Several Random Things

It's a pretty quiet week around here.  In other news...

• The photo above is of a neighbor's yard.  Everything in the yard is plastic and from the Dollar Tree!  I think the guy finally got tired of the HOA (if you have two weeds in your yard you will definitely hear about it in a warning letter from the HOA!) so it looks like he made a yard that will never change and always look pretty!
• Here are 99 Bits of Unsolicited Advice from Kevin Kelly.  Interesting stuff here!
• I saw this story on the news about a teacher who is running a marathon in order to raise funds for tech equipment for his school.  On the one hand, what a great teacher!  On the other hand, how messed up is it that teachers need to fund their own tech gear for their students?
• This is a cool webpage from NASA where you can learn about astronauts and even request a free picture of them!
• It seems like everything is increasing in price!  But in our recent shopping we found: a Kipling purse for me at the local Kipling outlet store which was 70% off!  I love Kipling bags but there is no way I will pay $100 for a purse when I can wait and get the same exact purse for $30.  Hubby found a side of pork at our military base commissary for around $1.50 per pound which is much cheaper than any outside store (no he will never be vegan even though I tried to get him to change...I figure it is better he is happy for the last years of his life rather than grumpy for the last years of his--extended by going vegan--life).  So now we have a freezer full of pork at very little cost and hubby is happy.  And finally, I have been looking for a faster laptop and while I was prepared to pay up to $1200 for one, I was perusing TechBargains and found a flash sale for a Lenovo C940 laptop for only $700 so I jumped on it and it is on its way to our house as I type this.  It is a great deal for an i7/12GB RAM/256GB SSD laptop and my current laptop will be used by hubby.  The laptop that he uses upstairs--as opposed to downstairs where he uses one of my very good older laptops--is a dinosaur that is falling apart.  Since he wants a bigger screen than the 15" laptop, I will find him a monitor (on sale of course) and hook up the laptop to a larger monitor for a fraction of the cost of buying him a whole new laptop!