When it comes to most things (technology excluded), I am a somewhat thrifty guy. Sometimes, I am exceptionally thrifty.

I like my convenience store fake-coffee. They have a double-extreme caffeine variant and, for a little over a dollar, I can be set for the rest of the day, altertness-wise.

The girl at the local supply store who used to sometimes give me coffee for free has moved on, alas, and now they expect me to pay for it and everything. They do have buy-five-get-one-free deals, though. Right now they have a special running where they punch it twice for every coffee I get. Rather than actually redeeming any of these things, I’ve been stocking up. So once I can’t get two punches for the cost of a single coffee, my next several will be free.

This is the latest in a long-line of ways I try to game the system. They punch the code regardless of what size coffee I get. So even when it’s not two-punch month, I end up saving those things up for when I want a really large size. Because, hey, that’s an extra ten or twenty cents.

It feels kind of odd to be gaming a system for ten or twenty cents.