New Blog Address

I returned to self-hosting my blog. I love WordPress and the free version here at wordpress.com is truly a superb package. However, I decided to host my own wordpress installation instead of using their free wordpress.com service. This lets me set my own limits upon storage space, install new themes and plugins, and have a bit more freedom with how the blog is configured. It looks the same, feels the same, it just now lives at my url instead of here:

http://blog.stuartthompson.net

All of the posts from my original DasBlog installation have been imported along with about 40% of the SubText posts from before the crash.  I am well underway getting the last 60% moved over.  This blog will not be updated moving forward.  Thank you all for your patience through this transition.  There has been an amount of turmoil since the SubText upgrade failed and this whole mess began.  Hopefully those turbulent times are now over.

10 Reasons to Love a Downturn

Ted Murphy wrote an excellent post on 10 reasons to love a downturn.

I especially like “Spend time with your family and friends. Enjoy each other and create a support network to get through to better financial times.”  What a great perspective.

Thanks Ted!

Busy Weekend

Meaghs’ mom and sister were in town for the weekend to attend the Portland Bridal Show.  They stayed with us on Friday and Saturday night and then attended the show most of Saturday prior to a shopping spree at the Lloyd Center mall. 

They spent most of Friday shopping at Washington Square mall and both Meaghan and Mandy managed to find shoes for the wedding.  Woohoo!  I didn’t get to see much of them that night.  I’m starting a new project for my employer and working on the planning and legal stuff for that.  Then I had beers planned with Mark for after work.  I came home a couple of pints for the better!  Fortunately we were still able to share dinner and a few glasses of wine before turning in for the night.  It was nice to get the chance to catch up.  I could tell that Meaghs had a blast shopping with them both; so nice for her to get some girl time to spend checking out all of the stores!

I spent most of Saturday reading about the Apache web server and researching Ruby on Rails.  I decided to take a look at how the open source world lives.  Then on Saturday evening I joined Relentless on a very successful raid through Zul’Aman; I even got a new dagger!

All in all, a pretty cool (if busy) weekend!

Alter Egos?

I’m curious to see how many people out there have alter egos online.  This alternate identity could take many different forms.  Perhaps you have a second or third blog that is kept private or under an assumed identity.  It could be contributing to a forum using a pseudo-anonymous name instead of posting as yourself and linking back to your site.  I run a couple of blogs to separate my technical posting from personal posting in an attempt to better target those audiences.  Participate in this anonymous poll and lets find out how many of us have multiple identities online:

Portland Tech Twitter

@janetleejohnson pointed me at the Portland Tech Twitter list on AboutUs this morning.  It’s basically a wiki page listing of tech tweeps in PDX.  Very cool idea and a great index for new people I might be interested in following.  Adding yourself to the list is faily easy too.  There are some great instructions here.  For those wondering how to format the information, here is what I added to include myself in the list:

:[http://www.twitter.com/stuartthompson @stuartthompson] – [[Stuart Thompson]]
::Software architect, consultant for Microsoft-based enterprise solutions.  [http://stuartthompson.wordpress.com Blog] | [http://stuartthompsontech.wordpress.com Tech Blog]

The first part :[http://www.twitter.com/stuartthompson @stuartthompson] – [[Stuart Thompson]] includes a link to my twitter profile but is displayed as my name.

The second part ::Software architect, consultant for Microsoft-based enterprise solutions. includes a brief description of who I am.

The third part [http://stuartthompson.wordpress.com Blog] | [http://stuartthompsontech.wordpress.com Tech Blog] includes links to both this blog and my tech blog.

You can use the template above to include your own information by just tweaking the relevant parts.  Note that the colons are important.  They are part of the formatting syntax for the wiki.

Dinner and drinks for 1.2 billion dollars

Wow:
http://blameitonthevoices.blogspot.com/2008/10/zimbabwe-dinner-tab.html

You have to wonder where this will end. I feel really bad for the people of Zimbabwe. They people there are powerless to stop the financial crisis happening around them.

