mad anthony

We all end up on two tables...

2012-02-01T21:02:00.002-05:00

I went to an auction today - a large estate/consignment auction that a local auction company holds in a fairgrounds building every month or so. I've been to their last two auctions, because they had specific consignments I was interested in - one from the estate of a guy who owned a mastering studio, and one from a creditor that had seized the contents of a doctor's office. I did very well on both, and since I was close to being maxed out on vacation time and needed to burn some hours, I figured I'd go to todays as well, even though there wasn't anything specific that interested me in the listing.

I found a couple items I was interested in, but it was an all-day auction and the first item was about halfway through. Since it was a nice day, I bought myself lunch from the lunch truck and sat down at a picnic table outside. While I was eating my hot dog, I overheard the guy next to me say something interesting - "most of the stuff in there is from dead people. After you've lived on this earth, it all comes down to two tables - the embalming table and the auction table".

Estate auctions are a reminder of something that we don't want to think about - our own mortality. I've only been to a handful - I usually look for electronics, computers, and business equipment, so I generally seek out bankruptcy or business closing auctions where there is a lot of that kind of stuff rather than estates where there is a handful of that mixed in with clothes and furniture and knicknacks. But when you go to one, it's hard not to be a little creeped out and a little sad that the person who owned all that stuff is dead. But more than that, it's the realization that one day we will be too, and the things we surround ourselves with - the furniture we sit on, the clothes we wear, the TV and computer we stare at - will probably end up either on a table at an auction house or hauled off to Goodwill.

And with that comes the sad realization that there isn't much to my life beyond my possessions. Besides going to the gym and running the occasional road race, my biggest hobby is my side resale business - buying items to resell on eBay and at swap meets. I use my vacation days at work for it, I plan my weekends around it, especially during the summer, and it's reflected in the piles of merchandise and packing material that fill my house.

I want there to be more to me than stuff that ends up on a table at my estate auction. i want to be a husband, maybe a father. I want to do something with my life that people will remember me for. But I haven't had any success at finding a relationship - either because I'm not working hard enough at it, or I'm just not lovable. I haven't found a charity that I think I'd be a good match for.

About the only living thing I can say that's benefited from me (besides family, but my parents have given me more than I could ever pay back) is my cat, Nibbler. I understand crazy cat ladies, because I've become a bit of a crazy cat guy. When you are lonely and unloved, and a cute furry thing curls up on your lap, puts her head on your chest, and purrs contentedly, you feel loved, you feel important, you feel loved, like you've done something for someone other than yourself. Even if that someone spends most of the day licking herself and pooping in a box.

I'd like to get that feeling from a human rather than a feline. I'd like to leave something more behind than a corpse and a bunch of stuff with consignor numbers. But I feel like I probably won't.

I don't like sports, and i don't care who knows...

2012-01-21T23:05:00.002-05:00

Someone on facebook posted this story about a Baltimore grade school that was going to hide any kid not wearing purple to detention in the library during a "purple Friday" visit from the Raven.

Of course, the fun-hating cynic in me skipped the whole "school crushing nonconformists" angle and wonders why we are pulling kids out of class to have them cheer for a football team. No wonder the Chinese - and a ton of other countries - outscore us on math tests. I bet they never pull kids of out school to root for a football team.

But the other aspect of this is that i'm an anomaly. Not only am I a person who doesn't root for the home in a city (and county) that paints itself purple, I don't root for any team, in any sport. I don't take part in the office fantasy team pool, or wear team shirts to work, or spend my weekends in front of a TV. And that's not just limited to football season. I ignore a wide world of sports, from football to baseball to hockey and basketball.

I suppose part of it is nurture - neither of parents had much interest in sports. And since I was pretty much the fat, last-picked kid throughout school, I developed a certain dislike of participating in anything athletic, which extended to watching it as well.

I no longer have quite the dislike for athletes that I did as a kid - I now work out regularly, and run (err, walk quickly) in the occasional road race, so I have an understanding of how much work it must take to be a professional athlete. But I still have no desire to watch it.

I don't begrudge people who enjoy watching sports - everyone has their own hobbies. Given that my spare time is spent doing things like watching all 483 Republican primary debates and going to flea markets, I can't really criticize people who like to watch football, or whatever.

But sports have gone from a hobby - from what people do in their spare time - to something that seems to pervade every part of daily life. Purple-lit buildings. Stores and workplaces full of people dressed like they are about to tackle someone. It makes me feel even more like an outcast that I'm not participating. Which is pretty much how I feel about the world of people who actually seem to have relationships, but unlike my inability to find love, I really have no desire to join the world of the sports fanatics. I just wish their world was a little more contained and didn't leak into mine so much.

The continued evolution of mad.anthony

2012-01-01T15:00:00.000-05:00

I make this post every year. It's completely self-serving, and a complete brag to make me feel better about myself. But if you can't make a blog post for no other reason than to boast, why have a blog at all?

Here's the deal - back in 2004, I had one of my parents take a picture of me standing in front of their fireplace while I was visiting them at Christmas. At the time, I was 24 years old, 5 foot 5 inches tall, and weighed about 250 pounds. A few months after that, I was killing some time on a message board and took a "how long will you live" online test. It said I would be dead by 55. For some reason, despite ignoring years of doctors, family, and strangers telling me I should lose weight, something about that clicked. I started watching what I ate, and I started exercising. And in about 2 years, I'd dropped about 100 pounds. In the time since then, a lot has changed - i finished an MBA program, bought a house, got a cat - but I still managed to stay at pretty much the same weight. And every year, I have the family take a picture of me at Christmastime, and I post the series here. And yes, it's a chance to pat myself on the back, but it's also a reminder that if I want to be able to post this again next year, I need to keep up the trips to the gym and cut back on eating entire cartons of ice cream.

In the last year and a half, I've also added some strength training to my workout, in the hopes that I'd develop giant pecs that would cause random women to seductively rub my arms and ask if I've been working out. Alas, that hasn't happened - maybe I'm not working hard enough, or long enough, or maybe I'm just genetically doomed. But I do aim to keep up at least some of what I've been doing - I notice a very slight improvement when I look in the mirror, and I also feel like it's a little easier to lift stuff.

I've also started doing some road races, starting with the 2010 Baltimore Half. I did a few more races this year - a 10 miler and a 10k in addition to the half, and I shaved 28 minutes off my time this year for the half this year, going from 3 hours 7 minutes to 2 hours 38 minutes - not a great time, but it means something to me because there is a time where even that was way out of reach for me.

So it's the new year, and if I want to be able to post this again next year, I need to figure out what I need to do to get there. I do need to get back to watching what I eat - I've been really lax about it, and I work out enough that I can get away with it - but I'd like to be a little more careful, so that if I ever need to cut back a little on the exercise I can still fit into my pants - and because eating a healthy diet is in general a good idea. Before races, I had started adding an extra 15 minutes or so of running on my treadmill late at night to my routine, and I need to start that up again and keep it up. I want to keep up the road races - they are good exercise, a nice chance to see other runners and different parts of the city, and a great way to acquire t-shirts. I'd like to do another 10k or two, as well - it's a short enough race that i can focus on speed instead of just on trying to make it to the finish line, and that I can feel good the next day instead of feeling like I got run over by a truck.

And hopefully I'll have another good picture to post here next year.

(picture note - pics are in order, starting in 2004. For some reason, I can't find my 2010 pic, so that is missing. There wasn't a major change.)

What am I going to do with all this junk?

2012-01-01T12:15:00.002-05:00

So one of the perks of working in higher ed is that i get a shitload of vacation time and paid holidays, including from just before Christmas to just after New Year's Day. Early in my career I would spend all that time in NJ with the 'rents, but now that I've got a house and a cat I make sure I spend a few days in Maryland, usually with a list of errands and things to do around the house.

One of those things this year is to clean said house. It's a bad sign when bsom, upon coming over over Thanksgiving break to feed my cat and collect my mail, not entirely jokingly commented that he thought i should go on Hoarders.

I'm not quite that bad. I don't spend hours debating if I can throw away an empty Big Gulp cup, and I don't have any dead cats hidden in the back of my closet. But I do have boxes of stuff piled everywhere, and it's getting silly. I have to crabwalk through certain hallways, and I find myself apprehensive about having friends over, or what would happen if I ever wanted to invite a date over.

I had dreams that I would get everything cleaned over break, that my house would look like something out of an Ikea catalog by the end of the weekend. Clearly, that is not going to happen. I've done a little, and I plan to do some more. But I'm also realizing that, much like losing weight, cleaning out several years of accumulation is not something that is going to happen over a long weekend. And like losing weight, part of the battle is not just getting rid of crap but keeping it out in the first place - and that means making changes in the way I approach stuff, and in the way I do things.

What I'm doing this weekend isn't so much cleaning as setting in motion the things necessary to get and stay organized. I've got bags of stuff I'm getting rid of, a bunch of stuff listed on eBay, and I've started loading the back of my pickup with stuff that I'll dump in our Electronic Waste Recycling vault at work on Tuesday.

But I also have quite a bit of saleable stuff that I plan to hold on to, and i need to find ways to keep it organized and out of the way. Most of it is hamfest stuff - stuff I've bought to sell at electronics swap meets. But most of them aren't until spring/summer, which means this stuff needs to stay a while. In general, items I buy for eBay aren't a huge part of my clutter problem, because they tend to be smaller items and because I tend to turn them over pretty quickly. Hamfest stuff is inherently stuff too low value or bulky to eBay - which means it takes up a lot of room for a long time.

I've wrestled with the idea of renting storage space for that stuff, but I don't think I can make the numbers work - it would make a huge dent in my profits. Having limited storage space has the advantage - at least in theory - of capping how much stuff I buy - which is good, because there are only so many hamfests per year, and I can only take so much stuff to each one (ie, what will fit in my truck).

So what I plan on doing for the next day and a half is small chunks of cleaning - an hour in the basement here, some time going through papers in my home office there. It makes it more manageable, even if the results aren't as good as a 12 hour cleaning binge. And the hope is that I'll keep it up, doing a little every night even after work starts up again.

It will never be perfect, but I hope it's at least better.

New year's resolutions, again...

2012-01-01T00:14:00.000-05:00

Every year, for the last few years, I make pretty much the same resolutions - save money, stay in shape, get organized, fall in love. And every year I'm pretty good about the first two and a complete failure on the last two. And that's true for this year as well. I'm in pretty decent shape, at least relative to what I used to be. I'm doing OK financially, thanks to reasonably conservative spending combined with a pretty good year on eBay and hamfests. And my house looks like a computer store exploded, thanks to a pretty good year of finding stuff to buy to sell on eBay and at hamfests. And I'm still single.

So obviously one of the things I want to do this year is clean the house, get organized, and try to find the right balance between buying things I can easily and quickly resell for a nice profit, and not buying large, low-valued, crappy items that sit around the house - and by getting rid of the stuff that currently is filling my house, preferably by selling it but by tossing it if necessary.

Which is difficult, but still easier than the whole finding love thing, which is probably why you find a lot more poems and music written about failing in love than you do about failing to clean out your basement.

It's occurred to me that one of the things that probably doesn't help me - in dating, but also in a broader sense in life - is my less-than-positive outlook. I find myself waking up every morning and thinking "I really don't want to get out of bed". And it's not just "I don't want to get out of bed and go to work", because I do it on weekends too. And when you think about it , it doesn't make much sense - I have a pretty decent job, surrounded by some pretty cool people, on a beautiful college campus, where I get to use some pretty nice technology. It's not like I'm working in a coal mine or something. But more importantly, I'm alive at pretty much the best time to be alive, in terms of technology and the standard of living and lifespan and a host of other things. And I'm doing that in one of the freest and most prosperous nations in the world. People today in our country complain about their lives being unfulfilling, yet the fact that we can even complain about being unfulfilled shows us how good we have it - that we have the time and money to worry about things bigger than finding food or a place to sleep or worrying if the tribe down the road is going to kill us.

So yes, this year, I'd like to hit all the usual goals - have a little less fat and a little more muscle. Keep the savings account funded, maybe buy a new car and finally redo my bathroom and install that fence in the backyard. Be able to walk from the basement to the top of my house without tripping over stray computers and boxes of phones.

But I'd also like to wake up each morning remembering how good I've got it, how lucky I am to be born in the right time and the right place, and to approach each day less like a burden that needs to be slogged through and more like an gift to be enjoyed. I know if I could truly do it, the other things I want in life - the friendships and the relationship and the career advancement - would probably come a lot easier - and the absence of them would probably be a lot less painful. And while I doubt I'll ever reach self-help guru levels of cheerfulness, I'd like to think I've got it in me to be at least a little more positive and a little more grateful for the things in my life that are due to luck, and not just to keeping resolutions.

Housing (thought) bubbles...

2011-12-27T16:36:00.003-05:00

It's been a while since I've posted about housing, and I figured now is a good time to revisit my decision in July 2006 to buy a house... at the exact top of the housing bubble. I was debating if I should put actual numbers in this post, or just to use percents. I decided on the former - while some people see the amount they paid for their house to be a secret, the reality is that all this information is on the internet, accesible for a couple clicks, so it seems silly for me to try to obscure it when it complicates the post and is easily circumvented anyway.

I bought my house - a 2 bedroom, 2.5 bath "split foyer" townhouse in Baltimore County - for $215,000 in July of 2006, with a 10% down 40 year mortgage. I refinanced it last summer into a 30-year mortgage, and threw down another $20,000 to reduce the principle. I also got a much lower interest rate.

So how am I doing? Well, I now owe $168,000 on it. So how much is it worth? Whatever someone will pay for it. When I had the refi done, it was reappraised, and it appraised for $205,000. However, I did my refi right at the end of the $8000 new homebuyer tax credit, which i suspect helped keep prices higher. Zillow right now claims that my house is worth $200,000 - but there is a similar house for sale in my development right now for $189,000 and it's probably in better shape and has been on the market for 6 weeks plus. So the reality is that I'm probably underwater - my guess is that if I had to fire-sale the house, I'd probably get $150,000 to $175,000. Which means that the $40,000 or so I've put into the house is gone, and possibly more if I ever had to sell. Which means that - assuming I found a place for rent that's the same as my mortgage payments plus the money I've put into things like a new roof and plumbing and HVAC - I've basically done the equivalent of taking 40 grand and setting it on fire.

Which is pretty depressing. I'm the kind of person who is typically pretty careful with money - shopping the clearance rack, buying and selling stuff on the side for extra income, using coupons, keeping the house cold in the winter and hot in the summer. So the fact that I've thrown out basically a year of after-tax income is pretty depressing. But hindsight is 20/20 - while i figured that housing prices would decline slightly at some point, I was expecting more like 5% instead of 30%. And maybe I was stupid for thinking that - but based on the number of very large banks and traders who made bets with similar expectations, it wasn't an out-of-the-ordinary thought.

So clearly from a financial perspective, home buying was a loser. But ignoring the financial implications, was buying a house a good lifestyle decision? That's a lot harder question to answer than the financial. When I bought my house, I was probably driven largely by the idea that it was a good and responsible thing to do from a financial perspective. But I think on some level, I also saw it as a signaling mechanism, that if I bought a house the wife and kids would follow, because it would show potential mates that I was a responsible, "nesting" kind of guy. That hasn't worked out, and I sometimes wonder if I should have bought a house in a trendy city neighborhood full of bars and cute girls in yoga pants walking dogs. But I do like certain aspects of suburban living - not having to fight over parking, being a few minutes' drive from pretty much any store I could possibly want to go to. And the reality is I don't really go to bars, and doubt I would even if they were next door... or that I would, and become a raging alcoholic.

in some ways, I'm probably not the best person to be a homeowner. I'm messy, and having lots of space for clutter means I tend to fill it with crap. Also, if I had realized how much I was going to expand my flea market and ebay businesses, I would have looked for a house with more storage space or a garage. And I'm not terribly handy, which means that I have a lot of things that need to be fixed and that I'll eventually need to shell out for professionals to do it. It also means I have a bad habit of deferring maintenance until it gets really bad, like an infected wound that you keep picking at.

But home ownership has it's perks - it is a form of forced savings. Renting advocates like to point out that if you rented, and put away the difference between your rent and mortgage payment, you would have a buttload of money. But that's not the way people in the real world work - chances are I'd blow that money on flat-panel tv's and other crap. Home ownership means eventually I'll own the house, and not have to make a payment for a place to live, and that's good, and maybe even worth the extra cost. Owning a house let me have a cat, it lets me have space to buy stuff for resale, it means I don't need to worry about the rent going up or the landlord selling the place.

So from a financial perspective, buying a house was a giant mistake. From a personal perspective, though, it's much muddier.

Black Friday Blues...

2011-11-25T15:07:00.002-05:00

Blogging about Black Friday makes me feel old, because I start reminiscing about back in the day, when there were plenty of good deals to be found, and media hype and lines were short, and we had to walk uphill in the snow both ways to school.

But it's the truth - well, except for the uphill both ways thing. I think the first year I did any kind of Black Friday shopping was 2000. A family member wanted, of all things, a paper shredder, and Staples had one on sale until noon. I rolled up there around 11am in my '87 LeBaron sitting on chromed-plastic 14's, and they still had them in stock. By the next year, I had discovered eBay, and that people on it would pay good money for things that stores often had for free after mail in rebate. i got to the store that had the earliest opening - I think it was Circuit City - soon before they opened, and got a ton of FAR stuff - and repeated the same at several other stores.

I kept this up for several years - I'd be able to go to several stores, pick up a bunch of stuff, and still get back in time to have breakfast with my parents. The last year I did this was probably 2006. Circuit City had a laptop I wanted at some stupidly low price, plus a bunch of FAR stuff with it, and I got there at midnight. And was still too late.

So I switched to online, and I did pretty well the last few years. This year, I got a handful of small items, but not as much as I had in previous years. I did buy a 32" LCD TV - a $196 Haier from Newegg - which will go in my basement in front of my treadmill, replacing a 16" which i'll sell. $196 is a great deal for a TV, considering they were about twice that a year or two ago, but $199 flat panels have been available pretty widely at Amazon and other places. I did miss a couple good but short lived deals thanks to being asleep, but for the most part there just aren't that many out there anymore, online or in stores.

What's funny is that when there were awesome deals, there was very little hype, but now you've got stores opening at midnight and customers using pepper spray on fellow customers at Wal-Mart like they were some kind of OWS protesters. And yet those people are skipping sleep and committing felonies to get stuff at prices that aren't all that great, and are often available online.

So why has black Friday gotten so black? On the B&M (brick and mortar, ie "real") side, I think part of it is that retailers have gotten smart - they've realized that giving stuff away to people who will do anything to save a buck isn't making them money, it's costing them money. The mail-in rebate, which was the means that many of my deals from yesteryear came from, have gotten much more rare - a combination of shady and incompetent rebate processors and manufacturers and customers who were too lazy to read the fine print and follow the rules. And many of the B&M stores that used to be Black Friday destinations are gone - like Circuit CIty, CompUSA, and (at least where i spend Thanksgiving) OfficeMax.

On the online side, there are a number of reasons things have cooled - companies have realized that losing money or selling at cost isn't going to make them a profit, and that most online customers are price-sensitive and won't turn into loyal customers. Fewer rebates, for the same reasons as above. And, just like at brick and mortar stores, there is a lot more media hype about the deals online, so there are more people chasing fewer items.

One of the big developments this year has been stores opening earlier - some at midnight - and people who feel it's the end of the world and unfair to employees. While I understand that it probably isn't fun for some employees and their families, there are a lot of jobs, from restaurants to hospitals to radio stations - whose employees routinely have to work on holidays, and families typically find ways to work around it. And I suspect some employees don't mind the extra hours and extra money. But the funny thing is that this isn't anything new - for years before their bankruptcy, I remember CompUSA having "midnight madness" sales. And no, I never went to one.

i suspect Black Friday will never be what it was a decade or so ago. I wonder, though, if at some point there will be a backlash - if the combination of mediocre deals, idiot customers, and media hype will persuade people to stop going.

Support your local giant multinational business...

2011-11-24T23:42:00.002-05:00

The defending of small business and the complaints about large multi-international corporations is nothing new, especially in terms of retail. It's gotten even more attention of late, with promotions like Amex's Small Business Saturday, "localvoire" food movements, and people in general claiming that supporting small businesses will help the economy.

So should you feel guilty the next time you shop at Wal-Mart or Target instead of Mom and Pops? I don't think so. I have to admit, the idea of shopping at a small business is appealing - of getting better products, at lower prices, from people passionate about what they sell. And there are a few local business I patronize - the scratch bakery I often hit up for donuts after yard sales, the local gas station near work where I sometimes get my oil changed, the little Asian tailor who hems my pants to fit my nearly midget-sized frame. But most of my shopping is done at Target, or at Weis, a regional multi-state grocery store, or online.

Why? Partly because chain stores often win on price and selection. But even more so, they usually win on convenience - the big box stores are nearby, they are open nearly all the time, and they have plenty of parking.

One of the reasons people often advocate small businesses is that they keep money in the community - but I don't think it's that simple. If a business is a retailer, chances are a huge chunk of it's cost is for inventory, and if they buying from the same manufacturers as the chain stores, the money is going to the same place - probably China. Many chains, especially restaurants, are often franchised, which means the owner often is a local and a small businessperson themselves. And lots of chains are publicly held, which means much of those profits are going to stockholders in the form of dividends and increased stock prices - stockholders who probably live in the community and either own shares or have 401k's or similar investment vehicles that are invested in those chains.

I recently finished an interesting book, The Great A&P and the struggle for small business in America. The book looks at the growth of A&P, which at it's peak sold 10% of the groceries in the US, and at attempts by states and the federal government to restrict them. What makes it interesting is that in many cases, it was middlemen and small business owners who were fighting A&P, while consumers wanted them because they lowered prices. Being pro-small business often meant being anti-consumer, and that meant forcing people to pay more for food at a time during the great depression when money was scarce.

I've always found business, and specifically retailing, interesting, and I've read a number of business histories. It's always fascinating to see how opposed small business owners were to companies that are no longer powerhouses, and in many cases no longer around at all - A&P, Montgomery Ward, Sears, Woolworth. There was a time when these guys were the evil empire, when general store owners would burn Sears catalogs. I always think of this when people grumble about Wal-Mart, because i suspect at some point Wal-Mart too will cease to be a major force in retailing. It's part of the creative destruction of capitalism, and it's especially prevalent in retailing, because it's very easy to switch what store you shop at (especially if you live across the street from a mall like I do).

So if mom-and-pop can deliver a good product, a reasonable price, and convenient parking and hours, you should shop there - but for those reasons, not out of a sense of duty to them for being small businesses. And if a chain store does a better job of those things, you should shop there, and not feel bad about it.

Why do I deal in this crap?

2011-11-18T23:37:00.002-05:00

I spent my lunch break today yelling at my computer screen, at one point asking "why am I a complete failure at everything I try?".

No, it wasn't an online dating site - I was bidding on an online auction - online bidding, local pickup. The seller was a guy I've seen at a bunch of auctions, and who I've bought from a previous online auction and did well. The outburst above was after a questionable strategic move - there were two identical items, and the second one - the one i was bidding on sold for way more than the first one one, which was sold by the time I was out bid - but the rest of my disappointment boiled down to the fact that other bidders were willing to pay way more than I was for stuff - willing to pay more, in some cases, than the stuff sells for on eBay. i ended up winning only a couple lots, and probably won't make much off them.

This was the second auction-related disappointment of the week. I took off Wednesday to go to a large monthly consignment auction because they had two sets of items I was interested in - bank-seized office equipment at 11 and very high end studio mastering equipment from an estate at 5. The office equipment was pulled from the auction for legal reasons - the bank didn't give the legally required notice to the debtor that they were going to sell the stuff - and the audio equipment on the auction list was mostly not there - evidently the family had compiled the list, and then the dead guy's girlfriend had taken all the good stuff before the auction. I still ended up buying a couple lots - one of which I think I will do very well on, and one of which I think I overpaid for. I'll probably end up either breaking even or making a very small profit.

And I'll spend a lot of time writing descriptions, taking pictures, and packing and shipping stuff, none of which is particularly fun. I also spent a lot of time and frustration at the auction, and at the yard sales and flea markets I go to. Sure, I get a rush when I buy something and know I'm going to make a bunch of money, and when it actually sells. I've had some major wins this year, but also a couple pricey losses. But is it worth it?

After all, I use weekends and nights and the occasional vacation day for this, and that's supposed to be fun, but much of the time it's more stressful than work... well, ok, maybe not that bad, but it certainly doesn't refresh or relax me. And it means that my house looks like something out of Hoarders, except much of my junk turns over pretty quickly and gets replaced with new and different junk.

But it does make me money. But I've hit the major financial goals - bought a house, have enough saved up to buy the truck I want and pay cash. I can afford to buy my lunch, feed my cat, and spring for the occasional latte. I don't travel, I don't eat out, or go out, or do anything expensive. While I'll tell myself that having more money will help me attract women - I mean, don't they want a guy who can afford to support a family? - I suspect that lack of cash is the least of my problems when it comes to dating.

I've been trying to be more selective about what I buy, especially in terms of the stuff I sell at flea markets, and I've started to get rid of some of the stuff that I'm obviously never going to sell, and to be more agressive about listing stuff. But I've also realized that getting those big wins means going to more auctions, more sales, more obscure places - and that means more time, more frustration, more wondering if it's really worth it.

I had a coworker ask me if it was really worth the time - could i make the same modest profit some other way? But this has it's advantages - I have flexibility, I set my own hours, I can do more when I have time and less when I don't. That wouldn't be true if I was doing consulting or working a second job.

The office equipment that was pulled from Wednesday's auction is supposed to be sold at the next auction in mid-December. And I already have a half day's vacation marked on the shared Outlook calendar at work so I can be there. Even though i'm not sure why.

Greedy and uncaring? No. Entitled? Yes.

2011-11-18T21:36:00.001-05:00

A few weeks ago, I read Michel Lewis' excellent book about the global fiscal crisis, Boomerang. At the end of the book (spoiler alert) the author ponders why we got into the crisis, and blames it on the fact that we've become uncaring about our neighbors, that we've gotten to a kind of primal instinct where we want to make sure we get everything and don't care about anyone else.

While i may be a cold-hearted uncaring jerk, I don't think that's true of most people. I think the main reason for much of the stupidity that led up to the fiscal crisis has less to do with a traditional view that life is brutal and short, and thus that we need to grab all that we can, and more of the fact that we've become accustomed to a certain standard of living, and we've forgotten that attaining and keeping that standard of living takes work. In terms of the financial crisis, I think people also mistook luck and good timing for actual work or intelligence, and then tried to base future decisions on the belief that they actually had some sort of skill instead of just luck.

Soon after buying my house, I discovered the genre of house-flipping shows that were popular at the time. Some people have blamed them for fueling the rampant speculation in housing, but some of the shows actually did a pretty decent job of showing spectacular failures, because everyone knows that spectacular failures make for great reality TV. There is one episode I remember well - it started off talking about how the guy bought a condo in California in the early 2000's, and sold it a year later for a 100k profit. This made him think he was a real estate genius, and he proceeded to buy another property to fix up and flip - which, of course, turned into a giant gaping money pit.

