Home life

I hate watching our investments decline in value. And worrying about whether we're spending more than we should. But I love Mint, a free money management web service.After reading about Mint in a news magazine, I fired up my MacBook this morning and decided to see how good it looked. First impression: nice. And that carried over to the entire hour or two I spent on the Mint web site. Sign-up was simple. Then came the part I was worried about, giving Mint access to our checking account, investment portfolio, and IRAs. I've used Quicken for many years, and have…

Finding a way to safely drive around on snow and ice needs to be based on a basic Taoist principle of the universe: everything has an opposite.Put otherwise, there's no free lunch. Both personal experience with traction devices and considerable Internet browsing on this subject has convinced me of that fact.Example: I used to have a front wheel drive Volvo 850 wagon. Great car, but not super in our Oregon snow until I put Blizzak winter tires on it. They're made of a special rubber that stays flexible in cold temperatures and have a mud/snow tread design.One day I'd driven…

After extolling in a quasi-philosophical manner why spending money on an iPhone brings legitimate happiness, a commenter on my other blog asked me to explain why I'm so enamored of this piece of technology.Glad to oblige. Tonight I got around to recording my voice mail greeting in which I used the phrase "dearly beloved iPhone." So just as I was eager to tell people about how wonderful my wife-to-be Laurel was after I met her, it's a pleasure to share what -- after five days of togetherness -- I find so enticing about the 3G iPhone.(Note: obviously I'm an iPhone…

Jeez, here I am, sixty years old, and only now realizing that I've had it wrong for most of my philosophically-inclined life: notwithstanding the oft-heard adage, money really can buy happiness.I know this, because I've become increasingly blissful the more dollars I send in Apple's direction.Like a drug dealer that gets you hooked on cheap highs before bringing out the expensive good stuff, my first taste of the modern Apple offerings was the iPod Touch.It was cool. So easy to use. Such an elegant interface. I eagerly transferred my favorite CDs into iTunes, and thence to my new best friend,…

Whew! Laurel and I got out of Salem's Video Only store with our relationship intact. But it was touch and go for a while, as choosing a new television has become an exercise that highlights male-female differences.It used to be that you looked at a bunch of TVs lined up at a store and picked one that had a pleasing picture and was within your price range.On the afternoon of New Year's Eve, though, Laurel and I found ourselves taking a crash course in HDTV technology as we tried to decide on a 42 inch LCD set to buy.The impetus…

If humility is good for the soul, and admitting mistakes makes one humble, this blog post should get me one step further to saintliness.I'm also writing it because I enjoy firing up Google when I have a self-inflicted household problem and finding that some other guy has done something just as stupid as I did -- and thankfully shared the solution to getting out of the ditch he dug himself into.So here's my tale of well pump "short cycling" (turning on and off rapidly, which can burn out a pump). First, let's define a term: when I said stupid in…

It's that time of year ... when I shamelessly plug our Christmas letter: "2008 Holiday Greetings from Laurel and Brian."Download 2008 Christmas Letter I talk about the fear and trembling with which we approach the annual letter. By the time I get around to composing it, we've received Christmas cards from people who clearly are into way more interesting things than we are.They travel to Machu Picchu. We manage to drive to central Oregon. They volunteer to build medical stations in central Africa. We use VISA to make charitable donations online. So I try to make our mundanity into something…

Well, correct that title: a room temperature MacBook. Because so far as I can tell, my beloved new laptop never gets hot on me, as the bottom of my old IBM ThinkPad did. She keeps her cool, and I don't know how. No fan noise. No ventilation slots. Just elegant, sweet, no-fuss, fun computing all day long. Yes, I'm in love, as I explained here and here, and even agonized a bit about here. Today, obsessive possessive romantic fool that I am, I fired up my MacBook's camera with the marvelous iMovie software and defended her honor. I'd been called…

My first YouTube video and blog post on this subject -- why Macs rule and PCs drool -- received some deserved criticism. So I'll man-up and admit that comparing the start-up time of a brand new MacBook to a several year old IBM ThinkPad isn't entirely fair. The PC runs slower and has a bunch more start-up programs installed that, no big surprise, need to start-up before my ThinkPad is ready to go. Fortunately, I had an almost hot-off-the-Chinese-shelf Lenovo IdeaPad Y510 sitting around. I got this Windows Vista computer in January of this year, but haven't used it much.…

I hope my wife understands. Why, of course, she will. She's a retired psychotherapist. Laurel knows what happens when a man falls head over heels in love -- all the crazy things he'll do, how his life revolves around her. My new Macintosh laptop is a girl. That's obvious. She's thin, sleek, responsive, and oh-so-sexy. Plus, she almost always does just what I want her to. No back talk, like the B.S. I had to put up with from a string of Windows PCs that I've had mercurial relationships with. After a couple of weeks with my electronic sweetie I've…

