Being The Best You Want To Be

Posted by on December 2, 2016 No comments

On a forum I frequent, a question came up wondering why there are people who do not aspire to find and appreciate the best sound quality possible.  The answer is probably obvious on the surface – it’s just not something that interests them.  Like some people don’t have a care for paintings or photographs, or interior design, or anything else a person could be passionate about.

But on another level, on my level, what about people who do like music, but don’t like crappy sounding audio systems?  There’s a few sub-questions in there, like: Why don’t you have the best-sounding stereo possible?  Why don’t you own the highest-rated-in-terms-of-sound-quality CD for each of the albums you own? Why aren’t you into vinyl?  Why aren’t you also up in arms about people settling for MP3 and earbuds or playing music through their phone’s speaker?

Because I used to own a dedicated stereo system and because I plan to own one in the coming future, I felt that I needed to consider this question.  There is a certain “floor” of quality I insist on, but as far as a “ceiling”, I can’t be sure.

Regarding playback systems, I am not compelled to buy $3k speakers or $6k amplifiers to get the sound quality I require.  At the same time, I can’t really tolerate a $100 sound system either.  I swap out the stereo in each car I get, always to an improvement.  Despite having sound systems at the house, none of them are really satisfying.  My home theater system is a booming, bass beast – not good for music.  I have a couple small speaker docks that are ok for background music, but not for listening.  My best sound system is my computer running through my Event studio monitors.  Next year, I’ll get my listening system for the living room.

When I do buy my stereo, I’ll be buying what my budget allows from a quality brand.  For a true audiophile, this wouldn’t be satisfactory.  Consumer brands have lots of quality problems, and they would be able to identify what they are.  I wouldn’t, and I wouldn’t be able to tell by listening either.  After all, I don’t have any opportunity to compare systems, since I don’t have any friends (with stereo systems). Neither do I have the money to swap out components to try and make small to moderate improvements that I may not even notice.  So, what I have is what I hear and what I will enjoy.

As far as listening goes, I’m not sure I have the ear to be an audiophile.  I can identify obviously bad sound (like my theater system), but after a certain point, I can’t identify differences.  I can say that I don’t like it, but I wouldn’t be able to explain why.  More discerning people could say it was because of compression or eq or “presence” and some of the best could say it was because of speaker placement or wiring or the amp’s power supply.  I can’t do that.

The last piece of the loaded question is why not take the time to evaluate different masterings of albums to have the “best”?  My current stance is to own a version as close to the original as possible.  Before, I didn’t really have a position.  I’d just buy whatever was available.  I’ve decided that the original mix/mastering is the authority.  That’s what people liked.  A remaster is not a re-release.  It’s not like an album from 1986 is going to re-enter the charts because it was remastered.  All remastering is for existing fans.  It’s like version upgrades of software.

When Bad Meets Good

Posted by on November 28, 2016 No comments

Over the Thanksgiving holiday, the GF and I did something bad.  It wasn’t something I was planning on doing, intending to take a stand against change.  We went out shopping on Thanksgiving night.

And, as you can probably expect, we weren’t alone out there.  It was actually a pretty surreal experience.  I hadn’t been out shopping on Thanksgiving in many years, just assuming everything except gas stations and convenience stores would be closed.  But here we were, in the local mall, with a relatively large crowd, late at night.  The mall was open until 11:00pm.

I have long expected this holiday shopping season to be insane, mostly because of what I see in restaurants.  Restaurants are crowded again.  People have money again, somehow, and they’re spending it.  That’s going to translate into big retail gains.  Mark my words.

But anyway, I didn’t want to go out on Thanksgiving.  I did want to go out on Black Friday, probably in the afternoon, after the pre-dawn madness died down.  I wanted to get televisions.  I was at the point that I had zero televisions in my house.  The only one I did have was a 27” mono tube TV from the 90’s.  I hadn’t used it in years and finally disposed of it in the great purging earlier this year.

