of trips back to our house and brought the minivan over because the table was a bit big to carry back.  The chairs were easy, though.  (Get it??  Easy chairs? I’ll be here all week!)

The table top cleaned up like a charm in five minutes.  We’ll try to knock down the grime on the chair cushions a little bit with some cleaners with bleach, but that’s probably doable as well.

All told, for a hour’s work we got a $100 patio set for free!  It’s like our own personal Freecycle.

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In a few weeks, McDonald’s will be nixing its $2.95 per 2 hours wi-fi fee for customers, apparently in an effort to take another bite out of Starbucks with its new McCafe offerings.

Yeah, I’d tap into that, especially on a day trip up to the parents.  Why not bring the laptop in to check on Facebook or Twitter or pound out a couple of e-mails … all without needing yet another monthly data fee like on an iPhone?  Essentially, for free?

In a few years, maybe sooner, I predict free wi-fi will be the new standard at big-chain dining establishments.   Enough of the big ones are going the free wi-fi route that others will follow, and eventually enough customers will consider whether there’s free wi-fi when they decide where to eat for lunch.  (“Oh, you don’t have free wi-fi?  Bummer …”)

Overall, this is a good thing.  I love business competition. It’s what happens when people aren’t clamoring for freakin’ bailouts all the time.  When businesses compete, we all get lots of goodies.  Nom-nom.  I mean, McDonald’s doesn’t exactly get marks for good nutrition, but you pretty much know what you’re getting at any given Golden Arches, and if there’s a good chance of having free wi-fi, so much the better.

It will certainly make this site a whole lot more crowded.  With all of the Starbucks, and now McDonald’s, that’s like, what, 23 jillion locations?  (Why this site doesn’t have a Google Maps mashup yet, I don’t know.  There’s a free business website idea for anyone who wants it!)

And, of course, it’s far better than McDialup.  (Confession:  I did not take that picture.  My wife did.  But I spotted it!)

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For a while, my computer had been really noisy.  The fan would rev up when I did something that really taxed the processor — like, oh, watch a video or even move the mouse around too much.  It would sound like my computer was about ready to lift off.

So I finally went to SuperUser.com, a growing information exchange site for all kinds of computer questions.  I asked my question here.

It took only a few minutes for Chris_K, another SuperUser member, to answer:

it could be that the original heatsink compound isn’t doing the job. I’d try pulling the heatsink, cleaning it and the top of the proc really well (rubbing alcohol, cotton cloth) and then using some good thermal paste and re-attach it.

Of course, you might open the case and make sure you haven’t obstructed ventilation with any large dust bunnies first!

Well, I followed the last part of advice, and the inside of my computer was absolutely filthy. I had no idea that so much dust could collect in there.  I cleaned it out, started it up, and you’d think that I had bought a new computer the way it sounds now.  It’s so quiet!

This was a nearly instantaneous service call, and it was free.  Last week, Nickel sent out a tweet asking for recommendations for a high-power wireless router.  A few months ago I asked for ways to stream internet audio through a conventional tuner, and got several helpful responses.  These kinds of questions are perfect for SuperUser.com.

Oh, by the way:  If you’re looking for programming answers or sysadmin answers, check out StackOverflow.com and ServerFault.com.  Same idea.  These are free, too.

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We stopped at Five Brothers for dinner and ate outside so that Taffy could get out, too.  While we were eating, I was really surprised how much attention Taffy got.  And it was mostly from girls and young women who introduced themselves by saying  ”Awwwwww!”

Then my wife and I thought the same thing at the same time: “Man, it would have been great to have a puppy in college!”  She said that it works great for guys to have a puppy, but not for girls.  All it does is attract other girls.

But then I ran down the reasons why I didn’t have a puppy in college:

• I didn’t have a clue
• I was mildly allergic to dogs
• Dogs weren’t allowed in the dorms
• Did I mention that I didn’t have a clue?

But anyway, my wife had some of the same restrictions, but unlike me, she had a clue, and she was able to get puppies for free to take out and about without actually owning them. The local Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA) shelter would welcome anyone who wanted to take the dogs out for a walk, because they’re cooped up in kennels most of the day and the walks help to socialize them for eventual adoption.  They got to know her so well that she could play with them in the cages.

Had I known this as a single guy I could have had puppies for nothing and my chicks for free!

But now, as a very happily married guy, I at least know not to walk Taffy in town without my wife close by.

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The participants?  The Navy Commodores, the Army Blues, and the Airmen of Note.

The talent on the stage was absolutely disgusting.  The drummers ranged from solid to Buddy Rich’s doppelgänger. The trumpet sections screamed. It was a wall of sound.  (Check out Amazing Grace recorded by the Airmen.  Download the song for free.  And while you’re at it, check out all of the other songs by the other groups that you can download for free.)

It was a real treat.  What my friend said was that these bands used to be feeder bands for folks like Buddy Rich – like the way the minor leagues develop talent for the majors.  Now that there are fewer touring big bands, the talent stays more.

We saw the concert in the Carter Barron Amphitheater in Rock Creek Park.  The sound was fantastic.

What’s more, the Airmen had a gift for everyone who wanted one:  a full 77-minute CD with 13 live tracks.  They gave away hundreds of CDs that evening.

If you like jazz music, try to take advantage of this stuff while it lasts! Check out the schedules as to where they’ll be playing, or at the very least listen and enjoy.  Not only is the music DRM-free, it is free!

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Since we’re approaching tax time I’ll give away the other two rapid-fire.  I’ll mimic Nickel and Jim and make this a Twitter giveaway.  Again, this is for a copy of TaxCut Premium + Federal e-file.  You may enter through Monday, March 9th, 2009, at 9:00 PM EDT. Here’s the procedure:

• Follow me on Twitter if you haven’t already.
• Tweet me your best financial tip for one entry.  I’ll include the good ones in a future post.  Include #mbhtc so that I can track your entry.  The full tweet should look like something like this:  @mbhunter #mbhtc <INSERT YOUR FINANCIAL TIP>
• Spread the word for another entry.  Again, include #mbhtc so that I can track your entry.  It should look like this.  The URL at the end points to the post you’re reading now:  #mbhtc Tweet your best financial tip to win a copy of TaxCut: http://tinyurl.com/chqwdu
  
• There will be two winners.  One will be chosen randomly from the valid entries.  The other winner will be the one that submits the best financial tip.  What will constitute the best financial tip?  My wife will choose!  That way it’s out of my hands!
• Again, you must enter by Monday, March 9th, 2009, 9:00 PM EDT (Eastern Daylight Time).  I will contact the winners via Twitter.

Though I don’t anticipate any issues with you receiving the product should you win, I’m not responsible if something happens.

Oh, and have fun!

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