I'm taking tonight off from being irresponsible to get some work, Christmas shopping, and personal accounting done. Through some belt-tightening, planning, and relatively lucrative employment I've managed to pull out of the thirty thousand dollars of debt into which I plunged when I was unemployed in 2008 and 2009. By this time next month, I will be 100% debt-free for the first time since I was 22, when I got my first credit card and lost my childlike mind. So that feels good.

The next step is resolving what I see as a big financial problem for which my debt has made me incapable of addressing: my mortgage. Remember the mortgage crisis that culminated in the printing of zillions of worthless dollars in 2008 to make believe the problem had been addressed? Well, I'm one of those "toxic" mortgage customers. I took out a loan for the full buying price of my place when I bought it in 2007, and got an APR of 6.375% on it. That's bad. Especially with the dizzyingly low rates that are available to qualified borrowers nowadways. But over the past four years(it'll be five years in March!) I've made sure to always pay more than the amount due on my monthly payment, even if it was only a couple dollars. Some months were small, others were big, but now, I've managed to lop the last three months off my term and save myself about four times what I've overpaid. That feels good, but I'm still sitting with under 20% equity on my place.

So my plan is to ratchet up my monthly payments with my newfound extra money each month, with the goal being to get over 20% equity, and qualify to refinance at one of these great low rates. I have a spreadsheet on google that outlines my monthly expenses, debt, savings, and projections thereof. My plan is to increase my mortgage payment by an amount roughly equivalent to 0.7% of my principal balance each month, with the goal being to get over 20% as quickly as possible, so I can refinance for super-happy-big longterm savings.

What I've discovered though, is that I really don't have any savings whatsoever, and a monthly budget surplus seems like an ideal way to fix that. I have a couple of noticeable expenses that come up once or twice a year, and having a savings to deal with them and anything else unexpected seems like the reasonable thing to do. So here's the plan. Save up about two months' salary, then scale the monthly contributions to savings down to a trickle to push hard on the mortgage for about a year and a half.

Then I refinance, and fix my place up. Let's see how it goes. Check back with me soon.

Yesterday, besides working, I undertook the most revolting experience I have had to endure since I would say, 1995, when I worked at Ben Schwartz Food Mart back in Peoria.

Last week, I was in my friend Nick's car, on the way back from Lawrence. We had just watched the season premiere of Parks and Recreation, and a good time was had by all in attendance. I got a series of texts from my roommate about how the keg was pouring 90% head. The keg is from my favorite possession: my kegerator.

Anyway, I promised my roommate that I would look into it when I got home, and put it out my mind. I checked it out the next morning, and in my various times in and out of the fridge to check pressure gauges and stuff, I noticed that the top of the main fridge door was wet. I opened the freezer and it wasn't even slightly cool inside. I looked down at the wall and saw that the kegerator was unplugged. Because of the appendage we use to regulate the temperature inside, the unit will very easily become unplugged.

I explained to my roommate that it was because the beer had warmed up that it was pouring mostly head. I plugged it back in, and the compressor kicked on immediately. Upset by the loss of a fair quantity of meat and seafood that had completely thawed, we disposed of a couple of items from the freezer and went about our business.

By Friday evening, a tinge started to manifest in the air. I didn't notice it, but my roommate wore a disgusted look on his face from it. I assumed then, that it was me, and sheepishly went to take a shower. By saturday however, it was an outright stench throughout the common area of the whole apartment. Walking in the front door was a wall of stench. It took us at least a day to figure out what was going on. We turned the place upside-down trying to place the odor. My roommate was certain that some sewer gas had belched up through the kitchen sink, so he filled the sink with water. But over the next day, the stench only got worse. The closest thing I can think of to compare it to would be like the pen of unhealthy livestock. But even that doesn't do it justice.

But I was sitting at my desk yesterday, and it occurred to me that the stench appeared at about the same time as the kegerator caper, and I decided that the two events couldn't have been coincidental. We zeroed in on the kegerator and found that the smell's intensity had a zero added to its arbitrary measurement of revulsion, when we were close to the kegerator.

