In case you have somehow failed to notice the decorations in every downtown, shopping center, and grocery store, or the music playing on just about every radio station, or the dropping temperatures (at least in most places in the Northern Hemisphere... those guys on the Southern one do strange things), or the odd little tree fields cropping up in every open parking lot, Christmas is more-or-less right around the corner. For people like me, this tends to be a slightly bad thing, since I invariably put off my Christmas shopping until the last possible minute (with this year being no different, unfortunately).

Thankfully, places like Overstock.com really do not care when you do your shipping, and, in fact, seem to be encouraging doing as much shopping as possible this month. For example, they are currently running an All I want for Christmas Giveaway. The short of it is that if you register, and if you win, you can choose from a variety of gifts (basically whatever Overstock.com offers) valued up to $1000, and the long of it is that if you register, and then invite five other friends to register, if you win, they win the same prize you do. And, of course, there is a grand prize - if you manage to beat the odds for that one, you get five gifts of your choosing (up to the resulting $5000 limit). Me, I could live with a nice new LCD HDTV... or one of those spiffy new DSLRs. But, hey, I am just saying.

Just be sure to do whatever shopping you are going to do sometime soon... Online shopping stores such as Overstock.com will be open until SkyNet eventually takes over the internet itself, but, eventually, USPS, UPS, and FedEx will get so overloaded with packages, gifts, and the like, that your present will stand a snowball's chance against a PPC of making it in time. Something tells me I should start taking that advice...