THE PEOPLE MUST HAVE THEIR DAN MILLER

Quick recap before we head on out of town for Thanksgiving. Since we were leaving, it was a short week of super doubling, but I still got some good deals. Profit-wise I think this was my best time ever, due to a couple of good deals that you will see down below.

Stuff I paid for:
9 Smuckers Low Sugar Jelly ($8.91). At 99 cents a pop, this is much better than the almost $3 I usually have to pay for it. Which I do, smilingly, because I love my wife soooo much.
1 Cream of Wheat ($3.49) – I suppose technically I could not count this in my totals since it was just something that I had to pick up without any coupons
Tax ($2.26) – Grr….
2 Silk soymilk ($1.58) – A little treat for the folks – I got the Very Vanilla kind which (so I am told) tastes essentially like a melted vanilla milkshake.
6 Crest Toothpaste ($1.20) – I messed this up. There was Crest for $2.27, and I ordered $1/1 coupons. That’s 27 cents a box (plus tax), which, with the amount of toothpaste that we have, I wouldn’t have done the deal. But they also had Buy 2 get $1.00 Meijer Gas, which would have made it a moneymaker. But the kind for $2.27 wasn’t the same kind as the Meijer Gas printouts, and the cheapest kind that was eligible for the gas wasn’t covered by my coupon, and the kind that was both covered by my coupon and eligible for the gas was $3.59. Why it took me 6 toothpastes (3 orders) to figure all this out, well…. no comment
4 McCain French Fries ($.76) – I believe I’ve covered this.
18 Diet Sprite Zero 2-liters ($.56) – These should have been free, but it’s a matter of opinion how many coupons you can use on a Buy 1 get 1 free (or in this case Buy 3 get 2 free). My opinion is that on a B1G1F, I can use 2 coupons. This opinion is not universally shared…, and even I get tired of fighting folks sometimes

Free Stuff:
28 Sunny Delight juice 6-packs. Wow I didn’t realize I had gotten this many. Yesterday when I was at Meijer there was a sample lady giving out samples of these with $1/1 coupons there. I asked her how much they were selling for and she said $2, so they’d be free this week. I got 4 yesterday then asked her if I could take some more coupons and she said “Sure”. So I swung by the other 2 Meijers I frequent today and picked out some more.
14 Martha White Pizza Crust mixes. These coupons usually adjust right to the price

Moneymakers:
8 Oral B Toothbrushes (-$0.24). Forgot I still had some of these coupons from last super doubles till just now – they were on sale for $1.97. I still have 3-4 coupons but that’s not enough to get me back to Meijer before we leave.
6 Betty Crocker Instant Potatoes (-$0.44) – free with printable 80/1.
20 Martha White muffin mixes (-$0.48) – most were just free but there was this one cashier that, if the coupon didn’t double fully (in this case 2 of them were $1.26, so it would be $.75 coupon plus $.51 doublage, she would void that and manually enter in a $.75 coupon so it would double to $1.50 – not complaining….)
12 Mueller’s Lasagna (-$0.50) – Raincheck for B1G1F plus $1/3 blinkies
3 Open Pit BBQ Sauce (-$1.46) – we were running low…
5 Hefty Kitchen waste bags (-$1.55) – as I was contemplating whether the $3.88 small bag or the $5.88 bigger bag was a better deal, considering my $1/1 coupons, I saw these for $1.69. Wish I’d have had more coupons – might get some more since IIRC they don’t expire till 2/28/06.
24 Mueller’s Spaghetti (-$4.31) – same as the lasagna, though with these I also ran into the same B1G1F / 2 coupon arguments.
5 Emery boards (-$5.60) – I found some emery boards at the checkout lanes that are even cheaper! (88 cents vs. $1.19)
18 Idahoan Instant Potatoes (-$5.98) – I picked up a few of these 40/1 blinkies at Kroger since they were on sale for 89 cents so I thought it was reasonable that I could eventually get them for free. And lo and behold Meijer had them at 99 cents B1G1F.
25 Progresso Microwaveable Soup (-$6.25) – this was a deal that’s been going on for the past few weeks. I think my end total was 70 of these. They sell for $2.25, and every time you buy one you get a coupon for $2.50 off your next order. So not only is it free soup, you make a quarter. The only annoying thing with this is was that you had to buy them one at a time – if you bought 2 soups you’d still only get 1 $2.50 coupon.
32 Powerade Options 32 oz (-$19.28) – but not quite as good a deal as this one!! This one has also been going on for a month or so. 2 Powerade options for 79 cents each. I got a hold of some $1/2 coupons. So even before super doubles this was a moneymaker, because every time you buy 2, you got a coupon for $1.10 off your next order. Not to mention that you also get a coupon for a free Propel fitness water (Propel trying to get you to try their stuff I’m sure). Same annoyance with having to do them 2 at a time, but even more annoying is that it was nearly impossible to find this stuff. The Fields Ertel store had them in the back, so I had to keep asking someone to get them. Supposedly they wouldn’t fit on the shelves and the guy hadn’t built the display. It was finally built today after a week and a half. The Tylersville one had some, but only lemon. I asked at the Ridge Meijer and the guy called “someone” back in the back who said they didn’t have any, but I wouldn’t be surprised if that guy just didn’t want to look. A couple of times I almost walked in the back myself and looked (I get asked if I work for Meijer all the time). In the end I gave my co-worker Kerry (not to be confused with my sister Kerry) my last 5 coupons and he’s going to try and get me some if he goes out to Meijer before Saturday.