So we performed surgery on the kegerator, convinced that somewhere inside it there was a foul reservoir of thawed meat and seafood leavings that had to be cleaned out. In our exploratory surgery, we discovered the path of the drainage was actually determined by design. the natural slope of the floor of the freezer led back to a catch that fed into a pipe that went down. We followed that down to the bottom-rear of the unit, and there, sure enough, perhaps two quarts of the most vile liquid I have ever seen or smelled had accumulated.

I unplugged the fridge, propped the freezer door open, and we stuck a couple plates of baking soda into the freezer. We left for a while, and when I returned, I pulled the fridge away from the wall in such a way that the pan was as exposed as possible, and tried to think of a way to tackle it. It was attached to the compressor, so the only way to pull it out would have been to detach the compressor's housing and unwire it, and I wasn't about to do that. Between the lip of the pan and the heat-dissipating grated structure of the refrigerator's rear was perhaps an inch of clearance into which I could insert something to extract the reeking poisonous liquid.

So, the most effective method I found was to take a large spoon and bail the pan out a tablespoon at a time, over the course of about an hour, enduring the mortally toxic odor all the while. Three times I had to break away to breathe out my nausea. After it was done, I put a bunch of baking soda into the pan, and sprayed down the floor with 409. I boiled the spoon for about 40 minutes before putting it in the dishwasher. Maybe some day it can be used again.

I am now employed, as you probably know, but if you did not, there it is. I am now employed, and I'm excited about it. As lovely as that news may be, that's not what I decided to blog about for the first time in over two months. No, I'm writing here on this seldom-viewed website to tell you about my experience with a new consumer-grade technology.

Pursuant to the fact that I am now newly-employed, I was in the Chicago area for my new-hire orientation, which I must say was excellent. Previous employers, especially the one where I supported battle simulations, could take a lesson from the practiced brevity and high-density content that was cheerfully and interestingly delivered over a period of two days.

But again, I digress. Since I was in the area, I arranged with my patient accommodating new employer to let me fly in early and spend the weekend with family at my brother and sister-in-law's house, not far from where I would be staying over the course of the orientation period. This all fit very well with scheduling, and a lovely weekend was had by all. When my brother dropped me off at the hotel, I immediately began to miss him, and got emotional when I had closed the door to the room behind me.

That said, I wanted to talk about Blu-ray, the purported next generation in consumer-level video storage. I honestly found the picture to be a little too good, if you can understand that. The motion was so fluid that I was forced to step out from behind the fourth wall and come to the realization that the robotic smoothness, as if I'm looking through a window and not at a large television set, is actually a little disconcerting, and I would actually like to have the slightly choppy nature of DVD and its predecessors.

Realism is not important, I've decided, when watching movies. It's the same reason I think movies that are projected in 3D are grasping for a level of realism that is demonstrably unnecessary. I'm aware when I watch a movie that the people I see are not really there, and cannot respond to my suggestions at how to disarm the bomb or come to terms with a death. Comedian David Mitchell made an excellent point when he said that people actually dislike being realistically immersed in the settings of the media they consume. A good example of this is sculpture. Sculpture is extremely realistic, and by its nature is far more realistic than painting, yet it is far less popular.

But even with all that in mind, I think I could live with Blu-ray, but for one problem. Intrusive advertisement is rampant. A significant portion of set-top Blu-ray players are wired for internet services like Netflix Streaming, Hulu Plus, or just plain old Youtube. As such, they will take advantage of this internet access to force the user to sit through commercials before they can watch their own movie. As far as I know, there is no setting that allows users to disable these ads.

This is on top of elaborate and patently fluffy animations and menu screwiness, along with Final Fantasy 7-style animations for production houses and distribution companies, which are also ads in themselves. They cannot be skipped or avoided in any way. The aggregate result of these delays is that the "feature," for which the legitimate consumer forked over money to watch cannot be watched until several minutes of ads and menu juggling have been accomplished.

Also added to the delay is the fact that since Blu-ray is a poorly written and implemented technology, there is an actual computer processing period that takes place for the loading of the underlying software that reads and displays the information stored on the disc.

On top of this is the customary, and now completely ignored MPAA/FBI warning about copyright and its legally protected status. I find it especially outrageous that due to the nature of ripped media(ie, illegally obtained digital copies of movies), these warnings are never seen by the people who decide to infringe the copyright. This means that pretty much the only people who have to sit through the display of these warnings are the people who legitimately purchased the disc. So basically, the people who play by the rules are being punished for doing so.