Thanks to @geoffrey_mcgill and the re-tweet from @shanselman for the link.

Two-year anniversary

Tonight marks the two-year anniversary of Meaghan and I being together.  It was on this day two years ago that we enjoyed a lovely meal at a local French restaurant before heading to a cocktail bar for midnight bellinis.  Meaghan and I fell in love on that first date and have been together ever since.  It’s been a wonderful twenty-four months and I look forward to us spending the rest of our lives together.

To many more like this!

Abomidable spelling

I was reading the news this morning when I came across this article on the Discovery channel site: http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2008/10/20/yeti-footprints-nepal.html

It never ceases to amaze me the typographical errors that pass editing on mainstream websites.  Doesn’t the Discovery channel provide a service to educate others, particularly younger children?  In the modern online publishing world there are a whole host of utilities and services at your fingertips that are designed directly to avoid this type of error.  Even as I typed the word abomidable into WordPress, it underlined it with a little red squiggly.  I tried to contact them about the error lest the abomidation continue but I was unable to post a comment on the entry and could find neither sight nor sound of a contact form or email address.

It's simply abomidable!

High Astromancer Solarian

On our second Relentless raid into The Eye we managed to not only one-shot Void Reaver, but also one-shotted High Astromancer Solarian on what was only our guild’s third attempt.  Pictures to follow tonight when I can get them uploaded from my desktop machine at home.

After killing Astromancer we took a peek at Kael’thas.  We were able to kill his four advisors but the weapons in phase 2 simply tore us apart.  It’s a complicated fight and one that will take quite a bit of practice but for now it was great to make more progress into the tier 5 raids.  Congratulations Relentless on another guild first kill!

Palin Bingo!

Now you can play too!  Create your own card at http://www.palinbingo.com/

Moved to Skype

Meaghan and I chat with my folks over the internet about once a month. For the last year we’ve put up with the bugged and flawed experience of MSN Messenger, working around audio delay, dropped calls, and frozen video problems. This morning we switched over to Skype and what a difference!  We’ve been aware of Skype for a while.  I’ve been using it on and off since I was in college.  However, we’d stuck by the principle that if it isn’t broken then don’t fix it.  MSN Messenger finally qualified as “broken enough” to switch.

The Skype call quality is superb, the video degrades and upgrades as the connection quality comes in and out but I’d much prefer a graceful degradation to a dropped call.  Even over the wireless network, the connection quality was amazing.  I was able to give my parents a tour of our house by connecting on our laptop and just wandering around.

Good to see my folks- great to see and hear them clearly!

Percent means out of 100

I was browsing the NFL website today, checking out the games for tomorrow.  The Steelers are playing the Bengals, which as a predominantly Steelers household should be a good game for us.  However, looking over the stats for the Steelers I ran across an example of a pet peeve of mine.

There is a little table showing their standing in the AFC North that shows their wins, losses, and win %.  The Steelers have won 4, lost 1, but show a win % of 0.800.  I don’t think that’s really what they mean.  A value of 0.8% is a pretty small number of games to have won.  What they really mean is 80%, but instead they’ve mixed up two different mathematical concepts.

The value 0.8 is the multiplier used to calculate how many games they’ve won out of the total number of games they’ve played.  i.e.  5 games played * 0.8 = 4 games won.  That is not the same thing as 0.8% which is what the table actually cites.  If they’d won 0.8% of 5 games, then they would only have 0.04 of a game; or about 2 minutes and 24 seconds of game time.  I know they’ve won more than that!

Pedantic?  Yes.  However, this pet peeve of mine crops up in more than just NFL statistics.  Consistency and precision are key when it comes to defining concepts, especially mathematical concepts.  Saying that the steelers have a 0.8% win record is a highly inaccurate statement.