All in all, $364.94 of stuff for -$27.33.

These aren’t french fries. I just thought that you would like to know.

I’m at Meijer today since it’s Super Double coupons again. I got some $1/1 McCain coupons at Kroger, and Meijer has them for $2.69. They also have a Buy 2, get $1 Meijer Fuel reward. That makes the final price 19 cents a bag. I’ve gotten them for a better price, but that’s not bad, especially considering that we eat them a lot, and if we run out, then I get *pressured* to buy more, occasionally for full price .

So, the fuel rewards don’t print out. I head up to Customer Service. I’m not that optimistic since the guy up there is a meanie. Some of you may remember back in August when I went through the line of a cashier who was on his first day on the job. This is the same guy. Apparently in 3 months he has been promoted to customer service dude. He seems to be fairly intelligent, but I don’t know if he remembers me and doesn’t like me, or if he just doesn’t like coupons, or if he thinks all couponers are out to scam and cheat him, or what, but I’ve had nothing but problems with him.

In fact, some of my coupons from my lunch trip today didn’t work right, so I was going to go to Customer Service when I first got there to fix that, but when I saw that it was him at the desk, I didn’t even want to waste my time… So in any case, I go up there to try and get my fuel rewards. He brings out the fuel rewards sheet, where it says

“McCain Bites, Fries or Roasters All Varieties 24 or 28 oz (Buy 2) – $1.00″. He then asks to see my fries, which I show him, and he tells me that what I bought were not fries. I ask him what they were, and he said they were “Spirals”. I knew I wasn’t going to get anywhere with him so I just took my leave and will try my luck tomorrow with someone else…

Update: I went to a different Meijer today (day after). Here’s how the conversation went (paraphrasing since I don’t remember exactly)

Me: Last time I was here my Meijer Fuel Rewards didn’t print out
Customer Service Lady: The what?
Me: The Meijer Gas rewards
CSL: Oh. What was it for?
Me: McCain French Fries, Buy 2 Get $1.00, and I bought 4.
CSL: So you need $2
Me: Yep.
CSL: I’m just going to give you 2 dollars cash.
Me: Okay.

So another semi-rant. On Sunday, I’m driving to go home-teaching. As I start driving down Iuka, a car pulls out in front of me. It’s not like they pulled out in front of me like causing a wreck. Had they been operating their vehicle normally I probably wouldn’t have noticed. But they were operating it at approximately a mile an hour. So I was stuck behind them all the way down Iuka, Sanoma, Osceola and partway down Camargo till they turned in to Krogers (sic).

That, in and of itself, is not particularly noteworthy. I soon forgot about it as I picked up my comp, went home teaching and then dropped him off and headed home.

Until, as I was turning back on to Iuka (and keep in mind this is a good hour and a half later), THIS SAME CAR IS NOW IN FRONT OF ME!!! Still driving wicked slow. I thought it was quite odd that we both took exactly the same time to do our Sunday errands.

