Resize, Reassess, Restructure, Relief

Posted by on May 6, 2010 No comments

Downsizing. No, upsizing.  No.  I’m not really sure.  How about resizing?  Yes, I have resized my vehicle.  After 10 years of driving the same model car – an Acura TL – I have changed to a new vehicle.  It is a new 2010 Mazda MX-5.  I’ve been driving it for a week and I’ve had substantial time to reflect on the change on a micro- and macro-level.  Going from a midsize, near-luxury sedan to a roadster is a pretty radical change.  Most people add a roadster as a weekend car; I made it my only car.  I had some logical reasoning going into the purchase, and post-purchase, I’ve affirmed these beliefs and realized others.

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To begin, I simply wasn’t happy with my Acura.  It had been purchased used and had the same transmission problem as my previous one.  The “buying it used” part had a big effect on me.  I never felt the car was really mine.  I never had any emotional attachment to it – not like the first Acura, which I had bought new.  So buying new was the only option for me.  I felt that I wanted to be back in love with my car.

Looking at the vast choice of cars available, I was very uninspired with all the sedans.  Even the sport coupes didn’t appeal to me.  The thing that annoyed me the most was bulk and waste.  I’ve hated SUV’s and trucks for a very long time.  I’ve recently been on a simplification plan – downsizing and minimizing my footprint.  Becoming a motorcycle rider helped with that.  It’s simple, no-frills, no-baggage transportation.  Looking at sedans, there’s two extra doors and an entire back seat area that will rarely, if ever, get used except to collect and haul crap.  The two seat roadster was the answer.  Of the available roadsters, of which there are very few, I didn’t want to deal with the cost of maintaining a BMW or Audi.  Like I’ve said to others, “I could get a Z or a TT, but I like my money, too.”  So the MX-5 was the answer.

So I satisfied my need for minimalism and initial-ownership.  The roadster choice also fulfilled my need to enjoy driving again.  With my massive commute in a bulky, heavy sedan, I had begun to despise driving.  It was a chore.  And I had to drive sensibly to save gas because my commute was so far.  Riding the motorcycle was a totally different experience.  The small engine meant I could go faster and ride harder without worrying about wasting gas.  The light weight and general “bike-ness” meant I could handle it harder.  The open air experience was unmatched.  In the last few weeks of owning the TL, I drove everywhere with all the windows down and sunroof open.  It was ok, but a convertible is a totally different experience, for the better.

So when I bought the MX-5, I was a little freaked out.  The windshield view is tiny and I wasn’t completely prepared for it.  It took a few days to feel comfortable with the car and then I could relax and understand my feelings in this new car.  One thing that came into my head was an article I had read about people buying large houses.  The article said that people don’t really feel comfortable in large open spaces.  I applied that to my new-found comfort in my purpose-built driving cockpit.  Everything is close at hand.  It made sense.  Then I thought of when I had my first Acura and I bought a cheap beater car: a Toyota Celica.  The Celica was crappy in many ways, but I honestly think I liked it more than the Acura.  Maybe because it was smaller and had a more sports-car atmosphere?  Possible.

I think the TL was supposed to be my “all-grown-up” car.  I had “made it” professionally, I was living on my own, and this was the next step.  Grow up, be an adult, get a responsible car.  I never considered that I didn’t have to follow the recommended path.  So with the MX-5, I feel more like my old self.  And that can’t be a bad thing.

And now that I’m here, the term “mid-life crisis” means something different.  When you’re younger, it’s a joke.  To see some middle-aged person acting like a teenager again seems dumb.  They’re supposed to act their age.  But when you get to “mid-life” yourself, you find yourself evaluating your life so far.  You may discover you haven’t taken the time to have fun, maybe you’ve gotten wrapped up in work and chasing status and collecting “stuff”.  You look around, see all the stuff you have, and while it’s nice to have, it’s also a pain to have. 