I suspect that's a familiar theme. People bought houses before the boom because, well, they were at the point in their lives where they wanted to buy a house. The market then went up, and they had a ton of paper wealth. They assumed that either this was the way it always is - that housing prices normally go up 20% every year - or that they were unusually adept at timing the housing market. They then either borrowed money to buy bigger houses that they really couldn't afford, but figured would continue to climb at stupidly fast rates, or they took out home equity loans against their new, bubbly, inflated house values. They weren't trying to take other people's money - they honestly believed that they were creating wealth.

The other thing is that I think people have forgotten that obtaining a high standard of living takes work - often generations of work. My great-grandparents worked in a woolen mill, 6 days a week 12 hours a day. My grandfather ran a tailor shop. My dad spent part of his career keeping the machines in a chemical plant running. Meanwhile, I sit at a desk for most of the day in front of 3 very nice 23" monitors and click on buttons - and then complain about my job.

I've always liked cars and trucks, and lately I've developed a lust for a Range Rover. I'll drive to work in my perfectly good, 5 year old pickup, and look lustfully at one when I see one, and try to figure out if I could possibly afford one. There is, of course, no good reason that a 31 year old suburban single male who drives 30 miles a day needs a vehicle that costs twice the annual salary of the average American family and is designed for crossing the African safari, but I still feel like a failure that I don't have one. Nevermind that the truck I bought at age 25 is in a lot of ways nicer than what my dad was driving at 50. And my 1200 square foot starter townhouse is actually the average size for a house in 1950 - and has one more full bathroom than the house my parents live in today.

Much of the grumbling about the Occupy Wall Street movement has been that many of the participants are college students, and that that while many have significant student loan debt and no job (or no job doing what they want to be doing) - and i think it's a valid criticism. There seems to be an attitude - not just limited to OWS types - that because you spent 4 years studying Kant and drinking PBR, you are entitled to a good-paying job doing what you want to be doing. I had that view when I graduated college in 2002 with an IT degree - right after the dot-com bubble burst and the 9/11 attacks sent the economy into the shitter. I spent some time living with the parents and temping, and eventually got a job that wasn't exactly what I wanted. I'm still not exactly doing what i want, but I've chosen stability over more money or more personal fulfillment. Because I'm not entitled to those things, and because it's not the fault of the banks, or the government, or the 1%, that I made that choice.

A Long December, err, November..

2011-11-14T23:23:00.002-05:00

(with apologies to the Counting Crows)

I can't say that I've been particularly happy with my life in general. I suppose I should be - I've got a decent job, a house, a truck that is visible from space, a good relationship with my family, and an obese cat who at least occasionally prefers my lap to the floor. But I also have a certain emptiness, a feeling of being unfulfilled. Most of that is because I seem to be chronically alone - whatever it is that normal people have in them that lets them meet other people, date, have relationships, marry, raise families - seems to be lacking in me. I don't know if it's looks, attitude, personality, natural selection working to keep my genes out of the gene pool, but it seems that I'm doomed to being alone, to spending my evenings at home wearing sweatpants and balancing a laptop and the aforementioned obese cat.

It's not that I ever forget that I'm alone in a world of couples and families - I'm reminded of it every time I hear my coworkers talk about what they did this weekend, or ever time I'm at the gym or Target or driving around and see happy couples doing things together that I do alone. But this time of year, as the leaves fall and the weather gets colder, always makes me feel worse.

I suspect part of it is that I've got more free time to think, and nothing good ever comes from thinking about the things in your life that you don't like. During the summer, I tend to be a little more occupied - I sell at hamfests, swap meets for computer and ham radio geeks, and most of them fall between Memorial Day and Halloween. I shop yard sales and flea markets, which abound in the summer and are all but nonexistent during cold Baltimore winters. I ran a couple road races this year - another spring/summer/fall activity.

But there's more to it than just more free time - I think the cold, the dark, just makes things worse. There is something about walking out of the gym at 8pm on a cold, dark windy night that just makes me feel sad and alone in a way that walking out at the same time to the warmth of a setting sun doesn't, something about driving home waiting for the heat to come on that seems to bring out the melancholy, while making the same trip with the windows down seems pleasant.

The holidays don't help either - I love my family, but giving up my privacy and routine for several days to be trapped in a modest 70's rancher with them is an adjustment, and seeing them get older and have health issues doesn't help. I find myself feeling guilty I moved away, but not guilty enough to actually leave behind the life I've built 4 hours away - it may not be a great life, but it's become familiar.

And adding to things this year, I've got a project at work that is far more complex and difficult than I had anticipated - and that needs to get done faster than I had expected.

Obviously, the solution would be to figure out why the average single woman would rather sit at home staring at the wall than let me buy her dinner, but given that I've spent the last 15 or so years pondering that with no luck, I probably shouldn't count on a Eureka moment anytime soon. The other thing I can do is keep busy. For normal people with social skills, that would probably mean going out and doing things with other people, but I'm not quite sure what those things are - I have no sport skills, can't dance, and I tried going to grad school for a second master's degree but quit - all I was doing was trading being miserable and bored for being miserable with several hundred pages of reading about things I didn't care about.

I guess i could spend more time at the gym, or go back to the late-night treadmill sprints I'd added to my workouts, but given that the next race is about 6 months away, that's a hard sell. If losing 100 pounds hasn't made my life significantly better outside of clothes shopping and climbing stairs, it's hard to believe that dropping another 10 will.

I've also been trying to get a handle on the messiness of Casa De Mad, my 1200 square feet of townhouse, constructed of the finest pressboard. One of the side effects of running a moderately successful eBay/flea market business is that I have a ton of crap, combined with the usual lack of cleaning that you would expect from a bachelor who doesn't have people over. I've made a very small amount of headway, and and while I hope to make quite a bit more, it's hard to be motivated when you know it's really all in vain, that almost nobody will care that I've got a couple printers sitting in my hallway, because almost nobody will see my house.

So it looks like the way I will deal with the blahs of November is pretty much to wait until April.

On being a Halloween Humbug, or why won't these damn costumed kids get off my lawn?

2011-11-01T21:22:00.003-04:00

Yesterday, I celebrated Halloween by doing the same thing i do pretty much every night - going to the gym after work for a couple hours. By the time I ran a couple errands and got home, it was 8:30 or so, well after all but the hardiest of trick-or-treaters were gone. I then posted a comment on facebook mentioning that "I don't know why I should be expected to provide the neighborhood kids with candy, isn't enough I pay taxes to fund their schools?". This brought a bunch of comments, most comparing me to Scrooge and accusing me of ruining kid's lives, but a few of agreement.

When I shared my philosophy at lunch, including at one point equating being expected to give out candy to socialism, I was asked "do you really believe that or are you just saying it to get a rise out of people?" The answer to this question is, probably, both.

I'll admit that feeling obligated to hand out Snickers bars probably isn't the same as having to labor in a Soviet gulag. But I do think our society has an unreasonable that people should hand out candy on Halloween, and that those that don't are mean jerks. I think it's a nice gesture, but I don't think there is anything wrong with not doing it.

In previous years, I've thought "maybe I'll hand out candy", but I've always ended up not, and either bringing into work or putting it in a bowl on my porch, which always made me worry someone would steal the bowl (it's my cookie-dough-mixing bowl). This year I didn't even bother to pretend I was going to do it.

And, no, my trip to the gym wasn't an intentional means of avoiding candy-grubbing rugrats. I work out pretty much every day - i think I missed the gym 3 days in October, and one of those days I ran a half marathon. It's something that's important to me for a number of reasons, and I'm not going to give it up so that a bunch of kids can get an extra peanut butter cup.

To me, my neighbors are just people who happen occupy the physical space near mine, and home is just a place i eat, sleep, poop, and store my stuff. I rarely talk to my neighbors, so I don't really see any reason why I should be obligated to supply their kids with Skittles. Plus, being around happy couples with their adorable little poop factories just serves as a reminder that being one of those parents seems to be out of reach for me.

So chances are next Halloween my lights will remain off and my door will remain closed.

Youth is wasted on the young, or, can we expect 14 year olds to know what they want to be when they grow up?

2011-10-31T21:48:00.002-04:00

I did a lot of dumb things in high school, including wearing a lot of flannel and canvas Vans with my favorite grunge band names written in pen on the soles, and equipping my hand me down 10 year old Chrysler sedan with a host of JC Whitney accessories, including GTO blackouts, fog lights, and a giant white vinyl. CHRYSLER banner over the windshield.

I also made some questionable academic choices - taking some honors classes I shouldn't have that pulled down my GPA, not really prepping for the SAT's, half-assing my college application essays.

In recent weeks, there has been a lot of talk on the internets about the plight of young, unemployed recent college grads - the most recent being this McCardle piece. People on the left grumble about evil banks suckering people into loans they can't repay, while people on the right are more apt to blame squishy low-demand majors like gender studies and colleges that do a questionable job of teaching.

Not surprisingly, I put more weight on the latter. But I think a big part of it is that we expect children, starting around 14, to set into motion events that will determine where they are when they are 30. They are expected to have enough of an idea about what they want to be doing for the rest of their life around age 16, when they need to decide what college to go to - and much of choosing a college is choosing one that has a good program in what they want to do.

When I look back at my life, I can see a number of things I could have done differently in high school or college that probably would have made me much better off - and some things that I did that were good moves in retrospect, but didn't seem like a big deal at the time.

Obviously, part of the role of a parent is to push kids into the right decision - but teenagers tend not to listen to the 'rents, and parents who haven't been to college often have a hard time realizing how important some of these things are themselves.

And colleges often promote those squishy but not lucrative career paths - one thing that sticks in my memory from my first college orientation is a speech about how you should "find something that you love to do, and then you will never work a day in your life". To an 18 year old, that sounds great, and I suspect a lot of the OWS crowd took similar advice. But the reality is that there are a lot of people who work jobs that they don't love, but that they tollerate because it lets them do things that are important to them outside of work. Recent college grads may be happy to have a job that utilizes their art-history degree even if it means living in a basement apartment with 4 of their closest friends. But when people get into their late 20's and early 30's, they start to want things like home ownershhip and fammilies, and often being a cube monkey for 40 hours a week becomes tolerable to get those things. I doubt that too many accounting majors were passionate about determining if they should use FIFO, LIFO, or averaging to value inventory, but they made a decision that getting a decent job was important.

I don't know what the answer is. As someone who has no problem delaying gratification, who lives frugally, who has long supplemented his income through overtime when it was available and through a side business when it wasn't, who has taken a job that provides stability and benefits but not necessarily the opportunities for advancement or to do things that interest me, I want to tell the OWS protester types to take a shower and get a job. But even if I'm not particularly sympathetic to them, I also can understand how some of them made choices at 16 or 18 or 20 that they probably wouldn't have if they had a few more years knowledge and experience.

Getting the Runs..

2011-10-15T19:43:00.003-04:00

So today was the Baltimore running festival, and I ran the half marathon. This is the second time I've done it. The first time was last year, after a casual comment by a friend that I was probably in good enough shape to finish one.

I did finish last year, but with a less than stellar time of 3:07. But I enjoyed the experience - running on city streets, random people cheering you on. I vowed that I would train hard, come back this year, and do much better.

Well, as usual, I didn't train as much as I would have liked. But I did do two shorter races - a 10 miler and a 10k - and put in a little extra treadmill time. I set a rough goal for this year that I wanted to get my time down to 2:45 or so.

I actually managed to beat that goal - my finish time was 2:39 - which means i shaved 28 minutes off last year's time, and cut my time per mile from well over 14 minutes to just over 12.

Which still isn't a very good time. Last year's placement was 7486 out of 8057 finishers, this year's was 7251 out of 9150. Last year I was 575 out of 596 males 30-34 who finished, this year I was 595 out of 655 for my age/gender bracket.

Running is a strange thing - you compete against the people you are running against, but also against yourself. I'm still not a very good runner, but I'm a lot better than I used to be. And for someone who spent most of his childhood being cautioned against physical activities by doctors thanks to the open heart surgery I had when I was 4, and most of his early adulthood being morbidly obese, being mediocre at something I've generally been awful at is, well, progress.

So where do I go from here? I've toyed with the idea of doing the full next year, but I'm leaning against it. The only reason to do it is to say I did, to cross it off a bucket list I've never written (maybe "write bucket list" should be the first thing on my bucket list). But getting better at something I enjoy and don't completely suck at makes more sense to me than doing something much more difficult badly just to say I did it.

So hopefully I'll follow through and actually bump up my training this year. I plan on doing the races I did this year again next year, and hopefully adding a few more - treadmill and Precor time is great, but there is no better way to improve at road racing than to run more road races - it forces you got think about pacing, and hills, and other runners.

But that's long term. For the short term, i plan on doing a lot of sitting, because my legs are already kind of sore, and from previous experience I know that for the next few days I'm gong to be wincing every time I have to climb a flight of stairs.

What am I running for, or from?

2011-09-25T19:45:00.004-04:00

I did my 3rd road race today - the Race for Our Kids 10k. (For the metrically impaired, that's a little over 6 miles). I had seen it advertised a few times in emails from the Baltimore Running Festival and was debating signing up. A coworker of mine was fielding a team, so it gave me the final nudge to sign up. (btw, if you want to donate the donations page is here - but don't feel obligated.

It was a nice race. As I mentioned, this is the third road race I've done - I did the Baltimore Half-Marathon last year and the Baltimore 10-miler earlier this summer. I was a little apprehensive about doing a short race - my theory has been that I'm slow, but steady, so I figured a shorter race where speed mattered more than endurance would put me at an even bigger disadvantage than normal.

It actually was a really good race - the shorter distance was nice, because I could run more of it (instead of walking) knowing i didn't have as far to go. They also did a really good job with the race - because you are running with a few hundred people instead of a few thousand, there wasn't the the normal frantic push for port-a-potties or parking spaces, and the post-race party was actually catered with good food (including cookies and diet coke!) instead of the normal gatorade and a rotten banana you get at other races.

As far as how I did, that depends how you look at it. My chip time was 1:13:04 - which works out to 11:51 a mile. That's considerably better than my previous races - 13/mile for the 10-miler and 14:38/mile for the half marathon. Of course, it's a shorter race, so my time/mile should be shorter - I was less tired/fatigued, and also didn't have to worry as much about saving myself so I'd have the energy to finish.

Still, overall, that puts me square at the end of the pack - last place in my age and gender bracket (14 out of 14 among males 30-34) and 211 out of 241 overall. Results page is here.

Running is, in a way, an odd sport, for two reasons. First of all, it's one of the only sports where anyone, for the cost of a pair of fancy sneakers and a race entry, can compete against people who are essentially professional athletes, or at least close to the level of them. Secondly, thought, it's a sport where you aren't just competing against the field you are running against, but against yourself, against your own times. And in that sense, the first chance I'll really have to see if I'm making any progress will be in a few weeks, when i do the Baltimore Half for the second time - I'll actually have something to compare to an identical race.

But I also don't have a good reason to expect to do better - besides having a couple additional races under my belt (err, elastic waist shorts) and a few short runs on my basement treadmill, I haven't done any serious additional training beyond my normal daily cardio. OTOH, my normal daily cardio is 90 minutes, so I feel like I can't do a whole lot more without cutting into other activities I enjoy, or at least am obligated to do, like sleeping or going to work.

When i mention my results and the fact that I'm not thrilled with them, people usually say something like "all that matters is that you finished". But while finishing was a suitable goal a year ago, when I had no way of knowing if it was something I could do, it isn't anymore - to succeed in life, you need to set newer, higher goals, not just achieve a previous one over again. So I'm hoping to shave some time off my times, and to continue to run races and train a little more. I'd also like to do some more 10k's like today - probably not this fall, as I will be busy in October and by November it will be too cold - but hopefully in the spring. It's a good chance to get some road-race experience, without the frantic hassle of a big race, and often to throw a few bucks to charities in the process.

The idea of being a better runner appeals to me for a couple reasons, but I think the biggest is because it's something I've never been very good at. I was the last picked in gym class, and for a good reason. Six years ago, I was 25 years old, 5'5", and 250 pounds. Getting from that point to where I am now - 100 pounds lighter and able to finish a race - is at least somewhat of an achievement. There is something appealing about getting good at something I've always been really bad at - just like some of my geeky friends enjoy "hacking" - modifying things to do stuff they were never intended to do - it's interesting to push the limits of what the human body can do.

The question is, am I willing to put in the time to push hard enough? And should I, or would I be better off working on something I'm actually good at - if there actually is anything I'm good at?

Are singles the last group you can be prejudiced against?

2011-09-21T22:49:00.003-04:00

Are singles the last group you can be prejudiced against? That's the claim made by a psych prof quoted in this NY Times blog post about the plight of singles in America.

As a chronically single person, I understand the point. I work for a very family friendly organization, whose benefits includes free college tuition for the spouse and kids I don't have and lots of family leave. But it also includes other things, like that our annual employee picnics have become family picnics, with employees encouraged to bring spouses and children. If you are someone who doesn't have either, it's kind of awkward - a reminder that you are a loser who doesn't have the relationships that other people do. And there may be organizations out there where it's more serious than the awkward family-themed picnic, where managers would rather promote someone with a spouse and a few kids than a single guy because the latter needs the money more for their family.

Of course, there are two kinds of singles out there - people who are single by choice, who are happy to be single because it keeps them unconstrained, and then there are people like me, who would rather not be single but just haven't found someone. For the former, it's an annoyance, because at some point they have made the choice that they don't want those things, but for people like me it's like rubbing salt in a wound - a constant reminder of something that you are unhappy about.

But organizations and society should probably have larger concerns than hurting people's feelings when setting policies. But the other problem with workplace family-friendly policies is that they have a cost, and that cost sometimes ends up falling on single people - the person who ends up having to work harder or postpone their own time off because they need to make up for the work done by their non-single coworkers while they are out because of birth or a sick kid or a honeymoon or whatever.

But beyond the workplace, there is the awkwardness of trying to have a social life when you are single and most of your friends aren't - you either end up spending your nights alone or become a third wheel. You watch the people you grew up with post pictures of their spouse and kids on facebook, but the best you can do is pictures of your cat. You pay higher car insurance rates because unmarried deviants like you can't be trusted to be as careful as those responsible married types.

But do these add up to prejudice? That seems to be stretching the term - I do think singles get treated worse, that policies in both government and the workplace are often tailored to and give advantage to married people, and that single people are often looked down on. But it's not on the level of groups that can have a legit claim on prejudice - as much as I hate being single, it beats being, say, a slave .

Another wasted summer..

2011-09-05T22:09:00.002-04:00

(note - post title is from an obscure Mighty Mighty Bosstones album cut).

So every summer, as certain as warmer, longer days and women in shorter shorts and halter tops, is the emergence of ants in my kitchen. I'm not sure where they come from, but they come in moving lines, with their eyes on my Lucky Charms and whatever else they can grab with their little black arms. This year was different, though - at the first sign of ant invasion, I Swiffered the shit out of my kitchen floor and loaded every cat-inaccessible crevice with Tarro ant bait, a mix of sweet corn syrup and deadly, deadly borax. That kept the ants at bay - at least until today. Which is ironic, since today is Labor Day, traditionally viewed as the end of the summer season. Especially by people like me, who work in higher ed and tend to mark time by semester rather than month or year - this was the weekend that 3800 or so college students descend on our campus, looking to fill their heads with knowledge and their stomaches with popular-priced domestic beer.

Every summer starts off optimistically - when you work on a college campus, it's an easier time, where you don't have to fight for parking spots with the mix of expensive SUV's and battered subcompacts driven by students. As someone who isn't a big fan of cold, it's a time I don't have to worry about chapped skin, or scraping ice off my windshield, or putting on layers of fleece before leaving the gym.

And because of the warm, sunny optimism that warm, sunny days inspire, I always have high hopes for the summer. Every summer I start with big dreams - I'm going to find love, lose weight, build muscle, make piles of money in my side business on ebay and at flea markets, tackle a stack of home improvement project, help out the parents, take a vacation, advance my career, write the great novel, and achieve world peace.

And every summer ends with disappointment, and not just because I haven't cranked out the next Great Gatsby. I didn't spend a whole lot of time with the family. I didn't get rich selling on eBay - I had a few awesome finds, but also a few major losses from poor decisions and a lot of times I came back empty handed from auctions or yard sales - or with mostly full truck bed after not selling as much as i hoped at an electronics swap meet. I could not bring myself to invest the time or money in taking a vacation, or into fencing my yard or the other things I hoped to do. I pretty much look and weigh the same as I did 4 months ago, and I still go to bed alone every night wondering if there is someone out there for me.

Part of this is that I set my expectations too high - there is no way I can do all the things I want to do in a summer, especially when many of those things conflict with each other - I can't save money, spend it on a vacation, and spend it on home improvements. I can't advance my career if I'm on vacation or taking days off to go on inventory buying trips for the side biz.

When it comes to what things get done, I think part of it relates to what Tyler Cowan has saidabout how errands are often what we get done on our to do list. From a daily household management perspective, I'm not sure it's as bad as he makes it seem - often we do need to do errands, and often we accomplish them because they have hard deadlines we need to meet- if I want to buy something at Target, I need to do it before they close at 10pm. If I want to get in a 2 hour workout at the gym on a summer Saturday, I need to get there by 1:45 so I'm done with enough time to change into a dry shirt before they lock the doors at 4pm. So going to the gym is something I kept up with pretty well (even if I got there later than I would have liked a lot of days) , but doing the things that don't have hard deadlines - cleaning the basement or calling a fencing contractor - get put off indefinitely, because there is no time limit when they need to be done.

And some of the things I tend to associate with summer are for no real reason, or for a desire for things I have no control of to fit my schedule. I'm always more optimistic about dating in the summer - maybe because every women looks better in a sundress, or maybe because I'm convinced I look better when I'm not wearing a bubblegoose. In reality, dating sites typically have fewer members in the summer and more in the cold days around that of St. Valentine (or as I like to think of it, single awareness week). It's easier for me to duck out for a few hours to go to an auction in the summer, when work is slower, and parking easier - but it's typically bankruptcy court judges, not the weather, that determines when many of the auctions I attend are scheduled.

And in reality, it wasn't a totally wasted summer - I've got more money in the bank than I did in May, some of my work projects have gone well, I've had a couple decent day trips, eaten a lot of ice cream, and still fit into my pants. And I may not have become an internet Romeo or champion marathoner, but at least I kept the ants out of my cereal.

And I'm also realizing I probably need to stop putting summer on a pedestal, to realize that there are more positives to fall and winter than the temporary reappearance of pumpkin spice lattes and peppermint mochas at Starbucks, and that there may be opportunities for love and profit even when it's cold out.

There just won't be parking spaces at work. Or ants in my kitchen.

Fake it until you make it, or try to make it?

2011-08-28T16:02:00.002-04:00

A while back, my gym was closed for a day due to excessive heat. I expressed my frustration to a friend of mine, commenting that I didn't want to miss the chance to work out, since I'm already a miserable failure at dating and the last thing I wanted to do was put on more weight and be even more unappealing. His response was that my problem wasn't my appearance, but my lack of confidence, and that i should be confident about the things I've achieved, like having a good job or owning a home.

Sometimes I look at my accomplishments, and thing that i have achieved a lot and should be a catch. But if I look closer, it's pretty obvious that the things I pretend are a big deal really aren't. Yes, I have a job, but unemployment is less than 10%, which means 90% of people have a job. Yes, i own a house, but so do over 67% of Americans.. Yes, I have a graduate degree, but so do 9% of Americans - and many of them probably have them in much more rigorous fields than business.

I feel like there are two ways to be confident - you can either convince yourself that you are successful and should be proud of yourself, or you can actually do things that make you proud of yourself - in other words, you can fake it or you can make it. The reality is that when I look in the mirror, I see more Chris Farley than Bradd Pitt - I see a short, borderline overweight guy with spindly arms. I figure until I'm able to change that, until I'm able to look in the mirror and like what i see, I'm not going to be confident - and once I do I won't need to.

The problem is I'm not very successful at turning myself into someone I'm happy with. I typically work out 2 hours a day, but still don't look good. I guess either I just don't work out hard enough or do the right things, or it's still not enough, or I need to change my diet more, or I'm genetically predisposed to having lots of belly and little muscle.

On one hand, I think that if I put all my free time into either working out or making money, I might become attractive enough or wealthy enough for a woman to be interested in me. After all, most women want to have kids, so they want a guy who can provide for them, and is attractive enough to pass good genes on to their kids.

But the problem with this is that if I spend all my time on those things, I tend to become even more introverted, and to have less activities outside work and working out to have in common or to interest a potential mate

The one thing that puzzles me about the whole confidence thing is that when I do online dating, I've tried to make my profiles as positive as possible - to not mention my insecurities, or this blog, or my odd hobbies that involve buying and reselling crap. I've got pictures that show me in a decent light (no shirtless and/or bathroom mirror pics, ect). But I don't get responses when I email women. Since they haven't met me in person or even talked to me, it can't be the obvious lack of confidence things - the not looking at, the mumbling, the umms - which means in addition to not being confident enough, I'm also not attractive or interesting or rich enough. I know some people will say that that's just because online dating sucks, but I know plenty of people it's worked for - which means the problem must be something that's wrong with me.

And then there is counterintuitive stuff, like this OKCUPID analysis of successful messages which shows that guys who are self-effacing in their messages are more successful. Which is pretty much the opposite of everything else I've ever heard of anywhere.

As far as confidence itself, i think it's overrated - I really feel annoyed when I read articles like this one which says that if you are a shy guy, you "haven't met your emotional needs and couldn't possibly meet anyone else's". Really? I'm not confident because women don't seem interested in me - on the rare occasions where one seems like they might be, I feel a lot better about myself. And when guys like me are nervous/tongue-tied/ect, it's because they are genuinely interested in someone and are trying to not screw it up. You know what women I feel least nervous around? The ones i have no interest in dating, either because they are in a relationship or because I'm not attracted to them - because I don't really care if they like me. So if you are a women and a guy acts like he doesn't care if you like him, chances are it's because he doesn't. Guys who act confident often act that way because they are cocky jerks - the reality is that there is often no actual link between how successful a person is and how successful they think they are, and confidence is usually based on the latter.

So what does this all mean? I'm not sure. I guess it means I'm where I've been for a long time - alone, and with no idea what's wrong with me, with what I need to do to change it.

Replay it again no more...

2011-07-24T21:42:00.003-04:00

Well, I had to pull the plug on a dear friend last night... my RePlayTV DVR. It, and it's brother, who died too young of hard drive failure, have been time-shifting TV shows for me for the last 8 years. Alas, RePlay is ending the service as of next week. While there are some hacks to keep it going using a third-party scheduling system and running a Windows machine as a server, nobody was sure that work until a week or two ago when RePlay released the encryption keys that it depended on. Before that happened, I went on eBay and bought a lifetime series 2 Tivo with an upgraded drive for $170. I figure if it lasts me a year and a half, it will cost me the same as a year and a half of a Comcast subscription would have cost, but with more features and capacity (and a warm fuzzy feeling of not giving Comcast even more money).

