Of Bag Tags and Credit Cards.

My brother gave me a backpack for my upcoming -- impending? -- birthday. I wanted my name on it, and my brother thought of punching a hole through my old credit card and using it as a bag tag. It would have been a perfectly creative idea, but I told him it would be a security risk -- after all, the credit card number is still active, even if the credit card itself isn't. The number could still be used for online transactions, and it seems fairly easy to guess the three-digit code at the back of the card.

But I still wanted the credit card idea (or maybe I'm just too much of a cheapskate to order one of those credit-card-like bag tags), so what we did instead was to cut off the portion where the credit card number, my signature and the magnetic stripe were. The tag doesn't look as polished as those store-bought (in fact, it's nowhere near polished), but it will suffice.

So that's one use of your old credit cards... And that's what I call extending your credit line. ;)

by Awi Mayuga (eighth entry)