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 […]
Skills ROI
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 […]
Foot Power (and Taking Cars for Granted)
My car is out of commission right now, so my mobility is exclusively foot-powered. I think I baby my car a little too much. Much of that is enjoying the results of taking old and worn out parts and giving them fresh, new life, really restoring something to quality. But after starting a big project […]
No Perfect Setup
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 […]
Stuff Begets Stuff: The Tyranny of Everything!
The past few months have been a nightmare for my budget: not only had I been preparing for a challenging backpacking trip for which I basically wrote myself a blank check, but I have also been preparing to change some critical parts on my car, and have been buying those parts and tools for them […]
Why I Don’t Have Investment Property
If you can stay away from loose money and loose women, your chances of success in life are pretty high. Investment property tends to fall in the former category, but tends to attract the latter. That’s a double-whammy of ‘bad decision’. Cheekiness aside, I am absolutely not a fan of investment property. Now, investment property […]
Life Engineering: Stability and Fragility
We have an astronomical number of choices in life, but most of these choices are restricted by culture. Some of these restrictions are good, but many of them are bad. Culture gives us defaults for our expectations, hopes, dreams, and desires, but some of these can lead to great pain and suffering. I’m up for […]
Smart Phones
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 […]
The Tyranny of Stuff
All the thrift stores seem to have had the same bright idea: “Hey, since there’s a pandemic, let’s limit the hours during which people can bring donations!” I’m no virologist, but I suspect that keeping people inside at the cash register is more dangerous than keeping people outside, typically at great distance from other people […]
Escape!
We live in a world full of over-commitment. Being passionate about something has become akin to goodness, but for all the dedication and passion, I don’t see a tremendous amount of good being done in the world. We are also constantly exposed to fictional characters who have absolutely no balance in their lives but who […]