I don’t know why I have been stuck in rant-mode lately on TPMHTDM. Perhaps a new turn for the blog?

In any case on the radio today I heard an ad for Mount Saint Joseph college. This is not the first time I’ve heard this particular ad, nor the first time I’ve been annoyed by the following bit of information, but nevertheless, it is the first time that I have bothered to blog about it (duh).

The ad talks about how cool MSJ is and then says that for more information go to www.msj.edu backslash courses (it actually wasn’t courses but I can’t remember what it was).

Now, if you don’t know a whole lot about the Internet just let me clue you into the fact that if you are putting in a backslash – \ – anywhere in your browser, you’re not going to have much luck. You’re looking for the regular slash – / . Though actually in some rudimentary testing, Firefox was somewhat forgiving (more forgiving than I’d have been).

I can’t believe that nobody in the whole ad / marketing department knows what is the difference between a slash and a backslash. It reminds me of the time when I saw a huge billboard advertising some jewelry company as being located next to “Krogers” (sic). But let me not get started on THAT particular pet peeve of mine, for lo, it is my greatest.

What is this – two posts from me in one day? Actually, “please advise” was written yesterday, but Blogger was having some problems so it didn’t make it on the site till this morning. So go read that one if you haven’t already

But alas I have some more rants, this time fueled by Jeff and Jen from Q102. I was listening to them on my way into work today (as I occasionally do), and somehow they got on the subject of “6 degrees of separation“, and Jeff was talking about how many handshakes away from the president you are, and saying that usually it’s not that many. For instance, he said that he knows a guy who knows Florida governor Jeb Bush, who is the brother of the president, so he is 3 handshakes away from the Prez.

So then he asks about them – and the other girl on the show (not Jen, some other girl whose name I do not know) says that she thinks she’s maybe 5 handshakes away. And Jeff is like “see, it’s not that many” and moves on to a new subject.

DO YOU SEE THE PROBLEM HERE??!??! If you don’t, think about it for awhile, or just read on and I will explain. Girl whose name not know but for purposes of this blog I will call “Christina” CAN NOT be 5 handshakes away from the President. She knows Jeff, who is 3 handshakes away, so she can not be any more than 4 handshakes away (she knows Jeff, Jeff knows some guy, some guy knows Jeb, Jeb knows the Prez). It’s possible for her to be less than 4 if she can get to the President in some other way, but she can not be any more than 4). And not only did she not realize this, but Jeff didn’t either! When an example like this is crucial to the very point he was trying to make!

Grrrrr (to the urr to the)

Warning: Rant on

If you ever catch yourself saying in an email the phrase “Please advise” please be advised that 1) you are an idiot and 2) I hate you.

It’s just one of the stupidest if not the stupidest of all the “buzzword” phrases that I’ve ever heard. I love too how it’s always just “please advise”. Not “please advise what you want me to do” or “please give me some advice” or “please advise how we should proceed”. Just “please advise”

I think that a good rule of thumb for emails or other similar things (message board postings) is to say things that you would normally say if you were having a regular conversation with this person. Obviously there are exceptions but I think it’s a good rule of thumb. Have you ever heard anyone say “please advise” in the context of regular conversation? No! because it’s stupid!

The other thing I hate is that it’s generally completely unnecessary. An example from a message board I was reading just a bit ago trying to figure out a problem I’ve been having at work.

“Still, the image is not accessible from the webpage. What would I be missing? Please advice.[sic]“

There’s no need to stick “please advise” on there. Without it, the post means exactly the same thing. WE KNOW YOU WANT ADVICE! IT’S THE WHOLE POINT OF YOUR POST!

Anyways….. **Rant off**

Stuff has been going pretty well here. I’ve played basketball the last 2 Wednesdays as Lost has been a repeat. I plan on going occasionally over the next few months – it’s fun to play, even though I feel like I’ve lost a few steps and am no longer the player I once was (not that I ever was *that* good in the first place). Halloween was fun, even if Amy was quite umm, forthright? in her candy picking, as Carolyn has already pointed out .

We’re planning on going to visit my dad in Blacksburg over Thanksgiving and heading up to Clev-o over Christmas some time, but still not sure on the exact dates of the Christmas trip. My mom will be coming down sometime near Joel’s birthday (on the 19th) so that will be nice.