I got my rebates today, significantly reducing the out-of-pocket cost of maintaining my antivirus stuff. Instead of purchasing a renewal license for my existing Symantec Norton AntiVirus 2007 installation, I got a whole new one, Symantec Norton AntiVirus 2008 from Buy.com, because, of course, it was cheaper (eventually). I’m always looking for deals on stuff I get anyway, so when it comes time to get hardware or software, I shop around a bunch. At the time of this writing, one can buy Symantec Norton AntiVirus 2008 from Symantec for $39.95 (plus shipping of $7.00+, no tax unless you’re in CA, MN, or WA); shopping around, you can find it for a few bucks cheaper with free shipping. Back in June, a few weeks before my subscription expired, Buy.com was running a deal that basically got it to me for $6.41. Pay $35.57 for it at the time of purchase (no tax, free budget shipping) and get two rebates: a $20 “competitive/upgrade” rebate if you can prove you own a previous version or a competitor’s product, and a $10 “if you get it from Buy.com” rebate. So that comes to $5.57 + two 42¢ stamps = $6.41. Not bad for keeping my antivirus software up to date for a year.

I say all this not to congratulate myself on saving $29.16, but to extol the virtues of being patient enough to take advantage of deals when you can. I’m not a big fan of buying seasons 1-4 of The Muppet Show just because you have a 20% off coupon, but if you’re going to get something anyway, deals abound.

A sampling of deals I’ve taken advantage of from this year:

• My QuickBooks 2001 that I had been using to make invoices and keep track of financials for my business was having problems – some related to being too old to get updates, features not working because of their dependence on Microsoft Internet Exploder Explorer version 5. So in March I bought Peachtree Pro Accounting 2008 by Sage for 41¢. Well, it was $145.00 from Buy.com again (free shipping, no tax), with a $145.00 rebate. Total Cost: one stamp to send in the rebate form.
• Ginger’s notebook’s hard drive crashed, so we got her a replacement computer (it was old and slow enough that it made sense enough to replace the whole thing rather than just the hard drive) – a Lenovo ThinkCentre M55e desktop PC from PC Mall for $294.99 ($344.63 including tax & shipping). We saved about $150 because it was an “open box” product but still brand new).
• Our soccer team has taken to going to Buon Giorno after our games on Saturday nights, so when they offered 10% extra on gift card purchases, I was all over it. For $20 down, I got a $22 gift card, which I’m using for my regular purchases.
• At various times, our local Tom Thumb store runs specials on meat. Specifically, it’s great to get Certified Angus top sirloin steaks for $4.99/lb instead of $7.99/lb!

Yeah, you can say I’m cheap. But I prefer “frugal” or “smart”.

Ginger was drying clothes last weekend… checked the dryness, needed to let them go longer, pushed the Start button, and… nothing! So immediately our thoughts went to the worst-case scenario: spending money (yuck!) on a dryer, and the painful process of trying to find one that just dries clothes without having all kinds of electronic computer-controlled features.

Then our thoughts turned to the best-case scenario – flip a tripped breaker. We went to the breaker box in the garage and noticed the one labeled “Dryer” was tripped, over to the “off” side and showing orange. It’s nice when the breakers are labeled! But this day it wasn’t going to be so easy – never before have I seen a breaker that just wouldn’t go back to “on”, but this one just wouldn’t. Repeated flips over and back just wouldn’t ever get it back to “on”, so we were stuck. Being the troubleshooter that I am and wanting to explore all possibilities, we even unplugged the dryer just in case there was a short in it or its cord that immediately tripped the breaker whenever it wound try to come on… but nope, the problem was really at the breaker box.

We let the problem lie for a couple days, contemplating calling an electrician because I didn’t want to get fried by touching all those scary wires in the wrong way. After bringing up our problem amongst our respective coworkers, both Ginger and I had people suggest it was a bad breaker; I didn’t know that there was such a thing as a breaker “breaking” or “going bad”, but that seemed to be the case here.

