Travelin' Man

It seems, the older I get, that faces in airports trigger thoughts of "Hey, that looks like..." Is it just a craving to encounter a friend in a vast and lonely setting, or simply the inevitable coincidental facial and bodily similarities after a lifetime creating an internal database of friends, relatives, and acquaintances?

I often also wonder why, after decades of flying passengers around the country, the airlines haven'f succeeded in finding a more efficient way to board than the cattle call of confusion that reigns. Aside from the whole "let's seat the first class cabin first" method - which seems odd to me - why do we make the highest-paying customers wait the longest on the tarmac? - it would make a ton more sense to seat from the back of the plane forward, so that the people stowing their luggage in the overhead bins and juggling seat assignments aren't blocking the passengers who are coming in behind them. Add a couple of big burly flight attendants to toss the carry-ons up into the racks, and you'd really speed things up when little oriental grannies come up...short.

Today, for the first time ever, I actually witnessed a more reasonable group of people deboarding the plane for a change. Most of the time, everyone leaps to their feet the moment the plane comes to a stop at the gate and starts dragging all their baggage down from the bins. You know, people, you can't leave the plane until A) the door opens and B) the people in the 28 rows ahead of you get off of the plane. I always just relax in my seat until the two rows ahead of me are starting to move, then stand and gather my things to depart. Jumping to your feet earlier does not make people move out of the way any faster, and you're still going to have to dash to your connection - at the other end of the terminal...or in another terminal entirely.

Just some of my travelin' thoughts.

Fast times, slow reading

It's been difficult to get anything up on the blog recently, as I've been traveling quite a bit more this summer than ever, and between being slow to finish books (almost four weeks on what I'm reading now), and not feeling the energy to post about a couple of bits of fluff that I did complete, there's been a drought to rival California's here.

I am, however, still alive and well.

Silver Bullet by S M Reine

The action shifts to  Reno, Nevada in the 2nd in the Preternatural Affairs series. Cesar and his partner, Suzy, are assigned to a special team investigating a magical power surge in the Biggest Little City in the World. The trail leads from a nightmare demon who runs a casino to an abandoned silver mine filled with giant spider demons, and right up against a nasty werewolf before the case is finally solved.

Cesar runs afoul of the OPA's security policies when his boss, Fritz, is kidnapped and he is forced to use his cell phone to contact a vicious VP of OPA. She would as soon kill as deal with him, so he has to think fast on his feet to rescue the boss and avoid being terminated in all senses of the term, as a security breach.

Again, long on action, short on plot, but a fun tale to while away a couple of hours. I've downloaded some more of Ms. Reine's work.

Witch Hunt by S M Reine

I believe this book was one of Barnes & Noble's weekly freebies, so I was pleasantly surprised when it turned out to be an amusing , if not engrossing, tale. Cèsar Hawke is a witch, who works with the Office of Preternatural Affairs arresting dangerous witches, demons and miscellaneous supernatural beings.

He's pretty new on the job, but seems to enjoy his work. After celebrating a successful investigation a bit too much, he finds the dead body of a woman he took home in his bathtub the next morning, a bullet hole in her chest. Cèsar isn't the type of guy who is prone to murder on a first date, and though the police are convinced of his guilt, and his bosses don't send anyone to bail him out, he still has a shred of faith in himself, and escapes custody to find the real killer - shades of OJ, anyone?

His partner, Suzy, seems to believe his innocence, and she gives him a place to hide out briefly, but as the story goes on, it appears that Suzy may herself be the killer. Hawke's naive faith in people leads him into a number of near-death experiences, and it's a dark, wild ride through a very spooky Los Angeles.

Definitely an author worth watching.

Werewolf Cop by Andrew Klavan

I really enjoy Klavan's blog posts on PJMedia, as well as a couple of his earlier police procedurals, so I thought Werewolf Cop sounded like a fun read. It didn't totally disappoint, at least. Klavan's writing was good enough to drag me to the ending, but not quite good enough to make me want to run right out and grab some more, alas!

Hotshot cowboy cop (in fact his nickname is Cowboy) Zach Adams runs up against an adversary he really can't handle when Dominic Abend, a former Nazi turned mobster, shows up in the U.S. Abend and his sidekicks torture and kill a known fence, searching for an artifact which was stolen from him, and then leave a trail of destruction as they interrogate everyone else who had contact with the item.

The trail leads the Cowboy to Europe, where he is attacked and infected with lycanthropy by a werewolf there. The werewolf doubles as an elderly female college professor, who has been hunting Abend for the purpose of destroying a powerful and evil magical artifact which he possesses. When Adams kills the werewolf, he inherits its mission.

