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  • New Yelp Review – Paddy’s

    Nice little place over in W. Newton. Check it out!

  • How To Reduce Your Student Loan Interest Rate

    I’m sure this is common knowledge but just in case, here’s some useful info:  You can reduce the interest rate on your Direct Loan from the US Department Of Education by .25% if you just sign up for them to auto-draft your checking or savings account every month for the payment!  It sounds like a small amount but a quarter point over time adds up, and this blog is partially about watching every penny.

    I just did the sign-up and it’s really easy.  I’m sure you can do it over the phone, but I did it by logging onto the Direct Loan website and going through the screen to add my checking account info.  They said to continue paying normally (I use BoA’s BillPay service online) until I recieve a notice in the mail.

    Easy to do, and a quick way to save some money.

    p.s.  Don’t do this if you carry such a low balance on your checking or savings account that you’ll risk overdrafting if you forget about this auto-pay!

  • Program Love: Pidgin

    I’ve used a few different IM programs over the years, starting with AOL IM and ICQ almost a decade ago.  I now have accounts on multiple IM networks and got tired of running multiple IM programs.  I’m on a PC, and I have tried Trillian, Gaim, and others.  The one I’ve found to work the best and make my machine not die (*ahem* AIM and your memory hogging annoyingness..) is Pidgin.  It’s little, it’s simple, and it works with all my accounts without a problem.  It was brought to my attention this morning that a new version has been released, so I figured I’d post about briefly.  Check it out!

  • Goodbye, PS2

    In an effort to put more $ toward the new home theater fund, I sold off the PS2 yesterday.  I managed to get $75 for the system with two games and one controller.  It was in relatively good condition, and the only thing we used it for was to watch DVD’s.  I can count on one hand the amount of times it was used to play games with.

    I figured it was a good thing to let go of because we can always buy a new (used) one for cheap if the need to PS2 game arises, and it was only going to lose value while sitting around the apartment.  It was taking up space, and as you will see by further banal posts, I’m trying to get rid of some of the various unused and unnecessary junk around the house.

    Goodbye, PS2.  You got us through four seasons of Six Feet Under, two seasons of Carnivale, three seasons of Deadwood, and countless other random shows and movies

    Postscript: Anyone want to buy an Atari 2600 system?  I’m selling mine – complete with games!

  • Quick Book Review: A Death In Belmont

    I picked up Sebastian Junger’s “A Death In Belmont” at the Harvard Book Store a few months ago and just got time to get to it last weekend. I was bored after finishing off three or four books that I’d started and were languishing around and I couldn’t find anything on my shelf that I was particularly interested in.

    At first I thought I wouldn’t like the book at all. I bought it because it had local connections, and I not read anything by the author before. I was pleasantly surprised by the content, and very impressed with Junger’s simple style. I was kept interested from beginning to end, and finished this book over the course of two Saturdays.

    The book is related to the Boston Strangler, and one murder in particular for which a different man was convicted. It takes place in and around where I live, and I enjoy books that I have a connection to. Also, the book is part of the author’s life, as Albert DeSalvo himself had been doing a construction job on his house in 1962 when he was a small child.

    I recommend this book to anyone interested in the Strangler case, anyone who was impressed by the writing style of “The Perfect Storm”, and anyone who wants an interesting look at the life of criminals, not just the Strangler.

  • Quick Movie Review: The Descent

    More or less this movie creeped me the hell out! I have not been so creeped out since High Tension. It’s a story of a group of six or so adventurous women who set out on a spelunking expedition. Soon they are in over their heads due to the manipulation of one of the girls, and have found themselves lost and their friendships splintering. Furthermore: they are not alone in the dark, scary, spaces.

    The movie is a little more layered than just a plain thriller, and that keeps it interesting. It gave me nightmares, and that’s not an easy thing to do. Anyway, rent it, buy it (hint – Amazon Link below!), NetFlix it, or borrow it from your neighbor. Watch it late it night with all the lights off and be prepared to scare the living crap out of your couchmate when you scream like a girl when surprised once or twice throughout the movie.

  • Product Love: Stemless Wine Glasses

    I love the Crate And Barrel Stemless Wine Glasses. Here at the Casa De Crazy, we drink a little bit of wine. We are also a bit clumsy, and for years, broken wine glasses were the bane of my existence. You couldn’t walk around the apartment barefoot without getting at least one itsy bitsy piece of glass stuck in your foot at least weekly. Wine glass breaking became something of an art form, right up with the sport of spilling-red-wine-onto-something-that-used-to-be-white.

    Enter last summer. On a trip to Maine, I stopped by the outlet stores on the way home, and lo and behold I found a miracle: stemless wine glasses. Crate And Barrel had them at a really good price, and they are amazing. The Rate Of Breakage of our wine glasses has gone a ton, and, just as important, the Days Since Last Wine Spillage Chart number keeps growing! They don’t spill as easily and are much harder to break when they are tipped over. Plus, they’re wicked cheap to replace when they do break! At $1.95 each, how can I afford NOT to break a few of them every year?!

    Link: http://www.crateandbarrel.com/family.aspx?c=130&f=9086

  • Yay Me!

    As of today, I’m 100% credit card debt free.  It feels good.

    On the subject of credit cards, I currently have four of them.  They’re all fee based horrible cards.  I need to get rid of them.  There is one problem with just getting rid of them though: the potential to damage my credit score.

    Still, yaay for me!  I’ll write an extended post in the otherblog over the weekend regarding the challenges that lay ahead for my credit building adventure.  (Ugh, adventure…)

  • Say Goodbye To Old Macs…

    Sold off my old Macs finally.  I had a Mac SE, a Mac Classic, and a Mac 512, as well as an Imagewriter I and Stylewriter printer.  They were just taking up space and I had no time to make one into a MacQuarium or anything like that.  I got $20 cash for ‘em.  Hell, it’s better than nothing.

  • Sunday Morning Banality

    I’m trying to fill the blog up with posts in order to test out features and how I want things to look and feel. I’m trying to find a way to ONLY view particular categories based on user preferences. Unfortunately, I know no real PHP or CSS and may have to pick up a couple books. Anyone have recommendations?

    In other news, Superbad was watched last night after I fell asleep.

    This morning, upon picking up the Boston Sunday Globe at my local package store, I glanced at the ads and saw the Panisonic stereo I want to buy at Circuit City for $300 (plus tax), and also that Best Buy has the printer I bought two weeks ago for $40 off. I’m taking a trip to Best Buy this afternoon to try to get the $40 back.