Why is it important?
Consider for a moment that a fast food vendor put out an advert for:

Cheeseburgers: 0.99¢

Is that really what they mean?  Each cheeseburger costs less than a penny?  If so then surely people would walk up with a dollar bill, buy 100 cheeseburgers and then set up a food cart right next door selling them for a dollar a piece.  Legally the advertisement would have to stand.  People are purchasing the cheeseburgers for the advertised price of 0.99¢.  What they really mean is either 99¢ OR $0.99 but you can’t mix the two together.

The NFL folks probably figured that 80 wasn’t an informative number for most people in that table.  However, the number 0.800 as win ratio multiplier probably felt confusing too, so instead they just mixed their definitions to get the best of both worlds.  While most people who read this will probably think “Oh let it go you pedantic git”, I think it is fundamental that we retain precision when describing quantities.

Percent means “out of 100″
Per – cent.  Cent is a latin rooted word for 100.  It’s where we get words like centurion, century, and centimeter.  Per means “for each” or “for every”.  Therefore percent means per hundred.  Eighty percent means that per hundred games the Steelers have won eighty.  If five games have been played then an 80% win rate dictates that 4 have been won so far.  100/80 == 5/4.

Does it really matter?
When the Hubble telescope was first launched there was a problem discovered with it’s mirror; it had been cut to the wrong shape.  It was off by less than a millimeter but it was a lack of correctness in the terms and definitions used that led to the $1.5 billion problem.

If I was to place a bet on the Steelers to win tomorrow, and the odds for the bet were calculated based upon the Steelers having 0.8% chance to win (i.e. a very small chance to win indeed) then I could make a lot of money!  The bookie would give me great odds on such a long-shot when in reality I know that the Steelers have a very good chance of crushing the Bengals.  What if your bank calculated their odds with fuzzy math too?  That wouldn’t work very well at all. ;)

Feeling in a great mood

It’s Friday morning, I’m getting ready to go into the morning standup meeting for our project, and I’m in a really great mood.  My parents just got back from visiting Menorca, a beautiful little island off the southern coast of Spain.  The Warcraft patch 3.x is live and we’re less than a month away from the release of the Wrath of the Lich King.  We had a shaky start to our Zul’Aman run last night but then ended up scoring a guild first kill on both Jan’alai and Hex Lord Malacrass.  Our project at work is going very well.  We’re way ahead of schedule and QA is finding only a handful of tiny issues for us to fix.  Next week will mark the two-year anniversary our first date together, when I met the girl of my dreams and my life forever changed for the better.  I’m listening to one of my favorite albums of all time: Queen’s Sheer Heart Attack (there simply isn’t a bad song on the entire album and it still feels like cutting edge material today).  We have a busy social schedule for October and now even parts of November.  All in all, life is good.

Does it really matter?

I was talking with a friend of mine after writing my last blog post.  We talked about the presidential race, the current economic crisis, and the banks in Iceland, among a smattering of other popular topics of current interest.  My friend, when presented with a verbal painting of potentially impending doom, responded “Does it really matter?”  I think this speaks truthfully to the apathy partially responsible for our current plight.

Presidents come and go.  Political and economic policy sails in and out and the majority of people are none the wiser.  “Yeah, that was a bad policy or a bad time, but we’ll come through it, everything will be ok.”  Now I’m not proferring that the end of the world is currently rolling up our driveways, but I have to take a stance of “Yes, it does fucking matter!  It affects billions of people on a daily basis.”  It makes me wonder if the last twenty years have been altogether too shielded from harm.  We’ve never truly seen consequences for our actions or for our apathy.

Most people look at global warming with an “oh yeah, is that still going on?” sort of attitude.  The economic crisis is “scary” and everyone “knows someone” who is having problems with their mortgage payments or retirement plans.  However, the overarching response I seem to get from people on these topics is a look of general boredom and an expression similar to the vocalized phrase of my friend: “Does it really matter?”

Well, to the people in Iceland right now: it matters.

To the people in California leaving everything in their homes for a “trash out” team to throw into a dumpster: it matters.

More subtly, for all of us who might suffer under another ignorant and uneducated administration: it matters.

