CMoore.com

I’m a huge believer in buying used things, particularly in areas where immediacy is not an issue and quality does not decline much, if at all.

Yeah, I’m looking at you, books. Textbooks, novels, hardcover, softcover, whatever. Used books markets are the greatest invention in the history of ever. The one I use? Half.com.

This is the least obnoxious banner they have offered (the others are all those lovely animated gifs. Woo.):

I think I saved over $300 last semester on ghostfinger’s textbooks by using half.com for most of the purchases (this was before I knew about Valore., so I’ll definitely comparison shop next semster). Anyway, half.com totally rocks and it’ll save you a bundle of money.

I’m a big believer in giving books away too of course, but iffen I’m going to be buying, the first place I looke is half.com. You can get CDs and DVDs on half.com as well, though I’ve been less successful for those products compared to its competitors (like Amazon marketplace) in terms of savings.

Good luck, buddies

According to Quentin Tarantino, if a rookie screenwriter wants to get their script read by the right people in Hollywood they must first find a way to bypass the script readers. In the director’s eyes, a reader will never recommend you since they’re frustrated writers themselves and don’t want anyone else to succeed. Tarantino was killing me softly with his advice, telling my whole life, with his words, killing me softly. Yes, I do read scripts on occasion for extra cash and I’m also currently writing a script that I know everyone will hate and that I’ll never finish anyway. However, I assure you that we readers have nothing but respect for the show-offs who actually complete a script. It’s more accurate to say that we’re hoping your script is very, very, very bad.

I’m not really tacking with the cut of his motherfuqin jibe, but they’re good tips to keep in mind while you’re-

writing your killer screenplay.

The Sleeptracker! It’s a watch! It’s an alarm clock! It’s a watch alarm that only wakes you up when you are at the appropriate moment in your sleep cycle!

I’ve met a couple of people who have this watch now and they swear by it. What it does is:

• Sleeptracker monitors your sleeping patterns to wake you up at the right time
• Wake up during an optimal “almost-awake” moment of your regular sleep pattern
• Designed to wake you in a pre-set “alarm window” timeframe so you wake feeling refreshed and energized
• Continuously monitors your body for signals that you are nearly awake to wake you at the best time

Sure the Sleeptracker is a touch on the ugly/geek side, but wouldn’t it be worth it to be woken up every day at the best possible part of your sleep cycle, refreshed, invigorated, and ready to face the day?

For the next six weeks or so, I’m going to try and post a daily deal or gift idea… just in time for the holidays (see also, the Xmas Gift Guide site).

Finding the best gift doesn’t just stop on December 25th, though. No no no no noooo! I need schwag year round! Therefore, it’s in my best interests to keep The Best Gift Guide Ever site going throughout the year as I find deals or cool gear that warrants a post. CMoore is the root site, but as single-focus sites are becoming the norm on the interweb thingy (hyper specialization, much like cable channels), the other two blogs will have some additional content for gifts that are worthy of consideration, just not CMo-ish or CMo-wishlisted.

It’ll be fun, you’ll see. Mmm…. window shopping!

Again, the new sites:
The Best Gift Guide Ever! and The Holiday Gift Guide

Invest in pr0n

Wall Street is largely a boys club, a place packed with hypercompetitive tough guys proud to wear their machismo on their sleeves. Yet there’s still one investment the Street is generally wary of: porn.

That’s why Francis Koenig, a onetime Wall Street hedge fund executive now based in Los Angeles, believes there are riches to be made by matching investors with “adult entertainment” companies. He believes that plenty of people would back the industry if there were vehicles commonly available to do so.

Think of Koenig as a porn launderer. He makes it acceptable for the DAR to get a piece of some of that $12 billion-per-year smut money.

No, really. And there’s this place that is the leading music shop on the whole of the truck-filled tubular net doohickey, called eye-music. Now, I don’t know why they call it that, since you listen with your ears, but that’s what they call it so that’s what I’m calling it.

Sure, Mondegreen is available for free download … but it’s also on the eye-music even without any videos! Isn’t that cool?

I gave it a look and it’s $1/song and $10/album (roughly). The best part is – you won’t get sued by the RIAA! Sweet!