“I’d love to have a dozen cars!”  Really, no, you wouldn’t.  You have to store, insure, license, maintain, and wash all those cars.  “I wish I had a house with a few extra rooms.”  No, you have to heat, cool, clean, furnish, and pay taxes on that extra square footage.  People ask me how I’m going to get anything home in my tiny new car.  First, if I’m buying more stuff than can fit in the car, I’m buying too much stuff.  Second, if it’s too big to fit in the car, I should have it delivered.  Third, if it can’t be delivered, I call Enterprise and rent a bigger car for a day.  The likelihood that I would end up at the final choice is very slim.  Buying a bigger car enables bad choices like buying too much stuff.  I can’t take a bunch of crap with me because there’s no room in the car.  If I have trash, it comes out right away, there’s nowhere to put it in the car.

Less is truly more.

Going Above and Beyond

Posted by on April 21, 2010 No comments

A couple of days ago I bought a piece of jewelry to extend a bracelet, since my wrist was between link sizes – one link either made the bracelet spin freely or cut off circulation.  So I purchased a small extender, $8 after shipping.  It arrived today.  This is what I bought:

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This is how it was packaged:

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Nice and fancy.  That kind of stuff is lost on me.  But that’s not the end of it.

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So, a bracelet link in a poly bag, in a mesh bag, in a poly bag, in a shipping box, wrapped in the shipping invoice, wrapped in tissue paper and shredded packing paper, in a plastic shipping envelope.

Now that’s how it’s done.  That’s http://chainextenders.com for everyone that insists in having their jewelry treated like gold – even if it’s not.

Epiphany

Posted by on April 10, 2010 No comments

There is an infographic I found a while ago that I found quite interesting.  At the time I found it, It was a “that’s neat” response.  Upon revisiting it and doing some critical thinking, I realize that it answers so much about the current political environment.  Some questions it explains:

  • Why can we never have world peace?
  • Why can we never be equals?
  • Why must some people be poor?
  • Why do those poor people typically vote for Democrats?
  • Why are rich, white people typically Republicans?
  • Why are we so screwed up right now?

The key, for me, is understanding the base motivations of Conservatives and Liberals.  It also made me realize how liberal I am, so consider this your warning.

For reference, the graphic is at: http://www.informationisbeautiful.net/leftvright_world.html

Typically, when you hear pundits talk about right/left, red/blue, Republican/Democrat, they focus on stereotypes: Democrats want to raise taxes, Republicans want to start wars, Democrats want government to control your life, Republicans only care about the rich people.  No one ever talks about why these parties do this.

A simplistic view is that Liberals want everyone to get along and to be treated equally, while Conservatives want defined classes of people.  Why do Conservatives need classes of people?  Because their whole ideology is based on getting personally rewarded for your personal efforts – the harder you work, the more reward you get.  Sounds pretty good,  and I agree with it until I realize that this requires a winner and a loser.  Your success results in failure for others.  Their success results in failure for you.  So, successful people want to remain successful and keep others that would threaten their success as subordinate. “The rich get richer.” 

Why are they called Conservatives?  Because they resist change.  Things are fine just as they are, with us in control.  How far back do you have to go to see Conservatives resisting change because Conservatives were in power?  All the way back to the days of slavery.

So on the other side you have Liberals, who are always changing things in the interest of balancing power, making advancement possible for people who don’t have the resources available to richer people.  And Conservatives hate that.  First, because they didn’t get any help for their success, and second, because it gives them competition.

The other light bulb burning brightly from my study of this graphic is a key word applied to Conservatives: fear.  It is found in the relationship of parent to child.  Parents control their children through fear.  It’s been nearly 10 years that we have been besieged with a non-stop torrent of fear mongering from our Republican leaders.  When we finally received a break – in the message of “Hope” – the Republican message remained unchanged, but refocused.  Now instead of fearing an external enemy, we must fear our own government.  But only because the current president is a Democrat, once Republicans take over again, we can start worrying about the rest of the world.

So in summary, having Conservatives in charge means things will not change.  That’s great if you are a Conservative yourself and/or you are content with the way things are right now.  The problem with being Liberal is that your nature is to promote equality.  This tactic doesn’t work against a Conservative, who does not believe in equality and whose prime mission is to rise above and control others in order to succeed – little more than base, primal, instinct.

2012 can not come soon enough.