Zach's mission is further complicated by the aftermath of an extramarial affair, and his inner struggles as he deals with guilt and the potential consequences of his infidelity if it should be revealed, and by the possible corruption of his partner by the criminal Abend.

Twisted, bloody, introspective - typical Klavan.

Kitty Saves the World by Carrie Vaughn

So, Kitty and her eclectic packmates become convinced that Dux Belloram,or Roman, has acquired a magical artifact which will empower him to cause a volcano to erupt - he seems to have done it with Vesuvius centuries ago. So the hunt begins. They lure him to New Mexico with the promise of a new ally - Cormac in drag, so to speak - and try to trap and kill him, but things go badly, and they are attacked by the usual demon and both they and Roman flee the scene.

When they return, Kitty's wolves have all gone missing, and she spends some time running around Denver trying to locate them. The new master of the local seethe of vampires is a weak-willed fellow, who falls under Roman's spell, and eventually forces a confrontation with Kitty.

At long last they discover that Roman is going to work his disastrous spell in Yellowstone, a cauldron of volcanic instability which is long overdue for an eruption. Kitty and all her allies pack up and road trip to the park, where they are able to divine Roman's location and face him down once and for all.

Vaughn claims this is intended to be the last of this series, and it's been a pretty good run, but once you've killed one arch villain, it's tough to top cataclysms and world domination, so she may actually be telling the truth.

A Rotten Person Travels the Caribbean by Gary Buslik

When Rick Steves speaks or writes about travel, you can be fairly certain that he demonstrates a high level of respect and love for the countries and cultures that he visits. On the contrary, Buslik seems to hold most of the places he visits and the people he meets in contempt. Granted, he's not only sarcastic about foreigners in his writing - he says nasty things about his wife and friends, as well.

I know that the purpose is supposed to be comedy, so one can forgive him some poetic license, but it wears thin pretty rapidly for me, and I gave up on it about halfway through. There's plenty of sarcasm going on in my own head some days, I don't need to increase the traffic.

The Sword of the South by David Weber

Did I miss something? It seems as if there may be at least a short story, perhaps an entire novella, in between War Maid's Choice and this book. Bahzell and Leanna are happily married, running a tavern, with a ten year old daughter, Gwynna, who has a telepathic bond with a dire cat. How time flies!

The fourteen hundred year old schemes of Wencit of Rum are finally coming to fruition, beginning with the appearance of a bedraggled man without a memory, at least of who he is, though his knowledge of geography and swordplay and harpistry seem to be just fine. Wencit knows his true identity, but he refuses to enlighten the poor fellow, who names himself Kenhodan. I suppose if Wencit told him, he'd have to tell us, and spoil the surprise, which truly isn't all that surprising if you've read enough of this sort of thing.

Be that as it may, Kenhodan is the key to the next step in Wencit's plots, which revolve in this episode around the defeat of an evil sorceress, Wulfra, and the recovery of a powerful ancient artifact which she has under her domain, though not necessarily her control. Our mysterious red-headed warrior, Bahzell Bloody Hand, and the ancient wild wizard Wencit (say that three times fast) book passage aboard Brandark's fastest ship for the first leg of their voyage, enduring yet roundly defeating a pirate attack, then journey overland, pursued by Dog Brother assassins, for the remainder of the quest.

Things go about as expected, and the trio manage to deal with every obstacle thrown in their path, including an acid-spitting dragon. It is, of course, quite handy that Bahzell, as a Champion of Tomanak, can magically heal his fellow travelers from all the wounds they suffer in various skirmishes.I don't recall Aragorn being able to pluck out the arrows pincushioning (that's totally a verb) Boromir and lay on hands, but Bahzell is special, dontcha know.

There's a side plot which will probably become important in the 2nd or 3rd book in this final fantasy trilogy of Weber's involving Bahzell and Leanna's daughter, who appears to be slated to be the next incredibly powerful wild wizard, either succeeding or replacing Wencit as appointed guardian of Norfressa.

Predictable, but Weber is always quite readable.

Veiled by Benedict Jacka

Alex begins to worry about what will happen when his former master, dark mage Richard Drakh, decides to focus on either recruiting or eliminating Alex at last. His friends suggest that he join the Keepers, the law enforcement branch of the Council, to gain some extra protection and to make Richard more reluctant to deal with him violently. So he approaches his sometime friend, Caldera, and she gets him recruited on a probationary basis.

Just about the time Alex gets used to the idea that most police work is boring, a late night routine assignment goes horribly wrong and results in him being chased around a railway platform by an assassin, who very nearly succeeds in killing Verus. Alex begins to pull at the threads around the edges of his new case, and pretty soon begins to unravel a deadly conspiracy which holds incriminating information on many of the "light" mages on the Council.

