The Writers Coin

Hope everyone out there is having a great day, filled with family, food, and fun times. What are you doing on The Writer’s Coin on Christmas day??

Get back to your presents and your family already!

As Christmas gets closer and closer, I decided to link to some old posts that might make your last-minute holiday shopping a little easier by brainstorming some ideas.

Good luck out there!

• Kindle: My post on the gadget of the year explains why I think this is going to be the next “it” gift for gadget freaks. It may already be, but it’s only going to get bigger.
• Was Buying the Wii a Huge Mistake? Not really, and it’s even cheaper now than when I bought it. It’s a great gaming console for parties and for bringing families together.
• Valentine’s Surprise: This one was specifically about Valentine’s presents, but I think it applies to any occasion. The best present you can give is to surprise someone.
• Magazine Subscriptions: Can’t think of what to give as a present? A magazine subscription to a hobby or interest is the gift that keeps giving…for a full 12 months. That’s a great deal. And right now Amazon has a $5 sale on magazines like Golf and Entertainment.
• My Cyber Monday Wish List: In case you know someone who loves to write, read, take pictures, and play the occasional video game…then they might also want what I want for Christmas…just sayin’.

Cute image by Tuija2005

I was reading a great article over the weekend in The Wall Street Journal that was all about the deals that were brought to Warren Buffett over the past couple of years during all this economic turmoil.

From the article:

Warren Buffett believes his best deals during the economy’s biggest belly flop since the Crash of 1929 may well turn out to be the ones he didn’t do.

Mr. Buffett slammed the door on one opportunity after another during the most harrowing stretch of his storied career. That impulse, he says, left him with the financial firepower he needed last month to strike the biggest deal he has ever done — Berkshire Hathaway Inc.’s $26.3 billion purchase of railroad Burlington Northern Santa Fe Corp.

It’s a great lesson that to be great sometimes means passing on certain deals. Being passive isn’t always equated with greatness or even with smarts, but Buffett passed on all the right deals in order to get the one he really wanted: Burlington Northern.
From the WSJ:

After reading The Snowball, it was pretty clear that he was obsessed with railroads, and thanks to his patience he managed to get what he wanted during a time of great turmoil and uncertainty.

The best part about Buffett besides his genius? His modesty:

“I made plenty of mistakes,” he says. “I didn’t maximize the opportunities offered by the chaos. But in the end, it worked out OK.”

There are some great deals out there today, and if I had the money and could overcome my fobia of spending money, here is what I would buy:

Amazon Kindle: I don’t know if the Kindle will kill books or if it’s even worth the money, but I’m curious to experiment with this and see how I like it. This might be how we all read books in the future, so I’d like to at least get my hands on one and play with it.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2: I haven’t even finished Fallout 3 yet, but this game looks really juicy. I played it at my friend’s place and it was a blast. This Slate review was also really intriguing.

Nikon D90: My old Powershot camera is around eight years old and now the flash isn’t working for some reason—so I need a replacement. Do I need a camera this advanced and this expensive? No, but it sure would be nice to step into the SLR arena…

What the Dog Saw and SuperFreakonomics: I’m a huge fan of Malcolm Gladwell (see my Outliers review) and Freakonomics made economics fun (and comprehensible) to millions of people. These two are can’t misses.

The Wire: The Complete Series: The greatest show on TV—ever—now in one tidy little box. Other than Seinfeld, this is the only other show I’d ever want to own.

Subscription to Wired Magazine: Gadgets and great reads: the perfect combination.

Subscription to the Wall Street Journal: I’ve been meaning to keep up on the news more than I do, and this might be overkill, but it’s probably one of the best places to get your fix of world news and how the markets are moved on a day-to-day basis.