Incidentally, upon a quick check on my roommate's streaming setup, Netflix doesn't stick the FBI warnings into their features either. You just hit play and the movie plays. I agree with most people that physical media is quickly becoming a thing of the past, and that in a short time, people will remember physical media like DVDs, Blu-ray discs, and VHS tapes as something from a bygone era. However, Blu-ray discs and even DVDs are still very much in the mainstream.

It would appear to me that the MPAA is either trying to shape consumer behavior by making their products a pain in the ass to use, or they're just hopelessly out of touch- oblivious to the sensibilities and preferences of normal people. The former seems highly unlikely, given the fact that many movies are still not available on streaming services, so I'm going to bank on the latter.

I'm also probably never going to purchase a physical disc for a movie again, as I'd rather pay just once for a movie than over and over with commercials.

Ever since I stopped growing, I've had extra weight. In high school it wasn't that big of a deal. In college it was a minor annoyance, and everybody says that you're "supposed to gain weight" in college, due to the party culture. After college, I started to make my own money, and spend it on things I wanted, including foods I wanted. Invariably, these were terrible culinary choices. McDonald's, Taco Bell, and Chipotle were regular stops for me, and when I went to the grocery store I would buy terrible things: hot pockets, hot dogs, microwave burritos, american cheese, white bread, peanut butter, jelly, 2% milk, soda, junkfood, and beer.

I lived this way for over ten years, and now I'm the heaviest, fattest, and most out of shape I have ever been in my life. It's easy to continue, facing the choices that have to be made to turn things around. It's easy to go with the flow. But I recently realized that the path of least resistance could easily mean terrible things for me, and not very far down the road. Heart disease. Cancer. Death. I'm 32, and these are very real possibilities for an unhealthy person.

I was getting a drink with my friend Jon recently, and he was telling me about the changes he made to his lifestyle in 2010. He was just as heavy as I am, or possibly heavier, and now he looks fantastic. He lost over fifty pounds over the second half of 2010. He talked about how unhealthy food gives your brain a short seratonin rush that passes quickly, and leaves you wanting more of what you just ate, regardless of whether you're hungry.

Elsewhere and historically, fat has been viewed as a sign of luxury and abundance. Only the wealthy could afford so much food that they ate more than they needed. Their wealth allowed them to eat for pleasure, not sustenance. As with so many things, American industry has turned the concept on its head.

The cheapest, most accessible calories available in Anmerica are in fast food. The easiest and most apparent way to fill your stomach in America is to load up on extra value meals, and in so doing, pump your body full of endorphines that give you a short-lived high that your body learns to associate with eating unhealthy(but admittedly delicious) food. The result of this is that poor Americans are fat.

This means that people with the means to eat healthy in America are failing to realize an enormous bit of potential when they don't. While unhealthy food is ever-present and marketed in-your-face, healthy food is still readily available to anyone who wants it. It certainly gets a bad rap though. My friend Jon made an excellent point though, when he said that there are extremely profitable systems set up in this and every country that operate on the assumption that people will just do what's easier in the short term, and those who see through that and act accordingly place themselves at an enormous advantage.

I decided then and there that I was changing my life. That was Monday, February 21st. The next day, I walked into the cafeteria at work for lunch, and instead of going straight for the deli or the fried/grilled counters, I went straight to the "home-cooked" counter which always features two ever-changing selections. One is the "comfort zone," and the other is the "right choice." I'll leave the distinction to you, but suffice to say, I went for the right choice, and on a whim, I decided to treat myself on top of this with some roasted potatoes.

My custom when eating is to eat all the least pleasant things on my plate first. So I ate all the squash and peppers and chicken(though I love chicken, but I needed an in-mouth accompaniment with the vegetables) with it, and last on my plate was a pile of greasy roasted potatoes. I took a bite of one, and almost immediately after swallowing it my stomach roiled with indigestion. I realized immediately that what Jon has told me was correct. I threw the rest of the potatoes away, and I've been eating healthy ever since.

That was eight days ago. I've been walking about a mile per day in my commute, and trying to run on the treadmill upstairs at least once a day, but i haven't been as good about that. Even so, my most recent weigh-in has me at 8.7 pounds lower than when I started. I feel better than I ever have, I'm sleeping better, and I have more energy.

