• On Life and Love

    Weekly Linkage: Politics, Money, and Some Music

    The original posting of this was horribly borked. I may be switching link-posting plugins. Warm and Fuzzy Budgeting – "You have things that matter to you. Hopes, and goals, and dreams. This is going to sound cheesy, but I think it’s true: Your budget is simply your hopes, and goals, and dreams … on paper." Maybe those tax incentives for creating new jobs should be for hiring a currently unemployed person | Prometheus 6 – What? How are you only going to hire people who already have jobs? "Members of Congress had urged the commission to explore the issue, after reading press reports of numerous instances in which employers and…

  • On Life and Love

    Financial Advisor: Not This One

    My first financial advisor discussions have ended with a quiet crash and burn. The Bogleheads’ Guide to Retirement Planning warned me about commission-based folks. I listened to them and then called him on some junk. We met yesterday to catch up on some of the things we talked about the first time, such as pre-tax vs. post-tax investments, “real wealth” vs. “paper wealth”, etc. Showstopper: he was trying to sell me insurance. Lousy insurance at that. His ideas of safe, “real wealth”, tax-protected investments were whole life and variable universal life insurance. Which he’d get a commision on for selling me.

  • On Life and Love

    Weekly Linkage: Web Work Everywhere!

    This week’s internet cruising: A reason to UI test, or “How to fill in the gaps” – "My stance: We unit test the ever-living raccoons out of the app now (thanks in no small part to Jukito). And we do have a UI testing process that was used for major features. While I agreed that we should have more, I was leery that it would make us any more productive. And I doubted it would help us discover any more issues than we already were…" Guide to CSS support in email clients – Articles & Tips … – A nice set of tables covering CSS support in various email clients.…

  • On Life and Love

    Weekly Linkage: The Personal Finance Edition

    The notables in this week’s internet cruising were mostly in personal finance. Surprise, surprise. I picked up a couple of books from the library yesterday: Generation Earn by Kimberly Palmer. I’m neck deep in this one already, and really liking her approach. Less conservative than Dave Ramsey, less passionate as well, but it’s not geared at those struggling and drowning, it’s geared at those of us able to look a little longer term. The Bogleheads’ Guide to Retirement Planning (by a ton of folks). I’ve read a fair amount of their stuff on their wiki, but want to get a feel for their approach in a more sequential fashion. The…

  • On Life and Love

    Weekly Linkage: Kickin’ It 1995 Style

    This week’s internet cruising: 1995 – I loved me some JNCOs. Playing the ‘playing the racism card’ card – "Most of us don't have to bend over backwards not to be seen as racist because we don't go around saying racist things." Pigeonnier – Bee-yoo-tiful. Jim & Sid’s Tiny Houses – Some of these are so cute! Google: Bing Is Cheating, Copying Our Search Results – "Google has run a sting operation that it says proves Bing has been watching what people search for on Google, the sites they select from Google’s results, then uses that information to improve Bing’s own search listings. Bing doesn’t deny this." Define Gender Gap?…