Miscellaneous

The jackpot is now $275 million. Tonight the drawings will be held at 11:00pm. We’ll see what my tickets mean after tonight.

Update: The jackpot just increased to $340 million. That means nobody won. I didn’t even win any of the smaller prizes.

When I was walking home tonight, I saw the Mega Millions jackpot ad and decided to play for fun. I’m not a big believer of lottery tickets. The last time I bought a lottery ticket was years ago. Anyway, I walked in the store and bought five tickets, all random picks.

Mega Millions Tickets (2/28/07):
A. 21 35 36 50 53 : 29
B. 01 09 33 34 56 : 15
C. 12 34 38 51 53 : 35
D. 06 12 21 31 54 : 21
E. 13 27 28 34 46 : 19

The next drawing will be on Friday, 3/2/2007. Let’s see how it turns out.

By the way, if I win the jackpot, the first person to congratulate me on this post will receive $100,000.

I received my rebates from Cingular. However, I only received $200 instead of the $250 rebates I was told. I’m going to call my Cingular guy and ask him where’s the missing $50. Also, instead of a check, I received the rebates in Rewards Debit Cards. They’re similar to a credit card, where you can take it to any store where Visa is accepted. I received 3 cards, denominations of two $50 and one $100. I think it’s a hassle to keep track of these cards. I prefer cash. But since I can’t take it in cash, I’m going to convert them into Amazon certificates. At least I’ll have everything in one account, plus I buy a lot on Amazon.com.

Tyler of Smart Capitalist told me he was learning Dvorak. I looked up “Dvorak” and did some reading on it. It claims to be more efficient with typing in the English language, but then I’m so used to QWERTY, I can type pretty much effortlessly with QWERTY. At the peak of my training, I typed up to 80 wpm with good accuracy. I’m pretty sure if I spend some time training myself in Dvorak I can type that fast too, but I see no benefit in switching at this point. It’s not like I type for a living. I can still type 60 wpm in QWERTY if necessary. Most of the time, it’s the contents I dwell about rather
than the speed.the speed.

Tyler’s response:

The biggest difference is that all the special characters like < and > are in more accessible positions. I guess that is also the “.” character. That and I must have gotten really bored. It seems people can type about 100 wpm with DVORAK..

Response to My Company Wastes Paper:

The previous company I worked in wanted to get rid of all papers and went mostly paper-less. The CEOs wanted everything on computer files. They scanned all the paperwork and converted them to PDF files. The good thing was that they saved a lot of trees. Going digital also made the documents easier to distribute.

My company prints out hundreds of sheets of paper every day. Most of the paper are just thrown away after a meeting. The surprising thing is that there are no recycling bins on my floor. I hate wasting paper, so I stack up all the printed papers at the corner of my desk and use them later for scrap papers. Sometimes I used the blank side for printing. It is preferred to reused paper than to recycle.
I want to look for an organization that would take used paper for recycling, but I haven’t found one yet. I did some research online and found some information on recycling.

Solcomhouse Recycling

Reuse and Recycle Paper

EIA Kid’s Page

Does your company recycle paper?

I found out that I can check the balance and minutes of my Cingular bill without speaking to a representative. And I can even pay my bill, too. I was told that the text messages sent back to me are not charged on my bill. Here are some neat tricks for Cingular customers:

Check balance
Dial *BAL# (*225#) on your phone.
Press the Send key.
Within seconds, your balance is delivered via text message to your phone screen. You’ll also see your next bill’s due date as well as your last payment posted.

Check your minutes
Dial *MIN# (*646#) on your phone.
Press the Send key.
Within seconds, the minutes remaining are delivered via text message to your phone screen. These minutes will be broken down by type.

Make a payment
Dial *PAY (*729) on your phone.
Press the Send key.
You’ll get immediate access to our automated voice system. Follow the prompts to pay your current bill with a checking account, debit card, or credit card.

Every morning, as I wait for the elevators in the lobby of my workplace I would see a bunch of people holding a cup of coffee. Especially on Mondays. How many tons of coffee beans does America consume a day? What if these people don’t drink coffee for a day? Will they become less productive, or still be awake? I don’t drink cofee; I’m a tea drinker. I have been drinking tea more frequently since I started my current job. Tea also has a lot of caffeine, but I’m not dependent on it. I buy a box of tea and make it in the office kitchen. I believe that would save me more money vs buying it from outside. How much do coffee drinks spend a year buying cups from stores and street vendors, espeically from StarBucks?

I don’t believe in horoscopes but sometimes I glance at what they say. Here’s a horoscope from Jan 31, 2007 AM New York paper and it sounds really good.

Gemini:
Gather up as much as you can, graciously of course. More money and status for doing less manual labor is your objective.

I have many past issues of SmartMoney, BusinessWeek, Forbes, and more. Some of contain really good articles. I’m offering the issues for free, but you’ll need to cover shipping charges. If you are interested in past issues of financial magazines, let me know.