Posts filed under 'Schtuff'
Hearing lots about the mega million jackpot today. $640 million would certainly make an impact in most folks’ bank accounts. Apparently, $640 mil is more than what most US households would earn in 10,000 years.
Your odds of winning are long. Ridiculously long. 2 hole in ones in a single golf game long. You’re more likely to be crushed to death by a vending machine or dying by being a lefty who uses right-hand products, according to the Daily Beast. But boy, wouldn’t it be nice to live like a mega millionaire?
Um, no. Not thinking so. Maybe a mini millionaire. Someone who has enough money in the bank to not worry about whether they’re covering the bills, not feeling like they’re stuck in their job, able to dream a bit and feel like they could make those dreams (travel, motorcycle, adventures, …) come true.
Mini-millionaire is easy, and a lot less dependent on 1 in 176 million odds. Live below your means. If you make 100K, live on 85-90K or less. If you make 60K, live on 45-50K, or less. Act like you’re still making the money you started your career with – no cost of living increases, no raises or promotions. What’s that do for you? It does a few things. One, you’re not stuck in what I’ve heard termed as ‘golden handcuffs’. Golden handcuffs are jobs that you have to keep because they’re the only ones that will give you the kind of salary you need to live on. You’ll keep going to a place that you don’t like, doesn’t inspire you, or otherwise give you any reason to keep going to work other than that particular paycheck number. It’s a gilded cage. It’s a demotivating cage. You’re not going to do your best work if the reason you’re still there is only pocketbook motivated. For one thing, there’s always the distraction of looking for the cage upgrade. Ones’ monetary ‘needs’ have a funny habit of growing, unless specifically kept in check, so soon enough that cage starts feeling just a bit snug.
Second, it gives you a ‘go-to-he**’ fund. It gives you money in the bank which you can use as a cushion to find a different job at any point. A guy I knew at a job a few years ago didn’t particularly like his job, but was paid at the top of the market. He ended up laid off, as top of the line salaries make you top of the line targets. The top of the line salary part wasn’t a bad thing, but his need to get a job very quickly gave him a large salary-sized problem. Contrast that with having the freedom to say: I don’t like this job. I don’t like working for you. I’m not going to do it anymore. It’s a wonderful and yes, powerful feeling, to know that you’re working for someone because you want to, not because you specifically need to. Now, there’s a difference between need to work generally, meaning at some point you need to get another job, versus never wanting to work again. Somewhat theoretical for me – having a hard time imagining myself not working at all at some point in the future, even if that work is part-time or volunteering or … My point is, since entering the workforce out of college, it’s been a goal of mine to never work somewhere just because they’re willing to pay me, even if they pay me well. And a ‘go to he**’ fund is a great tool to help that happen.
Lastly, and on the much more personally rewarding side, one of the things that millionaires often do is give lots of money away to causes they find inspiring. Warren Buffett has Girls, Inc, Bill Gates has the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Carnegie had Carnegie Hall, Carnegie Mellon, etc, etc… They write checks to help make things happen. When you live below your means, giving away money no longer is making a choice between helping yourself and helping someone else. There’s a lot more latitude there to give more freely. It hasn’t really cost you anything. Now, one can make the argument that it costs you the things that you’re otherwise not doing in your lifestyle with that excess (my term) money. Still, though, it costs you something you’re not doing, not something you are – very different dynamic.
Reading the paper this morning, someone in Maryland won one of the Mega Million lottery tickets. It’s not me, I’m certain, as I didn’t buy a ticket. Whoever won has a lot more means this morning than they did last night. It should be a bit easier to live within it. That said, there’re many lottery winners who don’t live within their means and go bankrupt, even at the tune of income of the level of millionaires. Contrast that with folks who build their habit of living within their means and become ‘The Millionaire Next Door’. Or, better, the guy who lives like a millionaire because he’s not beholden to his job and gets to give away his money to the causes that he finds near and dear. Bank account balance may or may not make him a millionaire, but he sure feels like one.
March 31st, 2012
It’s a sad day when I get more interest / $$s from my credit card rewards program than I do for saving diligently.
March 5th, 2012
Adding a few habits of late: Scrabble, Words with Friends, Pinterest… lots of things that sort of have me engaging with folks, but only in a tangential way. Lots of late work hours, so these let me kind of keep in touch / ping folks, without requiring it to be at a reasonable hour.
Statistic I’m keeping track of of late: PopTart meals. How many “meals” did I eat by grabbing PopTarts out of the kitchen at work, because I haven’t managed to break away to go get something else, and I didn’t think enough ahead to bring in a healthier lunch. Last week’s PopTart count was three, I think: some were lunch, some were dinner. Aiming to get that metric down a bit. I don’t actually even enjoy PopTarts.
You may have gathered that life has been busy, particularly the work part of life. This weekend had me home with the kids as Jason was out of town. An odd shift in thinking / scheduling. Though I’m still now up at 11:45 on a Tuesday night for no real reason – just mostly habit. Grrrr. Need better habits.
