Author: pinoyboy

Reward Index

As the keeper of our households finances, I was making sure that our accounts were reaping all the benefits one receives from not paying cash. Borne out of the interest and fees collected from those in debt, I revel in what I can get back from credit cards. I genuinely feel bad for those who are tied down by debt, but I’m equally as angry at the credit card industry and their shenanigans to capitalize on our weakness to consume and procrastinate.

I’ve been earning and spending points for years, but Snuff has been missing out on that fraction of dollar until I signed him up. With all the incidental purchasing that he does I thought I would have some gifts coming my way in no time until I saw the hard figures.

  Visa WorldPoints Visa Extras AMEX Rewards
Apple iPod Classic 80GB 39,200 Points 177,500 Points 42,000 Points
Sony® Bravia™
Home Theater System		 41,600 Points 186,500 Points 53,998 Points
Cash Back scaled from .5 to 1%
2500 Points = $12.50
350000 Points = $350		 set rate of .2%
2000 points = $4		 set rate of .5%
20,000 points = $100

confessions of a husky boy: black eyed peas

I’m not entirely clear as to how black eyed peas made it to our New Year’s table living in the American midwest and being immigrant Canadian. Mom has made it a point to serve these totemic dishes to ensure health and prosperity, so I try to keep with tradition.

Start with some kind of meat, the cheaper the better – about the size of your fist for a large pot. We have noticed over the years that fresh beef ribs, tail, spine, hooves, tongue; don’t compare to pork trotters, which seem to be in constant supply at a very low price. Boil the meat with a few pepper corns and bay leaves. Once the the meat is tender and a broth is set – throw in soaked black eyed peas, boil again.

One can appreciate the simplicity of this method – it is 90% done.

Magic time, some of the black eyed peas disintegrate, some stay whole, and the broth goes starchy and everything picks up the flavor of meat. At this stage one could throw in:

bep.JPG

– hot sauce and vinegar
– julienne strips of bitter melon and bitter melon leaves
– spinach
– rice and roast pork
– field peas, black beans, or red kidney beans

Today it’s ham hocks and spinach, rice on the side. Happy New Year!

Utter B(e/i).S.

Dear Research in Motion,

In the coming year, please take the SDK for Google’s Open Handset Alliance and iPhone SDK and create a BlackBerry Connect for those respective platforms. I realize that you have solutions out there now [link] and may have plans for this in the future [link] and I don’t want to sound too presumptuous or impetuous but I’m tired of shocking headlines about your products you have yet to make.

Run on all platforms and shut pundits up. I don’t want to read another nearly-fired-due-to-lack-of-productivity-wallstreet-analysts cum blogging-fud-and-buzz-rakers‘ cobbled together ideas of what would spark growth. Nor do I want to read how RIM’s [insert product name] is going to be the next [insert hot handset, business device, software]-killer. I know you see the potential of everyone in the business world connecting to their corporate BES with or without a genuine BlackBerry device. If you made connections to BIS cheap and available to everyone – you could become the de-facto standard for email; in fact email 2.0.

Keep making your handsets, make them sexy and irresistible to appease your current fan base; but make your service sexy and irresistible. Your biggest market isn’t the people who want Blackberry devices, it’s the people that don’t have Blackberry devices. If you don’t kill the iPhone or HTC’s touch devices, you could live happily knowing that you’re cashing in on their connectivity.

kthnxbai,
pb

ps: could you open up a datacenter in michigan? we kinda need the jobs…

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