Several months ago, I had an interesting thought concerning the actual cost of working on my car. Back at my old apartment, I had the option to rent a garage for an additional $75/month on top of my rent for the apartment. I never took this option because I was too cheap for that sort […]
Additional Media Thoughts
Due to the flexible usage of DVDs and the inflexible usage of Blu-rays, as mentioned in my last post, I kind of wish I had focused on buying DVDs instead. However, maybe half of my Blu-rays include both, but these are strangely unpredictable. For example, I have The Hunger Games on Blu-ray only, but my […]
Media Rant
I ventured back into the world of Netflix last month, after probably a 4 year hiatus. There were a few series I had been wanting to watch for years, but for whatever reason I had been too lazy to get around to. I have access to Netflix through the account of my friend who owns […]
The Structure of Financial Decisions
I’ve had a dozen things to write lately, and all of them have been worthless, but as I was thinking how best to categorize my own financial strategy as compared to other financial strategies, I remembered some loose ideas I’ve had over time about how our financial decisions don’t operate in a vacuum. Too much […]
Similarities Between Investing and Driving in Traffic
Saturday I got a late start driving to the mountains for some ruin hunting. I almost chose not to go, but decided that a little traffic with hiking was better than no traffic with no hiking, so I took off on I70. And traffic there was! I prefer to get started early to avoid the […]
Rethinking the Future: Work, Missions, Housing, Life
Thus far, my late 20s and early 30s have been marred by quite a bit of instability. Getting established in a profession took awhile, building friendships and community took awhile, and developing a sense of self and purpose has taken awhile, too, all in the midst of mass scatterings of friends, comings and goings of […]
Rebuild vs. Replace: More Automotive Economics
Most car parts behave as a unit but consist of smaller parts inside. When these internal parts fail, the unit often requires replacement. If you do this yourself, you can save a lot of money, but you can save even more money if you diagnose which internal parts failed and change those rather than the […]
Predicting the Future
Life is full of predictions about the future. In fact, whole industries exist to make these predictions and sell them to people. Being able to predict things accurately carries with it a tremendous amount of prestige and influence, so it’s no wonder so many people pursue this. But predicting the future largely isn’t possible: nobody […]
The Shop Press is Gone!
The big news of this week is that my shop press sold at my parents’ garage sale! I apparently feel the need to tell the world. The shop press was one of those purchases of overreach. I have a few other purchases like that, too, but they are at least cool. The shop press was […]
Brief Reflections on Collecting
Collecting is weird. It’s fun at the same time that it’s usually meaningless. About a month or two ago, I hit a healthy wall with my antique catalog collecting. Of all things, I stumbled upon two taxidermy catalogs from the same company, published in the 1930s. One was priced super low, like $6, and the […]