So web 2.0 it makes babies cry.

There is an article about Ron Paul in this month’s Esquire magazine.  While I did manage to learn quite a bit about Ron Paul in the article, and perahps I dont’ think he is as goofy as I once did, I found this infographic to be the most entertaining.

President Obama, Sarah Palin, George W Bush, and some of my other favroites are displayed!

 I’ve been writing this blurb for about a month now, well finally after being a loyal customer for 17 years,  I am officially done with my personal banking at TD Bank.   I must admit, it’s bittersweet, well mostly just bitter.  Ever since the changeover to from Commerce Bank to TD Bank, things went downhill, and fast.   Don’t get me wrong, I was looking forward to the merger.  I was hoping TD’s investment arm would be a great fit for Commerce’s banking division.  Sadly, I was mistaken..  In every sense of the word, they failed.   They were once “America’s Most Convenient Bank”, now they are deplorable.   Sure someone answers the phone and directs your call, but then you sit on hold for 20 minutes to get a person. That does not count as good customer service, or speedy call response times.   You used to be able to reach someone in under 5 minutes, and generally had your issues resolved in a similarly small amount of time. Now you get bounced around for the simplest of issues. 

  I’ve just recently switched over to a Credit Union, I’m quite happy. My main income is directly deposited into my account, any checks for reimbursements or whatever get put right into an ATM machine.  They are almost always there the next day. For someone like me who is feeling the travel itch, that is a good thing. Who knows where I’ll be when I need to put some $$ into a machine. As far as I am concerned, never need to walk into a bank, or sit in a line at a bank again.   At this point, there was just no reason to sit at TD and get dinged for fees whenever they made a change or pulled something out of their asses.   Credit Union’s almost always seem to have better rates on CD’s, Savings/Checking/Money Market Accounts.  Not to mention the amount you can save on auto loans and home loans.

  I wonder what the point of conventional banks are at this point.  I make my deposits at ATM’s, many times getting a photo reciept of the checks right then and there (if desired), view my accounts online, then import the info with buxfer.com, done and done. While I am very happy at my credit union, I’m also considering opening up an Ally account to see how they are.  Their rates look very attractive and may fit my needs well.  I’ll keep you posted.

Since it was such a nice day yesterday, and I need to get rid of my “spare tire”, it was time to rock four new geocaches. Sadly, I only found two of them first. Then again, I was being nice! The first cache was semi-important to me as I had been unable to find it previously. So that was a nice little victory. Pictured below are some ducks from the third one, they really had great colors on them. It is just a shame that my phone kinda sucks for taking pictures, and I left the pocket digital camera in Delaware.

As we draw to the end of 2008, and I look toward 2009 it is that time to reevaluate my goals, and decide where I want to be this time next year.  As much as I say “when I win the lottery” I know that is not going to happen,  well at least I shouldn’t plan for it.   I have been spending the past week thinking about everything that has happened to me in the past year.  Including but not limited to the decisions that I have made, others have made, and how they have affected me.   Some decisions which I thought were minor, ended up turning out to be fairly major.

As a result, I have pretty much created a document which has a major goal on it, which is more of a general guideline.   Next I’ve written down a few minor goals, which blend into the steps to achieve those goals.  Which can be thought of as a set of realistic resolutions. Just a few of my many small steps include:

• Cutting back on the dark cola’s, and eventually commercial/chemical filled soda’s all together.
• Following up on the path I have been on to eat better, healthier and more organic food.
• Increasing my cardiovascular health, something I have been working on since quitting smoking last January.
• Increase my flexibility through my morning yoga sessions, followed by a few minutes of meditation.

Keep in mind that my resolutions are realistic, not delusions of grandeur such a save every penny, reinvest and make a mint in the stock exchange.  After all, I have a better chance of breaking even with the money I invested in Crox than I do of seeing a dime of that lottery money.

Well first and foremost, geek chicks are indeed hot.. How come the only people I never see in storm trooper outfits resemble Jeff the comic book guy from the Simpson’s?

