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Check Your Bills

Today, I discovered our AOL billing information. Turns out we’ve been paying for dial-up via automatic bill paying that we thought we cancelled in 2000. $1,800 later, we called to cancel. Customer service congratulated us on being loyal members for over 13 years. FML -Jay

: Image by roberthuffstutter via Flickr

I am a huge fan of automating my finances. My paycheck is direct-deposited. My savings are automatically transferred from my checking account to my savings account. Almost every bill I receive regularly is set up as an automatic payment in my bank’s bill-pay system. I even have my debt snowball automated.

The only question left is whether it’s possible to automate too far. Can you automate past the point of benefit, straight into detriment? The primary benefit of automation is knowing that you can’t forget a payment. The other benefit is freeing up your attention. You don’t have to give any focus to paying your bills, freeing you to worry about other things.

The problem with the second benefit is the same as the benefit. If you don’t give your bills any attention, how do you know if there is a problem? If something changes–an extra fee or a mis-keyed payment–you won’t notice because you haven’t been giving the bills any focus.

Sometimes, this means you are paying an extra fee without noticing it. Sometimes, if your due date changes, it can mean late fees. Even if nothing goes wrong, you are missing the opportunity to review what you are paying to ensure your needs are being met as efficiently as possible.

What can you do about it? I put a reminder on my Life Calendar to check my bills each month. I pick one bill each month and try to find a way to save money on it. I review the services to make sure they are what I need and if that doesn’t help, I call and ask for a lower price. If it’s a credit card, I ask for a lower interest rate. For the cable company, I ask if they will match whatever deal they have for new customers.

Every company can do something to keep a loyal customer happy. All you have to do is ask.

Do you automate anything? How do you keep track of it all?

The Library vs Amazon

Finance, Life

A few weeks ago, I discovered the queue at my public library’s website. The process is simple: Select your books, wait a few days, then pick them up. They are available from any library in the county, delivered to my local library. That’s awesome. Much more convenient-and cheaper-than Amazon.

So I moved a couple of pages of my Amazon wish-list into the library’s queue.

I must not have been thinking, because two days later, I got an email telling me that 19 books were ready to be picked up and 10 more were in transit.

In this county, each checkout is good for 21 days. For items that don’t have a waiting list, you can reserve 3 times. That’s 12 weeks for 29 books. Hopefully, I’m up to the challenge. Please keep in mind, I’m a father of three, two of whom are in diapers, and I’m married, and I have a full time job.

I have frugally blown every second of spare time for months.

Update: This was another post written in advance. When all of the books came in, I suspended my request list. Little did I realize, the suspension cancels itself after 30 days. That was 30 more books. Whee!

New Ideas

Business

lawn gnome

I had an email exchange with my close friend and business partner earlier this week.

“I get ideas but think they are probably stupid. Okay, I have some ideas. Again, I get scare you’ll think I’m reaaaally dumb.”

My response?

“No ideas are stupid. You start filtering **** like that, we’ll never find the ******* gold.

Brainstorming has no filter. You never know where a “stupid” idea might lead or what associations it might trigger.”

When you are trying to generate new ideas, applying a filter like “That sounds stupid” won’t get you anywhere. It’s idea suicide.

Could a discussion on the possibilities of becoming a lawn gnome distributor lead to becoming a successful manufacturer of combat gnomes?

Brainstorming involves turning off your stupid filters and running with it. Keep a recorder or a notebook handy and keep track of everything. Go off on tangents and see where they lead. Maybe they’ll lead to the gold.

The one thing you can’t do while brainstorming is criticize. If you start shooting down ideas, you are destroying the opportunity to find greatness. Even if an idea is impractical, build on it. There has to be an angle that becomes worthy of consideration. On the off-chance that there’s not, run with it anyway. It’s an exercise in creativity.

I regularly send my friend emails with potential business ideas. Most of them come to nothing, but once in a while, something clicks and we launch a successful venture together. If I were filtering ideas because they might be stupid, we might not have some of the projects we’ve got.

