Timothy Yordy

There comes a special time in every father’s life and that time is when his child(ren) are finally old enough to get toys that the father wants to play with. This Christmas was that time for me.

Our son was given a Melissa and Doug wooden train set for Christmas and then for his birthday he got three more sets as well as some Thomas the Tank Engine train cars. There are a couple very cool aspects to wooden train sets that you don’t get with other styles of trains.

The first one is that you and your kids can easily pick up the tracks and create any layout you want. The track pieces fit together just like puzzle pieces. And because they are made out of solid wood, there is nothing to break on them. With a total of four sets worth of wooden tracks to work with, we are able to now create some fairly awesome layouts.

The other cool thing is that pretty much all the different brands of wooden trains and tracks will work with each other. So if your kid is into Thomas you could get a Thomas the Tank Engine and buy a more economically priced track and not have to worry about whether the two will work together.

I don’t know that I would want to try my hand at it but you can even get a model Train Track Bit Set to make your own tracks. Of course you’d need a router and router table as well but if you’ve already got them then this could be a really cool investment.

So this year I asked for a deep fryer for Christmas because ours broke earlier this year and I’ve been missing out on fried foods ever since. I can only hope that if someone gets me one that they choose one from the Best Deep Fryer Reviews top ten list, because those ones sure look nice.

Many people this year are looking for ways to spend a little less at Christmas and one way to do that is with Printable Christmas games. They are cheap and can add some great entertainment to your family gatherings this year.

It’s a great time to own an Xbox, Playstation 2, or Gamecube because the games are dirt cheap on the internet, and to some extent in local stores though you need to search harder for bargains when buying locally. Four years ago I bought an Xbox. At the time the price was $150. I then bought two games at $45 each and an extra controller which I think was about $30 at the time. All told I spent more than $250 initially. Those first two games were Star Wars Episode III, which is pretty terrible, and Madden NFL 2006, which I have played extensively.

That was the end of my video game buying though. I couldn’t afford any more games and my disappointment in the Star Wars game made me leary of investing more money in the Xbox. And so it sat barely used until recently when I discoverd that Xbox games were being sold for next to nothing on sites like Amazon. Sure the games might be four or five years old but they are new to me.

So I’ve compiled a list of the best Xbox games available for the cheapest prices through Amazon. And if you don’t have a system yet those are cheap too, going for about $50.

The Best Xbox Games for a Fraction of the Original Price

1. Crimson Skies: High Road to Revenge - great flight sim game. Best Price: $0.49
2. Elder Scrolls III Morrowind - an epic RPG. Best Price: $1.71
3. Halo: Combat Evolved - the shooter that defined the Xbox. Best Price: $3.38
4. Evil Dead: Regeneration - the best mindless zombie thrashing game you can find. Best Price: $4.08
5. Fable - Another good RPG. Best Price: $4.43
6. Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic - This is an RPG set in the Star Wars universe and unlike so many other Start Wars games, this one is actually good. Best Price: $10.50
7. Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas – This the best game in the GTA series. Best Price: $5.87
8. Far Cry Instincts - Another great shooter. Best Price: $1.71
9. TimeSplitters 2 - Shooting things and blowing stuff up across time, what’s not to like. Best Price: $1.83
10. Mercenaries - Sort of like GTA but with slightly less dubious morality involved. Best Price: $3.94
11. Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six 3 - This is a good port of the PC version of one of the best tactical shooters. Best Price: $0.01
12. Lego Star Wars - Good lego fun in the Star Wars universe, what’s not to like? Best Price: $4.94
13. Half Life 2 - It’s like Half-Life but with a 2 in the title. Best Price: $0.25
14. Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time - One of the best RPGs on the Xbox. Best Price: $2.20
15. Burnout 3 Takedown - Had to include a racing game and what better than one with ridiculous crashes? Best Price: $2.60

There you have it, you could add 15 of the best Xbox games to your collection for $47.83. That’s what one game would have cost you a few years ago but now those of us who just aren’t cool enough to own a new system can get endless hours of gaming pleasure for a fraction of the original cost. Go buy yourself some cheap games and enjoy your outdated video game system, I know I’m enjoying mine.

