Even worse are companies that have a website to sell a product, list all the features, maybe a snazzy demo, then have absolutely no pricing information available. This leaves me scratching my head every time. When a company refuses to list prices for their product, it tells me a couple of things right off the bat. First it tells me that they are so over-priced that they are embarrassed to show their price unless they have a salesman on the phone to sugar coat it. Second, it tells me that they don’t have enough confidence in their product to let it stand on its own merits alongside their asking price.

My advice to any online company wanting to sell your product on the Internet is to always list your price. If you give lots of discounts, just list your base product and include a note explaining that the “price is often discounted, call to see if you may qualify.” Doing this allows potential customers to quickly determine if your price is even an option within their budget and allows them to compare your product with a competitor. It shows you respect the intelligence of your customers. If you’re afraid of that, then maybe it’s time to re-evaluate your price structure anyway.

Max 10 hours per week of TV – Over the limit, but was home sick yesterday and consequently watched more TV than normal.  If I had not watched the extra episodes of Solitary I would be well under.

• Knight Rider (1 hr) – Didn’t watch yet.
• Battlestar Galactica (1 hr) – Watched one episode, still several behind.  I can’t imagine the feelings people would go through to strive for this perfect solution to literally all of their problems, only to find out that solution was only a dream and failed to produce.
• Biggest Loser (2 hrs) – Finally got rid of the Silver team!  Yay!  I felt bad for Carla as she worked her butt off just to have Joelle throw it all away for her, but that’s the breaks and they chose to be together as a team.  And then when they met afterward for Joelle to keep saying she tried when it was very obvious she didn’t was beyond annoying.  She has some issues with personal responsibility for sure.  It was too bad to see the black team get split up too, but I was glad to see the brown team got to stay for another week with a phenominal loss!
• Dirty Jobs (1 hr) – Was pretty gunny watching Mike separate out dirty diapers from last week’s episode.  Went to watch this week’s but the wife was too freaked out about watching anything to do with spiders right before bed.
• Grey’s Anatomy (1 hr) – Haven’t watched it yet.
• ER (1 hr) – Didn’t watch this either.
• 24 (1 hr) – Still behind on this, but I can’t wait to get started. Marathon didn’t happen yet.  I did notice the DVR was missing one episode so we’ll have to catch that one on Hulu if its there.
• Solitary 3.0 (5 hrs recorded) -  What a crazy show!  It is amazing how far these contestants will push themselves for $50K.  I have not watched all of the episodes I’ve recorded yet, but I have watched 3 of them.
• Non-tracked viewing: Other than some evening news, I’ve watched a few episodes of The Dave Ramsey Show.  Dish finally added Fox Business to their lineup, though I had to increase my programming package in order to get it.  It may seem odd to spend more money ($10 per month) to watch a show where the primary theme is saving money but I get more than that in motivation over a period of a month, plus there are several more channels (like the Science Channel and Discovery Kids) that we will enjoy too.

At least 2 books per month -January’s goal met, on track for February.

• Twilight – Finally started reading this.  I’m not too far in but so far it seems to be well written and should be a fast read once I get going.  Cristi read it in a few days, and if she can read a book that quickly I have no doubt I can too if I take the time to do it.
• The 9 Steps to Financial Freedom: Practical and Spiritual Steps So You Can Stop Worrying by Suze Orman -Almost done.

Minimum 3 blog postings per week – Got this one done this week with plenty of time to spare!  I should be able to do the same this week too.

100 lbs (2 lbs/week) – Up 1.5 pounds direct weight this week, but if I go by yesterday’s weight I’m down 4.2 lbs.  I had quite a bit of sodium yesterday being home sick eating raman noodles, so I think today is artificially high.  Even with today’s higher weight I am still 1.65 pounds down on the averaged trend.  If I use yesterday’s weight (its easy to be artificially high, but not artificially low) I’m on-track for my long term goal.

Budget – We never did set down and do our budget for the last pay period as I mentioned before, but even so we still didn’t overspend and come up short.  We made a few smaller trips to the grocery store, rather than one big trip, but overall we did very well having considering ourselves as completely slacking off this time around.  We will be going over our specific budget before this week’s paycheck to get back on the wagon.

On the other hand, they are linking back to me from their pseudo-blog sites, so they are providing a place for exposure to my blog.  This can also help with search engine relevance since there are more sites linking  back to me.  But they’re still a form of spam.

I need to do some research and see what others are doing about it, if anything.  Akismet is blocking a majority of them, so I need to see if I should let it continue to block them, or if I should go ahead and allow them through.  So far I’ve allowed them through if they’re using an excerpt of my post and/or a related posting, but there are so few that it will only take a moment to cull them if I decide that is the best route to go.