Monday, September 27, 2010

gold is where you find it

Gold, even the word itself conveys a certain meaning of value or worth. You know gold has been globally recognized for well over 6000 years by people and countries both as a means of trade as well as a hedge against inflation or a temporary financial crisis.

Several nations mint bullion coins. Minting coins by a national governments gives the coins a numismatic value to collectors in addition to their value in terms of the sheer raw material. Buying gold coins from a reputable nation state also serves as a way of certifying purity and actual weight. While the level of purity can vary from issue to issue, 99.9% purity is common. Some of the purest mass-produced bullion coins are in the Canadian Gold Maple Leaf series which is convenient for Americans both in terms of the dollar's customary advantage to the Canadian dollar as well as the locational advantage.

When one decides to buy gold bullion coins you have the choice of holding them in trust or often more preferably to most investors, to take physical possession of the coins and having them shipped direct to your home or office. Bullion gold coins are minted for the investment purposes and are commonly preferred because they are tied closely to the daily spot price of gold making it easy for the buyer to monitor their value and trade. There are three commonly traded gold bullion coins used by most investors, they are the South African Krugerrand (in many ways the 'grandfather' of gold coins and the one even casual investors are most familiar with), the Canadian Gold Maple Leaf, and Austrian gold coins. The Chinese Gold Panda is another coin option and is becoming much more prevalent as that nation grows in prosperity and international prominence.

Buying into a gold ira can serve to reduce the volatility of your total retirement portfolio. While historically gold moves counter to the direction of stocks, bonds and mutual funds, this means the technical term is that gold is negatively correlated to the movement of stock prices. $10,000 of gold bullion coins purchased in the early 70s and held (during the oil crisis, inflation, devaluation of the U.S. dollar, Savings and Loan scandal, recession, tech and internet bubble, 9-11, and the real estate bubble, and current recession) would enable you to turn that investment today for something like $305,715.00 given today's spot prices for precious metals.

Whatever you decide and who you choose to hold your bullion purchases, you owe to your portfolio, yourself and your children to take a look into the benefits of precious metal investing. As always, with any typer of investment: do your homework and never invest more than you can lose.

telescopes see the future, the past and the world above

Looking for a Christmas gift for a young person that will give them a lifetime hobby, maybe even a career? What about telescopes? Take a look at this easy to use, portable dobsonian telescope from Bushnell or if you are just getting your feet wet in the sky-gazing world, this Celestron beginner telescope sounds like just the thing.

History, physics and story-telling are all waiting for you in the sky. Spend some time outdoors with your kids and loved-ones looking at real stars not the Hollywood type.

I See a Red Flag Looking at Me

"Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?" on a list of banned books? The New Yorker's Book Bench has the story.

Teacher, teacher what do you see?



Friday, September 24, 2010

Tweet from @Glinner

"if you are earning more than $1million a year and are complaining
about a 3.6% tax increase, then you are by definition a greedy asshole."

Sent from Echofon - http://www.echofon.com/


Made of 100% recycled tweetage.

Wednesday, September 22, 2010

I was Reading Your Butt and...

boost your street cred

This is a Sponsored Post written by me on behalf of Boost Mobile. All opinions are 100% mine.



Like talking on a phone that doesn't look like it came as a hand-me-down from a parent or sibling? Ready to dip your toe into the Android SmartPhone pond? Hate the idea of paying a huge tariff to the big phone companies (for service that is known world-wide to be stunningly awful)? Then do I have good news for you!

Boost Mobile now carries Android-powered phones as well as the ever popular Blackberry phones all in handy pay-as-you-go formats. I always liked the idea of pay-as-you-go as it seemded a much cheaper way to have a phone than with long-term commitments and big monthly payments but was worried about the flip side: running out of minutes when you really needed them. Boost has solved that problem with their Re-Boost scheme, where you can pay by phone, by computer or in person, plus you can set up automatic payments, perfect for people with more things on their mind than 'have I topped up my mobile minutes this month!' Just shoot them your debit/credit card digits to make a payment or sign-up for worry-free automatic payments, whatever works for you best.

Plus, you should see how easy it is to tweet and access your Facebook pages from a Boost Mobile phone. Never be out of touch with friends and family with live updates. Comment while you are still doing things not hours or days later when you get to a computer! It's fun, it's easy and now best of all: affordable! See their plans and then ditch that keyboardless phone you've been hanging onto. It doesn't have to be expensive to be social any more!

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Sunday, September 19, 2010

Crushing on the Fujifilm X100 So Hard Right Now

Saturday, September 18, 2010

Repeat As Necessary

Mac users:
Unmute your speakers
Open Terminal.app copy and paste this:

say -v "Cellos" "droid"

Friday, September 17, 2010

Hail the iOS

Apple has given users the option to change the font that the included Notes app displays. Your choices now include Apple's original "Marker Felt," the equally ugly "Chalkboard," and the wonderful, majestic king of typefaces known as "Helvetica."

