Tuesday, November 25, 2008

vimrc

Ryan just did a post asking to expose our VI settings to the world (wait, you all use VI, right?). I'm going to follow suit and throw mine out here. Surprisingly, for the amount of time I have spent in that editor, and how much I enjoy using it, my vimrc is rather sparse.

" Stop me from accidentally doing things when I click the stupid scroll-wheel
map
map <2-middlemouse>
map <3-middlemouse>
map <4-middlemouse>

" Prefer unix format
set fileformats=unix,dos
set fileformat=unix

" Use Vim settings, rather then Vi settings (much better!).
" This must be first, because it changes other options as a side effect.
set nocompatible

" allow backspacing over everything in insert mode
set backspace=indent,eol,start

set cindent shiftwidth=4
set history=50 " keep 50 lines of command line history
set ruler " show the cursor position all the time
set showcmd " display incomplete commands
set incsearch " do incremental searching
set expandtab " Spaces, not tabs :-)
set autoindent
set smartindent
set nobackup " Live dangerously
set tags=$init\tags " Tags - the secret to life

Sunday, November 16, 2008

Just Like Cash

So - if you're like me and spending money at Amazon is pretty much a certainty (especially now that nearly all of my digital music is bought there), this is a pretty slick deal.

Coinstar and Amazon teamed up a while back to let you turn in money at Coinstar machines, and avoid the transaction fee if you redeemed the coins for an Amazon gift certificate instead of cash.

Now, they have a special deal where if you turn in $40, you can mail in for an additional $10. So - I can drop by the bank, get $40 in quarters, and then drop them into the closest coinstar machine. After mailing in my receipt, I end up with $50 I can spend on Amazon. A nice little 25% gain on my money (or equal to a 20% off coupon, however you want to look at it).

Worst case if somehow the $10 deal goes wrong, I simply tied up $40 at Amazon that is guaranteed to be spent eventually (and often far too quickly).