First thing after coming home on Friday, I checked my mail.

Let’s see, what could in be the box that arrived?

The envelope says, “DON’T RUIN YOUR SURPRISE. Open your gift before this envelope.” Curiouser and curiouser.

Nicely gift-wrapped and everything.

Hmm, what could it be now? (Yes, I’ve already read the little card, but I’m not sharing so as to maintain the suspense.)

Shall we take a look inside?

A-ha! There it is! I have been trying to win a copy of The 4-Hour Workweek on JohnChow.com for a couple weeks. Instead, I wound up winning it at Chris Bloczynski dot Com in his first blog contest.

You may remember that his blog was one of the two contenders in my first review. I should have thought of using a photo like he did. Chris won the battle, but, unfortunately for Chris, it was the other Chris that won.

Anyway, I won second place in Chris’ contest–hey, I guess he won second place in my review too!–but since I’ve been wanting to get a copy of the book (preferably free, but I would have bought a copy sooner or later), it’s like winning the first place prize.

Thanks again, Chris!

Be sure to visit his site and read his post: “Post popular articles on high-traffic days.”

And, if you haven’t been fortunate enough to win a copy, you can still buy a copy of The 4-Hour Workweek at a reasonable price.

Why does no one listen to me? I just told you not to read this post, yet here you are!

You see, I have a great post in mind. And, I am eager to share it with you.

Unfortunately, I need an example–a good, solid example. And, I have one! But, I don’t remember the full details. I don’t remember the source. I thought I knew the source, and I checked the book–three books by the same author. Not there. I can remember the example pretty clearly, except for the who, where, when and the book that it was in. All I do know is the what!

Thus, the non-post. Sure, I should have something else as a backup. Well, one piece of advice is to go through your archives and update something you’ve previously written. I don’t have that much of an archive yet!

Instead, I’ll just remind you about my “$15 for Fame” giveaway.

What? This post wasn’t good enough for you? Don’t complain–I asked you not to read it!

“CIA, FBI computers used for Wikipedia edits”

I’m sure they limited their changes to simply correcting statistical information, right?

The CIA responded, but the FBI hadn’t.

Apple
Banana
Carrot
Doughnuts
Eggplant
Fig
Green Pepper
Habañero Pepper
Iceberg Lettuce
Jalapeño Pepper

In the morning, take a few minutes and write down a list of ten items, using the first ten letters of the alphabet as shown above. You can use a theme (such as food) or not. When starting out, it may be easier to use a theme though.

Once you’ve written them down, read them over a few times and memorize them. Keep the paper in a safe place at home–don’t take it with you to work or school.

At lunch time, try to remember the ten items, writing them down if you wish.

When you get home, try to recall the items again, writing them down if you want. Then, check against the actual list and see how well you did. You can do this right when you get home, or after dinner or at bedtime.

Do this daily, changing the items each day. Once you are able to recall the ten items daily with regularity, start increasing the difficulty. If you have been using groups of items in a theme (such as food, animals, kitchen items, etc.), use a group of random items instead.

Once you have mastered that, begin adding more items to the list each day. Once you can get through all the letters of the alphabet, that will be great!

And, once you are able to recall 26 items with frequent success, stop using the alphabet method. Just choose 26 items, no matter what letter with which they begin.

This exercise takes only minutes per day, but you will be amazed at the results, especially if you don’t think you’re good at remembering things.

After a time, you will be able to go to the grocery store, and you won’t have to check your list because you’ll remember everything you need to buy!

Fame

The heights by great men reached and kept
   Were not attained by sudden flight,
But they while their companions slept
   Were toiling upward in the night.

Henry W. Longfellow, in “The Ladder of St. Augustine”

Reminds me of an early book, titled Where Wizards Stay Up Late by Katie Hafner & Matthew Lyon on the origins of the Internet.

Anyway, I think it’s a nice motivational piece. It reminds us that success comes in part to those who are willing to work for it, even well into the wee hours of the morning.

What’s your favorite motivational or inspiring quote? It could be worth $15.

Write a post on your blog about your favorite motivational or inspiring quote, and link back to this post. You can leave a comment here when you’re done, just in case the trackback doesn’t work or something.

Each blog post with a linkback counts as one entry for you. Thursday, August 23rd, 2007 will be the last day for this. Then, I will count all the entries and draw a winner on August 25th, 2007.

Void where prohibited. You must be able to accept a PayPal payment. So, if you’re in a country not served by PayPal, sorry. Any applicable taxes are the responsibility of the winner. And, I reserve the right to retroactively apply any legal stuff I should have included but didn’t know I should have.

Oh, I did mention the prize is $15, sent via PayPal? If not, I’m doing so now. One prize of $15.00 (fifteen dollars). That’s in U.S. dollars, by the way. Everyone else gets that warm fuzzy feeling for sharing their favorite motivational or inspiring quote with their readers.

SBI! is the perfect AdSense host.

Every day, every single day since I started this blog, I have received no eMails saying, “Hey, DCR, where can I register a cool domain name like yours?”

Since I receive as many requests as I mentioned, I figured I just ought to save time and tell everyone in a post that they should visit CanvilleRegistry.com to register their domain names. It’s inexpensive, easy and fun!

Yes, fun. It is fun to find the name you want! It is fun to pull out your credit card or use PayPal! Fun, fun, fun!

Don’t have your own blog? Register your preferred domain name anyway, before anyone else gets it!

Have you registered your own name? You don’t want some poser out there pretending to be you, do you?