The next couple of months should be very exciting for me.

Well that's a record for silence. I've not been especially busy over the past seven months, just dealing with feelings, and not in much of a mood to go broadcasting it to everyone I know. I spent most of the second half of 2010 dealing with the pain of the breakup, and annoying my exceptionally patient friends about it. I met an incredible woman in September, and we enjoyed the time we had together until January, when she moved away to accept a gigantic job out of state. So, I've been trying to keep my head up and see my friends when possible.

I'm still employed, and earning the most I've ever made. I've devoted the majority of this new income to paying off the very significant amount of debt. The job I had before didn't pay well enough to allow me to make any real headway against the five figures of debt that I had-- quite the opposite. I actually picked up some debt there. But as it is now, I've actually managed to take the five figures down to four figures, and I put together an aggressive payoff strategy that has me completely out of debt by the first of July(this year). Excitement about this fact has occupied a great deal of my attention as of late.

I wanted to share with you what I think is a really simple method that I've put together for debt payoff that I'm confident would have been effective even with the lower income at my old job. I spent all but two weeks between the 4th of July and Labor Day in Dallas, and my presence there was largely unnecessary, as the planning and meeting that was going on there was for Windows stuff. Not my area of expertise. That meant I spent a great deal of time looking for work to do.

In this search, I formulated a plan to simplify my bills, debt, and budget. I get paid once a week here, as I'm still an hourly contractor. This means that there are sometimes bills that are larger than my paycheck. A notable example of this is my mortgage. For a long time, I've struggled to create a situation where the money that gets deposited into my bank account is mine to spend, and spendable. I wrote and continuously improved my ledger app for this purpose, under the idea that if you have a rough idea of what your expenses and income will be, you will know how much money you have by looking and seeing the lowest balance in the future.

I've conducted my financial affairs under that understanding for several years, and it's worked well enough for me to avoid overdrawing my checking account. But what I really want is to normalize my finances so that every paycheck I get has roughly the same result. The same impact on my check account balance. In this way too I can get a better idea of what I'm spending on things. I decided that what I needed to do was set up a second account, and divide my direct deposit between my checking account and the second account. I settled on the ING Direct account that I've already had for several years, and with which I've on several occasions made a half-hearted attempt to create savings or contingency funds. It was ideal for my intended purposes in this case.

I started a spreadsheet, and it has grown from this point, but it began with an itemized list of all of my monthly expenses, including debt payoff itemized at at least $1000 a month. I added all the items up, and divided that number by the number of times I get paid each month, and rounded up. I took this rounded up number and changed my direct deposit setup to take that number and send it to the ING Direct account, and dump the rest into my checking account. This means that my mortgage, HOA dues, electric bill, phone bill, cable bill, insurance bill, and debt payoff are all paid automatically from this second account, and my own spending money is constant from check to check.

Using this method, I don't have to put a great deal of effort into paying bills on time or getting out of debt. I don't have to make sure I have enough money by the 13th. It's all taken care of by the separation of my accounts. All I need to do is pay the bills that fluctuate, and dump the remaining balance each month into debt repayment. As such, I've been able to draw up a debt payoff schedule, which indicates at any given time when my debt will be paid off.

And when that happens, drinks are on me.

Having now worked out in the world for several years, I've come to an understanding about something. If you work in a cubicle, It doesn't seem to matter how comfortable or "Class-A" it is. The intent in its design is clear: subordination. You are in a cubicle, and you therefore are beneath someone else. Your role is to be "under" someone else. This fact has been made clear to me by the structure and layout of the cubicle. Allow me to elaborate.

Take this old picture, for example. This is an average shared office-like workplace from probably about 60 years ago. Look at all the people. They're all pretty visible from throughout the room, but even without partition walls between them, they each have a modicum of privacy. Look at how their tables and desks are all perpendicular to the wall, and not flush against it. Their backs are to nothing in particular. If someone comes to talk with one of them, they only need to look up. They don't need to turn around.

