Letter Never Sent

Society — 6 comments
24
May 07

Experiment with your life

Do you ever wonder how much your way of life is based on arbitrary concepts and social tradition? Why do people own homes or rent apartments? Wouldn’t it be better if we all lived in shared dorms and made better use of mostly empty living space? Why do some people travel and move frequently while others live in one place their entire lives? Aside from a basic necessity for shelter, what motivates people to live the way they do? What ways can we live better? In what ways can we take advantage of modern technology to improve life? What options are we missing?

These things are worth thinking about.

My lease is up in June. I’m considering experimenting with my life, specifically my shelter. The goals for my new arrangements are simple: maximum flexibility and mobility, short-term commitments, low cost, and maximum ease. I would buy property, but I don’t want to tie myself down to the DFW area for the next five years. I would get an apartment, but I have little furniture and I would never spend time there. What other options are there?

The best idea I’ve come up with so far is to live in a hotel. It sounds crazy, but consider the benefits:

No lease: No long-term commitments. Move whenever you like. No rent checks, no landlords. Pay by the week or just put it on your debit card / credit card. Earn points on your living expenses and make money on the float.
Maid service: Ideal for someone who hates cleaning and making the bed.
No utility bills: Most hotels have free cable, local phone service, and Internet access in addition to the usual power and water. Crank the A/C up in August and forget about it.
Free continental breakfast: Most hotels serve a free continental breakfast. This saves you about $5 a day or $150 a month. Load up on free oatmeal and coffee.
Swimming pools, fitness centers: Many apartments have pools, hot tubs, and fitness centers, but some don’t.
No bad neighbors: If someone disturbs you, ask the front desk to move you to another room.
24 hour room service: Get hungry and don’t feel like leaving? Order in and keep on working.
Concierge: Send off your clothes for drycleaning. Get your shoes shined. Have a copy of the Wall Street Journal dropped off at your door every day.

According to my calculations, living in a one bedroom apartment costs an estimated $700-$1500 a month after bills and rent. Living in a hotel suite, costs between $850-$2800 a month based on my estimates. This is a wide range based on your preferred level of luxury. Obviously, if you’re staying at a five star hotel it will cost you $5000 a month and up, but the level of service would be much better. This is more than most people need. For someone with minimal needs, hotel living is a good option based solely on economic grounds. When you consider the added benefits of flexibility and ease, it becomes even more compelling.

When I started researching hotel living as an option, I came across an article in Trendspotting about a trend they call “5-Star Living“. Apparently, many new luxury hotels, including the W here in Dallas, have a few floors set aside for permanent residences. These are condos with many of the features you would find at a luxury hotel: spa, concierge, room service, etc. As people move beyond the traditional suburban family unit and as baby boomers retire, this becomes a logical way of life for many.

Personal — 1 comment
21
May 07

My wallet is a tumor

Ever since I’ve carried a wallet, I’ve ended up stuffing receipts and other crap into it until gradually it doubles in size and hurts to sit on. Eventually I’ll go through and purge, removing all the business cards, scraps of paper, empty Walmart gift cards, and frequent smoothie buyer cards with irregularly-shaped holes punched into them until the wallet is restored to its original, more comfortable size. No more. I’ve replaced my wallet with one of those black binder clips found in any office in America. I just shove all my debit cards and ID into it and squeeze the binder clip onto the stack and go. It’s like a money clip, but better and free and possibly completely washable in case I forget to empty my pockets. Hat tip to my boss, who I stole the idea from.