This seems to be more of a transitional novel than anything. The point seems to be to get Alex firmly ensconced in his role as a Keeper, and to finally find a good teacher for Luna's Chance magic talents. Anne and Variam are in a holding pattern, though Variam has definitely found his home with the militant wing of the Keepers. The balance of power on the Council is shifting in a way it hasn't in centuries, as a dark mage is appointed a seat for the first time in history.

Hoping for book six soon, now.

Wicked Bronze Ambition by Glen Cook

 I've been reading Glen Cook's work for a long time - three decades, in fact. I may have to re-read his early Black Company novels one of these days and get some reviews up. I used a Christmas gift card to buy Nook versions of the first six of them recently, and picked this one up as an ebook to catch up on the Garrett series, too. Ebooks weren't even a gleam in their daddy's eye back when I first wandered the streets of Tunfair.

Though Garrett would much prefer to avoid the gazes of the dangerous and powerful, it's gotten a little tougher since being affianced to one of the most powerful sorceresses in the city. Her daddy and grandmother have decided they need Garrett to use his skills to find out more about the contest known as the Tournament of Swords, which threatens to kill off many of the children of the magical families of the kingdom, and by implication to put a stop to it, as well.

Then, someone kills his fiancee,Strafa, and all bets are off. Once the shock is over, he relentlessly pursues the identity of the killer(s), with the help of all of his friends whom we have come to know over a dozen or so books, as well as the resources of one of the powerful wizarding houses, since he is now considered to be family by the denizens of The Hill.

The downside to this novel is that it takes a long and winding road to discover the truth about who is behind the resurrection of the tournament and Strafa's murder, and Garrett stumbles like a drunken bull through it all, only the steadfast support of his friends keeping him from a dire fate on his own. There was almost an element of french farce to the whole thing, as Garrett repeatedly tracked down the usual suspects, hauled them off to be questioned by the Dead Man or to his friends in the Algarda or Relway's guard, then they would escape or be turned loose, and he'd end up tracking them down all over again for a new round of questioning.

Glad I pushed on to the end for a nice surprise twist.

True Enough by Farhad Manjoo

Manjoo seems to have set a new record for how quickly I grew disgusted with the premise of a book. Far from being an unbiased study of fragmentation of our news media, his premise immediately veered to the left, explaining why conservatives and Republicans believe all of the lies that come from Fox News, while the progressives and Democrats live in a fact-based world.

I'm sorry, this book was not "true enough".

The Power of No by James Altucher

I must have read an interesting article by Altucher somewhere which prompted me to put his book on reserve at the library. If that article was an excerpt from this book, it must have been the best thing he wrote, as the rest of it is a confusing, anecdotal gallimaufry of stale ideas about self fulfillment and success in life. I kept trying to push on and finish it, but I simply couldn't relate to what James and his wife, Claudia, had to say.

Spider's Trap by Jennifer Estep

While attempting to untangle a dispute between a pair of minor mob bosses at a meeting hosted on her friend's riverboat, Gin - now the reluctant leader of the Ashland underworld - contends with more of a blowup than anticipated when a mysterious stranger detonates a bomb on the boat. It takes Gin a while to determine who the real target of the attack was, and when she does, it brings back flashbacks aplenty from her days training with Fletcher.

As has become the routine in these tales, Gin doesn't really want to get too involved in pursuing the attacker until one of her friends gets hurt. In this case, it's bf Owen, who narrowly escapes death at the hands of a vengeance-minded metal elemental.

Ok, so I've wondered occasionally why the all powerful and all knowing assassin, the Spider, with all of her friends and resources, never seems to spend any time just thinking about her craft, and how to do things better. It seems like she was more effective in the earlier stories, actually.

One of the key plot devices in most of the conflicts is the use of elemental magic. Why don't any of her allies sit her down and just do a brainstorming session about what possible attacks and defenses a fire elemental, ice elemental, stone elemental, metal elemental, water elemental (you get the drift?) would be most likely to use, or have been seen to have used, let alone come up with some novel ideas for how to attack or defend against one? Fletcher was supposed to have been one of the most feared and respected assassins in the history of Ashland, and Gin has access to all of his files, but he never wrote down anything he had learned about how to kill elementals? If he kept files at all, they ought to have been useful stuff, right, not just gossip and reminiscences. Of course, in the first place, what self-respecting assassin would ever keep paper files laying around his home for anyone to stumble across. Really?

So, once again, Gin gets surprised by how tricky and powerful and nasty her latest foe turns out to be, and nearly dies several times, before finally doing something desperate enough to work.

Time for Gin to step up her game.

