Glad to hear your fam is doing well. What a change for David! Didn't he start off as engineering?

Eyeball Thief

Ever since finding his new home in the Crypt hallway, my Wallmonster has been repeatedly defaced, requiring numerous repairs. Now, I am sad to announce, one of his eyeballs has been completely stolen.

It's time for a Wanted poster to help catch the thief.

Wanted: Grand Theft Eyeball

Posted on May 31, 2007
Filed under: General, Humor, Random Comments

Watch problem solved

Needlenose pliers: is there anything they can't do?

Changing a Swiss Army watch battery

Unscrewing a watch

Flipping a lightswitch

Turning on a light

Eating a cookie

Eating a cookie

Playing XBox

Playing XBox 360

Washing the car

Washing the car

Posted on May 26, 2007
Filed under: General, Humor, Random Comments


I've seen it! I love how it's organized and how you can scroll through the various toolbars. I'm a frequent user of the new microsoft office 🙂 I totally understand the part about moving away from friends & family. But, thanks to the internet you can keep in touch with everyone. How's your family? Is David still at Boulder?


hey buddy long time no see. How is Seattle?

Dead watch battery

My watch battery just died after only a year and a half. The watch itself was not very expensive, but now I see why - they want to charge $30 to replace the 75 cent battery. It's like the printer companies and their $50 ink cartridge refill scam.

Supposedly the battery can only be replaced by mailing it to an "authorized technician" or else the waterproof seal will break and the warranty will be voided. I already tried getting it open but I don't have the right tool to unscrew the back. If anybody has a watch-unscrewing clamp tool, I'm in the market..

Dead watch

Posted on May 23, 2007
Filed under: General, Random Comments


Happy birthday, Word man. Facebook won't confirm for me... is it today, tomorrow, or did it already pass?


Ahhh... yes, I think I have heard of this "Microsoft Word" 🙂 So did you work on the newest version? Do you like Microsoft? I vaguely remember you weren't sure about it all when you took your internship there.


I have no doubt you're living it up in Seattle 🙂 I'm only temoporarily done... I start the summer semester with rotations next week. I was supposed to go to Brighton Pharamcy but that has changed and I dunno where I'm going next week yet (I hope it's not far away b/c I'm already doing 3 months far away). How long have you been working for Microsoft now? What kinds of projects do you get to work on?

Venus

By the moon

Venus By the Moon
Point-and-shoot cameras don't seem to work very well for astronomy photographs

Posted on May 19, 2007
Filed under: General, Random Comments


I'm no Communist, if that's what you mean... at the moment I'm trying to find my big kid job, so I suppose that would make me a leftist... but hopefully soon, I can be a raging fiscal conservative, if you get my drift.


Hey Eric! How are things? I'm finally out of my shell since the semester is over with & am trying to catch up with my friends 🙂

Bananacode

Prize for the first person who gets it

Bananacode

Posted on May 7, 2007
Filed under: General, Humor, Random Comments

New bank

I've been using a credit union for banking, but I never really analyzed it to see if it was the best deal. This weekend I took a look at it and noticed that I've been getting a pathetic 0.0-0.5% interest rate on my checking account, and 2-3% on savings.

I checked around and it looks like it's possible to get 5% on savings accounts with various banks like HSBC, EmigrantDirect, ING Direct, and E*TRADE.

Ultimately I decided to switch to E*TRADE because they also have checking accounts at 3.25%, and it'll be handy to be able to do stock trades from the same account. At these rates, I calculated that I "lost" several hundred dollars in interest on checking & savings last year, so switching definitely looks like the smart thing to do.

Of course, the higher rates are only possible because these are mostly online discount banks, meaning that they don't have physical branch offices anywhere - all customer service is done over the internet (the way of the future), or over the phone (probably in India or China). Credit unions and traditional banks earn their fees since they have to pay for lots of branch offices and people to staff them, as well as maintaining whole ATM networks (which has got to be expensive).

E*TRADE works around this by allowing you to use any ATM and refunding the fees the owner bank will charge you. If it works it sounds great, but it seems a bit unsustainable since if everybody switched to online banking, there would be no brick-and-mortar banks to maintain all of the ATMs. So the high interest rates might not last forever (or maybe electronic commerce will eventually evolve to the point where cash is not required for most transactions, and ATMs will be obsolete).

Next step on the way to smarter finances: get a cash-back credit card and stop using my debit card. I've been using the debit card almost exclusively for several years, and getting 0% back. Even with 1% cash-back, that's another couple hundred dollars "lost" per year. I'm looking at several cards but haven't found one that's clearly better than the others. Currently I'm thinking about going with the Amazon Visa Card (3% on Amazon purchases, 1% on everything else) since I buy a lot of stuff on Amazon, but it's administered by JPMorgan Chase (infamous for evil customer service), so that might not be the best idea..

Posted on May 6, 2007
Filed under: General, Random Comments
   

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