PRODUCTIVITY: Using Gmail as your spam filter

Wednesday, May 16, 2007

http://news.office-watch.com/t/n.aspx?a=512

Using Gmail as your spam filter
Gmail has a good spam filter, you can use it for your own email accounts.

Office Watch’s Email Essentials has picked up “my” tip on using GMail as a spam filter. Of course, they explain it much better than I do. I like to use TWO gmail ids.

ISP Id#1 -> Gmail#1 -> Gmail#2

ISP Id#2 -> Gmail#3 -> Gmail#2

But they explain it much better.

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Posted by reinkefj

YAHOO ANSWER: Credit unions good for car loans? Not good; great!

Wednesday, May 16, 2007

*** begin quote ***

Credit unions good for car loans?

I am looking to buy a used car that is $16000. a 72 month loan seems to be getting me an apr of about 11% no matter who i go through – would a credit unio be able to give me a lower rate – and are there any downsides to being a credit union member?

*** end quote ***

I just checked my credit union and you can get 48 months for 6%.

So they have good deals. I’ve blogged on how to bootstrap your way out of repeated car loans. Basically buy a car, finance it for three, but pay for six. The second three becomes savings for the next down payment.

I can’t give you a downside for a credit union loan, but I can give you a giant upside.

Most, if not all, credit unions don’t use the rule of 72 on your car payments. Most everyone else makes you pay the interest first and principal later. If you prepay the loan, then you’ve paid a higher rate for your money. CUs use a simple interest formula. Prepay early and you save interest expense. That prepayment also happens unexpectedly when the car gets totaled. So two good reasons to use the Credit Union. And, the CU usually has free credit life insurance thrown in.

So do your homework, it can save you big bucks.

Downside, you may have to bring a check from the credit union to the dealer, so you won’t have instant gratification of signing papers and driving away. So, I did think of a downside. But that dealer financing can be very “expensive” if you don’t really examine the details, which most people don’t.

Good luck,
Let us know how you make out.

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1 Comment | YahooAnswers | Permalink
Posted by reinkefj

JOBSEARCH: Learn skills that can’t be defeated by foreign competition

Wednesday, May 16, 2007

http://finance.yahoo.com/expert/article/yourlife/31830

http://tinyurl.com/2ueyjq

A Few Lessons from the Road
by Ben Stein
Posted on Friday, May 11, 2007, 12:00AM

***Begin Quote***

What’s the lesson here? Learn skills that can’t be defeated by foreign competition. The doctors in Detroit still make money. The finance people who manage the doctors’ offices still make money. And the people there who have substantial savings invested all over the world are doing fine, too.

More brutal than that lesson is that capitalism requires flexibility. Autoworkers who were being paid $50 an hour are getting laid off, it’s true. But in Indian Wells and Palm Desert, Calif., men and women who can lay tile or install plantation shutters or plumb toilets are getting $50 an hour and can’t keep up with demand.

***End Quote***

Remember the four part strategy: ruthless financial discipline, white collar job, blue collar skill, and a web biz.

Capitalism may require flexibility according to Senor Stein. But, the seeker “fighting” under today’s rules of engagement better have their own version of “flexibility” in mind.

Use your spare time wisely. Learn a language. There are things that are timeless and competition-proof. I’ve never met a poor plumber!

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Posted by reinkefj

LIBERTY: Dona nobis pacem.

Wednesday, May 16, 2007

http://www.lewrockwell.com/shaffer/shaffer155.html

Memorial Day Alternative
by Butler Shaffer

***Begin Quote***

Paths of Glory – A Kirk Douglas film. A general sends his men on a suicide mission. When the mission fails, a few soldiers are arbitrarily selected to be tried – and executed – for cowardice.

***End Quote***

In my younger days, I loved war movies. I think it was Paths of Glory or perhaps it was The Execution of Private Slovik that killed that illusion.

Now I see and regret the error of my ways.

Maybe it was the anti-war folk songs of the Sixties. Maybe it was reading about countless kids coming home to their parents in body bags over the decades. Maybe it was the anti-war Socialist Left harping on the issue (to advance their own agenda). Maybe it was the MASH tv series.

Maybe it was just growing up.

I’ve since “learned” of the horror. The Japanese Internment, Dresden bombing, and A bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I “learned” it in school, but I was too stupid to really “learn” it.

I’ve since learned that venial leaders like Lincoln were pursuing their own agenda (i.e., that of the Northern mercantilists). Some were just lying like Wilson who campaigned on an anti-war platform and proceeded immediately to get us into WW1. Some were seeking to get out of economic trouble like FDR staging Pearl Harbor (see Stennent’s book). Some were silver-spoon sex-crazed drugged egotists like Kennedy, who knows what their motivation was (I’d have expected better of a vet who was almost killed). It seems we the people only find out the truth long after the bodies are buried. Our friends and family members bodies that is. We are led by a political class that has a positive motivation to put us more under their thumb. Hitler was an amateur. He should have had the income tax and inflation. That makes everyone a slave. Then you can kill them at your leisure.

“For the people, wars do not pay. The only cause of armed conflict is the greed of autocrats.” ~ Ludwig von Mises
“You can no more win a war than you can win an earthquake.” ~ Jeannette Rankin
“War is the health of the State” Randolph Bourne

All drive home the point. We all lose in ANY war.

You can talk to me about war, when someone is landing troops on the Jersey shore.

Dona nobis pacem.

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Posted by reinkefj

RANT: Jury Duty

Wednesday, May 16, 2007

AS EXPECTED

I’m going to have a lot to say about Jury Duty, but a quick note. Zenger! They keep repeating that the jury members have to apply the law as the judges give it to you. But, the Fully Informed Jury Association says differently. Jurys judge the law as well. Freedom of the press was established by the Zenger trial. Prohibition was effectively ended years before the Repeal by jurys refusing to convict violators. No mention of that. And, those who attend the gooferment skoolz probably never heard of it.

1 Comment | Ranting | Permalink
Posted by reinkefj