I am sick to death with the apathy, opinions of entitlement, and complete lack of self-responsibility that I have observed over the last decade.  The world does not revolve on a wheel made of gold.  Sooner or later, no matter how many government bailouts and social blinders we employ, the consequences of our apathy and greed are going to affect us all.  The worst part of it all is that most people agree on a foolproof method for determining when it matters:

as soon as it starts affecting you.

McCain + Palin = Epic FAIL

I’ve been on the fence about the upcoming presidential race and have until now held off posting about politics on my blog.  Not because I don’t have political views or an interest in the political process nor is it from fear of expressing my opinion.  Until now, I have stayed out of posting about this political process simply because it has taken me a couple of months to become informed enough about the candidates to have an opinion.  I didn’t know enough about Obama, Biden, McCain, or Palin.  So I have spent the last two months researching, reading, watching, listening, and thinking.

It is hard to get to the truth in the political process.  The candidates are masters of presentation, conversation, and in many ways of deception.  Words are prepared, researched, and twisted to paint particular points in a favorable or unfavorable light as is desired at the time.  In other words, the trust is abstracted and twisted such that the discussion at hand is less about fact and opinion, and more about eloquence and spin.  I entered my campaign of research expecting that it would be difficult to really weigh in on a preference because my own views often fall squarely in between those of others, and I find there are both many Republic and Democratic traits and views that I support or disagree with.  What I was surprised to find was that one of the presidential offerings was so way off base, so incompetent for the position as to make the “choice” between them moot.  This is simply about escorting the limp horse off the track to prevent it from causing injury either to itself or to those around it.

I have decided that the McCain/Palin ticket is an epic FAIL.  I’m not saying I’m 100% behind Obama or the democrats.  I’m something of a Demolican Republicrat because I find plusses and minuses on both sides.  However, where Obama represents a mixture of good and bad, the McCain/Palin ticket is simply horrifying.

They both demonstrate a level of incompetence and ignorance that fills me with fear.  I wouldn’t trust them as far as to park my car let alone run a country.  I share two of the latest in a long list of items that truly make me hold my head in my hands and wonder how these people even received a nomination.

http://crooksandliars.com/2008/09/11/john-mccain-stumbles-badly-after-being-asked-if-palin-has-national-security-experience-energy/

http://blog.indecision2008.com/2008/10/10/energy-specialist-sarah-palin-believes-congress-bans-oil-exports/

Think about it.  This is truly frightening.  My name is Stuart Thompson, I’m a Software Architect and I spend about 10 hours a week reading current affairs publications and other news sources because I’m interested in the world around me.  I spend about another 10 hours a week (in addition to the 50 I work) focusing on technical learning and growth because that is the field that pays my bills; it is my specialization.  My full time job and personal life fill the remainder of the time.

If I was paid to spend my time working directly in current affairs and the political destiny of our nation, I would be considerably more informed upon these issues.  Why then, dear reader, is a dank looking hatchery chicken nicknamed Chloe who has spent the majority of its existence laying eggs in a cage more informed on energy policy that our potential future vice president of the United States?  That is hyperbole for sure but it illustrates the root of what I have come to fear in the Republican party’s offering for this year.

Thus I have come to decide that whether or not I agree with the policies and views of a particular party, the most important tenet of a candidate is whether they are even familiar with the information they need to make good decisions in the first place.  If they aren’t even equipped with that information then the decision they want to make is irrelevant.  Whether or not I agree with their intended direction means absolutely NOTHING.  The first step in fixing our energy/economy/unemployment/war crisis is knowing where we even stand.

[Roleplay]: “You’re the expert on energy; more informed than anyone else in the U.S. and you don’t know our own federal policy on oil exports?”  “You’re fired.  Collect your belongings and leave the building.”

If I didn’t know the basics in my position, I would be let go by my employer.  That’s how it works.  We trade you money for your time and expertise.  No knowledge, no paycheck, capiche?  Go back to grade school and try not to eat the books this time.