So this year, I wanted to get somewhat up with the times.  I couldn’t really expect to do any entertaining without a TV in the house.  That would make me seem just a little weird.  I figured I would get a TV for the living room and one for the master bedroom.  I spent a little bit of Thanksgiving morning comparing models and prices.  I had some options from HH Gregg, Sears, and Best Buy, with Best Buy being the pretty obvious leader.

At the mall, we hit a clothing store and got the GF all hooked up in the wardrobe department.  That’s really all we came for, but we just meandered down to Sears to see what was going on there.  Sears is widely believed to be on the ropes and is expected to close up next year.  The death of Sears has been predicted every year for the past decade, but they just keep chugging on.  The prospect of Sears closing does make me sad, because I like Sears.  They’ve pretty much always been there when I needed something.

We end up in Sears and go to the electronics section.  It’s pretty empty.  There’s some people looking at appliances, but the other sections are unexciting.  The shelves seem lightly stocked and it doesn’t look like there’s a lot of choices.  Something seems depressing about the whole setup.  I repeat, no excitement.

Regardless, we start looking at what TVs are available.  I’m initially disappointed because all I see are 4k TV’s, which is not what I need.  As I move down the isle, getting tucked into the corner, I see the 1080p TVs, and the prices have gotten more in line with my expectations.  In fact, they’re pretty good.  The GF is checking out smaller TVs, in the 24” range, and they’re reasonable, too.

Since television is not a high priority to me, I can easily get by with a lower-end TV without a lot of features.  Accordingly, I budgeted about $450 for each TV, hoping to get somewhere in the 45”-55” size range.  These TVs at Sears fit the bill.

Then, about the service.  There were a few salespeople milling about and one came up to us asking if we had questions.  We asked about the capabilities of some of the smaller TVs and then discussed some of the bigger TVs.  We made our choices – a 24” Samsung smart TV for $120, a 50” Samsung for $349, and a 60” Samsung for $579.  We walked out with the 24” and arranged to pick up the bigger ones at their pickup area around back.  Really, no more than 10 minutes and we were done.

That needs some extra emphasis.  We got personal service and were done with our transactions in about 10 minutes.  You try that at Best Buy.  You try that at Best Buy on any other day, even non-holidays.  And the Sears staff loaded the TVs into the car for us.  I didn’t even wait more than a couple minutes in the pickup area.  I was more than willing to pay extra to avoid the experience of fighting through Best Buy.  One of the salespeople commented that he just got off the phone with a friend who was over at Best Buy.  They had 2-hr checkout waits.  There you have it.

After we got our purchases home, I jumped online to see how much of a premium we paid for the Sears experience.  Turns out it was pretty much all the same.  Because I wasn’t researching 60” sizes, I was surprised to see the prices were the same between the stores.  The 50” might have been $40 more, but it may have been a slightly different model, too.  The 24” was the same price, too.

I had planned to go to places that weren’t considered to be ground zero for technology deals, anyway.  But I am amazed at how well it all turned out.  No stress, personal service, and great prices.  You should always go off the beaten path and explore.  If you don’t get better service, you will probably get something more unique, both of which have tangible value.

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The idiot boxes have arrived.

A Little Bit Of Tim Taylor In The Kitchen

Posted by on November 23, 2016 No comments

Thanksgiving is almost here and that means it’s time for cooking.  I believe I probably think like most guys in that in order to do something properly, you have to have the right tools.  If you don’t exactly know what the right tools are, it’s best to just have all the tools.

And so, in this year, I’ve been building up my kitchen tool chest.  I pitched my ad-hoc cookware and bought a brand new starter set of pots and pans.  Then I augmented that set with a couple more small pots, for flexibility of course.  And last night, I saw two more pieces from the same model line (in the same color, too!).  I hadn’t ever seen them before, and I wasn’t entirely sure I would ever see them again, so I picked them up.  Now I own a stock pot and a deep sauté pan.  Will I ever use them?  Better to have and not need than need and not have.  Clearly, a man composed that line.

