Frugal Finds (4/28/09): My soul is not free but the ‘Emo is Awesome, Emo is Evil 2′ album is

On April 28, 2009 · Leave a Comment · In Frugal Living

emowallThe Blawgirl crawls the Interwebz to find steals and deals for the frugal law student and the competitive bargain shopper. Find a new Frugal Finds 11:30 (ish) p.m. PST every Monday through Saturday! Also, each post is updated as I come across items. You’re welcome.

Gadgets and Gear:

Entertainment:

  • Free world music sampler. Travel the globe without the fear of catching swine flu. Amazon.com’s MP3 store has a free download of its seven-song World Music Sampler, which includes the sounds of Madagascar and Latin Arabia.
  • Free emo music sampler. Forget about wishing that your lawn was emo so that it would cut itself. Now you can get into the emo state of mind with a free Emo is Awesome Emo is Evil 2 download. For the price of free (!) you get a whopping 15-song album with songs from artists like Sounds Like Violence and Desert City Soundtrack. Scroll down to the end of this post for a fun emo video bonus!

Odds and Ends:

  • $10 drink warmer. Froobi.com offers the Emerson Stainless Steel Car Drink Warmer for $9.99 with free shipping. (via DealNews)
  • Free crazy chicken. Today until 8 p.m., participating El Pollo Loco Restaurants will offer a free Taste the Fire meal. This crazy deal comes with one flame-grilled chicken leg, one flame-grilled chicken thigh, two tortillas, and fresh salsa. You’d be loco not to take it. UPDATE: The Blawgirl went to her local El Pollo Loco around 12:30 p.m. to pick up some free chikin. As expected, there was a line, but it took only about 15 minutes to get to the front. According to the employee at the door, the location had seen maybe 2,000 people since the promotion started that morning. Free stuff is awesome!
  • Help a firefighter’s family, buy ice cream. Tomorrow from 5 to 10 p.m., participating Baskin-Robbins locations will have ice cream scoops for 31 cents each as part of its annual event to honor the National Fallen Firefighters Foundation. At the end of this promotion, Baskin-Robbins will donate $100,000 to the foundation, which assists the families of fallen firefighters and provides training to current firefighters to prevent deaths in the line of duty. (via DealNews)

Tagged with: •
 

Frugal Finds (4/27/09): Save Chuck and some cash by buying $5 footlong at Subway today!

On April 27, 2009 · Leave a Comment · In Frugal Living

savechuckThe Blawgirl crawls the Interwebz to find steals and deals for the frugal law student and the competitive bargain shopper. Find a new Frugal Finds 11:30 (ish) p.m. PST every Monday through Saturday! Also, each post is updated as I come across items. You’re welcome.

Alerts:

Gadgets and Gear:

Entertainment:

Odds and Ends:

  • Free sunglasses. From May 5 to June 8, you can receive a free pair of sunglasses at participating Charlotte Russe stores by bringing in the June 2009 cover of Seventeen magazine or a printout of the Seventeen.com homepage. Only 10,000 pairs will be given away to females between the ages of 13 and 29 who are legal residents of the 50 United States, District of Columbia or Canada. (via Frugal Freebies)
  • Free chicken. Today only, participating KFC restaurants offer a free piece of Kentucky Grilled Chicken to all customers with no purchase or coupon required. (via DealNews)
  • $5 meals at Friday’s. T.G.I. Friday’s recently introduced nine sandwiches and seven salads for $5 each. Find your nearest Fridays here. (via DealNews)
  • 5 … $5 footlong for The Blawgirl’s happy TV time. If you’re looking to drop $5 for lunch today, why not help save one of The Blawgirl’s favorite shows on television by heading over to Subway to buy a $5 footlong. After you purchase your sandwiches, be sure to write down “Save Chuck” in the comment cards available to customers. Be a nerd, join the herd! Also, check out one Mexico fan’s international campaign here.