Compare that to the average cubicle of today. The partition separates and isolates the occupant from coworkers. The only privacy the occupant is afforded is from his/her contemporaries. If anyone approaches the cubicle, the occupant's back is to them, which means that while the occupant is working, all they do is visible for any passerby, but especially to management. The occupant knows that their boss can see whatever it is that they're doing, just by approaching the cubicle. This means that the overarching motif is fear. The design goal is for occupants to be productive not for the sake of productivity, but for fear of getting in trouble.

To further reinforce the intent behind modern office design, let's have a look at a typical managerial office.

The door to this room is off to the left, or possibly the right, but certainly in such a position that the occupant of the office can see who's there, and face them with a piece of authoritative furniture between themselves and the visitor. The theme of the manager's office is comfort and authority, as opposed to the theme of the cubicle, which is vulnerability and fear.

I've worked in many cubicles over the years, and they've all been similar enough to the one pictured above that the main points I stressed were consistent. When I worked at Sprint, I remember that I didn't like what I was doing on my computer to be visible to anyone who came close. So I moved my computer to a part of the desk that allowed me to face the entrance of my cubicle. This way, my computer screen faced only me, and I could see when people visited me.

My boss, Barbara, was very opposed to this idea, and cited this rearrangement in a write-up she composed after I'd been there a short time. She didn't like that she couldn't see what I was doing on my computer. She didn't like that she couldn't surprise me anymore. She was very accusatory in her tone. "What are you trying to hide?" she would ask. "It's very paranoid that you would do this." The simple truth at the time was that I didn't like people tapping my shoulder without me knowing they were there, but thinking back I realize that I felt like a subject of management, and not like a valued employee.

Every manager I've ever had has had an office with a desk that allowed them to face the door. In addition, they would always put their computer in a position to allow them to see who was coming at all times. Nobody ever claimed that the people in management were paranoid, or trying to hide anything. Such ideas didn't enter people's minds. Indeed I'm sure they were looking at youtube and facebook too, just like everyone else. But they had no need to worry about whether anyone could see it.

So why does a cubicle dweller not only work in fear of reprisal, owing to the default layout of their allotted work space, but the manager is above reproach? Don't even take into account things like managerial incompetence or hypocrisy, or whatever other charges you can levy against any manager you've ever had. Look past all of that and ask yourself, why don't we ever wonder what they're looking at on their computer? We certainly worry about them seeing what we're doing. Why does the term, "time theft" only seem to apply to cubicle-dwellers? Even the dwellers themselves don't generally think about what their managers are doing, if it doesn't relate directly to what they themselves are doing.

We have an office layout system now that encourages discipline with fear, and work ethic through paranoia. It seems like a problem to me.

What a weekend.

On Friday I met a bunch of friends at a park somewhere down south, near the Plaza. The specific meetup time was "eightish," so I hopped on the bus at a little after seven, and got off at 43rd. I had plenty of time, so I decided to walk past the Kansas City Art Institute, as I had never actually seen it before in nine years of living in Kansas City. It was very small but very cool looking. The evening was like what you see in old paintings of people in gigantic clothes: women in dresses made of an acre of silk, and men in three-piece suits sporting chained monocles and top hats. In short, it was perfect outside. The vivid blue of the sky contrasted brilliantly between the full summer leaves of Rockhill and Southmoreland, and a breeze carried the scent of flowers to me from their beds to the conjectural west.

Not so much walking as floating, I wandered into the park and back a a couple minutes after eight. My feet impacted the overgrown lawn of the park as reality set back in, and I made my way the long way around the fence that had been erected around the event. In 2003, I went to Berkeley Riverfront Park with my brother and my friend Stacey for the Tour de Fat, a bike-centered beer event put on by New Belgium Brewing and well attended by all. Dogs and bikes abounded, and a great time was had by all. I watched year after year, and they never came back to do it again. The closest the event ever was to KC when it was held again was St. Louis.

On Friday New Belgium made their eventual return to KC, after over seven years away, for the "Clips of Faith," film festival. A small collection of short, usually humorous, often moving films were shown after the sun went down. Many of them made sure to carefully position New Belgium's products for everyone to see, but even so it was very fun. The sky was clear, the crickets were crackling, and the beer was delicious. I could hardly have thought of a more entertaining use of my Friday night. When the films were over though, the crowd dispersed like cockroaches when a light turns on. We went over to Fred P Ott's on the Plaza for a beer, and went home.

