The perfect formula for the perfect problem:

Any way you think of it… you can’t live with them and you can’t live without them.

If you’re planning to go to the top party destinations this weekend (I’m definitely not because of my cold) then this is some good to know info. We’ve all done it but don’t even think about it for the next couple of weeks.

Police Launch DUI Crackdown

SAN DIEGO — Police are making a countywide crackdown on drunken drivers this weekend, calling it Operation Green Mile.

Officers said they will be on patrol in large numbers, with many of them undercover in local bars, and others at DUI checkpoints.

Police said the stepped up patrols will mainly be in Carlsbad, Pacific Beach, downtown San Diego, and near the border.

Susan Tryon, the mother of a drunken driving victim, said she urges people to think of the consequences of their actions.

“It’s happening every day, you read in the newspapers, somebody else is getting killed by a drunk driver,” Tryon said. “Innocent victims are dying.”

Police said they plan to have extra officers on patrol for several weeks, through the spring break period.

And this is why I never wrap Christmas presents:

How To Wrap a Present Like a Man

Via:� Digg

Yep, I said it. The Christmas white lie that we all engage in every single year. Your dad gives you those kewl pair of Dunlop Leather Golf Shoes that you’ve been dreaming about all year long. Mom on the other hand decides that a Crochet Muffler Scarf would go great with your eyes. What do you say when opening those presents right in front of them…. hmmm? Well, I’ll give it a guess.

Lie:

“Wow dad! These are great. These will go perfectly with my plaid golf pants. I can’t wait to show these to the guys.”

Truth (thought):

“I’m burning these and burrying the ashes as soon as I get home.”

Lie:

“Mom, you shouldn’t have. I’m glad you picked a color that goes well with everything I wear. Pink has always been my favorite color. Thank you mom.”

Truth (thought):

“How could you mom. I’m a 28 year old man for God sakes! You could of picked any color but pink! Pink, pink, pink!!! Ahhhh!”

Things don’t have to be that way. Receive a bad gift? Pass it on to the next deserving person. Hell, there’s even a site dedicated to it. The best part of the whole site is their Regifting 101 page.

If you are thinking about regifting this holiday season, ask yourself the following questions:

Is the gift regiftable? Never regift handmade or one-of-a-kind items. Signed books and monogrammed items are off-limits. Do you have to be told not to regift free promotional items? Some gifts that are good candidates for regifting include good (unopened!) bottles of wine, new household items and inexpensive jewelry.

How is the condition? Only new, unopened gifts in good condition should be considered for regifting. Never give partially used gift cards. Don�t give items that you have owned for a long time. A general rule of thumb: if you have to dust it off, it is not regiftable.

Is this going to work? Successful regifters use common sense. If you are going to regift, be sure you know who gave you the item, so you don�t return something to the original giver. Only regift items to people who are not likely to see the original giver.

Do you have good intentions? Don�t just give a gift to give a gift. Be sure that the recipient will appreciate the item. Remember, if you feel that an item is undesirable, the recipient probably will too. If you are regifting simply because you ran out of time, gift cards are simple to obtain and always well received.

How does it look? When it comes to gift-giving, go for show! While gift bags in good condition can be reused, wrapping paper is a one-time thing. Always spring for a new card or gift tag.

Can you handle it? If you don�t plan to announce the gift as a regift, ask yourself if you can keep the secret. Never feel guilty about regifting once you�ve done it.

Have you considered your options? An unwanted gift could be a welcome donation to a charitable organization. It is also an option to suck it up and keep an unwanted gift�after all, it was a gift.

Seriously some good information here if Santa doesn’t bring you what you really want this year. I’m bookmarking this one….

Any time I find something useful that could benefit another I’ll usually put a little post together and throw it on the ole’ blog. All my friends know I follow Google’s products pretty closely. It’s interesting to watch a company as Google branch out into areas that have been monopolized by other companies who are dedicated to solely doing one job which from this post title would be PayPal. Not too long ago I used to have an electronics store on eBay and I used PayPal for every single transaction. Well, it did its job of processing transactions for Paypal to Paypal, credit, and debit. The only problem was the cost. I was charged a fee for the eBay store, hosting the individual product, and finally the PayPal transaction charge. I had to jack the price up to stay alive. I later closed it down because I wasn’t making enough off of a sale to make a monetary difference that outweighed the trouble I went through playing customer service with shoppers/buyers.

This season we have Google Checkout. Too bad they’re not allowed as a form of payment on eBay. I might actually re-open the store if that was the case. Gcheckout is advertising their product by offering some big incentives for both retailers and shoppers. They’re trying to quickly take market share from big players like Paypal by using their arsenal of hired super geek engineers and their deep pockets. Retailers don’t have to pay for any transaction fees through the rest of this year and even 2007. Now that’s sick. If I had an online store I would definitely jump on that. A lot already have.

Since I’m no longer a retailer I now fall into the consumer category. For us that means spending that hard earned cash on holiday gifts this Christmas. Things don’t have to seem grim though especially when looking for discounts shopping online. Gcheckout to the rescue. From their blog post:

And this holiday season it also means a nice bonus for your gift-buying budget; as a small holiday gift to all Checkout shoppers, you’ll receive $10 off purchases of $30 or more, or $20 off purchases of $50 or more, depending on the merchant.

