If you’re a member of any points-for-signup programs, you already know about VistaPrint. They are most famous for their free business cards offer - which I have actually used twice, as well as buying a set of “real” business cards from them. But they also offer a bunch of other free products, including invitations, rubber stamps (I got one of those from them too, the self-inking kind) and checks. They even do hats and t-shirts now! A lot of their products are available free with their logo on the back, and their custom printing services are pretty cheap. They have a lot of nice invitations; I’m not sure I’d use the free ones for a fancy event, but for a little party they have some pretty nice invitations. They have a special coupon code called “BlogInvite10″ that you can use on their website to receive 10 free invitations; usually for their free item promos you still have to pay shipping and handling but the pricing on that is pretty reasonable. Feel free to give them a try, they don’t spam you or bug you even if you only get their free products…and as I mentioned, you can order their free products more than once!

I’ve been using OpenOffice since I got my new laptop toward the beginning of the school year. My old one had Microsoft Office but this didn’t; it would have cost more to get it. The Word and Excel equivalents are great, but I cannot figure out the PowerPoint equivalent to save my life! I keep having to go to the computer labs at school to work on presentations. But it turns out there might be an easy way around this: academic pricing. Hey, I’m a student now, I can get this stuff! For example, CostCaptain.com has the entire Office 2007 suite for $129. (Although actually, none of the computers at school have higher than Office 2003, so getting 2007 might not be the best thing to do.) They also have Adobe PS Elements 5 for $100 which is about the same as the academic pricing direct from Adobe! (I know this because my father in law wanted to use my academic discount to buy a copy. Ahem.)

Right now I am searching the USA Hotel Guide trying to find hotels for Anaheim. My wife has decided that we should stay there for the first couple of nights and go to Disneyland, and then return to El Segundo for her training. I worked up the package pricing to stay in a Disney “Good Neighbor” hotel, which is $440-512, and now I have to figure out if there are ways to do it cheaper. The Los Angeles hotel guide found the Super 8 right by Disneyland for $80/nt, which comes to $446.20 including theme park tickets and parking. The Motel 6 “Good Neighbor” hotel is slightly cheaper, but there is a fee for the wireless Internet access, whereas the Super 8 has free access. They’re both walking distance from Disneyland, apparently.

I love playing travel agent.

Here is a good site for tech bargains - they don’t sell things themselves, but rather they direct you to deals on other sites around the web. They update frequently and you can get updates via RSS, which means you’ll have no problem snapping up a limited-time bargain on a great new toy. Like travel websites, you can get an email newsletter with the hottest deals. I was extremely pleased by their Buy a Wii page, which monitors multiple online vendors and tells you who has a Wii in stock and who doesn’t! Of course right now only Wal-Mart has them in a package with extra controllers and games for almost $700, which isn’t exactly a deal! But anyway, they list rebates as well as coupons, so you have multiple ways to get a bargain. Their search function lets you search their site as well as eBay, which is nice because “real” vendors don’t always have prices to beat eBay. I think my favorite page would be their Amazon coupons page. Their site is updated all day and all night, the Amazon page has some that were posted at 5am! It can’t hurt to add TechBargains to your feed reader, can it?

I have been looking around lately for T-Mobile phones, because I discovered that the Helio Ocean is not all cracked it’s cracked up to be. (No ssh? No thanks!) I was looking at the MDA instead, and I glanced at the Wing and some Blackberries. But I really ended up with my heart set on the T-Mobile Dash. I read dozens of reviews and the pros seem to outweigh the cons. Plus I would have had to transfer my contract to someone else if I had bought a Helio, this way I don’t! I was really amazed to see that A1 Wireless has the Dash for free if you’ve never been a T-Mobile customer before. (I’ve been a customer since 2002, so the lowest Dash price I could possibly have qualified for was $150, but I bought the Sidekick 3 in May.) A1 also offers one-year contracts, so you can get a reduced price on any phone without locking yourself in for two years. But since I’ve already done that, I ended up buying the Dash on eBay for $181 including shipping. I’m not committing myself to it yet. Once it arrives, I will have T-Mobile switch my plan to the Dash plan and then I will try it for 2-4 weeks. If I like it, I’ll make a Buy-It-Now auction for $181 for my Sidekick 3 (free shipping) and it’ll get snapped up right away. Same for the Dash if I don’t like it!

