Getting change and entering bills

You have entered 101,324 Bills worth $282,686
Bills with hits: 7,674 Total hits: 8,718
Hit rate: 7.57% Slugging Percentage: 8.60% (total hits/total bills)
George Score: 1,246.83
Your rank (based on George Score) is #246
(out of 52,498 current users with a George Score. [99.5 Percentile])
Your State Rank in Florida is: 18 out of 7,791 [99.8]
Your initial entries with hits have traveled a total of 4,149,527 miles.
They have averaged 484.0 miles per hit and 192.60 days between each hit.

It looks like the North Miami Publix is also not a good place to get change. I went over there and when I asked someone else for change, someone else called her and said that there were no singles. It could be that they were simply low at the time, but the impression I got was that there weren’t any for me.

I had been there a few days before and they had said at the time that several businesses had asked for change. When asked which business I had worked for, I had mentioned that I used to work for Wolf. I don’t know if that has anything to do with it. I wish I had someone else with me so I could have sent them in.

I did eventually get change. Because my computer wasn’t working for a while yesterday, I went over to FIU to see if they had any computers for public use. It turns out that they do, but there are so few that they were all taken. (And this is on a Sunday.) I ended up coming back home. I did find out that the machine where you pay for parking takes $2 bills.

I’m going to have to keep looking for more places to get change. I also want to find new places to enter bills, mostly as a precaution.

You have entered 100,560 Bills worth $281,060
Bills with hits: 7,622 Total hits: 8,662
Hit rate: 7.58% Slugging Percentage: 8.61% (total hits/total bills)
George Score: 1,246.07
Your rank (based on George Score) is #250
(out of 52,631 current users with a George Score. [99.5 Percentile])
Your State Rank in Florida is: 16 out of 7,789 [99.8]
Your initial entries with hits have traveled a total of 4,122,135 miles.
They have averaged 483.8 miles per hit and 192.47 days between each hit.

I finally passed 100,000 bills a couple of days ago. (It looks like I’m just below 100 in rank by number of bills entered.) It took me a little longer than I expected, but I knew it would come eventually. It will probably be a while before I hit 200,000. On a side note, I seem to be holding at #16 in Florida.

I also found a few interesting bills. This one has what appears to be a bird on it. I’m not sure what it’s supposed to signify. This one is someone’s name. I don’t know who Teresa Marquez is supposed to be. Cajera can mean either an ATM or a female cashier or it can refer to a city in Mexico, either one of which is plausible.

It seems that it’s getting tougher to get change at Publix. The one on Aventura switched to that new system. They apparently only order what they need each day, so they don’t have any to spare for customers. Other stores seem to still be giving out change if they have it, but they don’t always. I need to start getting out of the house earlier so I can go to the bank.

The race to 100,000

You have entered 99,068 Bills worth $277,847
Bills with hits: 7,569 Total hits: 8,603
Hit rate: 7.64% Slugging Percentage: 8.68% (total hits/total bills)
George Score: 1,245.17
Your rank (based on George Score) is #253
(out of 52,441 current users with a George Score. [99.5 Percentile])
Your State Rank in Florida is: 18 out of 7,780 [99.8]
Your initial entries with hits have traveled a total of 4,097,151 miles.
They have averaged 484.2 miles per hit and 191.99 days between each hit.

I now have hits in 1,004 counties. I’ve gotten so many new counties lately, I’m not even sure which one put me over 1,000. I still need one for Massachusetts, two for New Hampshire and eight for Florida. I seem to be averaging 14 or 15 hits per day, which helps, but most of them are in Miami. One of these days, I’m going to have to take a trip up the East Coast.

I am also within reach of 100,000 bills entered. I have some bills to enter, but I’ll be putting them off until tomorrow morning. I went to the casino today, but didn’t to bring all of my bills that I had entered. I put most of my money into the machines, but felt that I should have had more. It didn’t occur to me until later that I may have left some at home. When I got back, I checked and there were bills that I had missed. I’ll have to remember to make sure that I bring all of my bills with me. That’s another 50 singles that I could have entered tomorrow morning.

I do have a two interesting hits. This one took a year to stay in the same place within the United Kingdom. However, it’s apparently going to be repatriated soon.

I wish I at least knew where Maldives was. I looked it up and it’s a series of Atolls near Sri Lanka. I’ve never heard of the place until now. One of the interesting things about Where’s George is finding places you’ve never heard of. At least I’ve heard of something new.

more bill pictures

You have entered 96,141 Bills worth $270,909
Bills with hits: 7,377 Total hits: 8,382
Hit rate: 7.67% Slugging Percentage: 8.72% (total hits/total bills)
George Score: 1,242.12
Your rank (based on George Score) is #262
(out of 52,364 current users with a George Score. [99.5 Percentile])
Your State Rank in Florida is: 17 out of 7,753 [99.8]
Your initial entries with hits have traveled a total of 3,953,584 miles.
They have averaged 479.7 miles per hit and 189.96 days between each hit.

