Asciigod update B0.09

Not a lot going on these days in the realm of “writing”, “constructive thoughts”, “healing the world” or “making babies”. Scratch that last one holmes, I’m makin’ more babies than Raelians. Blowin’ powder dust like Mugwumps out the Urethra (Justin Warfield style).

Shit’s just been super busy, but I felt the need to bless the mic with some K.N.O.W.L.E.D.G.E.

Work, school, baby mama, health. It’s the cycle, but it’s OK. My awesome financial strategies have turned out to be failures. But hey, there’s still 40 odd years, am I right?

Just got done with some homework for an Investment class at school. Since content’s not exactly quantity nor quality here, I figured I’d cut and paste my “mini-essay” in here, get my word count for the year above 300, and call it a night. I gotta head to work, so see ya’ll on the dark side!

“ESSAY” (LOLRIGHT ASCIIGOD 2009) RE: Aggressive Investing?

“Due to my relative youth, and long time horizon for retirement I feel I can currently invest aggressively to meet my retirement needs. I am in a situation with more than 30 years to save for retirement. This puts me in a position that, historically, indicates the “numbers” of the markets are in my favor for long-term growth. Despite any 5, 10 or even 15 year periods of negative performance, it behooves me to invest aggressively now. Of course this aggressive position needs to be tailored as the years pass, with investments moved from aggressive to more stable and income producing positions.
For instance, assume I would like to retire with $2,000,000 in stable and/or income producing securities in 30 years time. Assuming I start with a relatively modest $20,000 base, and contribute only $5,000 a year, given a relatively conservative assumed return of 10% on these investments, the total saved for retirement would be $1,434,648.60.
But that isn’t quite enough!
Actually, to equal that sum in “today’s dollars”, adjusting for a 3% inflation, I’d need to raise $3,482,267. To meet my $2,000,000 goal in “today’s dollars”, I’d need even more: the princely end balance of $4,854,525. A daunting task! In fact this exercise has made me realize just how much more “aggressive” I need to be.
And that isn’t just aggressive in terms of investing. The 10% expected return is solid, and is as much as I can legitimately use to “crunch” these numbers. So the difference will definitely have to be made up of with more aggressive saving. That’s right! Additional funds are needed. Let’s recalculate assuming my wife’s income contribution matches my own $5,000 yearly deposits, and that we both up the ante an additional $2,000 for a total of $14,000 per year addition to our nest egg.
This results in a balance of $2,882,195.99 at the end of 30 years. Not quite good enough, but honestly, at some point this exercise has to become an issue of quality of life and financial management. Not considering other sources of income, dividends, and property I feel safe to say this sum would certainly get us by “OK”. And if not, we could always trade in our hover car for a less expensive model.”

DON’T DO DRUGS KIDS.

Blogging, New Years Resolutions, and Productivity

To all the haters, hahahahaha. Nicely done.

I’m not the type to make a lot of New Year’s Resolutions ™. Even though I really should quit smoking, lose 15 pounds, and stop giving money to hobos, I’ve never put those things on a list and created firm deadlines. Commitment can be scary, and I don’t like to tie myself to one blood type, much less three nebulous goals. And as much as I’d like to contribute to Shapes’ fitness’s earning reports, I’m not ready to do that. Camel needs my money to pay all those artists who design their excellent “Designers Series” cigarette packages. I’m nothing if not a supporter of the The Arts. Lastly, I’m lying, I don’t give hobos money anymore. In fact, I’m pretty aggressive about this. I’ve even developed a whole deaf-mute routine where I pantomime and yell “No hablo Deutschlis!” to get out of parting with my sort-of-hard-earned-money.

I settled on a more vague plan this year. In reality, it only coincided with the New Year through coincidence, but I figured I might as well run with that and pretend it was all part of a grand Divine Scheme.

This year, I’d make the commitment to doing one hour a day of stuff that was directly related to “self-improvement”. As it happened, this started out with reading a chapter or two of an interesting book. I even have a huge stack of books selected for this purpose, and they’re all neatly lined up on my desk at work, where they are now mocking me.

Fun list of books:

 ”Rich Dad, Poor Dad” by Robert Kiyosaki (which someone got me as a very thoughtful Christmas gift, even though I assume it’s rather elementary material).

 ”Home Buying for Dummies” by Eric Tyson (because sooner or later, I’m going to need to do this).

 ”Men’s Health: Better Body Blueprint” by Michael Mejia (as it was already at my desk, and I’d forgotten I had it for at least a year).

 NOLO’s “Patent It Yourself” by David Pressman (no specific reason, but I found it at a thrift store, and in my experience, NOLO books are awesome).