Made of 100% recycled material.

Tuesday, September 14, 2010

Please Hold... Your Call is Very Important to Us

Reading about the California budget woes and how it and municipal money problems are making it much harder for many fire departments to respond to ordinary calls made me think of Public Enemy and their infamous track, "911 is a Joke."


Which lead to this fun fact thanks to Wikipedia:

...if all the samples used on "911 Is a Joke" and the other tracks on Fear of a Black Planet would have been cleared for copyright under current (2010) rates, each copy of the album would have generated a loss of five dollars per album sold, instead of a profit.

So... Crime does pay? Or it did??

Monday, September 13, 2010

run fit

A couple of years ago I started to think that I really wanted to get in shape and maybe lose some weight, wasn't really big on the going to the gym but thought I would give it a try. Mostly I did my time on their the treadmill, say for a half hour, then some elliptical for about 5-10 minutes followed by the really easy weight machines. I was to be honest super clueless and didn't want to prove it by asking for help with machines figuring that those things are really self-explanatory so anyone of average intelligence shouldn't have a problem. Lots of people who I knew who also went to the gym said they just do the treadmill for an hour, so I decided I was in good company.

Some even recommended their personal trainer for more guidance but you all know how cheap I am and besides, while they may be really helpful, the truth is I am way too anti-social to deal with something like that. Then I thought, I could spend more time running and less time traveling if I just got my own treadmill, but who has treadmills review recently? Not any of the usual consumer magazines. Luckily, this is the internet and and everyone has an opinion and a website.

We were able to get all sorts of good information, so now I have the shoes (the most important part) and the skills to pick a good treadmill. Now we, well, I, just need to clear some space in the garage to make room. If you have seen our garage, that in and of itself will be the first workout. Wish me luck and stay tuned!

25 Years of Jumping

Super Mario Bros.™, or should I say, "Sūpā Mario Burazāzu" (スーパーマリオブラザーズ) is 25 years old today & I can't belive it falls on the day AFTER a return from Japan. It's like a national holiday there I would think.

Or have they moved on to other favourites. Domo Kun?

Regardless, Happy Birthday little plumber dude!

traveling with clean hands

Having just finished visiting Japan I can tell you I have now been in 3 international airports, three majour train stations, an untold number of subway stations, at least half a dozen UNESCO World Heritage sites as well as one of the largest convention centers in Asia. As you can imagine I have also been to the bathroom at most of these locations as well and having been raised in America, I can tell you that to my eyes, Japanese washrooms are some of the most interesting on the planet. For example, at the convention center, did you know that they have speakers playing random bird sounds to mask the usual noises from the 'customers'?

As befitting the home of climate change initiatives, the Kyoto convention center tries to minimize their carbon footprint by reducing the amount of paper waste by encouraging the use of hand dryers. Seems to me an easy choice, no wood pulp to convert to paper, no paper to have to transport to manufacturing location to warehouse to convention center, no paper waste to have to burn / recycle / haul away.

What's not to like? Have you seen how high-tech these dryers have become lately? You may not miss the paper as much as you think....

Off Target Message

Have you been following the Target Boycott saga?

As the AP succinctly put it:
Target’s headache illustrates the potential risks for businesses that seek to take advantage of a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling that threw out parts of a 63-year-old law that prohibited campaign donations from company funds. The ruling changed regulations in about half the states, but the Target donation in Minnesota is among the first major new corporate moves to come to light.
Here's hoping that in the future even though corporations can spend freely, they may in the future be much more careful not to alienate their carefully groomed image and customer base....

Sunday, September 05, 2010

the dell you want @ new low prices

Finding the right computer you want isn't easy, finding the computer you want at the price you want to pay can be even more difficult. Or rather, it used to! When we wanted a small, lightweight netbook we did a lot of soul searching and settled on the Dell mini10v as the machine at the price point we liked and having chipset that gave us the most flexibility when it came to operating systems.

Having the Dell coupon number 2010 also helped as it made the already low price even lower and if you can't find something among the promo codes, free shipping deals, and online coupons from BestOnlineCoupons.com just wait a few days and try again– there's always something new!

Never pay retail, with the Dell coupons you can always shave a few extra bucks of the price and who doesn't like that?

Thursday, September 02, 2010

Have a Look, News From a Book

J. K. Rowling has donated over fifteen million dollars for a multiple-sclerosis research center.

Nice to know she is still making enough money to be giving away amounts like this!

Steve Jobs announced that iTunes users have downloaded thirty-five million e-books.

The question is, how many were paid for and how many were finished?
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idogcow. Get yours at bighugelabs.com/flickr

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