I bought my first RePlay in 2003, when I was a fresh out of college grad working second shift. Which made it hard to catch prime-time TV shows. I picked the RePlay over the Tivo based on the fact that it had ethernet (I lacked a phone line and wireless wasn't yet common), the fact that it had some goofy features like commercial skip and show sharing (especially useful since my then-housemate bsom bought the same RePlay), and a deal that Amazon had after rebate on an oddball 60-gig model that was originally only made for Costco.

I hooked up the Tivo last night and am still getting used to it - the interface and how it treats things like conflicts is vastly different. I had to reprogram all my shows, which was annoying - especially since i have shows that aren't currently on, which means I can't find them in the program guide. I also have an almost-full replay that I'll need to hook up at some point to watch the shows on it, or export them using dvarchive, a neat utility that lets you grab shows off of Replays.

I'm still convinced that the RePlay was the better product, But Tivo did a better job of branding and advertising, was more consistent about strategy (at one point RePlay went from monthly subscriptions to lifetime and building it into the product, then went back to monthly - but ended up giving lifetime subscriptions to a ton of people who bought devices at subscriptionless prices that still had the lifetime info on the package and claimed to have been misled. They also added neat features (like commercial skip and internet show sharing) that pissed of the RIAA. They also changed hands a bunch of time, from SonicBlue to a company called DNNA that also owned Denon, to DirectTV.

I'm sure I'll get used to the Tivo, but giving up a system I've been using for 8 years and know exactly how to make do what I want is painful. Ironically, I find myself watching a lot less TV of late anyway - I've been trying to work out more and put more time into my eBay/Hamfest side business - so having a DVR doesn't even matter as much.

Killer ham and a little bit of money...

2011-07-17T21:36:00.002-04:00

I recently finished reading Killer Stuff and Tons of Money", which chronicles the adventures of "Avery", who buys and sells at antique markets, mostly in the Massachusetts area.

The book was interesting because there are a little parallels between his world and mine. I do some selling at hamfests - basically electronic swap meets originally aimed at ham radio enthusiasts, but broadened to include computers and other electronics. There are a lot of similarities between the worlds - dealers who go to shows to buy more than to sell, buyers who flock to amateur sellers who don't know what stuff is worth, and vendors grumbling about how there aren't as many customers as there used to be. It's also reassuring to hear that even pros make mistakes, because I have a few albatrosses, some rather expensive in my house - and a list of things I didn't buy or didn't buy enough of and regret. Some of my buying experiences are similar too - at auctions I've had people try to read the notes on my bidder card, I've suspected people have bid against me just because they figured if I was bidding on something it was worth something, and I've seen amateur bidders bid way too much for stuff. I've also found myself buying a large lot of items to get one or two good things in the lot.

There are some differences, though - most of what I buy and sell is pretty much a commodity, which makes it easier - but also more competitive - than the antique trade, where it often takes some work to identify if an item is real and how old and rare it is. I've noticed more and more people looking stuff up on their smartphones at auctions, and many of those people are bidding against me on stuff that normally almost nobody looked at.

Avery and I share another common thread - houses full of crap. My collection of computers and other stuff has outgrown the basement storage area and has crept into hallways, family room, and pretty much every other room in the house. Unlike Avery, I don't have a significant other to keep me in check, either.

There is another difference - I'm not doing this to pay the bills. Avery is a full-time dealer whose profits feed his family. For me, hamfests and eBay are a little extra income, money I can save up towards things like renovations or a new truck.

Which makes me think it's time to back off a little bit. The last few months I've been striking out - there haven't been many good auctions, and many of the ones I've been to have been a bust (which may be a good thing, since I often trade on misery - bankruptcy, failed banks, closed businesses). I'm thinking it's time for me to start backing away a little big - to continue buying, but only when it's something I can make a ton of money on, and to focus on smaller items. That's tough, though - while it's easy to be more selective in what I buy, being successful at buying often means going to some auctions, yard sales, swap meets, ect that are a bust - because sometimes the ones that seem the most promising aren't, and some of the best ones are the ones you least expect to be good.

But barring something good popping up at the last minute, I think the next few months are going to be slow for buying. But I'm hoping they are good for selling - I've got 4 or 5 hamfests coming up in the next 3 months or so. They are probably not going to be very profitable, because I've sold most of my high-end stuff and will be selling cheaper items. But I'm hoping I sell a lot of them, so I can clear a lot of space. I'm also hoping that after I've sold a bunch of stuff, I can get a better idea of what I have left and dump or donate some of it.

Before this weekend's fest, I dug around my basement looking for a couple specific items that someone at a previous fest had been looking for and that I know I have somewhere. I didn't find it, but I found a ton of other stuff, including 2 broken ps2's and an entire case of computer exterior cleaner, that I didn't know I had. Which is probably a good sign that I have too much stuff, and that I need to sell or otherwise get rid of it before I'm on an episode of Hoarders, screaming that "I'm not a hoarder, I'm a reseller!"

Or maybe someone will write a book about me.

The eternal struggle between present and future...

2011-07-06T22:49:00.002-04:00

I was reading a book that included a quote from someone who was in the twin towers when the planes hit, who told his son that he should live his life in a way that he wouldn't have any regrets if someday he saw a plane coming at his office window.

It's good advice.. or is it? It's tempting to suggest that we should live in the moment, do the things we want to do so we live with no regrets, ect. At the same time, there is evidence that people who can defer gratification tend to be the most successful. Doing the big things in life that people want to do - marriage, kids, owning nice things, training for races - often means making short-term sacrifices to achieve larger long-term goals.

I've been thinking about that a lot of late. I've been less than happy with certain aspects of my life, especially my being single and where I am career-wise. And in general, my response to both of these things has been that I need to work harder - that I need to devote more time to working out and making more money, in the hopes becoming more attractive and desirable, and that I need to put more time into work. i've generally figured that I can relax - that I can think about things like vacation - later in life, after I have found someone to share it with. But as I get older, and that seems more and more like a goal that for some reason is completely out of my reach, I wonder when I should relax.

For example, i don't take vacations, and usually end up losing most of my vacation days at work. I'll take a day off here and there to visit the family, or to attend an auction, but I can't bring myself to take a bunch of days off just to do nothing, and i can't bring myself to spend a bunch of money to travel somewhere. Even when I've thought about traveling, I usually wanted to center it around an auction or something where I could possibly make a few bucks to offset the travel costs. I posted this on a forum I read, and the general response was that I am a moronic loser who will die alone. Which may well be true, but I'm not sure how sitting on a beach somewhere is going to help me - I'm still going to be the same awkward and not particularly attractive person on a beach somewhere as I am in the real world. And i can sit at home and read a book much cheaper than I can sit on a beach and read a book. But I can't really justify sitting home reading a book when I could be at work - if I'm not there, I might miss a meeting or a chance to make an impression on someone that could make or break my career.

I don't really know what the answer. In a way, I feel like if I'm relaxing and enjoying myself, I must not be working hard enough. It's like when I finish a race - if I don't pass out at the finish line (and i never do) then I must not have pushed myself to my limits. If I have free time to read or watch tv or write on this blog, it's time I should be using to try to chase love or money.

I don't want to die having never enjoyed myself. But I also don't want to die wondering if I could have achieved the things that have seemed out of reach if I'd put a little more time into it.

The power of negative thinking...

2011-06-19T21:34:00.002-04:00

It's a self-help cliche that the way to be successful is to remind yourself how good you are, how capable that you are, that you are good enough and can accomplish what you want to.

I look at things the opposite way - I try to berate myself at any opportunity. I figure if I look at things positively, I won't have any incentive to improve. So I look for the cloud around any silver lining. I think of myself as overweight because I am - by about 2 pounds, if you take the BMI as gospel. I refer to myself as a college dropout because I decided, after taking a couple classes, to not pursue getting a second master's degree.

I try to remind myself that the only difference between successful people and myself is that they worked harder than I do, so they deserve to succeed and I don't. When I see someone rolling around the beltway in a shiny new Range Rover, I remind myself that the reason they are surrounded by wood and leather while I'm surrounded by the plastic and fabric of my 5 year old Ford is because they are smarter than me and work harder than me, and if I want to be successful like them I need to work harder. When I see an attractive woman, I remind myself that if I worked harder at being a more fit, better looking, more interesting, smarter, and wealthier person, I could date someone like her, but since I don't, I don't deserve to.

So does it work? Should I start writing my own self-help book? Probably not. It does work in the short term - I can usually guilt myself into a few extra minutes on the treadmill or into not eating that bowl of ice cream or getting out of bed early to hit up some yard sales to make some extra money by reminding myself that I need to make sacrifices and endure some temporary pain if I want to achieve my goals. But long-term, it also makes me more bitter and frustrated. In some sense, I feel like I work pretty hard - that I'm pretty good about doing my job, but don't seem to be promoted, that I work out more than most people I know, but it hasn't translated into making me any more desirable. Am I not working hard enough, or am I just doing everything wrong, or is my life just a modern Sisyphus - no matter how many times I lug the boulder uphill, am I just doomed to see it roll back down and have to push ad nausea?

And despite the Range Rover lust, what I really want in life should be more achievable - love, marriage, kids, ect - but it seems to be out of reach, and no matter what I do, I can't seem to figure out what I need to do - what I need to spend more time on, what steps I need to cross off my to-do list - to achieve it.

Or maybe I'm just too fat and stupid to, and I need to get off the internet and get back on the treadmill.

On the run, or can something be worth doing, but not worth doing well?

2011-06-18T15:58:00.003-04:00

Today I "ran" my second road race, the Baltimore 10 miler. My first one was the Baltimore half-marathon last fall. I signed up mostly on a whim, after a friend mentioned that it was something I might want to do. I figured it would be a good test to see how in shape I was.

The answer was not very - I finished, but way in the back. I didn't do any real training beyond my normal workouts, though, so it shouldn't have surprised me that I did poorly. I figured I'd try to do some actual training for next year's half, but when I saw the 10-miler I figured I'd sign up for that too.

I was planning on doing some actual training, but laziness and life got in the way, and besides a couple weeks of adding an extra 15 minutes of time late at night on my basement treadmill, I didn't do much. So it's not exactly a surprise that I did pretty badly today - my time was 2:10:03 - which puts me in 306th place out of the 318 men 30-34 who finished the race. Which is pretty sad. People have commented that "at least you finished", but that seems like setting one's standards too low, like being proud that you graduated high school with a 1.3 GPA.

I suspect at least part of this is statistics - if you are a numbers/stats nerd, the results page is incredibly interesting. One thing that's obvious - both from the page and from observing the race - is there are way more women than men. It's also interesting that there are way more women who are what I'd consider "casual" runners than there are men - the back of the race where I was was almost all women (note to self: come up with some running pickup lines). Yes, I realize women tend to be slower at races (the top male finisher was about 10 minutes ahead of the top female) but it seems like not only do fewer men run, but the ones who do tend to be pretty good.

But there is something to be said about finishing, and there is something to be said about me finishing. After all, it's fair to say that, say, 7 years ago, when I was about 100 pounds heavier, I would not have been able to finish a 10 mile race. In fact, I probably would have had trouble walking from the parking lot to the starting line. There is at least some personal accomplishment in finishing, even with a time as bad as mine.

And that's what makes road races kind of interesting - you aren't just competing against other people, but against yourself - against your previous time. I feel like unless I'm pretty much willing to quit my job and do nothing but train, I'm probably never going to be anywhere but at the back of the pack. But I also feel that if I train a little more and push myself a little harder, I can at least shave a few minutes off my time, and I suppose that will have to be good enough. I'm kind of a competitive person, and I usually do pretty well at things I do, so realizing that there are things I'm not very good at is kind of depressing - which is kind of silly, since there are clearly plenty of things, from football to poker, that I'm pretty sure I'm never going to be competitive at.

But there is something appealing about road races, as a way of seeing what you are capable of. It's also an interesting thing to be a part of - to see people cheering (favorite sign of the day: "Go random stranger, go!), to do something that at least some people -including the old me - aren't capable of.

Plus, I get a stylish vest out of it - perfect for those times when my chest is cold but my arms aren't!

The online auction format isn't totally dead...

2011-06-10T13:49:00.002-04:00

Wired has an interesting article up about the decline of the online auction - how everyone thought it was going to create an economist's wet dream, a perfectly informed, perfectly liquid market in everything - until people realized that they didn't want to have to sit around watching auctions end every time they needed a small item, and until eBay kept raising fees and changing the rules for sellers to make it less profitable and less fun to sell, while still having buyers not feel secure about not being ripped off.

As regular readers probably know, I'm a part-time eBay seller - I've been buying since 1999 and selling since 2001. Over the years, my product mix has changed - I started out selling free after rebate items and clearance stuff from retailers, and have since switched to items from auctions and yard sales. I've also tried to focus mostly on business equipment, because I've found I can often buy it cheaper than things like consumer electronics because people selling it at yard sales or bidding on it at auctions often don't realize how much it's worth.

I don't make a fortune, but it's a hobby, and I make enough to pay for the gas to drive to interesting places and still make a few bucks. It's also a nice feeling to know that you were the smartest guy in the room - when you looked at something that a bunch of other people looked at and passed up the chance to buy for $2, and were able to buy it and sell it for $150.

As a reseller, that means that I need to buy inventory, and that means that I've come to realize a small but not insignificant chunk of the liquidation business has moved online to online auctions. Not eBay auctions, but proprietary ones, typically using software like Maxanet or services like Proxibid. Government auctions have also moved to online B2B auctions - the Federal Government now sells it's surplus at gsaauctions.gov instead of at live, open-call auctions. Some previously live auction companies have moved everything online, while others sell some items online and others in live, open-call auctions.

As a buyer, I have mixed feelings on the online auctions. Prices often seem to go pretty high on online auctions, but I've still gotten some really good deals. It's also nice if the auction is a distance away to not have to drive a distance, stand around for hours, and leave empty handed. You can bid from home or work and only drive to pick up if you won something. Some online auction companies do have a bad habit of extending auctions or rescheduling pickup times, which is a hassle if you are a part-timer who has to work around a day job.

But my guess is that online auctions bring a higher overall price and are easier for a client in many cases, which is why places use them. I think when people look at eBay as all there is for online auctions, they are missing a pretty decent chunk of B2B commerce that has moved to online auctions.

The other, somewhat tangential, thing about eBay and B2B is that, since many of my sales are of business equipment, many of my customers are businesses. Some of them are obviously buying them to use themselves, but many are resellers themselves, and it seems like some have a business model that relies heavily on buying certain items on eBay to resell to customers. It's kind of surprising - you wouldn't expect it - and it suggests that eBay has at least made a significant difference for a lot of buisnesses, some of which probably wouldn't exist without it, even if it hasn't had the huge change in everyday customer purchasing that economists were predicting a decade ago.

Drug buying...

2011-05-30T21:38:00.002-04:00

I tried to buy some drugs on Friday, but alas, my criminal behavior was caught and I was not able to score any.

No, I wasn't trying to buy crack, or weed, or anything else that's sold in plastic bags by guys on street corners of Baltimore's less-fine neighborhoods. I was trying to buy Allegra-D at Target, but evidently I'd bought too much this month and was shut down after they scanned my license.

Allegra D contains pseudophedrine, which can be used to make meth, in addition to making it so madanthony can breathe. It used to be prescription, so I wasn't even aware of this until about 2 months ago, when it became over the counter. Which not only meant that it was costing me more out of pocket, because instead of just a copay with my insurance picking up the rest, I'm paying the full dollar-plus per pill. Worse, though, is that instead of the 90-day supply I had before, I'm forced to go to the pharmacy pretty much weekly to pick up a 10 pack. It's kind of a pain, because I usually am at the gym until close to 8pm, and the pharmacy at Target closes at 9pm, so I'm cutting it pretty close. As a result, I generally try to pick up a package anytime I'm there and the pharmacy is open. Including Friday - I had the day off (yeah working in higher ed and it's generous 4-day Memorial Day weekend) and tried to buy a package, only to have the machine beep when they scanned my license and print out a receipt saying that I'd tried to purchase too many of a restricted item.

The most frustrating thing about it is that neither of the employees at the pharmacy could tell me what the legal limit was, or when I'd last purchased it, or when I could purchase it again - one person thought it was every 7 days, another thought it was every 10. It turns out they were - it's not a weekly limit, but a 30 day limit of what works out to 3 packages of Allegra D every 30 days.

A while back, Megan McCardle had a pretty interesting look at the cost-benefits of psudoephedrine bans - which I didn't think much of at the time because my Allegra was still by prescription. But now that I basically have to jump through hoops to get a legal, effective drug for an actual medical condition, just because it can be used to make an illegal drug. I don't like that the government is storing my license data for 2 years, that the law is being enforced by retailers whose employees don't even know what the law is, that I'm being treated like a criminal for having a stuffy nose or fluid-filled ears. It seems absurd to me that I can buy enough rotgut vodka to drink myself into a coma, and maybe I'll have to show an ID if the clerk is unusually cautious, but I can't buy allergy medicine without joining a government database.

This is truly government as big brother at it's most absurd - in order to prevent harm to a hypothetical third-party that might misuse a perfectly legal product, I pretty much have to rearrange my schedule and make 37 trips a year to a pharmacy counter to buy a legal drug, one that I was at one point prescribed by a doctor, for a stuffy nose.

If any politician made repealing the Combat Methamphetamine Act of 2005 a platform of their campaign, I guarantee that would capture the allergy-sufferer vote. And that's nothing to sneeze at.

Just another sad love song rocking my brain...

2011-05-14T21:26:00.002-04:00

I'm not sure how much to write in this post, because it's something I've written about before, and the thoughts haven't really changed.

Suffice to say, I met a girl, thought it might go somewhere, it didn't.

People often characterize me as negative, or pessimistic, or even depressed. But I'm only those things when I have reason to be - when things aren't going well, when there are things in my life that I wish were different but haven't figured out how to change. When it looks like things might get better, I'm hopeful and optimistic - but when they don't get better, and when they go back to where they were before, I'm more unhappy, because I've gotten a glipse of hope, a taste of what could be, only to have it not happen.

I feel like there must be something about me that separates me from pretty much the rest of the world. Most of my friends, coworkers, ect have found someone, and those who have had it end have generally found someone else pretty quickly. I, on the other hand, seem to have an anti-woman gravitational field. Dates in my life are rare, and go nowhere. I find myself looking at couples - at the store, driving in their cars, wherever - and wondering why I can't be a part of something like that. I don't believe that humans are meant to go through life alone, but that seems to be my destiny.

For most of the goals I've had, there has been pretty clear things I do that produce the desired result. Need to lose weight - eat fewer calories, burn more calories. Need to save money - earn more, spend less. But when it comes to dating, there doesn't seem to be a simple formula.

There are usually two pieces of advice I get. The first is to improve my appearance, and that's probably good advice. While I've lost a lot of weight from where I was, I'm still a few pounds overweight by BMI standards, and I plan on going back to watching what I eat more carefully. I also am not very muscular - my arms have been described as "spindly" - and while I've started doing some strength training, I obviously need to work out longer and harder. I currently do about 2 hours a day at the gym - hopefully I can bump that up to 2.5 or more, but I fear that I am just too weak to put in the time that I need to put in to be attractive. And can I really blame women for not wanting to date a guy who doesn't care enough about himself and his health to put in the time and work to be healthy and in good shape?

The other advice I usually get is to "be more confident", which to me is like telling someone with cancer that they need to "have less cancer". Confidence isn't something I can will myself to have. In reality, it's not something I should have - I'm a failure at dating, and when you think about it, if humans have one goal on earth it's to propagate, and I'm failing at that. I've had the same job for years and don't have much likelihood of moving anywhere anytime fast, my net worth is barely positive, I dropped out of a graduate program because I was unwilling to put the time and effort it would have taken to finish, and I'm sitting alone on a Saturday night writing about my life on my blog. I don't really have a whole lot to be confident about. If I was confident, it would be a sign of insanity, because I'd be ignoring the reality of my life.

But could I fake being confident? Probably not. I wrote a while back about my thoughts on using "The Game", and it still pretty much holds true. I don't really want to start hitting on random women in bars, I don't want to be a jerk, and I think there has been so much coverage of the ideas that most women are wise to it anyway. It probably wouldn't hurt to force myself to talk to more strangers, and it might make me a little more comfortable around new people, but I feel like I'm not going to be more confident until I have something to be confident about, and I'm not going to have something to be more confident about until I'm more confident.

I often think the best thing to do is to give up on dating - delete my profile from the couple dating sites I use, to tell myself anytime I see an attractive women that I have no hope with her, and otherwise give up - focus my energy on work, on working out, on making money, on my ebay and hamfest business. But I have just enough hope to think that there might be something out there, and that usually just leads to disappointment.

Coming up short...

2011-04-22T10:14:00.003-04:00

Megan McCardle has a post about women who won't date shorter guys. Despite the fact that she starts out discussing a women who will only date short guys, she blames it on the guys, saying that it's mostly that guys don't want to date women taller than them.

As a short guy, I disagree. First of all, guys tend to be less picky about who they date or are willing to date than women - I can't find the study despite several seconds of googling, but I remember a while back an economist studied speed daters and found women tended to want to meet 25% of guys they talked to, while men wanted to meet 50% - what made the study interesting was that those percentages stayed the same even if the quality of the potential dates changed. I mean, lets face it - there is a considerable number of guys who will pretty much date anything that moves, so it seems unlikely that guys are going to pass up an attractive woman because they are taller than them - unless they have a really good reason.

While it's not scientific, I've known women in the real world who refuse to date guys shorter than them, and I've seen plenty of profiles on online dating sites with women who say the same thing.

Which brings me to my theory - if guys generally date women who are their height or shorter, and avoid women who are considerably taller, it's not necessarily because of their preferences but rather as a response to women's preferences. If you are a guy, and you notice that women who are taller than you almost always turn you down, you are going to tend to gravitate towards women shorter or of similar height than you, because you figure you have a better shot at them. I know I do - if I'm looking at a profile on an online dating site, and I'm on the fence if it's someone worth contacting, and I notice that they are short, it will usually make me more willing to give them a shot - because every woman who I've gone past email to phone or an actual meeting has been my height or shorter. Which, granted, is a very small subset, but still...

Which brings up the second question - if it really is women who are refusing to date shorter men, should they be? As a short guy, it doesn't thrill me that a large subset of the population of single women refuses to date me based on a physical characteristic that I can't control - I mean, there are so many other, better reasons not to date me. Then again, I certainly have certain physical characteristics I prefer in women - some of which are under their control (like weight) and some of which aren't (age, race).

So I guess the best I can do is ask women to at least consider thinking about looking at shorter guys - maybe accept a date with one, or turn down the "height" section in search if you use an online dating site. Maybe you'll meet someone really cool who you wouldn't have met otherwise, and will decide that that outweighs the height factor. Maybe you'll decide that you were right and height is important to you.

Adventures in Timonium Hamfesting...

2011-04-02T01:38:00.002-04:00

So last weekend was the Timonium Hamfest, one of the largest hamfests on the East Coast and one of the only ones that runs more than 1 day. It also happens to be about 15 minutes from Casa De Mad, my sprawling 2-bedroom estate. In previous years, I hadn't sold at it, but last year - after a few auctions where I bought a bunch of stuff - I decided to tailgate outside one day. I did quite well last year, but was really really cold.

So this year I spent the extra couple bucks and got an indoor basic space, the cheapest indoor space, for the whole weekend - it was only a few bucks more for Sunday. It was definitely worth it - I got to come in Friday night to set up, didn't have to take down Saturday night, and didn't get 3rd degree windburn from standing in a parking lot for 8 hours. The only glitch was that when I picked a spot out, I think I was looking at the map upside down, or thought I was on the other side of the building - I ended up on the far side of the building, furthest from the entrance, and away from most other sellers. It didn't seem to hurt traffic or sales, though, and it made it easy to unload and load up, especially on the last day, since I started taking down an hour before the end when you could bring cars into the building - I was able to pull up to the doors and have a short walk to load the truck.

The other nice thing about being inside was that outdoors opens at 6am but inside doesn't open until 8am, so I could shop through the tailgaters for a while. Didn't find much, though - a $1 wireless b netgear bridge (for hooking up wired devices to a wireless network) and a $5 Orinoco Gold wireless laptop card - 16-bit, for old laptops.

So how did I do sales wise? Quite well - I grossed basically a mortgage payment. How much did I net? Who knows - I'm not great about keeping track of that kind of stuff, especially taking into account things like the cost of gas for buying trips. But in a sense, it doesn't matter - everything I sold I already had bought and paid for, so all I can do is try to get as much money for it as I can - it's not like I can return it. I learn what sells, and that helps me the next time I'm buying. I remember a while back watching one of those "flip this house" type shows, and one of the rare flippers who actually knew what they were doing stated that you make money when you buy, and the best you can hope for is to not lose it before you sell it. It's the same way with reselling electronics.

The other thing that was good is I slightly reduced the amount of stuff in my house, which is good. Winter tends to be a very slow period for selling - few 'fests, and small ones - so I've bought a bunch of stuff, and am literally tripping over servers, pc's, and other inventory. I've run out of room in my basement storage area and have stuff stacked in my hallway and the family rooms. Aside from making me look like I'll be appearing on next week's Hoarders on A&E, it means I have limited room to buy new inventory when I have the opportunity because I don't have a place for it. Last week I had a chance to buy some very cheap year-old pc's with widescreen monitors from an online auction of a mortgage scam that the FTC shut down - I bought one lot of 7, but would have bought more - they went cheap - if I had a place to put them.

Last year I started buying stuff more aggressively, and found a few new (but not guaranteed) sources. I also started selling at more 'fests to sell that stuff, and to give me something to do and see new places. I hope to continue to do that - I'm debating about a couple that are coming up in the next few weeks in PA and DE - and definitely want to do a bunch over the summer. I've built up a ton of inventory, and would like to get rid of it so I have money in my pocket, and so I can see more of the floor of my house. I'd also like to be more selective about what I buy, so I have less stuff sitting around - but that isn't always an option, since when opportunities come you have to take them - sometimes you have to gamble on stuff that may or may not be easy to sell, sometimes you buy a huge lot at an auction because you know there are a few decent sellable things in it, and sometimes you know you are not going to get a chance to buy something like that again.

So I'll probably have a houseful of crap for a while, but hopefully also a little more in my bank account.

How to shop at a hamfest...

2011-03-19T13:46:00.003-04:00

Next weekend is the Timonium Hamfest - one of the largest hamfests on the east coast, and located very close to me - one of the perks of living in Baltimore. Hamfests are basically swap meets/flea markets geared towards ham radio, electronic, and computer enthusiasts. I've been selling at hamfests for the last 5 years or so, although last year was the first year I sold at Timonium. I generally avoided selling so I would be able to focus on buying stuff, but I've been more active at buying stuff for resale lately and want to convert it to money and free up some space in my house. I'm spending part of this weekend pulling stuff out of my basement and pricing it in preparation.

Last year I did the outdoor tailgating, and only sold on Saturday. This year I sprung for an indoor tailgate space and will be selling both days - it was cold last year. I figure that this will give me a few advantages besides comfort - the indoor space doesn't open until 8am, which means I can shop the outdoor tailgaters before I start selling. I can also set up Friday night, and bring additional inventory Saturday and Sunday if I have space. I don't know if being inside will help or hurt sales, though... we'll find out.

