Say hello to Nancy Hannan, security awareness program manager in the Information Security department at Fifth Third Bancorp. Fifth Third is among the largest money managers in the Midwest, and provides services such as corporate and branch banking, consumer lending, and investment advisors. In honor of Cyber Monday, Nancy will be here for the next hour answering questions about protecting your identity this holiday shopping season and beyond.
    
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Rise and shine! Morning time just became your new best friend. Love it or hate it, utilizing the morning hours before work may be the key to a successful and healthy lifestyle. That's right, early rising is a common trait found in many CEOs, government officials, and other influential people.
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Let's be real for a second: most of us probably don't know every government official that represents us. The President and our congresspeople, sure, but if you need to find out who your county tax commissioner is, Map Your Representatives can help.
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Schumpeterianism, or "creative destruction," means very specific things in social theory, but for those of us looking to get things done or find our creativity, it means the ability to let go of old ways and embrace teardowns and criticism as a way to improve the way you do things.
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Giving gifts is a great tradition that allows you to express love and share happiness with people you care about. It's also bogged down with warranties, rebates, extended coverage, and other boring paperwork. We're here to help you with the latter.
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While you may need your caffeine fix on most occasions, avoid coffee or any other drink with it before your next interview. Your adrenaline doesn't need that jolt, and it will likely harm it instead, says Desha Peacock, director of career development at Marlboro College in Marlboro, Vt.
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If you want to build up a collection of great ebooks on your Kindle without spending a dime, Red Ferret has a simple but neat trick to using Amazon's individual RSS feeds and our favorite web automator, IFTTT.
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The world can feel so tiny sometimes, especially now that social media’s tentacles are thoroughly suctioned on to every aspect of life. That shrinking universe is what led a former mugger to his victim of 35 years ago, when he stole a guy’s bus pass as part of a gang initiation. Facebook reunited them recently in an altogether heartwarming way.
‘Tis the season for cheer and all of that, which makes this story a bright spot in the midst of so many other bummers in the news. A simple Facebook post about a local New York City bagel shop closing down started it all.
The former mugger tells the The New York Post he boosted the pass from a man sitting on the steps of the American Natural History Museum in the late 1970s to impress a friend who didn’t believe he was in a graffiti gang.
“I went up to [him] and said, ‘Where’s your bus pass?’ The cops immediately pulled out badges and arrested me,” the man remembers. “I told this story throughout my life. I felt so bad about it.”
Cut to last week, when the former mugger happened to be perusing the Facebook post about a bagel shop closing, and recognized a name among the comments: It was the man who’s bus pass he’d taken as a teenager.
“You may not remember this … but a long, long time ago I walked up the steps of [the museum] one afternoon, trying to look like a tough guy,” he posted. “I have never forgotten the incident or your name … then here I am … reading about my favorite bagel store in the world closing down, and [whose] name do I see but yours. Finally I can say — I’M VERY SORRY that you had to go through that crap that day long ago.”
The former victim remembered the man and as these warm, fuzzy things go, accepted his apology.
“Clearly you’re a ‘bigger man’ today,” he replied in the comments section. “Memory is a funny thing. I recognize your name now as well…. Any man who draws a line for himself [and says] ‘Today I step forward for myself, my family, and humanity’ is a hero to me,” he added. “So let us now, jointly, put this in its proper place, behind us.”
The mugger says he’s spent his life trying to make up for doing bad things by thwarting other crimes around the city, and says former Mayor David Dinkins gave him a thank you note for saving a woman from an attack near a building where he worked as a doorman. But this takes the cake.
“A very large weight has been lifted off my shoulder,” he said of the apology. “I feel peace and dare I say joy. I’m even happier this is bringing joy to other people.”
‘I’m very sorry’: Mugger’s Facebook apology to victim — 35 years later [New York Post]
To get around the law, in 2012 Costco split its then-under-construction D.C. site into two, and created a wholly owned subsidiary — CWC WDC LLC — to run the gas station. Thus, the warehouse store could get its liquor license and the gas station could sell gas at around $.30/gallon cheaper than competitors in the capital.
