Great Prices Here

Why do celebs look so great? Yes, spending mega bucks on designer clothing, grooming and accessories, having a personal stylist, is all part of the package; after all part of the job description is to look great; but what is also part of the deal is something a little more elusive, more subtle. It is about having a personal sense of style (or in some cases a lack thereof). There are ways in which you and I can look great with a limited budget, by taking care of certain details.

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Tags: General, people by Nicole Price
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After a really long time I wanted to do a post about the most expensive things (I did one way back in January on what to do if you have extra money to spend), rather than my usual bargain hunting posts. I figure that one really should be aware of all the really expensive things in life in order to understand that a lot of people really have money to burn! So to start off with, the most expensive….

Dress, is a dress of Marilyn Monroe that in 1999, fetched over $1.26 million at a New York auction. Monroe wore the dress to celebrate John F. Kennedy’s 45th birthday at a spectacular party in Madison Square Garden when she sang “Happy Birthday”. She had supposedly been sewn into the skin-tight dress for the occasion.

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Tags: General, people by Nicole Price
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CNN Money put out a list recently, of all the best companies to work for, and guess who is number one on the roll… well its Google!

Apparently Google is also in the business of making millionaires (out of its stock holders). The stock broke the $700 mark! And why is it the best company to work for? Stock options! To 99% of their employees! With revenues of ($ millions) 10,605 in 2006, it does sound like the best place to work, with 8134 employees in the US and 60% growth in a year!

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Tags: Business, General, people by Nicole Price
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I love watching films, and for my money I would more readily watch a pure comedy or even a romantic comedy (think movie version of Friends) rather than anything with too much blood and gore or a thriller with too many twists and turns. After a bit I get a bit dizzy and can’t keep up with all the twisty turns you see. However the economics of films interest me, even if the films themselves may not.

So when a began a quest for the top grossing films of all time, I found that only three films so far had grossed over $1 billion till date.

The top grossing film of all time and in the entire world is Titanic – the tragic love story revolving around the rich girl and the poor boy unfolding against the back drop of that most ill-fated and famous of all ships. Made back in 1997, it remains the top grosser to this day with $1,848,813,795.

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Tags: Entertainment, General by Nicole Price
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Hey guys, this is my 50th post. It has been a long journey – time consuming but fun. I have made a lot more acquaintances and interacted with some very interesting people.

In the last six months, the blog has grown tremendously. Following are some stats at the time of writing this post:

Technorati rank: 199,227

Google Backlinks: 481

Yahoo Backlinks: 34465

Google PR: 3

Over 5000 unique visitors in May till date.

What do you guys think? How are these stats for a 6 month and 50 post old blog? What other stats would you like to see? Do let me know your thoughts. Thanks for all the love and support.

Tags: General, Uncategorized by Nicole Price
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With the Internet giving us opportunities for staying connected like never before, more and more of us have the option of working from home! If you are in the daily grind of commuting to and from office, battling heavy traffic and spending that most precious of commodities, time, on travel, then you need to ask yourself the question if it is possible for you to work from home.

If it is not possible to work from home all the time, perhaps you can reassess the time that you need to spend in office, whether you need to go in everyday or if it is possible to go in once or twice a week while still being able to accomplish the bulk of work from home. Because, remember time saved is money saved and the amount that you will save on actual travel costs is a bonus! If you don’t already have an office set up at home, you may want to keep the following in mind:

Pick a Space: A small, unused room in your house could work, or even part of a room can be used if you don’t need too much space. Think of what you need to set up an office away from office in your own house. Perhaps a desk, ergonomically designed chair, some storage shelves and drawers may be all the furniture that you require. Mind that you don’t pick a space where most of the family hang out at all times.Tthat will make for too much disturbance and you’ll never get any work done! Some seclusion is a good idea.

Work out what you actually need: Before you go on a shopping spree, assess what is required. Sometimes you may overlook an unused item that is already there in your home, which may fulfill your purpose. Perhaps there is an unused chest of drawers or a set of shelves that you can set up for your home office. Then if you realize that you really need to get some additional items to set up a work station at home, make a list of those things.

Look around; consider used furniture: Flea markets or furniture consignment shops can give you some great deals. This online Yellow Pages site is arranged city wise to give you quick and accurate access to the items of your choice. Consider taking on furniture that high end hotels are looking to dispose of because they tend to redecorate every few years. Sometimes similar deals can be got from offices who are redecorating as well.

Since I am looking to redecorate my own home office, I will write about any bargains that I find in my next post.

Tags: Furniture, General, Home Stuff by Nicole Price
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In his post Plan for tomorrow, live for today, Derek Semmler tagged me with this interesting game, and here are the rules:

• Write your own six word memoir.
• Post it on your blog and include a visual illustration if you want.
• Link to the person who tagged you in your post.
• Tag at least five more blogs.
• Leave a comment on the tagged blogs with an invitation to play.

So I thought for a bit, what is my six word memoir? What is the mantra that I live my life by? The answer is I can’t choose just one! Derek, I don’t know if this is allowed but I want several six word memoirs! As when I am faced with several good choices when shopping, I want it all. And so it is with my six word memoir, I can’t just choose one and so here goes:

I don’t take myself too seriously: No one else seems to J! Seriously, though I think there is a lot of merit in not taking yourself too seriously, that way you retain a sense of humor in most situations and don’t allow problems to get to you so much. It’s rather like my fave track by the Eagles, Take it Easy, Don’t let the sound of your own wheels drive you crazy”

Life is Short, Don’t hate anyone: There are so many wonderful things to do in the world, so many wonderful people, so many beautiful places to go to in the limited time that we have on this earth. Why waste any of that time hating anyone? Hate is a corrosive and destructive emotion, indifference is less so, but it is more insulting to the opposite person J.