Based on my selling experiences, I figured I'd share a few tips about how to have a productive buying experience, from someone who has been on both sides of the tables full of junk.

1)Bring lots of cash - most sellers will only take cash, and you don't want to miss out on something because you don't have enough money on you.

2)haggle, but don't be a dick about it - many sellers, myself included, price stuff above what they expect to get for it because they know most buyers will haggle. So don't be afraid to offer a lower price for something. However, don't be a jerk - I'm a lot more willing to work with someone who is nice and tells me they need a lower price because they don't have a lot of cash, or don't have space, or that their wife/girlfriend will be mad if they buy it than someone who tells me that I'm stupid for wanting that much for an item or that it's probably broken and they don't trust people who sell at hamfests. Also, how much I'm willing to go down depends on a lot of things - how much I paid for the item, how long I've had it, how big/heavy it is, how many more of them I have, if it's something that becomes obsolete, and how early in the day it is. Chances are, if you are looking at a couple year old desktop pc near the end of the day, you have a lot more haggle space than if you are looking at an iPod at 6:05 am.

3)don't spend money you cant' afford to lose - I'm honest about what I sell, and try to test used items and describe them accurately. Still, sometimes stuff is defective or worked when I tested it but got knocked around in transit. I'm willing to give out contact info if someone wants it (I even have cards printed up this year with my email, ebay id, and google voice number). Also keep in mind that not every seller knows that much about what they are selling - there are a lot of resellers who just buy lots of stuff at auctions or the like and drag it to the 'fest. To me, it's not worth intentionally selling stuff I know doesn't work because I sell year after year to the same people, and if I burn them once they won't buy from me in the future. I have a handful of customers who seek me out at fests, and a few I sell to outside of hamfests, and I've heard customers telling other people they've had good experiences with me. If I ripped them off, they would be telling people to avoid me instead. Still, not everyone thinks this way.

4)if you are looking for something specific, know what you are looking before before you come - I'll often have people ask me if I have RAM or a power supply for "a Dell laptop", but they don't know anything more specific. If you need a part, research the part number or specs before you come up. Asking for RAM for a Dell laptop is as useful as asking for a tire for a Ford - a Fiesta tire isn't going to work on an F-450 Super Duty pickup.

5)don't grumble about how there aren't enough ham radio stuff and that it's all electronics and computer stuff - there is a reason most ham radio clubs market their hamfests to computer and electronics sellers and buyers as well - because there aren't enough vendors and hams to support a fest6) that's just ham radios. There is enough crossover between the electronics, computer, and ham worlds that stuff that appeals to one often appeals to another. Besides, the dues that sellers like me and buyers like the people who buy from me pay goes to support ham radio clubs - and maybe some of the people who come because of the computers and electronics will become interested in ham radio.

6)arrive early - most fests start early - Timonium tailgating opens at 6am to buyers. If you get there late, you will miss some deals. Lots of vendors pack up pretty early, because they've been up really early and want to go home and get some sleep.

7)dress appropriately - comfortable shoes, layers in case it's warm or cold, rain gear if there is a chance of rain. Some people find a backpack useful if they are buying a lot of small items.

8)if you want it, act fast - if you pass something that looks interesting and say "gee, I'll come back and buy that", there's a pretty good chance it won't be there when you get back. And don't be afraid to ask the price of something, don't just assume it's out of your range. I've been surprised at how low some sellers are willing to sell stuff. Worst that can happen is they quote a price you don't like and you keep walking.

Maybe all the good men are right here....

2011-03-14T21:45:00.000-04:00

I read Kay Hymowitz's WSJ article Where Have All The Good Men Gone a week or two ago (and added her book to my amazon wish list) but haven't gotten around to writing a post on it. Until now.

The article laments the rise of the man-child, the "pre-adults" who aren't interested in marriage, gainful employment, or doing much else but reading Maxim, watching Comedy Central, and playing video games.

First of all, I'm not sure all the cultural indicators that are flagged are proof that there are vast hordes of man-children wandering around being immature. The fact is that it's possible to play video games, or read Maxim, or watch tasteless TV shows, and still be gainfully employed, well-groomed, and family-oriented.

And I don't want to downplay my own failings, either - I'm sure there are plenty of things wrong with me that are the cause of my singleness.

But if women are mourning a lack of mature men, of the kind of men who want to settle down and raise a family instead of existing in a post- college haze, I can't help but wonder if the reason is partly because they overlook guys who are those things because the man-children are more fun/interesting /attractive/exciting, and partly because they themselves aren't interested in settling down, or at least aren't sure what they want.

I use dating sites pretty heavily, and one thing I've noticed is a lot of women have profiles where they talk about how much they love certain activities - travel, extreme sports like skydiving or rock climbing, ect - and how they want someone who does those things. And they will also have selected that yes, they want children.

The thing is that these are typically women in their late 20's to mid-30's - ie they are at the age where if they really do want to have children, biology suggests that they probably should do it soon. Which would suggest that their days of jetting off to France are pretty likely to come to an end for the next decade or two, and that if having children really is something that's important to them maybe they should be focused more on looking for someone who is husband/father material than someone who has been to the Eiffel Tower.

I'll also see plenty of profiles talk about how they want a guy who is employed, doesn't live in their parent's basement, doesn't mooch off them, ect - unlike all the other guys they've dated. Of course, if being gainfully employed and having one's own house was a sufficient condition to at least getting a date, madanthony's life would be much more exciting. My guess is despite their claims, when it comes to a choice of a boring, less attractive, but gainfully employed guy or a better looking unemployed moocher, they will pick the latter.

And if that is what women really want, that's fine. But they need to be honest about it - not just when writing profiles, but with themselves. Clearly their stated preferences and their actual preferences are different, probably because they haven't stopped and thought about what their actual preferences are.

uggh, weekends...

2011-03-13T21:58:00.002-04:00

Every time the weekend approaches, my coworkers get all excited about what they are going to do. I, on the other hand, typically greet them with a profound sense of meh.

When you are chronically single and undateable like me, and when you don't have much of a social life, like me, weekends are just another day, except without going to work. And when you don't have much else going on in your life, that's not all that much of a plus.

How do I typically start my weekend? By making a to-do list on the back of a piece of scrap paper, which typically includes such exciting events as "laundry" and "Target". Since work and going to the gym eats up the bulk of my weekdays, the weekend is when I typically get much of the little errands and other things that I need to get done done. None of which are particularly enjoyable (although Target does have a Starbucks....)

But it's better to be doing stuff than not, because weekends where I have free time usually mean I end up sitting in my house and thinking about what a fool I was to buy a house at the exact top of the housing market, or surfing internet dating sites full of profiles of women who will never go out with me, making me ponder what I am doing wrong and why I am such a loser.

But the good thing is that my weekend malaise tends to be most profound in the winter. Spring and summer bring more things to occupy my time, which means less time for madanthony to get all emo. Granted, many of those things aren't particularly sexy - hamfests, auctions, yard sales, flea markets - but they'll occupy some of my time, and hopefully also put a little money in my pocket. Also, I've signed up for a 10-mile run in June, so I now have a reason to push myself to put in some time on my basement treadmill - or maybe even outside. And summer does hold the possibility of a slight improvement in the giant black hole that is my social life.

Of course, summer is invariably followed by winter, which means that at some point I'll go back to posting about how much my weekends suck.

weight loss is possible, but shaming kids into it isn't...

2011-03-10T21:17:00.006-05:00

Megan McCardle has a post up about shaming fat kids into not being fat, and that she doesn't think it's a good idea.

I'll agree that telling kids they are fat and suck probably won't do much good. However, she also makes an argument she's made in a number of posts about weight loss - that it's nearly impossible to lose weight and keep it off. I strongly disagree with that.

See, here's the thing. I consider myself pretty knowledgeable both about weight loss and about fat kids, because I was a fat kid - and a fat adult. In 2004, I was 24 years old, five foot five, and 250 pounds - morbidly obese by BMI standards.

The thing that got me to change my lifestyle was actually one of those silly online death calculators - which said I'd die at age 56. For the fist time, it put into real terms the idea that my weight would most likely have significant, long-term negative effects unless I did something about it. So I did. I started watching what I ate, and - for the first time in my life - I started exercising. It took me about 2 years, but I lost around 100 pounds. And since then, I've kept it off - my weight has fluctuated a little in both directions, but right now I'm 150 and a 34" waist - when 7 years ago I was 250 and a 46" waist. I'm not as careful about what I eat as I used to be, but I also work out about 2 hours a day, so it balances out.

So I think weight loss is possible. And it's not like I'm some uber-successful person who succeeds at everything he tries - in fact, when it comes to dating, careers, or finances I'm a complete failure at the first two and maybe average at the third. So if I can do it, a lot of other people should be able to as well. I'm not saying it's not difficult, but there are many things that are difficult but still accomplished by a number of people.

But as far as the shaming fat kids thing goes, it's not going to work. Part of it is that, as Megan mentions, fat kids tend to be pretty ashamed already, and more of it is unlikely to change anything. But what got me to lose weight wasn't shame or even disgust at the way I looked - it was finally understanding the long-term consequences of my actions. And let's face it, kids are inherently bad at understanding long-term consequences, as well as at making decisions that place long-term consequences over immediate gratification. I can think of plenty of things that, looking back on, I would do differently if I had really understood the consequences and trade-offs - and those are things I did in my teens and 20's, never mind the ones I did as kids.

Losing weight takes a lot of work, a lot of sacrifice, a lot of doing things that aren't particularly fun now - like 90 minutes on the precor or not eating that donut - in order to gain benefits later. In order to do those things, you need to really want those long-term things - and kids aren't good at that, they tend not to think long-term. They probably don't even understand long-term well enough to care about it.

So I think that means it's difficult to find any way to motivate kids to lose weight. I think the best you can do is educate parents on how to feed their kids right and encourage them to exercise regularly. But kids are still going to find ways to go around those things, and I don't think we'll ever find a way to stop it.

And btw, the pics at the top of this post are of me - the first picture was taken in December 2004. The second one was taken in March 2010.

and miles to go before I rest...

2011-03-06T22:09:00.002-05:00

So, having run, err, walked, the Baltimore half-marathon back in October, I found myself on the mailing list and facebook page of the company that organizes the marathon, and several other running events. One of which is the Baltimore Ten Miler, in June, which runs through madanthony's old neighborhood (and the backdrop for several scenes in The Wire) of Reservoir Hill. After waffling back and forth for a while, I decided to sign up today.

Which means now I actually need to start training. I work out pretty much every day - typically 90 minutes on the elliptical and about 30 minutes of low-impact strength training. As you can imagine from the fact that I still hover on the line between normal and overweight on the BMI scale, this isn't enough exercise, and is counteracted by too many visits to the cookie and ice cream sections of the grocery store and the all-you-can-eat buffet at work.

I did the half-marathon with no extra training whatsoever - and my finish reflected it, around 7500th out of the 8000 finishers with a time that was about 3x that of the 1st place finisher - in other words, he could have done 40 miles in the time it took me to do 13.

Which means in the next week or 2 I need to start a new training regiment. Ideally, what I hope to start doing is doing some running before work - either on the treadmill at the gym (to better simulate the experience of road running, plus to try to get myself on the pace that I need to be on to improve my time) or around the Reservoir near work. The question is if I can make myself do it - I'm not a big fan of getting up early (or going to bed early, a necessary condition to getting up early). I have to remind myself how bad I felt when I realized how much I sucked after the half-marathon - hopefully I can shame myself into putting in the work that I need to put in to get a decent finish time.

no madanthony is an island...

2011-03-06T21:48:00.002-05:00

When you are chronically single, like me - when you just seem to give off a force field that repels the opposite sex - you are never short of reminders of what a loser you are. Happy couples walking around at the store or sitting in the car next to you at the traffic light, romantic comedies on the TV at the gym where the loser actually gets the girl by doing things that would probably get him arrested in the real world, coworkers talking about their girlfriends/spouses/ect. It's always a reminder that there is just something about me that I'm doing wrong, that makes me unable to have something that everyone else seems to have no problem with.

And then there's the smaller, odder things. Like last week, I bought a bunch of stuff at an auction from a failed bank. In addition to some pc's, servers, toner cartridges, and check processing equipment that's going on eBay or to hamfests, I bought a couple pieces of corporate wall art - a bunch of large framed pictures. One of them - a large framed picture of a tree-lined path - would look perfect in my bedroom. I tried to hang it tonight, only to realize that hanging a several-foot-long painting by yourself is pretty much impossible.

Now, you might question if, if madanthony had someone else in his life, if he'd be hanging a picture that formerly graced the teller counter at a Timonium, MD bank branch in his bedroom. For that question, you might wonder if any sane woman would let her significant other drop $1100 on stuff from a failed bank. And you would probably have a point, but it's not the point of this post... the point of which is that, in life, there are big and small things where it would be nice to have another person to share your life and experiences with. And I don't have that. And I have yet to figure out what's wrong with me, what I'm doing wrong, what I need to do differently to get what I want.

What do I want? Well, this probably sounds stupid, and saying stupid things is probably part of the reason I'm single, but sometimes when I'm not doing much - usually when I'm driving home from work - I'll think about my cat, Nibbler. I'll picture her curled up on my lap, purring, her little furry head resting on my chest, and I'll find myself - no matter how bad my day was - involuntarily smiling. And that's what I want - a female that sits on my lap and purrs. No, seriously, what I wish I had in my life was someone that made me smile like that - someone who the very thought of spending time with made me happy. And I wish I was that someone for someone - the person who they wanted to be with when they weren't, the person who the very thought of put a smile on their face no matter how bad their day.

But clearly that's not meant to be. When I was fat, I tended to blame being fat on external things - it wasn't my fault that I was fat. Once I realized that it was, in fact, my fault that I was fat - that what I ate and not exercising were the reason I was fat - I was able to change those things and lose weight. But I haven't figured out what it is that I'm doing wrong that's causing me to be unlovable - if I need to spend more time at the gym, make more money, become more cultured, or what it is that I'm doing wrong now. When I was fat, it was because I deserved to be fat, because I did the things that fat people do. So I must be single because I deserve to be single, but there isn't the same obvious "eat fewer calories than you burn" equation for dating. Or at least not one that I've discovered.

And that's why there is a wall in my bedroom that still lacks a picture.

Mirrorless Monday, or why it must be someone else's fault if you don't like what you see in the mirror...

2011-02-20T23:14:00.002-05:00

I was at the gym at the university I work for a few days ago when I saw a sign that they would be celebrating "mirrorless Monday" as part of "body image week" and covering up all the mirrors in the bathrooms and locker rooms, as well as in the weightlifting areas. There are so many things wrong with this that I fear I may break my keyboard typing them. It's the kind of stupidity that can only come out of the bubble that is higher ed, where there aren't enough real problems, so instead people need to be protected from the real world.

The first is the fact that most people don't look in the mirror because they are trying to decide how they feel about themselves, but instead to solve more practical and immediate questions - like if they have a piece of this morning's breakfast stuck in their teeth or if their hair is sticking up. The reality is that we judge people by their appearance, and preventing people from looking at themselves doesn't mean that they will not be judged, but instead that they will not have the opportunity to look their best when being judged.

The second problem with this is the idea that if you look in the mirror and don't like what you see, it's the fault of society or the media or advertisers or something other than the choices that you have made in terms of diet and exercise. Feeling bad about how you look isn't a bad thing - it's a way of making you realize that maybe you should put down that third donut and spend some time on the elliptical.

Yes, I realize that part of the reason for body image week is probably because of eating disorders like anorexia and bulimia. But the reality is that a very, very tiny group of people suffer from those things, while most Americans are overweight or obese - 1.6% of Americans are anorexic or bulimic while 68% of Americans are overweight or obese. Rather than protecting people from feeling bad about the way they look, the University would be better served by making more people feel bad about the way they look, because chances are they SHOULD feel bad about the way they look.

The third problem I have with this is that it assumes that looking in the mirror makes you feel worse about yourself. But for many people - especially people who actually make some effort to live somewhat healthy lives - looking in the mirror is an uplifting experience, because it validates what they've been doing and lets them see the results of good choices they've made. When I look in the mirror, I do see that I could stand to lose a few more pounds and put on some more muscle - but I also see that I'm in much better shape than I was a few years back, and that I've got a little bit more muscle than I used to - and seeing that the choices I've made are working.

Is "Mirrorless Monday" the biggest problem ever? No. But I do think it illustrates an attitude that is prevalent in this country, and especially on college campuses - the idea that certain things - including physical appearance, wealth, success, intelligence - are completely outside of people's control, and if you aren't where you want to be it's not your fault and you shouldn't feel bad about.

Why am I so ugly, and what can I do about it?

2011-02-11T22:56:00.003-05:00

There's a pay dating site that I have a membership for (I had a coupon code). Let's just call it PeeHarmony. Every now and then they run promos where you can "communicate" for free, but if you aren't a paying member you can only get so far into the communication process, and non-members also can't see the pictures posted by paying members. During these promos I sneak my email address into communications so that if the person isn't a member they can get in touch with me.

I've had that happen twice recently. Both times the conversation seemed to be going OK - until they asked for a picture of me. That's the last I heard from them. And a while back I had actually met a woman in person who I had also met during a free communication event, who hadn't seen my pic but who I seemed to get along well with on the phone. Once I met her, I never heard from her again.

That makes it pretty obvious that my looks is clearly one of the major things wrong with me. Which is surprising, not because I think I'm attractive, but I figured there were many other things that are much more obviously wrong with me.

Now, I can't really blame a woman for not wanting to date someone they don't find attractive - I wouldn't either. But it does seem interesting that you will often hear women complain that all guys care about is looks, that women are more interested in things like how a man can satisfy their emotional needs or if he'd make a good father. And to that, I call bullshit.

Years ago, when I was fat, I could blame my being single on being fat. Now, I'm still a bit on chunky side (5 pounds above "normal" and into "overweight" by BMI). But it's hard to believe that if losing 95 pounds didn't make me more datable, that losing another 10 would have significant impact.

So that suggests that at least part of my lack of appeal is stuff other than weight. I did start doing a little weight training about 8 months ago in the hopes that it would help me add a little muscle and look a little better. It hasn't really made much of a difference, which means I'm either not doing enough or not pushing myself hard enough.

There are other things I can't really do anything about - I'm short, and I have a condition called Shurman's Kyphosis that gives my back a curve. AFAIK, there aren't any exercises to add height, and while back surgery is possible, it was advised against as being dangerous, painful, and not particularly effective. I also have the kind of skin that is either pale or burned. I guess I could start using spray-on tan, but I can't imagine that doing anything other than making me look even more ridiculous.

I guess I could try to dress better, although I'm not sure what that would be. I could try a new haircut, but I'm kind of limited in options because I have a small bald spot that I need to keep covered. I could lose the goatee, but I kind of like it and have had it for years - it's kind of my signature. Same with the glasses - maybe different ones would help a little, but I like my thick black frames- they are kind of hipster - and I don't want to do contacts because I suck at putting things in my eyes - I've had to be held down to get eye drops.

I've included the pics I sent the last time- if you have any suggestions, feel free to let me know what I can do to not look so repulsive. FWIW, one was taken last year in Red Rocks outside of Vegas and the other was taken last month on a hike organized by an old college roommate. I suppose I could get a friend to take different pics, but if the point is to hide flaws I don't see as being real useful - once I meet someone in person, they will know what I look like in person.

Luckily, I don't have a personal life to get in the way of my workouts..

2011-02-06T11:56:00.002-05:00

The Wall Street Journal has an article about the struggle that some serious fitness enthusiasts have with balancing their family lives and their workout schedules.

First of all, it's a reminder of how pathetic my workout schedule is - like the main guy profiled in the article, I typically work out 2 hours a day on weekdays (90 minutes of cardio and 30 minutes of strength training) but unlike him, I only do 2 hours a day on weekends, instead of 5 to 6. I'm hoping to bump that up as things get warmer and I can do some outdoor running to get ready for the Baltimore half-marathon this fall. But the fact that I don't do more now - when I don't have many obligations beyond work - doesn't bode well for my commitment.

But the thing is that there are other things I enjoy doing besides working out - reading, watching TV, surfing the web, spending time with friends, visiting family, going to auctions and yard sales, selling stuff on eBay and hamfests. The thing is that most of these things, compared to working out, aren't particularly noble. Cutting down on your workouts to spend more time with your family is hard to argue with. Cutting down on your workouts to, well, post on your blog - not so much. It displays weakness, a preference for doing what is enjoyable but not good rather than sacrificing enjoyment for long-term gains in health and appearance as well as towards goals like achieving a better half-marathon time or eventually doing a full marathon.

I'm also convinced that if I just worked out more and harder and ate better, I'd be attractive enough not to be single. I'm not sure this is true, but it's hard to believe I wouldn't look better if I got another 10 hours a week or so of exercise.

But if I ever did actually succeed at dating, I'd then be in the position of the people profiled in the article - having to choose between the workouts that would let me look good enough to let me be n a relationship in the first place and that relationship. Clearly, there are plenty of worthless things I could cut back on to make more time - TV, websurfing, sleeping - but at some point I would have to choose between things like my eBay side business, which brings in some extra money, or my workouts.

Maybe it's just as well that I'm single.

Out of control..

2011-02-06T11:38:00.002-05:00

A few days ago, I found myself staring out the windows. Weather.com had been predicting an 80% chance of heavy freezing rain, sleet, and ice, starting around midnight. So before I went to bed, I was peeking out the window, seeing if anything was falling, trying to get an idea of what I would wake up to - a normal day of work, a delayed opening, a day off from work. But there was nothing I could do but stare at the parking lot of my townhouse complex and wonder what, if anything, would fall from the sky while I slept.

It was a reminder that you can't control everything in life, that no matter how much you plan or how much you want or don't want certain things to happen, there truly are things that are out of your control.

The trick, of course, is figuring out what things are and aren't, and what you can control. When I was severely overweight, I had a somewhat fatalistic view of that - I tended to think that everything was out of my control and nothing was my fault. After that, I started to view things the opposite way - that if I could lose 100 pounds, much of which I had been carrying since I was just a little madanthony, then I could do anything. Of course, with power comes responsibility - if I'm in control, than anything I haven't achieved is because I haven't worked hard enough. If I'm single, it's because I haven't worked hard enough at being attractive and interesting enough to be date-able (or haven't followed the steps to being a pick up artist). If I'm not where I want to be career-wise, it must be because I don't have enough degrees or take too much time off or otherwise haven't worked hard enough to be management material.

But the reality of life is that it is a combination of luck and skill, of being at the right place and the right time and of doing the right things to put yourself in the right place. There are things we don't control - things like the weather. And also things like the economy, and our genes. For some of those things, we can try to overcome those things - forcing ourselves to be more outgoing if we are, well, me, or spending more time at the gym if we are, well, me again.

For other things, all we can do is stock up on salt and shovels and peek out the window, and set our alarms a little early in case we've got ice to scrape before we go to work.

On the fine line between happiness and complacency..

2011-01-29T15:43:00.003-05:00

A while back, I was having a lunchtime conversation with some coworkers about a project that I was involved in - one that was mostly successful, but had gotten a few complaints about something that I had limited control over. I stated that I preferred to ignore the complements and focus on the complaints, and to always focus on the negatives as things that need to be improved - that if you focus on the positives and pat yourself on the back for a job well done, then you will never have a reason to improve. The way I saw it was that happiness is for the weak, for those who don't want to improve, and that because of that I hope I'm never happy, but instead always trying to improve.

My coworkers looked at me like I was crazy, and I figure I probably am.

But a few weeks ago, in a meeting at work, we were shown a video - produced by another university, and aimed mostly at college kids trying to figure out what to do with their lives. It expressed what I was trying to get across - and incorporate into my own life - but did a much better job of it. The film's narrator stated that we should be wary of ever being satisfied, because if we are we become complacent and don't have a reason to try to set higher goals and achieve more.

It's what I was thinking, and it's how I try (but rarely succeed) to approach things in my life. When I finished the Baltimore half-marathon last year, a number of people expressed that I should feel glad that I finished, even though my time was pitiful (in the bottom 10%). I've tried to look at it as an incentive to do better next year - but it probably isn't working so well, since I have yet to significantly. change my diet or exercise routine, although I do have some time left, and it will be easier to do some of those things - like start running outside - once it gets warmer).

What is tricky is trying to balance a desire to be proud of achieving goals with the need to constantly set new goals and having the motivation to continue to achieve them. When you look at most things - say, at personal wealth - there is always room for improvement. You aren't the richest person in the world, and thus you should feel bad about it, and work harder to change it. But statistically, it's unlikely that you will ever be the richest person in the world. If you accept that, you will probably feel better day to day - but you will also probably not work as hard at trying to make more money.

The other thing that makes achieving the goals you set after you've met your initial goals is that they become way harder to meet - a sort of declining marginal return. When I was 100 pounds overweight, losing weight was easy, because making small changes like actually getting some exercise or not eating an entire box of pizza rolls chased by a pint of Ben and Jerry's for dinner would make a big difference. I could also remind myself that if I didn't lose the weight, there was a pretty good chance, statistically, that I'd be dead by age 50. Now, I'm pretty close to a healthy weight but could stand to lose 10 or 15 pounds. It's a lot harder to motivate myself to do that, because not only is it a lot more work, but the benefits aren't nearly as dramatic - making it to age 75 is worth the extra work, but I'm not so sure if making it to 76 is.

I approach a lot of things by trying to picture the worst possible scenario and doing everything possible to avoid it, like working as if doing a less than perfect job would get me fired. While that seems to work on one level - I'm still employed, and have gotten pretty good reviews and increased responsibilities - it also makes me pretty uptight and worried about doing things like taking vacation days, for fear that will make me look bad.

One thing about losing weight was it really shifted my view of personal responsibility. When I was overweight, I tended to blame it on external stuff - genes, health, ect. Once I began to lose weight, I realized that it was under my control - that when I was overweight, it was because I did bad things, and when I wasn't it was because I did good things. In some ways, it's empowering to know that you are in control - but it's also depressing, because you start to look at the other parts of your life that you haven't changed and realize that it's because you aren't working hard enough or making the right choices, not because life is unfair. Of late, I've been trying to put on some muscle, without a whole lot of success. I used to look at the guys at the gym who are ripped, who can wear sleeveless shirts without looking completely ridiculous, and be jealous of them for winning the genetic lottery. I still look on them with envy, but now I know it's not because of luck that they are in better physical shape than I am, but because they work harder, push themselves more, and otherwise make better choices. They look better than me because they are better than me.

And it's even more difficult for things like dating - obviously, I'm alone and single because I'm doing the wrong things, but I haven't figured out what the right things are. Other things in life can be reduced to simple math - want to lose weight? Eat less, burn more calories. What to be ripped? Lift heavier things more times. Want to save more money? Earn more, spend less. But there is no simple formula for finding love, and I can't help but suspect that there is at least some element of luck involved in it, of being in the right place at the right time.