February 21st, 2012
Day 3 of iPad adventuring. After getting set up on day1, my kids started asking what games I had on it. First request was for Bejeweled (Callie). Second request was for Angry Birds (Cameron). And then they both clamored for Fruit Ninja. I blame their grandfather for the first two, and their babysitter for the third. I did download a free Angry Birds and spent too much time throwing feathered missiles at pigs. I had had a version of AB on my Android and never been impressed. On the iPad, the user experience worked a bit better – still a pain in the neck game, in my opinion. Though that hasn’t stopped me from spending too much time on it.
Typing this blog post from my laptop for no really good reason – I pulled out the laptop to do some Javascript development. So I now have my Android in front of me, updating its apps and downloading Google Voice to let me do some voice command trickery I saw on LifeHacker; I have the iPad in front of me that I’m using as my eBook kind of thing to read ‘Learning Ext JS 3.2′. And, of course, I’m typing on the laptop for my blog. I type all right on the iPad – it’s just that I type faster on a physical keyboard as of yet. Appreciating some of the niceties of the on-screen keyboard: if it knows I’m entering in an e-mail field, then the ‘@’ sign is part of the primary keyboard; as I shift to type a punctuation mark, after I type the mark, it returns me to the main letter keyboard. However, it doesn’t do that if I’m typing numbers – very smooth.
Did finally set up a cellular plan on the iPad. $20 / month for 1GB data. I figure if I primarily use the thing at work and at home, both have wireless connections. But the $20 gets me accessibility in other places, without relying on wireless networks that I worry may be less secure. That reminds me: I need to find some sort of virus and other network protection software for the iPad.
Having a very funny geeky weekend!
July 4th, 2011
So, I’m connected up through iTunes, registering my new iPad. I worked a few years ago for a cellphone company, and as part of our website, we had folks register their phones. There was always a question of how to get the information we wanted from our customers without annoying them with all of the information we wanted, and how to confirm that the information for key fields like serial number was typed correctly.
iTunes iPad2 registration experience: I typed in my iTunes id (gmail address) and password, and got taken to a screen that had my address, my phone number, and my serial number, all already populated. For everything but the serial number, those fields were editable. They had my phone number wrong, but I first corrected it, and then actually deleted it. Not sure I like that they had a phone number for me. It WASN’T the phone number I gave the Best Buy guy yesterday, or any mistyped variant of it. Not sure where they got it. Slightly weirded out. Really appreciative on the serial number thing, though: that info was amongst the set of common errors when registering cellphones where folks would fat-finger.
I skipped the set of questions they ask (what I do for a living, how old I am, primary usage purpose, etc)… It always bugged me when our end-users would skip those questions, but here they’re not listed as required: interested in seeing what Apple does with my “non-compliance”. Oooh, it does require my phone number – not liking that. Giving ‘em the fake number run-around. Whoever has number 366-2273, sorry: your number also maps to “FooBard”.
Did set up the ‘Find my iPad’ feature. I’ll trade potential loss of privacy here (explicitly granted, instead of just likely going on anyway) for the reward of being able to find my lost device.
By the way, impressed that the keyboard on the iPad counts the ‘@’ as part of the alphabet keyboard, rather than the symbol keyboard. Nice touch.
July 2nd, 2011
After too many conferences where my options for staying in the loop with my team were (1) lug a laptop around all day, including powerpack, etc or (2) receive/type emails on a phone keyboard while not being able to get to all of my filed emails (probably solvable with better software), decided to go for the iPad. Then the choice became: Wi-Fi only or Wi-Fi + 3G? There’s a reasonably significant price difference between them, and of course the 3G requires a service plan with a carrier, which usually goes against my cheapskate side. But this time had a bit of extra cash at my disposal, so decided to go for the gusto. Because the iPad isn’t subsidized by any of the carriers in the same way a phone might be, there’s not the same requirement to lock-in to a contract. In other words, pay a bit more for the ability to do 3G, but not locked in to paying month over month necessarily. OK, workable.
Next choice: which carrier (AT&T or Verizon) – you have to determine which when you buy your iPad. Just like phones (grumble, grumble), the equipment varies based on which carrier you’re going with. Having an existing contract with T-Mobile (being bought by AT&T) and not being entirely happy with that (lots of dropped calls lately), decided to test out Verizon.
Next choice: how much space – options include 16GB, 32GB, and 64GB. I don’t intend to use this as a heavy entertainment platform, so opted to go for the 32. Probably still more than I need.
Next choice: I was at Best Buy, so they wanted to set me up with a Geek Squad policy. Listened to what they covered, listened to the price ($120), opted to pass.
Out of box experience: you get the thing, it has a 2×2 inch instruction sheet that tells almost nothing. You turn on the iPad, and it shows two icons with a line between them. The first is a drawing of the connector for the iPad with a line connecting to an icon for iTunes. Really? They’re really counting on knowledge of iTunes being ubiquitous for their customer base. I didn’t have iTunes on my work laptop (I’m a Pandora fan, and usually listen on my phone rather than eat network bandwidth at work), so installed it.
Once it’s installed and started, with iPad plugged into my laptop, iTunes recognizes the iPad device and starts me up for registration. Looking forward to fun here – just really amused by the out-of-the-box experience.