Best Buy announced Monday that they would be making changes to their in store compensation for sales associates and effectively halving the income of 8000 employees. This move has drawn comparisons to Circuit City who two years ago made a similar move in firing higher paid sales staff and replacing them with lowered paid employees. That move drew public criticism and resulted in lower sales due to having stores staffed by workers who cared little about customer service anymore. Everyone knows how that story ended of course, two years later and Circuit City is out of business. Someone at Best Buy thought to themselves, “Wow that seems like a really great way to save money!” and so the cycle begins again.

            However I don’t think things are that simple. Apparently everyone thinks that things will just be peachy because of how much the employees like the new CEO. Seriously? I work in retail so I’m no stranger to corporations being completely out of touch with what it’s like to work in a store and what the employees in stores actually care about. But how can they be so naïve as to think that the employees love the CEO, who already makes about 1000 times as much as them, so much that they won’t care that he gave the order to cut their pay in half? If this past election cycle taught us anything it’s that the Democrats did a wonderful job of leveraging the idea of class warfare to get votes and right now is not a good time to be seen as a big CEO that is treading all over the little guy.

            There is of course more going on here however. This is about saving money sure but not in the way that they are describing. This move by Best Buy is being driven by fear that the so-called Employee Free Choice Act might pass. If it does then workers will have a much easier time unionizing. Best Buy knows this and so they have made the decision to cut wages so drastically before the bill passes so that if it does pass, then they will be dealing with union employees starting out from much lower pay scales. The flip side of this of course is that those 8,000 employees are now much more likely to be disgruntled and join a union. The execs at Best Buy must have reasoned it out though and thought that that was an inevitability either way if the Employee Free Choice Act passes.

            If the bill doesn’t pass then Best Buy has saved themselves some money but only time will tell if they suffer the same drop in sales productivity and public backlash that Circuit City encountered.

            For you employees at Best Buy that this has affected please call your Democrat Senators and Representatives and thank them for bowing down to the big union lobbyists and pushing this bill. The Employee Free Choice Act hasn’t even passed yet and it has cost you half of your income.

I’ve been a fan of the pop/rock group the Newsboys for nearly 15 years. During that time period there have been a few lineup changes but none quite as important as the latest one.

Frontman, Peter Furler, the only original band member remaining, is stepping down as lead singer. Taking his place will be Michael Tait. Most recently a solo artist and previously a member of the vocal group dcTalk, Tait will certainly take some getting used to for long time Newsboys fans.

It was just about two years ago when bassist Phil Joel left the band and was replaced in concerts by programmed bass rhythms. I’m not sure if Joel should feel honored that they couldn’t find anyone to replace him, or insulted that he was replaced by a computer. Joel’s absence left a pretty large hole in the form of some really great backing vocals which the other members were never really able to duplicate.

Now Peter Furler has decided to hang up his touring boots and be a studio only band member with occasional stage appearances. I can respect wanting to stay at home with your family after 20 years of touring but I have to wonder what is in it for the other band members? Furler intends to stay at home and collects royalties from the songs he writes while the others spend several months a year on the road doing the hard work of the music business. I should note though that Furler’s excellent songwriting is what has fueled much of the band’s success.

To me, the timing of this decision just feels all wrong. The band is in the middle of a tour, which fans have already bought tickets to, and now they are going to be getting quite a different concert than they expected. Tait has a much different vocal style and stage persona than Furler. I saw Tait in concert a couple years ago and walked out halfway through. He’s not bad, he’s just not interesting on stage. Also, if Tait was able to successfully fill concert venues on his own, then he wouldn’t be looking for a job as another band’s lead singer. I’m just not sure what he brings to the table.

The Newsboys have a new album that is releasing on May 5th entitled, In The Hands of God. Furler sings every song on the album. Again, the timing of all of this just feels wrong. Why do this now? Why not wait until the album is released? Or better yet they could re-record a couple of the vocal tracks with Tait singing lead so that he could be introduced to the fans. With Tait being absent from this new album it will likely be a full two years before anything is recorded in the studio with Tait’s vocals.

All of this makes me wonder if this is the beginning of a fast downward spiral for the Newsboys or if fans can expect several years of mediocre albums and tours before the end finally comes. I hope that neither situation is the case. I hope that somehow they can pull this off in a way that will be enjoyable for the fans but I think it will be a tough sell.

My goal with this website from the beginning has been to write articles about exploring ways of making money outside of working for someone else and to need less money by being more self-sufficient, and also as of late covering topics about how the current political and economic evironment may affect all of our freedoms to pursue happiness in this manner.