Too Many, Too Many, Too Many

Posted by on April 8, 2010 No comments

I’ve been thinking about things that have changed since I was growing up and what made them change.  And I’m beginning to point the finger at people.  Not specific people, just people.  There’s too goddamn many of them.  And they suck.  But, oh, don’t worry about me.  I’m doing my part.  I’m not incrementing that population counter at all and I’m not living past my prime.  I’m just a passing fad.

So what have we lost as we’ve gained people?  I haven’t done much thought on this topic, just some casual thinking.  So I don’t have a multi-page rant, but I came up with a few items.

Travel:  Whether by air or car, there are too many damn people travelling.  Air travel used to be luxurious.  My parents dressed me in a suit to go to the airport.  It was like going to church.  Now, it’s just a big cattle train.  With the apparent loss of manners and couth of the average American, it’s a terrible experience.

Education:  All the time, I’m hearing about how schools need to be built or expanded.  Where the hell are all these children coming from?  When I was growing up, there was no school shortage.  And with all this overcrowding, there’s no way anyone’s getting a good education and no teacher is getting paid for the effort they have to put in.

Beaches:  I haven’t always lived near a beach, but when I was growing up, there were regular vacations to a beach.  And I remember it was a lot different then.  For one, you could drive your car on the beach.  Not now.  And can you imagine if you could?  It would be a big-ass parking lot with no room for people.  Traffic jams on beaches; beach rage; idiot drivers.  Again, something that used to be a pleasant experience ruined by the masses.

Does it sound like I’m being elitist?  I don’t think so.  If the stupid humans of the world had enough damn sense that they don’t need to have more than two kids, much less 4, 6, or – holy shit – 8, then there’d be enough resources for everyone.  There’d be enough seats on a flight.  There’d be enough roadway for everyone.  There’d be enough beach for everyone to lie out and for some to bring their car. 

As humans, we’ve lost any concept of humans as a race.  And we’ve stopped thinking about the big picture, and we’ve certainly stopped thinking of anyone but ourselves.  2012 can not get here soon enough.

Driver Formula

Posted by on March 10, 2010 No comments

I think I’ve come up with a formula to determine the assholosity of any driver on a highway.  The formula is simply:

x*abs(y-z)

Where x is the number of lane changes per mile, y is the average speed of the driver, and z is the average speed of the rest of traffic.  Spoken, the formula is: the number of lane changes per mile multiplied by the deviation in speed from the flow of traffic equals the level of asshole on the road.

This formula is a great step forward in the field of Asshology, of which I consider myself an expert.

It’s Just Money

Posted by on March 5, 2010 No comments

Why is this conversion to Quicken so goddamn hard?  I think I’m a reasonably smart person, so why does my money keep getting screwed up in Quicken?

Whenever I use Quicken, it’s laborious.  And not because it’s different, I’ve come to learn the differences in the 4 months I’ve been using it.  It’s dumb.  And I pity the people that have been using for years and years, because MS Money had a much better user interface.

My latest fiasco occurred this morning when I got a notice from a bank saying a transfer was cancelled due to insufficient funds.  After confirming that the balance in Quicken differed from the bank web site, and after a short walk to calm the hell down, I discovered that I had six deposit entries in my register that were duplicates of downloaded transactions.  Thankfully, this was a simple transfer between savings accounts and had no effect on any bills.  Of course, it uncertain if I will be whacked with an overdraft fee or not.

The problem is, I can’t trust Quicken worth a shit.  This situation arose even after reconciling the ledger of the funding account.  Should I have been suspicious that I had unmatched transactions in my register?  Yes, but it has happened so often in my short time with Quicken, I’ve taken it to be normal.  And just now when I was downloading transactions, I had a transaction mismatched and I couldn’t find the real transaction it belonged to.  Why?  because the last time I downloaded, I thought I would trust Quicken and chose “Accept All” to auto-match all the downloaded transactions.

As far as laborious, the matching process is the worst.  The downloaded transactions are in a list at the bottom and as you select each one, it highlights the matched transaction in the register above.  So your eyes are constantly scanning up and down.  Payee?  Good.  Date? Good. Amount? Good.  Ok, next.  Three checks for every downloaded transaction.  And as I’ve found, you have to check all three, especially if you frequent a business often.