 J.K. Lasser’s “Small Business Taxes 2007″ by Barbara Weltman (see above. Even though its out of date, it was cheap, and small business taxes fascinate me).

 Sams “Teach Yourself Adobe Dreamweaver CS3 in 24 hours” by Betsy Bruce (I just realized this was written by a woman! I might have to throw it away, I don’t want to design websites about Cats or Gothic Erotica).

 The Motley Fool “You Have More than You Think” by David + Tom Gardner (Another wildly out of date edition. I think this one focuses on the late 90’s dot com boom! Nevertheless, a great book).

 ”Quickbooks 2008 for Dummies” by Stephen L. Nelson (which I’ve had since QB2008 was released, meaning it’s out of date as well. And from what I’ve already read of it, it’s not very good).

 And lastly, my “Principals of Managerial Finance” book that I was *supposed* to read last semester for my introductory Corporate Finance class. However, that class was jam-stuffed with hours of lectures every week, and the book was barely opened.

All of this went well for exactly one day, and I have the post-it note bookmark in the Men’s Health guide to prove it. Then, right as school started, my company dropped an unannounced client on me with exactly ZERO forewarning. This client turned out to be at least as large as all our other clients combined. Needless to say, I haven’t had much time to focus on “me time”. Quiet baths, relaxing walks, obsessive-compulsive collecting behavior. It’s been rough.

We’ve finally gotten most of the preliminary work done, so things have slowed down a bit. Now it’s time to start focusing on this stuff again, and I’m looking forward to it. Although I guess I really should focus on what’s important for school right now: publishing more blogs about my blogging productivity!

And that’s a wrap!

Final exams and vacation pre-planning.

I’m not even supposed to be in the office today. But this isn’t one of those Dante from Clerks moments. No, I’m just here to get some peace and quiet while studying.

My wife and I babysat my niece all… day… long. This is grueling for a childless, working professional couple one of whom (raising hand) happens to also be a student and run his own business. So what if it’s online retailing, it brings in mad cake and takes work therefore, it’s real! Unless you work for the IRS. Then this conversation never occurred. Pleading the 5th.

And tomorrow is my Managerial Finance final exam. So I’m at work late, midnight, and it’s my vacation. I took 4 days off of work to ostensibly focus on studying, relaxing, and laying around. Turns out I’m here, secretly covering production issues for my coworkers, studying, stealing cheesecake, wishing I had more coffee, and blogging. (Edit: I’ve also scratched my nuts during the composition of this post).

I had a grand to-do list of things I wanted to accomplish on my vacation. This grand list has been lost in the “Wind of Change” The Scorpions sang so about so poignantly. Grandiose.

On a bright note, this class’ exams typically cover something like 8 chapters at a time. At least it seems that way. The final comprises four chapters! And one of them is about dividends, and one is about taxes. Both of these subjects are a breeze. However, I’m going to have to bone up (huh huh, fire) on the capital structure and cost of capital areas. Maybe after this PCP laced blunt.

An all natural study aid… with PCP!

For the record, here’s what I want and/or have to do this vacation. We’ll (maybe) check back in a week or so, and laugh at how much didn’t get accomplished. In no particular order, except the order they are randomly scrawled on a notepad document on my home PC:

oo1. Transfer my blood sugar readings from my glucose meter to a journal. I’m on a new insulin regiment, and was supposed to be keeping track for my doctor. By pre-dating a journal, and essentially counterfeiting the process, I hope to impress the doc with my basketball skills.

oo2. Research stocks to buy when I get paid Friday. I’m thinking CitiGroup (C) and Amazon (AMZN). It’s not a (C)oincidence that (C)a$h starts with (C) and AMZN is ALMOST the exact same as AMAZING. I picked em. You bank em!

oo3. Buy one of those adaptors that splits a single 5/8″ (or whatever size it is) microphone jack into two. Buy a cheap(er) microphone than the one I already have (which isn’t that bad a mic really. One love.) This is for when my partner in rhyme comes down to visit for Christmas. Freestyle session to ensue. Crappy microphone is his. Home field advantage.

oo4. Organize my inventory. I’m sitting on boxes upon boxes of product dogg. This shit don’t move itself. It’s Christmas. I’ve got a few thousand dollars of crap sitting around to sell. Time to flood the streets like an episode of The Wire. No homo.

oo5. That’s it? Really there’s like a dozen more things on that list, but this was already boring me at oo1.

P.S. WordPress’s new dashboard is off the hook!

P.P.S. I’m totally cranked out of my fucking head on ritalin. Time to study!

How to quit smoking: GUARANTEED!

Title spam, FTW.