Tagged with: •
 

Frugal Finds Weekend (4/25/09): Build a blog for less than the cost of a spiral-bound notebook

On April 25, 2009 · Leave a Comment · In Frugal Living

2836828090_67d4900ab3_oI’m no blog building expert. I’d be the first to admit that, by geek standards, I’m pretty much a newb when it comes to WordPress blog design. Which is why this blog is a perfect example of what can be done with a bit of research, application of said research, free blog themes and free plugins. Although I paid for hosting and domain registration so I have more control over what I can put on this blog and because I’m picky like that, there are resources that allow you to start your blog in less than a minute for free. There are also resources that help you customize said blog’s header, sidebars and graphics … also all for free.

That’s right. For considerably less than a dollar a day, you too can feed your ego by building your own blog. Here are some ways to get started.

  • Decide what you want your blog to be about and what you want to put on the site. Do you want to make your own blawg? Are you blogging about your fat cat who likes boxes? Do you want to sell a product/yourself (marketing wise, not that crazy Craigslist stuff)? The purpose of your site will not only give your writing direction, but it may also dictate the platform you use and the design you want to implement on the site. Do some research on the blogs you like, then sketch out ideally what you want your blog to look like: does it have a cool photo up top? are there multiple pages? are there thingies (widgets) on the side that have tons of cool functions? Once you decide on these things, it’ll be a lot easier to choose your platform and your design.
  • Pick your platform. There are several free blog hosting platforms to choose from: Tumblr, Blogger, WordPress. I’ve tried both Blogger and WordPress, but I personally prefer WordPress over the others to manage my content. I recommend you explore the different blogs that are hosted at the various sites just to see if there are blogs that have the same feel and features that you are looking for in your personal blog. Once you’ve signed up, you’re pretty much ready to get started. The end. Wait, you want more?
  • Pick your template. Once you’ve signed up for free blog hosting, you have access to tons of different designs for your blog. These are often called templates or themes, and each can give your blog its own personality. For many of them, you’ll notice that there’s a crazy, random picture at the top of the blog, the header, but don’t worry too much about this as we’ll talk about those options in the next step. What you should concern yourself with is that list and sketch you came up with in the first step. Think color, content, character, whether the theme you choose is the face you want to put forward.
  • Customize your header. If you don’t want those photos of a baseball field in the header of your blog about Canadian fashion, but you do like everything else about the blog theme you’ve picked, you can change that. I know that both Blogger and WordPress allow you to change the text and the image of the header. You can either choose an image from your computer, or go out into the Interwebz and find a photo or texture that you like. Try looking at Creative Commons for images that are OK to use, or at a site that provides image textures, like cgtextures.com. Once you have those images, you can edit them further at free, browser-based image editing sites like Sumo Paint or Picnik.
  • Add some bling. If your site still looks boring to you, you can add widgets to your blog. These are those little doodads in the blog sidebars that have things like “This day in history”, a nifty quiz, or a cat that follows your mouse around. You can pick these up at a variety of places on the Interwebz, but a good place to start is at Widgetbox.
  • Start blogging. Because, let’s face it, no matter how bling-tastic your blog is, the most important part, the soul of your blog, is your content. So, happy blogging!

The steps above are basically how The Blawgirl got started in the blog world. Since I started a couple of years ago, my preferences have evolved, and I eventually decided to register my own domain and start this site. You can find out more about this blog in particular at my “About” page. See y’all on Monday!

Photo: Kristina B / Flickr

Tagged with: •
 

Torture memos set to song; still unclear if song about torture also constitutes torture

On April 24, 2009 · Leave a Comment · In Blaw, blaw, blaw

Jonathan Mann committed himself to writing and posting a song a day to his YouTube channel. The inspirations for the songs cover such diverse topics as Battlestar Galactica, Israel and Palestine, and Tumblr.

And what was his inspiration April 19?

Why, the torture memos of course.