That’s not the only thing I’ve done in my tool refresh.  I pitched my dinnerware and bought all new, matching pieces, including things I shouldn’t need, like a serving bowl, a platter, and a gravy boat.  And although my meals are typically for one, I have 4 large plates, 4 small plates, 4 bowls, 2 additional large bowls, and 2 more additional small bowls.  I like soup and salad, but still, that might be pushing it.  I have the additional plates and such in case I have guests.  ha ha ha ha

I also swapped out my flatware.  Just because.  The old set was over 10 years old, and a change was needed.  Also, more knives.  I have two carving sets.  I have multiple whisks, multiple peelers, multiple strainers, multiple cutting boards, multiple crock pots, and more wooden utensils than I can use in a week.  More mixing bowls than I expect to realistically use, but they’re in all different sizes, so I will have the perfect size bowl for whatever it is I plan to do.  You need to have the right size tool for the job, right?

Last night, when I picked up the most recent pot and pan, I made the joke that I was a “completist”.  But then I looked up the definition, which is: “an obsessive, typically indiscriminate, collector or fan of something.”  That doesn’t sound fair.  It’s not an obsession, nor is it indiscriminate for me.  For one, it’s opportunistic. (This also applies to my CD collecting.)  Also, my purchases serve a purpose.  I’m not exactly acquiring these things for the sole purpose of having them.  I do intend to use them when there is a legitimate need.  I just need to create that need.

More Space; Going Vertical

Posted by on November 22, 2016 No comments

Well, as I last mentioned, it’s time to grow the CD storage.  It cost just as much to buy a new storage tower as to build one, so I went the pre-built route.

After the new tower arrived, the first step was to clear out the old tower.  Surprisingly for me, I gave some thought as to the stacking of the CDs so I would be able to put them all back into the new tower in order.  Unload from Z to A, then reload from A to Z.

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The new tower has shelves that are pretty much the same width as the old tower, but there are two additional shelves to work with.  Those, times four sides, gives me 8 more shelves worth of space.  Compared to the old tower, the new one is quite impressive.

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Replacing the CDs, I was able to leave space on every single shelf, and even with that, I had almost two free shelves at the end.

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In all, quite a nice upgrade.  And if I manage to fill that, I have the old tower I can start using again.

DIY…NAH

Posted by on November 10, 2016 No comments

Tonight I had a thought.  I need a new CD tower.  The one I have is totally maxed out.  I pulled up an old picture I took during the assembly of my tower and realized, this is nothing.  I can build this.  All it is is a bunch L shapes joined together into a swastika shape.

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I got thinking further, if I’m going to build my own, I can make it HUGE.  The measurement of my current tower is about 18” per shelf and about 5’ high.  I figure maybe 24” shelves and 6’ high would be amazing.

So I spec’d out what I would need.  First, I’d need some tools:

  • Pocket hole jig: $40
  • 2 Clamps: $40
  • Shelf pin jig: $35

I have all the power tools I’d need to cut down the wood, so now for the actual parts:

  • 2 sheets of 4’x8’x.75” MDF: $60
  • 1 sheet of 4’x8’x.5” MDF: $24
  • Swivel base: $15
  • 200 shelf pins: $20
  • Paint: $20

This comes to a grand total of $254.  That’s not bad.  But it’s the same price as some reasonably priced shelves.  Jeez, I can’t even build this thing myself for less.  And, I know me.  It won’t be perfect.  It’ll probably be passable as far as quality goes.

How Cute.

Posted by on November 7, 2016 No comments

In my random browsing about CD collecting and storing, I came across a website for “CD collectors”.  Some people were posting pictures of their collections and some would post pictures of their finds at stores.  It was kind of cute, and I mean that in a patronizing way.

Post titles like “Started 2 weeks ago, full collection so far” and “After 6 months, this is my collection”.  And then there’s a picture of a dozen CDs, or maybe two dozen.  And when I think about my 800+ collection, I snicker a little inside.  And when I see that the CDs are mostly new releases, I snicker a little more.