If you think about it, that’s possibly some serious cash saved. I use Gcheckout every time I shop at Starbucks. I buy $31 of coffee and after the $10 discount from Google it’s like receiving a free pound of coffee. I’ve made 3 buys from Starbucks using Gcheckout and everytime has been smooth as can be. I didn’t have to register at the retailer site and give out my info… even though they eventually receive my name and address, but not my full credit card number. Heck, all I had to do was log into my Google Account to buy. So when you’re at the site’s shopping cart all you have to do is click on the Google Checkout icon and it brings you to another shopping cart with the same items hosted on Google’s servers. As you can see below (Click on the image to enlarge). Next put in your password and click “Place your order now.” Fast and simple.

So if you were to buy something or somethings that totaled just over $50 from for instance Buy.com then that’s almost a 40% discount. Not too shabby if you ask me.

P.S. Yes, I know I have been blogging a lot about Google lately but the news is so damn juicy…. I can’t resist.

I personally follow all of these listed tips on a daily basis while conducting Google searches but I find a lot of people don’t. Well, actually most everyone I deal day in, day out don’t know about operators, specialized searches (government, microsoft, universities, books), or the Google directory (which is really useless if using the search box correctly).

I just had to list these on my blog to get this out there for the 50 or so people subscribed. Very useful information put out by informit.com.

1. Tip #1: Use the Correct Methodology
2. Tip #2: Conduct an “Either/Or” Search
3. Tip #3: Include or Exclude Words in Your Search
4. Tip #4: Search for Similar Words
5. Tip #5: Search for an Exact Phrase
6. Tip #6: List Similar Pages
7. Tip #7: Fine-Tune Your Search with Other Operators
8. Tip #8: Search for Specific Facts
9. Tip #9: Search the Google Directory
10. Tip #10: Use Googles Other Specialized Searches

I originally found this article through digg.

We all have been there. You fire up your default web browser and your home page is either set to Google.com, MSN.com, or Yahoo.com. Then clicking on bookmarks or favorites and visiting your favorite sites browsing the newest articles whether that be sports, headlines, or generic/ specific blogs, etc. Each time you click on a site you’re loading a brand new page/tab which requires more clicks and more browser wait time. Before using a feed reader I relied on bookmarks and portal pages (Yahoo.com) for regular web surfing but now all I have to do is bookmark Google Reader which brings all my web sources to one site.

To start out I want to open up the choices you have as a web surfer and give you some real world numbers. Numbers first. Say on a daily basis you check out 5-10 sites tops. My girl used to do this. Let’s use her for example. She used to visit a lot of the celebrity gossip sites like Dlisted.com, Hollywoodtuna.com, PopSugar.com, Egotastic.com, Hollywoodrag.com, and Socialitelife.com… wew. She would also visit a few other blogs (like mine… heh) and maybe Google and Yahoo News. I actually ran a stop watch on her one time and to my amazement she actually didn’t spend as long as I thought she would. It took her 46 minutes to check the updated blog articles and news. Also take into account that she’s a “freak of nature” speed reader, she was using my ultra fast home built computer, Firefox, and a broadband internet connection.

Now I timed myself the other day. First, I’ll give you some numbers on what I currently use. I did the same test on myself using the same computer, Firefox, broadband internet connection, am a decent speed reader, and I’m currently subscribed to 143 feeds through Google Reader. Yes, I know, her 6-10 sites can’t remotely compare to my 143 but I was quite confident I would never the less prevail. To make it fair I let my feeds build up over a course of 24 hours. When I check my Google Reader account I noticed it said 100+ updated items. What this means (for non feed reader junkies) is that there are currently over 100 updated articles posted from my 143 sources. There were a lot but I’ll let you in on a little secret. About 40+ of those sources are technology oriented and this means that about 25% of the updated items are repeats. For example when popular news about Google is released to the wild you’ll see the same thing on Digg.com, Techcrunch.com, Technewsworld.com, and various other Google blogs to name a few. Each one quoting the other and adding their own opinions. While there is nothing wrong with this and by using my Google Reader to only skim the articles vice reading them I’ve already cut my time in half.

Let’s get to the stop watch. As soon as I brought up Google Reader in Firefox and it completely loaded I started the stop watch. At the 10 minute mark I was completely done with 20 of my 27 labels and 68 updated items remaining. The only ones left over were my Digg feeds (Digg Science, Digg Tech Deals, and Digg Technology) and my news headlines (Google News and NYT headlines). I left these for last because they usually take me the longest. Reason being: I have to click through to the site. These sites do not list the whole article but only the article title and short snippet. Digg taking even longer because after clicking through to the site I have to click through to another site where the submitted article remains. This kind of peeves me off sometimes but how else are they going to make money if no one ever actually had to view their site. After reading the article I will then usually close the article tab and view the digg tab finally either leaving a comment, digging the article, or marking it as lame. Again, even though there are about 40 items that are labeled “digg” I don’t have to click on them. I’ll skim and click on what I might find interesting by the submitted article title and snippet.

When I was finally done I had skimmed or read over 100 articles and left 3 comments on Digg and forgetfoo.com. Not too bad and the stop watch said 24 minutes. I usually check my feed reader 2-3 times a day unless I’m really busy with work or other events/ projects.

Finally, to conclude this post I want to post a small list of popular feed readers. I prefer web based over the other because it doesn’t limit me to my home computer.

• Google Reader
• Bloglines
• Rojo
• Newsgator

On a future post I’ll write about how to maximize your time as I do with your feed reader using Google Reader as my reader of choice.