It’s time to quit smoking. Again. Audio 5000 like housin’, low commission in this position. Poles, hold roll call at Auschwitz when I bounce with wet cigarettes. The sherminator aka terminator 4 when I’m in perfect form. Ford Prefect, predict that nobody reads this. My audience is heathens, but obviously I need them. Let’s pretend my page hits are higher than Rastafarians.

I don’t know what the above was. Well I do. I was listening to some freestyle rhymes I recorded a long time ago. Maybe they’ll surface on the interweb sometime. Probably not. Circle of influence = noted.

In an effort to  become healthier, I’ve been working out. Dieting. Changing my insulin routine. It’s a lot of work. The biggest thing I need to change though is my smoking. So to curtail this game and be framed like dovetails, I’m packaging my smokes up Bolivian style. 20 for now. Then fewer and fewer as interbreeding forces their population to dwindle due to sickness and disease. And because pictures make blogging fun, I present the evidence below.

A PICTURE IS WORTH A THOUSAND WORDS. IN THIS CASE, THEY ARE ALL SYNONYMS FOR “SADDENING”

Wish me luck. And a million more wishes.

GAPEMAN OUT

Managing my RSS feeds: the Bloglines bloat

It seems like it’s been months, years even, of agonizing toil and self-flagellation (school) since I last checked my RSS reader, Bloglines. In reality, it had only been about a month, yet this tentacled beast that captures my RSS feeds had begun to resemble an oldschool political cartoon. You know the kind. Black and white, detailed, giant octopus wrapping its many squirming arms around Abe Lincoln, a bear that represents the Soviet Union, a mass of railroad tracks, and freed, voting slaves – all while gnashing its cute little beak around the ghost of Benjamin Franklin. Shit’s bananas, out of control, cream pie (ew?).

I’m a procrastinator at heart, and there’s a point of imagined critical mass when I view something like this as a nightmare. The very idea of opening the bloglines website just to look at all those feeds, crawling like worms, upset my stomach.

But I faced my fears today, and cleaned up that shit. Does that make me a hero? Probably. Am I asking for a reward? Only financial.

So I hope to be back to checking people’s blogs, and trying to find more “personal” type blogs; I axed a few of the bigger ones. Sorry if you missed my awesome input. Every superhero needs some quiet time in his Fortress of Solitude.

L O L </ridiculousness>

Also, I kicked the living crap out of four tests this week. Take that scantron!

P.S. Ghostroach spotted at an Atlantic City casino.

Absolute dank artichoke heart salad. Bonjoir, senior ++

Props to my wife. She made me this awesome, healthy and greazzzy artichoke heart salad for lunch today.

I’m no expert chef, but I believe the ingredients were artichoke hearts, diced tomatos, feta cheese, vinegar (?!), fresh basil from her porch-garden and love. Her private stash also had olives, as that is how she rolls. I’m not too fond of them, so she kindly left them off. Tight!

This is just one of the many, diabetic friendly recipes she’s been making for me. Low carbs, low fat, well.. low “bad” fat, and great. More info soon on her killer diabetic friendly yogurt pie dessert thing. Wowsa. I will keep it secret though, maybe Yoplait will have a contest or something soon…

More stuff coming soon, but until then, FEAST UR EYES ON THIS!!!

Happy Birthday Wendy!

I love you very much. Our relationship, along with my innumerable escapes from death, proves I’m the luckiest man in the world.

Here’s to 100 more years together, my little bucket of chowder.

Beautiful, and wild! Que bella. Dos Mios los pelligrino guapos alligatoros!

Children, Augusten Burroughs. Similiarly overrated.

This is just a small update. Mostly, I’m concerned about my October archive being empty when this month scrolls by. I had a few ideas for posts lately, but with school, work and hustlin’ baby, I haven’t had much time for other pursuits.

My wife, the most awesome lady in the world, is having her 30thbirthday in a little over a week. I’ve promised her “30 days of Wendy” witha gift each day. Unfortunately, I don’t see her (working over night) enough to have made this a reality. However, there’s a large stack of presents waiting to be opened sitting on our coffee table. She’s even thrown a festive tablecloth on it, and named it the “Birthday Table”. It’s kind of like a Christmas tree, with less of a fire risk. I say “less”, because I have latent telekinetic powers, kind of like that girl in Firestarter. They tend to “flare up” if I’m separated from my computer for too long. That’s my story…

This weekend was pretty hectic. The end of the year is coming, and I found out I had two “Floating Holidays” to take, so I opted for Yom Kippur (bless you Jesus) and Columbus Day (bless you Jesus). It worked out to a four day weekend, which was nice. People seemed to sense I’d be around though, and we ended up babysitting our 2 year old niece while her parents “played hide and seek”… well that’s what we told her. Normally she’s a sweetheart, but I guess she was grumpy that night. Long story short, it made us question if we wanted kids.

