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So, my bank this week launched a new checking account product, where as long as you (1) get e-statements, (2) get a direct deposit or withdrawal at least once a month, and (3) use your debit card at least 10 times in a month, you get a phenomenal 6% APY on the checking account. (If you don’t meet the requirements, you get a reasonable-nowadays 0.5% APY for that month.) The first two requirements I already meet, of course. Meeting that last one will require some effort, because currently I use my credit card for all my day-to-day purchases (and several automatic recurring bills) due to its nice cash back program. However, being able to have my main savings in my main checking account simplies my finance tracking, and I think if I use the debit card on small purchases and the credit card on large purchases I’ll end up earning more than I am now, if only slightly.

The land transfer finally got recorded today. We now officially own 46½ more acres, bringing our total ownership to approximately 48 acres.

Plan is in book 858, page 25
Deed is in book 41390, page 194

(You can look them up at the Registry of Deeds under Southern Worcester County, but their application is too dumb to let me link to the documents directly.)

Is it possible for a human being to pass a Turing test?

When I logged onto my bank’s web site this past weekend, I learned that they’re now finally offering electronic statements.

I’m now one significant step closer to not needing a physical mailbox at all.

So, about a month or two ago now, we decided to buy a bunch of my parents’ land from them. This should be about as simple a process as a land transfer could be, since we have an agreed-upon price, and we’re not planning on building on the land. However, we’ve had issues with one thing after another, as the plans have gone to the Planning Board, who required some corrections from the surveyor, who did so and sent it back to the Planning Board, who approved the plans but didn’t have enough people there to sign it somehow, and then it eventually got signed and sent to the lawyer, who tried to take it to the Registry of Deeds but couldn’t record it since somehow they don’t have an updated signature list of the people on the Planning Board since the elections that were at the start of May.

I have a Prime Money Market account at Vanguard, which is where I keep my emergency fund as well as money that I’m accumulating throughout the month for large monthly expenses such as my mortgage. It pays a pretty good interest rate, and is handy for automatically funding my Roth IRA there as well.

So when I need to transfer money from the money market account to my bank for something like my mortgage, I really have two options:

My hobby web site on sending junk mail back to the Post Office is rather quickly climbing the rankings on Google for relevant queries. It’s kind of fun watching the analytics data and watching people find my site for some very relevant search queries. This project is partly ending up being an experiment in creating a site about an obscure topic and seeing how people find it, which is kind of interesting in and of itself.

On Saturday I was the head judge of Magic Regionals in Hartford. We had 189 players, and despite some mishaps that made things take longer than I’d like that probably weren’t avoidable, it worked out alright, and was a good experience for me.

On Sunday I went bowling with my family, and it was a lot of fun. After playing bowling on the Wii more and more and doing pretty good at it, I wanted to go out and play some “real” (that is, candlepin non-virtual) bowling. It was enough fun that it may be something my wife and I do more often.

I put together a web site with the information I’ve learned about refusing unwanted mail.

Refuse Your Mail: You don’t have to take it anymore.

Maybe this will be the start of a huge nationwide trend that’ll make a difference in Postal Service policies and get major media coverage.

Or maybe it’ll just be a cute site only read by me and a couple Random Strangers on the Internet.

(Edited afterward: This was originally posted with its own domain name, but that has since expired, and it’s now on a subdomain of cooperjr.name.)

“Approvals-Not-Required: … • Cooper-Berry Corner Road” — Charlton Planning Board Agenda for June 6, 2007.

Hopefully, by the end of the week we’ll be the proud owners of 46½ more acres of property.