So how can one be proud of one's accomplishments and still driven to accomplish more? There is an old prayer that asks for "the strength to change the things I can, the courage to accept the things I can't , and the wisdom to know the difference." But I suspect few are wise enough to really know the difference, and that that difference isn't so clear-cut.

Cold and lonely: a winter rant

2011-01-29T14:28:00.003-05:00

My boss is a boater, and last year discovered Facebook. Now he routinely updates his status to count how many more days it is until spring launch. I find myself checking his updates - not because I have any interest in boating (I can't swim and my skin burns at the mere mention of sun), but rather because I'm counting down the days until spring.

Over the last few years, I developed a deep-seated hatred of winter. The cold make my pale, thin nerdy skin crack and bleed. The cost of powering the heat pump that heats my house makes my electricity bills double or triple, despite the fact that I keep my house at a temperature low enough that visitors routinely ask to borrow a blanket. I have a horrible sense of balance, so I struggle to avoid falling on icy sidewalks. Dressing to keep warm means that my already less-than-toned physique starts to resemble that of a snowman, because nobody looks serious or fit in a puffy "bubblegoose" down jacket. Not wanting to go outside in the cold makes everyday tasks that I normally don't mind - taking out the trash or recycling, going to the store, gassing up the truck - turn into a dreaded, shiver-inducing hassle.

But beyond that, there is just something depressing about winter - a sadness that seems to come along with each gust of wind when I'm walking outside, that just seems to accentuate the loneliness and uncertainty and unhappiness I feel about my life. On a warm sunny day, you feel like everything is right with the world, even when it's not - but on a windy, cloudy, bitterly cold day, it's hard to feel anything but alone and sad.

Maybe part of it is that cold weather always reminds me that I'm getting older. This week, I had two snow days off from work. I actually don't normally like snow days, because it always seems to screw up my schedule and projects at work, but these were actually not too badly timed, coming right before the start of the labor-intensive phase of a major project. But what did I do with my snow days - play in the snow, build a snowman (or snow-person for the more politically correct), go sledding?

Nope. I did a load of laundry, did my taxes, sorted through some hamfest inventory, wrote some descriptions and took and edited some pictures for some stuff I need to list on eBay, baked a batch of cookies (using leftover Christmas ingredients, including a bag of red and green M&M's), paid some bills, and shoveled my sidewalk and cleaned off my truck - twice. Essentially, I did a lot of the stuff I would normally do on a weekend, which proves how lame my weekends are. It was useful, in that since I couldn't travel anywhere it forced me to get things done at home that I would normally put off, but it wasn't exactly enjoyable.

About the only good thing about winter - with the exception of snow days and Peppermint Mochas from Starbucks - is that it makes you look forward to spring and summer and appreciate it more when it comes. I remember stepping out of my truck a few month ago on a hot summer day and looking at the fire lane in the parking lot of my townhouse complex, and thinking that it was hard to believe that a few months earlier, after the "snowmeggedon" snowstorms we had, that it was filled with a giant pile of snow several feet high and wide. Now it's once again full of snow, although not quite so much this time, and the only silver lining is there will come a time in month or two when it won't be for a while.

Defending T-bell

2011-01-27T21:45:00.002-05:00

mad anthony doesn't eat a whole lot of fast food. This is more because mad anthony is cheap and making a half-assed effort to watch what he eats than any sort of elitist protest against it's taste or quality. I've realized I can generally make my own food at home cheaper than fast food - even if I rely heavily on frozen and premade ingredients, and I usually need to drive at least slightly out of my way to pick up fast food.

But when I do eat fast food, Taco Bell is often where I go. It helps that there is one practically around the corner from Casa De Mad, and it's open at stupidly late hours, like until 3am on weekends. It also helps that some of their food is actually not all that unhealthy if you order it Fresco style, and that it's insanely cheap.

So I'm not all that worried about the fact that they are getting sued for having beef that isn't beefy enough. The fact that the non-beef stuff is water, spices, and fillers like soy and oats is one reason I'm not concerned.

But reading this story on Consumerist and on another message board I read seems to bring out the usual Taco Bell bashers. I haven't found it to make me poop any more than any other fast food place. And yes, it's not authentic Mexican food - in the same way that General Tso's Chicken and fortune cookies aren't authentically Chinese - they are still tasty. And did I mention cheap? The 99-cent bean burritos are possibly the most filling thing that you can buy for under a dollar.

So the next time I need a late dinner, there's a pretty good chance I'll be at the Taco Bell drive- thru, ordering a couple fresco style 38% ground beef crunchy tacos.

I can haz contentment?

2011-01-26T21:43:00.002-05:00

This past weekend, I was on the phone with the parents, giving them their weekly phone call to let them know that their son had survived another week in the mean streets of Baltimore. Nibbler the cat was on my lap for a while, until she leaped off and headed downstairs, where her litterbox, water fountain, and food bowl are. A few minutes later she came back up, jumped into my lap, and started purring loudly and doing that paw kneading thing that's usually seen as a sign of a content cat.

It's always nice to have a happy cat - I'm not one of those people who thinks that cats are interchangeable with children - you can leave a 3 month old cat home alone for 12 hours, but not so much for a 3 month old human. Still, I do feel that by adopting her I have a certain responsibility for her, and it's nice to feel like I'm meeting that - that she's better off with me than if she was roaming the mean streets of Roland Park.

But I also felt another feeling watching her - jealousy. I wish I could take as much pleasure from simple things as she does. Presumably, she went downstairs to drink some tapwater, nibble on some dry kibble, maybe take a poop - and came back up incredibly happy. I get to eat better, do much more, and don't think I'm ever quite so happy - I mean, I never purr.

As far as things go, my life isn't too bad - I have a decent job that's pretty secure, has lots of perks, and at least some possibility of eventually moving up. I live in one of the most prosperous countries on earth, during the most technologically advanced period in history, I'm in good health. Of course, my social life isn't exactly the world's most active, and I seem to constantly fail at what seems to come easy to most people - dating and relationships.

Then again, maybe that's why Nibbler is so happy. Since she's "fixed", she doesn't need to worry about that kind of stuff.

New year's resolutions 2011

2011-01-01T19:50:00.000-05:00

As a kid, I generally didn't think much of New Year's resolutions, because I didn't tend to measure time in years, but rather in school years or semesters. Even as an adult who works in higher ed, things tend to be measured in semesters and fiscal years more than anything else - May is the start of a new year, with a new budget, not January.

Still, it's a good idea to stop and think at the beginning of a calendar year what one hopes to achieve, and so I'm doing that. I tend to set similar resolutions pretty much every year, although sometimes the measures change, and I tend to succeed and fail at the same ones every year.

1. Stay in shape: - this is one that's been on there for years, and one I've been pretty good at. Between 2004 and 2006 I dropped about 100 pounds, and I've pretty much kept it off since then. So the obvious goal is to continue to keep it off.

But this year there is a little more to it - about 6 months ago I finally added some strength training to my daily workouts, so my goal this year is to keep that up, and to increase the length and intensity of my workouts. I suspect nobody will ever refer to me as "ripped", no woman will run her finger over my biceps and ask in sultry voice if I work out, and I'll never feel that it's appropriate to cut the sleeves off all my shirts. Still, I think I have put on a little bit of muscle, I can crank the resistance a little higher than when I started, and it's a little easier to open pickle jars. In addition to more time at the gym, I also need to put more time into working out at home, especially on crunches and stuff to work on my abs.

The other component of this is that I need to get back to watching what I eat a little more carefully. I still could stand to lose a few pounds, and I have fallen back into some of my old eating habits - giant portions, lunch at the all you can eat buffet at work, big desserts at night. I'm not going to completely give it up, but it would behoove me to scale back a little.

2. Run the Baltimore half-marathon again, and suck less at it this time: - back in October I entered the Baltimore half-marathon, mostly on a whim after a friend suggested it. I finished, but with a pathetic 3 hour and 7 minute chip time, which put me in about 7500 place out of about 8500 finishers. This year, I'd like to do better - maybe more like 2:40. That means I actually need to run for a good time instead of holding back to finish like I did this year. It also means I actually need to train - that I need to add some time on the treadmill to my daily workouts and do some running outside.

3. Save money - and figure out what to do with it - I've been able to put some money away over the last few years, but I could stand to tighten up my budget a little. I spend too much on impulse purchases, lunch out, coffees at the on-campus Starbucks, shoes and clothing, and a host of other things. Last year, I started expanding my hamfest and eBay businesses, and found some promising sources for inventory. I also started selling at more hamfests, including ones further away. I want to - make that I need to - keep that up, and to basically spend any time I'm not working on other resolutions working on making more money. I've also occasionally turned down overtime opportunities, and I need to stop doing that - any chance I can be increasing my net worth, I should be doing that, not doing non-revenue producing things like sleeping.

The flip side of this is figuring out what to do with my savings - I'm probably going to be in the market for a new car in the next year or two, and I need to decide if I want to go all-out and buy what I really want - a stupidly expensive preowned luxury SUV like a Range Rover - or buy something practical and put the rest of the money towards things like traveling or renovating my house.

4. Find a relationship, or stop trying: - This is one that's on my list every year. I'm 30, single, have never had anything that can be called a relationship, and don't really know why. Sure, there are plenty of things wrong with me, but there are plenty of things wrong with lots of people who still seem to find love. Either I'm going about it all wrong, or I'm just completely repulsive and should just give up. I hope to figure out which of those it is and fix it.

5. Get on a career path: - for the last couple years, I've been in the same job at work, with the same title - but with an ever-growing list of responsibilities. While I'm glad that I have the opportunities, I'm also a little frustrated that I'm managing projects, buying hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of equipment, and responsible for quite a bit of technical stuff, while still answering to the title of "senior technician". Ideally, I'd like a title that fits what I do, a role where I'm not answering to like 4 managers, and I'd love to move away from the technical stuff - which I neither enjoy nor am particularly good at - towards the management/business side of things. But I haven't had much luck with that, because we have a ton of management types already, and because I don't feel like it's right for me to walk into someone's office and tell them what my title or responsibilities should be.

It probably doesn't help that I started, then dropped out of grad school this year. I do have an MBA, but I started an educational technology program this year - and after a semester, decided that it was taking up a huge amount of time but wasn't really giving me any skills or knowledge that seemed particularly relevant to my job. But I do worry that dropping out sends a signal to management that I'm not dedicated, and I wonder if I did more damage doing that than I would have if I hadn't started it in the first place.

6. Travel or something, maybe: - Everyone seems to love traveling - women on dating sites talk about how much they love it, coworkers talk about how much they've enjoyed it. It doesn't hold a whole lot of appeal to me - it costs money, which I hate to spend, especially when I don't actually get a material object in return. It means I have to take off from work, and given the fact that I'm on thin ice already career-wise, I'm reluctant to take too many vacation days, and I already have to take some for picking up inventory and going to auctions for my side business, and for visiting my parents and helping them out as they get older and their health fails. I feel like I should travel internationally at least once, just so I can say I did, but I can't see that happening anytime soon. I did get to go to Vegas for work this year, and can probably go again in 2011 if I want to - but I'm not sure I want to. What I think I may do is try to combine the side business with a trip - either to Atlanta for an unclaimed mail auction or to a failed - bank auction (well, to pick up the stuff, anyway - the actual auctions are online only) - since lots of failed banks are in sunny places like Florida. That still means taking time off and spending money, but at least there is a chance of making some of the cost back.

7. Get organized: My house is a mess - boxes, old electronics, and other stuff everywhere. Moving in my basement is next to impossible, my spare bedroom/home office has turned into a storage room, and the crap is spilling over into the other living spaces in my house. It's unavoidable to a certain extent - I'm in the business of reselling stuff - stuff that often has to be bought in large quantities and sold in small ones, which means it needs to be stored in the meantime. Still, there is a lot I can do to make it more manageable - get rid of the stuff that is obviously unsellable, organize the stuff that is, be more aggressive about selling and more selective about buying. I need to do those things.

Black Friday fizzles...

2010-11-26T21:43:00.002-05:00

When it comes to Black Friday, I feel like a crotchety old man, describing how it used to be back in the day - back in aught-one and aught-two, when I could roll up to a retail store an hour before opening and still get a decent spot in line, when I could leave with an armload of free after rebate stuff, and when I could hit 3 or 4 stores, get most of what I wanted, and be back in bed by 10am.

Several years ago - I think it was '06 - I went to Circuit City at midnight, in the hopes of scoring a $300 laptop. I was too late. That's when I decided that Black Friday was no longer worth it - the combination of crappier deals and more people chasing them had made it not worth it. That, and I realized I really didn't like sitting in the cold for long periods of time.

So the last few years, my Black Friday ritual has consisted of firing up the Macbook Pro and surfing deal sites. I've made out pretty well in previous years, especially a couple years ago when Amazon listed a bunch of Logitech stuff with duplicate rebates.

But this year, I didn't get a whole lot. Part of it is that what I normally chase - free after rebate or nearly free after rebate stuff - has quickly been disappearing as some of the retailers that were the biggest promoters of it have either dropped rebates or gone out of business altogether - compusa, circuit city, officemax, pc club. I've been banned from shopping at frys.com after last summer, when I filed a chargeback after they lost a damaged TV that was returned to them.

Also, retailers have started moving around when they have their promos, so the bulk of my black friday purchases were made before Black Friday. I'm hoping there will be some decent deals for "cyber monday", although in the past those have been mostly hype. I'm also hoping more deals come closer to Christmas.

So, since wednesday, here is what I've bought:

Newegg:
LG hbm-235 bluetooth headset - 99 cents AR(After Rebate)
Gigabyte Radeon 4550 video card - $10 AR

Amazon:
Tom-Tom 340tl 4.3" GPS with lifetime traffic and maps - $99 (this will replace a year old Tom Tom 1 third edition refurb, which I can probably get $30-$50 for on eBay, which is only slightly less than I paid for it)
Bunch of cheap $1.99 DVD's from their lightning deals (Talledega Nights, Casino Royale, The Fast and the Furious Tokyo Drift, The Hangover)

Tiger Direct
2 VIA usb pci cards - FAR (free after rebate)
Samsung bluetooth headset - 99 cents AR

Best Buy
Insignia Blu-Ray player (with wireless streaming Netflix and Pandora) - $89 (for me, my first Blu-Ray player)

mwave
iogear bluetooth music transporter - FAR

Office Depot
Logitech M310 cordless mouse - $5 AR

In praise of intelligent consumerism...

2010-11-26T18:49:00.006-05:00

Today being Black Friday, the day often considered the start of the Christmas/Holiday shopping season. It's also the day that hippies like to protest by celebrating Buy Nothing Day, generally by not going shopping on a day they weren't planning on going shopping, and then acting like they did something special.

I thought of this because a few months ago I read Not Buying It: A Year without Shopping (which, ironically, I bought for fifty cents from The Big Tarp, an odd-lot closeout store). It was a pretty awful book - goodreads is full of reviews by people who agree with the author and didn't like it. I don't agree with her, and didn't like it - and not just because she couldn't make it through the first chapter without complaining about how evil George Bush was. She comes off as a cheap, elitist jerk with a sense of entitlement, a superiority complex, and an inability to grasp that other people may enjoy different things than she does - at one point she contemplates that she can't grasp why anyone would rather buy a quad than give money to a puppet theater. While I've never ridden a quad, I can't imagine how anyone wouldn't want to ride a nimble, powerful vehicle through the woods if given an opportunity - and why anyone would want to watch puppet theater.

But I still think I got my fifty cents worth out of it, because it got me thinking. While I don't agree with her about the evils of consumerism as a whole, I do have a problem with people who consume more than they can afford. I hold no sympathy for people who are facing foreclosure because they bought a house that was well out of their means, who can't understand why they can't save any money while they run up giant credit card bills and pay the minimum every month. I like to think I'm a fan of what I would call "intelligent consumerism". I do, in fact, believe that the stuff you own can make you happy - maybe not in a spiritual, enlightenment sort of way but rather in a makes life somewhat easier and more enjoyable sort of way. But I also believe that such desires need to be balanced by other principles - savings, frugality, planning for the future. I also believe that, with proper time and effort, it's possible to own some very nice and enjoyable stuff without going broke.

I like to think I practice something resembling intelligent consumerism - I buy things I want, but only if I can afford them. I do research, comparison shop, buy used, go to auctions, and avoid taking on debt beyond my mortgage, some student loans, and car loans if absolutely necessary. I buy books, but usually buy them used. I have a 42" flat panel, but I shopped around and got a good deal on it. My house is full of cool unique items I got cheap at auctions and yard sales, including a couple Herman Miller office chairs, a "detoxify" neon sign, and a vintage typewriter. I've got closets full of clothes and a house full of furniture, most of it from clearance and as-is sections.

Now, there are other reasons to avoid rampant consumerism, beyond economic ones - if you really are expecting spiritual fulfillment from your purchases you probably want to rethink your worldview. And there are probably some legitimate environmental concerns to think about - but I feel like some people, including the author of Not Buying It are more interested in pointing out how good for the environment it is that they don't do something they have no desire to do, like drive an SUV, while having no qualms about doing stuff they want that's just as bad, like flying.

I also think that sometimes it makes sense to be a consumer - our aforementioned author feels she's a saint because she repaired the cord rather than buy a new toaster. But when you can get a toaster for $10, there is an economic argument to be made that buying a new toaster is the smart thing to do.

So I, for one, will continue to buy it - but only when I can afford it and can get a good deal on it.

Thankful..

2010-11-25T08:45:00.000-05:00

So it's Thanksgiving, the time of year when we're asked to stop and reflect on the things we are grateful for. Also the time of year when we eat copious amounts of turkey and fall asleep in the living room. But that will come later.

So I figured I should take a break from my normal emo whining and think about the things in my life that don't completely suck.

- my family - yes, they drive me nuts sometimes, but they've always been there for me, and they've made untold sacrifices for me for the three decades I've been on this earth. Even when I haven't seen eye to eye with them, I know that they've had my best interests in mind, and I'm lucky to still have them around, even if my parent's health isn't quite all there anymore.

- my friends - I'm not the world's most social person, but I have a small group of friends and acquaintances who are willing to put up with my company. Which is nice of them, because I'm not sure I'd want to hang out with me if I had a choice.

- my job - yes, I complain about it sometimes, and in a perfect world there are plenty of things I'd change. But it pays the bills, doesn't involve digging ditches in the cold, lets me play with some cool technology, and lets me work with some pretty awesome people.

-my health - I've got no major maladies, weigh a lot less than I did 5 years or so ago, and completed my first half-marathon a little over a month ago.

- technology - it's become one of those things we take for granted, but it's pretty awesome when you stop and think that some of the things I've grown to rely on day in and day out - fast broadband internet access, my helpful GPS, my DVR, my iPhone, my iPod, ect - weren't available a decade or so ago at all. The world's richest king couldn't dream of owning stuff that we can buy for a few hours wages. And it's not even just consumer electronics - lives got much more enjoyable - and longer and healthier - thanks to things like indoor plumbing that keep us from literally wallowing in our own poop.

- The USA - for all it's imperfections, we have an amazing amount of freedom and prosperity, and even the politicians whose policies I venomously disagree with are still generally acting in a sincere belief that what they are doing is the right thing for our country - something I would suspect isn't true for, say, North Korean or Nigerian politicians.

-Nibbler the Cat - yes, she's fat, has been known to bite me for no reason, and her poops have the weight of a thousand suns. Still, it's nice to have something cute and fuzzy greet me at the door when I come home from work, and to have a giant ball of purring fur sitting on my lap, resting her little kitty head on my chest while I'm reading or on my laptop. I wasn't planning on having a pet when she came into my life, but I couldn't say no to the little black kitten that fell asleep in my lap, and I'm glad I didn't. I hope she is too.

- the people who read this blog - I'm not sure who you are, or how you found me, or why you read it. But I'm greatful to have an outlet to express my thoughts in.

On the road again...

2010-11-15T23:55:00.003-05:00

I've been running some numbers in my head. By the end of this weekend, I'll have spent about 24 hours this month driving back and forth from Maryland to New Jersey. I'll have spent over $200 on gas, consumed about 3 gallons of coffee, and slowed down past an unknown number of state troopers hiding in the median.

My mom had knee surgery early this month - I came up that weekend, driving up late Thursday night and coming back on Sunday. I drove up the next weekend, leaving late Saturday morning and coming back on Sunday - just long enough to visit mom at rehab and take my dad to visit my aunt and her cousin who was visiting from NY. I took today - the day before Thanksgiving - off and drove up, I'll be here until Sunday.

I owe my parents a huge debt - they made huge sacrifices to put me through school, and put up with me from the pooping infant stage all the way to the unemployed college grad stage and beyond. I feel pretty guilty grumbling about the hours I spent in the surgical waiting room at the hospital, given that when I was four I had open heart surgery to correct a congenital defect and my mom slept on a cot in my hospital room for the multiple weeks I was in there.

Still, I've got something resembling a life in Maryland, and coming up to NJ interrupts it, means I need to work around stuff, means I don't have as much time to do stuff around the house or put into my eBay business or take weekend overtime when it's offered to me. And as much as I normally enjoy long drives, I've found myself getting pretty tired of it by this point - probably not helped by the fact that I also had to make a run to suburban Philly to pick up some eBay inventory last week. I'm sure my mom is looking forward to her knee healing and being able to move more - and I'm looking forward to a couple weekends of not having to go anywhere - at least until Christmas.

Why I fight, err, exercise...

2010-11-05T11:26:00.002-04:00

I was talking to a coworker over lunch a few weeks back who told me that she thinks I have exercise too much and that it's a sign of an eating disorder and poor body image, based on seeing my truck at the gym around 8pm and on my disappointment at my finishing time at the Baltimore Running Festival half marathon.

I typically get about 2 hours of exercise a day - I do about 90 minutes of cardio - precor/elliptical - and about 30 minutes of strength training (pull-ups, lat pulldowns, bicep presses, other circuit training, and a bunch of other stuff). But sometimes I do less, if I have other stuff to do, and occasionally I miss it entirely.

I will agree that I probably get more exercise than most people do. But I don't think it's an excessive amount - a study earlier this year suggests that it takes an hour a day of exercise just to maintain weight - and that was based on people eating a reasonable diet. I don't. I eat like food is about to be made illegal. I munch throughout the day, eat a huge dessert every night, and go out to eat sometimes or eat lunch at the all-you-can-eat buffet at work. Exercising daily is what lets me do that, and still fit into my pants. Yes, I could eat a whole lot less, and exercise a whole lot less, but I like to eat and don't see anything wrong with that. Besides, there are other benefits to exercise - I enjoy it, it gives me a chance to listen to music, watch the FOX News All-Star Panel (now with more Juan Williams!), is good for the heart and for building muscles. I notice when I skip or skimp on exercise, I tend to feel more run down. There is evidence that exercise fights depression.

As far as having a poor body image, I do. I also have a pretty poor body. I still have a bit of a gut, and I'm literally right on the line between normal and overweight based on height and BMI. While I realize BMI is not a perfect measure, it is a good rough guide, and it tends to be wrong mostly for people who are unusually muscular. I, on the other hand, have had my arms described as "spindly". I've got pale skin that turns red with the slightest contact with sun, a back that is permanently curved thanks to diagnosed too late Sheurmann's Kyphosis, which gives me the posture of a turtle with low self esteem. I'm short and unusually hairy. I've met women online who seemed interested in me, until either seeing a picture or meeting me in person. I've also contacted literally hundreds of women online, and heard back from almost none. So it's not exactly a leap to conclude that I'm not particularly good looking. I can't do anything about my height or my complexion or my back, but I can try to keep in decent shape. And if there is one point in my life I should try to look my best physically, it would be now - as a single 30 year old guy who would like to get married, start a family, ect - but is quickly passing the age where I have a chance of that happening, if I'm not past it already.

The other thing about exercising is that it keeps me busy. If I wasn't at the gym, I'd probably be at home, surfing the internet, reading online personal ads and getting more and more frustrated by my single-ness, or watching crappy TV. To me, being at the gym, working out, seems like a better place to be.

As far as my marathon time, well, I want to improve on my time. Running (err, walking) is an interesting sport, because you compete not only against the field, but against yourself. Now that I have a base time, I'm curious how much improvement I get for doing additional work - for actually doing some training, maybe entering some more races. I've never been good at a sport, and I probably won't start now, but I can become better than I was. It also brings up an interesting question - when people are good at something, how much of it is genetic, born into them, and how much is for training - and how much can someone who is well past the prime for being a top runner, age-wise, improve? Some people like to modify cars to get lots of speed out of them, some people like to overclock computers. I'm curious if the same can be done to the human bodies.

So while I may exercise more than most, I think if I'm going to overindulge in something, there are far worse things than time at the gym.

Posting live from the surgical waiting area...

2010-11-05T08:47:00.002-04:00

So I'm in the surgical waiting area of a hospital in Central NJ right now. My mom is having knee replacement surgery - her other knee was replaced back in June. Woke up at 5am, at the hospital at 6am, through the series of waiting rooms, and into surgical waiting. On the plus side, they have free danishes and wifi, and a cafe that serves Starbucks coffee downstairs. On the con side, well, I'm in a hospital waiting room in NJ.

I'm kind of grumpy about being here - I hate taking off from work, I have a ton of stuff I need to do around the house, I miss my cat and my gym and my DVR full of unwatched episodes of Chuck. But I figure it's the least I could do - especially since when I had open heart surgery when I was 4, my mom got a cot and camped out in my hospital room.

I drove up last night, leaving Baltimore a little before 7pm after a quick half-workout at the gym, on the theory that it would let me leave late enough to miss some of the rush hour traffic. I usually don't mind long drives, but it was cold and rainy and I had the eternal choice of a foggy window or a defroster that was warm enough to make me want to doze off.

I guess I shouldn't complain too much - it's probably worse for my brother, who lives nearby and does a lot more driving and parental babysitting (my dad was diagnosed with MS a little over a year ago and doesn't do much). But coming up here still interrupts what little life I have. I figure I'll go back Sunday, and come back next weekend basically overnight (drive up late Saturday morning, drive back Sunday afternoon), so I have some time to work out, do stuff around the house, and not drive in the dark. I'll also be up for a couple days for Thanksgiving. So by the end of November I'll have spent 3 of 4 weekends in NJ, and logged about 800 miles (and several quarts of gas station coffee) on the Ranger driving back and forth.

At least she's out of knees that need replacing.

Why I'm not sure I should try too hard to vote on Tuesday...

2010-11-01T00:23:00.003-04:00

You will frequently hear people talk about how important it is to vote - how one vote can change elections, and how it's your civic duty, and how if you don't vote you shouldn't complain about the outcome of the elections.

There are probably situations where that is true - if you live somewhere that's a swing state, or in a hotly contested district, or there is some important ballot initiative up this year.

But that's not where I am. I'm a registered Republican - mostly for fiscal reasons - in the very blue state of Maryland. When it comes to presidential elections, it's pretty much guaranteed that a Dem will win. And based on polling in this exciting, non-presidential year, it looks like Dems will win no matter if I show up to the polls or not.