Maybe you could register your license plate number and put up a website with pictures of your car so people will know who slowed down to let them turn onto the busy road where they had been sitting the past five minutes waiting for traffic to slow down so they could make their turn–but, it never did, so they just sat there and waited–and waited and grew frustrated and wanted to turn but couldn’t–and the kids were crying and they all had to go to the bathroom–and they knew they shouldn’t have let the kids have sugar and caffeine–but they didn’t expect to be sitting there, waiting to turn, waiting to be able to go home–and then you came along, slowed down, and let them in front of you. You saved their day! Certainly, they remembered your license plate number so they could Google it when they got home and send you a couple bucks via PayPal to thank you for your kindness. So, register your domain name today!

After all, it could happen, but it most certainly won’t if you haven’t registered your domain. Do it now!

Since last week, I have been planning to do a post on comments, and whether and how often you should reply to comments on your blog.

But, other things came up, so it got pushed off.

Apparently, I am not the only one thinking along those lines, as when I checked ChrisBlogging yesterday, guess what he posted about?

To save myself time, and since I already responded there, I encourage you to pop over to his blog and jump in on the discussion.

Meanwhile, I will have to put some thought to another post, before someone else beats me to it, again!

A lot of people have credit card debt that they want to pay off. A couple days ago, Budget Babe talked about reducing your credit card debt.

When trying to pay off your credit card(s), it is best to avoid using them. However, sometimes you just cannot avoid using them. Here are a couple money-saving tricks to help deal with that situation.

1) If you need to purchase something with a credit card, pay it off right away and round up. If you can pay online, pay on your credit card (either before or right after your purchase) the amount you had to pay, rounding up as much as you can. For example, if you paid $46.95 for something, pay $50 on your credit card. That way, you are reimbursing the card for your purchase as well as reducing the debt by a little.

If your credit card company restricts the number of payments you can make in a month, write out a check for the amount and save it until it’s time to pay the bill. Then, pay the amount you normally pay plus the amounts of any additional checks you wrote.

By doing things this way, you will continue to see your credit card balance drop, instead of bouncing up and down when you make new purchases.

2) If you are saving up for a large purchase, consider “saving” by making payments on your credit card. Even if you end up having to charge a large amount later (once you have “saved” enough money), in the meantime what you will have saved in interest charges will likely far exceed what little interest the bank may have paid you if you saved the money in a checking or savings account.

And, as always, know thyself and be sure these methods will work out to your advantage before using them.

As I mentioned earlier, my goal for the end of the year is $300,000. For tracking, I have added this to my sidebar where it will show the progression toward meeting the goal.

I have also added a short term goal, which is $5,000 for the purchase of a new computer and software. This is also shown in the sidebar.

To aid in the short term goal, I have changed the “Buy me a soda” link to a link to make a voluntary payment in support of this blog, so that I can meet that short term goal.

To a number of bloggers, freedom is having a sufficiently large income that they can do whatever they want: stay at home to spend time with family, travel the world, retire and live off interest income, etc.

But, whatever your situation, are you really free?

If you have to spend your time fighting content theft, how free are you?

And, what about real world theft too? People break into homes, and not only do people lose their things, but they feel violated as well. People break into businesses, which hurts productivity and costs the business time and money as well.

It’s not just the loss of stuff either, but the clean-up from the mess of the break-in (broken glass, broken doors, cut wires, bended metal, etc.) and from the thieves rooting through things.

Not everything can be replaced either. There may be jewelry or other items that was handed down in the family from one generation to the next. Inherited furniture may not be stolen, but damaged or destroyed.

A common response is that insurance will pay for it. Well, you paid for that insurance! And, the more crime occurs, the more we all pay for our insurance. If you have to pay money to pay for the replacement of things you already have because someone someday might steal it from you, is that freedom?

What about going out in public? Travelers are often advised not to look like tourists because they might be mugged or scammed. If you have to dress a certain way to avoid being a victim of a crime, are you free?

Even in your own hometown, you’re often advised to be careful, especially at night. We advise teens and women to go out in numbers–never alone–because you never know when there might be a pervert or nutjob or criminal out there wanting to hurt someone. Is that freedom?

Here’s a simple litmus test: If a young woman can go out alone in the middle of the night wearing nothing more than a bikini with a couple hundred dollar bills in her waist strap and take a shortcut through a dark alley to go to a gas station to buy a bag of chips and a six pack of beer without being assaulted, mugged, raped, murdered, kidnapped or harmed in any way, then you live in a free (and safe) country.

On top of all that, we (well, many of us) live in a society where there is greater concern for the criminal than for the victims they hurt. While the criminal may go through appeal after appeal after appeal, the victim is long forgotten. The victim is the one that has to continue their life, clean up the mess, pick up the pieces–and they were the ones that didn’t do anything wrong!

Society’s attitude is to screw the victim. It’s the criminal that needs to be well-treated. The victim is biased, so his or her opinion is of no value.

Heck, sometimes we even blame the victim! Well, he shouldn’t have gone there. She shouldn’t have been dressed like that. He shouldn’t have driven that fancy car. She asked for it.

Forget about the victim. The victim may be too stressed and shaken to eat properly, but let’s make sure the criminal gets a balanced meal. The victim may have to pay for years of therapy, but let’s make sure the criminal gets it for free. And, of course, let’s not burden the poor criminal by making him or her pay any sort of restitution to the victim. Just because he or she committed a crime doesn’t mean he or she should be further burdened by any financial difficulties, right?

Never mind the cases too where the criminal has sued the victim, and won! So, even if you defend yourself, you still might end up being victimized, this time by the criminal with an army of lawyers behind him.

Is that freedom?

I’m not going to pretend to know the solution, but maybe if we all took some self-defense measures, if we pushed for legislation that would require criminals to pay full restitution to their victims and if we lobbied to get rid of judges that decide in favor of criminals, that might go a long way toward winning our freedom.

Sorry about what has turned into a semi-political rant, but I read this post and got to thinking that people shouldn’t have to worry about these things when they go to the library, and things took a tangent from there.