- Working on my day off and watching Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. #
- Sushi-coma time. #
- To all the vets who have given their lives to make our way of life possible: Thank you. #
- RT @jeffrosecfp: While you're grilling out tomorrow, REMEMBER what the day is really for http://bit.ly/abE4ms #neverforget #
- Once again, taps and guns keep me from staying dry-eyed. #
- RT @bargainr: Live in an urban area & still use a Back Porch Compost Tumbler to fertilize your garden (via @diyNatural) http://bit.ly/9sQFCC #
- RT @Matt_SF: RT @thegoodhuman President Obama quietly lifted a brief ban on drilling in shallow water last week. http://bit.ly/caDELy #
- Thundercats is coming back! #
- In real life, vampires only sparkle when they are on fire. -Larry Correia #
- Wife found a kitten abandoned in a taped-shut box. Welcome Cat #5 #
Fighting Fair
This was a guest post on another site early last year.
Everyone, at times, has disagreements. How boring would life be if everyone agreed all of the time? How you handle those disagreements may mean disaster.
This is particularly true when you are arguing with your spouse. You spend most non-working moments with this one person, this wonderful, loving, infuriating person. Your emotions will naturally run high while discussing the things you care most about with the person you care most about. Arguments are not only natural, but inevitable.
How do you have an argument with someone you love without lasting resentment?
You have to argue fairly. There are a few principles to remember during an argument.
- When your partner is talking, your job is to listen with all of your energy. You are not interrupting. Your are not planning your rebuttal while waiting for your turn to talk. Your are listening, nothing else. If you don’t listen, you can’t understand. If you don’t understand, you can’t find a resolution.
- Remember that your partner cares. If she didn’t care, she wouldn’t feel so strongly about the argument. This isn’t a war, just an argument. She still wants to spend the rest of her life with you. Keeping this in mind will change the entire tone of the argument into a positive interaction. You will still disagree, but you will be looking for a solution together, instead of finding a “win” at any cost.
- Search for the best intent. Remember #2? There is an incredibly good chance that, if there are two ways to interpret something your partner has said–a good way and a bad way–your partner probably meant the good way. Even if you are wrong, it is far better to err on the side of resolution than the side of antagonism.
- When your partner has finished speaking, it’s still not your turn to argue. Your job now is to repeat your understanding of the issue, without worrying about problem-solving. Before you can refute the argument–or even establish your disagreement–you have to know that you understand her position and she has to know that you do. Without understanding, there can be no path to resolution that doesn’t cause resentment. If you have too much resentment, you won’t have a marriage.
After all of this, it will finally be your turn to make your point. Hopefully, your partner will be following the same rules so you can solve your problems together, without learning to hate each other.
Arguments in your marriage aren’t–or shouldn’t be–intended to draw blood. Fights happen. If your goal is to win at any cost, you will both lose, possibly everything.
Mastermind – The Best Personality Type
A few of the best personal finance blogs have decided to post on a theme. It’s a personality type blog carnival.
After taking the Jung Typology Test, I discovered that I am an INTJ; a Rational Mastermind. Specifically I am I(78%) N(12%) T(75%) J(44%).
What does that mean, you ask?
It means that I am rare. Fewer than 3% of the population has my personality type, which is Introvert iNtuition Thinking Judgement, but the intuition is close to Sensing, making me almost an ISTJ, or a Guardian Inspector.
From Wikipedia:
- I – Introversion preferred to extraversion: INTJs tend to be quiet and reserved. They generally prefer interacting with a few close friends rather than a wide circle of acquaintances, and they expend energy in social situations (whereas extraverts gain energy).
- N – Intuition preferred to sensing: INTJs tend to be more abstract than concrete. They focus their attention on the big picture rather than the details and on future possibilities rather than immediate realities.
- T – Thinking preferred to feeling: INTJs tend to value objective criteria above personal preference. When making decisions they generally give more weight to logic than to social considerations.
- J – Judgment preferred to perception: INTJs tend to plan their activities and make decisions early. They derive a sense of control through predictability, which to perceptive types may seem limiting.
- S – Sensing preferred to intuition: ISTJs tend to be more concrete than abstract. They focus their attention on the details rather than the big picture, and on immediate realities rather than future possibilities.
To summarize the personality of a mastermind: We are big-picture planners. We see patterns other people miss and use that to solve complex puzzles and problems. It’s not possible to follow a thought through the head of a mastermind, because thinking comes with a ton of free association. We may be watching an episode of Spongebob, and something Patrick does will trigger a domino-effect of seemingly unrelated thoughts that will lead a conclusion, out of nowhere. Often, we aren’t aware of the process.