In addition to random & odd emails, I’ve got a notebook of some kind with me everywhere I go to record any passing idea I may have. In my car, I use a voice recorder. I periodically review everything I’ve noted and copy most of it into evernote.

Someday, those pieces may come together into a billion dollar idea.

How do you generate ideas? Do you bounce ideas off of friends or get drunk and shuffle a Trivial Pursuit deck into a Monopoly game?

PRISM: Did the NSA kill privacy?

Politicians

Revelations have been continuing to emerge regarding widespread surveillance tactics being internationally deployed by the United States government. PRISM is the codename of the project, which was implemented by the Protect America Act of 2007 that President George W. Bush signed. Their data collection activities remained obscured for years until a contractor employed by the National Security Agency leaked internal documents regarding the invasive system to the public.

The Scope of Surveillance

Because the intrusive monitoring is being conducted under a shroud of secrecy, it is difficult to estimate the magnitude of governmental spying. Federal agents have direct access to any online conversations conducted between Americans and international locations. These authorities have permission to conduct individual surveillance operations on any person for up to seven days before they need to acquire an official warrant. This scenario indicates that the guise of personal privacy has expired.

Logistics Versus Application

The details that have been released about the program illustrate serious setbacks for privacy activists. Fortunately, the public population vastly outnumbers the amount of authorities with access to these surveillance capabilities. Statistically, this means that that are far too many people to be personally tracked. In all likelihood, most people have not been targeted for individual monitoring; however, the story creates an appearance of governmental omnipresence that instills a need for self-censorship. The exposé about wiretapping operations simply confirms the common knowledge that the expression of incendiary rhetoric is dangerous in any arena. It would be naïve to believe that records of online activities were not being stored before the government had access to them. The permanent imprints of internet use were always available; therefore, it was only a matter of time before the legal authorities started accessing the material.

Unequal Privacy

Technically, the surveillance measures have institutionalized extreme privacy for the secret courts that have legalized extensive wiretaps. The United States Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court operates in a completely classified fashion. They issue rulings that have fundamental impacts on American democracy, but they only conduct closed hearings. Additionally, they issue secret rulings that form the basis of laws that citizens do not know about. The court is comprised of heavily partisan members. This is based on the fact they are all appointed by John Roberts, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. Only one appointee was not a Republican, but the FISA Court is so concealed from the general public that conflicts of interest cannot be thoroughly vetted. These judges are privy to unfettered secrecy while they simultaneously deny the public of rights to their own privacy.

Public Backlash

Privacy still exists, but it has been neglected in favor of flashier technologies that are not secure. Fortunately, people have started returning to conventional methods of communication, which cannot be easily traced. Several organizations are developing secure ways to conduct discrete transactions online, and physical cash may now avoid its inevitable obsolescence. Ultimately, these startling announcements about governmental eavesdropping are generating a resurgence of non-digital media to regain privacy in all interactions.

Zimmerman Wins Lottery: A Prank, but What Are the Real Odds of Winning?

Gossip

Satirical reports regarding George Zimmerman have been misconstrued as factual by several media outlets, which have led to the belief that the man who killed Trayvon Martin is now a multimillionaire due to a lucky lottery ticket. The improbability of the story is astounding, but the more inconceivable notion is that reporters actually believed it enough to pass it on to their audience. The origin of the hoax was the same source that profligates fake news items on a regular basis: The Onion.

The outlet makes no claims about their veracity, and yet they have been regarded as a legitimate resource on innumerable occasions. This is an ultimate embarrassment for any organization that failed to recognize the comedic parody as satire. Errors like this indicate an inhuman lack of humor in tandem with a dense mind. Fortunately, news consumers were not to be deluded, and immediately subjected the reporting to a fact check.Through metaphorical symbolism, the original faux news story implied that Zimmerman’s recent acquittal has visible parallels with a lottery victory because both scenarios seem to bestow an improbable fortune. The report

was obviously meant to be disseminated as sarcasm, but the writers must feel tremendous pride in their ability to dupe the mainstream media. An unintended prank has a marvelous ability to generate a lasting reputation for the satirist. Notoriety is now something the author has in common with Zimmerman.

