At Flowing Data they posted a great flowchart on the current financial crisis (it’s way to big to reproduce here. Informative and easy to follow.

I think they got it from here.

Here’s a free Christmas Album sponsored by Oprah.

This is trickier than it sounds. Imagine trying to open an account in the US without a Social Security card and without a mailing address…

I got all my paperwork in order:

Just a quick tip on winning: The easy way to remember which pieces are the winning game pieces for this year’s Monopoly game is they are the last piece alphabetically in their set; except in the case of Boardwalk (which is the major winning game piece).

Be sure to keep me in mind if you use this tip to win the big bucks ;)

I believe this is the same system they’ve used in the previous five years (possibly longer).

My problem with this is remembering the other pieces in the sequence to know if it’s the last one alphabetically…

Water Works – $50 – Odds 1 in 639,000
Mediterranean Avenue – $100 – Odds 1 in 5,701,000
Short Line Railroad – $500 – Odds 1 in 311,389,700
Vermont Avenue – $1,000 – Odds 1 in 106,921,400
Virginia Avenue – $2,000 – Odds 1 in 106,921,400
Tennessee Avenue – $5,000 – Odds 1 in 307,947,900
Kentucky Avenue – $10,000 – Odds 1 in 307,947,900
Ventnor Avenue – $25,000 – Odds 1 in 769,869,600
Pennsylvania Avenue – $50,000 – Odds 1 in 769,869,600
Golden Avenue – $100,000 – Odds 1 in 178,065,100
Boardwalk – $1,000,000 – Odds 1 in 591,287,650

Pretty slim odds, even for the low-end prizes.

* FYI – This is what I found out from looking around on-line and is the system I’m using. I don’t have any connection with the official game/rules.

I thought this was hysterical!!!!
I stole this from Jodi at faster pussycat… type! type!.

These deals probably won’t last (especially the cables) but I thought I’d mention them:

So today I found a small bottle of Coke for about 14 cents (yes, 14 American cents), but I had to drink it there. I wanted to take it with but I couldn’t figure out how much to pay to do that, it was a very non-tourist spot. I actually paid her about 19 cents since I didn’t have change. There were two kids there talking to us (and hassling us for money and pens) so I bought them each a soda too. I’m thinking they were kids of the shopkeeper, I made sure they actually opened them before they. I was tempted to give a few of the kids money but I didn’t think we could get out of the community without the word getting around.

Also had a carriage buggy ride that I was already paying to much for (I was almost running late and I had already haggled him down 50%) but when I got there he tried to jack the price up. I just say no, repeat the price and walk away. Oh, he tried to get me to tip the horse too and then he switched currencies to try and confuse me (about 23%). Keep in mind we’re really talking peanuts with any of these amounts.

Napkins are napkins, right? Sure some might be bigger or fluffier or prettier but they’re all generally the same. At least in my experience. I picked up some America’s Choice generic napkins the other day and every time I use them I cringe. They aren’t very absorbent and kinda non-porous. Their qualities reflect that of paper more than napkins. I could probably run these babies through my ink-jet printer except they might not absorb the ink.

So the more I think about this the more I’m bummed I didn’t think of it. This guy, Alex, is doing a web page and he’s selling pixels for $1 a piece (minimum 100 pixels). He’s sold $100,000 worth so far so he’s well on his way to paying for college. Sure it’s a gimmick, but it’s working :)

My guess is that he’ll top out at 1/4 to 1/3 of a million (400,000 tops) at some point it’s gotta get visually unappaealing.