If along the way the website itself managed to generate some money, well then great. That being said, my Google AdSense revenue has stunk recently. So I decided to try a new approach via TextAdMarket.com. It’s a site that lets you sell text ads for a whatever price you determine based on what you think you can sell and based on your traffic level. Ads are sold on a per day basis. If an ad space sells, then the price goes up. For each day that none of the ad spots sell, the price drops. It’s based on supply and demand. A website supplies the ad space but if there’s no demand then the price drops. A publisher can also use a fixed price if he doesn’t want to use the Market price setup.

I think it’s a great concept and I’m giving it a try to see how it goes.  Another option that TextAdMarket.com gives you is to allow pay-per-click ads to show up in the ad spots until a spot is actually sold. The only hiccup I’m seeing so far is that it seems like, if the pay-per-click ads are showing then there is no real way for your website visitors to see that the ad slots are available for sale. You can create a separate link to the ad and manually add that to the site but that seems less convenient than it needs to be.

For publishers, signing up your own site is free and only takes a few minutes. For advertisers, you are buying ad space of course but in a very targeted way as opposed to a kind of blind approach applied using Google Adwords.

I remember a time not too long ago when my wife and I were really struggling financially. Heck we aren’t far better now. At the time though I was beginning to question how we would be able to heat our house through the winter. Bills were piling up and there wasn’t much hope of the situation improving anytime soon. Christmas came and we had to make the tough decision to not buy each other anything for Christmas. The holiday is certainly not all about giving or receiving presents but it’s nice to be able to go spend money on your spouse and surprise them with something and it really stinks when you can’t.

A co-worker of mine at the time was somewhat aware of the situation we were in and a few days before Christmas he gave me a card. Inside of it was $50. He wanted my wife and I to be able to buy each other something for Christmas. Later that day we took the money, split it up, and went shopping for each other. Nothing big or extravagant just small gifts that wouldn’t have been there otherwise. There’s something so much more special about being able to give someone a gift after you’ve already resigned yourself to the idea that you won’t be able to. The gifts you receive in those circumstances are all the more precious as well.

That friend of mine may never know just how much he changed Christmas for us that year. I pray that God will multiply to him and his family the blessing that he gave us on Christmas. And to everyone who reads this article, may you be blessed richly and joy be upon you.

Merry Christmas.

We are just a week away from the most greed filled day of the year. I am talking about Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving. Thanksgiving is one of the commercially innocent holidays remaining of the major holidays. That status is being stripped away though by more and more retail stores choosing to open on Thanksgiving instead of waiting until Friday to kick off their sales.

I have never gone shopping on Black Friday, most years it is because I have been working and a couple years it’s simply because I’ve got no money. As someone who has worked inside of a store during this madness I can say that it is generally a display of the worst of humanity. People pushing, and yelling, and bursting with anger if they don’t get their hands on lots of junk that they don’t need anyway. A lot of them are the types that you see every year, buying the same type of junk, and also throughout the year whenever sales are good enough. These are the ones that aren’t buying for themselves or as gifts for anyone, they are simply reselling. And they are usually the rudest ones.

If I could give just one piece of advice to those who are thinking of venturing out on Black Friday it would be this: Don’t. Do you actually need the things you plan to buy or are the low prices driving greed somewhere within you? Those low prices aren’t worth dealing with the traffic, the crowds, the stress, and more often in recent years the violence that accompanies this day.

I have a friend that has worked at Wal-Mart for a number of years. She told me that every year on Black Friday she comes home with bruises all over her from greed driven customers trying to get to whatever generic electronics item is on sale that year. Black Friday is definitely a dark day in America. Once again this year, I will be working that day. Fortunately though the company I currently work for doesn’t deal with this kind of insanity.

I’ve spent the last four years on dialup internet. During that time I wasted countless hours waiting for pages to load and didn’t go to many websites because I didn’t have the time to wait. I also killed many website ideas I had during that time because managing them would have been impossible on dialup. As of a month and a half ago though I have finally rejoined the rest of the high speed world and am on a level playing field with my internet connection.

I came to a scary realization a couple week ago though. While I spent the last several years maintaining simplified websites to accommodate my connection, the rest of the internet was becoming bigger and better and I simply ignored what I couldn’t do on my connection. Now though I realize that while I was stuck, the rest of the internet has passed me by. My web design and graphic design skills are severely out of date and if I want to be able to compete in the online world I need a major upgrade to my knowledge. I may have grown up with computers but kids today have grown up with internet capable computers and their skill level is accordingly greater in the online arena.

