Moving Money

I know Where's George is sooo 1998, but 10 years later, it's captured my imagination like nobody's business.

The idea is simple: Each dollar bill has a unique identifier on it, and were you to enter them into a database, and track instances of a dollar bill's possession, you could monitor its travel throughout the world.

For the last few weeks, I've been religiously stamping my dollars -- $1 bills only; it's George for a reason, Media Dieticians -- with a stamp purchased from Holmes Stamp & Sign and releasing them back into the wild.

All my dollars have been virgins -- no previous entries, these -- but my sense of money and how money moves has been heightened.

Where does your money go? It's not that difficult to tell.

Awesome Career Development Fire Sale

This is an unbelievable offer and opportunity that I just have to share.

After 16 years in Chapel Hill, Jeff Davidson of the Breathing Space Institute is moving to Raleigh, and until the end of the month, he's offering an incredible package deal -- all in the name of cleaning out stuff he doesn't want to maildeal with. Check it out:

$78 worth of Books

• The Complete Guide to Public Speaking (Wiley, 324 pages) $16.95
  
• Marketing Yourself and Your Career (Adams Media, 238 pages) $12.95
  
• Complete Idiot's Guide to Getting Things Done (Alpha/Penguin, 324 pages) $18.95
  
• Complete Idiot's Guide to Managing Stress (Alpha/Pearson, 372 pages, $18.95)
  
• The 60-Second Procrastinator (Adams Media, 142 pages) $9.95
  

$198 worth of CDs and Audio Books

• The 60-Second Procrastinator (Oasis Audio, 140 minutes) $19.95
  
• Surviving Information Overload (NIBM, 72 minutes) $14.95
  
• Relaxing at High Speed (ACHE, 32 minutes) $9.95
  
• Blow Your Own Horn (Simon & Schuster, 60 minutes) $10.95
  
• Time, Stress, Simplicity (Skillpath PersonalQuest, 300 minutes) $59.95
  
• Getting Articles Published (PR Leads, 57 minutes) $19.95
  
• Selling Your Book's 'Sub Rights' (PR Leads, 59 minutes) $19.95
  
• Foreign Rights Sales (PR Leads, 60 minutes) $19.95
  
• Creating a Brilliant Book Outline (BSI, 53 minutes, $15.95)
  
• Giving Better Presentations (Dreamcoach, 55 minutes, $16.95)
  

Plus CD and Article Bonuses

To order, go to this special Web site and enter the description "career advancement" and the amount... $99.

These items are from major publishers -- at list price -- so it's quite a package deal. I don't often post stuff like this, but holy cow.

Two Music Stores in Wisconsin

• Geo. R. Breber Music Company
  
• Ward-Brodt Music Company
  

The Grand Kinoki Foot Pad Experiment of 2008

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Originally uploaded by h3athrow

Not long ago, I bought some Kinoki foot pads on a whim because of an infomercial I saw on television.

They're supposed to be a detox tool, and despite some speculation that they're a scam -- including a segment on 20/20 -- we decided to buy some. We considered the $20 fun money.

Long story short, they didn't seem to do anything. Over the course of a couple of weeks, I wore one pad on the bottom of a foot while I slept. In the morning, the pad was dark, supposedly because impurities had been removed from my system. They're supposed to lighten over time -- as you become more pure -- but I could detect no change in their coloration. And I felt no physical change at all over the course of the two weeks.

There are better ways to detox your body. Kinoki pads are just a fun novelty.

You can see the whole photo set, as well.

Products I Love XXIII

I used to be a religious -- as in, frequent -- customer of Northern Sun, a progressive mail-order retailer based in Minnesota. I was especially fond of their "recycle this envelope" labels, which you could affix onto a business-reply envelope in order to address it and use it. For years, I just reused business-reply envelopes. Now, I'm not so picky, and the labels appear to be discontinued, so go figure.

But I recently dropped $20 their way in order to get some T-shirts I could work out in at the Greenpoint YMCA. We joined the Y in early February, and I've been hard pressed to single out T-shirts -- and I have too many -- that are worthy of sweating in... and then still wearing in other settings. So far, I've pegged a ratty Septophilia Records T-shirt as one that's not nice enough for everyday wear, but otherwise, it's Threadless and other shirts too nice to sully.

Northern Sun has this deal where you can get discontinued T-shirts for $5 a pop. You can't choose them, but you can buy them. I just got four -- and they're awesome.

A Stitch in Town

Shannon Okey's opening a store! Stitch Cleveland will open in Ohio later this month. Congratulations to all involved!

Spam of the Day

File under Phishing, but I just received a relatively smart spam email:

Your history shows that your last order is ready for
refilling.

To visit ://fake.url.of.no.provenance

Please visit the site to complete your order. Because you have
ordered from us previously, your prescription is pre-approved.

Thank you,

Lidia Joyce
Customer Services

If a Web site I do business with frequently sent me this email, it might have been of actionable interest. Take note, Minimus and Delivery.com. But as it is, it's just not recognizable or clickable.

To the phisher's credit, they're reflecting an activity that frequent online customers want, need, and would act on. If only it were for real.