The previous pair had lasted me more than a decade and I knew I was looking for a change. However, every pair of frames I liked came with a stiff price tag. Yes, I know you invest in some things because you use them often and for a long time. Glasses are definitely in that category. However, it’s hard to plunk down hundreds of dollars on a frame that carries a certain “fashion” with it. I certainly can’t justify buying three pairs of glasses because I need different pairs for different activities, etc. So, pressed with this budget constraint, I typically settled for minimal, or plain glasses that could be used for a variety of situations without drawing a lot of attention to themselves. Trouble was, those didn’t really feel like glasses I wanted to spend money for.

The months rolled by and I visited with some friends who were talking about the latest pair of glasses they ordered online and how they only cost $50. Sure, I scoffed at the idea of buying something so cheap. I mean, if you’re going to use something as much as you used glasses, shouldn’t you spend some serious money on a pair? Well, the more I thought about it, the more I thought it might be justifiable to buy cheap glasses because if they didn’t last, all you would have to do is order another pair right? Still, some things in life are worth spending money on to get quality. I wasn’t convinced.

I did some investigation and I found a couple of websites that offer discount frames. One of them was the website that my friends had used.

• www.GlassesShop.com
• www.EyeBuyDirect.com

After researching the companies, reading countless reviews, and educating myself on the make and manufacture of frames, I came to the reluctant conclusion that it just might be possible to offer quality frames at $50 a frame. I located a pair of titanium frames from EyeBuyDirect.com that I liked and I plan on ordering them tomorrow.

It will probably be two weeks before they arrive, but I will post my initial impressions of them when they arrive. In the meantime, I wanted to pass along these two (seemingly) great online resources for frames.

There are some additional comments from Rackspace on this page, as well.

• Bonanzle
• eBid
• PriceFalls
• OnlineAuction

There are others as well, but we’re curious if you have any suggestions. Comment or email us (web at banditdeals.com); we’d love to get your input.

There was also another revision to the number of days to archive listings for search results. Originally it was a month, then 2 weeks. However, after several fixes were made to the geolocation process, more listings could be dealt with than before so the size started to creep up again. Now, don’t get me wrong, BanditDeals it being written in a scalable fashion, but until the traffic arrives, it would be foolish to pay for hardware to support 3 weeks of extra listings when you know most visitors are going to be focused on results within that first week. So, recently the decision was made to limit the age of listings to 10 days. That puts the database well within acceptable limits and as traffic grows (and hopefully revenue with it) the server can be expanded to handle more traffic and more older listings. Our immediate goal is to keep search results to within a second and costs to a minimum for serving at least a week’s worth of listings across all of Craigslist, EBay, and Amazon. We are achieving that easily at the moment and with most of the phase 1 feature work behind us, I think this will hold true.

On this blog you’ll find discussion of the issues and technology affecting BanditDeals.com and hopefully find it useful for your own projects. Enjoy.