IT Insights Blog — Savings

Does anyone else remember the days when most (if not all) of the things that you could "subscribe" to were printed on paper and delivered either a) to the front porch (or the driveway, the rosebush next to the picture window, the low-hanging branches of the maple tree on the front lawn — it's hard to aim things from a bicycle seat or the back of a station wagon), or b) to your mailbox? Newspapers, magazines, catalogs, or maybe the latest selection from Book of the Month club.

Every U.S. IT Insights Blog reader within the sound of our keyboard has doubtless already completed and filed his or her federal income tax return. It would be plain irresponsible, after all, to wait until the last second to square things up with Uncle Sam. No doubt if we were to drive past the local post office after 11 p.m. tonight, there would not at all be an unusually long queue of vehicles waiting to use the all-hours mail drop to be assured of getting an April 15 postmark.

Back in the 1880s and 1890s, the era, in the United States, of the first transcontinental railroads, poor workers used to follow rail lines from place to place in search of a job, a handout, or something better than whatever they'd left behind. A culture gradually grew up around these disadvantaged wanderers that persists to this day. Something about so-called "hobos" fires the imagination, and almost everyone is at least passingly familiar with bits and pieces of hobo lore.

There's a long tradition in the annals of humanity of resolving to improve oneself in various ways at the start of each year. Many centuries ago, the inhabitants of Babylon would make a religious vow at the start of each year to return borrowed objects and pay debts. In ancient Rome, many citizens of the empire would begin the first month of the year by making promises to Janus, the god of (among several other things) beginnings.

Show of hands, who remembers the episode of The Simpsons where the Springfield mall gets a Mapple store that offers products for sale that reflect the boundless creative genius of Steve Mobs? After discovering that she will most likely never in her natural life have enough money to purchase a Mapple product, Lisa lucks into a MiPod that Krusty the Klown has disdainfully discarded. All is well until she gets her first bill ... for $1,200.