I like FiveThirtyEight.com, which summarizes and analyzes multiple polls to give a pretty accurate picture of what the election will likely be - and despite the many places where things may change, they won't where I am. They are calling for a 95.2% chance of O'Malley remaining governor, a 99.9% chance that Dutch Ruppersberger will win the House in the 2nd district, and a 100% chance that Barb Milkulski will keep her senate seat and keep her important job of fighting against overpriced bagels.

And unlike California, we don't have any cool ballot initiatives, just your usual bond issues and esoteric questions like if Orphan's Court judges should be members of the bar.

Don't get me wrong, I plan on voting on Tuesday - I'm hoping to drag my ass out of bed early and go before work. But if I don't wake up on time, I seriously have to question if it's worth cutting my daily workout at the gym short just to make it to my polling place before it's 8pm close, given the fact that the races are anything but tight.

Despite the traditional platitudes about the importance of voting, there are plenty of elections where it really just isn't that important - where standing in line to cast a vote in an election where the spread is that large is completely irrational, a complete waste of time. Gerrymandering - drawing districts in such a way as to make it likely a given party's candidate will win - means most races just aren't competitive - and if your state is dark red or dark blue, your chance of getting a governor of the opposite side is slim, and since almost every state does electoral college votes on an all-or-nothing basis, if your candidate doesn't win your vote is pretty much meaningless.

To me, voting in many cases is one of those things that people do to feel good about themselves even though it's completely irrational.

Only 360-something days to train for next y...

2010-10-20T00:15:00.004-04:00

So Sunday, the day after my less-than-exceptional finish in the Baltimore half-marathon, I was feeling pretty crappy. Especially when walking - I felt pretty sore. But mostly, I was mad at myself. Part of me was mad that I was in such bad shape - I was in the last 25 or so finishers in my age bracket, out of 580 or so. My time was almost 50 minutes higher than the average for my age. And part of me was mad at myself for not taking it seriously, not doing any training or anything.

But mostly, I guess I was sad that I wasn't in as good of shape as I thought I was - I'd convinced myself that I work out and eat reasonably decently, and thus I should be in great shape, and clearly I'm in considerably worse shape than I thought.

But I've moved on from self-pity, and instead am thinking "what concrete steps can I take to not suck so much next year?" Part of it is that I'm not in as awesome shape as I'd like to believe, but part of it is that I'm just not in great shape for running road races, because it's not something I've done or trained for. So I need to change that.

So I've got a few ideas. First of all, right now I do pretty much all my cardio at the gym, on precors and ellipticals. They are great for burning calories, because they are designed to use lots of energy but be gentler on knees and legs. Which is great if your only goal is weight loss, but not so great for getting used to running. So I'm adding a little bit of treadmill time to my daily workouts. So far it's only been about 10 minutes or so, but I hope to build up from there, and I'm trying to do it at the pace I need to average to get the time I'm hoping to run the whole race at next year.

I also need to spend some time actually running/jogging. Some of it can be inside, on the indoor track at my gym, but some of it needs to be outside, so I get used to running outside. Some of it also needs to be in bad weather, so I get used to that.

I also need to spend get back to eating healthy and losing weight - I'm pretty happy with where I am, but I still could stand to lose a few pounds, and if I can drop 5 or 10 pounds, that's 5 or 10 pounds less I need to carry around with me during the race.

I might also look into doing some other races - there are evidently a handful of other 10-miler and half-marathons in the area, and they would be good training and good experiences.

Part of me wonders if this is worth the time - I already work out for about 2 hours a day, and if I want to get competitive I need to increase that, as well as have days where I do 13 miles so I get used to it. But I need to prove to myself that I can actually compete, and time spent working out is probably better spent than time surfing the internet or watching mindless TV.

So that's what a half-marathon is like...

2010-10-16T20:51:00.002-04:00

Well, today I "ran" the Baltimore half-marathon. Well, more like walked it. I finished in 3 hours, 7 minutes. So what does that mean?

Well, from a marathon perspective, it's pretty pathetic - the winning runner finished the course in 1 hour, 15 minutes. Average for a male age 30-34 was 2 hours, 20 minutes. Overall, I came in in 7470th place (out of 8038 finishers). In my age/gender group, there were only about 20 people who took longer than me to finish out of almost 600. (For more fun statistics, the results site is here).

But if you want to ignore the real world and look at it like everyone is special in their own way, I did OK. I pretty much signed up on a whim, didn't do any training beyond my normal daily workouts, and pretty much set out with a goal of finishing. I didn't really know what to expect, so I pretty much powerwalked the whole thing, like an elderly woman mallwalking or someone running slightly late to a moderately important meeting on the other side of the office building. I figured I'd rather save my energy and make sure I finished, but I probably could have pushed myself harder in the last couple miles and shaved some time off.

My other excuse for my lousy performance is the fact that it's still more than I would have been capable of for most of my life. Considering less than 6 years ago I was about 100 pounds heavier than I was now, it's fair to say I wouldn't have been able to finish. Hell, I wouldn't have made it from the parking lot to the starting line (which to be fair, is like a half-mile, or considerably longer if you get completely lost due to their lack of signs and spend an hour wandering around).

It is a pretty interesting experience, though, even - or maybe especially - for someone who isn't a serious runner. I got to see parts of Baltimore I've never gone through before, and see parts I've driven through from a very different perspective. You see all kinds of people cheering, which is pretty cool, and one of a kind things like the eye of the tiger guy, plus people running in everything from suits to kilts to tutus to a giant Dunkin' Donuts coffee cup. It's pretty cool how many people are willing to cheer or volunteer to do this.

I guess part of the reason I did this was I figured it was one of those bucket list, things you should do before you die kind of things. But I guess if I really want to achieve something, I need to do a whole marathon - and I think that would take a huge amount of effort, effort I'm not sure I'd be willing to put in.

But I'm seriously thinking I might do this again next year - now that I have a baseline time, I have something I can work on improving - maybe shoot for 2:45 or so. I also have a better idea of what I would need to do to train - I do mostly elliptical at the gym, and running/walking on actual road, in the outdoors, is a much different experience. I could also use some better sneakers - I wore my normal, fairly new gym shoes - which I generally select by buying whatever looks decent that I find cheap on clearance online. That's fine for the gym, but I would probably do better springing for shoes from one of those specialty running stores that try to match your walking/running style and make sure they fit right. And now that I know I can actually finish, I can work on speed instead of just survival.

But I can't complain too much. I finished, so I met my goal, even if that's a pretty low goal to set.

I didn't fight the law at the hamfest, because the law would have won..

2010-10-03T23:48:00.002-04:00

Today was the CaraFest Hamfest in Howard County. The weather held out, I woke up on time, and I bought a couple things, including an Apple Airport Extreme for $6 (open box, haven't tested yet). I sold a bunch of stuff, and made... well, I can't say, in case the man is reading the blog.

About mid-morning, I saw two middle-aged women having a long conversation with the people accross from me. They looked out of place - besides being women at a hamfest, they had a stack of forms and one had a wheeled briefcase which clearly wasn't designed to wheel over the gravel of the Howard County Fairgrounds. When they talked to the guy next to him, and a paper with a state seal appeared on the back of his Explorer, I realized who they were - the Maryland Department of Revenue, making people collect and submit sales taxes. The next guy refused and packed up his stuff, telling customers that the state had shut him down. Then the women disappeared for a while.

Around noon, they came back. I had planned on leaving around noon, so when I heard them talking to the people next to me, telling them they either had to fill out the form or leave, and they started packing, I decided to follow their lead and pack up as well. I hadn't sold anything in a while, and didn't want to stay too late anyway.

As I was packing up, lots of other people were as well. Most vendors were arguing with the revenue people - hamfest sellers tend to be an independent bunch, many with a libertarian streak - I remember seeing quite a few Ron Paul stickers two summers ago. They tend not to be big fans of big government.

I realize that technically flea market vendors are evidently expected to collect and pay sales taxes. Traditionally, though, things like yard sales have been exempted, and most of the people selling at hamfest are closer to yard salers than storefonts - they are people clearing crap out of their basements, except it's usually oddball electronics and computer stuff that the average yard sale shopper would have no interest in. I probably sell quite a bit more than the average seller, and I often wonder if it's really worth all the effort. From years of shopping at hamfests, and watching and talking the sellers set up near me, I would guess the average seller probably sells less than $100 worth of stuff. It's hard to believe that it was worth the cost of the time of two state employees on Sunday (I wonder if they get overtime) to try to collect the couple dollars worth of sales tax that each vendor should have collected.

One seller mumbled something about "great job driving business out of the state, Maryland", and I tend to agree. I worry that this is going to be the final nail in the coffin of hamfests, which have already been shrinking and in some places disappearing. For the marginal vendor - the guy with a couple old radios/pc's/electronic parts in his basement - it's not worth the hassle of filling out forms and charging taxes to sell a few things when he's already barely making enough to pay for the tailgating space, gas, food, sunscreen (well, ok, not at today's), ect. Fewer vendors means fewer customers, and that means eventually there isn't enough revenue for hamfests. And while they might not be a huge draw, they do bring a number of people in from out of state - people who buy food and gas and other stuff at nearby businesses. They also attract the kind of smart, nerdy, creative people who you want in your state.

Like writing speeding tickets for doing 55 in a 54, enforcing sales tax laws at a hamfest seems like one of the things that, while the government has the right to do it, probably shouldn't be done.

catching new car fever...

2010-10-02T13:19:00.003-04:00

There is a disease that affects most people at some point in their lives, although it tends to affect guys more. It's highly contagious - you notice that the cars on the road, the cars your friends and coworkers drive, are all nicer than yours. You notice that there are things you don't like about your current car - it doesn't do everything you want it to do, it's got some dents on the outside and some wear patches on the interior, and it doesn't have leather/navigation/heated seats/ipod connectivity/ect like the newer cars out there. It's new car fever.

I'm a car guy. I spent lots of my time as a kid playing with matchbox cars and reading my dad's copies of the Consumer Guide auto issue and Motor Trend. As you can imagine, I wasn't a real popular kid. But that also means I'm a little obsessed with cars, and even right after I bought my current one I was thinking about what the next one would be. Now that it's been a few years since I bought my current ride, I'm starting to wonder if it's time to get something newer.

The current ride is a 2006 Ford Ranger xlt crew cab 4x4. It's bright yellow, which seems to attract cops like flowers attract honeybees. It's got about 64,000 miles. It's paid off, and set up well for things like the hamfests I occasionally sell at - it's got a spray-in bedliner and hard tonneau cover over the bed. But it's showing it's age - the interior has patches worn smooth, the exterior has dents from my bad habit of running into things and from using a steel-tipped shovel to clean it out after the previous winter's snowpacalypse. I sometimes wish I had a backseat, heated seats, a cushier ride.

I've toyed with a bunch of ideas - buying a second, sporty or collectible car (for about $20,000 I could get a late-80's Bentley Arnage!), or buying a used luxury SUV. But most likely when the time comes, I'll probably buy a new, nicely equipped, truck-based, non-premium-brand mid-sized SUV. Which probably means a Toyota 4Runner, because almost every other SUV smaller than an Expedition or Tahoe has moved to a car platform (except for the Jeep Grand Cherokee, but after owning a PT Cruiser that had all sorts of electrical gremlins, I've soured on Mopar).

I have two rules for my next car - I'm going to buy it with every option I could possibly want, because I don't want to kick myself a year or two later, like I have with my current truck, where I pretty much bought the cheapest one that had the stuff I couldn't live without. And I'm going to pay cash for it, because as long as I am buying a vehicle because I want it and not because I need it it's stupid to finance it.

And that means that I'm going to have to learn to live with my new car fever for a while, because a fully-loaded 4runner stickers around $42,000 and even after trade my bank account is quite a bit shy of that. I refinanced my house a few months back and threw in some cash at the same time - think of it as a cash-in refi - so I don't have as much cash on hand as I used to.

So now I need to convince myself that instead of buying a new truck, my goal should be to get my current one to hit 100k. Which at my current rate of driving would mean that I'll be suffering from new car fever until about Januar 2013.

shut up and eat your frozen broccoli!

2010-10-02T10:30:00.002-04:00

A while back, I was watching Food Inc with a couple friends (as you can tell, we're a wild bunch). At one point, a guy is lamenting that he can get a pound of cheap beef for $1, but not a pound of fresh broccoli. To which I reply, "you can get a pound of frozen broccoli for $1".

That might not be quite accurate - I think the last time I checked, broccoli was $1.19 for a 1-pound frozen package at my local Weis (or as I refer to it, the We Iz).

So I was glad to see that Megan McCardle has a post praising frozen veggies. They seem to be the redheaded stepchild of the food debate - an inexpensive, healthy, easily accessible, easily prepared way for people to eat more veggies without the issues (cost, availability, preparation time, spoilage) that discourage people from eating more fresh vegetables. I personally try to keep a couple bags in the freezer, so I can make sure I add a vegetable to my usual meat/starch meals - it adds a lot of bulk and some useful vitamins and fiber without adding much in the way of calories. And it costs me about 50 cents for half a bag, which is about 2 or 3 servings.

Yes, frozen veggies don't have the snob appeal of fresh, or the romance or ability to say that you are eating local - although if you are one of those people who insist on organic, you can usually find some frozen organic veggies, especially at specialty stores like Trader Joe's. But they are just as healthy, and certainly better than not eating a vegetable. But they don't fit into the meme of big food forcing horribly unhealthy food down your throat, so they get overlooked.

Some will argue that fresh veggies taste better, and I suppose that's true sometimes - but that's letting the perfect be the enemy of the good. For people who don't eat any/enough veggies, frozen is a better alternative than none.

And while we're on the subject (and as many of Megan's commenters point out), can we stop acting like all frozen food is bad/evil/unhealthy? Sure, there is plenty of bad stuff out there, but frozen food has come a long way, and it's possible to buy stuff that's pretty tasty, not all that bad for you, and still easy to prepare. Those of us with lives/hobbies don't have a whole lot of time to cook, so frozen foods are a Godsend. I'm partial to a number of things from Trader Joe's, like their orange chicken. I'm also a fan of things like low fat chicken tenders, precooked grilled chicken breast strips (great on salad), and frozen precooked or uncooked chicken breasts - they are easy, fast, cheaper than takeout, and range between healthy and not awful health-wise.

I typically go to the gym after work, and often don't get home until after 8pm, so the last thing I want to do is cook an involved meal. So I for one salute our frozen-food-creating overlords, and raise a bowl of frozen broccoli to them.

The summer of our discontent...

2010-09-11T14:41:00.002-04:00

The Obama administration has taken a lot of drubbing from the right of late for it's claims at the beginning of this summer that this would be a "summer of recovery", since the numbers don't exactly show much in the way of recovery. But while I might disagree with their fiscal policies, I can hardly blame them for being overly optimistic about the magic of summer.

I always seem to look forward to summer, and always anticipate that it's going to be awesome and life-changing - I'm going to do all the things I want to do, go all kinds of places, succeed at things I've always failed at, and otherwise have an amazing summer. And I'm always disappointed, yet do the same thing every year, like a gambler convinced that this time that long shot horse will pay off.

There are a couple reasons I tend to look forward to summer. The first is that I hate cold weather - my thin skin gets chapped and bleeds, I hate having to put on shoes and pants and jackets and wait for the heat to come on in my truck and having to scrape ice off the windshield and shovel snow and a hundred other things.

The other big reason is that I work in higher ed, so summers are theoretically slower than the school year - most of the faculty and students are gone, so there are fewer users, and the campus is overall easier to navigate without scores of students hogging all the good parking spaces and the good seats at the cafeteria.

But work hasn't really been that much slower, because we've got a ton of projects we do during the summer, and because with people out on vacation, you are trying to pick up their slack.

This summer, I hoped to accomplish a bunch of stuff - I was hoping to take a vacation, something I don't normally do - I wanted to go to the unclaimed mail auction in Atlanta. I was also hoping to have some success in dating - last summer I actually managed to get some dates via an online dating site, and I was hoping that it was due to the magic of summer.

Alas, it looks like my dates were a fluke, and I never got an actual vacation. My mom had knee replacement surgery this summer, so I ended up in NJ at the parent's house helping them out rather than in the ATL.

That's not to say my summer was a total bust. I did make a few day trips to pick up stuff I won in online auctions, which along with some other auction and yard sale finds made for a fairly lucrative summer, financially. I went to a bunch more hamfests than I normally do. I started doing some strength training, and while I'm never going to be Mr. Universe, I think I've made a little progress.

My mom is probably going to be having her other knee replaced in November, which will require some more trips to NJ, but at least it means hopefully by next summer she'll have two decent knees and maybe I'll actually be able to take a vacation. And I should probably also make more of an effort next year to get all the stuff I've said I'm going to get done around the house done - get the shed fixed, get the grill working, get my broken front stairs replaced, and maybe even get my bathroom brought out of the late 70's.

Still don't know how to fix the whole dating thing, though...

Of half-marathons and half-hearted workouts...

2010-09-06T11:54:00.003-04:00

So it's been a few months since I started adding some strength training to my workout routine. So how's it going?

I really don't know. Probably not as well as it should. When I started out, I would do about 20 minutes at the gym every day, and probably another 15 minutes or so at home. I've dropped the home stuff, although I'm hoping to re-add it. I've been kind of busy with taking care of the parents and with my side eBay/hamfest businesses and haven't devoted as much time as I should be to keeping in shape. I need to get back to putting in the time and effort if I actually want to make any gains. I've also found myself shaving 15 minutes or so off my cardio workouts on occasion, a habit I need to get myself out of, and I need to get back to watching what I eat.

That isn't to say that I haven't been doing some strength training, and it's probably had at least a tiny impact. I can't say that I've added enough muscle for anyone to notice, except myself if I squint real hard and use my imagination. But I can set the weight a little higher than when I started, so I've gotten at least a little better - and I've noticed when I need to carry, say, 50 pounds of kitty litter into Casa De Mad (for Nibbler the cat to poop on!) it's not quite as taxing as it used to be.

The hardest thing about trying to build muscle, as opposed to losing weight, is that it's a lot harder to set goals and measure. I guess if I was really serious, I could be one of those people who keeps a notebook of how much they lifted and how many reps they did every day, but I haven't been. I also didn't, say, measure my biceps before starting. Weight loss provides a pretty easy and fairly immediate feedback - you weigh less than you did the last time you weighed yourself, so you are succeeding. It's easy to set a goal - lose x per week, lose y total - and know pretty quickly if you are on the right track to getting there.

When it comes to strength training, I'm not even sure what I'm trying to achieve. If i just want to be a little healthier and have an easier time lifting stuff, I'm doing OK. If I actually want to look good and build a lot of muscle, I'm pretty sure I will never succeed - I just don't think I'm dedicated enough to put in the time and effort it takes to look "ripped". It doesn't help that almost all of my coworkers are very serious lifters, so pretty much every day I'm reminded how much more dedicated and less lazy they are compared to me, and how that as a result I'll probably die alone.

That is, if I don't die while "running" the Baltimore Half-Marathon next month. I had thought about doing it, in the same sort of "things I've thought about but almost certainly will never do" way I've thought about quitting my job and going to law school or of buying a used 1987 Bentley Mulsanne off of eBay. But I was killing time online while babysitting my parents last month, and visited the website - and noticed that the half-marathon was almost sold out. So I signed up. At least I'll get a t-shirt out of it. I've never done anything resembling running, and routinely get laughed at when I try. So I don't have a lot of hope. I figure I'm probably going to be walking it more than running or jogging, and I'll be happy if i manage to finish in the 5.5 hours before they start kicking people off the course. I probably should actually try to do some outdoor running, given that the closest thing I've done is my daily 90 minute Precore workouts, which take place in a climate-controlled gym full of TV's, and fall several miles short of 13.3 miles. But I figure it's one of those things I should try once, and maybe I'll actually enjoy it or not completely suck at it - but I doubt it, since I generally suck at almost everything I've tried doing.

My neck, my back...

2010-08-15T22:44:00.002-04:00

So this isn't something I've really mentioned much, but chances are there is a pretty big elephant in the room when it comes to my physical appearance. Occasionally, someone will mention it, and I've always gotten a little uncomfortable about it. See, madanthony is a hunchback.

For a long time, my back has been noticeably curved. I basically have a hump. I don't really remember when I started noticing it, but by my senior year in college it was serious enough to see a specialist about it - who said it was curved, but it wasn't worth doing anything about it, and I should lose some weight and do some situps.

Well, eventually I lost the weight, but I wasn't too into the whole situps thing. And as I lost the weight, it became more noticeable, if only because the more obvious physical deformity - being morbidly obese - was gone. I've changed doctors a few times, and my current doctor has mentioned a few times that I should see a specialist again about it. So a few days ago, I did.

So evidently I have Schuermann's Kyphosis, which would make a great name for a rock band. Basically, my spine is curved, quite a bit - evidently normal is 35 to 50 degrees, mine is around 85. The thing is that as long as it doesn't cause me pain or keep me from doing anything, there isn't really much that can be done. If it had been caught when I was a kid - at age 12 or so - I would have been put in a brace for a few years, and it probably would have corrected it somewhat. But I didn't, and while there is surgery, it's dangerous and only limited in effectiveness. So I was told to come back in 5 years to make sure it wasn't getting worse (because even if it is, it gets worse so gradually that they wouldn't be able to measure it over a shorter period of time, because the change would be within the measurement margin of error) and if it's not, to forget about it.

But I can't really forget about it. When I was fat, I blamed the fact that I couldn't get dates on my weight - which was probably correct to some degree. But now, I wonder how much my giant hump is working against me. When women think about what they want their dream guy to look like, "hunched over" is never on the list. It makes me shorter, and shorter guys have less sex and get fewer emails on online dating sites.

It also makes me look like I have horrible posture, which makes me look even less confident. In the book The Game, the author mentions a number of time the importance of posture in looking confident to attract women, and he went as far as taking posture lessons. But posture lessons don't do much good when the pieces of your spine are permanently bending down.

What's most frustrating about this is that I have no control over it. It's not even a bad choice I made in the past - at the time I could have done something, I didn't know I needed to. I lost weight, and I've started doing some strength training to build muscle. While I'm not sure I could do it, one thing that The Game suggests is that with enough work and practice it is possible to overcome things like social awkwardness to be better perceived by women you want to date as well as people in general. But there is no way I can will my back to be straight, and because of that there's a pretty good chance I'll die alone. And hunched over.

Reflections upon entering my 4th decade...

2010-08-15T22:14:00.002-04:00

So last week, I turned 30. The big 3-0. I've never been a big fan of birthdays in general - it always just seems like a reminder that I'm another year closer to dieing and still not exactly where I had hoped to be. But 30 is even worst - I'm no longer a 20-something. I'm closer to middle age than I am to teenager.

In some ways, I'm probably better off than I thought I would be a few years ago. I'm in better shape physically than I've probably ever been, certainly considerably better shape than I was in my early 20's, when I was about 100 pounds heavier than I am now. I'm a homeowner, and I'm not upside down. I have a job that, while I wish I was further up the career ladder in, pays the bills, is steady, lets me do some cool stuff, and is generally a lot better than a lot of other jobs. I'm in pretty good financial shape.

But of course, there are also things I'm not as happy about. I'm single, and haven't had a whole lot of success changing that - and the older I get, the more unlikely it seems that I'll ever find someone, that I'll be able to do the things I want to do, the things that everyone else seems to be able to do - get married, have kids, ect. My parents are, like me, getting older, and having a bunch of health problems, and I'm sure they will only get worse and require more time and probably some difficult decisions in the coming decade.

So what does the next decade of madanthony's life hold? Probably surprises, hopefully of the good kind, but probably a mix of good and bad. Someone once said that "if you want to make God laugh, tell Him your plans for the next 10 years". While we may have an idea where the path of life will take us, it sometimes takes unexpected turns, and sometime something small makes a huge difference. It was an online survey that made me make the dramatic lifestyle changes that let me lose 100 pounds, and that have made the gym a place I spend a significant amount of my free time. It was a decision to look for a summer job so I could stay in Baltimore that eventually led to my current career. It was an off-the cuff remark, followed by a few minutes with a kitten who didn't want to do anything but fall asleep in my lap that brought Nibbler the cat into my life. So hopefully on the relationship front, something will surprise me and hopefully send me the way I want to go.

I'm not saying that there aren't things we can do, or even probably things I should be doing, to change the direction of my life to the way I want it to go. But I think sometimes life just happens, and maybe it will happen to me. Well, it will happen, and it's just finding out what "it" is.

Business or hobby? I don't know...

2010-08-04T21:30:00.003-04:00

So the last few months I've been selling at more hamfests than normal. Usually I don't sell at Timonium, but I did this year. I also sold at Manassas and Berryville/Ruritan.

I've gotten quite a bit of inventory lately - I bought a bunch of computers and monitors from 2 online FDIC closed bank auctions, a bunch of Hoffman electrical enclosures from another online auction, and still have some PC cleaning stuff from an auction I went to in PA last fall.

At one of the 'fests I was at a few months ago, someone asked me if this was a hobby or a business. I said hobby, but then started thinking. It's becoming more like a business - I've been looking harder for inventory, and traveling further to find it - then when I do, traveling further to sell it. I invested in one of those folding canopies. And I keep debating if I should be doing more - going to more auctions to find inventory, going to more 'fests to sell it. I'm not pulling in a huge amount of money, but I'm doing OK - it definitely gives me a lot of extra financial breathing room to spend on things like the occasional Starbucks coffee or put away in savings in the hope of buying a new truck.

But it also requires a lot of investment in time. There are lots of people chasing stuff to resell, and some of them have outlets - like stores - where their stuff can fetch more than I can get, so they are willing to pay more. So I've been to some auctions where I've left with a ton of stuff, but I've also driven 8+ hours round trip to go home pretty much empty handed. And a weekend with a hamfest is pretty much a weekend I can't get a whole lot else done - I spend Saturday night loading the truck, wake up stupidly early Sunday morning, and then collapse in bed when I get back and spend the rest of Sunday in a state of groggy post-nap confusion. Plus my house is now full of inventory.

I also find myself kicking myself when I buy something and it sells well, and I could have bought more but didn't. But at the same time, I only have so much room to store it, and at some point the market becomes saturated for anything I'm selling.

I think my best bet is to keep my eyes peeled for stuff like the computer cleaning supplies and hoffman enclosures - they are easy to sell, don't require much explanation, don't take up a lot of space, and don't become obsolete as time goes on like computers and electronics do.

But while I like the extra money, I'm not sure I want this to take over my life. I suspect that spending weekends at hamfests and having about 40 computers in my basement is probably killing what little chance I have of not dieing single and alone. So I will probably continue to keep an eye out for auctions, but also try to be reasonable about how much I buy and where I travel to - and how many 'fests I sell at. I think expanding any more would require significant capital investment - a warehouse and a box truck - and I could never justify that. The whole having a day job thing also cuts into how many auctions I can go to and how far I can travel, but I know I wouldn't make enough doing this full-time to give up my day job - especially since it has pretty awesome benefits.

Pickup Artists, or is the way to a women's heart through being a jerk?

