Cheap Textbooks

So, the textbook buying season just passed, and the usual feelings of outrage and despair, coupled with desire to throw a few pounds of explosives at the school bookstore, have passed.

This year there was actually a little less pain then in years before, due to a pretty cool website I found, textbook price comparison bigwords.com

Even though this is a great website, there were still significant challenges in the quest to find my textbooks for a less tear-inducing, anger-causing price. At bigwords.com you can find the lowest price for your book, but only if you know the author and title, or the full ISBN number. And of course, the miserable BYU bookstore provides neither piece of critical information.

Here are a couple tricks that I employed to find the necessary clues.

1. As soon as you register for classes, go to the BYU booklocker and look up what books people are trading for your class. This can be somewhat helpful, although there are usually a few different books/editions for the same class.

2.Email around. I was lucky enough to be in quite a few classes as a lot of people in my major, so I could email around and ask if anyone had taken my classes before, and if they had information on the books that were required. Sometimes this is helpful, other times you will only get replies saying that someone has the books, and will sell them to you, but not give you any of the information. I politely declined.

3.Wait for the bookstore to post the information a few days before school starts. This is pretty much the worst option. Not only does the bookstore wait till the last minute to post any info on your books, the info that they do finally put up is not helpful at all. Abbreviated titles and authors, and lack of anything close to an ISBN make it impossible to find your books anywhere but at the overpriced campus bookstore. This really only leaves you one option.

4.Snoop around in the bookstore. Although the bookstore cannot post your book information online more then a few days before classes due to "the teachers haven't decided on which book to choose yet", they are somehow able to magically put the physical books on the actual shelves in the store. How do they do this? No one knows. This leaves the fearless hero with the opportunity to wander around in the bookstore with pen and paper hidden from the book Nazis, and hastily scribble ISBN numbers down when the Gestapo's attention is diverted. If you are unsuccessful, you will be "escorted" out of the bookstore, but if you do manage to smuggle the information out, you can go to the above website and save a bundle of cash.

After following these four steps, I managed to save almost $500 on my textbooks this semester. True, some of my books are only legal to possess in India or Bangladesh, but whats life without a little risk?

RFID Proposal

So here is a little proposal that I have been working on at work. The graphs and tables didnt really copy over well from MS word, so they dont look good, but they looked a lot better when I actually turned it in. It's some interesting stuff, RFID. It was interesting to do all the research for. Anyways, here is the report:

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Tuesday, November 27, 2007

IT Customer Services Manager

Summary: By implementing RFID technology to facilitate asset management, the MTC will benefit from increased accuracy in reports in addition to earning a ROI of 211% and total savings of $8,145 in the first five years

Dear -:

One of the persistent problems in asset management for the MTC is the scanning process required each quarter to take inventory. This process is tedious, takes several days to finish it, and usually has to be partly redone due to human error. Due to these factors, we have had to start the inventory process earlier and spend more time on it in order to meet the deadlines for completing the quarterly inventory report.

The Desktop Management team has been researching and evaluating ways to improve the inventory process. One of the options we have been evaluating is the implementation of Radio Frequency Identification, or RFID. The cost of RFID has been reduced dramatically over the past few years, and is now a viable solution for resolving many of the problems that we now face with the inventory. RFID will allow us to reduce the number of IT staff that we use for scanning computers, while improving the timeliness and accuracy of the final report. As a result of the time saved, it will also reduce overall costs at the MTC, allowing us to save a significant amount of money in the long run.

Our proposed solution fits well with the current technology used by the MTC, and will allow for continued improvement in the future.

Estimating a cost of 15 dollars per hour, implementing RFID would save the MTC $600 every inventory scan. Costs of implementation fall into two categories: the handheld scanner and the RFID tags. The scanner will cost $3,060, and the tags will cost $800 (.53 * 1500) for a total cost of $3,855. A look at the following chart will show us the breakeven point and 5-year Return On Investment.

As the chart shows, the breakeven point would be 7 inventory scans, or 1 ¾ years. The 5 ROI would be 211%, with total savings of $8,145 ($12,000 - $3,855).

Other Benefits:

· Store more information about each computer

· Reduce probability of missing laptops

· Prepare for further growth

· Less interruptions of missionary time

· Drastically reduce the need to re-scan areas

· With more free time, TSR and DEG can improve other areas

We feel that the benefits of implementing RFID far outweigh the costs. As a result of using RFID for asset tracking we will be able to reduce the time it takes to collect and organize inventory and increase the time we will be able to spend on additional projects that will create worth for the MTC. Doing so will help increase the spirituality and preparedness of the missionaries and further the goals and aims of the MTC.

Sincerely,
Desktop Management

Here are our halloween costumes as well... Shelley is very cute with her monkey

And I'm very scary with my sword!

Pumpkin Carving

Here are some photos of our pumpkin carving adventures :-)

ohhh, so scary!

Adwords

So I decided to try and see if I could make some money off this little blog thing..... you may have noticed the ads up top, they are the google adds. So far I've made almost 25 cents!! Basically I'm getting ready to retire right now. I think the coolest thing about it is that you also get a pretty detailed look at the traffic hitting your site. I think I've had 23 page views, and it tells me when those were. It's pretty interesting, I'll keep everyone updated on about how much I make with this thing...

2002 Mazda Protege

So our old car got smashed up by a gravel truck, and we just got this car yesterday! I'ts been good so far, and the best thing is that it has a warranty. Our first car with a warranty! Hopefully It'll last through the end of school and well into working life.