Mann took the text of a portion of the memos released last week and set them to music. The result is a somewhat peppy guitar and piano tune that sounds like an unsettling mix of a CNN news anchor, Jack Johnson and the Moldy Peaches. Throw in some air quotes ala Dr. Evil, a couple of tortured-looking grimaces, and a split screen and you have yourself a music video. Check it out.

(via BoingBoing)

Tagged with: • • • •
 

The Shark Attack: Rankings leaks, John Yoo speaks and the LSAT too

On April 24, 2009 · Leave a Comment · In Blaw, blaw, blaw

438037919_36785da891In The Shark Attack, the Blawgirl brings you a list of links to blog posts published at The Shark, a blawg written by and for law students.

Has the hysteria hit you yet? Stay calm amidst the ranking craze. Students and bloggers peed themselves Sunday and Monday when U.S. News and World Report law school rankings were leaked (see what I did there?).

Torture memo debate at Chapman turns up the dialogue rather than the drama. Chapman University School of Law visiting professor and former Bush administration legal adviser John Yoo debated professors at the Orange County, Calif., law school about Presidential Power and Success in Times of Crisis. Shoe tossing was upsettingly absent from this debate.

Berkeley professor spends years developing alternative to LSAT. LSAT, shmel-sat. A team of Berkeley professors, with the blessing of the Law School Admissions Council, researched a test that is supposed to more accurately test whether a student will make a better lawyer.

Photo: Richard Ling / Flickr

Tagged with: • • • •
 

Frugal Finds (4/24/09): Listen to your literature with free audio book mp3 downloads

On April 24, 2009 · Leave a Comment · In Frugal Living

71859999_20e265b781The Blawgirl crawls the Interwebz to find steals and deals for the frugal law student and the competitive bargain shopper. Find a new Frugal Finds 11:30 (ish) p.m. PST every Monday through Saturday! Also, each post is updated as I come across items. You’re welcome.

Gadgets and Gear:

Entertainment:

  • Free classic audio books. If you’re one who likes to listen to your books rather than read them, you might want to check out Free Classic Audio Books, a website that gives out … get ready for it … free classic audio books. Among the titles available, you can download recordings of Jane Austen’s “Emma” and Robert Louis Stevenson’s “Treasure Island”. (via Frugal Freebies)
  • Free puppy love. Garmin, via Audible.com has downloads of John Grogan’s “Marley and Me: Life and Love with the World’s Worst Dog” audiobook for free. iTunes has the mp3 for $16.95. (via DealNews)
  • Free short stories. Barnes & Noble offers downloads of nine MP3 audiobooks for free. You have your choices of titles from stories by Kurt Vonnegut, Louis L’Amour, Mark Twain, Alice Munro and more.

Odds and Ends:

Blawgirl PSA: While listening to a book is a valid option, I’m pretty old school when it comes to my reads. Take a look, it’s in a book! And that reminds me of this, one of my favorite shows as a kid!

Photo: dalydose / Flickr

Tagged with: •
 

Frugal Finds (4/23/09): Fly from Long Beach to San Francisco, Calif., for $29 one way!

On April 23, 2009 · Leave a Comment · In Frugal Living

320966632_ff1bfdee4bThe Blawgirl crawls the Interwebz to find steals and deals for the frugal law student and the competitive bargain shopper. Find a new Frugal Finds 11:30 (ish) p.m. PST every Monday through Saturday! Also, each post is updated as I come across items. You’re welcome.