The Man Who Knew Too Much

Once upon a time, in my youth, I was the quintessential math nerd. Who am I kidding? I was a geek through and through in STEM fields. My life was a cross between That 70s Show and The Big Bang Theory and if you mind-melded together the characters of Eric and Leonard, it would pretty much describe my life. This book about mathematician Alan Turing stirred up a lot of old memories of fun times solving math problems. No, that's not an oxymoron, people!

Turing was one of the key figures in Great Britain's WWII effort to decrypt the secret communications of the German armed forces using the Enigma device. There's a pretty good description of the strategies employed and the counter-strategies that the Germans attempted to stay one step ahead of their foes.

One of the interesting things the British did to help them decipher the code was to plant mines in particular locations specifically chosen so that the Germans found them easily. Then, when the Germans sent messages back to headquarters to report the discoveries, the British knew what the content had to include (locations), and were able to use these as a key to decipher the rest of the message.

Turing was a homosexual, back in the times when that was still a criminal act in England, and he eventually may have committed suicide after being convicted of unnatural acts, chemically castrated by the government, and denied permission to work for the government in any capacity from that point forward due to security concerns. The book spends an awful lot of time interpreting nearly everything that Turing wrote, spoke or accomplished in terms of his sexuality, but if you ignore most of that, it's still an interesting, though tragic, story.

Fun quote:

"In Newman's laboratory, the walls were covered with brown tiles in what F.C. Williams, his partner in the project, called, a 'late lavatorial' style."

One of Turing's early creations, a computer called "Baby" was set to the initial task of testing Mersenne primes, a task which involved many man hours of calculations. Turing envisioned a time when his machines would become almost human, but I don't think he really had any concept of what the computer revolution would accomplish, and even though Siri sounds almost human at times, computers still have not evolved consciousness, nor have they become inventive or creative.

He also had the odd idea that computers could be taught by  method similar to the one we often use to raise children, with both reward and punishment.

I've certainly been tempted to punish mine...but I think it's got the upper hand.

Around the Web

Funniest thing I've heard today, at According to Hoyt,
"I made entire friendships based on how many books this person had to lend."

CFL analysis

This post is a little outdated, as CFLs have been replaced by LEDs, but the ideas apply, I believe.

Ok, read something that got me to thinking...it was about the cost savings of installing CFLs.
-------
(From Five Cent Nickel's pf blog)
"Now let’s work through the math so we can come up with some hard numbers.

Incandescent assumptions:
100 watt incandescent bulb
8 hours/day
365 days/year

100 watts corresponds to 0.1 kilowatts. At 10 hours/day that works out to:

0.1 kW * 8 hours/day * 365 days = 292 kWh

I just checked our latest power bill, and we are currently paying $0.108/kWh for electricity, so that one incandescent bulb would consume $31.54 worth of electricity per year.

Compact fluorescent assumptions:
26 watt compact fluorescent bulb
8 hours/day
365 days/year

Doing the same math as above, we have:

0.026 kW * 8 hours/day * 365 days = 75.9 kWh

At the rate for electricity, that works out to $8.20 per year — a savings of $23.34 per year just for switching out one light bulb. And that’s considering just the cost of electricity.

Given that most CFLs are rated to last an estimated 10x longer than incandescent lights, you’ll come out even further ahead if you can get them for less than 10x the price of an incandescent bulb. Since CFL pricing has come down dramatically in recent years, you’ll actually come out way ahead."
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I actually installed about ten CFLs in my house in various locations as the incandescents burned out, and I really haven't noticed any cost savings on my electricity bill.

So, I don't dispute that, for a given quantity of light over a given period of time, CFLs will use less energy, which is probably a good thing.

However, I don't think the theoretical cost savings will ever really be realized for most households.

In the first place, who leaves the lights on in their house 8 hours a day? In a commercial building, I can see that there would be significant energy savings, but at home? Most of us get up in the morning, turn on a few lights for whatever time it takes us to get ready, then turn them all off, and leave for work. When I come home from work, it's still lights out, and I don't turn on any lights until around 9 pm (in the summer time), at which point I've got another hour or so before I go to sleep, anyway. We turn off all lights except one on the nightstand, so on a good day, I've only got maybe 16 to 32 light-hours (kinda like man-hours) for the entire house. I suppose one could actually keep a journal of how many lights are on in the house, for how long each day, and actually make predictions based on that of more realistic cost savings from installing CFLs.

Second, who uses 100 watt bulbs in the house? Most light fixtures rated for home use say 60w maximum. Using 5C's methodology:
60 W incandescent
.06kW*8 hours/day*365 days = 175 kWh
14 W CFL
.014*8 hours/day*365 days = 41 kWh

that's a savings of 134 kWh at $.108/kWh = $14.42 per year per bulb replaced (THAT OPERATES 8 HOURS PER DAY).

