jkslade.net

A great opinion piece from P.J. O’Rourke: Fairness, Idealism, and Other Atrocities. A few of my favorite bits below.

On fairness:

Well, I am here to advocate for unfairness. I’ve got a 10-year-old at home. She’s always saying, “That’s not fair.” When she says this, I say, “Honey, you’re cute. That’s not fair. Your family is pretty well off. That’s not fair. You were born in America. That’s not fair. Darling, you had better pray to God that things don’t start getting fair for you.” What we need is more income, even if it means a bigger income disparity gap.

On idealism:

Don’t chain yourself to a redwood tree. Instead, be a corporate lawyer and make $500,000 a year. No matter how much you cheat the IRS, you’ll still end up paying $100,000 in property, sales and excise taxes. That’s $100,000 to schools, sewers, roads, firefighters and police. You’ll be doing good for society. Does chaining yourself to a redwood tree do society $100,000 worth of good? Idealists are also bullies. The idealist says, “I care more about the redwood trees than you do. I care so much I can’t eat. I can’t sleep. It broke up my marriage. And because I care more than you do, I’m a better person. And because I’m the better person, I have the right to boss you around.”

What it really comes down to is this: go out and do something, make something, create value. That’s where real power and influence come from. If you want the people with power and influence to be aligned with the values you support, then make yourself one of those people.

http://optoutprescreen.com/ is a service run by the credit bureaus to allow you to opt-out of receiving any pre-screened / pre-approved credit and insurance offers.  Takes about 30secs to opt-out electronically… hopefully it will reduce the amount of junk mail I receive.

I agree with others that it is silly to create grandiose goals to start the new year — only to forget them within a week. I’m not planning to set any new goals, really, just write down some of the things I’m actively working towards, and elicit feedback and support from others to help me achieve them. So here goes…

Get under 175 and stay there - I’m generally active a reasonably healthy, but losing a couple pounds would be great. I don’t have the time and energy to commit to really shaping my body… this goal simply means that I need to be more disciplined, mainly cutting out the junk and exercising a bit more regularly. I expect to hit 175 by the end of March.

Go to bed by midnight at least 3 days a week - This is a major issue and a discipline I need to develop. Getting more sleep, and more consistently, will have many positive ripple effects in other areas.

Never use credit cards again - Mostly we keep credit cards for emergencies, and pay the balances quickly. But really it’s a crutch to keep from having to be more disciplined and plan better. I’ve been reading and listening to stuff from Dave Ramsey, and he’s helped me realize my dependence on them and that it has to stop. I strongly encourage you to follow his advice (which certainly isn’t anything new).

Establish a 6-month emergency fund - Another of Dave’s baby steps (also not unique to him). It’s tricky to balance all the competing needs for financial resources, but this is something that has to be done first. Our landscaping and other plans will just have to wait a while longer.

Earn revenue from my genealogy business - I’ve been working on some web-based genealogy service stuff with some partners for about a year now… mostly we’ve just been learning and prototyping, and not moving very fast at all. This year I plan to move that far enough along that it generates actual revenue - anything more than zero counts! I see the potential as being much greater than that (or else why would I do it?) but, realistically, everything else that takes my time and energy is not going to go away.

Get out of the house with my wife at least twice a month - Two days until our 11th anniversary, and I certainly have a lot more to learn about dating her. It doesn’t have to be anything lavish, but it does have to be just the two of us.

Ski and golf with my boys - I’m looking forward to lots of fun activities with my boys as they get older. It will be a while before we all are able to do these things together as a family, but I’ll do what I can for now. As Kim’s grandfather Brig says, “All I hope for this year is to make more money and play more golf.”

Use technology to benefit my extended family - uh, that doesn’t count as a goal, but I’ll let it slide - I’m kind of the nerd of the family, and that’s okay. I know a lot about the internet and such that can benefit my family. This past year I got my mother blogging. This year I need to finish up on the Lofgreen Newsletter project I started a couple years ago. Then there’s teaching about things like RSS, avoiding viruses, phishing and other attacks, filtering bad content, etc. There’s no way I can keep up on all of it myself, but I’m happy to consult and help any who ask.

Looks like 2007 will be as busy as ever. Hopefully writing these down and sharing them publicly will help to yield positive results. I’m looking forward to it.

15′ tall tomato plants that look like trees:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7471798897454225511

I know Frank from playing ultimate at Greer Park when I was attending Stanford. Never knew about his tomatoes…

There’s also a newspaper article about his garden that has some good tips.

I listened to one of Dave Ramsey’s online shows, and I enjoyed it. Nothing new or earth-shattering so far, but it is good to have reinforcement for the principles I already believe in. It’s good to have something worthwhile to listen to while I work.

Based on the suggestion from Ramit Sethi’s blog, I decided to go to http://www.annualcreditreport.com to check my credit report. This site allows you to go to each of the 3 credit reporting agencies. Thankfully, the one I went to first was Equifax, which turned out to be the easiest to use and most complete report by far. If I had gone to either the TransUnion or Experian sites first, I would have given up. They just made it too hard to get into (account creation, verifying my personal data).

I did also pay the $7.95 fee to get my credit score — credit report (details of open accounts, balances, payment histories, etc) and credit score (aggregate number in the range of 300-850) are not the same thing. I got a whole lot more out of the credit report (which was free) than the single credit score (which I paid for) — go figure.

I was surprised to see in the credit score that basically every account I’ve opened in my adult life was listed — student loans, credit cards, mortgages, etc. Most of them are paid and closed, so I guess it helps my score to have them listed in my history?

We give our children an allowance, and require them to pay tithing and also to save 10%. We have seen good things as they start to understand the concept.

Here’s an interesting story from a blog that I read, that goes a bit further, however:

…my oldest is 10 (or entering 5th grade this next year).I recently gave her a ’summer challenge’ whereby if give her $100 and she can turn it into $150, I’ll double it — and she’ll end up with $300.

It piqued her curiosity, to say the least, and it also inspired a very interesting conversation on how she could do such a thing.

Ever since then she’s had visions of using her creativity and what interests her now (knitting, jewelry-making, etc) to make money. It’s been a very interesting adventure.

It’s one thing to teach our kids to save — very passive activity — versus teaching them to invest and make their money do something. I still have a lot to learn about it myself, too…

http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/BuNO?m=725

I bought a new (used) car today — a ‘04 Kia Optima. My old ‘92 Mitsubishi Mirage just wouldn’t do it anymore. I believe I effectively used that up and wore it out. Time to move on.

But I hate spending money on cars. I like the new car (the boys think it is way cool), but I don’t like the money involved at all. Unfortunately, we weren’t prepared enough to be able to pay cash for it, which I like even less. But I do feel much better about having two reliable vehicles, and we’ll pay that off in about a year.

So much for our landscaping plans for the summer, though… We were just getting geared up to do some fun stuff this year. But no debt is much more fun, I think.

An article from the Creating Passionate Users blog about turning off the TV — I’d have to agree strongly about the hypnotic effect of watching TV. We have a DVR now and use it a lot… but after watching a show, the tempation is always there to channel-surf for a few minutes. No doubt that we could all accomplish much more if would lose the TV. But I’m not ready to completely do away with it, I just need more discipline.