Literature — Comments Off
21
May 07

Good Melville passages from Billy Budd

terence stamp as billy budd I started reading Billy Budd last night. It is Herman Melville’s last book, published posthumously 40 years after Moby Dick. One thing I like about reading Melville is that I have to read carefully and decypher because he loads so much meaning and metaphor into it. I liked the following passage, a description of the aloof intelligence of Captain Vere:

In this line of reading he found confirmation of his own more reasoned thoughts- confirmation which he had vainly sought in social converse, so that as touching most fundamental topics, there had got to be established in him some positive convictions, which he forefelt would abide in him essentially unmodified so long as his intelligent part remained unimpaired. In view of the troubled period in which his lot was cast this was well for him. His settled convictions were as a dyke against those invading waters of novel opinion, social, political and otherwise, which carried away as in a torrent no few minds in those days, minds by nature not inferior to his own. While other members of that aristocracy to which by birth he belonged were incensed at the innovators mainly because their theories were inimical to the privileged classes, not alone Captain Vere disinterestedly opposed them because they seemed to him incapable of embodiment in lasting institutions, but at war with the peace of the world and the true welfare of mankind.

With minds less stored than his and less earnest, some officers of his rank, with whom at times he would necessarily consort, found him lacking in the companionable quality, a dry and bookish gentleman, as they deemed. Upon any chance withdrawal from their company one would be apt to say to another, something like this: “Vere is a noble fellow, Starry Vere. Spite the gazettes, Sir Horatio” (meaning him with the Lord title) “is at bottom scarce a better seaman or fighter. But between you and me now, don’t you think there is a queer streak of the pedantic running thro’ him? Yes, like the King’s yarn in a coil of navy-rope?”

Some apparent ground there was for this sort of confidential criticism; since not only did the Captain’s discourse never fall into the jocosely familiar, but in illustrating of any point touching the stirring personages and events of the time he would be as apt to cite some historic character or incident of antiquity as that he would cite from the moderns. He seemed unmindful of the circumstance that to his bluff company such remote allusions, however pertinent they might really be, were altogether alien to men whose reading was mainly confined to the journals. But considerateness in such matters is not easy to natures constituted like Captain Vere’s. Their honesty prescribes to them directness, sometimes far-reaching like that of a migratory fowl that in its flight never heeds when it crosses a frontier.

Due to the wonder of the Internet, you can read Billy Budd in its entirety online.

General — 1 comment
20
May 07

Simplify your life

vagabonding

Lately I’ve gotten the itch to go wandering and live a more simple life, free from the usual restraints. I’m not looking for any big epiphany, I just want to do more living outside the lines. I want to head out and prospect, turn stones over and see what’s underneath. As a result of this mood and from moving regularly (5-6 times in that past few years), I’ve started to pare things down to the essentials. I’ve come up with a few simple rules for how to create the structure I’ll need to do this thing, to live well. It’s easy to simplify:

Get rid of things you don’t need or really care about. Be ruthless.

Go through your closet and get rid of anything you haven’t worn in a year. You will never wear it. Donate your cast offs and get a receipt for your taxes.
Go through your bookshelf. If you’ve read it and won’t read it again, get rid of it. If it’s actually hard to find and important, keep it. If it’s not hard to find, you can always borrow or buy it again later. Even if a book changed your life, why does that make you want to keep it? Lend it to someone else and spread the joy. I try to keep no more than one box of books. Sell everything else and you won’t feel bad about buying more books later. To enjoy something it doesn’t mean you have to own it forever.
Go through your papers and toss anything not important. If it’s important, file it for a few years or store it.
For everything else, if you haven’t used it in a year, you probably won’t. Get rid of it.

Cutting future clutter and creating a permanent address.

If you plan on moving frequently or traveling, get a post office box. No need to worry about not checking your mail regularly, meth addicts stealing your mail, or leaving a forwarding address. I think mine costs $40 a year. I use it as my mailing address and my business address and check it once or twice a week.
For your bank statements and other records, cut off the paper bills and statements. Most providers will now send statements and bills via email.
Set up automatic payments for your bills. Many bills are the same amount each time. Set any of these up for automatic payment if you can. This will save you time and money.

Get your finances tuned for maximum freedom and simplicity.