From a financial standpoint, it only makes sense to replace "high use" bulbs with CFLs, if you're interested in ROI.

Third, as I mentioned before, I've seen little to no reduction in my electricity bills from the CFLs. Did I somehow purchase bogus CFLs? Or, is it just that the bulk of my electricity use is from other things. I suspect the latter. I have a refrigerator that runs 24 hours a day, an electric dryer that we run three or four 45 minute loads in each week, an electric dishwasher that runs 2 or three loads a week, an electric oven used to cook our food at least a few times each week, an electric fan in my heater/air conditioner that runs almost constantly, except in the spring and fall, an electric motor in the heat pump for the AC, computers, printers, routers, modems, coffee machine, can opener, toaster, microwave...you get the picture? CFL usage just isn't gonna cut it, in my opinion.

If you want to save the planet, you better learn to live without any of the modern conveniences, the light bill ain't the half of it!

Impulse Buying

From the Get Rich Slowly blog, I found the following list of questions to use on yourself to avoid impulse buying.

1. When will I use this?
2. Do I have another one like this already?
3. If I buy this, where will I put it?
4. If I buy this, can I pay cash?
5. Can I buy a good-quality, used version for less?
6. Do I know somebody who already owns one I can borrow?
7. Can I wait to buy this?
8. Why do I want to buy this?
9. Are there better options available?
10. What would my wife say if I bought this?

Great list, and I use some of these questions, myself.

1. This tends to ward off the "ooh pretty!" factor. I've always wanted a pair of snakeskin cowboy boots, just because they look so cool. I've never spent the money on them, though, because the number of times I'd wear them in my life is below trivial. They used to be mandatory wear for corporate VPs at a company I formerly worked for and owning them back then might have gotten me recognition, promotion, or respect, but I find cowboy boots extremely uncomfortable with my wide, ducklike feet, and I don't wear dress up clothes more than once or twice a decade.

2. This is a real kicker for me. It's why I have a monster card catalog of my books. I should have one for all my tools and gadgets, too, but it's way too much work to create. Failing to bring my card catalog along to bookstores these days keeps me from buying anything I'm not absolutely certain I don't already own, but it didn't used to be that way - I'd just take a chance.

3. I'll put in the garage, most likely. That's where most of my junk ends up.

4. Who carries cash any more?

5. Well, duh.

6. This one is great. I've managed to talk myself out of buying a pneumatic nail gun several times, as my neighbor, Dan, has a couple I can borrow any time. Same thing with a furniture dolly and my neighbor, Paul. I have another neighbor across the street who is a general contractor, so he's got all the tools, too. Sometimes, though, there's an immediate need for something and you can't wait for the person who owns one to get home. I'm always loaning out tools to people I know, too, so it all comes around.

7. This is one use for creative procrastination. At times, though, it leaves me scrambling around at the last minute before a trip or some other deadline, when I determine that I really do need it...NOW!

8. Aside from books, most of the things I buy have some rational basis in need.

9. You're talking about a guy who suffers from analysis paralysis here, so if there's a better option, you can bet I've researched it endlessly.

10. Usually, "just buy the darned thing!"

Money Matters

As I prepare to teach a personal finance class at church in the fall, I'm forced to think a bit about my personal approach to finances. One of the key pieces in anyone's financial puzzle is a thing called a budget. At its most basic level, it provides a framework or a plan for personal expenses, spending and saving. In a crisis situation, such as long term unemployment or a campaign to pay off debt, it can be a fairly restrictive structure.

There's an old method of budgeting called the envelope method, where money from each paycheck is actually placed in separate envelopes, labeled with spending categories, such as rent, groceries, clothing, utilities, etc. As money is spent on each of these things, it is pulled out of the envelope and used only for that purpose. If the envelope for a category becomes empty, in theory, one can't spend any more money on that category. In practice, one can raid another envelope - if it's a variable or discretionary category - for a bit more money to get through the pay period. There are other ways of implementing the envelope system that are a bit more modern, using online services or computer software, and one could probably even implement it in MS Money or Quicken. With the widespread use of direct deposit and automatic bill payment, the physical envelope system has mostly gone out of style, but a virtual envelope system still works quite well.

For a good number of years now, I've used MS Money to track my expenses. The first step in establishing a budget is keeping a record of what you spend your money on. If you don't have this information, getting your finances under control is simply impossible. I actually ran a triple-check system for a year or two, where I entered my transactions in my check register, in MS Money, and in an Excel spreadsheet of my own design.

Seems like overkill, right?

