"The longer I put off starting my own firm, the longer it can remain a dream and not something I screwed up at." – Ted Mosby, How I Met Your Mother

The EFF recently reported that Last.fm gave the RIAA information about users who illegally downloaded U2's latest as-yet-unreleased bit of caterwauling uh, "music." That sucks and all, but there's a larger issue at question here than deniable, allegedly unintended musical surveillance.

Who the hell still cares about U2?

First, let me apologize for not having posted anything for a month. I do plan to do a debt update for Feb. (soon...) and start posting again soon. Now, on to my rant.

Over the last two days I've tried two times, at different places, to redeem a coupon at a fast food joint for a free sandwich. Both times I failed because a local franchise did not honor the coupon. I am incensed.

I have two Washington Mutual credit cards. Since Chase bought out WaMu last year, I've been receiving mail and e-mail messages about the conversion of WaMu credit card accounts to Chase credit card accounts.

One of the best features of WaMu credit cards is that they allow you to view your monthly updated FICO credit score as reported by TransUnion for free. Unfortunately, according to an e-mail I got from WaMu this morning, this freebie is soon going the way of the mastadon. Here's the relevant text of the e-mail.

Did you get a 12% pay increase this year? I got a raise, but it nowhere near 12% (though I did get a substantial bonus in March). Given the current economy, though, I'm okay with what I got, knowing that a lot of people I work with did not get even that much.

But if you work for minimum wage, you should be happy on Friday when the federal minimum wage rate increases from $5.85 per hour to $6.55 per hour. That's a whopping 12% pay raise!

Jim over at Blueprint for Financial Prosperity asks whether his readers give to panhandlers (he doesn't). I don't give to panhandlers, but then there aren't very many in the small upstate town where I live. I doubt I would give to them in a larger area either.

JLP of All Financial Matters notes that Engadget and Gizmodo were valued at $30 million and $50 million, respectively, according to a recent article in Fortune. JLP then figures his blog is worth a cool quarter mil based the number of visitors he gets in proportion to these uber-popular.

I work for a multinational financial institution, and earlier this year it posted a series of videos on its intranet describing how the company makes money. While I don't know that I learned any new facts from the video series, it was very interesting to see the company present a simple – and frank – communication showing at a high level why it operates the way it does.

It's a sad story of expectations and undeserved feelings of entitlement.

My wife is the president of the parent-teacher group at our daughter's school, and each year the group sponsors the purchase of "spirit wear" where students and parents can order clothing emblazoned with the school's mascot. As such, last year my wife did some research into who could produce the clothing. She preferred to go with a local vendor, and in asking around found out that the uncle of one of the children in our daughter's class owned a screen printing business.