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Previous Update - March 9, 2006

March 9, 2006 - Chaos in Freebieville Talk about a chaotic day. I woke up today to find that The $39 Experiment had hit both digg.com and about.com on the same day. The end result? The site was at a crawl. I quickly got onto the phone and beefed up the hosting plan that the site is on to at least bring things up to a "somewhat working" level. The definition of an idiot in my book is "one who doesn't learn from previous mistakes". In my book, I'm an idiot. This happened to me once before with a different site I'd done, and I vowed never to use a cheap-o hosting plan again. I should have listened to my own advice... Anyway, the site's on a somewhat beefier plan for now, and I'm in the process of moving the site over to a much, much better box, so all should be well in short order. Until then, just smack Refresh a few times if you get that ugly "Service Unavailable" message. To the thousand people who e-mailed me telling me that I should have written a letter asking for free bandwidth — you're right. Mercedes Keychain Update Several people e-mailed me links to sites which sell the same model of keychain that Mercedes sent me. The street price of this "London" model appears to be $30, so I've updated the Freebies Summary accordingly. Better than the $5-$8 I'd originally guessed, that's for sure. Today's Freebies First off, the letter to Avis that had bounced back (and that I resent) bounced back again, because I forgot to cross out the address barcode at the bottom of the envelope that the post office puts there. Like I said, I'm an idiot. I'll take care of re-sending this one (again!) tomorrow. Wendy's (#80) sent over a "no" which looked like they didn't even care that I wrote to them. I tell them that I once nearly gorged myself to death with Wendy's food, and all they basically say is "thanks for writing". Hmph. Chicken of the Sea (#38) sent over a nice letter as well as coupons for both free and discounted tuna, equating to a $4.25 value. Sanford (#21) sent over a letter and four free pens. I don't think they're cheap pens, either, so I'm putting their total value at $5. Thanks to both Chicken of the Sea and to Sanford for the freebies. Freebies Summary Who? What? approx. $ Fellowes Four cans of compressed air $32.00 Carma Labs One 0.25 oz. jar of Carmex $1.29 Stash Tea Nine teabags $1.80 White Castle 19 burgers, 2 breakfast sandwiches, 2 orders of Chicken Rings $12.37 Airborne One free tube of Airborne $5.99 Reynolds Two 50-cent coupons $1.00 S.C. Johnson One free ($3 max.) Skintimate coupon $3.00 Church & Dwight Two $1 Arm & Hammer coupons $2.00 Pfizer Three 50-cent Purell coupons $1.50 Pepsi Pepsi pen, pencil, stickers, and gift catalog N/A Biotene Free samples of gum, toothpaste, and mouthwash N/A Burt's Bees Free stick of lip balm $1.87 Dunkin Donuts Book of five $1 gift checks $5.00 Mercedes Benz Keychain $30.00 Eden Foods Pasta, tea, soymilk $9.54 Chicken of the Sea Two $2 coupons, one 25-cent coupon $4.25 Sanford Four pens $5.00 17 companies $114.61 Wendy's Chicken of the Sea Sanford