Jasper Jones

This morning I went to print out the homework for my English class and as soon as I hit the print button a little gray dialogue box popped up and says “You are almost out of ink.” Well, that’s just great. We’ve only been using this printer for maybe 6 weeks and not really doing much printing and I’m already getting a message that we are almost out.

Well, at least we got a warning. It used to be that you just ran out and wouldn’t even know it until you picked up the stack of papers in your report and thumbed through them when you noticed that the printed pages started fading and then disappeared, so all you had was half a pile of blank sheets of paper. Don’t try turning those in for a grade, folks.

With our college student budget, Alex and I are going to have to save money on things like new printer cartridges. We can’t just run down to the drug store and buy brand name ink cartridges and pay top dollar for the privilege of a brand name on the box. What we do is buy compatible cartridges and save about 30% off the cost of a new brand name cartridge.

The best way I’ve found to save money buying compatible inkjet printer suppliesis get online and use the web site called inkjetdeals.info to find a place that sells compatibles for your printer model, like our Epson.

There are brick and mortar stores that carry the different brands and there are online stores, too. If you have time to order your cartridge online and wait just a couple days for it to come in the mail, that’s usually the best way to go for the maximum savings.

But if you are totally out and desperately need to buy an inkjet cartridge to use immediately, sometimes this site has coupons and discount codes you can use at local stores, like BestBuy.

The guys are pretty much broke but not in desperate straights. We just are very frugal with the cash that we have and are always looking for ways to get more money. So we were hanging out at the softball game last night and talking about ways we might raise some extra cash for Christmas.

Alex has a girl now. Her idea is to open a kiosk at the mall and sell gift items for the Christmas selling season. I don’t know what kind of gift items will sell around here. But she’s very insistent that we can make some good money if we all go in together and take turns manning the cash register for the 3 months.

Even though I’m working the night shift at the hospital I might have an extra day here and there to help out. But to be honest I think this is more for Alex and his girl to handle. I can handle some of the background effort, like finding wholesalers and arranging for credit card processing and things like that.

I firmly believe that if you are selling a retail product that you must accept credit cards in today’s world. Most people don’t carry much cash any more - they use either credit cards or debit cards to pay for things at the store. In fact, the only cash I spend is at the fast food places. Most places I go take my credit cards without blinking an eye, and if they didn’t take plastic then I probably wouldn’t be shopping there.

Alex’s dad is an engineer and when the bridge collapsed up in Minneapolis several months ago, he was called in by the Feds to do some consulting work on the bridge repair. He’s an environmental engineer, and to be honest I don’t really know what he does or what it has to do with the environment. Neither does Alex. LOL!

Anyway, his Dad really like Minnesota and has been calling here encouraging Alex to come up to Minneapolis on our next break and spend some time with him up north. He’s even told us about the local newspaper, the Star Tribune, and how it has lots of listings for Minneapolis jobs.

He says there are a lot of companies hiring in Minnesota and that Alex can write his own ticket after he graduates. Of course, Alex should go on up north and check out the area before he takes any career advice and moves up there. Plus, graduation is still eight months away. But we are getting a lot of mail from recruiters and it’s never too early to make your plans for after graduation. Hell, maybe I should check out the job listings and go up north for a visit with Alex - we might both find something.

Maybe I’ve been living under a rock these past couple of days - what with school and working at the hospital. But I had no idea that we were having a gas shortage around here. I went to get gas after class and pick up a 24 pack of Pepsi. But when I pulled up to the pump there were plastic grocery bags over all the handles. So I went into the store and asked what’s up, and the clerk tells me that because of Hurricane Ike that all the gas stations are out of gas. All the BPS are out of gas, some of the Shells are out and a couple of the Exxons have mid grade and premium gas - but they are sold out of regular.

I hadn’t even noticed but station that have taken out the numbers from their signs that post the price per gallon are signaling that they are out of gas. If there’s no numbers on the sign - drive on by.

Well, it’s going to be pretty tough to get to the hospital from here if I can’t find some gas.

College kids are constantly bombarded with offers of credit and loans. Let’s face it, these are the people most likely to need a little boost with money. If taking a heavy course load, most student can only deal with a part time job at minimum wage to keep some spending money coming in. It’s a time of great sacrifice and limitation for a lot of people, but unfortunately, life happens and sometimes we need to raise cash quick to take care of unplanned expenses.

One solution to covering small emergencies is to take out a short term personal loan. An easy way to apply for Personal Loans is to use the internet to apply for the loan. But kids need to use this resource sparingly and responsibly. There’s no sense getting off to a bad start with a lot of debt right out of college, but if you need help to get through this difficult time, its good to know what resources are available to you and sometimes a short term personal loan is really the best solution to the problem.