But the Washington Post recounts how things got ugly when local gas station operators tried to fight Costco.
The station owners — and one owner in particular who operates a majority of filling stations in the city — first tried to challenge the zoning decision and have the liquor license revoked or give all gas stations the right to get a liquor license.
“The government decided they were going to do anything and everything to get Costco into town, including not complying with the law,” explained a lawyer for the gas stations. “In no other jurisdiction do they have this scheme.”
The matter eventually came before a local neighborhood advisory commission. One commissioner says he was accused of possibly taking kickbacks from the warehouse store for his support (a charge he denies), and that he received death threats from people opposed to the Costco gas station.
“This is serious, serious business,” the commissioner tells the Post. “If this was done back in the ’40s, blood would be everywhere. There would be a shootout at Bladensburg Road just like the shootout at the O.K. Corral.”
In the end, the commission and the Board of Zoning Adjustment approved the gas station, and in November the Costco-operated station became the first in five years to sell gas below the $3 mark in D.C.
The owner of the competing stations says all he’s asking for is for the law to be applied equally.
“If Costco is allowed to sell both gasoline and liquor, then my tenants should be able to do the same,” he explains to the Post.
Opponents of leveling the liquor/booze playing field in D.C. say that there is a huge difference between a convenience store where you can go in and buy beer/wine/liquor while your car is being gassed up and a business where one has to drive away from the fuel pumps to a separate parking area, walk all the way through the warehouse and then back to buy their booze.
“People are not going to have the same temptation,” says a rep for AAA Mid-Atlantic, which supports both cheaper gas and anti-drunk driving efforts. “You’re not going to be drinking a gallon of Jack Daniels in a Costco parking lot.”
(SA_Steve)
Well, okay, to be fair, the frenzies over towels have become a tradition too. That’s because they cost only $1.74, and a 29-cent washcloth was also a huge hit on Black Friday. At that price, you could just buy washcloths and throw them away instead of washing them.
Here’s a towel frenzy from last year:
Wally World announced their towel tally in a press release. They also sold 2 million televisions, 1.4 million tablets, and 1.9 million dolls. Walmart did not specify how many towels, TVs, tablets, or dolls they sell on a normal weekend.
Walmart sold 2.8 million towels on Thanksgiving [Marketwatch]
Kiplinger has a lovely slide show of a dozen items — including the aforementioned TVs and bling — that you should avoid buying during the holiday shopping season. Here are the ones we considered the most interesting on the list, in order of how soon after the holiday you can get a good deal.
1. Cars (Between Christmas and New Year’s)
Sure, it looks a bit romantic in the commercial when the impossible attractive couple with the camera-ready home give each other luxury cars with big red bows on top, but Kiplinger says you’d do better to wait until after Christmas and take advantage of year-end clearance sales at dealerships looking to make room for the next model year. And besides, you know that everyone on the block really hates that adorable couple, and their new cars will be covered in egg and toilet paper by week’s end.
2. Furniture (January)
If you can live with that ratty sofa for a few more weeks, or duct tape that fractured chair leg a couple more times, Kiplinger says you can score some clearance deals on new furniture in January when stores are preparing to bring in next year’s models.
3. Perfume (post Valentine’s Day)
What’s more alluring than some nose-tickling new scent on the neck of your loved one? Knowing you saved up to 50% by waiting until after the Christmas and Valentine’s buying frenzy.
4. Luggage (March)
Okay, so maybe this isn’t as sexy as some of the other items in the round-up, but people do spend a lot of money on luggage and may not know that they can get the best deal in March, as retailers look to keep merchandise moving between the holiday and summer travel seasons.