The BP Solar Decathlon just ended, with the team from Technische Universität Darmstadt taking first place. The contest involved 10 teams from around North America and Europe, all competing to build the most efficient solar house. Each team was made up of students from a variety of disciplines, including architecture, engineering, economics, and more. Once relegated to the land of hippies, solar power is once again receiving attention as the impact of global warming is felt around the world. This was the third decathlon since the event was founded in 2002, and as in previous years, teams built their solar houses at home, tested them, and then transported them to the National Mall to form a solar village. Their task was to run their entire house using only energy from the sun. Visitors to the Mall were able to interact with the teams there and check out the houses themselves. The event was sponsored by BP, which offers residential solar solutions to help make every house solar-powered. You can get a quote online, or visit your local Home Depot for information on purchasing a BP solar system. (It is unlikely, though, that the store itself will be solar-powered, even though BP does offer business solutions as well.)

If you know me, you know I love to travel. You also know that I don’t care where I’m going! I would travel just about anywhere except places where the State Department’s travel warnings are particularly grave. But I would go anywhere in the United States as long as it was free! You can win a Free Raleigh Giveaway from their Convention and Visitors Bureau. This opportunity brings you to a city that has been around since 1788, which has great weather year-round (average 38.9° in Janary and 77.1° in August). During the time that the fall getaway is offered, temperatures will be in the 50s and 60s!

It might seem that Raleigh is not a particularly interesting place to visit, but that’s not so! For children, there’s the new Marbles Kids Museum, which was formed by a merger of PlaySpace and Exploris museums. Anyone interested in history would enjoy the North Carolina Museum of History, there’s an art museum, and for those who love motorcycles, there’s the massive Harley Davidson Museum and dealership! There’s also more than 150 parks and recreation facilities.

If you win the giveaway, you’ll receive one night accommodations for two at the Courtyard by Marriott, a $25 gift certificate to the renowned Bloomsbury Bistro, and a pair of tickets for to the NC Theatre’s production of Man of La Mancha, the Landscapes from the Age of Impressionism exhibit at the art museum, and the upcoming Dinosaurs exhibit at the natural history museum. It’s free to enter, so have fun!

I was so excited when I saw the Packet 8 opportunity come up! It’s actually a contest, and the most creative entry is going to win a video phone! I’m not particularly creative, so I don’t think I will win, unfortunately. I thought about doing this piece in ASL, because that would have been creative, but I left my webcam at school!

Anyway, I am really impressed by the video phones available from Packet 8. I know they market to deaf customers, or at least are compatible with the needs of deaf customers, because I’ve heard of the company before. My favorite video phone is their DV326, because it is a fully stand alone product. The biggest problem with having your video phone connected to your computer - like the EnVision SL software available from Sorenson - is that it’s dependent on your computer’s processing power. Unless you have a pretty new computer, you probably can’t have anything else running while the video phone is in use. But with a stand alone like the DV326, you can carry on a phone conversation and browse the web at the same time!

Packet 8 offers another video phone for home use, the Tango, but it’s not as clear to me how it works. The DV326 is very similar to a particular D-Link phone, but it’s a lot cheaper! All the functions, including dialing, are done directly from the phone unit. And if the little monitor is too small for you, you can use it with an external screen too. I would love to have a DV326 so I could chat with friends from home…that would be SO cool!

It doesn’t take much to get me to write about wedding dresses, I like to look at sets of things that are very alike and yet have their own similarities.

This dress is really pretty, I like the slimming wrap-around effect and the way it has the rhinestones following the length of the wraparound. I also like the little off-center spot of sparkle on the back. The dress is by Maggie Sotero.

The Bridal Shop has lots of other wedding dresses, and they also have some dresses in lots of colors for bridesmaids, proms, and so forth. I especially like this one for its colors, although for just a prom dress it is a little on the expensive side!

Right now, our home is worth about two and a half times what we paid for it. We used to dream about installing a hot tub and remodeling the master bathroom, both of which would increase our home’s value…though we no longer have money for either of those plans. And yet some people have enough money for conservatories as add-ons to their home! I’m not sure if this is only popular for United Kingdom home improvements or if it is done in the United States too. They are definitely more elegant than the screened-in back porch we have now - and with their glass sides, it reduces the risk of cats climbing up the walls like they do on our back porch!