I found two bills worth posting pictures of. The first is a $1 bill that has been marked up a bit too much. I entered it, but I don’t think I added any of my own markings. Personally, I don’t think I could mark bills this much on a regular basis. Aside from all of the work, you run the risk of people and machines not taking the bills.

The other is a $2 bill with a red mark that looks familiar. It looks like someone took one of those plastic things from a bag of bread and used it to make the mark on the bill. I’m not sure what they used. It looks like magic marker, but I could be wrong.

I’ll let you know if I find any more bills

You have entered 95,402 Bills worth $269,226
Bills with hits: 7,317 Total hits: 8,319
Hit rate: 7.67% Slugging Percentage: 8.72% (total hits/total bills)
George Score: 1,241.25
Your rank (based on George Score) is #267
(out of 52,349 current users with a George Score. [99.5 Percentile])
Your State Rank in Florida is: 19 out of 7,751 [99.8]
Your initial entries with hits have traveled a total of 3,925,258 miles.
They have averaged 480.3 miles per hit and 190.00 days between each hit.

I’ve been reading and hearing a lot about the Federal minimum wage, which was jut increased to $7.25 as of July 24. I have to admit that this doesn’t do me a whole lot of good since I don’t have a job. Yes, they say that looking for work as a full-time job, but looking for work doesn’t get the bills paid. I don’t think many landlords will take job applications in lieu of a rent check.

When I first started working at Wolf Camera, I was earning $6.50 per hour. This was in excess of the $5.15 per hour required at the time. When Florida enacted a minimum wage, it was below what I was earning until January of 2008. I was being paid $6.75, but Florida said that the minimum was to be $6.79. (Wolf continued paying me a base salary of $6.75, even when the minimum wage went up to $7.21, because I received sales incentives.)

It was pretty nice having a base salary above minimum wage. It meant that my employer thought enough of me to pay me more than they had to. Even with the sales incentives, it wasn’t anywhere near what I needed to live on, but it was still nice.

When minimum wage caught up with my base salary, it was a little more depressing. It meant that the first few cents I earned every hour meant nothing. Yes, I was still getting above minimum wage, but I was also still earning less than what I needed to in order to afford luxuries such as food and rent. (While the store was being closed, there were paychecks that they had to bump me up to minimum wage because I wasn’t being paid sales incentives until the end of the month.)

Now that I’m looking for work, I have to wonder how minimum wage is affecting my chances of getting hired. I haven’t seen salary information on many of the jobs, but I think a lot of them pay well enough that I don’t have to worry about it.

Or do I?

End of the Month

You have entered 94,665 Bills worth $267,428
Bills with hits: 7,293 Total hits: 8,293
Hit rate: 7.70% Slugging Percentage: 8.76% (total hits/total bills)
George Score: 1,240.83
Your rank (based on George Score) is #264
(out of 52,090 current users with a George Score. [99.5 Percentile])
Your State Rank in Florida is: 19 out of 7,751 [99.8]
Your initial entries with hits have traveled a total of 3,913,065 miles.
They have averaged 480.3 miles per hit and 189.57 days between each hit.

I can’t seem to get out of the house in time to be able to go to Bank of America. The problem is that it closes at 4:00 Monday through Thursday. If I go to the casino, I’d have to leave around noon or 1:00 to be able to enter any hundreds I have before taking them to the bank. I actually got out pretty early Thursday. I went to the bank before going up to the casino to get some $2 bills, which they had plenty of.

After going to the casino, I went to the Bank of America across the street. I had $50 that I didn’t use at the casino so that I might break it at the bank. It turns out that there was some unusual activity on my card causing it to be declined. I guess using the card at two different banks on the same day raised a red flag. It took so long to get it straightened out that the tellers had already closed out their windows. I ended up breaking the $50 at a nearby Publix.

Yesterday, I had to wait for someone to fix our phones. He was scheduled to be here between 11:00 and 2:00. He didn’t show up until 3:00. The problem with later appointments is that it’s impossible to tell when they’ll be there. I don’t fault the guy for showing up so late, as he can’t really tell how long each job will take. It just sucks that I had to wait around so long. I couldn’t really do much at that point.

It looks like I finished July having entered 7,244 bills worth $17,392. I’m not really sure how I ended up entering that many bills in one month. I was actually trying to slow down. (I entered 6,676 bills worth $14,903 in June, which was a record until now.) I’ve been trying to go to parks and movies more. I’ve even been getting a lot of fives lately. I guess I haven’t been cutting back as much as I thought. The up side is that I’ve been getting a lot of hits every day. I have 16 so far today.

I have hit two more bills this month. (#9 and #10) This brings the total to 133 bills hit so far, including ten last month.

Maybe if I try, I can get out today before one, not that the banks are open past then…