I unscrewed the panel surrounding the breaker box, exposing the assembly that houses the individual breakers and all the bare wires running into them – it looked like each breaker was a small cartridge-like thingy that could be removed easily enough. But I sure didn’t want to go digging around in there with my bare hands or a screwdriver without doing a little more research.

A guy at my work confirmed what I was thinking: I could turn off the “Main Principal” breaker , cutting power to all the breakers below, rendering them harmless. Then I could touch anything below without sending sparks flying. The idea was to disconnect the wires to the breaker, remove it, go to The Home Depot and buy an exact match, install the new one, reconnect the wires, flip the “Main Principal” back on, and have the dryer and everything else electrical still work, all without killing myself or burning the house down.

Back at the house… a borrowed volt meter confirmed that turning of the Main Principal indeed killed power to all those below it. I was able to unscrew the fittings into which the red and black wires ran, then basically snap out the offending breaker. I made a 10-minute trip to The Home Depot and bought its exact match replacement, a QO 30amp double pole breaker (no, I don’t know what any of that means) for $15.47.

It was super-easy to snap the new breaker into place and reconnect the wires. Now the moment of truth: flipping the Main Principal back on. It would be a good thing for the dryer to work again; better would be for all of the lights and appliances to still work; best would be to have no sparks or fires or injuries. Success! Everything electrical in the house works like a champ, and I even got it done in time for the SmartUPS in the office to keep all of the computer and network stuff running on battery power while the power was off. And we didn’t have to mess with scheduling with (or paying for) an electrician – it only took $16.75 and some patience, effort, and a little courage.

Andy Box posted a while back, and again more recently, about why he likes high gas prices. I have to agree.

What!!?? Two people on the same planet actually LIKE paying around $4/gallon for gas!!??

Well, I didn’t say I liked paying those prices. But in principle, I like the fact that gas costs a lot. Andy sees the expense as a driving (pun not intended) force behind people consciously finding ways to conserve gas, and sure, that’s a good thing, but I’ll supplement his thoughts with some of my own. Discomfort is good – it forces people to assess what’s really important. But there’s more.

Expensive gas is an indicator that the free market system is working. The market determines what the price will be over the long haul, which is the way things should be. If some entity (US government, or, in the foreseeable future, a One World Government) steps in and artificially ‘lowers’ the price of gas, things get messed up because the relationship between the supplier and the consumer is no longer the most important factor. If Charlie Consumer stops buying gas from Suzy Supplier because it’s more important for him to have his money than her gas, she loses a customer; if she loses too many customers, she adjusts her pricing. No, she doesn’t go out of business because she buys gas for more than she can sell it for, and here’s the reasoning: if Charlie buys from Valerie Vendor instead because Valerie’s prices are lower, Valerie can afford to offer hers at a lower price, and thus so can Suzy. So Suzy will just make less money but still some. If Charlie buys no gas or less gas because he’s conserving, then there will be more gas to offer everyone else, so people will sell it for cheaper in order to get more business because the supply is greater than the demand.

This works if there are 3 people in the gas market; it also works if the are 3 billion. We hate to wait since we all want things to be more comfortable (cheaper) right now, but over time, gradually, the market will level at a place where the buyers and sellers are comfortable with the price.

If you hate the big evil gas companies right now because they’re charging too much for gas, then just wait, and one of two adjustments will occur:

• You’ll love it when they have too much product on hand because people like you stop buying, and they have to keep paying billions to store it and pay their employees and such. Then they’ll have to sell off their stuff at a loss.
• OR, your attitude will change when you realize that the price is fair after all because it’s so important that people are willing to pay the price offered.

So the next time I pay over $50 to fill up my little gas tank, I’ll count my blessings. I could live in a society that would put limits on how much my provider could charge me, but that society would put put other limits on other things that would make me much more uncomfortable.