If you find that your skill set is also obsolete here are some subject areas I would recommend studying: css, xml, php, asp, javascript, internet marketing, and very importantly graphic design. The first several things I listed are the meat of what makes a site do what it does but the internet is increasingly a visually dazzling place and most sites don’t need a really meaty backend to be able to perform their intended function. So if nothing else, try to look good. Good graphic design is often aided greatly by good graphic design software and that unfortunately isn’t cheap. All of the graphics on all of my websites were made using Paint Shop Pro. Years ago I would have likened Paint Shop Pro to being really similar to but not quite as good as Photoshop, while keeping the price tag much cheaper than Photoshop. Unfortunately though in recent years the makers of Paint Shop Pro have really not kept pace with the tools that are now available in Photoshop.

There are a number of really great free tutorials scattered throughout the internet that could teach me any of the programming languages I listed. And that is where I plan to start when I am able to make the time. I haven’t yet figured out how to resolve the graphic design problem but I’ll work on it. We live in an online world and it changes with such frequency that it is far to easy to be left behind.

There I was in the express checkout at Wal-Mart. 10 Items or Less. In front of me in line was a middle-aged woman who waited until all her items were scanned and then pulled out her checkbook. Meticulously wrote the information down in the check register and then began filling out the check. Meanwhile the line in the express checkout was growing and tempers were rising. I’m sure this has happened to all of us. Grocery stores should not allow checks in the express checkout lanes if they should be allowed at all.

I’ve been wanting to write this article for awhile and finally fit it into the schedule. I wanted to create an article examining the three main forms of payment accepted at retailers and discuss the benefits and drawbacks of each because it seems that many Americans are ignorant of what the differences between checks, cash, and credit/debit mean to them.

Credit/Debit Cards – Over the last couple years Visa has run a number of commercials that portray using cash as much slower than using credit and the undertone of the commercials is that the person using cash is somehow not cool and dumber than everyone using credit. So let’s dive into this a little bit. With credit cards you are spending money that you don’t have and if you don’t pay it off on time you will be paying terrible interest rates and the things you purchased will cost you more than the price you originally paid. Using debit cards means you are spending directly from your bank account and in some sense that is better than going into debt with a credit card. Thinking about security concerns though if your credit card gets stolen you are often not liable for fraudulent charges depending on your credit card company but with a debit card a person can pull your money from your bank account. That’s a bit more serious. As for Visa’s ads about credit cards being so much faster than cash. As someone who works in retail I can tell you that an overwhelming majority of the time credit/debit takes longer than cash. Additionally the recent advent of touchpay systems further strips away security features on credit cards because the cards themselves emit a radio frequency that can be captured by someone holding a device near your purse or wallet.

Checks – Other than for paying bills, most of which can be paid online, checks are an outdated method of payment that should be done away with in my opinion. No form of payment in stores takes longer to complete. With so much concern about identity theft it amazes me that people still write checks so much and women are the ones who still use checks at retail, almost universally. Think about the information on your check: Your bank account, bank routing number, name, address, and in some cases your phone number. Some people are even brainless enough to include their driver’s license number on there as well. Every time you write a check at a store you are placing an awful lot of trust in that cashier that is only making minimum wage.

Cash – Cash is the oldest, usually the fastest and still the most secure form of payment. There are exceptions to it being the fastest of course. I remember another time I was in an express checkout lane at Wal-Mart and the cashier was an elderly lady in her seventies at least and the customer at the checkout was a lady about the same age. The customer paid for the entire purchase with loose change. Between the two of them it took about ten attempts to count it all out accurately. These situations are rare however. The only real drawback of cash is it can’t be used to pay for things online, that is until our computers start coming with cash slots built into them like vending machines.

The thing that I really love about cash though is the security of it. You can spend it wherever you like and none of it is personally identifiable to you. I’ve heard people say that they don’t like carrying cash in case they get robbed. Really? I would much rather lose $100 in cash than lose a debit card that is linked to however much is in my bank account. Even if I manage to cancel the card before any damage is done, the theoretical mugger still has my full name and that is something he wouldn’t get from cash.

So there you have it. Quit using checks and don’t buy into the lie that credit is better than cash.