We don’t do crowds, at least, not often. Good conversation with good friends is better than a party full of people we barely know. Crowds are draining. A quiet night at home is a good night, but that’s not saying we-re shy. We just don’t enjoy keeping up with small talk and polite chatter. Get us on a topic we’re passionate about and you won’t shut us up. Get us in a group of people we care about, and we can be the life of the party.
As a group, we are ambitious and deliberate. We are capable of making firm decisions, confidently. Confidence is one of the hallmarks of a mastermind, but one I don’t have to the normal extreme.
We are obsessive focused. When we get set on a problem, we focus in a way that leaves other people stupefied. Time goes away. The rest of the world fades. You may have to shout to get our attention. Sometimes, our minds will drift in the middle of a conversation, and we’ll lose track of who’s saying what. It’s rude, but that doesn’t change the way we are wired.
We don’t do emotion. We are rational and get frustrated with people who make decisions based on emotion. This makes it hard to connect with others, but that’s okay, because it’s better to have a few extremely close friends than a crowd of mere acquaintances. Unfortunately, this can make relationships difficult, too. The benefit to dating or marrying an INTJ is that we carry our focus into relationships. We take our relationships seriously.
We are inwardly-focused, so we spend quite a bit of time examining ourselves. This can lead to a long series of self-improvement projects, but none get taken on as a mere fad. They are planned and dissected before even being mentioned to others, let alone undertaken.
We take criticism well, but if you can’t back up the critique with facts and reasoning, don’t bother. Rational, remember?
We are driven by a need to understand. Once we understand, a given project or line of thought may be abandoned. Until we understand, very little can shake our focus.
Self-promotion is difficult, since we don’t get into the heads of others well. They should be able to see the obvious benefits without being told, right?
Now, to cross a bit of the ISTJ into the mix.
An Inspector is duty bound and loyal, to an extreme. They are dependable workhorses. Under stress, they can get stuck on the things that could go wrong, which would explain why I miss out on the confidence brought by being a mastermind.
To summarize me:
- I am a planner.
- I am extremely focused, to the point of obsession.
- I am driven to learn new things, constantly. Few of those things are incorporated into my life, long-term.
- I don’t cheat. Taxes, games, relationships, etc.
- I am intensely loyal, but to very few people or causes. I don’t end relationships quickly or easily. That said, when it’s time for them to be over, I can break it off with little regret.
Security, improvement, planning, learning, thinking, loyalty, honesty, integrity.
That sounds about right.
Now you know a bit about how I tick. What’s your personality type?
How Much is Your Pet Worth?
A few years ago, one of our cats had a urinary tract blockage. When that happened, the cat’s bladder became almost rock-hard. He was in pain.
Naturally, this came to our attention late on a Saturday evening. Our choices were to leave the cat in pain or head to the emergency vet. One x-ray, one emergency catheter, and 2 nights in the vet’s office later, we charged the $750 bill and brought the cat home. He lived about two more years and had to be on a special UT-friendly diet. He spent the next two years with poor bladder control and very little energy.
About the same time, I had a coworker with a cancer-ridden cat. Until that time, I had no idea that you could get chemotherapy for a cat. Between the chemo and the regular surgeries to remove tumors, they were dropping a few thousand dollars every few months.
Recently, a friend’s cat ate a ball of twine and narrowly avoided intestinal surgery that would have cost $2500. He was willing to pay instead of seeing his 8 year old cry. I figured a new kitten would soothe her hurt.
How much is too much to spend on an animal?
When our cat needed a trip to the fuzzy emergency room, we had no savings. I’m not sure how we were keeping our bills paid. $750 was a lot of money, but we didn’t hesitate. Afterward, we discussed it and decided that it wouldn’t happen again. When a pet needed that much care, it would be time to put it down.
We’ve currently got a 17 year old arthritic cat. I tried discussing its end-of-life options, but my wife looked at me like I was asking her to punt bunnies into a lake. I fear we’re going to be paying a lot to stretch out the end of the cat’s life.
Now, before anyone tells me that I hate animals, we have 5 cats, 3 kids, 2 gerbils, 2 pythons, and a dog. We are an animal-friendly house. Or we keep spares.
That said, it’s the natural order of things. People outlive their pets. When you buy a pet–with the exception of giant tortoises and some birds–some part of you knows you are going to outlive it. What’s the right amount to spend, trying to stretch out the most uncomfortable years of a pet? When does the financial burden outweigh the companionship? When do I go from cold-hearted jerk to financially-responsible pet-owner?
For the pet owners out there, how have you dealt with this? How much would you spend to keep your pets kicking?
The Happy Butt
Do you find the cloud in every silver lining? Is the glass not only half empty, but evaporating? Do you start every day thinking
about how the effects of entropy on the universe make everything you do ultimately pointless?
You may be a pessimist.