Well, each of those methods provided me with something that the others didn't. The checkbook register was a hard copy, not dependent on electricity, just like getting paper statements from banks and retirement accounts. I realize it's not trendy, but I do like to have a backup in case of power failure or natural disaster. MS Money provided me the opportunity to track multiple accounts and to get a great deal of granularity in how I categorize expenses, plus all the bells and whistles like charts and graphs and year end reports. The Excel spreadsheet gave me a bit more portability with my basic expenses and planning, and Excel has some great financial functions available for calculating ROI and future value, etc. I keep the spreadsheet on my thumb drive these days, so I can look at it when I come up with budget and planning questions. It's more of a brainstorming tool than anything else at this point.

Once you know what you're actually spending your money on over time, you can begin to control your money. The longer the baseline, the better off you're going to be, especially with respect to irregular recurring expenses, like car insurance premiums that show up every six months, annual dues in a homeowner's association, or Christmas presents. I've got records going back ten years or so, but I usually archive stuff after a couple of years, so as not to totally bog down my old computer.

BTW, this is a pretty old version of MS Money (98? or did I upgrade it in 04? (actually the 2K version)) I'm running, that I got free with some other software. Newer versions probably have more bells and whistles, but I've grown accustomed to its face, and I like it.

Whenever I enter a payment in Money, it shows a little "status bar" that tells me how much money I've allocated in my budget envelope for that category, and my current level of spending for the month. If you're under budget, it's green, and when you go over, it's red. Simple, yet effective. Money does have some budgeting features that allow you to move money around between virtual envelopes, though I don't mess with them much.

So, when all is said and done, I don't have a hard, fast budget with fixed amounts allowed for spending in each category - exceed at your own risk! What I do have is a strong historical average picture of my monthly spending for each category. When I exceed that average significantly, I'm alerted to it, and I can spend some time figuring out why the change has taken place. If it's a short term issue, such as spending more money on fuel because I've taken some driving vacations, or more on food because one or more of my kids has come to visit, then I can safely ignore it and move on. If it's a long term issue, with some sort of increasing trend, then I need to take steps to either fix it, or account for it by changing my expectations and plans to match. For example, if I spend $100 in a particular month on books, when my budget calls for $50, then I just need to stay away from the bookstore the following month, and after the jitters go away, everything will be all right. A recent example was getting a huge power bill for the month of July. I took some steps to reduce our power consumption, and I'll know at the end of this month whether they were effective or not. If those steps didn't actually help, then I'll have to adjust some of my other spending plans to account for a plain old increase in utility costs that ain't gonna go away.

What I try to avoid is the "perfect storm" scenario in my finances. M and I have a weakness for good food and beverages. Every so often, we get tired of cooking at home and go out somewhere nice. If we do that several times in a given month, and if, in that same month, I find several new hardback novels I just have to buy, and I have to do some emergency maintenance on a vehicle, and I spend several hundred dollars on some carpet for the basement...then it can really throw things out of whack when all the bills come due at once.

So, I try to plan things out, expense-wise, so that the overall experience is a bit more smooth. For example, right now, because of buying a new dryer, I have run my credit card right up to the amount I usually budget for an entire month's payment, and I've still got a week to go before the billing cycle ends. So, though the truck needs a tank of diesel, and my racquet needs restringing, and the banister I broke needs replacing, and I really want a 1T external drive...I've got a self-imposed moratorium on new spending until the cycle turns. But what if I absolutely have to spend some money?

Fire Season

(written in 2015)

As I was riding in to work the last couple of mornings, I noticed a distinct smoky tang to the air. We've been covered, lately, by a blanket of smoke from the wildfires in Oregon and California. One of my coworkers mentioned the haze seen out the office windows, and it got me to thinking.

Every year, the BLM and Forest Service (and probably other agencies) spend billions on fighting wildfires in this country. I hate to be a conspiracy theorist of any sort, but whenever there's this much money to be spent/made, someone has a vested interest in maintaining the status quo.

With the ability we have to deliver a JDAM strike halfway around the world on a particular building (with some modicum of accuracy), why can't we drop a fire suppression bomb (how tough can it be to design something that explodes over a wide area with a half ton of fire suppression chemical?) within minutes on a wildfire? Certainly it couldn't cost all that much more to use our network of satellites or some retired AWACS planes to watch for lightning strikes or other hot spots in our federal lands, and to have a fleet of fire suppression bombers (again, get some retired B52s or something) in the air during fire season.

The up front cost might still be about the same, but the damage costs ought to be significantly reduced. Isn't an ounce of prevention worth a pound of cure any more?