Alerts:

  • Fly for $29. Today only, JetBlue has several one-way fares starting at $29, including flights from Long Beach to San Francisco, Calif. Fares require an advance purchase of at least seven days and must be booked by today for travel by June 10. These prices are only good for travel on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. Some other restrictions and blackout dates apply. (via DealNews)

Gadgets and Gear:

  • $400 notebook. Newegg.com has the Gateway T-6345U Pentium Dual-Core 2.16GHz 14.1″ Widescreen Notebook for $399.99 (Orig. price: $549.99) with free shipping. (via DealNews)
  • $400 notebook. Dell Home has the Dell Inspiron 15 Intel Celeron 2.16GHz 15.6″ Widescreen Noteboo in pacific blue for $399 plus $29 for shipping. (via DealNews)
  • $430 notebook. Buy.com has the Lenovo 3000 G530 Intel Pentium Dual-Core 2.16GHz 15.4″ Widescreen Notebook for $429.99 with free shipping. (via DealNews)
  • $700 notebook. Newegg.com has the Toshiba Satellite P305-S8997E Intel Core 2 Duo 2.1GHz 17.1″ Widescreen Notebook for $699.99 (Orig. price: $799.99) with free shipping. (via DealNews)
  • $850 notebook. Newegg.com has the Acer Aspire AS8930-6442 Intel Core 2 Duo 2GHz 18.4″ Widescreen Notebook for $849.99 (Orig. price: $999.99) with free shipping. (via DealNews)
  • $10 notebook sleeve. BuyDig.com has the Lowepro Slim Factor Medium Notebook Sleeve for $9.99 with free shipping. (via DealNews)
  • $15 notebook sleeve. Today only, DealsClick.com has the Built NY 17″ Laptop Sleeve in Soho striped, striped, or brown for $14.99 (Sugg. retail: $49.99) with $4.99 for shipping. (via DealNews)
  • $20 notebook stand. Meritline.com has the Connectland Ergonomic Adjustable Notebook Stand with Cooling Fan for $19.99 (Orig. price: $22.99) with free shipping. (via DealNews)
  • $15 office chair. Target via Amazon.com has the Swivel Ring-Back Office Chair in apple green for $14.98 (List: $59.99) with $17.99 for shipping. (via DealNews)

Entertainment:

  • Free book. Random House has the Confessions of a Shopaholic book for free when you sign up for their email list. (via DealNews)
  • Super box set. Amazon.com has the Superman Ultimate Collector’s Edition on DVD for $45.99 with free shipping. The 14-disc DVD collection includes Superman The Movie: Special Edition, Superman II: The Richard Donner Cut, Superman II: Special Edition, Superman III: Deluxe Edition, Superman IV: Deluxe Edition, Superman Returns: Special Edition, behind-the-scenes featurettes, and more. (via DealNews)
  • Discounted downloads. Today only, the Amazon MP3 Store offers downloads of Seether’s Finding Beauty In Negative Spaces for $1.99 (iTunes price: $9.99). (via DealNews)

Odds and Ends:

  • Free grilled chicken. Pick up a free piece of grilled chicken during Kentucky Fried Chicken’s “Unfry Day” April 27. (via Frugal Freebies) Check out what reporters at the Orange County Register had to say in a taste test of the new offering from KFC versus El Pollo Loco fare.
  • Free coffee! From April 20 to May 3 go to McDonald’s to get your free small cup of regular coffee  every morning from 5 to 10:30 a.m. weekdays and until 11 a.m. weekends. For more info, check out their McDonald’s Facebook page. (via Frugal Freebies)
  • Buy.com offers the Hamilton Beach Indoor Grill for $34.99 (Orig. price: $49.99) with free shipping. (via DealNews)
  • Aldo takes up to 80 percent off (with free shipping!) select men’s and women’s shoes and accessories during its Clearance Sale. To see the sale, enter acess code “5489548″ when prompted. Use coupon code “STUDADV817002″ at checkout to take an extra 10 percent off. (via DealNews) For the budget shopper, some of the shoes can be a bit pricey, but there’s a nice selection of basic pumps and shoes for less than $50.