Alas, I’ve been busy. Not just normal modF busy either, but it feels like things are slowing down. I had been studying like a mad man for weeks so I could perform the Entered Apprentice degree (the degree of an Initiate, which makes one a Freemason) for my lodge on this past Saturday morning. I did pretty good, not as well as I had hoped, but a lot better than I thought I would a month ago. This being the largest piece of work I’ve ever done in front of the most amount of people, I learned a few things about public speaking:

1. People want to see you do well, they really do.
2. If you mess up a line or something, keep going it is not the end of the world.
3. Slowing down and pronouncing is a wonderful thing, plus it helps you breathe properly.
4. When going slow and breathing properly, you are better enabled to “Speak over the Wall”.
5. Enjoy it!

Now I’m starting to study future parts that I should already have under my belt, but we all know that I do my best work under (a lot of) pressure.

As for other things, minus about $30 in 2 months, I’ve been doing a great job of keeping track of my buxfer account. So far it has been an interesting journey and somewhat fun to track my progress. In just a few months I’ve really managed to figure out how I spend money, and in some cases how I spent too much money. One of my biggest gripes, as was all everyone else, the price of fuel and oil. I’ve been trying to drive better, keep the AC off, and watch those RPMs. Instead of keeping a series of receipts in the car, enter MyMileMarker. Now I’m not sure that I can go back and enter the receipts that I have in my dashboard console, but I’ll do my best to provide accurate results moving forward. Of course, yes, I can update via twitter.

I’m hoping to get home tonight and get some stuff done in the yard, I’ll make sure I water the plants so we are sure to get rain shortly thereafter. Hopefully I’ll have some time to get the big compost bin sorted out and screened and separated. I have a bunch of stuff that is ready to go into a pile, but I don’t want to add this much of it to the existing one. Hopefully I won’t make a mess or screw up the screening processes too badly, this is the first time I’ve done it.

On a side note I have a phone call into some guy selling *cheap* food quality plastic barrels that I found on CraigsList. I’d like to create a rain water reclamation unit off of the garage so that I can water at least my flowers and perhaps even the grass. I’ve been doing a bit of reading about how people work the water lines back into their toilet lines/grey water systems and I’m not quite sure that I’m ready for all of that. Besides, this is just a hobby project.

Since this is approaching one of my larger posts, I’ll pick it backup later and letcha know some more.

I have been doing a lot of analysis over the past few weeks on my life. Perhaps it is because I have quit smoking, or I’ve been trying to live a bit greener, or who knows. One of my life goals however, is to get my finances in order. I figured now is as good of a time to start as any. Most recently I’ve been really checking over all of my investments, and I started to think about forming a good budget plan. Not something that is set in stone, but something that I can adapt as needed. For instance, restaurant week is coming up here in South Jersey and I really want to play. Going out a few nights a week is something that would be out of my normal realm unless I’m doing reviews. So a workable budget plan needs to be formed. Since I’ve become pretty much addicted to twitter, and to “life on the web” in comes buxfer. What is buxfer? Well from their first tour page they claim to help you :

• How much money (or debt!) you have in your accounts
• The breakdown of your recent expenses
• Who owes you money and who you owe money to

I’ve gone ahead and imported my credit cards, my bank account, and via twitter, I’m now keeping track of the amount of money in my pocket down to the penny. Why would I want to do this? I’m now accountable, for everything I spend. With the tagging feature (which I find is a lot easier to use than Quickbooks or Quicken) I can look back and wonder what possessed me to spend $150 at Starbucks instead of packing my lunch. So far, I have about 6 months of solid data. Unfortunately most of those six months were right smack in the middle of my bad habits and bad spending. So I’m going to really start to use this month as a reference point. Just doing a quick review though, I spent too much money on interest and late fees (sadly not Blockbuster), so I know where I need to improve.

I can also see this being useful for doing the household finances. This way household bills can be split in a variety of ways, and everyone in the house can pay their fair share. Wish me luck, here we go.