So after months of reading, referencing, watching, listening, and thinking, I have decided that in this race I support Senators Barack Obama and Joseph Biden for president in 2008.  I don’t agree with everything they have to say, but at least I can rest assured that it is informed and that when they make a decision, the intent of their decision can be trusted.

Ending on a lighter note, I have to present that the following is simply the best depiction of the upcoming race that I have seen.  Clean, crisp, and straight to the point:

http://community.livejournal.com/damnportlanders/13094327.html

“I’m Stuart Thompson, and I approve this message.”

Free/Busy Information Added

I added a link to our public free/busy information calendar to the sidebar.  This link does not expose event information, however if you are planning events with us it should be useful to see the times when Meaghan and I are available.  This page uses the Google Calendar service to retrieve the event data.  Check it out when you get a chance and let me know what you think.

I’m still deciding upon a final calendaring and organization solution.  I’ve been using my TMobile MDA to organize my calendar for the last couple of years.  It integrates with the Exchange server at SoftSource (my employer), which means all of my work meetings are automatically synchronized.  However, I’m finding that I’d prefer a little more control over my own calendar without reliance upon the “email server at work”.  If I were to change employers then retrieving all of that information could be difficult.  Furthermore, I’ve never really felt comfortable putting my personal appointments on my work calendar.  I’m giving the Google calendar application a good test as it seems the most promising so far.  Easy to update and very easy to sychronize with using the iCal format.  I’ll give it another six months to see how well it meets our needs.

Twas the night before patch day

‘Twas the night before patch day, and all through the realm,
Not an item was dropping, not even a helm;
The toons were all resting, asleep in their beds,
with visions of new talents filling their heads.

From two in the morning, till two in the aft,
the Blizzard employees installed their new patch.
They worked and they toiled through bugs and through lags,
trying to roll out the content they had.

But the servers, like beasts, would boot and then fail,
the mobs all evading in Stranglethorn Vale;
and just as the night seemed to proffer despair,
the Azeroth they knew came alive with new flair:

A harbor in Stormwind,
new routes by the sea.
More items to craft,
and a new loading screen!

There was only one job that was yet to be done,
to make it all right when the players did come.
The Blizz guy updated the greeting with glee:
“Happy Patchday to all, please welcome patch three.”

Lunchtime walk

I don’t take a lunchtime break because I prefer to work the 7:00am – 3:00am shift and get a good chunk of my afternoon to enjoy the sun or take care of weekday errands.  The traffic is much lighter, I spend less in gas because I’m not stuck in stop n’ go and I get a nice chunk of afternoon back.  However, I do still take one of my 15 minute break periods to fit in a lunchtime walk and clear my head a little.  Over the last few months I’ve been increasing the length of my walk as I get more familiar with it and of course get a little faster at the route.

This is my current route.  I’ve added three blocks since I first started doing it and I already feel a little fitter as a result.  I’ve still got a long way to go in terms of getting back in shape, but the daily walks have been helping a ton.  I’m hoping that I can enjoy the route for another couple of months before the really cold weather kicks in.  I’ll still take my walks, they just won’t quite be the same without the sun shining and the birds singing.  Speaking of which, I’m going to head out and take one right now.

Relentless’ Guild First Kill of Void Reaver

We had a spectacular success this weekend in The Eye.  In only our second attempt on Void Reaver we took him down smoothly.  The Void Reaver fight is basically a big game of dodgeball.  All 25 of your raiders spread out around the circumference of a large circular room.  Throughout the fight, Void Reaver will hurl balls of arcane energy at a couple of raiders at once.  Fortunately he aims at your feet, so if a ball of arcane energy is heading in your direction you move out to the edge of the room, let it land, and then get back in.  Other than that it’s a fairly simply tank and spank.

Click for larger image

Congratulations to all of Relentless!  This is great progression and was a wonderful night both for loot and, more importantly, for fun.  We had two good shots on High Astromancer Solarian but eventually just ran out of time.  We’ll be back next Sunday to progress further, this time with Meaghan leading us into battle.