5. Bicycles (September)
Unless you have a time machine, this is one you’ll have to mark on the calendar for next autumn, when retailers discount current models about 25% to make room for the new two-wheelers. And if you do have a time machine, we’d hope you would use it for more interesting purposes than going back in time a few months to score a discount on a bike.
Again, you can check out the whole list at Kiplinger.com.
When you see dollar bills floating toward your clutching hands from the sky, like some a question directed upward that is now answered with cash, what’s your first feeling? Joy, unremitting and excited, “I can’t believe this is happening!” joy? Yes, well, at the Mall of America in Minnesota, the person responsible for making it rain money recently was cited by cops instead of hugged.
It sounds like the perfect set-up, according to the Minnesota Star Tribune: Singers caroling happily away to the strains of “Let It Snow” while a 29-year-old man flung $1,000 in dollar bills over the third-floor railing of the Mall of America, in an apparent attempt to spread cheer.
But then the Cheer Police showed up in the form of the local cops, who cited the man with a disorderly conduct ticket. According to officials, the man just wanted to stage a publicity stunt to persuade his girlfriend to come back to him.
The man admitted to throwing the money, say the police, which was stamped with his YouTube address (where he uploaded the video of his efforts later) so people would visit his page.
In the video, the man admits he’s had a tough year but decided to chuck his “last $1,000 … to spread some holiday cheer … to make it snow money” while the singers performed. They apparently weren’t part of the stunt.
He argues that no one was hurt so he’s unsure why he was cited.
“I don’t see how holiday cheer is disorderly conduct,” he said.
A Mall of America spokeswoman said it’s the first time anyone has ever done something like that in the mall, but added that the man disrupted the singers’ performance and could’ve caused a serious situation.
Man cited after tossing $1,000 in dollar bills into Mall of America rotunda [Star Tribune]
Yup, PNC Financial has once again tallied up what is calls the Christmas Price Index (NOTE: turn your speakers off if you go to the site) the individual costs of each item on the list:
One Partridge in a Pear Tree: $199.99
Two Turtle Doves: $125.00
Three French Hens: $165.00
Four Calling Birds: $599.96
Five Golden Rings: $750.00
Six Geese-a-Laying: $210.00
Seven Swans-a-Swimming: $7000.00
Eight Maids-a-Milking: $58.00
Nine Ladies Dancing: $7552.84
Ten Lords-a-Leaping: $5,243.37
Eleven Pipers Piping: $2,635.20
Twelve Drummers Drumming: $2,854.50
So to just buy each item once will cost you a total of $27,393.17, a 7.7% increase from last year’s total of $25,431.18.
But if you actually repeat each of these items according to the seemingly interminable song, PNC says it will run you $114,651.18, more than a $7,000 uptick from the 2012 grand total of $107,300.84.
Prices remained flat year-over-year for six items on the list — the turtle doves, hens, golden rings, geese, the milking maids, and swans, — and the cost of the partridge/pear tree bundle actually dropped 2.4% since 2012. According to PNC, this decrease was due to a drop in the price of pear trees during the year.
But three gifts experienced double-digit price increases. Those lords-a-leaping jumped up a percentage point for each of the 10 men in the group, the apparent huge demand for calling birds sent their price skyrocketing by 15.4%, and the dancing ladies raised their fees by a whopping 20%.
Interestingly enough — and perhaps fitting with the song’s old-timey groove — PNC says it would actually cost you more to order many of these items online because of the shipping costs involved. Just buying all the listed items once will cost you $39,762.61, about $12K more than if you’d just gone out to your local milkmaid/bird/gentry/musician/tree shop.
And of course, what story about the 12 Days of Christmas would be complete without a visit from Bob & Doug McKenzie?
Forget about waiting for the UPS guy to roll up your street. Someday, you’ll be watching the sky for Amazon’s drones to descend with your purchases.
On Sunday’s 60 Minutes, Bezos dragged Charlie Rose out of his black-backgrounded studio and to Amazon HQ to show off “Amazon Prime Air” octo-copters, tiny, electric drone aircraft that he believes could someday bring packages directly to customers’ homes and offices.