2010-08-04T11:53:00.003-04:00

A few weeks ago, economics blogger Megan McCardle had posts here and here on pickup artists - people who claim to have distilled picking up women at bars to a method. Even more interesting than the articles themselves are the comments, which run from "this stuff is crap" to "there are some legitimate stuff in here, but also some crap" to "pickup artists are gods we should all imitate".

Since madanthony has never had much luck with the opposite sex, I'm pretty interested in the idea. So I decided to pick up a copy of the book that the comments mentioned was the original in the genre - Neil Strauss's The Game. I figured I'd read it more as an anthropological study than as a how-to book.

Which turned out to be a good idea, because it's not really a how-to book. It profiles the author's entry into the world of pickup artists who spend their free time picking up women in bars and bedding them.

In a way, the book confirms what every AFC (Average F*cking Chump, the book's term for nice guys who finish last) like myself has known but doesn't want to admit - that the way to attract women is to be a douchebag. Techniques include "the neg" (pointing out something unattractive about the women you are hitting on), the freeze-out (ignoring the targeted woman and pretending you aren't interested in her), and bringing lint with you so you can put it on said women, and then pick it off.

The thing is that the author at one point admits that while these are great for picking up women in bars, they are not so great if you are trying to build a long-term relationship, because lying and being a douchebag aren't really good things to build a relationship on. The other thing to keep in mind is these are designed for picking up women in bars - if you are after the kind of women who doesn't hang out in bars waiting to be picked up, your mileage may vary. Megan makes fun in one of her posts of Mystery's outfit - but the outfit was designed to attract women in bars, where standing out is necessary if you want to, well, stand out.

The other thing is that much of this rests on how much time you can put into it - the author mentions that at one point he was spending 18 hours a day doing everything from reading and working out to learning magic tricks to prowling bars to getting tanning and teeth whitening to taking dance and posture lessons to improve himself. Which works if you are a writer, but for those of us with real jobs, not so much. And it's not exactly shocking that if you put enough time into something you can succeed at it.

At the same time, it is interesting that social interaction can be learned and refined, even if it's shallow interaction designed to bed aspiring models. Personally, I've always wondered how I've been successful at some things in my life, including things that many people struggle with, like losing weight and keeping it off - while being a complete failure at relationships, something most people seem to have at least some short-term success with. I've generally ascribed this to the fact that weight loss is internal, completely under my control - if I watch what I eat and put in enough time at the gym, then I can continue to fit into my pants. But if I want to get into some girl's pants, I need her to do something. The lesson is that it isn't external - that you can change enough about yourself and the way you interact with people to change your success interacting with them.

Of course, that gets into doing exactly what I hate doing - interacting with strangers. But it does give some interesting advice - if you are approaching people, it works better if you have some idea of what you are going to say, and if you have something interesting to say - a question, a request for an opinion, a magic trick. They also suggest walking to a shopping center and just saying "hi" to every woman you encounter as a way of building confidence - which is an interesting idea, if I can get the confidence to do it.

I think the other interesting thing about the book is that, if you are a dating failure like me, it makes you realize that you aren't the only one. It also had a quote from one of the original pickup artists from the '70's commenting that one thing to remember is that everyone else is as scared of approaching people as you - which I think is probably true, and good advice. As I get older, I realize that a lot of the people I'd always assumed knew everything - doctors, coworkers, parents - didn't always know everything. The same is true about being confident.

So while I don't plan on walking up to random women in bars and asking them to picture a cube - or for that matter, spending lots of time in bars - I do need to make a point to try to engage more random people in conversation, to remember that other people have the same feelings I do, and to try to do things that put me in touch with people. Although I'm not sure what those things are.

On being torn between family and self...

2010-07-05T22:23:00.002-04:00

So I'm up in NJ, for the second weekend in a row. My mom had knee replacement surgery last Friday, and I came up last weekend - drove up Thursday night, went back to Baltimore on Sunday. This weekend I drove up Saturday morning, will be returning tomorrow afternoon - I'm off the 5th and 6th from work.

It looks like I'm going to be up here again next month - my brother is going away on vacation, so I get to babysit the parents for a while. I'm not exactly thrilled - I had hoped to take a vacation this summer, ironically to the same place he's going, but because of scheduling stuff couldn't swing it. I also hate taking time off, and this means I'll have used something like a third of my vacation time on family stuff. I don't like to take time off in general, and try to let most of my vacation days go unused, which means I can't take a whole lot more time in addition to what I'm taking to help them out without hurting my career. But I can't really blame my brother for wanting to take a vacation, and he has been doing a lot for my parents since he lives much closer than them.

My parent's health issues - my dad has MS, my mom has some other issues in addition to her knees - have probably been harder on him than on me to have to deal with. But it's hard on some level for both of us. It's strange how different things are from a few years ago - now I'm cooking for the parents and shopping and driving them around instead of the other way around. Now holidays and visits seem less like relaxing and more like work.

I'm also not used to not being on my own - to having to accommodate other people's sleep schedules, eating schedules, ect. My dad tends to like things done on his terms, while my mom thanks me for every little thing I do so enthusiastically that I feel bad for not doing more. But I'm also bored - they don't have a TV, so it's either the internet or books. All the stuff I normally have - friends, my cat, my house, my gym - are a couple hundred miles away. I feel disconnected, torn between where I feel like I need to be and where I want to be.

This post is pretty rambling, and doesn't say much. I guess I'm mostly venting. I'm trying to figure out what my obligations as a son are, I guess. I want to be there for my parents, because they made huge sacrifices for me when I was a kid. But at the same time, I want to be able to live my life, and maybe someday even meet someone and have my own kids, and that's hard to do when I'm going between my life and theirs.

If the fine print taketh away, I taketh away my business...

2010-06-25T10:20:00.003-04:00

So last week I got an email from a company I'd purchased from in the past, telling me that they missed my business and that they were giving me a 20% off coupon, plus their normal free shipping for purchases over $25, to get me back. They sold a product that I was eventually going to need more of, so I clicked on their link, found the product, calculated that it would be a few dollars less than other places after the discount, and put it in my cart.

And then I promptly got a message telling me that they could not offer free shipping on certain large and heavy items, including the one I'd just put into my cart.

Now, I'm an occasional eBay seller, so I'm pretty familiar with the cost of shipping. And I realize that there is a certain threshold at which it gets significantly more expensive to ship items. I wouldn't begrudge a company from advertising free shipping on most items, but not being able to offer it on, say, a pallet of concrete blocks or an 8-piece sectional.

But I knew about how much the item I was looking to buy was, and it wasn't nearly large enough to be oversize/overweight (which for UPS is over 70 pounds or 70" in girth). That's because the item I was looking to buy was a 5-pound jar of whey protein for protein shakes. (I've been doing some strength training and have added a small amount of protein supplements to my diet in the hopes of building some muscle).

That makes me suspect that their "heavy" items aren't so much things that cost more to ship, but rather things that are very price-competitive and that they want to be able to advertise a low price on for comparison shoppers but not actually have to deliver on.

The retailer, for those who are wondering, was drugstore.com . Suffice to say, I didn't buy it from them - with shipping, the price is about the same as from amazon, who has more of a selection of flavors, and from whom free shipping really is free.

I wonder how many other customers are like me, and if their little free shipping game is costing them more customers than it's attracting. I certainly would be reluctant to buy from them unless it was an amazing deal, because it seems like a very shady way to run a business.

Scenes from a hospital waiting room...

2010-06-25T10:08:00.002-04:00

I'm sitting in the surgery waiting room of a hospital in central NJ right now. My my is having knee replacement surgery - she's needed it for a while, but finally was able to schedule it for today... for one knee. We'll get to go through this all over again next year for her other knee.

My dad has MS and isn't able to do much, so this is going to be tough for both of them. It's not really easy for my brother and I, either. He lives nearby, so much of the caring for them falls on him. I took today off, drove up last night, and will drive back to Maryland sometime Sunday. I'll be back again next weekend and we'll see if/when I'm needed after that.

I can't say I've been looking forward to this - I'm busy at work with a couple major projects, and I hate giving up my weekends, my house with my own bed in it, my cat, or my free time. Which means I'm a pretty selfish bastard, since I'm grumbling and I'm not the one who is having his knee replaced.

Watching your parents get old and having to start to take care of them is weird. I've already found myself doing the things for my parents that they used to do for me - driving them around, going shopping for them, holding my mom's hand so she doesn't fall down, cooking meals. And I guess that's only going to increase.

I guess in some ways it's a good thing that I don't have much going on in the way of relationships or a personal life, so I don't have to work around that - but this is only going to make it harder to try to have one. And once again, complaining about this makes me realize I'm a pretty shallow, heartless jerk.

I'm not the world's most religious person, but I do try to get to church on Sundays, and last week's homily included talking about how one of the things that makes us human and unites us is suffering - we all go through different kinds, but everyone has had some in their lives, and it's part of our shared humanity. I guess when I find myself envying people who have healthy parents (or girlfriends) I need to remind myself that some people are lucky in some areas and suffer in others, and those seem to be where I'm suffering.

Also, I'm incredibly grateful for whoever got the idea of putting wifi in hospital waiting rooms.

New adventures in re-fi...

2010-06-19T16:34:00.004-04:00

So yesterday, I refinanced my house. I've had some savings socked away that were burning a hole in my pocket, or at least in my savings account. I was seriously considering buying a second car - something sporty and topless - but the practical side of me just couldn't bring myself do something as unnecessary and fiscally irresponsible as buying a giant money pit. So I decided to look into doing a refi instead.

I was originally hoping that as part of it, I would be able to drop PMI. I bought my house 4 years ago, put 10% down, and took out a 40 year mortgage at around 6.3%. But I had to have an appraisal, and it came back lower than I hoped- evidently, my house is worth 5% less than I paid for it. Which actually, given how the housing market has been, isn't that bad, considering I bought at the peak of the market in 2006. It also means I'm not upside down, which is nice to know. But it also meant that I would have to kick in pretty much every dollar I had to my name if I wanted to drop PMI. My thought was to put an amount between the original amount I planned and what I would need to have a PMI-free 80% Loan To Value. But the mortgage company seemed to have misunderstood, and when I got the HUD-1 20 hours before I was due to close, it had the original numbers. I could have delayed closing, but decided to just go ahead. If I want to, I can always make a large one-time principle payment to bring it down, and it will drop off on it's own in 5 years, which will save me $68 a month.

So right now, the new loan will reduce my monthly payments by $140 a month, even with PMI, and will reduce the term by 6 years. That means in about 2 years I'll have gotten back what it cost in origination fees and closing costs, so I think it was a good deal.

I think I'm actually better off with the lower amount down as well. While it would be nice to drop PMI, I like actually having some cash on hand. Since I didn't buy a second car, I'm thinking of replacing my first one in the next year or two, and it makes more sense to pay cash for it rather than use my cash to reduce my low, tax deductible mortgage and then take out a high interest car loan - especially since I'm considering used cars, which have higher interest rates.

The car would be an indulgence - I don't really need a new one. But I'm trying to find a balance between saving money and being frugal, and buying things that I enjoy - and I've always been a car nut. We'll see, though, if I can really bring myself to buy a new vehicle, especially one that's a little pricey - what I want is a preowned luxury SUV, probably a Land Rover L3, Range Rover Sport, or Porsche Cayenne. Any of which would probably end up being money pits to maintain.

Anyway, there was one minor hiccup in the whole signing process. The lender sent a rep they contracted out with the papers for me to sign. Aside from a HUD-1 that was missing most of the numbers, everything seemed pretty normal - until I got to a form saying that I was in a flood zone, and that by signing it I was agreeing that the lender wouldn't make the loan unless I got flood insurance. Which was odd, since I wasn't in a flood zone 4 years ago when I bought the house, and since I had earlier signed a paper saying I wasn't in a flood zone and didn't need insurance. Rep calls title company, who says it's a lender issue. madanthony calls lender, leaves vm, luckily gets a callback a few minutes later. Rep says it's not in a flood zone, I don't need flood insurance, and I can either write that I'm not in a flood zone and sign it or not sign it at all. I elect to go with the latter.

Evidently there is a 3 day grace period where I can back out, so they wait until then to actually transfer the money and finish processing everything. So hopefully this won't blow up, and hopefully I've made the right moves financially.

Like Fergie, I'm up at the gym just working on my fitness...

2010-06-19T16:17:00.002-04:00

So it's been a couple weeks since I began my attempt to build some upper body strength. So how's it going?

Eh. Hard to tell. The thing about when I started losing weight is that it was pretty simple to see if what I was doing was working - the numbers on the scale would be smaller and my pants would be looser. Gaining muscle isn't quite so easy, because it doesn't happen as quickly or dramatically. If I flex at the right time and look at the right angle and sort of squint, I maybe have something that sort of resembles a bicep. But I don't think anyone is going to notice anytime soon, because there isn't a whole lot to notice.

I'm taking a somewhat different strategy than what most people do - most of the people I know who do strength training do 45 minutes or so a couple times I week. I've been doing about 15 minutes at the gym, and maybe another 15 at home, pretty much every day. It fits into my existing workout schedule, and is easier to get myself to do, but I'm not sure if it's as effective.

A friend of mine showed me a ton of exercises, and I've been doing, well, a few of them. So I'm probably not doing enough, or the right ones. But I figure anything is better than nothing, and hopefully I can get myself to work up to both more variety and more reps/more weight/less assistance as time goes on. I'm hoping I'm at least in decent enough shape before school starts and the flood of students comes back and makes me look bad.

I've also started drinking protein shakes - 1 a day. At first the idea seemed kind of silly to me - I don't feel like I really exercise enough to justify it. But I figured it can't hurt - it doesn't add that many calories to my intake, and I don't get a whole lot of protein in my diet. Besides, anything that tastes as bad as it does has to be good for me.

So I'm not sure if I'm actually doing enough to get anywhere. But I figure it can't hurt and might help, and it's not like I have anything else better to do with my time, so I'm going to try to keep it up. I haven't had to open any pickle jars recently, though, so I don't know if it's working yet.

Correlation vs. Causation, or why home ownership isn't wrecking the economy...

2010-06-07T20:17:00.002-04:00

I was reminded of this old blog post when I read this WSJ opinion column claiming that home ownership is overrated. While there are legitimate arguments against home ownership in certain situations, the statistics that Mr. Florida uses to try to demonstrate this are awful:

But cities with high levels of homeownership—in the range of 75%, like Detroit, St. Louis and Pittsburgh—had on average considerably lower levels of economic activity and much lower wages and incomes. Far too many people in economically distressed communities are trapped in homes they can't sell, unable to move on to new centers of opportunity. The cities and regions with the lowest levels of homeownership—in the range of 55% to 60% like L.A., N.Y., San Francisco and Boulder—had healthier economies and higher incomes.

Besides their economy, there is something else that seems pretty obvious about those places - the cost of homes. Homes in Detroit are notoriously cheap - some have sold for as little as a dollar. LA, San Fran, and NYC, on the other hand, are notoriously expensive places to live, where closet-sized condos often go for half a million or more.

So I would argue that Detroit et al aren't economically depressed because home ownership is high, but that home ownership is high because they are economically depressed. Like any other good, houses are subject to the laws of supply and demand, and when demand goes down because the economy is tanking and supply stays stable because, well, the houses are already there, then price is going to go down, and consumption is going to go up. The opposite is true in places like NYC - demand goes up, supply stays flat, and prices go up.

Now, I'll admit that I do have a dog in this race - I own a home, and when I bought it I factored in the mortgage interest deduction that Mr. Florida wants to kill. That would hit me twice - it would raise my effective interest payments by a couple hundred bucks a month, and sharply decrease the value of my house, because buyers would no longer be factoring that interest deduction into how much they are willing to pay.

And while I do think that there are advantages to the flexibility of not owning a home - at various points, I've considered a career change or going back to school full time, but I can't since I own a house. However, there are also good things about people being stable - it may not be good for new businesses, but it's good for employers who want to retain their employees. It's also good for the stability of communities, to have homeowners who actually have a long-term stake in their communities.

I wonder if Mr. Florida thinks that lemons reduce car crashes, too.

Hamfest and Asian...

2010-05-30T23:57:00.004-04:00

Today was the Memorial Day Hamfest at the Howard County Fairgrounds. It's one of the few holidays I spend in Baltimore instead of going up to visit the family in NJ, so I can sell at this fest.

It was... OK. There were quite a few vendors, although none selling stuff I wanted (my only purchase was a $5 Linksys range extender). There weren't so many customers, though. I ended up grossing $357 - not awful, but not great either. I had a number of Dell systems, from P4 1.6 up to core 2 duo 2.13, and did not sell a single one. Usually I blow them out pretty quickly, but they were hardly looked at - and from talking to one of the other vendors, his experiences were similar. I don't know if it's because it's a holiday weekend or the economy or what, but while I'm glad to have some money and slightly less crap, I'm disappointing to not have even more money and even less crap.

I may sell at the Manassas VA fest in two weeks - I've never been to it, but since several of the other fests I've sold at in the past are gone (Fredrick, Gaithersberg) I figure I need to branch out. I'd also like to free up some space in my basement, and make some more cash - I'm in the process of trying to refinance my house, and if it goes through it will eat up most of my savings, so I need to start rebuilding them.

The other less than pleasant thing about the fest is that while I was glad it didn't rain, it was very sunny. I'm now bright red in various places on my body - evidently my skin can only be either clammy pale white or lobster red. I should have worn sunscreen.

After the 'fest, I headed off to Lotte to do some grocery shopping. Lotte is an Asian grocery store, plus food court and department store and some other stuff, all crammed into an old supermarket space in a strip mall. Shopping there is an experience - the parking lot is like driving in a demolition derby full of Asians in late-model Camry's, the isles are tiny and arranged in no particular order (it's not unusual to see the same product in a different brand in a completely different isle), they have things like live turtles, most of the packages are in Korean, occasionally with some Engrish, and you can buy things like hot bean paste in tubs the size you normally associate with industrial chemicals.

I bought mostly staple stuff - sauces, sesame oil, spices, apples - but also a few new things to try - mixed grains (which I suspect will not come out well in my rice cooker), some sort of diet Aloe drink, a "Hawaiian Banana", and some Azuki red bean ice cream, which I suspect I bought mostly because it's one of the ingredients that's always mentioned on Iron Chef. Haven't tried anything yet, so no reviews yet.

madanthony is at the gym, getting ripped...

2010-05-29T23:49:00.002-04:00

Up until about the middle of 2005, I'd never set foot in the gym at the college I work for (and graduated from), except to work on the computers there. But a few months earlier I had decided to make a commitment to lose weight, and to do that I needed to exercise. I had been walking laps around a nearby reservoir, but it was getting to be summer and hot outside, plus when it rained I was out of luck.

I got in the habit of going pretty much every day, unless I have something else I have to do. But in those 5 years, I've always stuck to the cardio side of things, eventually settling on the Precors and Ellipticals for my daily 90 minute workouts. Until a few days ago, anyway.

For the last year or two I've said I was going to do some sort of strength training or lifting, but never have. I've always been intimidated, both by the equipment and by the people who use it. But it's summer, and the gym is mostly empty, so I figured it was a good time to get a start - hopefully by the time September rolls around and the gym fills up I'll be comfortable enough to be around the kind of people who can lift Volkswagons, even though I struggle with lifting Matchbox cars. A coworker of mine who has a pretty serious strength-training routine generously agreed to show me the ropes, so last Sunday I dipped my first toe into the waters of upper-body conditioning.

I got a flurry of possible exercises. I've adopted a couple, the rest I plan to work in slowly once I become more comfortable with the equipment and better at using it. I've decided to ignore the conventional wisdom of doing a big 45 minute workout 2 times a week, and instead do 10 or 15 minutes every day. While I figure that isn't optimal, it fits better into my current workout schedule - I can do it after my daily cardio - and it's a lot more manageable.

My goal in this isn't to get ripped or anything. But I have pretty much no upper body strength, and have had my arms described as "spindly" by one of our student workers. I'd be happy if I can lift heavy boxes and open jars of pickles without straining - although I figure that it can't hurt me dating-wise, since I've never seen "spindly" as a "want" in a woman's online dating profile.

Of course, 10 minutes a day probably isn't going to get me that, but I do intend to increase it, and it can't hurt. When I first started exercising, I would walk for about 15 minutes. Now I do six times that. When it comes to strength training, I'm where I was at at cardio 5 years ago, when I weighed 100 pounds more than I do now.

There are some things I'm getting used to about the difference between cardio and strength training - when you do cardio for fat burning, the goal is more to be doing something so you burn calories and less to push yourself - the "fat burn" settings on the Precor aim for 65% of your max heart rate. Strength training is different - you want to do a small amount of intense stuff at your limit. You need to rest between sets. And while a good cardio workout and careful diet can shed several pounds in a week, especially if you are fat to begin with, the time frame I see in articles about lifting is "weeks and months".

Still, I have noticed that I can do a few more reps with a little more resistance than I could a week ago, which means I must be doing something right. And I don't feel nearly as sore afterwords as I did the first day, although that may be more my much-reduced workout length than anything else. But it's not like I could get any less strong, and hopefully I can build this up into a decent daily workout.

And never struggle with a pickle jar again.

Will 20% under-25 unemployment have serious consequences?

2010-05-23T11:17:00.002-04:00

I was killing time in a coffee shop yesterday and thumbing through the Bloomberg News app on my iPhone when I stumbled on this article about unemployment among recent college grads. There was one thing that jumped out at me - Unemployment among people under 25 years old was 19.6 percent in April, the highest level since the Labor Department began tracking the data in 1948.

So almost 1 in 5 people under 25 are unemployed - and that presumably doesn't count those that are underemployed, like the engineer working as a banquet waiter profiled at the beginning of the article.

I think this is going to have vast and rippling effects on the economy. People in their early 20's are at the age where they start thinking about things like marriage, having kids, buying houses. People who are unemployed or barely employed tend to put those things off. Which makes me wonder if population rates are going to go down, if marriage rates are going down, if home sales will continue to be awful - because people will put those things off until they feel financially stable, and people won't feel financially stable for a long time.

It also is going to have implications for companies in the long term - if they aren't hiring and training new workers, they aren't going to have people to move up the chain when older workers retire. Many jobs require a fair amount of institutional knowledge, of on-the-job experience - and without new blood, there aren't people with those things to move up into management roles.

I also wonder what the effect will be on the market for things like new tech products - typically people in the under-25 group are the early adopters of new gadgets - but that takes money. I wonder how many inventions that would have caught on won't because their target audience can't afford them. I wonder how many more iPads would have been sold if 20% of people under 25 were't unemployed.

This is the first time I've seen the statistic, and I'm kind of surprised it hasn't gotten more press - it seems like it has pretty serious implications for the future of our country.

A weighty decision...

2010-05-13T23:44:00.002-04:00

So back in January, work decided to have a "biggest loser" contest. I signed up - not because I really felt I needed to lose a whole lot of weight, but figured that I should at least give it a shot. I didn't really try very hard, though, and only lost a few pounds. A few weeks ago, I went to Vegas, and gained a few pounds, so I worked my ass off the next 2.5 weeks. I ended up losing a total of around 8 pounds, which gave me a loss of 5.7% - not far behind the third place finisher, who lost 6.2% - although I have no idea how many people were between him and I.

They are starting up again June 1st, and I'm wondering if I should give it another shot. I was thinking I would relax the next couple weeks - not intentionally try to gain weight, but not take any extraordinary efforts to lose it, either - and then go hard come June - 2 hour daily workouts and eat about half what I'm eating now.

But now I'm thinking maybe I shouldn't sign up at all. The thing is that I probably could stand to lose a couple pounds, but I don't think I could lose enough to win - and I think I'd be miserable. Because I really like to eat, and not being able to eat things I like makes me miserable -and since I already exercise regularly, I'd need to add a bunch more to actually lose rather than maintain. I normally do 90 minutes a day, so I would need to do 2 hours or more, which means not getting home until after 8.

The other thing is that a friend of mine has been trying to convince me to start lifting for years, and I probably should start. I think it would be good to add some muscle - but muscle means weight, which means I would need to do even more cardio if I want to lose weight while adding muscle. That means 3+ hours a day.

Which I could do, but I'm lazy. And therein lies the rub - not doing the biggest loser means admitting that I'm too lazy to put in the work necessary to win, which isn't a good thing.

But I also feel like I'm at a a point weight-wise where I'm not sure if it's worth the effort. I'm not saying I couldn't stand to lose some weight. I'm 5'5" and 142 pounds at last weigh-in. By the government's BMI calculator, I'm in the normal range for my height - but near the top. The range is 111-150. So I could lose 31 pounds and still be healthy - and I'm kind of curious what a 111 pound madanthony would look like. Would I be able to see my ribs?

But unlike where I was 5 or so years ago, when I was 250 pounds instead of 142, it's no longer critical that I lose a significant amount of weight, just nice. Which makes it a lot harder to justify putting a huge amount of additional time and missed ice cream cones towards it. It's my grad school dilemma all over again- I have the time, and I have the ability to achieve it, but it's a question of if it's worth the effort and time or if there isn't something better/more productive I could put towards it. And like grad school, there is no easy answer.

A man-child reflects on mortgages, cars, school, dating, and other adult pursuits...

2010-05-13T00:07:00.002-04:00

A few months ago I was pondering certain things in my life - if I was going to continue the grad program I was in, about buying a second car, and as usual, why I'm a complete failure when it comes to dating.

The sports car thing probably isn't going to happen. I can't bring myself to drop a ton of money on something that is just going to cost me more money in repairs.

Instead, what I'm probably going to do is throw a bunch of money at my mortgage. When I bought Casa De Mad a few years ago, I did a 40 year mortgage at 6.3% or so, and put 10% down, which means I'm spending $80 a month on PMI - private mortgage insurance, which protects the lender if I default. If I bring the LTV - loan to value, the ratio of the amount owed vs. the value of the house - to under 80%, I can drop that. So I'm looking at putting another 10% down and refinancing into a 30 year at around 5%. That would shave 6 years off my payments, and probably around $200 a month... assuming that the house gets assessed at what I paid for it. Zillow says it's worth that much, but who knows if the bank will agree.

That will save me a lot of money long-term. It's the mature, practical, adult thing to do, and I can't bring myself to do anything else. It also means that I'm going to need to go back to being frugal, because it will put a huge dent in my savings, which I'll need to rebuild. Instead of buying a second car, I hope to replace the Ranger in a year or two, preferably with something with a backseat and a paint job that doesn't attract every cop in a 3 mile radius. And I want to pay cash for it, because unless it's dead it doesn't make sense to borrow to replace it.

As far as school, still not sure. My plan right now is that I'm not taking any classes during the summer, but I still need to decide for the fall. It's nice not having classes - I can do 2-hour workouts at the gym, eat real dinners, watch an hour of TV every night, and kill a book or 2 a week - ones I actually want to read. On the other hand, I somehow managed to get A's in both of the classes I took last semester, it would be cool to have another degree, and it's not like I have anything better to do.

One thing I was hoping was that with more time, I'd actually be able to date. But that's not happening - I've stuck my toe back into the cesspool of online dating, even renewing my eHarmony subscription, but so far not even a nibble. I guess I had some illusion that the cloud of failure that follows me around like PigPen's cloud of dust would somehow magically disappear and that the opposite sex would cease to be repulsed by me, but not surprisingly, that hasn't happened - which makes the idea of going back to class, where at least I can interact with people who can't stand me in person instead of just over the internet.