Kaliyah, Agizett, and Vaelorna (me) all got their T5 shoulder tokens, which turn into Mantle of the Corruptor for me and the Rift Stalker Mantle for both Giz and Kali.  The T5 shoulders are definitely an upgrade over my Merciless Gladiator’s Dreadweave Mantle for raiding, plus it’s just so cool to have the real thing instead of the wellfare arena reward alternative.

Until next week…enjoy your time Solarian.  Relentless are coming for you!

FreeCreditReport.com

We’ve all seen the advertisement….”shoulda gone to FREEEE credit report dot coowmmm” with the happy hippy college grad playing his banjo in a themed restaurant and then his beater car.  The principles offered in the commercial of monitoring your credit actually constitute very sound advice.  I monitor my credit, dispute and file inaccuracies in my report, and try to keep on top of the state of my finances.  It’s a wise thing to do.  It was coming up time for me to perform another credit report review and so I thought I’d give freecreditreport.com a shot.  It typically ends up costing me about $40 to get all three reports, but considering I only do this about twice a year that’s really not too bad.

As far as freecreditreport.com go, they are an Experian powered portal proferring a “credit monitoring service”.  This can be loosely translated to “report summary”.  The dashboard provides a quick view of the same data that is contained in my Experian report, as well as a couple of less than useful graphs that “track my credit score” and show “alerts” on my report.  To be fair, I was able to get my Experian report for free, use the freecreditreport.com account to sign into Experian and then file a few disputes about typographical errors on my report.  Nothing huge, just missing apartment numbers on addresses etc…  These things are fairly typical errors on a credit report but it doesn’t hurt to get the disputes filed and clean it up.

How to make sure your FREE credit report is actually FREE
If you are considering using freecreditreport.com then there are just a couple of things you should know:

• You will need to enter credit card information in order to get your free report.
• Your credit card will not be billed until 9 days after you sign up
• After 9 days you will be charged $14.95 monthly for their service
• In order to cancel you should call 1-877-481-6826

How to get the most out of it
To get the most out of your free credit report, here is what I advise that you do.  First go to freecreditreport.com and sign up for a free account.  You will need to enter your username, password, address, social security number, answer a security question, and supply a credit card or debit card number.  This will create your free account. After you have satisfactorily used the report, be sure to call them at 1-877-481-6826 and cancel your account.  There is no option on the website to do this.  When you call they will try to sell you other services and distract you from the cancellation request.  Just persist and after about 30 seconds they should accept that you just want to cancel.  Be sure to persist here.  You will receive an email a few minutes later confirming that your subscription has been cancelled.  You can now continue to browse your free report for the next 9 days.

Flickr Photostream

I’ve been making a few updates to the layout of the blog recently.  One of the things I added was a Flickr photostream preview in the right-hand sidebar.  It will show the 3 most recent additions to my photostream.  I’ve only recently moved to flickr, having mostly uploaded pictures to my blog in the past and then to Facebook over the last couple of months.  However, it seems that many of my friends are using Flickr so this morning I decided to starting using it more actively.  I upgraded to a pro account and started uploading some of the photos from our trip to England.  If you’re on flickr and want to add me, my profile name is stuart.thompson.  You should be able to search for me and add from there (or you could just click through one of the photos in the photostream preview on the right).

See you there!

RSS Feed

Did you know this blog has a feed?  It’s located at: http://stuartthompson.wordpress.com/feed

Vacation to England – Part I

Posts from our trip to England are coming soon I promise!  I’ve been consumed by importing the posts that were corrupted during my failed upgrade to SubText 2.0 and have as such been procrastinating over starting publication of our photographs and stories from England.  I’ll get on that tonight and then more this weekend.

For now, here are a couple of photographs from Manchester airport taken after we had just landed.

Our flight had arrived a little early, so we actually beat my parents to the airport.  After twelve hours in a tin can, Meaghan was ready for a cup of coffee.  We had a little bit of fun paying for it as England have converted to Chip & Pin for payments (basically a bank card now has a small chip on it that is scanned by a device, which is then paired with your pin).  This meant that my “old sk00l” VISA card with magnetic stripe confused the hell out of the girls working at the coffee counter.  After a few minutes of head-scratching they were able to find an option in the EFT terminal that allowed me to “swipe” and then sign.