A stark contrast exists between lotteries and trials, and they are not equivalent. The justice system strides to avoid occurrences of random chance while lotteries promote the notion that anyone can win. The legal process is supposed to rely on evidence. Regardless of the circumstances, a victory in the courtroom has to be vigorously earned. Contrarily, there is nothing anyone can do to increase their chances in a lottery short of buying massive amounts of tickets. In a trial, the concept of reasonable doubt exists to exonerate the defendant, which should eliminate any potential for a toss-up. Courtrooms operate using evidence while lotteries are strictly statistical; therefore, the comparison is non-existent.

Even when it comes to jury selection, the process is not chaotically uncontrolled. Both sides have a general composition is mind, and they meticulously scrutinize prospective jurors as they whittle the numbers down. The pool is always sifted for bias. They are analyzed with hopes of picking people that will be sympathetically swayed towards a certain point of view. At the end, one side picked a better jury. Lotto victors cannot pick the numbers that will be responsible for their fate. Winners of lotteries do not stalk unarmed teenagers with a gun and fatally shoot them, but apparently winners of trials in Florida do.

Lotteries are often labeled as a tax for dumb people; coincidentally, this demographic is the same segment of the population that was targeted by the falsified journalism. In fact, real lottery odds are mathematically insignificant. An ABC News study declares it would take 1,684,841 years for the average lottery player to win a jackpot. Not even Zimmerman is that lucky.

Crack

Recipe

I guess I’ve been feeling pretty domestic lately. This is the second food post in two weeks. I wonder what that means? It probably means I’m hungry.

If I’m bringing a dessert to a potluck, or I need a dessert for a party, I bring crack. I’m absolutely sure that wasn’t the name on the recipe when I found it, but it’s been renamed by everyone who has ever tried it. I’m sorry, Mr. Potato-Chip-Man, but I can eat just one of those. This stuff needs to be restricted by the government. It’s an addictive, sell-your-first-born-for-another-hit bit of salty-sweet yum. I’m gonna make you fat.

Ingredients

1 cup of salted butter – $2
1 cup of brown sugar – $1
2 packs of saltines (That’s half of a box) – $2
2 bags of chocolate chips – $4
2 handfuls of toffee chips (broken Heath bars) – $1

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Cover two cookie sheets in foil. Spread crackers over each sheet in a single layer.

Mix the butter and sugar in a saucepan. Stir over medium heat until it starts looking like caramel, then stir for another minute or two. You still want it kind of runny, so don’t let it get thick.

Spoon the caramel over the crackers. Get some on each cracker. Try to get it even, but don’t worry about it too much. Sloppy is good. Remember, half the caramel for each cookie sheet.

Put the cookie sheets full of crackers and caramel in the oven for 10-15 minutes. The caramel will spread out and flow through and around the crackers. You’ll know it’s done when the caramel starts bubbling evenly.

Pour one bag of chocolate chips over each pan. Try to spread it out evenly, but–again–don’t sweat it.

Go away for 10 minutes.

When you come back, the chocolate will be all melty-good. Spread it evenly with a rubber spatula.

Sprinkle some toffee chips over the chocolate, then put the pans in the freezer to cool and set. It will take at least a couple of hours.

When you pull the pans out, peel off the foil then break it up into snack-sized pieces. Don’t break it up first, or you’ll spend the evening moaning over the candy and crying over the foil hitting your fillings.

Depending on how long you cooked the caramel, it will get soft when it approaches room temperature. I always store it in the refrigerator to avoid that.

When you bring this to a party, always pack it two containers. When the first one is empty, you can auction off the second. You should be able to turn the $10 you spent on ingredients into at least $50 of guilt-ridden goodness.