I spent yesterday ensuring that everyone who came to my assigned precinct who wanted to vote could vote (provisionally, if nothing else). There were no disruptions outside of one crank (my state is not New Jersey, Tennessee, Ohio, or Florida … thankfully enough) and everyone there was quite knowledgable after working elections together for 20 years.

It was safe, boring, and peaceful. Just the way democracy should be.

For an off-year election, turnout was super high. Since there were no wedge issues on our ballot, I took that as a sign people were pissed as hell… which I found out late last night was pretty much true, even if that fucktard Lieberman’s still around in a position of even more possible damage to the republic than ever before.

But let’s not focus on that for the moment. Let’s focus on the zero-loss unprecedented Dem victory in 3 branches of government (house, senate, gubernatorial)!

No blogging for me today, I’ll be out volunteering as part of the Voter Protection program.

Vote!

Don’t shoot anyone in the face while I’m out.

While trying to figure out how I could monetize my “$100 million and climbing” HSX brilliance, I found Intrade. Holy cow is this awesome. Actual money on politics and news events. Of course, given my recent successful predictions (and GOP shenanigans), this is could just be an even easier way to lose money than Lotto.

Here’s a snapshot of some of the things you can trade in (I don’t know precisely what will come up; it’s a dynamically generated frame):

And their banner advertisement looks something like this:

Yet another thing that’s probably more Chartoo’s forte than mine, but I’m kind of excited about day trading in the presidential aspirations of Saint Rudy. I know. I need to get out more.

The biggest problem I had so far was actually getting money into the system – their security is quite a bit more comprehensive than the one-click universe we’ve been inhabiting. This is good in that I’m pretty confident any phishers aren’t going to be going there to take your money, but it can also be a drawback if you spot a sweet market opportunity for the avian flu’s arrival date in the U.S.

If you click the banner ad above, theoretically I get $50 if you both put some money in and do a bunch of trading over the next 90 days. If you just want to go to intrade.com and skip the lurve-giving to me part, I’m totally OK with that. I’ll just give you the puppy dog eyes and maybe sigh a little bit.

Is a supermegafantastique coffee maker.

Namely, the Braun KF600!!!

It’s got all the features of the Capresso MT500 (vacuum carafe, stainless steel, timer, gold filter, water filter), without the ridiculous $170 price tag and complaints about constant overflowing onto your floor. Braun it is. Woo!!

Netflix! Unless you’re a sports or talk show junkie, once you subscribe to Netflix, you no longer need to pay for cable. If you cancel your cable and keep a 3-disc Netflix setup, that will save you anywhere from $30 to $85 per month ($360 to $1020/year).

(if you join Netflix, enter my friends network so I can send you inappropriate movies that you’ll hate suggestions that you’ll love and vice versa)

Looks like I figured out at least one way to simul-post. Sweeet.

Money lurve (I love money… so should you)

The current trends are away from generalist blogs, such as this one or Grumpasaurus and towards single-issue focused ones. This makes sense from a number of business/advertising standpoints, but it doesn’t comport well with my natural inclinations. In any event, I thought I’d try a single issue blog (where I post about money or investments or deals or such) and see if there’s any difference in traffic there as compared to, say, the money section here (or on grumpy). Chartoo’s would probably be a better driver for this subject than am I.

I don’t think this subject is exactly one of the huge traffic generators (that would be something more like Lohan and Simpson amateur lesbian video tape sales), but while I was thinking about it today, I thought I’d give it a shot. Besides, who doesn’t want to hear that Yellowtail Shiraz is 2 for $10 right now at QFC?

and I think it behooves all of us you to get off your ass and make November a novel to remember! To that end, NanoWrimo.org has a site set up for you to encourage and help you in this endeavor, so sign up now. And you can link to buddies that will also encourage you and/or mock you for your inability to write 50,000 words in one month. And if you make it, you get a nice little ribbon image to post on your site.

Here’s my page, with my awesome 0 words entered. Mock away! (just make sure to friend me so I can mock you back)

If you’re in the market for some webhosting, and enjoy getting a great deal, consider signing up with Bluehost (my hosting company). $6.95/mo with tons of space and domain options. Can’t say I’ve been disappointed.

Best part is if you sign up through me, *I* get a little lurve from them, which makes it easier for me to keep on blogging. Woo.