July 2nd, 2011
I have a not-so-secret dream to be a clown. As a kid, I dressed up as a clown for my kid sister’s birthday party. As an adult, when I temporarily left my software development career, one of the alternates I considered was being a clown. I’ve done the clown thing at Pioneer Girl events: dressing up, doing balloon twisting, juggling, … I wouldn’t consider myself good at it, but it does seem to be a theme in my life.
One of the avenues of “clownship” that appeals to me is that of a Christian clown. Clowns seem to cause polar reactions. Folks are either clown-phobic (a few, and often little kids), or are drawn to them and interested to see what the clown does or says. What a great platform for a whole bunch of things: for just giving someone the gift of a little bit of enjoyment in their day; for giving a parent the gift of seeing their child light up; for distracting someone from pain, whether that be physical pain in a hospital or emotional impact; for giving someone just plain attention which in some cases is a gift some folks too rarely receive; and for expressing truths in a way that causes folks to look at them in a new light. I’m really attracted to the concept of gospel clowning, a way of sharing God’s truths in a manner that helps folks look at things in a different manner. If I just go up to you and tell you God loves you, you’ll treat that as an odd behavior and throw away the message. If I find a way to show you that in a gospel skit, well, you expect odd things from a clown and might just hear it out.
So…. I’m on the lookout for gospel clown skit inspiration. Got to do one at our church talent show a few weeks ago, and hoping to use that to seed thoughts in a few folks’ minds to start a little clown troupe. If you’ve got ideas, thoughts, donations, interest, … and oh yeah, that prayer stuff, too – all ears. Or, in my case, all clown feet.
March 3rd, 2011
Marylanders don’t consider themselves as really part of the south, but we’re sure not northerners, either! It’s 21 degrees, give or take a few, outside today, with wind chill making it feel more like 10. That’s way cold. And to make life all that more interesting, our heater has decided to start leaking gas. The BGE guy wisely decided for us to turn off the heater, to avoid us making our house a bit more accidentally HOT than is advised. But it’s 21 degrees outside! Inside of our house isn’t yet that cold, but we’re getting close to 60, and still falling. [Heater repairman is here now... no word yet on what the necessary remedy will be.]
At the end of December, we had a plumber out, to fix what ended up being a root ball in the pipes. Water in the basement, luckily confined to the laundry room, and luckily shower water was the outflow, rather than toilet water.
Last night, my hubby realized our sump pump isn’t working, luckily by observation, rather than overflow. Looks like some time spent on Monday doing a sump pump replacement, which will have the side effect of causing us to clean out the workroom so he and his dad can actually get to our sump pump without a huge hassle.
So….. this new year isn’t starting off so hot, from a home upkeep and maintenance perspective. Now, thinking of cash inflows into the economy, well, we’re doing our part to keep the service and home repair and supplies industry going strong!
January 17th, 2009
The past day or so have been laden with good, geeky happenings. First, my family got a Wii for Christmas. The sheer delight of my kids as they tore off its wrapping paper and shouted ‘Wii!’ in unison was wonderful. They (and us) have now spent hours playing tennis and bowling against each other. My younger daughter’s found some way to really scream the tennis ball on her serve: I haven’t been able to figure it out yet. It’s nearly unreturnable, at least for me, anyway.
Next, I got to reference a teen boy from my church who was griping about wanting to do Unix-like things on his Microsoft laptop to Cygwin. Now, what makes that even sweeter is that when the youth group was over at Christmas, when the guys had a tech question, they immediately turned to my husband. No knocks against my husband; he was able to answer their questions, and frankly, does have certain tech areas covered much better than I do. However, given that they don’t know him really at all, I was a bit peeved that the assumption was that he would be the person to answer the question. It was nice to toss a technical morsel to at least one of the guys.
Lastly, my Facebook Scramble score went up by 32 points this weekend. I had held the lead position in my circle of friends for months by some 15 points, but hadn’t been able to beat my personal best. I beat it, and then beat my new top score, to really annoyingly widen the lead.
So, I’m happily geeking out. No coding as yet this weekend, though I’ve seen a few headlines in the tech world I want to poke at. Merb + Ruby? Two technologies I haven’t played much with have now merged: hmmm… time to do some poking.
December 26th, 2008
Our company is organizing one of those grab-a-gift-from-the-table gift exchanges. My client’s office is arranging one, too. I’m not allowed, for ethics reasons, to give anyone a gift at my client’s office. But somehow swapping $20-limit goodies works, since I don’t know who specifically will get it? (Yep, I looked it up in my client’s online ethics manual: if I don’t know who I’m giving it to, it’s completely ethical.)
Seems like then I’m not giving to make someone’s day brighter, since I have no real idea who I’m gifting to or what they’d like. Forgive my Scrooge-i-ness, but it seems like then I’m giving so I can get something from the table. Something which someone else has no idea whether I’d like.
I can’t help but thinking we’d be a little more in the Christmas spirit if we all just put cards on the table that said “I put a coat on someone for you today”, or “I gave someone dinner in your (non-specific, ethically pardonable) name today”.
December 3rd, 2008
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