Anokwa.com » Archive for life
February 18, 2008 at 14:51
tags: finance, life
I use credit card every time I get the chance and I think it’s a good idea if you have some amount of self control. As long as you never ever carry a balance and always pay on time, I find credit cards can be excellent financial tool.
Besides getting the standard credit card protection, credit cards offer lots of other perks. For example, Visa and Mastercard protect most purchases from theft or damage for the first 90 days from purchase while your debit card barely protects you against fraud. Additionally, I’ve found credit card companies go out of their way to keep me as a customer — I just have to call to complain about something and it’s generally fixed. So, given that I use them all the time, I’ve been looking into good ways to maximize my money.
Cash back cards are a good way to get a little back from credit cards, but they are generally irritating to use. Either you have to wait to hit a threshold to get a check mailed or you have to make sure to buy at certain stores or you have to redeem points for gift cards or wait a year to get your cash back. All these are hassles I’d like to avoid, so I set out some requirements for a new credit card.
First, it has to be accepted everywhere (sorry Amex and Discover). Second, I want cash applied to my credit card statement automatically or at a minimum via phone. Third, it has to be free of annual fees.
With the help of metafilter and my über googling skills, I came up with these favorites.
- Bank of America‘s Cash Rewards and Financial Rewards offer 1% cash back the cash can be redeemed by phone every $2500.
- Capital One‘s No Hassle Cash has the same deal as the Bank of America, but will also give a 25% annual bonus on the rewards earned.
- Chase Bank’s PerfectCard requires 9 purchases/year to stay annual fee free, but rewards are credited to your account automatically. Rates are 3% on all gas purchases and 1% on everything else.
I already have one of the BoA cards, so I’ll be trying the Capital One in my wallet. If you have other cash back cards you like, please post in the comments.
February 18, 2008 at 2:32
tags: life, seattle
LN and I volunteer at the local shelter most Sunday nights. She’s been doing it for a long time and I started tagging along at the beginning of this year.
The shelter is for non-violent homeless teens in the U-District and it’s a place where they can eat, sleep and take it easy while trying to get on their feet. I wish I could say I do it to give a little back to the community, but I’d be lying. The work is mostly fun and takes my mind off grad school.
I was in the kitchen when I heard the explosion above me. It was the kind of loud that startles but doesn’t frighten. Moments after the bang started to fade, I felt debris rain down and instinctively turned my back to the noise. I could have sworn the old dishwasher had exploded, but the draft blowing in from the window suggested otherwise.
It didn’t take long to figure it all out. Someone had thrown an empty forty at the shelter. The bottle had punched a hole in the leaded window and then exploded over my head once it made it through. Cool, huh?
No one was hurt, so I shrugged off the glass and everyone else shrugged off the incident. Just another night at shelter, I guess.
January 20, 2008 at 0:41
tags: life, seattle
“Let us develop a kind of dangerous unselfishness.”
– Martin Luther King, Jr.
If you aren’t doing any volunteering on MLK Day, you should at least listen to two of his most moving speeches. The first is the famous I Have a Dream (YouTube) and the second is his last, and my favorite, I’ve Been to the Mountain Top.
July 21, 2007 at 2:46
tags: blog, life
A few nights back, I tried to copy all my bookmarks in XML format from del.icio.us. Their XML exporter was down so I had to export it into the Netscape bookmark format, then do some grep/sed magic to transform it to XML before I could move it into a usable format. It was a total pain, but it gave me confidence that holding on to my own data is still a good plan.
There are a few del.icio.us clones, but the best out there is Scuttle which has the perk of supporting the del.icio.us API. The install was slightly irritating, and I can only tag bookmarks for people on anokwa.com, but I do have it running and it’s pretty good. I’ll hoping to code up cross-server tagging in a few weeks, but until then you can see my links at http://links.anokwa.com/.
Next up is a Flickr replacement which is coming along nicely at http://gallery.anokwa.com/.
July 1, 2007 at 0:38
tags: life
Google’s Health Advertising Blog posted a reaction to Michael Moore’s Sicko. I think the post speaks for itself…
“The healthcare industry is no stranger to negative press. A drug may be a blockbuster one day and tolled as a public health concern the next. News reporters may focus on Pharma’s annual sales and its executives’ salaries while failing to share R&D costs. Or, as is often common, the media may use an isolated, heartbreaking, or sensationalist story to paint a picture of healthcare as a whole. With all the coverage, it’s a shame no one focuses on the industry’s numerous prescription programs, charity services, and philanthropy efforts.
Many of our clients face these issues; companies come to us hoping we can help them better manage their reputations through “Get the Facts” or issue management campaigns. Your brand or corporate site may already have these informational assets, but can users easily find them?
We can place text ads, video ads, and rich media ads in paid search results or in relevant websites within our ever-expanding content network. Whatever the problem, Google can act as a platform for educating the public and promoting your message. We help you connect your company’s assets while helping users find the information they seek.”
What’s next? Helping the tobacco companies get their message out?
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