Pessimism gets a bad rap. Without pessimists, we wouldn’t have insurance plans, missile defense systems, or Eeyore, and what would the world be without those things?
The thing you have to ask yourself is “Does the negativity make you happy?”
The next thing you have to ask yourself is whether or not you were lying with your previous answer.
If you have a negative outlook on everything, I have good news for you: it’s possible to defeat it. No matter how long you’ve been looking at the world through coffin-colored glasses, no matter how ingrained your negative slant is, it’s possible to change it.
You have to want to change it, because, as the saying goes, old habits die hard. Yippee kai yay.
You need a happy butt.
Little known fact: language shapes the way you think. If your language has no words for a concept, you will have a difficult time thinking about that concept, or even understanding it. Statistically, Asians are better at math than their western-world counterparts. Why? It’s not genetic. When a family moves to the US, the edge is lost within 2 generations. It’s not the amount of school they get. Even in backwaters with limited school access demonstrate the same abilities.
It’s the language. Euro-based languages are horrible. They are a clumsy mish-mash of crap from around the world, and the numbering system makes no sense. 11, 12, 13, huh? Spoken, that’s not a progression, it’s something we have to learn by rote. Why is 13 pronounce “thirteen”, with the ones place first, but 23 is pronounced with the tens place first, the way it is written? Where did the word “twenty” even come from? It’s obviously a horrible bastardization of “two” and “ten”, but is it self-evident? Does the progression through the decades follow some kind of rule? Twenty, thirty, forty, fifty. Nope.
The Asian languages (most of them) differ. The numeric progression is spoken in a rules-based progression that makes sense. 23 is literally “two tens three”, making learning math less about rote memorization and more about masters some simple rules.
In the western world, we are handicapped by our language, at least when it comes to math.
The rest of our thoughts are formed by language, too. Learn a language with different roots than the one your were born with and see how your perceptions change.
One of the signs of negative thinking is qualifying everything you say negatively. For example, one person might say “It’s a beautiful day, today” while Mr. Negativebritches would say “It’s a beautiful day, but it’s probably going to rain.” That’s a sad butt, err, but. Every time you qualify a sentence with a sad butt, you are reinforcing your negative view of the world.
The solution? Drop your drawers and paint on a smiley face. You need a happy but(t). You can rephrase the sentence into a happy thought without changing the sentiment or meaning in any way. Try this: “It’s probably going to rain, but it’s a beautiful day, now.” That’s a happy butt, and it reinforces the positive in your mind.
It sounds stupid, but it works. Your language shapes your life. Put a positive spin on what you say, and you will eventually start to think about life in a positive way.
Give it a shot. For the next week, every time you say something negative, qualify it with a happy butt. At the end of the week, come back here and tell me how it’s working and if you can sense a change in your mindset.
Five Ways to Save Money On Cable
Cable is a luxury. There are very few people out there who can actually and legitimately consider cable television to be a necessity of life. For the rest of us, it’s just something that’s nice to have. Unfortunately, it’s expensive. In my area, prices come as high as $90 plus tax, and that’s not including any of the fancy channels that could feed my True Blood addiction. If you start adding on channels, you can get up to $250 per month.
That’s a lot of cash.
Cutting back on cable TV is one of the easiest ways to get your spending under control. Here are 5 ways to make it happen.
1. Ditch it
Do you really need cable at all? How much of your life do you waste in front of the TV? This wouldn’t work well in my house. We enjoy too many shows, and a lack of TV aggravates my insomnia. When I wake up at 2AM, I need something mindless to distract me while I fall back asleep.
2. Netflix Instant
I love my Netflix. With Instant, as long as you aren’t too hooked on watching the latest show as it comes out, you can catch most of the show you enjoy. There are thousands of TV series to choose from. I make a habit of choosing a couple of shows at a time, and watching the entire series before moving on. This does have the drawback of leaving you a couple of seasons behind for some shows, like In Plain Sight. Grr.
3. Go basic
If you do need TV, do you need the extended cable-only channels? Can you get by with basic cable, and just get the shows that would be otherwise broadcast? That’s what we did. This, combined with #2, make TV cheap and easy.
4. All internet
Did you know that you can use a Roku box to get Netflix Instant, Hulu Plus, Crackle, and more? I have more channels available there than I’ve ever had on cable. Starting at $50, it’s a steal.
5. Drop the fancy channels
HBO, Skinimax, and Showtime are pure unnecessary luxuries. Save yourself some money and buy each series on DVD as they come out. If you buy one a month, you’ll still come out ahead.
I’m not about to tell you that cable is evil or that TV is rotting your brain. I enjoy my rot, and you should be able to do so, too. Try not to waste extra money doing it.
How do you save money on TV?