“I know this looks like science-fiction,” Bezos tells a jaw-dropped Rose. “It’s not. It’s early; this is still years away… we can do half-hour delivery, and we can carry objects — we think — up to five pounds, which covers 86% of the items that we deliver.”
Bezos says the current generation of test drones have a 10-mile radius from a fulfillment center. Given the growing number of Amazon warehouses out there, that would cover quite a substantial portion of some major metro areas.
“It won’t work for everything,” he admits. “We’re not going to carry kayaks or table saws this way.”
Unlike most currently operating drones that are remotely piloted by someone on the ground with a monitor and controls, these Amazon copters do the flying themselves.
“You give them instructions of which GPS coordinates to go to, and they take off and they fly to those GPS coordinates,” explains Bezos. “The hard part here is putting in all the redundancy, all the reliability, all the systems you need… this thing can’t land on somebody’s head while they’re walking around their neighborhood. That’s not good.”
He admits that the project is still years away from becoming a reality.
“I know it can’t be before 2015 because that’s the earliest that we could get the rules from the FAA,” Bezos says. “My guess is that’s pretty a little optimistic. But could it be four to five years? I think so. It will work and it will happen, and it’s gonna be a lot of fun.”
Speaking of the future, Bezos confesses that while Amazon may be the unrivaled titan of e-tail today, it will someday be unseated by some punk upstart startup.
“Companies have short life spans” he says. “Amazon will be disrupted one day… I don’t worry about it because I know it’s inevitable. Companies come and go and the companies that are the shiniest and most important of any era, you wait a few decades and they’re gone.”
As for when he predicts Amazon’s fated downfall, Bezos laughs and says, “I would love for it to be after I’m dead.”
Freezing rain was blamed for highway pileups that sent dozens of people to the hospital Sunday morning in central and northern Massachusetts.
It's the year of the "selfie" and the year that social media-transmitted self portraits were taken to new heights, with the arrival of U.S. space agency NASA on Instagram.
The Salvation Army says someone broke into one of its community centers in Washington and stole donations collected through the charity's Red Kettle Program.
A New Jersey canine that was crowned the world's ugliest dog in 2007 and later became the topic of a children's book preaching acceptance has died. Elwood was 8.
The Virginia State Crime Commission will study cigarette smuggling.
Written by Karalyn Dane. Karalyn, the newest member of the Jewrotica team, is the author of Sweet Dreams.
1. The person carving the turkey is Lord of the table. Though shalt not discuss your new-found vegetarianism as the turkey is being carved, or at least not while he’s holding the knife.
2. You must have no other sexual orientation other than the one everybody already knows about. Trust me, this is not a good time to make any announcements unless you know it will lead to a mazal tov (see commandment #1 re: knife).
3. Do not drink too much, lest yourshikker (drunken) state cause you to reveal too much about your personal life. It is likely you will pay for these slip-ups for a few decades, if not generations.
4. Thou shall be gracious and kind to everyone at the table and not make any sexual innuendos about breasts, thighs, mounds of mashed potatoes, stuffing or gravy.
5. DO NOT bite the hand that feeds you no matter how much you want to.
6. Thou shalt not present any new body piercings or tattoos at the thanksgiving table.
7. Honor you father and mother so that they will continue to help pay for things. Kvetch (complain) too much and they might stop.
8. Do not do anything inappropriate at the table, on the table or under the table, at least until the table has been cleared and everyone has gone to sleep.
9. Do not covet thy sister’s boyfriend, thy brother’s girlfriend, thy cousin, aunt, uncle, niece or nephew, because it is likely you will never live it down nor be allowed to ever forget it and it will likely be the topic of conversation at every future thanksgiving meal so long as you both shall live.
10. Remember that this is your family and no matter how crazy they drive you, you will be going home soon.