Meaghan and I were both fairly hungry after our flight and it was still early enough in the day to head over to the Ladybower Inn before we had to get back to Doncaster for the night.  I was looking forward to a pint of John Smiths and the food there was great.  Just what the doctor ordered.

More pictures to come tonight and this weekend.

SubText import: 12 down, 128 to go

Continuing with my import from a failed SubText 2.0 upgrade, I’ve completed the import of my DasBlog entries.  Today I started importing the SubText entries.  With 12 down and 128 to go, it still feels like there is a ton of work ahead.  It’s nice to see it coming together here at WordPress though and I’m really enjoying the new blog interface and overall robustness of this blogging package.  I’m looking forward to having the import completed so that I can return to blogging normally.  I still have all of my photographs and stories from England to post.  If only there were 30 useful hours in every day!

How to survive an economic crisis?

I am hearing so much talk about the bailout, failure of the bailout, failure of the financial markets, and the impending doom we are all promised is rolling up our driveways.  However, I find myself not alone from my friends and peers in asking “What exactly can I do about all this?”  We are not economic powerhouses with the ability to stimulate or restart the economy.  If you’re anything like me then you have a couple of car loans, one or two credit cards, and a comfortable apartment or small house.  You have a 401k investment plan into which you have added a percentage of your paycheck.  In your daily life you will awake, go to work, pay your bills, eat, and sleep.  Your options to solve the crisis in the financial markets are somewhat slim.  We all would like for the “financial crisis” to be over but we lack the means to directly effect that change.  Furthermore, you are probably looking for ways to ensure that over the next six months you can still feed your family and pay the rent/mortgage.  Grander designs will have to wait for a fuller wallet.

So what can you do in the meantime to help ensure that you are able to ride out this crisis?  There are a couple of things.  Please bear in mind that I am not a financial advisor, nor a qualified or certified financial consultant in any way.  I have opinions and observations, all of which could be (and probably are) entirely false and misguided.  However, I have had many friends over the last few weeks ask me for ideas about keeping themselves safe through troubling times.  To that end I will share the ideas and techniques I am using to insulate myself from whatever economic change is forthcoming.

Float (or Rainy Day Fund)
The first thing is the concept of a float or a rainy day fund.  We all know that a nice little savings account would give us a warm fuzzy feeling, however seemingly fewer of us have succeeded at putting one together.  A float is there to simply insulate you from short term bumps in the road.  It should only be used as a last resort to help cover emergency expenses and should be the first thing restored after the emergency need has passed.  The biggest problem most people face with a float is how to get one started so lets start by addressing that first and then progress from there.

Starting a Float
It takes only a small amount of discipline to successfully put together a float.  The most important thing is to get a system going that you can stick to.  The technique I used to get a float going was to first establish a weekly amount that would be set aside for the float only.  I chose $50 but you can tailor it as necessary.  The key is not to set aside the $50 at the start of the week and then hope that you won’t need it by the end.  All that does is put $200 aside in a box that is then spent at the end of the month when money runs out.  Instead try to actively find items during the week that you can consciously do without before you spend the money.  Then take the money you were about to spend and set it aside (in cash if possible) in a box or envelope clearly marked “Float money – DO NOT SPEND”.  When the float has got $50 in for that week then any other purchases are fine to make.  At the end of the week (or month depending upon your schedule) take the money from the box or envelope and deposit it into a savings account.  Doing the deposit in person is important because it mentally reenforces the activity and helps to form the habit and strengthen the system.