Set up a high-yield savings account with a recurring transfer from your checking account every week. Many online banks like ING offer savings accounts that pay out almost 5% interest. Set up a recurring transfer of a few dollars (whatever you might spend on a new outfit) every week and put it into your bank account. Over time, you will build a cushion of savings that is earning interest for you. (Email me (csivori (at) gmail.com) if you want a referral to ING. For a $250 deposit, you’d get $25 dollars and I’d get $10.)
Set up a financial dashboard where you can glance at a quick overview of your financial situation. I used to use Microsoft Money to keep track of my finances, but since I started using Fidelity I’ve added my accounts to their “Fullview” portal. Basically, you input your various accounts and logins at the Fidelity website and they fetch your account information from any other banks, credit cards, investment accounts, etc. that you might use and display all your balances and transactions on one page. It will also track spending and calculate your total net worth.
Pay down debt. Debt is one of the biggest obstacles to doing what you want. As long as you owe someone money, they have a certain power over you. The biggest way to overcome this to eliminate debt and build savings to prevent future debt.
Start a side business. Create some way to make money outside your normal employment. Chances are you can offer the same services you do at work. If you’re an engineer, start an engineering consulting company. If you’re a mechanic, tell friends and neighbors that you’ll do extra work on the side. Most jobs can operate on a freelance basis and many times you can start doing this a few hours a week when you’re not working. This will show you that money can be made outside of the context of having a job. It will also teach you a lot more about business so that you’ll be more valuable as an employee. There are plenty of ways to make money. You just have to create value in a way that is sufficiently profitable for yourself. Use your expertise and help people out. They will pay you for it.
Get a rewards credit card (I use one for hotel and airline miles) and never carry a balance. Deposit your paychecks into a high-yield checking account and charge your expenses to the card. You’ll earn airline miles on your living expenses and interest on your wages until you pay off the card balance. Remember NEVER carry a balance as the interest rates on rewards credit cards are higher than normal. If you don’t have the discipline to pay off the balance each month do not do this.

Other ways to simplify.

Do things in chunks and batches. When you sit down to do something, it’s better to do one thing at a time until it’s done. Check your email and read the news in chunks. Make all your phone calls at once during the day and let everything else go to voicemail. I use Simulscribe to transcribe my voicemail, so I rarely even answer my phone right away and I never listen to voicemail unless I can’t make out the transcription. When you’re buying birthday cards or other types of cards for special occasions, look forward a year and buy one for any upcoming event. Fill them out ahead of time and just mail them when the date approaches. That way you will never forget and you get it done all at once. Think in terms of chunks and batches.
Let someone else do your chores. How much is your time and energy worth? I’m a big believer in wash and fold services and dry cleaning. I used to hate doing laundry and ironing. It would stack up until I ran out of things to wear. Now I drop off my work clothes and nice things at the dry cleaners each week and I take everything else down the street to the laundromat for wash and fold service. Wash and fold costs $1 a pound, so I usually end up spending about $20 a week. They do a better job than I do and it’s a lot easier. No soaps, no machines, no time, no crazy water or gas bill. Just drop it off dirty and pick it up clean and folded. Nothing to think about. Similarly, I’ve also graduated from washing my own car to paying someone else to do it. The cost difference is about $10, but the result is quicker and better. Many car washes will also guarantee your wash for a couple days in case it rains.

Society — Comments Off
16
May 07

Americans moving on to greener pastures?

Interesting article on recent demographic changes. Many of the large cities are starting to look like the third world in terms of class division:

This is something few would have predicted 20 years ago. Americans are now moving out of, not into, coastal California and South Florida, and in very large numbers they’re moving out of our largest metro areas. They’re fleeing hip Boston and San Francisco, and after eight decades of moving to Washington they’re moving out. The domestic outflow from these metro areas is 3.9 million people, 650,000 a year. High housing costs, high taxes, a distaste in some cases for the burgeoning immigrant populations–these are driving many Americans elsewhere.

