Going for Not Broke

On Monday morning, I awoke to find my iPhone  partially submerged in water in the Eskimo Joe 's cup I keep on my nightstand. I remember vaguely waking up in the middle of the night and checking the time on it. My guess? Afterward, I tossed it into the cup. I've been kicking myself a lot since then. First, for buying the phone in the first place. It was pricey, but I had gift cards that I was able to apply toward it, plus I told myself it would come in handy as I try to grow my home business (in short, I justified the heck out of buying it). Secondly, as I was purchasing it, I thought, "Hey, I'll save money by NOT buying the insurance." Thirdly, I've really grown to love it, which makes me really, really, really want to run out and replace it right now. According to online sources that I came across thanks to the Twitter hashtag #iPhoneInWater (and my husband's friend who works on gadgets for a living), sealing the phone up in a bag of dry rice for thr...

Back in the early 1990s, I landed my first full-time job at a newspaper. I used a Macintosh computer to build ads, and from there, my preference for Macs grew. I've owned PCs, mostly because they're easier on my pocketbook, but they get the job done too. I just like Macs better, so back in 2006, I bought one to use while I do freelance work. Now, it's 6 years old, a dinosaur in the tech world, so every now and then, I have to talk myself out of buying a new one; the old one does just fine -- for now. On Saturday, Woot had a good deal on a Macintosh computer -- roughly $250 cheaper than it would've been if it were being sold through Apple. It might've been refurbished -- I didn't hang around the site enough to see because the temptation to buy one for myself was pretty strong. It had the Lion operating system (mine has Snow Leopard) and more RAM than my current one. I told myself I'd go back to Woot at 10 p.m., and if the site wasn't sold out, I'd ...

Back in June, I signed up for GoDaddy's data storage service, thinking it would be a good replacement for Apple's iDisk, which Apple discontinued on June 30. It turns out, it didn't work as I had hoped so it won't do. Here's why I liked the iDisk: I paid for the service, and in turn, I got access to X amount of online data storage (I no longer remember how much) that was automatically divided into several folders, one of which was labeled "Public." I had the option to password protect the public folder, which I did. Then, I could send a link to whomever I wanted to allow access to the folder. The recipients could then login from anywhere, whether they use a PC or a Mac, and both download and upload files and folders. They could see and access anything within that folder. This allowed me as a part-time freelancer to move files back and forth between myself and my clients, without requiring them to buy or sign up for anything themselves. Als...