Krunk4Ever!

So I finally picked up a Motorola Surfboard SB5101 Cable Modem. Amazon.com finally had a deal for $43.99 - $20 rebate, making it only $23.99 shipped. Well, I had to pay sales tax too, but that’s because I’m in Washington.

There has been discussion on threads if the rebate is valid for Amazon.com given that the rebate form is hosted on Frys.com and that Amazon.com doesn’t actually list the rebate. However on the rebate form, it does state that Amazon.com is a valid retailer to purchase from. Then there was doubt about the UPC matching given that apparently there are 3 UPCs for this particular modem and something about the color of the box.

I got the modem today and the UPC do indeed match (6-12572-14827-3) and mine came in a blue/black box if that matters.

Previously, I had posted my results from Speedtest.net using my D-Link DCM-202 flashed with a special Comcast firmware yielding these results:

A couple days later, TekMan showed me his results:

I was shocked how much of a jump there is just based on the cable modem alone! At this point I was determined to find a deal and get my own Motorola cable modem.

A week or 2 ago, there was a Circuit City deal for $20 after rebate, but required price matching to Office Depot and the fact that I had to actually visit a store discouraged me from attempting. When I saw this Amazon.com deal on SlickDeals, I knew I had to get it.

I ordered it last week for $44.99 + tax shipped and then it dropped a dollar further to $43.99. I did get my dollar back through Amazon.com’s 30 day price guarantee. Anyway, the modem arrived today and I called Comcast to update the MAC address so I can associate the new cable modem to my account. After giving him the information, he tells me the registration server was down and told me to try back at 3am. I had called around 11pm and the thought of me going internet-less for 4 hours was a scary thought.

So I sat around filing my rebate and did a couple other things while the clock ticked away. When the clock hit 1am, I knew I had to check to see if I can register my modem yet. I called and indeed the server was back up. Registration only took a few minutes and my internet was up and running in no time. Whoopee!

Of course, the first thing I do is another speed test:

This purchase was definitely worth it. I did 3 tests with my D-Link DCM-202 and they average to around 18000Kbps down and 1500Kbps up. I did 2 tests with my Motorola SB5101 and they average to 23000Kbps down and 3100Kbps up. Quite a performance increase for just $25! Of course, this could just be the initial burst speed, but I’m still excited about the speed increase.

Now I have a spare cable modem or if I sell it, it’ll probably pay for my Motorola cable modem completely!

Not sure if you’ve noticed, but I’ve added an Amazon.com Store link on my side bar, which currently lists the items I’m selling on Amazon.com. I began to buy and sell stuff on Amazon.com a long time back, but only recently (a few months ago) began to push a lot more volume (instead of 4 or 5 items a month, I am now pushing 30+ items a month). And it’s bringing in quite a shiny penny. Actually, I’m not too sure how shiny the penny is as in I haven’t really done any bookkeeping besides knowing that I’m selling items for more than what I purchased it for, which can range from a few dollars to over a hundred dollars per item.

I’m not going to go too deep into how this all works and what my “secrets” are, but if you’re interested in anything I’m selling and I personally know you, I can probably sell it to you at cost. Also ignore anything that’s listed as $2,000 as that just means I’m currently not selling it, probably due to insufficient stock or the pricing isn’t at what I want to sell it for.

I’ve also been maximizing my earnings by using my Amazon.com credit card and directing people to purchase under my affiliates account. The credit card gives me 3% back on all Amazon.com purchases, which has netted me $75 worth of Amazon.com gift certificate rewards for each of the last 2 months. The affiliates account started with only $90 earnings a few months ago, but just last month, I’ve broken $200.

Concurrently, I also list the items in my Half.com Shop, which gets me purchases once in awhile, but they don’t really have that high of an audience as Amazon.com. I’m currently also thinking of becoming a merchant on Buy.com Marketplace, but they have a bit more requirements to join.

All in all, I’m happy with the results.

So now that I have multiple places where I link to Amazon.com items using my affiliates ID, I’ve decided to create multiple Amazon affiliates ID to track where things were coming from.

I knew there was a way to mass edit strings in my blog posts and a quick search resulted in: How to Find & Replace Data in MySQL

To find a string in a certain field and replace it with another string:

update [table_name] set [field_name] = replace( [field_name], ‘[string_to_find]‘, ‘[string_to_replace]‘ );

So a quick update wp_posts set `post_content` = replace( `post_content`, 'krudoethekrue-20', 'krunk4everblog-20' ); did the trick.

Now I’ll be able to track if people are coming through my HD-Trailers site, my HD-Trailers blog, or my Krunk4ever! blog.