The best is yet to come: I am the eternal optimist; I genuinely believe that life is only going to get better. People are going to wisen up and stop living wasteful and polluting lifestyles; global warming and climate changes will reverse. There will be peace and prosperity all over the world; war will cease. I will be rich and famous! Hmmm if you think that sounds a bit like la la land, well that’s just me! I like to view the world thru rose colored spectacles! There is enough despair and hopelessness in the world without me adding to it.

And this is my picture, one of spring because Spring is all about new beginnings, rejuvenation!

And this is the final part, where I tag five more people to play this game. They are:

• Andy Bailey
• Megapixels
• Eva White
• Raymond Chua
• Greenville NC Events

Tags: General, Quotations by Nicole Price
3 Comments »

Can the need for regular backup of important data ever be overemphasized? People tend to take backups lightly. I used to do the same thing, until the day my hard drive crashed around last October and I lost a lot of important data. That day I swore to backup all my data every 15 days. I did that religiously for a few months. Now I think it’s been about 25 days since my last backup and my cabinet is overflowing with dated CDs and DVDs.

I thought the idea of online backup would make much better sense. Moreover, since the data would be available to me wherever I may be. I would not be hampered by having to carry DVDs and external hard drives. I looked around for a low cost solution and I found something even better. I found a free one. IDrive offers free Online Backup facilities for upto 2 GB of space for personal use. For requirements beyond that, there is a very affordable fee of USD 4.95 per month (or USD 49.50 per year) for unlimited storage space (read conditions on site) for personal use. There is a different package for Business Users with Storage space options of 50, 100 and 500 GB. The costs here are very competitive as well.

I have just finished backing up all my files, including the files of this blog. The entire process was pretty simple. Have a long way to go before I exhaust my 2 GB of free space. So I’m good with the free account for the time being. You can give it a shot too and save yourself a lot of potential trouble.

Tags: Best Deals, freebies, General, Money Saving by Nicole Price
9 Comments »

Regular readers here probably know that I been toying with the idea of getting myself a new laptop. Yesterday I finally zeroed in on this Dell XPS Series model for $999. As usual, I then began my hunt for discount coupons for the same. And boy was I successful! I landed up on BestOnlineCoupons.com which provides innumerable discount coupons and codes for shoppers like me. Here I found Dell coupons that can help me avail huge discounts on my Dell laptop purchase. Not only this, the site is a treasure trove for bargain hunters.

They add new coupon codes and discount information on a daily basis. The Hot Coupons page lists the selected few unbelievable coupons that are far more lucrative than others. Their coupons are divided into many easy to browse categories. All the information is very well organized. The coupons for Apparel and Clothing are too good to ignore. Also worth checking out are the Health and Beauty coupons. They have great coupons on office supplies too. Some worth checking out are the Vistaprint coupons for low cost promotions on custom color printing. The discounts range form 25% to 75% with some stuff actually being given away free. That’s one find my better half will be happy about. Not so sure about the Clothes and Beauty coupons though. LOL.

And I must add, the site is completely free to use, no free registration required either. Do check it out and let me know if you use a code that helps you save bucks.

Tags: Best Deals, freebies, General, Money Saving by Nicole Price
4 Comments »

There is a lot of buzz around news circuits about the devaluation of the dollar worldwide, and a lot of trade pundits are predicting more doom and gloom. So does this mean that the position of the US dollar as the most important currency in the world is threatened? Is a recession really impending and will it drive the US dollar from its coveted top spot? I don’t think there is any immediate fear of that happening but that set me thinking, how did currency come into being? How old is the tradition of paper money and when was the barter system replaced by currency?

While the system of barter (trading or swapping an item with someone who requires it, in return for acquiring something that you need), which was used over centuries had its own obvious limitations. For instance, a vegetable farmer may be willing to offer his produce in return for some tools that another individual is making, but the tool-maker may not, at the time have any need for the farmers produce, and by the time he does, the produce of the vegetable farmer would have been spoiled, so the barter becomes untenable to that extent. So what was then required was to have an intermediate commodity that doesn’t perish and is reliably in demand throughout the year. In earlier times, items of intrinsic value such as copper, gold or wine were used as currency. Early settlers in Australia traded with rum as a currency! Grain and cattle were other items used as and by way of currency.

Even in ancient times, coins were minted by the ruler of the land were stamped with an emblem that guaranteed the weight and value of the metal and used as currency. These were usually made from precious and semi precious metal so that they carried intrinsic value and were stamped with the ruler’s seal thereby imbuing it with an intangible value stemming from authority as well.

The reason for the emergence for paper money was twofold; one, the shortage of precious and semiprecious metal and secondly, ease of portability (soon coins became too heavy to carry around). In Europe the first paper money consisted of paper ‘coins’ issued in Protestant Leyden (today, Leiden) in the Netherlands during the Spanish siege of 1574. Later, governments directed citizens to replace precious metals with paper money to hasten the general acceptance of paper as currency.

Usually currency notes are made by adding cotton paper, linen or other textile fibers so as to make them more resistant to wear and tear. There is also a thin layer of varnish to protect them from soiling. In order to make it impossible or at least very difficult to make counterfeit notes, currency is usually enhanced by a water mark, the thread component and several other factors. Over the years, bank notes have also been printed on materials such as polymer, silk, leather etc.!

So fascinating is the subject of currency, that numismatics is the term coined for the scientific study of currency and its history in all its varied forms and I found this very interesting site devoted to numismatics which gives you access to bank notes from around the world and you can also order any that you want!

Tags: General, Government by Nicole Price
3 Comments »