I woke up the next day far too early for how late I went to bed, and communicated poorly with Nick over IM or text about getting lunch at Burger to Go. It's an absolutely amazing burger place at 7th and Central in KCK that used to be a Checkers or a Rally's, or something like that. I wound up going by myself, but I regret nothing about going there. The food is so good that I have to remind myself to chew it. I met Jeff for a drink at the Peanut shortly after that. The 3rd was his birthday, and I didn't want to miss it. At around 7pm or so I rolled over to Grand Slam and picked up a six of Single Wide, clutching my bag of undetonated fireworks from perhaps 2005.

Nick and Anna had a cookout at their house, and everyone made themselves at home while we were there. At around 10pm or so, I got the itch to head home. Nick taught me better of it, and I wound up staying for an additional six hours before I left at bird-chirping time. Before that though, we played charades, some kind of drinking jenga game, and wrought various levels of destruction in blowing up the remainder of my fireworks. The last of these were blown up well after midnight. They either have some extremely patient neighbors, or nobody was home, nearby. Either way, no protest was given to our mayhem.

I slept until noon on Sunday the 4th. I would have slept more if convention had allowed. After sitting for a while weakly sipping water to counteract a hangover that had begun the previous day, I received a message from Nick, inviting me to get some food at Sharp's. I arrived unshowered to find an unshowered ensemble of Nick, Anna, and Daniel tucking into eggs benedict and biscuits and gravy. I ordered some honey mustard fried chicken sliders and drank four full glasses of water before the check came. It was a successful meal on all fronts.

We decided we wanted to keep it moving, so we dropped Daniel off at work, and Nick showed us around his childhood neighborhood, and pointed out no fewer than seven times the school where he served his K-8. As we slowly, creepily rolled around Western Hills and Santa Fe Hills, both Nick and Anna pointed at houses with 87-, 88-, and 89- addresses, and stated the names of people they knew while growing up. Locals!

In response to their familiarity with south KC, as compared to my lack thereof, I spirited them to Raytown. We followed the detour around the missing bridge for 63rd St to the Bickering Tree, a relatively trashy bar that uses hanging helmets of various type and style as over-table lamps. I sponsored a pitcher of Budweiser and we made ourselves as comfortable as we could with the bar's outspoken clientele. We moved on after our pitcher to Highway 40, or as they call it in KC, "40-highway," where we called at the Bamboo Hut. None of us had ever been there before.

We sat outside in their pretty filthy patio. We got a pitcher of Busch and Anna laughed uncontrollably as the bartender poured it all over my legs by accident. The kitchen was closed, as they were cooking out. They had a large gas grill that they were still using fluid to light. With a sharp WOOF the grill leaped to life, scorching the TV mounted right above it with 4-foot tall flames. We had no choice but to buy a plate of food. We had some bratwurst and potato chips, and some baked beans, potato salad, and pasta salad that came from large plastic tubs for $5 a plate. Anna refused to eat any of it, and I can't say I particularly blame her. The bar seemed to have a bit of a pest problem, judging by the abundance of pests.

That said, we had a great time at the Bamboo Hut in Independence, and would happily go again and recommend it to anyone. Just be ready for some grit. We made haste from there to Nick and Anna's house, where I dropped them off. I hurried home and took a 60-90 second shower, rendering myself 3-8 minutes late for a drink at the Peanut. Sunday night went on apace, and I met up again with Nick and Anna for a rooftop party in the West Bottoms. Nathan joined us as well. After the evening of watching fireworks in every direction was over, Nathan and I went over to 1st St by the railroad crossing in the East Bottoms, lit off perhaps two hundred individual pyrotechnic items.

I introduced Nathan to the "sparkler ignition technique," in which a sparkler is laid on the pavement, and a dozen or more bottle rockets are laid along it. The result is a rapid-fire succession of bottle rocket launches and explosions. We scored several direct hits on passing trains, and lauded them with cheers and fists in the air. I dropped Nathan off at his sister's place in the River Market, and went promptly to bed.

I got up the next morning, and went to El Camino Real #2 with Nathan. That was the entire extent of what I did yesterday. I sat at home, played video games, and drank lots of water.

It was a banner weekend.