A few weeks ago I dived back into the Macintosh world, after a long dry spell wandering in the Windows wilderness. I started with Apple back in the way old II+ days, but got tired of not being in the computer mainstream. My new MacBook makes me wonder, "Why did I stick with PCs for so long?" I just made a You Tube video that implies an answer: "Because I didn't know what I was missing, fool that I was." Below the video I'll expand upon my reasons for loving MacBook more than ThinkPad, and clarify some remarks I made…

Having turned sixty, an absurd act on my part, wholly out of character with whom I feel myself to be, I've decided to focus on throwing myself into a mid-life crisis. Now, there's good reason to argue that every day of everyone's life should be experienced in crisis mode, following the Zen adage of whole-hearted "hair on fire" living. But the older we get, the more we understand that our days are limited. As is the value of our investment portfolio, particularly after the past few days. A neighbor who's in my age ballpark cruised by a few summer months…

There's something deeply disturbing about jury duty. And I'm not saying that just because I had to be at Salem's downtown courthouse way earlier Monday morning than I'm used to functioning. I'll get up at 6 am when I want or need to. But it ticks me off big time to get a government letter that says I'm required to do my supposedly "civic duty," and if I don't, a warrant may be issued for my arrest. I don't understand why this isn't a bigger political issue. Just about everybody hates jury duty, yet Americans meekly put up with this…

Early in 2005 I converted to Firefox. And got a Firefox cap. Ever since, I've been faithful to my web browser, aside from the rare times I need to use Microsoft's Internet Explorer (such as to perform a Windows update). When I heard about Google's Chrome, at first I vowed to avert my eyes. I'd remain true to Firefox no matter how pretty and enticing Chrome was. That promise lasted just a few days. During which time Firefox did its usual memory-consuming thing after I'd opened many tabs, even though I'm using version 3.0.1. Result: drastic computer slowdown. Or Firefox…

Ah, now that's a terrific blog post title. I'm sure it will generate lots of hits on Google searches as the masses interested in these (obviously) closely related subjects will be led to this bloggish musing on the nature of focused concentration. Such was greatly in evidence today. Not from a Homo sapiens, but from a Canis familiaris – our resident house dog, Serena. It's often said that life should be lived to its fullest. I thought of that adage frequently from about 12:10 to 1:30 pm this afternoon, as I spent well over an hour of my steadily shrinking…

Snakes creep me out. Big time. Even little garden snakes. To my mind, this is proof of evolution, because I've got an inbred distaste for creatures that used to kill my distant ancestors. Also, I grew up in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains (California), where rattlesnakes abounded. So hearing their unmistakable sound as a kid while crawling over some rocks also serves to explain my current Yikes! whenever I see a slithery form with no legs. Yesterday one of those forms also had almost no body – just a few inches of what obviously once was a much…

Many couples about our age (late 50's, early 60's) are contemplating condo life, the travails of home ownership not meshing with their view of what retirement, or semi-retirement, should be about. Well, notwithstanding my occasional lustings for a potted plant on a deck, rather than ten acres of natural Oregon land in the lower reaches of the south Salem hills, we're following the "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger" adage. And believe me, maintaining our tree, brush, and grass filled property (with enough remaining poison oak and blackberry vines to keep my wife's sprayer busy) sometimes feels like dying,…

I just read about the FBI's proposed new policy of finding terrorists by using racial and ethnic profiling. Ever on the alert, I decided to take a closer look around our neighborhood for suspects. Didn't have to go far. There she was, sitting on what I now recognize as a prayer rug, right by our front door, clad in a semblance of her native Islamic garb. Thank you, Attorney General Mukasey. My eyes have been opened. I'm now seeing some disturbing resemblances. That nose…that dark facial hair…

Coliform bacteria! This sounds scarier than it really is. But we still were concerned when a water test showed that our well water contained these potential nasties. Potential, because coliform bacteria are ubiquitous. Only certain types, like E. coli, can make you sick. However, coliforms are used as "indicator organisms" for the possible presence of more dangerous bugs, as this helpful Oregon Department of Human Services bulletin discusses. After we had our well pump pulled and replaced, we had our water tested. We do this every year. This was the first time coliform showed up. The lab only reported "present,"…

To add or not to add? This is one of the big questions for anyone, like us, who lives in a home with a septic tank. For many of the eighteen years we've lived in rural Oregon, we've dutifully added enzymes to aid the tank's digestion of our waste. Whenever we've had our tank pumped or a line unclogged, the workmen have pushed an enzymatic additive, saying it'll help keep our septic system healthy. But is this true? After some Google research today, my conclusion is…No. Save your money and let nature do its thing. Mag Ruffman, the Tool Girl,…