The Overwhelming Power of Stuff

While working on rebuilding the back porch of Dad's cabin with him, I reflected on the packrat mentality that seems to be an integral part of my family culture. I'm certain that it's a cultural and not a genetic thing, because I'm not biologically related to him, or to his father, the king of pack rats. For grandpa "Pa" Herman, it was an attitude that he learned as a young man experiencing the Great Depression. My father was born in 1936, and he remembers all too well the type of frugality required to survive in the pre-war years.

Anyway, all three generations of our family that I've seen as adults had or have garages and homes packed to the gills with "stuff". Not necessarily new shiny stuff, but just stuff, tucked away on a shelf or in a drawer, "just in case."

When the "just in case" was rebuilding the back porch 45 miles from the nearest lumber yard or hardware store, Dad had stashed away a length of 2x6 that was long enough to build a new joist, and a piece of 2x4 that was just about right for the new stair tread. If he hadn't tucked them away however long ago, we'd have had to wait until he'd gone home and come back, having made a trip to Home Depot in the meantime. Upstairs in the cabin there's a ton of potentially useful items mouldering away; lumber, pipe and fittings, wire and electrical fittings, and all kinds of tools - duplicates of things we have in our garages at home.

The "wise" thing to do, it would seem, is to only purchase one of each kind of tool we might need, and merely do a better job of planning what tools to bring from home to the cabin on each trip. However, in this case, and on many other occasions, having the right tools and supplies for the job on hand saved us time and money.

In my own garage, for example, the amount of stuff is overwhelming at times. There's partial rolls of fiberglass insulation and a half a bag of blow-in insulation, a bundle of shingles the same color as the roof on the house, partial cans of paint from each room's color. There's an entire box full of old hinges, door handles and latches, boxes full of plumbing fittings, electrical outlets, and sprinkler parts. There are extra trailer hitch balls, converters for every imaginable type of trailer lighting connector, and nearly any type of screw, bolt, nut, nail, staple or fastener. There's mortar, paste, glue, grease, and dozens of cans of spray paint.

Then, there's some truly odd stuff. I have a blade for an antique scythe, a couple of rings from horse collars, an old tv tube, two AT&T brand D batteries, a 120/12V transformer, two wheel weights from a long-dead riding lawn mower, a spare drawer for a vanity I don't possess, a bucket of extra socket wrenches, the bunk bed and back door (WHY??) from the old camper, six inches from the end of a logging chain, a jacuzzi pump (I don't own a Jacuzzi), two shovel blades, a kit to make a wood stove out of a 55 gallon drum, a sturgeon pole (never been sturgeon fishing), extra boot bolts and fins for wakeboards, and so much other stuff that it's really impossible to list.

When I'm working on little repair or construction projects around the house, I often wander out to the garage and find something that will help me finish the job without a trip to the hardware store. It's impossible to know ahead of time just what might be required, so I hang on to everything. A month or so ago, I poured a concrete box for my irrigation line near the driveway, and for some odd reason I held on to the used pieces of wood I'd cut out to fit around the pipe as a concrete form. Last week, when I was working on the irrigation project down at a neighbor's place, those same pieces of wood, with minor mods, worked perfectly to form up a box around the new pipe we'd installed and the old pipe, so we could seal things up with concrete. I just never know, and my packrat instincts work out for the best every so often.

As you might imagine, finding things in my garage can be a bit of a challenge, and I can often be seen wandering about with a puzzled look, muttering to myself, "I know I have one of those somewhere..." Would it actually be more time-efficient if I just ran to the store?

Regrets

It's been over a week since I actually finished a book and got a review posted. Summertime is making it very difficult to find the time to read, but I AM having lots of fun.

More when I get 'em.

The One-Page Financial Plan by Carl Richards

I really enjoyed Carl Richards' The Behavior Gap, both the book and his web site, and so I looked forward to reading his new book about financial planning. For me, however, there wasn't anything really new to learn here. I can see how it would be good for a person who was feeling intimidated by the magnitude of the financial planning task, but I really didn't have a lot of takeaways here.

He starts with goal setting concepts, and builds on a very simple framework of just doing the right things a piece at at time to accomplish those goals. What he really tries to do is to make a scary process seem folksy and conversational. You might buy this book for one of your kids who is just getting through college. 

Nothing bad to say about the book, but it didn't really float my boat.

Black Widow by Jennifer Estep

At least in this installment of the Spider's story, we get to return to a more deadly villain, as Gin finally gets the confrontation she's been expecting ever since Mab Monroe's daughter, Madeline M Monroe, arrived in Ashland. Madeline uses all of her connections around the city to launch a simultaneous group of attacks on Gin's friends and family. Finn is served with a lawsuit, Rosalyn gets cut off by her liquor distributor, one of Owen's big contracts falls through, while his sister Eva is suspended from college for cheating, and Jo-Jo's salon may be designated a historical landmark and deemed unsuitable to operate a business.