Following that, I had to run around town picking up computer parts from The Thieves Guild in order to fix my friend’s computer. Dying harddrive. That’s still an ongoing project, only in that I’m lazy and would rather play KOL. It’ll get fixed eventually. He brought his kids over when he dropped it off, and it was the uppercut after the jab that was dealing with our niece. Kids… sigh.

Other than that, it’s been business as usual. I finished a book of essays by Augusten Burroughs titled “Possible Side Effects”, which wasn’t that good. I associate Burroughs with a former co-worker of my wife, who is pretty crazy, pretty addicted and pretty sad. It’s a fitting association, as she loves the author. I can see why, and it’s discouraging. To be sure, I watched “Running With Scissors”. It was also pretty horrible.

School and loathing

School’s started back up and I couldn’t be happier. This summer I had pretty much nothing to do but work, scheme and take care of doctor’s obligations. It was a real bummer man. So it’s nice to be back on campus. Even if I’m a dirty old man, I can still pass for a dirty young man. I get carded buying Depends.

My wife’s decided to attend my classes with me which is tight. It cuts down on the girl watching, but that’s OK, I feel creeped-out doing that anyway. A lot of guys are interested in younger women, but for some reason they’re usually not that appealing to me. I prefer my women to have been beaten down by life. Others see wrinkles, I see canyons waiting to be filled with fresh tears. Ego-trippin-son.

But nah, it’s cool to have my wife along. It gives us a chance to hang out, I imagine it’s going to be good for studying, and most importantly it wakes me up on time to get to school. All my classes are at night which is a bonus in that it also serves to get me geared up to tackle working when I get done.

Another rad thing is my new automobile. This is my first car with air conditioning. It’s also my first car that wasn’t produced in either the 80s or early 90s. Just barely, but still. It’s hard to stress how much less grueling commuting to school is in a car that (hopefully) won’t break down 3 or 4 times a semester. Fact: I have had AAA premium service just to safeguard against my cars breaking down while I’m on the road. Between my wife and I, we’ve used it EIGHT times in the past 10 months. That’s some bang for your buck. On a side note, eight is the maximum number of service calls two people can make over the course of a year. My timing, thank you Lord, continues to be impeccable.

My wife’s also enjoying getting back to school for personal reasons. She’s re-registered as a student, but hasn’t technically enrolled in any classes. She does have two undergraduate degrees (Spanish and Environmental Science and Policy), and works in her field. But she’s a woman of many interests, and wants to further her education soon. Nothing is concrete, but she’s been considering Engineering or Law. Either way, I know she will succeed at what she chooses; she’s a real smart woman, with a far greater work ethic and focus than I possess. So, yeah, this is getting her back on track with the schedule and routine of classes. I hope it helps her as much as it helps me.

What’s nice about this year is the books are cheap. I’ve been noticing a trend towards more online course material, which is great. Maybe it’s partially a product of taking upperclassman level course, which may be produced to be flexible for working adults. Mostly, it’s probably just the sheer convenience for the students and, I assume professors, to do a majority of the interaction online. Either way, it makes books a lot cheaper, and the content a lot richer. For a Finance class for instance, all of the text is available online with lectures, multiple practice quizzes, expanded materials, forums, etc, all of which can be taken at ones leisure. Working overnight, with a lot of downtime, this is obviously an awesome benefit for me. I realize this isn’t breaking news, but I’m glad it broke in my collegiate career.

Also, I’m trying out this Textbook Rental Service called Chegg.com (which is a URL strangely similar to a well known porn torrent site…). It’s for a math text, and it’s something I’m positive I won’t need once I pass the course. So using this site will save me around 80 bucks if I’d bought the text outright at a bookstore. Pretty nifty I think, we’ll see how the shipping time is. Apparently they also plant a tree for each rental, which is a nice gimmick, but completely secondary to the cost saving benefits.

.,-~~”( EDiT!!!) “~~-,. Chegg.com coupon code: LQ10 (5% off nukca!)

Aside from that, I’ve picked up a fun little web based RPG called Kingdom Of Loathing. From my short introduction to the game, it appears a lot like an oldschool favorite of mine from the BBS (Bulletin Board) days: Legend of the Red Dragon (LORD or, these days LOTGD). Essentially, you get a certain number of “turns” a day, which is really nice in lowering the addiction factor. I’m assuming games like World Of Warcraft are fun, but I’m worried I’d end up doing nothing else if I started playing. You use these turns to do adventure-y things, all designed around a warped sense of humor of puns, beer and bum jokes. The basic gameplay mechanic is great, easy to get immersed in, and thus far addicting enough.

