Wednesday, July 29, 2009

Dollar Store deals

I suppose the little stuff first. As the day nears, I don't feel quite as eager to tell my brother that I don't want to see him any more. Also, I was recently told that in the USA, if you negotiate down credit card debts, you have to pay tax on the portion that the credit card company writes off. That sounds a little scary to me. Also, 119 days worked this year and 6/20 night shifts down.
As for the slightly larger item on today's post, I recently ran across two things to do with dollar store items, so I thought I'd do my own. They tend to be fairly low quality in general. Looking though my spending log, I pulled out a couple items that I thought were of particularly good value.
Going backwards, the most recent one was the maple creme cookies, $1/325g, off hand, I don't know what they usually cost, but next time I'm at the grocery store, I'll find out. I'm pretty sure that the unit price is higher though.
Next item is a stapleless stapler. These things are hard enough to find let alone finding a good deal on one. I still find myself using a regular stapler more often, and it's taken me a while to warm up to this one. Also, I seldom find myself stapling things, so maybe it wasn't such a good deal. Though if you only find yourself stapling a few pages every now and then, your stapler doesn't need to be heavy duty and you can get by with a cheap one.
Following that, there's a tuna sauce meal. Very delicious and good shelf life too. Wonderful standby, however it's a discontinued item. I felt that offered good value and deliciousness that I went back to get more before they were all gone.
Last item on my list is a keychain sized 1AA battery to usb/cell phone charger and flash light. The flashlight is actually a tiny LED, not a regular bulb. It's a handy size and the light is not good, but reasonable and I've used it to give my mp3 player a boost every now and then. I'm not really a heavy cell user though so it might be a while till I try that. Also, should I ever get into robotics again, I could see myself testing these out to provide a mobile source of 5V power for my little machines. I wonder how stable they are.
That seems to sum it up. I also got a couple things that I felt really weren't that nice. A couple of containers that were labelled as leak proof but actually leak considerably. I've been tempted to try putting jello in them, but haven't gotten around to it yet. They're still good for storing paper clips, candy and other small items.
Headphones are also a perpetual disappointment, I've been through a lot of those. There's also a number of items that I didn't think were good that I haven't tried and probably won't.

Tuesday, July 28, 2009

Count down

My brother comes back on the 30th. I've tentatively decided that I am going to discontinue our relationship once I leave Calgary. I'm just not sure when I should tell him. Maybe now, maybe only after I leave. I don't think that I'll get a good reaction, but I do think that he'll respect that it's my decision to make.
During this time he's shown no interest in helping me, only interest in looking helpful from the point of view of others. He refuses to respect my values or accept that I'm the one who makes decisions about my life. There's a lot of things that I could say, but someone else asked me about it as I was writing this. I'll just sum everything up by saying that I felt hard pressed to summarize things in one hour.

Monday, July 27, 2009

117 days down, going 121

I guess I'm settling into the night shift routine. It's kind of comforting knowing that it'll only last for four weeks. Three more weeks to go. I'm feeling pretty good right now, though somewhat sad. There's little to do at night time because everything has to be quiet and it's hard to stay up.
Hmm, as for other stuff to report, not sure what to say. There's profit share coming up at the end of the month, so I'm putting off making month end figures till then. I hope I get something good. Been late a few times so might be a tad small. We'll see what happens.

Thursday, July 23, 2009

Night Shift

Working nights for a while. So far so good. after tomorrow, I'll be a quarter of the way done. It's actually nice to have a bit of a change for a while, and the night is more relaxed. There's more activity in the day with trucks being loaded, and some pieces of equipment only run during the day. When everything slows down, the feel of the place changes.
116 days down now, 117 at the end of the week. I'm surprised I haven't updated this in a while. I've also been a little negligent in my record keeping too. My spreadsheet hasn't been updated in a while. Oh well, next weekend. Also, my birthday is coming up soon.

Sunday, July 12, 2009

Loneliness and Nostalgia

Today, I found myself under a severe wave of loneliness. I just miss having close friends and snuggles. Also, found myself feeling nostalgic for some old games, Warpath and Castle of the Winds specifically.
Castle of the Winds is an old role playing game, more details and free download available here http://www.exmsft.com/~ricks/
Warpath is a galactic conquest action/strategy game, more details and free download available here http://www.synthetic-reality.com/warpath.htm
They don't have all the fancy 3d renderings, but the simplistic game play makes them timeless classics. Obscure classics, but still classics. It's something that I kind of want to get involved in, making simple games that'll hopefully have a timeless feel to them. Anyway, I should get some rest.

Wednesday, July 8, 2009

Epiphany

I've been listening to The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life lately and I had an epiphany when it came to discussing the efficient market hypothesis. While it may be difficult to beat the market average, what if I don't want to? Everyone is focused on gaining money. However if markets really are rational and efficient and everything drives toward the average, not only can you not beat the market it must also be difficult to loose money or hold steady. It is a fact that things average out. It is also a fact that losers must be offset by winners, otherwise the average is misstated.
I wonder if it's worthwhile to try to develop some sort of philosophy about the investment market rather than just view my little corner of it.

Monday, July 6, 2009

Sad again

What a difference a day makes. I feel a deep and profound sadness today. Earlier, I was starting to feel good about myself. Though some positives today. Returned someone's bank card and mustard seed ID. It took me a little out of the way, but it was the right thing to do. Also a bit of irony worth noting, on Friday, I managed to buy about $5.7K of a fairly illiquid security. Someone accepted my bid at the close of the market, and a bunch of shares traded for less leaving me feeling like I may have over paid. Today, it is one of few items that are up on an otherwise down day. Oh well. Hopefully tomorrow goes better.

Saturday, July 4, 2009

Happy Independence Day

I'd just like to start by saying happy Independence Day to my American neighbours, friends and family. I figured out what I should bring to share the next time I go visiting friends, these maple leaf creme cookies are delicious. I'm in an up beat mood finally, though I just really want to sleep. Maybe I'll squeeze in yet another nap for the day. It's starting to be a rather substantial number. I suppose another thing I should mention before I forget is that I've worked 105 days this year.

Wednesday, July 1, 2009

Happy Canada day, end of June, end of Q2 and end of H1

It’s sad to say that half of yet another year has gone by. I feel like I’ve been missing out on a lot. Making good progress on my goals though.
Ignoring investment activities, I made $17K and this pie graph shows where it went.



Maybe if I actually get around to writing some software again, I’ll show my spending in categories. It should be fairly trivial task, but I haven’t done anything of the sort in quite a while. It’ll have to wait till I’m covering more of my expenses before it means anything though. At the moment, I think I’m going to target moving in October.