Photo: {platinum} / Flickr

Tagged with: •
 

Frugal Finds (4/22/09): Save some green by going green on Earth Day

On April 22, 2009 · Leave a Comment · In Frugal Living

2433511891_a6ec0dc784_oThe Blawgirl crawls the Interwebz to find steals and deals for the frugal law student and the competitive bargain shopper. Find a new Frugal Finds 11:30 (ish) p.m. PST every Monday through Saturday! Also, each post is updated as I come across items. You’re welcome.

Earth Day (today!) Deals:

  • Fresh & Easy will be giving away free canvas tote bags to customers who purchase $10 or more today. Find your nearest Fresh & Easy here.
  • Amazon.com offers discounts on several green and environmentally-friendly product lines. Get free shipping on orders of $25 or more. (via DealNews)
  • Girlawhirl.com has a list of deals you can get today, including 15 percent off your purchase at your local Sports Authority. Check out the full list here.
  • According to the DailyGreen.com, Paul Mitchell has kicked off its “Cut Hair, Not Trees” campaign. Paul Mitchell schools will cut your hair for $10 to $15 from April 20 through 24. All hair clippings will be donated to Matter of Trust, which makes human hair mats to clean up oil spills. Visit PaulMitchellTheSchool.com to find a Paul Mitchell school near you. Find more deals like this at the DailyGreen.com.

Gadgets and Gear:

Recycle your old computer. Dell recycles your old Dell notebook or computer for free. Also, if you purchase a new notebook or computer, they will recycle your old system, regardless of the brand for free. Check out the program here. And here’s some information from the Environmental Protection Agency on how to recycle your old electronics.

Entertainment:

Studenthacks.org has a couple of interesting ways to recycle your old books. You can make a shelf out of them, trade them in, hide your money from the government in them your secret stash stuff in them, build a clock, etc. Check out the full list here.

Odds and Ends:

  • $20 raver’s delight. HandHeldItems.com has the LED Sound Activated EQ T-Shirt, a T-shirt with an embedded graphic equalizer, for $24.99, but coupon code “ledshirts” brings the price to $19.99 with $5.95 for shipping. The shirt looks like it’d be a great conversation starter, but could be a little bit annoying if a date were wearing it. Thankfully, you can shut the thing on or off (the shirt, not your date, sorry). Or, if you wanted to point out how shrill the other person you’re talking to is, you can subtly do so by turning this sucker on. Check it out in action!

If you didn’t catch the subtle, pop-culture reference in the heading for the item above, I recommend you also check this out.

Photo: hartboy / Flickr

Tagged with: •
 

Abu Ghraib scenes, Guantanamo Bay scenes, waterboarding recreated with Legos

On April 21, 2009 · Leave a Comment · In Blaw, blaw, blaw

2074541981_dcabd8b006One of the “enhanced interrogation techniques” (aka “torture”) described in the memos released late last week by the Obama administration is the practice of waterboarding, a technique from the medieval ages that simulates the sensation of drowning.

Flickr user Legofesto has recreated a waterboarding scene, and other all-too-familiar scenes from the Iraq war, using Legos. Is Legofesto making light of some of the darker periods of this nation’s history? I doubt it. Rather, I think the medium used, typically associated with children, is the artist’s effort to contrast innocence with brutality. Or something like that. Discuss.

Check out the rest of his collection here. (via BoingBoing)

In other news, check out the coverage of the debate between former Bush administration legal adviser John Yoo and a couple of his Chapman University School of Law colleagues regarding Presidential Power and Success in Times of Crisis here.

Photo: Legofesto / Flickr

 

Frugal Finds (4/21/09): Get a free ice cream cone at Ben & Jerry’s!

On April 21, 2009 · Leave a Comment · In Frugal Living

benandjerryThe Blawgirl crawls the Interwebz to find steals and deals for the frugal law student and the competitive bargain shopper. Find a new Frugal Finds 11:30 (ish) p.m. PST every Monday through Saturday! Also, each post is updated as I come across items. You’re welcome.

Gadgets and Gear:

Entertainment:

Odds and Ends:

Tagged with: •
 
show
 
close