I haven’t delved much further into it, but I’m seeing hints of MMORPG stuff like crafting, “meatsmithing” (don’t ask), clan gaming, etc. There looks to be a lot of depth to this crude game, but I’m sure that’s all been covered elsewhere on the interweb.

Not so long story made short: I like it. I would highly recommend it to anyone with similar sensibilities to my own, which, chances are if you’re reading this you possess.

Had a good holiday weekend (Labor Day). Fixed a friend’s computer which had the most viruses on it I’d ever seen. By a long shot. That including my sister’s computer when she was like 16 years old, and my mother in law’s computer who’s Internet Explorer taskbar looks like the interface to a supercomputer. It was a bitch, but that’s what the “computer friend” does I guess.

And now, back to work. Homework calls.

CHEERZ!

Cod and Chuck Klosterman: Both Baked [1/2]

It had been close to ten years since my wife or I had eaten any meat. And that had meant absolute nothing. No rennet, no steak, no burgers, no tacos. As much as my some people were amazed that meant no shrimp, no lobster, no steak tartare, no caviar, no sushi and no corned beef. For some reason people would think the more exotic an animal dish, the more likely it didn’t conform to our “Rules of Vegetarianism”. At times it meant no dairy, but honestly, that was brief and laughably failed experiment.

Our vegetarianism wasn’t an ethical decision. We didn’t choose to give up beef because of the ridiculous inefficiencies of the cattle industry (though later that would offer us warm solace over bowls of bland rice and broccoli). It had nothing to do chickens going beakless, seals being clubbed or pandas getting sprayed with prototype chemical weapons. I even think hunting’s probably pretty fun, and bunny rabbits wearing mascara have always held a certain appeal to me. Long story, but it involves a tawdry Easter holiday in my adolescence. No homo.

Nor was it a health decision. In fact, I originally probably gained 60 pounds in the year after I stopped eating meat. Cheese and bean burritos and personal pan cheese pizzas aren’t what fuels Olympians. They fuel drunken college dropouts, the poor, and the alcoholic. I would never be pregnant, but in this sense I was “eating for three”. I’m not sure how all this works, but I’m sure I suffered some negative effects of my poor eating habits during my early vegetarian years. Dementia, schizophrenia, logorrhea. Delusions of grandeur. Partying in warehouses, etc. It may have even contributed to my development of diabetes. What’s done is done.

Vegetarianism was a fad that went on too long. A lifestyle like that has it’s own twisted inertia. People start to expect certain vegetarian behaviour out of you. You don’t eat at certain restaurants. Cooking takes on a new strategic aspect. And it’s just generally a pain in the ass. It’s a pain in the ass I think people like though. For instance, it’s better than being the loutish, drunken uncle who comes over at Christmas and breaks the coffee table. It’s less inconvenient than the wayward brother-in-law who always needs a couch to sleep on, or bail money. Still, it was a tic that was hard to shake. Basically, it boils down to accepting the eating of living, bleeding things. There’s a psychological barrier to doing that after you haven’t in so long. But with diet becoming more of an issue in my diabetes control my wife and I have been steeling ourselves for the inevitable return to omnivorism.

This is a big deal. It’s been a long time coming, but we finally bought about a pound of sea bass, and some breaded cutlets of cod. The sea bass, because well, we assumed at nearly twenty dollars a pound, that had to be a hell of a fucking fish. The cod cutlets because, honestly, breading makes almost everything taste better. We were realistic in this regard. And it’s almost a week later, the sea bass in still sitting in the refrigerator (is that healthy?) but that cod cutlets have been baked (see title) and consumed. Mostly.

Even as a meat eater, way back when… in the glory days, I never really ate much fish. I just wasn’t raised in a family of sophisticated diners. Peanut butter sandwiches were the norm. Sans jelly usually, as it was too messy to justify it’s wonderful and undoubtedly sinful, taste. As a result, I’ve a modest palate. At times this is a blessing because I can shovel mounds of even the blandest food into my gullet. It’s helpful for powering through steamed vegetables, wheat germ, or unsweetened yogurt. For the most part, the cod seems to be a pretty bland fish. I think I can get down with that in the long run, but for now it’s taken me three days to eat what is, essentially, the size of a McFishen Sandwich. Baby steps, baby.

The good news here is that we made the first step. But it’s not nearly a full victory. The cod is too plain to really count as “meat”. I still consider myself a recovering meat-virgin, and fear the day my tastebuds get ravaged by a gamier source of protein. No homo.