| Merriam-Webster sez... |
Jul 02, 2008 02:05 pm |
Resource - a natural source of wealth or revenue
Cog - a subordinate but integral person or part
Which would you rather be? |
| I'm on strike because the sun is too hot |
Jul 02, 2008 10:58 am |
I don't understand all these strikes going on around the world because of oil prices. What are they protesting? That it cost too much? That's like bakers going on strike because flour is too expensive. Just pass the cost on to the next guy, geez.
Granted, I haven't actually read any of the articles about those strikes, so I don't know if there is some weird economical/political bull going on, but oil is a freekin comodity. Let's not get crazy.
The right time to go crazy is when the riots start because there isn't enough oil left on the planet to meet demand, and people can no longer commute to work from suburbia, or heat their homes, or to ship in food from the far reaches of the globe. |
| Close the hatches! |
Jun 26, 2008 09:01 am |
After a long period of silence, I've undergone a recent onslaught of bogus user creation attempts. At this rate, I'll be quick to get my IP address on every spam blacklist out there. Or not, most of the e-mail addresses the spammers use have bogus domain names.
For the longest time I've hated the term "networking", but I finally pinpointed why. It cheapens human relationships, as if you could just say "if I just follow these steps, I can build a relationship with anyone." Also, I highly doubt that after chatting with someone for five minutes, you can know what meaningful knowledge or skills that person can offer you.
I'm not saying that there isn't an advantage to having a lot of good working relationships, but proactively "networking" is a bunch of schizz. |
| Better savings through poor money management? |
Jun 25, 2008 10:16 am |
I just had a bizzare thought. If you're really on top of your weekly/monthly/quarterly expenses, then you would know exactly how much extra money you have at any give time. If you kinda cross your fingers and just stay glad that the overdraft fees have stopped accumilating, then you probably wouldn't even know if you had extra money.
Therefore, if you are the type of person who finds it hard to resist the temptation of consumerism...you might be better off by not keeping up with your balance sheets.
I can't wait to take a vacation. I'm eager to have some time to push out a new version of eightbit.org. I signed up for google analytics, and also the google webmaster tools. I must say, google analytics is kinda nosy, right now, as we speak, it's uncovering what geographic region you live in, what browser you're using, and what language preference you have.
But anyhow, I was considering trying to play the google game, optimizing the site for searchability and such. The end goal, of course, would be to get more readers and eventually make it worthwhile to get ads. Why would I want ads? Because my webserver is an effin 10 year old laptop who's screen fell off, and power plug I had to reconstruct with solder, paperclips, hot glue, and electrical tape. That's why.
That and I want the internet to love me. |
| How not to be a sales rep |
Jun 24, 2008 08:11 pm |
Let me start of by saying home warranties are a complete waste of money. Why? They don't cover ANYTHING useful. Ohh sure, they'll cover the things that have a 1/1,000,000 chance of breaking.
Secondly, American Home Shield can go ahead and die. You know why?- Every time I talk to someone from that company, it sounds like they're sitting in their PJs making a PB&J sandwich. Trust me, you can hear the difference in their voice when they're in an office or not.
- A sales rep just called to see if I wanted to renew my contract. When I explained why I didn't want to renew, she just HUNG UP ON ME.
Now, I may not be beautiful enough to be a pharma sales rep, make 80k/yr and get a free car. But I do know one thing about sales. If you're trying to sell something, don't fucking hang up the phone on someone just because you can't think of a counter-offer. How about you ask me what kinds of things I want covered, in case I just didn't know there was a package available that covered what I wanted?
Yes, I realize being a sales rep is a crappy job, and that one rep doesn't really represent everyone else in the company. But you know what? It still poorly represents the company, and that was the final straw against AHS. |
| Excel as spoken... |
Jun 21, 2008 05:17 pm |
The verdict is, after my credit card is paid off, I should use that payment to pay off my student loan as soon as possible. The funny thing is, not only do I save money on the student loan that way, but I also get the best savings on the mortgage by doing it that way. I guess starting the highest payments a little bit sooner saves you more money than phasing in the higher payments over time. Who would've thought!
