Introduction

I consider myself to be very conservative when it comes to money. I buy clothes at the thrift store, shop for store brand groceries, and I put off getting my oil changed as long as I can until my better judgement kicks in. However, I do have my weaknesses. Apple products. And the iPad is no exception. But there’s a catch. Indulging my inner geek isn’t easy as it used to be. Long gone are the days of bachelorhood and free room and board at my parent’s house. This 1st Gen. product release has found me married and paying a monthly mortgage with, what seems often times as too many, bills.

In light of my financial situation I am not deterred. I am determined to be an iPad owner and I WILL have people drooling over my shoulder! But I must be rational. I can’t just fork over $500+ like that. I’ve got financial obligations. So, I made it a goal to purchase an iPad with as little out-of-pocket-money as possible. The following are steps that I’ve been taking to reach my goal.

Step 1: Redeem Reward Points for Cash

I don’t know about you but I can’t stand carrying around cash. I’m more of a check/credit card person. Some people say it’s easier to spend money when you’re carrying plastic but for me it’s quite the opposite. Having a few extra bucks in my wallet feels like I’m carrying around bonus money. Money that’s not with the rest of my savings and is therefore free to use for whatever reason. So, it’s easier for me to spend.

Almost every bank or credit card company has a rewards program in place to reward users for using their cards. It turns out I have two cards. A check card from my bank and a credit card which I only use to pay bills. Again, I’m pretty stingy so I’ve never touched my reward points. I think they’ve been accumulating ever since I signed up. Well, it turns out I had $100 worth of reward points from my check card and $150 from my credit card! That’s $250 that was pretty much just waiting around for me.

Step 2: Sell stuff

As an Apple fanboy I tend to be an early adopter of new Apple products. The release of the AppleTV was no exception. I jumped onboard and made the purchase. It was the dream of watching free video podcasts on my TV and ditching my cable television subscription (one less bill). But that day never came. There wasn’t enough quality shows to live on video podcasts alone. It’s been sitting on my shelf ever since. That is, until last week when I sent it in to Gazelle. Gazelle is a company that will buy old gadgets and gizmos from you. They offered me $99 for my AppleTV and a shipping label. Off it went. Another $99 in the bag. $349 down, $150+ to go (I haven’t decided on the Wifi-only or the 3G model).

I also plan to sell my DroboShare that I bought to connect my Drobo to the network. Pointless, however, since my Apple Airport allows you to connect an external hard drive. A small overlook on my part.

Step 3: Cut Back on Expenses

Spending less on recurring expenses will make it a lot easier to save.

TV

Do you really watch all 200 channels of your cable/satellite package? I don’t, so I decided to go basic. Who needs more than 5 good channels of great TV programming like Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune?

$90/month to $50/month = $40/month saved.

Magazine Subscriptions

In an attempt to unplug from the digital world I let my MacWorld and MacLife magazine subscriptions expire. Most of the content is available online anyway.

$40/year to $0 = $3/month (not much – it was the principle I was going for)

Phone Plan

Our AT&T phone bill is killing us every month. 2 iPhones comes out to about $185/month. Most of the time I just talk to my wife. I plan to let my contract expire and part ways with my iPhone. My wife is not onboard with this. I’ve agreed to let her keep her iPhone and I’ll just buy a pay-as-you-go phone.

$185/month to $115/month ($85/month iPhone plan + $30/month go-phone plan) = $70/month saved

Dining Out

I’m working on this :-)

Step 4: Save Up

I believe it’s good to reward yourself with every paycheck you get. For the past few months I’ve been setting aside a few bucks at a time in my “Fun” account. When the iPad pricing was announced I immediately logged in to my account to see how much I had. To my surprise I had saved up $235. Now, I understand this isn’t a big challenge for some but it’s the patience I’ve had over the past few months to not spend it on anything else.

Save as much as you like. Sit back, relax, and be patient.

Step 5: Repeat

Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Continue to cut back and save. Who knows what Apple will think of next?

Conclusion

So far, I’ve managed to raise $485 without digging into my checking or main savings account. I still have a few electronics laying around the house that I think I can sell and a few weeks before the iPad 3G model comes out. I think I can do it. I’ll be purchasing an iPad with money I never even had. I’ll be happy but more importantly I think my wife will be happy with this approach.

