I have to say I’m a bit shocked about the news I found on MSNBC this afternoon. I missed part one of the story but part two told me more than I really needed to know.

You walk into Best Buy with a mission to purchase a new laptop to use for work. You pay a little over $1,100 which includes a $300 warranty in case something goes wrong with it. A few months later your on/off switch is broken and you, under warranty, bring it back to Best Buy to have it fixed. From there you spend about 6 months before ever hearing anything truthful about where your laptop’s status lays. Why? Because more than likely an employee of Best Buy has stolen the laptop from a secured back room and after 3 months of emails, phone calls and letters you’re told that it’s lost.

So what do you do? You file a $54 Million Lawsuit with Best Buy in hopes to make up for the fact that not only have you lost thousands of dollars worth of music but you’ve also lost thousands of important photos and did I forget to mention all of your TAX INFORMATION?

They then offer you $2500 to shut up and buy a new laptop. Yea, how well is that going to work out for them? While you may never win the case, you’re still going to fight it for as long as you possibly can.

Have any of you seen the commercial for the new program called Lifelock? They’re a service that protects your identity, they’re so confident that their systems are secure that the representative of the program actually lists his social security number in public in hopes that someone attempts to use it so that they can instantly be proven of Lifelock’s effectiveness.

They offer pretty great service for only $10 a month. They include:

• Proactive Identity Theft Protection
• Reduced Junk Mail
• Reduced Credit Card Offers
• $1 Million Service Guarantee

Based on the reduce in Junk Mail alone I’m pretty interested in signing up with this company. I can’t tell you how many credit card offers I receive on a weekly basis. At least two a day from numerous companies, mainly Capital One which I find strange considering I’m already a user of Capital One’s services. Junk mail isn’t fun either, magazine offers, magazines I never signed up for but companies insist that I have to pay for them.

It’s unfortunate but identity theft is at an all time high and finding a service that helps you from falling victim to it, can really benefit you financially. It may not bring in any extra money during the month but it will help you avoid having to go into debt because someone else was a loser and decided not to do things on their own name and insisted that dragging someone else’s name into the mud would be the way to go for financial freedom.

So I’ve been using this MarsEdit software for the last two days and I have to say I’m growing more and more fond of it. I had to do a little .htaccess altering in order to get it to work with my WordPress blogs but that’s a server based thing that needed to be enabled anyway. I’ve got all of my blogs worked into it and there are so many useful options that it makes it very easy to use. My only dislike for the program is the fact that you can’t edit the date/time. There are some entries that I like to post-date on other domains but this program doesn’t give you that option. I’m sure something about it will pop up in later versions but we’ll have to see. It’s a 30 day trial and it’s for Mac OS X users only, for $30 you’ll have the paid-version which is no different than the trial because the creators really wanted to give you the option of using everything the program has to offer before you decide to purchase it. Which I think was pretty nice of them, honestly.

There are only a few days before Valentine’s day and I know for sure that Sean and I aren’t doing very much this year. We were originally going to go out to dinner but then a few bills sprung up and we really just can’t afford things like that at this point in time. We’re both working our asses off to make ends meet but with over $3000 due in taxes (between us) there’s not enough to cover half of that in our bank account right now. We’re literally broke and until I hear something about any of the resumes I submitted in the last few weeks I really don’t know what we’re going to do. Last year he was sweet though, he’s a romantic at heart (most days – at least) and I woke up to beautiful valentines roses that morning and couldn’t have been happier. He also threw in a massive teddy bear as well. This year it’s going to be me cooking dinner for the two of us and hoping things in the house stay calm enough so that we can enjoy dinner without any major interruptions.

They just walked in the door about ten minutes ago. Candy has an enlarged heart and theirs fluid behind it. She’s now back on numerous medications and is receiving a specialized senior diet. I’m sure that’s going to be rough considering she’s used to pasta, chicken and other table-food that dogs typically don’t have unless they’re spoiled. Hell, even Bella eats that way because of my distaste for dog food – and everything that could possibly be wrong with it based on the previous recalls. We all know that she’s not going to be around for much longer, but hopefully she’ll at least survive for another couple of months so that we can all easily work into the inevitable – especially Karen, she’ll definitely take it the hardest.