And boy, isn’t that pompous of me?  It is, I admit it, and I accept that.  I mean, I could make a post saying, “After 30 years – my collection” and there would be people snickering at me.  “30 years and only 800?  I bought that much in the last 2 years!  My collection of 3,000 laughs at you.”

Despite the holier-than-thou ranking and hierarchy of collectors in which I probably place in the 70th percentile (The curve is exponential.  Once you break a certain level, you are in rare company), at the same time, I am encouraged.  These are people just discovering the joy of collecting physical media.  Judging by their selections, they are young, which means there is still life in physical media.  It’s not dead.

There is another reason for encouragement as well.  I’m not going to pretend that piracy doesn’t exist, whether software or music or video.  I can admit that I used to be a pirate.  In the old, old days, we used to have dual cassette decks that would copy tapes.  There’s really no legitimate need for a dual-deck unit otherwise.  So, I had plenty of copied tapes.  Why?  Because I was young and poor.  I also had lots of pirated software.  Why?  Exact same reason.  I couldn’t afford $500 for Photoshop.  As I grew older and started making money in my career, I didn’t need to resort to piracy anymore.  I didn’t need to “settle” for a copy.  I could get an original.  And I started valuing having that original in my collection.

If these budding collectors are anything like I was back then, that means they are beginning to advance in their life, making a living wage, where they can afford the luxury of not stealing.  That means the world is getting better.  Also, they take pride in their collection.  Consider the pride between showing someone 200 gigs of downloaded albums (which may elicit some praise from some people) vs. showing someone a collection of 100 CDs.  “They’re all real.  They’re permanent.” 

You can copy off that 200GB of music to your friend and not feel a ounce of pain.  But, giving up a CD from your collection, you’re actually losing something.  It’s the same psychological trick pundits use when they encourage you to live a cash lifestyle.  By handing over physical cash when you buy things, you feel a loss, more so than when you just swipe a credit card.

So even as these beginners are showing off their tiny collections, it’s still something to encourage and cheer on.  They have many years ahead of them and decades and decades of music to discover and collect.

Yay, Someone Did It!

Posted by on November 3, 2016 No comments

Check out my post from March, 2008.  Yes, 2008.  Someone finally implemented this.

BackerKit, after filling in your information, allows you generate a post bragging about what you just did.  and they offer selectable values for key elements.

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This allows someone to be themselves and also capture some data about the experience.

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You’re welcome, BackerKit.  Believe it or not, I have an entire document somewhere discussing the entire business case for doing this and how the results can be calculated and analyzed.  There’s even a prototype website with an entire functional database structure.  Ah, if I only had a lot more free time and even more motivation.

En Garde

Posted by on November 1, 2016 No comments

My CD collection continues to grow by leaps and bounds.  My spinning CD rack that holds 800 CDs is just about full.  I’m planning for the purchase of the bigger model that holds 1600 CDs.  Yeah, it’s a problem.

Anyway, while on one of my shopping runs, I came across a CD from a band I don’t see very often at all – The Residents.  I have a couple of their albums and I don’t really get them.  Regardless, I had to buy this CD anyway, just because their catalog is so infrequently seen.  I popped it in the stereo on the drive home.

I don’t think a lot of people have even heard of The Residents.  More people have probably heard of Frank Zappa.  And of those people, fewer still have actually listened to Zappa.  And of those people, fewer can even “get” Zappa’s music.  Now, I listen to Zappa and can get along with even some of the weirder stuff, but The Residents are on a whole level beyond that.  I can’t even really handle it.

So as I’m listening to this album of terribly performed songs, I’m trying to think of what I’m supposed to be experiencing, other than, “This is ridiculous.  I did stuff like this when I was 15.”  Although, I really didn’t.  I didn’t have a full studio and multitrack recorders and other period technology to make sounds like that.  That’s kind of the idea to keep in mind.  A lot of The Residents stuff might be described as “creation of sound”, rather than “making music”.

And the fact that I was exploring how the music made me feel, rather than enjoying the music, made me characterize the album listening as more of an artistic endeavor.  And The Residents would be clearly classified as “avant garde”.  Coming to this realization was almost like taking a burden off my back.