I used to work for a company that didn’t have a staging server for it’s web sites. They only had one working copy of each site and those were the live ones. This didn’t make my job easy. I was asked to work on very complex web applications that pulled in quite a bit of revenue for the company. We’re talking lifelines of the business. Any mistake made in the code could crash the whole site and lose the company mucho dinero. Fortunately for me, I work on a Mac which comes with Apache and PHP preinstalled. I had installed MySQL previously and I only needed to install one more thing before I had a perfect copy of the production server. Adobe ColdFusion 9.

ColdFusion is not free. You have to purchase a license if you want to install it on your production server. You can, however, download the Developer Edition of ColdFusion 9 and install it on your personal computer for free. Thank you, Adobe. Installing ColdFusion is pretty straightforward. Adobe provides an install wizard that walks you through the process but there are a few steps along the way that might lose you. The instructions below were the steps I followed to get ColdFusion 9 to work alongside my existing development web server on my computer.

What You’ll Need

• Mac OS X 10.5 or 10.6
• Adobe Account (free)
• Adobe ColdFusion 9 Developer Edition 64-bit (free)
• Web Sharing enabled in System Preferences
• 10 minutes

You’ll need to do a few things before we begin the installation process. In order to download the developer edition, you’ll need to create an Adobe Account. Once you’ve completed the signup process and have logged in, navigate to the ColdFusion downloads page. Find the drop down box labeled “Adobe ColdFusion 9 Developer Edition” and select “English | Mac OS X 64-bit | 406.4 MB”. See screenshot below.

The installation process should take no more than 10 minutes. And while you can get ColdFusion up and running on Tiger these instructions are specifically for mac users who are running Leopard or Snow Leopard. I believe Tiger users can follow these instructions using the 32-bit version of the ColdFusion Developer Edition. Leopard and Snow Leopard users will need to stick with the 64-bit version. Also, if you plan to run ColdFusion alongside the built in Apache web server you’ll need to enable web sharing. You can find this in System Preferences > Internet & Wireless > Sharing.

Installing ColdFusion 9 Developer Edition

Unzip the downloaded file and double-click the ColdFusion 9 Installer.

Click Next on the Introduction window.

Agree to the License Agreement

Choose ‘Server configuration’.

Click ‘No’ when it asks if ColdFusion 9 is currently installed on your computer.

The 64-bit version of ColdFusion uses a lot of RAM. I opted out of the ‘Start ColdFusion’ on system init’. I only want it to run when I need it to.

The default installation directory worked for me.

Select ‘No’ when it asks if there are earlier versions of ColdFusion installed. Unless, of course, there are.

For the next step, I chose ‘Configure web server connector for ColdFusion’. This will allow ColdFusion to work alongside the Apache web server if you’re using it.

This next step left me a little confused the first time I saw it in ColdFusion 7. It simply wants to know where the Apache directory is located. Type in ‘/etc/apache2′ in the Configuration Directory field and click ‘OK’.

Click Next on the Configure Web Servers/Websites window.

This next window just wants to know where your web server root is located. Basic setups will be located at /Users/your-name/Sites. I try to keep my development server setup as close to my production server as possible. My server root is located at /var/www.

If you are planning on working with OpenOffice in your application, check this box, or else keep it blank and click Next

Create an Administrator password. This is not your user account password for your computer. Click Next

I plan on being the only developer working on my machine. I left RDS unchecked. Click Next

Enter your computer password. This gives the installer permission to continue. Click Next

Look over the summary window to make sure all of your settings are correct. Click Install if everything looks good.

Almost there. We need to launch the ColdFusion Administrator site. Keep the checkbox at the bottom checked and click Done.

Log in using your ColdFusion password.

Don’t click Continue. I didn’t read all of the text the first couple of times of installing. I thought ‘Continue’ meant ‘Go to the next step’ and not ‘Stop me from finishing’. Just wait.

Setup Complete. Click OK.

Welcome to the ColdFusion Administrator!

Wrapping Up

Once you get to the ColdFusion Administrator, go ahead and bookmark it. You’ll be using it a lot.