Morton Fox's journal

Sunny and 66°F. It was such a nice day that I thought I'd go outside for a bit. Ran some errands in downtown Park Ridge. Also went to Staples to use the $10 gift check. Staples has been experimenting with new ways of paying out rebates to cut costs. They used to send out checks that I could cash at the bank but the last two rebates were different. The one before last was a $25 debit card. I can't imagine that's cheaper than sending out a check unless they got a cut of the merchant fees. I'd still have preferred to get cash because I don't have to think about how to spend it so I use exactly $25. The most recent rebate was the $10 Staples gift check. This less desirable because it forces me to spend more money at Staples and obviously Staples profits from the rebate payout.

At Staples in Park Ridge, I found 3 items that were on sale and that I'd eventually use, even if I didn't need those right away. So it was okay. The problem was the instant rebate on the gel pens didn't ring up on the register. I didn't notice until I got the receipt so I had to ask them to correct it. That took another 15 minutes because I had to wait for them to finish with the other customers and then they had to void the whole transaction and start over. In the end, I paid $1 plus the $10 gift check, and expect $9 back in rebates. (I filed those online already.) I have to wonder though how many people paid more than they had to for those gel pens and didn't notice. I imagine most of the free-after-rebate seeking crowd would've gone for it on Monday.

The weather was still nice in the evening so I went for Lucky Charm Lids at Clifton Commons in Clifton. I didn't complete that multicache though because it had more stages than I had time for. So I switched over to Plan B, which was to use my $5 coupon at the Red Robin adjacent to Clifton Commons. I had the new menu item, the Burnin' Love Burger. It's supposed to be spicy because of the pepperjack cheese and fried jalapenos but it's actually quite mild, not even 1-alarm by my standards. In fairness though, Red Robin isn't the kind of restaurant one would go to for spicy food. Of course, I also got a refill of the steak fries.

Except for the all-day rain, this Tuesday turned out to be much like the last Tuesday. A power failure early this morning reset my alarm clock so I woke up late. No problem. I just took half a day off and went to work in the afternoon.

Went for 3 geocaches in Congers in the evening. First one was Dam Lake, a quick grab near Congers Lake and the Paul Farmhouse. Second one was Congers Secret Cache. For this one, I found parking significantly closer than the suggested parking location. So it was a quick cache, which is good because there was still a drizzle. And finally, I went further up Route 303 to Hemlock Park for Hemlock. That was easy too, although for some reason, the terrain was rated 3 stars.

Palisades Center was just a straight shot down Route 303 from Congers, so that's where I went next. Just like last Tuesday, I had 40-cent wings on Wings Tuesday at Buffalo Wild Wings. I also took a look at the Acer Aspire One mini-notebook at Staples since it was in this week's store circular. The keyboard is too small for my hands. However, I remember thinking that about the ThinkPad when I first got it too. It may just be a matter of getting used to the form factor. Performance seems to be adequate, at least for applications that they had already installed. Of concern is memory upgradability. It appears that the Aspire One cannot take more than 1GB of RAM, which is a problem because I already use a bit more than 1GB on my ThinkPad. No hurry though. I can wait for more mini-notebooks to show up in stores before deciding.