The bill payment is very confusing.  The idea that you can pay a bill in Quicken, but that it doesn’t really get paid until you update your accounts is dumb.  And I certainly got misled by “One Step Update”, which I thought would make an immediate payment, but instead merges payments and transaction downloads together.  You mean there’s an even dumber way to handle online payments in Quicken?

I haven’t even dared to test out the reporting and projection tools.  I’m actually scared.  Not that anything would get messed up, since you can’t change anything when running a report, but I think I’m scared at how disappointed I will be or at how confused I will get looking at the results.

This has been one problem after another.  I spoke to a co-worker one time about a business application we use and she commented on how stupid she felt after training because none of it made any sense to her.  It was because the program is so un-intuitive, it made her have to think differently about everything she wanted to do.  That is how I feel and I do not think it is my fault.

Great Observations

Posted by on February 27, 2010 No comments

Following up a previous post on financial voyeurism, here’s the headlines for stocks for a period of time:

  • Monday: Stocks close lower on caution about economy
  • Tuesday: Stocks retreat after disappointing consumer report
  • Wednesday: Dow slips on Greece, domestic concerns
  • Thursday: Stocks backtrack but still fall on economic fears
  • Friday: Dow Rises 4 on Good GDP Data, Bad Housing News

The lesson here is: the stock market reacts to bad news in a bad way and good news in a good way.  Who would have thought such a thing?

I Never Really Believed in Curses Until…

Posted by on February 6, 2010 No comments

…I started travelling.  There’s some pretty bad mojo brewing up whenever I want to go back to my home state.  Last time, I was delayed a day and it was because I took the last flight out and because of previous delays, it was impossible to make my connection.  This time I scheduled the first flight out, meaning I got up at 2:45 in the morning to get ready.  Despite the plan that I could be bumped to later flights and do to people what they did to me the first time, the flight was still a no-go.  Thank you, blizzard.

And I thought I did everything I was supposed to.  I checked the flight status before I went to bed and when I woke up – all good.  When I checked in, I asked “any news?” – no, the flight is still active.  I got to the gate and within 10 minutes I hear my name paged.  Damn it, I know what this is about.

Similar to last time, I could make my first leg, but the second leg was cancelled.  I had the option of going to the first airport and trying to get on the next flight at 5:30.  That’s a 10-hour layover with a great chance of the flight either being overbooked or cancelled.  No thanks.  So after rescheduling for tomorrow,  back home I went.

I call the car rental company and modify my reservation.  Apparently, when you take one day off your reservation, you’re not in the “special rate” anymore and it suddenly costs you over $100 more.  So a brief check on Yahoo and I’m now renting from another company.  However, I’m still out $5 for my brief time of parking at the airport.  And gas, and time.  Luckily, no hotel reservations to change like last time, where they knocked me for $90.  I swear, companies make the most money when their customers are miserable.

The Biggest and the Bloatedest

Posted by on December 19, 2009 No comments

My personal domain name is up for renewal.  I’ve been with Network Solutions as my registrar for a very long time, 15 years, maybe.  A whole lot of low-cost registrars have popped up during that time, but I always stuck with the leader.

Now, recent re-evaluation shows I don’t really have a need for any of the services NetSol offers, so why should I be paying a premium price for their services?  Let’s take a look and see what the cost of renewal is with NetSol.  I just want to renew my domain.

This is where NetSol has really shot itself in the foot.  Not only is it a premium-priced registrar, it seems they are so money-hungry, they want to take every attempt to get more out of you.  After clicking renew, I am taken to a series of advertisements about other things I should be buying.

First, a pitch to add additional domains.  These are variations on my existing domain.  No, I don’t see any need to have three more domains with less-recognizable suffixes (or TLD’s for the technical). No thank you; next.

Next, a pitch to make my registration details private ($9/yr).  Other people have complained about this before.  Why should I have to pay extra for privacy?  And had I bought extra domains, multiply that $9 per domain.  Next!