When I’m faced with “music” that is just so difficult to understand, that seems to make no sense, that is completely unstructured, I try to figure it out anyway.  In the end, I’m just frustrated and come to the conclusion that “this music sucks.”  But I’m unsatisfied with that conclusion because obviously the artist spent time on this “music” and it makes sense to them, somehow.  But, approaching the album in the same way as visiting an art museum, it becomes palatable.  Similar to visual arts, you just absorb it and consider how it makes you feel.  Are the sounds menacing?  Humorous?  Does it stop and start unpredictably?  Are there multiple “subjects” conflicting or cooperating?

With that new perspective, I could classify some other CDs in my collection as “avant garde”, too.   Buckethead’s Cuckoo Clocks of Hell makes absolutely no sense to me.  The best I could come up with when I listened to it was that it was primarily rhythm-based.  There wasn’t really a traditional song structure with a melody line and a defined chorus.

And my final takeaway from my epiphany is that I granted myself license to only listen to an album once.  Like visiting an art gallery or a performance, you take in the whole experience in the same way you take in a speech.  You leave with a singular overall impression – motivation, happiness, uneasiness, or whatever.  And that experience is done.

Whole-Life Hatred

Posted by on October 11, 2016 No comments

If you follow any financial pundits, eventually you will hear them say that whole-life insurance is a bad choice, how it is a poor “investment”, and sometimes, how you’d be stupid to buy it.  Well, I was just reviewing my numbers and I’m not sure I understand what all the hatred is about.

First off, you need to think about why you have life insurance.  The purpose of life insurance is to make things easier on the ones you leave behind.  Primarily, in my case, it is to pay off my mortgage.  Whoever I leave behind should not have to be saddled with a mortgage payment when that was my responsibility.  Other assets like cars could be repossessed, so what?  My credit score doesn’t matter anymore when I’m dead.  The secondary purpose of insurance is to replace whatever income I was contributing to the family until whoever is left behind can get back on their feet.

So these two reasons are enough to have life insurance unless you are a total loner and have nothing you want to pass on to someone else.  But that’s only good when you’re dead.  What if you keep living?

If you don’t know anything about life insurance, here’s some quick info.  You typically buy a “term life” policy, which is effective for a period of time (a “term”).  If you buy a Term 30 policy, it is active for 30 years.  Buying it today, the policy will expire in 2046.  If you die in 2047, your beneficiary gets nothing.  But, by that time, I would expect your mortgage would be paid off so there’s no burden on your heirs.

Whole-life policies have no expiration.  As long as you keep paying the premium, you get the benefits.  However, they are vastly more expensive (I’ll share my numbers in a bit).  Additionally, whole-life policies have a cash value, which can be accessed as needed, either through an expensive loan or as a retirement account when/if you get to retirement age.

That’s the part that finance people hate.  Whole-life is so expensive, but your cash value is locked up and there’s little way to access that money without spending a lot in interest or waiting until you’re old.  They call it a savings account for people who can’t discipline themselves to save.  It’s almost like a 401k, but without the tax advantages.

Whole-life insurance is a hard sell and brokers will push on you pretty hard to sell it.  As such, there’s some salesman-ish stuff that gets promised.  For example, I was sold on the idea that the dividends from my whole-life policy would eventually pay the premiums for my policy, then I’d basically have free life insurance.  Awesome, huh?  Well, it will happen, eventually.  I just have to be really patient.

Ok, let’s look at some real numbers.  I have $250k in life insurance.  $100k is in a Term 20 policy and $150k is in a Whole-life.  I pay $118/mo for the whole-life and $16/mo for the term.  Now do you see why people freak out about whole life?  It’s almost 10x more a month. 

There’s not much to say about the term policy.  It has no cash value and expires in 2027.  In 2028, I will only have $150k in life insurance.  Hmmm, that sounds like a good thing.  I’m not dropping to zero, and I don’t have to worry about qualifying for a new Term policy at such an old age.  It almost sounds like a “plan”.