The result is that these Coastal Megalopolises are increasingly a two-tiered society, with large affluent populations happily contemplating (at least until recently) their rapidly rising housing values, and a large, mostly immigrant working class working at low wages and struggling to move up the economic ladder. The economic divide in New York and Los Angeles is starting to look like the economic divide in Mexico City and SÃ£o Paulo.

Democratic politicians like to decry what they describe as a widening economic gap in the nation. But the part of the nation where it is widening most visibly is their home turf, the place where they win their biggest margins (these metro areas voted 61% for John Kerry) and where, in exquisitely decorated Park Avenue apartments and Beverly Hills mansions with immigrant servants passing the hors d’oeuvres, they raise most of their money.

It looks like middle class Americans are moving out to where you can balance a lower cost of living and available cheap housing with decent wages.

Domestic inflow has been a whopping 19% in Las Vegas, 15% in the Inland Empire (California’s Riverside and San Bernardino Counties, where much of the outflow from Los Angeles has gone), 13% in Orlando and Charlotte, 12% in Phoenix, 10% in Tampa, 9% in Jacksonville. Domestic inflow was over 200,000 in the Inland Empire, Phoenix, Atlanta, Las Vegas and Orlando. These are economic dynamos that are driving much of America’s growth. There’s much less economic polarization here than in the Coastal Megalopolises, and a higher percentage of traditional families: Natural increase (the excess of births over deaths) in the Interior Boomtowns is 6%, well above the 4% in the Coastal Megalopolises.

The nation’s center of gravity is shifting: Dallas is now larger than San Francisco, Houston is now larger than Detroit, Atlanta is now larger than Boston, Charlotte is now larger than Milwaukee. State capitals that were just medium-sized cities dominated by government employees in the 1950s–Sacramento, Austin, Raleigh, Nashville, Richmond–are now booming centers of high-tech and other growing private-sector businesses. San Antonio has more domestic than immigrant inflow even though the border is only three hours’ drive away. The Interior Boomtowns generated 38% of the nation’s population growth in 2000-06.

General / Literature — 1 comment
12
May 07

Greasemonkey script for Lewisville / Farmer’s Branch Library Lookup

Greasemonkey is an add-on for Firefox that lets you change how you use particular websites and the web in general. For example, you can use a Greasemonkey script to strip Adsense ads from every website you visit or you can change the way Gmail works using GM Scripts.

Anyway, I took someone else’s library lookup script based on Jon Udell’s original Library Lookup project, added some code to use Lewisville and Farmer’s Branch’s OPAC to do an ISBN search from Amazon. So, what this means is that if I’m looking at books on Amazon, in the background the script will find the ISBN and then do an ISBN search in both the Lewisville and Farmer’s Branch Public Libraries to see if they have the book. If they do, it will present a link on the Amazon page where I can click through and reserve it at the library. Download the LVPL / FBPL Library Lookup script here. See the screenshot below:

For my friends in Austin, someone else already took time to make a version of the script for the Austin Public Library.

Since Jody works at the library, I often spend time there reading magazines and newspapers. All the good information with none of the guilt at buying something I’ll throw away soon thereafter. Particularly good for things like Business Week, the WSJ, and Investor’s Business Daily.

Updated: There’s a related script that adds a WorldCat link to Amazon book pages, so that when you click the link for any particular book, WorldCat will search all nearby libraries for the book. Google Book Search is also adding WorldCat links for any book that is accessible online. Unsuprisingly, they are not providing these links for books where you only view a preview as they have some arrangement to make money with the publisher in those cases.