For example, I play a lot of video games and will periodically browse the local stores for new games I’m interesting in buying.  I would sometimes pick out a couple of second-hand titles that I would like.  Think carefully before a purchase.  Putting one of the titles back on the shelf, taking out $22.95 from my wallet (I rounded to $23) and then going home with only one second-hand game still made for a great Sunday afternoon.  It also put $23 in the float for that week.  As another example, I sometimes get home from work and think “I’m tired.  Why don’t we just get a take-out delivered tonight?”  Instead think whether you could just heat something from the freezer and put $20 into the float box instead.  It soon reaches $50.  In fact, simply putting back an impulse purchase at the store and putting $4 into the float can help a lot too.  If you keep up the habit of getting to $50 each week then you’ll end up with a $2,500 savings account in just under a year.  This is a really great float.  It may take until next fall to get it built up but the point of this post was what things you could be doing right now to protect yourself against the effects of an economic downturn.  It’s hard work and frustrating at times (I hate putting games back on the shelf) but the lowered stress and peace of mind a float can bring is enormous.  I promise it will significantly improve the quality of your life to have a float account.

Reduce your Debt
Debt is a pain.  None of us want debt and yet nearly all of us have it.  We all mean to pay it off but somehow the action doesn’t line up to the original intention.  Lowering your debt is something that takes focus.  The companies that have loaned you money do not want you to pay it off.  They want to keep charging you interest on that loan and turning a profit.  If you simply put the debt on the shelf in your mind and pay the minimums each month then the companies you owe money to are going to keep fixing the system in their favor to take as much money as they can from your pocket.  The only way to reduce your debt is to face up to it, research it fully (most people could not tell you what they owe), and then set forth a plan of action to pay it off.  If you have multiple credit cards I would consider targetting one first.  Just pay the minimums on the other cards and devote additional resources to getting rid of the one focus target.  Choose the one with the lowest amount owing.  The mental reward of actually clearing a card is very valuable and by choosing the card with the lowest balance you ensure that feeling is as close as possible.  Try to find additional ways to send a little extra money to pay off this card every month.  Similar to the tricks for the float account, setting aside just $10 here and $20 there can quickly add up to a large additional payment.  Remind yourself every month when you pay your bills of all the reasons why you shouldn’t put anything on a credit card.  Don’t add to your debt.  You’re already building up a float for emergencies.  You do not need these credit cards.  They are an anchor on your life.  Find ways to pay them off and avoid using them at all costs!  When you’ve paid off the first card then turn to the next one and focus on that.  You’ll be surprised how quickly you can pay them off when you focus your sights on them.

Pay Yourself Early
Humans need rewards.  We respond well to rewards for actions.  Positive reenforcement has been shown to be the most effective way to encourage beneficial behavior.  At the start of the month (or whenever you receive a paycheck) take out a little money and set it aside.  This money is yours for the month.  I know that sounds strange but something we all must realize is that our paycheck is not our money.  That money belongs to our landlord, the electric company, visa, and a whole host of other people we have already promised to pay.  Take aside a little money from your check as soon as it comes in and make that yours.  Subtract it from the total in your head of how much you got paid.  If your after-tax total is $1,300 then take out $100 and say to yourself “Great, I earned $1,200 this check.”  That $100 is yours to spend on yourself and to do with whatever you like.  However, like an allowance once it is gone then it is gone and you must wait until next month to get more.  By setting the money aside you are making the remainder of your budget much more predictable.  If you don’t set the money aside then you will end up spending it anyway.  As the month progresses you will find that you need this or that and spend it because you need a reward.  However, because you aren’t tracking it you will probably spend more than $100 and also make your budget that much less predictable.  Ever find yourself at the end of the month wondering why you’re $40 overdrawn because a bill went out that you’d forgotten about?  Paying yourself at the start of the month and then leaving the rest of the balance alone will really help to mitigate that.

These are just a few ideas of things that you can start doing today to help your financial situation.  Wall street may get a financial bailout when they make a mistake but I can assure you that you and I will not.  We need to take steps to protect ourselves, especially if tough times are ahead.  Taking action now will pay off bigtime over the next couple of years if you are cautious and careful.  Don’t go out on a big comfort spending spree.  Instead reduce your risks and get a savings account started.  You’ll thank yourself when the day comes that you need it.