My Two Cents

My girlfriend and I tend to eat out at a lot of restaurants. Often times, its not much more expensive than buying all the ingredients and cooking for just two, but there are a few great meals that consistently save big bucks and taste awesome. Our favorites so far this summer:
1) Homemade bean soup – [...]

I was listening to NPR this morning and heard an awesome story. Local utility Puget Sound Energy has found its cheaper to offer customers rebates than to build new equipment to keep up with demand. This caught my ear due to the novelty of the idea. The idea of paying your customers [...]

I’ve spent some time over the last few weeks up near Mt. Baker, in a rural part of Washington. Isolated, but near a ski resort, this area caters to fast-driving college kids from nearby Bellingham and Vancouver. The two lane twisty road gets icy and it isn’t uncommon to see cars in the ditch, precariously close [...]

The web is all-a-twitter with netbook commentary and reviews lately.  Personally, I’ve had the pleasure of playing around with a few different netbooks lately.  First, the Hot Pink MSI Wind U100 that my significant other won via the MSI Wind Valentines Day promotion (that’s me, the guy in the first picture!), then my coworker’s HP Mini 1010NR.  [...]

The Seattle newspapers have been reporting on an interesting and unfortunate side effect of Washington State’s new “E-Cycle Washington” program.  The program is a new way to deal with the pricey electronic recycling predicament.  Washington’s program is entirely funded by the electronics manufacturers, allowing consumers to drop off many electronic devices (Monitors, TVs, computers, etc) [...]

Eugene, Oregon television station KVAL posted a great little story back on December 15th. “Two tasks in two minutes to prevent frozen pipes“.
Tip 1: Open cabinets to allow warm air to get under your sink to warm your pipes.
Tip 2: Turn on your faucets to get a trickle of water moving. [...]

I wrote a post about radio shack two years ago, wondering how they could compete long-term and being skeptical of their prospects.  Their stock was trading at $17, on a high after Julian Day took over the reigns and was promising a turnaround.  Now, 23 months later, the stock is at $11 and, to be [...]

Those familiar with IP telephony, IP-TV and internet connectivity in general know about Quality of Service (QoS) functionality to ensure the highest priority devices on the network get access to bandwidth first. This ensures that, if your office uses VoIP for phone calls, that the phone conversation will have priority over standard internet traffic [...]

I’ve been giving a lot of thought over the last few months to trying to establish a system to help small businesses build up a presence online.  Now, as the economy tightens up, its more important than ever for small businesses to leverage every means available to attract new customers.  Over the last 8 months, I’ve [...]

My birthday was a few months back and some friends bought my girlfriend and I Seattle City Pass tickets.  I’ve lived in Seattle quite a while so I’ve been to most of the standard attractions at least a few times, but the City Pass had an expiration date and it was quickly approaching so this [...]