Then, horror of horrors, the health inspector arrives at the Pork Pit!

Accompanied by a posse of crooked cops, the barbecue joint is judged wanting and will be shut down. When Sophia trips the head cop, she is arrested for assault, and when Gin and her lawyer, Silvio, try to bail her out, Gin gets arrested, which was M. M.'s point all along. They immediately lock her away in "the Bull Pen", where prisoners get to fight each other to the death for the amusement of the crooked police force. Faced with five deadly opponents at once, Gin uses her mad fighting skills and elemental magic to not only defeat the thugs but to escape custody and take it on the lam.

Run to ground at the Pork Pit, the villainess surrounds the building with cops, then tosses Molatov cocktails inside, making sure that Gin cannot escape the flames.

Gin dies, her funeral is held and life in Ashland goes back to business as usual.

No? Well, you'll have to read the book to find out.

My only nitpick about this book was that it seemed a little rushed. The situations facing Gin's friends weren't really allowed enough time to become serious threats and concern us. A really good evil opponent would have allowed some time for despair to set in before the final blow falls.

Stonewalled by Sheryl Attkisson

After reading Sheryl Attkisson's book, I think I feel a great deal as does she, frustrated by my inability to get to the root truths of a number of recent political scandals of the Obama administration. Some of what she wrote filled in details about Fast & Furious, Benghazi, the (Un)Affordable Care Act, and the horrible waste of taxpayer dollars given to "Green" companies whose owners were donors. But the key questions still remain unanswered. How high in the administration are the people responsible, and are these stories all simply the result of incompetence or something more sinister? I knew before, and Attkission confirms, that the media is in deep with progressive interests as well as big business, and for the most part cannot be trusted to do old-fashioned investigative reporting which speaks truth to power.

"What did we really tell America on this night that they didn't already know?
My own network is passing up stories on the crumbling Affordable Care Act; an exclusive investigation I offered about a significant military controversy; an investigation uncovering a history of troubles surrounding Boeing's beleauguered Dreamliner; and massive government waste, fraud, and abuse. Largely untouched are countless stories about pharmaceutical dangers affecting millions of Americans, privacy infringement, the debate over President Obama's use of executive orders, the FDA monitoring of employee email, the steady expansion of terrorism, the student loan crisis, the confounding explosion in entitlements, the heartbreaking fallout from the Haiti earthquake, continuing disaster for government-subsidized green energy initiatives, the terrorist influences behind 'Arab Spring', various congressional ethics investigations and violations, the governments' infringement of and restrictions on the press, escalating violence on the Mexican border, the debt crisis, the Fed's role and its secrecy, to name just a few."

After the election, President Obama issued orders to all Federal agency heads, directing them he was "commited to creating an unprecedented level of openness in Government."

But what was the reality?

"But barely into his second term, the Obama administration finds itself making history instead for its secrecy and assaults on the press. I, and other investigative reporters who are fully experienced in the indelicate art of prying public information from the tight grip of the government's hands, have now begun comparing notes about the daunting challenges this administration poses. There's delay, denial, obstruction, intimidation, retaliation, bullying, surveillance, and the possible threat of criminal prosecution. In my view, and that of other national reporters, this is proving to be the least transparent administration we've covered."

No time to go into an in depth description of all of the problems with the current administration, the bureaucracy and the incestuous relationship between big business and government today. Just go read the book.

Sparrow Hill Road by Seanan McGuire

This is one of those books which is difficult to classify. It fits more into the horror genre than urban fantasy, but isn't quite spooky enough to raise the hackles and cause insomnia. The whole thing is an abrupt change of pace for McGuire, but still enjoyable, though perhaps not as a steady diet - for me, anyway.

This is the story of Rose, the ghostly prom date who appears alongside the roads and byways of rural America, hoping for a ride home. She was killed on Sparrow Hill Road in a car crash on prom night, and has been doomed to an afterlife of rides with strangers.

One of the premises is that if a living human being offers her their coat to keep warm, she becomes solid to the touch and lives until the stroke of midnight causes her to become insubstantial once more. While she's "real", she can eat meals at truck stops and diners, enjoy warmth rather than the coldness of death, and even have sex.

One of her "jobs" is to help those whom the road also claims as victims to come to terms with their new existence, either to join the wandering ghosts of the road or to pass on to whatever heaven or hell awaits them.

The story is told in a series of vignettes and flashbacks, yet moves steadily forward to the resolution of a conflict with the man responsible for her death.

As I said, not my usual fare, but a pretty and dark yarn by McGuire.