Next, a pitch for web hosting.  New domains, hmmm. ok.  Existing domains, you probably already have hosting.  If you were transferring a domain, that would be another valid opportunity.  But, no.  I’m fine where I’m at.

Next, a pitch for forwarding web requests, mail hosting, custom website design (even if you selected no web hosting), and an SSL certificate.  Jesus, isn’t this simple renewal request ever going to end?  This is four full pages of advertising! 

Then, finally, you get to see the price of renewal: $35/yr.  4x the amount of other registrars?  For what?  4 pages of ads when you renew?  Now, you can see that NetSol has been overtaken by salespeople and scammers.  Granted, there are discounts for multi-year renewals, which is how I’ve stayed with NetSol as long as I have.

The way I see it, when you click renew, you should be taken straight to the shopping cart where a line item shows the domain(s) for renewal.  Under the line items, a line with a checkbox for each of these offered services should be shown.  Clicking the checkbox would expand the section to let you choose which renewing domains will get the service.  Obviously a “Learn more about service” link would be provided.

That’s quick, simple and to the point.  One page, all options available.  Instead, NetSol is afraid that if they don’t shout the features and prices at you in a full page ad, you might not take them up on their overpriced services.  In the virtual world as well as the real world, overselling, overhyping, and shouting drives me out the door.

Farewell, Network Solutions.

The Quickening II

Posted by on December 18, 2009 No comments

Like a bad sequel, I get to continue a story that should have ended.  As I discover some things in Quicken I don’t like, I check the opinions of blogs and Quicken’s own support forums and I am saddened by what I learn.  I guess none of my gripes are new, but they are mine.

I’m sure I’m going to have lots of fun matching transactions as time goes on.  I’m convincing myself that the real numbers matter starting next month – a fresh month of a fresh year.  But right now things are off.  One of my accounts had to have an adjustment posted to make it match with the last bank statement.  That worries me.  As I cleaned up the categories for my transactions, I found that when I would categorize a transaction as a transfer, it would helpfully create the other side of the transfer for me, duplicating a previously-downloaded transaction in another account.  So with all the credit card payments I categorized, I suddenly had a massively negative balance in my checking account.  More cleanup…

As I worked through these various screens I found myself missing a Microsoft standard: the Back button.  I remember years ago when I tried out the Zune at Staples, I thought to myself, “MS loves the Back button.”  The Zune has one.  And you know, it is the easiest concept for anyone to understand.  I also was a little weirded out at how some screens are windows of their own and some are in the main window.

And continuing with UI issues, I found the little things to be the most annoying.  Like being unable to resize columns.  The text in a column is truncated, but you can’t expand the column to see it.  You have to mouse over each row to see the tooltip.  I’m slowly getting used to Quicken’s way of doing subcategories – using a colon.  Money had that format as an option, but I turned it off.  The UI, overall, is definitely from another line of thinking – and not very much in line with Microsoft’s design recommendations.  I’ve had the argument before about how being consistent with Microsoft design helps a user understand your application quicker.  The additional time it is taking me to understand how Quicken works is a fine example of this.  Holy crap, I just discovered that some (4) popup windows I thought had closed actually didn’t.  They’re in a pseudo-taskbar at the bottom of the main window.  Good god.

Now the bigger issues.  The biggest being that the filtered view in the register does not maintain the proper running balance.  It shows a running balance of the transactions shown.  This makes the filtered view useless, but Quicken users have been living with it since the feature was introduced.  That’s nearly a deal-breaker, but I’m going to stick it out.  The other big one is there is no transaction entry form (that I can find).  You have to enter all your info directly in the register.  This brought back a very distant memory of when I first used Quicken and I didn’t like that method of entry.  Money provided a more presentable form for entry and it was a significant selling point.  Money also allowed the option to enter transactions Quicken-style.  Funny how Money tried to implement a more Quicken-esqe experience and ended up being the one that failed.

I feel a bit sad that Quicken is now the only major player in this software category.  Mostly because I know they can never make the changes needed to satisfy the MS Money crowd without ruining the experience of legacy Quicken users.