General / Literature — Comments Off
10
May 07

The Age of Sail, the English Civil War, the Restoration, and so much more

Ever since starting Neal Stephenson’s amazing Baroque Cycle series, I’ve been in love with the 17th century. Stephenson brings it all to life in a story that is historical, but also entirely fictitious, almost like historical science-fiction, although that sounds more boring than this is. It is actually the best series I have read in a few years. Very different from but on par with George R.R. Martin’s recent blockbuster series, A Song of Ice and Fire. I actually find the Baroque Cycle to be much richer since it has the benefit of using actual history to flesh out the plot and the world and I find the author more erudite and skillful in his use of language. The characters in the Baroque Cycle are either real historical figures such as Isaac Newton or Christopher Wren or entirely fictional creations of the author. Each of the three books of the series was published originally weighing in at around 800-900 pages, but since coming to paperback each volume has been split into three additional books for a total of nine (I think). Go to your local used book store or buy the original used hard-covers on Amazon. It’ll be easier to keep up with and it will save you money.

While reading the series, I found myself poring over Wikipedia engrossed in subjects I knew nothing about, like sailing history, tall ships, 17th century history, types of carriages, historical figures, etc. For example, I had no idea Winston Churchill was the direct descendant of a central figure in English history, John Churchill, the 1st Duke of Marlborough. This is just one of the many things I learned while reading this series. I also spent several delightful hours reading about wigs, Whigs, William Prince of Orange, Gottfried Leibniz, thief-takers, Louis XIV, Raskolniks, Robert Hooke, and much more.

If you want to submerge yourself in a place both familiar and utterly foreign, this is the thing for you.

Religion/philosophy / Science — 12 comments
10
May 07

The Earth is expanding?

My brother sent me this mind-blowing video explaining how the accepted plate tectonics (continental drift) theory is all wrong. The video argues that the earth is in fact expanding. In other words, the continents are not moving around like sheets of ice in the ocean, rather they’re being pushed apart by an expanding earth and unlike in continental drift theory, there is no subduction of plates into the mantle only a gradually increasing planetary surface.

It sounds crazy, but Neal Adams makes a pretty good visual case for it. I’m skeptical because if this theory were true it would change everything. Although, it could answer an earlier entry where I wondered why gigantism seems so common in prehistory and yet not so common today. If the earth were smaller, more like Mars, animals would be able to grow to enormous size due to lighter local gravity. At the risk of sounding like an idiot, this is the same reason Mars has mountains and canyons that are miles high and deep. It’s easier for things to stand out higher when gravity is less of a burden. Although, if the mass of the smaller earth and the larger earth is the same, the gravity should be the same as well, correct?

For there to be greater local gravity over time the earth would have to either increase in mass due to some unknown phenomenon or matter would have to accrete from outer space, maybe as a result of cataclysmic meteor strikes or comet impacts. Also, if you view the video, you’ll see that there is little ocean in their visualization. Does this mean the oceans were much deeper in the past or that there was less water? Assuming their theory is valid, could the additional mass and additional water be accounted for by the impact of a giant icey comet? I don’t have the answers, but I’d like to see a refutation of the expanding earth theory.

Of course, Wikipedia has a good article explaining everything including my puzzlement at dinosaur size:

The primary objection to Expanding Earth Theory centered around the lack of a accepted process by which the Earth’s radius could increase. This issue, along with the rise of the theory of Subduction, caused the scientific community to dismiss the geological evidence Carey and others presented. The evidence for continental matching even on the Pacific facing sides became irrelevant, as did the claims that a smaller sized and lower gravity Earth facilitated the growth of dinosaurs to their relatively enormous size.

Here’s a question, if everything in the universe were increasing in size at the same rate, how would we know? This is Adams’ basic thesis, that the entire universe is growing:

Adams believes his theory presents a more concise and comprehensive reading of available scientific evidence which indicates the universe is growing, not exploding or merely expanding. Along with other Expanding Earth researchers and enthusiasts, he utilizes the internet to encourage discussions of it and disseminates his theory to the scientific community and wider audiences.

Crazy.

Friends / Personal — 9 comments
10
May 07

One billion dollars for you

Hereâ€™s a philosophical question: if you had 1 billion dollars (enough money to never worry about anything), what would you do? In other words, if you could live your life any way you wanted what would you like to do and what would you actually do?

the old stuff