Category: Economics

If you only knew me from my blog, you might think I’m a fairly negative person. At times in my life this has actually been true, but it usually doesn’t take me long to pick up on this, and during those times I’ve had to ask myself exactly where that negativity comes from. But other […]

In middle school, we had an annual fund-raising event where the school tried to get all of the students to sell magazine subscriptions to friends and family. I guess the school got a cut of the proceeds, while some organization got the rest. They brought in a motivational speaker to get us pumped to win […]

Multi-Level Marketing companies. We’ve all known somebody who has been involved in one. Sometimes they are advertising these products on Facebook, sometimes they are giving you awkward presentations in your living room. These people are not bad people. They are usually just trying to increase their income. But the MLM companies themselves are scams, and […]

So it finally happened: the ultralight tent I have been wanting went on sale, 25% off to be exact, so I bought it. Whereas my old tent (which I plan to keep) was about 6.5 lbs, this new tent is about 3 lbs. My pack is otherwise empty, so I put my sleeping bag, sleeping […]

I’m not a fan of collecting things for their own sake, but I have to admit that I have started to become a collector of old mining supply books. I have two books, one from the late 1800s which was an absolutely amazing, lucky find, being the first in a popular series, and another from […]

Software engineering involves the writing of code, but more than anything, it involves the management of complexity. Almost anybody can learn to write code – if you’ve had any interest in learning, you should try it out. But not as many people enjoy managing complexity, and that’s where the real challenge lies. Life is the […]

My hope is that everyone would have enough income to allow them to sufficiently treat themselves from time to time. I think there’s a lot of value sticking to the basics and not buying a bunch of stuff that doesn’t contribute to your life, but everybody is different and we all have non-essentials that really […]

I’ve been spending a lot of time in the garage lately, and it has me thinking about the ROI of various automotive skills, which can be applied to other skills in life, too. I have this desire to be able to replace or fix anything and everything on my car. However, I am constrained by […]

My desk is kind of small, but it fits a 24″ monitor and a laptop docking station perfectly. I keep thinking it would be nice to have a second 24″ monitor, but this would require me to either have a longer desk and move my printer stand, or simply have the laptop docking station on […]

Oh, smart phones. What have you done to us? I used to have a slight tendency to be one of those self-righteous Luddites who resisted new technologies in defense of the old. I had a flip phone in high school, and I kept this flip phone well into my 20s. For my tunes, I even […]