So how about this Whole-life policy?  Well, since 2007, the cash value has grown to $9500.  The value is growing at about $1300/yr.  But wait, I’m paying a little over $1400/yr in premiums.  So my net cost is about $100/yr, which is actually almost half the cost of my term policy.

So, what am I glossing over?  For one, the $1300 in cash value increase hasn’t always been that high.  Four years ago it was $1200, and since 2007, the average rise has been $1055/yr.  But, the value should continue to climb through the magic of compounding.  But, I just want to say that I’ve got 9 years into this, and you wouldn’t see numbers like these right off the bat.

You could argue that I’ve spent $12,771 in premiums to gain $9500 in cash value.  That sounds horrible.  But that also works out to getting a 150k life insurance policy for $363/yr or $30/mo.  And that average cost is over 9 years.  That number is going drop over time as the cash value increases relative to my constant premium payments.

One more number to give consideration to.  After 9 years, my annual dividend is $781.  My annual premium is $1400.  I’m a little over halfway to the point where my dividends will pay for my premiums.  That’s going to coincide well with the expiration of my Term policy (which would also reduce my premium by almost $200/yr).

Let’s recap the whole scenario.  I have $250k in life insurance now, when I am most vulnerable with the most mortgage debt and the most to lose if I die.  If I had a family, that money would be needed to pay bills and help replace my income.  11 years from now, my Term life expires.  I have less life insurance coverage, but I also have less financial burden.  If I had a family, they would be grown and on their own by then.  The insurance would just pay my reduced debts.  I would also have $200/yr less in expenses because the policy expired.  Looking even further ahead, when I don’t have any reason to have life insurance because all my bills are paid, then I can start withdrawing money from my whole-life policy.  And guess what?  I still have the life insurance policy.  By then, my dividends will probably be paying my premiums, too, and I won’t have that $1400/yr expense anymore.

When you hear financial people trying to sell you on a “plan”, it can be hard to swallow all that information and difficult to see what the future will look like.  It was hard for me as well, but I took a leap of faith and now that I’m a significant way into the “plan”, I can see further ahead and understand that yes, it was a good choice.  Early on, it would have been easy to say, “I’m throwing away my money!” But like any investment, it takes time to grow.

Never Let Your Guard Down

Posted by on October 6, 2016 No comments

Today, I learned I had been “hacked”.  I say “hacked” in a figurative sense because there wasn’t really a whole lot of hacking involved.  I somewhat left the door open and someone just fiddled around and got in.

I have my own email server that manages a few domains.  I have one domain I don’t do anything with, and on that one, I had created a couple of test accounts for, well, testing.  The problem is, I never disabled them when I was done.  It’s been a while since I did that, so either I didn’t think about the consequences or assumed that since I was working on an inactive domain, no one would try accessing it.  You can’t assume that.

Since “hackers” just use a bunch of scripts to automate “hacking”, they can just let the scripts run and go eat some more pizza.  And that’s what happened to me, probably.  A script found my domain, then immediately went to work trying out different common username/password combos.  And although I have security features that will temporarily blacklist an IP address after so many failures, that had no effect.  The script will just wait until the ban is lifted then continue on.  Time is not a concern.

So, once they got some working credentials, then it was time to deliver the spam.  And boy did they ever.  I had gigabytes of log files and 22k email messages queued for delivery.  How I learned I was hacked was by chance.  I happened to try sending an email during one of the spamfests and got the email returned with the message:

DED : You’ve reached your daily relay quota

At the time I got that message, I thought it was being returned by the domain I was sending to.  Later, on a whim, I decided to check my own server and was shocked at what I saw.  I immediately shut down the email service and started clearing out all the trash.  Then I changed all the account passwords and disabled all the unused accounts and restarted the server.  The log files showed someone trying to log in using test2@mydomain.com and failing.  Bastards.

It’s my own fault, for sure.  But it’s terrible that you can’t stop being paranoid for a second on the Internet.  They’re always out to get you.