Fredo already mentioned one store giving back 10% extra if you cash/spend your economic stimulus check there. The Bargainist just came out with an updated list of ways to get more with your check including retailers giving bonuses, cashing the checks for free and suggestions to spend locally. My favorite has got to be Staples’ Economic Stimulus Center, a portion of their website devoted to encouraging people to spend their economo-stimulo check!

An interesting question just came up among the co-workers, however. What do people do if they’re getting direct deposit of their payment? What would retailers accept as proof that you’re spending your payment with them and not any ol’ amount of money you had lying around? Is this biased towards people who specifically are getting mailed a check?

My slightly frivolous purchase arrived. I’ll take that economo-stimulo check now, please!

With a bit of advice and encouragement from some friends online, I was able to get it up and running and transferred all the info, docs and apps from my Mac Mini over to the laptop. It has 4 times the space of my Mac Mini, how sick is that?! I’m not sure what I’ll do with the mini, it isn’t really powerful enough to do much aside from surf, check mail and play video files. Doing any sort of real work on it would take up all its resources. Perhaps once (if) Netflix ever offers Watch Instantly for Macs, I’ll connect it to the TV and it can be a homebrewed AppleTV, until then I’ll dust it off, find it a good spot on a shelf with its cables and try to keep that clean spot on the desk from acquiring too much stuff. I should pimp mine out as Bill did and make it look funky. Though is stripping the “whiteness” from a Mac removing its uniquely designed identity? Not that I can say anything as the MacBook I got is in basic black.

Considering I’ve been in such an out of sorts mood lately, turning to this page and seeing my name in lights, so to speak, made me blush for some strange reason. We joke around our paperless office that things mean more when they’re on paper, even if you’ve got the exact same information on-screen in front of you. So maybe seeing it printed and then looking around and seeing others reading Express and seeing copies laying about all over the place — good lord people, pick up after yourselves! — feels more real than just seeing it in my own copy. Plus, this is about as much notoriety as I’m ever likely to get from this little collection of online scribblings so I best enjoy it while it lasts.