In other news, it's hot. I wish we had air conditioning. |
| Hydroponics |
Jun 20, 2008 08:58 am |
Last night, on How It's Made, they showed how they make hydroponic lettiuce. I gotta tell you, that's some crazy stuff. So as a lark, I googled hydroponic trees. I got a few hits, but let's just think about this for a second. Lettiuce, you eat. Trees, you plant in the ground.
Think about it. How well could you possibly pack dirt inbetween the hydroponic sappling's roots to be able to plant it into the ground?!?
That reminds me. A few weeks ago, there were a lot of infant maple sapplings in the yard. I guess conditions are just right in my yard to grow trees. So I mowed them all down, except one lucky bugger, who I potted. From what I've read (after the fact,) you shouldn't do anything with sapplings until late fall, when they've gone dormant. Ooops. It still seems to be alive, so I think it'll be okay.
I'm debating on weather or not I should try and bonsai it. I'd most likely kill it, but it'd be neat to try, and I'm sure next year I'll get more maple sapplings to kill, I mean raise. The whole idea of bonsai sounds sick and twisted. Yeah, let's stunt this tree's growth by cutting back it's roots so it can't absorb enough nutrients. But the results look really neat. It'd be kinda cool to have a mini-maple. I wouldn't try and train it to be gnarly, I'd just let it do it's thing...just micro-sized.
Or not. I need more shade in my front yard. I already got one tree going, but I've got a big front yard, I could use another. |
| Slave in training |
Jun 18, 2008 09:53 pm |
I had a meeting today with one of the managers (not my manager) about setting objectives, career, etc. etc. And I thought I had an idea of what I should be aiming to do. But I lost it.
Add in the complexities of taking a business class, combined with the lure of owning a business, and I really don't know what I want.
Well, maybe I should take a queue from my all-time favorite philosophy: taoism. It also kinda ties into Buddhism. Think about it. Why do I HAVE to set goals? I'm just giving myself grief in doing so. I'm not saying that I should be unhappy at work or anything, but I shouldn't make myself more unhappy by trying to plan for something that I just don't know about. I mean, when the time comes, I'll know what I want to do, and when that time comes, I can worry about setting the right objectives to get there.
So okay, I should still set objectives. Why? I still feel like I'm the biggest limiting factor in my own performance. I just can't seem to focus like a robot. |
| Blah |
Jun 16, 2008 02:18 pm |
I don't really have anything specific to post about. Just enjoying some downtime at work right now.
In my spare time I've been trying to create a spreadsheet to amortize all of my debts so I can run through some different scenarios. I'm committed to finishing my current debt repayment plan, but once my credit card goes away, I have a couple options for that monthly payment.- I can stick it straight into savings and start gearing up for future large purchases (car, vacation, home improvements.)
- I can put towards student loan, and get that monkey off my back too.
- I can put it towards the mortgage, which doesn't have many immediate (5 year range) effects, but it does seem to cut 10 years off the repayment schedule, and save me 70k+ in interest paid to the bank.
Then of course there's any number of intermediate variations, like put some into savings, some into debt, or split it across debts. I think that between options 2 and 3, it'll be easy to see which option is better. It's whichever option pays the least money to banks. But between option 1 and the others will be kinda hard. I really should start building short-term savings, because you never know when it'll be necissary. But then again...I could get promoted this year...I could just take whatever that raise amounts to and file it all into short-term savings and leave my current debt reduction numbers the same.
Well, I have eight more months to figure it out. No hurry. |
|
Jun 08, 2008 10:43 am |
I forgot to mention, we took care of all the yard work before it got really hot. Kinda doesn't make sense for me to say "thankfully we got it done" without qualifying what I was thankful for.
Also, I forgot to mention that it was so disgustingly hot and humid that the linoleum floors were SWEATING. I guess it's just an indication on how quickly the heat and humidity came in. In retaliation, we put Matt's air conditioner in the kitchen. It really isn't strong enough to cool the kitchen and the living room, but it does cut down on the humidity, which is half the battle.
Mmmm, central air... |
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