Street Maps Software And GPS for 100 Bucks

A coworker alerted me to a sale going on at most office supply stores right now. Microsoft’s Streets and Trips 2006 is on sale at OfficeMax,OfficeDepot, Staples, etc., for $30 off the list price of around $130. While this may seem high for mapping software, a USB GPS is included. Thus, you get a USB GPS and high-quality atlas software for less than $100.

I’ve looked around and can’t find USB GPSs for much cheaper than $100, and those don’t include any software. Getting both for a hundred bucks is a fantastic deal. Hurry if you’re interested, though, since the deal ends March 18th.

City of Raleigh Offering Mulch Sale

Raleigh’s offering a two-for-one deal on mulch loads with this coupon. For people like me who are itching to get their yards into shape, this is a pretty good deal.

Here are the details:

From March 15 to April 29 while supplies last, the city’s Yard Waste Center is offering customers coupons to receive a free pickup-load size of mulch or leaf mulch if they purchase a load for $12. The coupons will be available at the Yard Waste Center and in kiosks at the Cityâ€™s six recycling drop-off centers (locations listed below). The coupons also are scheduled to appear in advertisements in the March 13 editions of The News and Observer and The Carolinian and in the March 14 edition of La Conexion.

The Yard Waste Center is located at 900 N. New Hope Road off of Highway 64 East. It is open Monday through Saturday from 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. For more information, call the Yard Waste Center at 250-2728.

DROP-OFF RECYCLING CENTERS

The Cityâ€™s six drop-off recycling centers, where the mulch coupons will be made available, are located at:

Jaycee Park at 2405 Wade Avenue
North Boulevard Plaza at Mini City on Capital Boulevard – behind the Taco Bell, adjacent to Food Lion
Solid Waste Services Administrative Office at 400 W. Peace Street ( 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday only, mulch coupons will be available inside the office)
Plaza West Shopping Center at the intersection of Western Boulevard and Jones Franklin Road
Brennan Station Shopping Center at the intersection of Creedmoor and Strickland Roads. The drop-off recycling center is behind the shopping center off of Brennan Drive . Follow the large white water tower
City of Raleigh Yard Waste Center at 900 N. New Hope Road (open Monday through Saturday, 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. only).

Cyberspace Scoops Paper On Debit Card Story

The N&O ran a front-page article yesterday detailing how numerous banks have recently reissued debit cards as a result of a security breach. It seems that hackers may have compromised the security of OfficeMax, according to the article. OfficeMax denies this.

What makes this story notable is that I found out about it a day earlier as a result of the local tech crowd. Folks on the Triangle InternetWorkers mailing list mentioned the reissued cards, providing links to additional information on the breach. I knew all about this well before the paper mentioned it to me.

The article did have news I didn’t get online, like the name of the “national retailer” involved, but other than that it didn’t provide me anything I didn’t get online somewhere else. It just goes to show how quickly Internet-based (and citizen-journalism based) news sources are outpacing the traditional news sources (a.k.a., the “mainstream media”).

Update: here’s some more detail coverage of recent ATM fraud cases.

Every time I read stories like this, it makes me realize just how absurdly vulnerable our banking system truly is. No wonder banks choose to pay ransom to the hackers to sweep incidents under the rug: if people found out how fragile things really are, they would totally freak out. It would cause a rush on banks.

It’s one big house of cards, so to speak.