Oh, I see you aren't using this money, so we're going to take it...

2010-05-07T00:22:00.003-04:00

Most financial advisers suggest that you should keep an emergency fund of about 3 month's salary for emergencies. When I finally reached the point in my life where I had enough money to do this, I did. I opened a high-yield savings account with an internet bank, deposited $8000 or so in it, and left it there. The idea was that I wouldn't touch it - because it was separate from my normal savings account and not particularly easy to access, it would be there if I needed it, but I wouldn't see it or think about it when I checked my normal bank balance.

Evidently, the state of Maryland has a problem with people leaving money to sit and earn interest. I got a letter recently that unless I contact the bank, my money would be considered abandoned based on state laws and be confiscated by the state. I have yet to respond, but I need to do so, or the government is going to take MY money out of MY bank account because I chose not to deposit or withdraw from that account. This seems like the stupidest thing ever. The law is here (pdf).

I can get the government to not take my money for no reason if I send a notarized letter back to the bank, which means I need to deal with a notary - luckily there are a few where I work. I'm guessing if I log in and move a few bucks in or out it would also do it, although I'm not sure since it's been over 3 years. The letter said they would turn it over in October.

Once again, I don't understand this. Why does the government feel that people leaving money in the bank is so horrible that they need to seize the funds of those who dare to do so? It also seems like the law is horribly outdated in the times of internet banking - the law includes text that some of the definitions of activity include going to them to get your interest record updated - kind of hard when you are dealing with an internet bank - or communicating in writing. Who the hell writes to their bank?

There are lots of naked grabs for cash that the government does, but rarely do you find one quite so blatant.

All inclusive or nickle and dimed?

2010-05-05T23:48:00.002-04:00

Two and a half weeks ago, I went to Vegas for a conference. It was my first time in Vegas, and it made me think about, among other things, pricing structures.

I don't travel much, but I have had the opportunity a couple of times to go for various training for work, and the last couple times I've stayed at "business class" hotels - a Marriott Residence Inn and a Courtyard, specifically. Both places gave you as much stuff as possible - free breakfast, free coffee and tea, use of a gym (one had an exercise room, one had a deal with a gym across the street), fridge in the room, ect. All small things, but they make your stay more enjoyable.

Despite a room rate that was twice what those hotels charged, though, staying at the Palazzo was different. Everything was extra - use of the gym and spa was $40 a DAY, a price I couldn't bring myself to pay despite my desire to keep in shape - especially since the college gym I go to, which includes a pool and rock wall just like theirs, costs me $30.. a MONTH. It has better hours, too. They had the obligatory mini-bar, plus snacks and bottled water on the dresser to upsell you.

Another example - I rented a car the last day. Not only did they try to sell me insurance, they asked if I wanted "full coverage or just liability" even though I wasn't required to get any. I did get the liability- I am a pretty shitty driver - and it cost about 50% of what the rate for renting the car was.

With a little thought, there are a ton of other fees and upsells we encounter every day, from extended warranties at Best Buy to cookies at Starbucks to baggage fees from airlines. And I'm really not sure how I feel about them.

As a consumer, I don't like when they sneak up on me - when I discover that to have something I want, it's going to cost me way more than I thought it would. However, I can also get some pretty good deals when I can buy the cheap item and say no to all the add-ons. As someone who minored in econ as an undergrad, I love them - they are a great example of price discrimination, where companies find ways to charge more money to people who are willing to pay more and less to people who aren't, and wouldn't buy their product at the higher price.

I do suspect I could make a bunch of money opening a gym on or near the Las Vegas strip that offered daily use for $15 a day or so, though.

What happens in Vegas goes on my blog...

2010-04-24T23:18:00.003-04:00

So I spent the last 6 days and 5 nights in Las Vegas - I got back very late last night. I was there for MMS 2010, a conference on Microsoft Management software. The relevant portion of it for me was SCCM, System Center Configuration Manager, which performs such things as software deployment to Windows computers. I went with another coworker, who actually does more with SCCM than I do.

There was a lot of info at the conference - it was overwhelming, especially since I haven't have been doing a whole lot of deep technical stuff with SCCM of late. Still, it was interesting to see things like what the next versions will look like, what it's capable of, ect. By listening to, say, another organization's talk about how they are deploying Win7 - in an organization that has almost nothing in common with ours - it gave some more thoughts on things that I need to address in our deployment.

Of course, besides the technical aspects, it was a free trip to Vegas, a city I've never been to before. Hell, I've never been further west than Indiana before. It meant flying, something I haven't done in nearly a decade.

So what did I think of Vegas? Meh. The conference - and our room - was at the Palazzo. Our room was sweet - great view of the north part of the Strip, 3 LCD tv's (one in the bathroom), a giant sectional couch, remote-control blinds. But it also nickles and dimes you - $13/day for wireless internet, $40 a day per person to use the gym (err, spa), ect. The gym thing irked me, because I try to keep up on my workouts, especially when I'm eating a ton. I did a little early-morning walking around Vegas, which was interesting, but not real helpful to my waistline.

I don't really gamble and don't drink much - and neither does the coworker I was with - so most of Vegas was lost on me. I dropped a few bucks in the penny slots, but that was about it. I got some good pics of Freemont St. and of the Strip and ate some good but horrifically unhealthy meals. I went to the "parties" that the conference throws, which one drunk fellow attendee described as "a bunch of dudes standing around drinking free beer", which pretty much sums it up - probably 90% of MMS attendees can pee standing up. My coworker and I did end up hanging out at Stripburger several times it's a restaurant and bar in the Fashion Show mall across from our hotel. In addition to being a nice place to watch people walk up and down the strip, it featured milkshakes, fried pickle slices, and $2 Sierra Nevada drafts after 11pm (but alas, closed at midnight).

There were only a couple sessions Friday morning, none of which was really relevant to us, so we ended up renting a car and driving around for a few hours before heading to the airport. We hit the Gold and Silver Pawnshop from the History Channel show Pawn Stars - only to get kicked out 2 minutes later because they needed to film an episode. We drove out to Red Rocks, a national park featuring a whole bunch of big mountains - I got some great pics. We briefly stopped by Fry's Electronics, but between lack of time and the need to take a plane home I left empty-handed.

Vegas is an interesting place to visit, and I'm hoping I make next year's MMS conference (which evidently is at Mandalay Bay). Still, by the end I was kind of looking forward to going home. Vegas is pretty much built around things I'm either not into or suck at - spending money, gambling, partying, sex. Unlike most places, which are designed to make you fit in, Vegas is designed to make it seem like everyone is richer, better looking, and hipper than you - it wants to aspire to, or pretend to be, a free-spending player, which ain't me. It also didn't help that it was filled with couples, many of which seemed to be a cute girl on the arm of a guy who looked like a total douche, mixed in with a few that appeared to be older guys with hookers. Vegas is absurd - 50 story luxury resorts next to strip malls 2 blocks away from lots used to store trailers. It's giant buildings trying to pretend they are something else - Venice without the poop-filled canals, Paris without rioting youth, a castle, a circus - all designed to get you to gamble. But you can't get away from gambling - every gas station we passed driving to Red Rocks boasted video poker, the Vegas airport had rows of slots, lest you find yourself stuck at the gate with some money left that you need to lose before your flight. I have nothing against gambling - if that's what people want to do - but it's not my idea of fun. Which makes it a nice city to visit, but I don't think I'd want to live there.

Dude, where's your blog?

2010-04-24T16:26:00.002-04:00

So if you are a regular madanthony reader - and evidently they do exist - you are probably wondering what the hell is going on with this blog - why it was offline for close to a month, and now gives you a shitty redirect page and an overly complicated blogspot url.

What happened is that blogger decided to end ftp publishing for blogger blogs. In an attempt to move it to a blogger custom domain, I completely hosed my DNS settings.

So I've temporarily moved it to blogger, with the crappy redirect page. In the next few weeks I hope to move it back to my own hosting, with the original URL and a different platform, probably wordpress. That's going to require some technical help and some time, though, so it may be a little while.

The Timonium Hamfest Report, 2010 edition

2010-03-28T10:08:00.002-04:00

So yesterday was the Timonium Hamfest, and I did something there I don't normally do - I sold stuff. Specifically, around $875 worth of stuff. Keep in mind that that figure is gross income, and some of the stuff I sold I had quite a bit of money into, including two PC's that I paid around $90 each for. Still, I now have a bit more stuff in my basement, and a bit more money in my pocket, so that's a win.

In previous years, I've avoided selling, instead wandering around - because it's so big, it takes a few hours to really look at everything, and I've usually found at least 1 or two thins I could eBay for a profit. But, this year I had quite a bit of stuff cluttering up my basement, thanks in part to the financial crisis - I bought a bunch of computer cleaning stuff from a mortgage brokerage bankruptcy auction back in October in central PA, and a bunch of PC's from a failed bank in Baltimore earlier this month. Since finding eBayable stuff is always a crapshoot, I figured I'd sell.

Obviously, I did OK financially. The big question is if it will cut into my sales later this year - if I just sold stuff to the same people who I would have sold it to later at the smaller, later hamfests I normally sell at. It also depends if I'm able to find new inventory to sell - if so, then it was a win because I'll have more room for new stuff, but if I don't then I won't have much to sell - OK, make that much good stuff to sell, because I've got so much crap in my basement that I can easily fill the truck.

I also met a guy who asked me if I was Anthony, and then said he knew me through this blog - and wasn't this the one hamfest I don't normally sell at? So evidently people I don't know actually read my blog. Sweet!

I've joked that one thing about Hamfests is that it's often easier to sell completely useless junk than stuff that's actually good. I had 4 Dell Optiplex core 2 duos for sale- mostly 2.13's that I priced at $175 - complete minus hard drive. I saw one sell on eBay for that, plus a giant shipping charge, so I figured it was a good starting price and that people would haggle me down to $150 or so. Throw in a $50 hard drive, and you've got a machine that will do pretty much anything for the next couple years. But I had a bunch of people look at them and tell me they were too expensive (including 1 guy who said it like 10 times). I invited people to make me an offer, but they never did. The thing is that I'm not going to price stuff cheap, because people at a hamfest will always haggle, so I build that into the price of anything that's over a couple bucks.

The other guy who annoyed me was one who was haggling over an item, and then told me he wasn't going to pay more for it because he's been burned at hamfests before. Now, I understand the logic - I've bought stuff once or twice that hasn't worked. Also, while I'm a regular fixture at most local fests, I haven't sold at Timonium before, so he has no reason to trust me. Still, most hamfest sellers are honest, and while it's certainly good to build the possibility that something might not work into the price you are willing to pay, I think it's rude to tell that to someone. I'm not going to knowingly sell something that doesn't work as working - not just because I'm such a nice guy, but because I want to keep selling at future 'fests, and that means having customers who are willing to buy from me more than once. I have a couple customers who usually seek me out and buy a bunch of stuff from me because they've had good experiences in the past, and I've had a number of customers - including one guy I sold a monitor to who insisted on getting my phone number in case it didn't work - who have come back at later fests and told me how happy they were with what they bought.

I packed it in around noon - I'd sold a bunch of stuff, had been there since just after 4, and wanted to get the truck unpacked and take a nap before I drove to a concert in Northern VA. While I was packing, I heard a couple people say stuff like "why's he packing up now? he's making a big mistake. I just got here!" Well, I didn't, and I've sold at enough fests to know that I don't usually make a lot of sales in the last few hours. Standing outside for hours in cold weather isn't the most fun, and I have other things to. If you want the best selection, come early - this is more hobby than business to me, so I'm only willing to put so much effort into it.

I only bought two things - a $10 Kodak digital camera and a $1 D-Link gaming adapter. Both were missing the power supply. Don't know if I missed out on any good eBay fodder, but I told some coworkers who were there to keep an eye out on some of the stuff I normally look for, so my guess is probably not.

Will I sell next year? Probably, as long as I have stuff to sell. I would do a few things differently, though. I got there a little after 4am this year, which was far earlier than I needed to - most tailgaters weren't there until 5:30 or later. I would also seriously consider springing for an indoor space - while the weather cooperated, it was freezing cold to the point I had trouble talking because my face was so cold. Since the indoors don't open until 8, that would also let me scope out the tailgaters for a while before I start selling (and scope out the other indoor sellers since I'd have access...).

The government all up in your bidness - healthcare musings, part two..

2010-03-23T22:24:00.002-04:00

There's one other thing about the health care I didn't really talk about that concerns me - the fact that the government's greater involvement in healthcare means that they will have a much bigger role in the rest of your life.

Here's the thing - there are a bunch of things that we know are not very good for your health - things like smoking, drinking too much alcohol, eating too much, having unprotected promiscuous sex. Those things are also, well, really really fun, or so I've heard.

With the government being even more involved in healthcare, I expect to see more crackdowns on these things - more taxes, more outright bans. NYC has already gone beyond banning tasty, tasty trans-fats and now has actually considered making it illegal for restaurants to add salt to food.

Now, most of these things are negative, and one might agree with additional legislation or taxes. The problem with this is that when we regulate "sins", we do so unevenly, and we often do so in ways that end up being captured by some of the businesses that are being regulated. Take tobacco - the latest tobacco bill bans what madanthony used to smoke when he would smoke cigars - cherry flavored ones - because of "the children" - but regular or menthol cigs are fine. I know lots of people who smoke cigarettes regularly, but I know nobody who smokes Swisher Sweet cherries every day. Or alcohol - big alcohol distributors have made it illegal to mail order wine in most states - once again because of the children, who you know will buy $40 pinot noir off the web rather than get their older brother to buy them a 30 of Shaffer.

The other thing is that debates about healthcare is now that the government is even more involved, lots more things will become political. We saw this already with the abortion debate - people who are opposed to things become very vocal about not having the government pay for those things. I suspect that the abortion payment debate isn't entirely over yet. I also predict we are going to see a whole lot more arguments on things like medical marijuana, alternative/natural medicine, end-of-life care, and a ton of other issues.

Some musings on the new healthcare bill...

2010-03-22T23:10:00.002-04:00

As you can imagine, as a self-described fiscal conservative, I'm not pleased about the health care bill passing. I generally favor the individual over the collective, the private sector over the government, and nudges over mandates, and from what I can gather, that's pretty much the opposite of this bill.

I suppose that means I'm an evil person who wants everyone who is sick to die. Not so much. As someone who had open-heart surgery at the age of 4, I can't really blame anyone who wants to make sure that life-saving medical care is available to everyone. But I'm not sure this bill does that.

In fact, I'm not all that sure what this bill does, despite hours of news channel viewing and blog reading. And I'm not sure anyone else does either.

A few problems that spring to mind from what I've heard, though:

- Stay on your parent's plan until age 26 - When I graduated college, it took me about 9 months to land a real, full time job, so I can understand giving kids a grace period. And since twentysomethings are generally healthy, having them in the insurance pool is probably a net win. But something about age 26 just seems like going a bit too far - by the time I hit 26 I'd bought a house.

- treating models like they are gospel - proponents of the bill keep saying it will save money, based on the CBO's estimates. But estimates, especially ones that go 10 years out, tend to be off. When the unexpected happens - a "black swan event" - they tend to be way off - see, mortgage crisis. The other thing is that part of those savings come from cutting medicare payment 21% in 2018 - something unlikely to happen, and from changes to student loans, something completely tacked onto the bill.

- No denials for preexisting conditions - yes, this sounds great. But insurance companies don't just deny for preexisting conditions because they are evil bastards who want you to die. They do it because otherwise people would not buy insurance until they are diagnosed with an expensive illness. It's like being able to wait until your house is on fire to buy homeowner's insurance.

I'm sure there are a ton of other things about the bill I would hate, if I understood them, but those are a few that spring to mind.

So what would MadAnthony do if tasked to reform health insurance? Probably something similar to the Whole Foods plan - their health insurance plan, not making everyone eat tofu and organic beets. I'd like to see an emphasis on catastrophic care coverage and health savings accounts. You would pay out of pocket for small stuff - physicals, allergy medicine, ect. - and insurance would be for the big, life changing stuff like cancer or heart attacks. After all, that's what people need to worry most about, and those advocating health care reform have trumpeted lives it will save and bankruptcies it will avoid - presumably those aren't from the common cold. So if the government wants to do something, how about a tax credit for the amount that people pay for catastrophic care coverage, plus untaxed health savings accounts that don't expire or need to be used up at the end of the year, and that can be contributed into by employers and employees?

The way I look at it is that health insurance should be more like car insurance. I don't expect insurance to pay when I need an oil change or when my gas gauge gets near E. I expect them to pay when I sideswipe a Pontiac driven by a pizza delivery girl. It's for major, unforeseen events, not for day-to-day manageable expenses, and I think it's sad that it's an idea that wasn't even really discussed in this whole process.

Finding myself, or why I think I might drop out of grad school, buy a convertible, and stay single...

2010-03-21T22:09:00.002-04:00

There's been a lack of posting on this blog of late. madanthony has been kind of busy, and hasn't really had time to blog. He has had time to think, though, and this post is about what I've been thinking about.

I guess for the last few years, I've kind of been trying to "find myself". I've got a decent job - it annoys me sometime, but it pays the bills. I've got a house, a reasonably reliable vehicle, and a cat who alternates between affection and trying to destroy everything I hold dear. But I still find myself unhappy, and I guess I've been trying to find someone or something to fill that. I still haven't, but I think I'm gaining a better understanding of what those things aren't, and I guess that's a step towards finding what is.

One of those things I tried was going back for a second Master's degree. I work for a college, which means free tuition. I already took advantage of that and got my MBA a few years back - it didn't seem like a big deal, I had an undergrad business degree and found some of the material pretty interesting. But this time I decided to get a Master of Arts in Educational Technology. The college's program is aimed at k-12 teachers who want to take on a tech role, but I figured there was enough of a crossover that it would be worth doing - it could be fun, would show my coworkers that I wanted to expand my knowledge, could be useful if a position involving classroom technology ever opened up, would be a good way to meet people (including single female people) and it would be cool to have two Master's degrees.

But now that I'm most of the way through my first semester in the program, I'm having serious second thoughts if I want to continue. I find it's taking up more of my free time than I thought it would - it's cutting into the time that I can spend doing other things I want to do, like go to the gym or date or read for pleasure or blog or run my eBay business. I don't enjoy the classes. I wouldn't mind having lots of reading if it was interesting and gained me practical knowledge, but instead I'm learning how to change the way k-12 schools educate, and that most teachers feel that they shouldn't have standards or merit pay and that all children are unique snowflakes who can't be treated like widgets, despite the fact that every other business that deals with people have found ways to treat people as individuals while still maintaining standards. I don't really fit in with the people, don't have much to add to conversations, and find that even when I'm not doing homework, the thought of having to do it hangs over me like a raincloud.

I think I'm probably not going to continue - I definitely don't plan on taking any classes this summer, and I doubt I will in the fall either. I feel like a failure, that I should go through with it, that I'm showing my coworkers and teachers that I can't follow through on anything. On the other hand, it seems stupid to spend the next 2-3 years completely miserable so I can get a piece of paper that I can hang in my home office that nobody sees, to give up doing things I enjoy so that I can spend time somewhere I don't really belong. There are some shifts at work that make me suspect that I'm going to be doing more of the business planning kind of stuff that I wanted to do all along, and thus that there would be even less chance that this degree would serve a purpose. So I'd like to think I'm doing the rational thing, that I'm not throwing good money - or in this case, time and effort - after bad.

So onto the sports car. For the last couple years, I've toyed with the idea of buying a second car. See, I need a truck because I do a fair amount of flea market selling and auction buying, where it's incredibly useful to have six feet of carrying capacity. But I also want something sporty, specifically a convertible. I've got a fair amount of money saved up - probably around a year's after-tax salary - and no real debt beyond the mortgage payments on my underwater house and a student loan at a stupidly low government subsidized, tax deductible interest rate. It's probably not the best use of my money, but I think I can pull it off, and if I don't do it now, when will I? The vehicle I want is a 2001-2006 Toyota MR2 Spyder with an SMT (syncro manual transmission, basically a clutchless manual). They aren't exactly easy to find, and I'll probably have to travel a bit to find one, and spend more than I want to.

I also want to take a short vacation this summer, so I'll have significantly less money at the end of the summer if I do both. But hopefully I'll also be enjoying myself, something that looking at my bank account balance doesn't really do much for.

Oh, and the part about remaining single. That's not really true - I still want to find someone. But for years I sort of approached dating with the idea that I was desperate, that finding anyone would be better than being alone. I'm beginning to realize that's probably not true, and also to understand why people avoid dating people who come off as desperate. Basically, I was emailing someone I met on a dating site - the first couple emails went OK, so I gave her my number, figuring we'd talk on the phone. The next morning, she started texting me. Now, I'm not a texter, and don't really like texting, so I found this kind of creepy - probably more than I should have. She seems like a nice enough person, but I also don't know if it would really go anywhere, and I haven't really pursued it - but for a while she was texting me pretty regularly, which made me think of that whole thing about not wanting to be a member of any club that would want me as a member. Part of this may also just be that I'm kind of burnt out with the whole grad school thing and don't want to add trying to balance a relationship to it. I'm hoping come May that I'll get back into the dating scene - I let my eHarmony membership lapse, but I'll probably renew it then. But I've come to realize that while I don't have the world's most active social life, I do have a few things I enjoy doing that take up a fair amount of my time - and a few people I enjoy hanging out with who put up with me- and that I shouldn't give those things up to do things I don't really enjoy doing or dating women I don't really see a future with.

Will making these changes help me find happiness? Probably not, but I think they will help bring me closer to understanding what it is - and maybe that's what life is, less a search for some absolute state of joy as an understanding of what we enjoy and don't enjoy.

I may be a loser, but I'm not the biggest loser...

2010-03-13T22:27:00.002-05:00

My workplace is having a biggest loser contest - one of those contests where you compete with your coworkers to lose the highest percentage of body weight.

I'm not doing very well. The only good thing I can say is that I haven't actually gained any weight yet, so I haven't had to pay any penalties. But I've lost a grand total of 5 pounds over the course of 6 weeks or so, going from 150.8 to 144.8 . They aren't publishing percent lost beyond the weekly winners, so I have no idea how I'm doing compared to other people besides the people who are winning.

There's a pretty good reason that I'm not doing too well - I'm not trying very hard. I'm not really doing anything additional. I am trying to keep up with my normal eating habits and exercise routines, but I'm not really cutting back any more or exercising anymore. Every now and then I'll do an extra 15 minutes of cardio - an hour and 45 minutes instead of my usual hour and a half - but that's about it.

About 6 months ago, I decided I wanted to lose some weight, and dropped about 10 pounds in a month - by dropping my caloric intake by about 1000 calories, and increasing my exercise to 2 hours a day. The problem was that I was miserable - I was always hungry, I couldn't enjoy any of the foods I liked, and the extra gym time meant I wasn't getting home until 8pm or later. I decided that it wasn't worth it.

Now that I'm taking some grad classes that are eating into my time, the extra exercise really isn't easily achievable. And while I feel like I could stand to lose a few more pounds, and get rid of a little bit of the spare tire I still carry, I'm pretty close to a healthy weight - I'm in the normal category for my height, although I'm very close to the overweight mark. But I'm also within about 5 pounds of being the lightest I've been probably since grade school. I'm a 34" waist - which isn't really something to brag about, but I was a 46" 6 years ago.

So I'm having a hard time convincing myself it's worth trying to lose more. I'm also trying to figure out why I entered in the first place.

Musings from the snowpocalyse..

2010-02-07T00:07:00.002-05:00

So except for about an hour spent shoveling my walkway and clearing the two feet of snow off the top of the heat pump in the hopes of keeping my electric bill below what my car payments used to be, I haven't left the house in 36 hours - and except for cleaning off the truck tomorrow, probably won't for the next 36, or more if school is closed on Monday.

So what have I done with my time? Probably not as much as I should have. I got some little things done - set up a laptop for one of our directors at work (it's been backordered, and finally came in 10 minutes before our early closing on Friday), straightened up my home office a little, got some stuff together for a swap meet next weekend, did the reading for my classes, typed up some eBay descriptions, paid some bills, and installed all the OS updates on 3 of my computers. I also made a crock pot of chili and a dozen muffins. If I'm off Monday, I'm baking a cake. Because I have a box of cake mix that's been sitting in my pantry forever, and because I'll be bored. And because I like cake.

Which brings me to one of the perils of being snowed in. When I'm bored, and home, I eat. I also haven't exercised much, since the gym has been closed on account of snow. Which is especially bad since I entered our work "biggest loser" competition. I wasn't planning on putting a whole lot of effort into trying to win, because that would require me to pretty much not eat anything that tastes good and spend all my free time working out. But at this rate I think I'll actually end up gaining weight. I've put in some time on my basement treadmill, but not as much as I would have if I'd went to the gym.

There are plenty of things I should do but haven't - cleaning, starting a paper for one of my classes, figuring out how to move this blog since blogger is shutting off ftp usage at the end of March. But there is something about being snowed in that makes me even lazier than usual, and I've spent most of my free time watching stuff off my DVR, obsessively checking my email and facebook, and letting the cat nap on my lap.

I've lived alone for the last couple years, and most of the time I like not having roommates - I don't need to share freezer space, or clean the bathroom, or wear pants. But on days like today, where the closest thing I have to human contact is facebook, I kind of miss having someone to talk to. It's also one of the times I most hate being single - being snowed in with someone you love would be a whole lot more
enjoyable.

One smart thing I did was actually go grocery shopping on Wednesday night, as soon as I heard the threats of Snowmegedon. I had needed to go soon anyway, and figured if I was going to be snowed in I might as well pick up the ingredients to make chili and muffins, and make sure I had enough kibble for Nibbler, my carefully trained attack kitty - plus Diet Mountain Dew was on sale, and I was down to my last 5 or so cases. My 9pm trip to the Weis was surprisingly calm - unlike the stories I've heard of people who went Thursday night. Normally, I suck at planning ahead, so I'm proud of myself for actually doing it for once. If only I could plan my career or my interaction with the opposite sex as well.

In defense of bottom feeding...

2010-01-24T21:13:00.002-05:00

I had mentioned the show Pawn Stars a few days ago to a coworker, and he grumbled something about how he hated the store owners on the show because they usually make lowball offers to people selling them stuff - people who often desperately need the money.

I like the show, but I also see a little of myself in the main characters. If you've watched the show, they will often get an estimate from a pro of what something is worth. The person selling the item will then ask for close to that value, and the owners will usually offer them about half. He'll usually point out that the top value is usually what it would fetch at an auction, which would charge a serious commission, that he's got to pay the costs of running a store and still make a profit, and that he may have to sit on the item for a while before a buyer interested in it comes along.

I'm pretty sympathetic to these arguments. And if you've watched the show enough, there are times he's gotten burned - bought something that turned out to be unrepairable, or not sell-able, or stolen.

The way I see it, what he offers is liquidity - cash on the spot, hundred dollar bills. Sure, you could get more on eBay or at an auction, but that takes work. eBay isn't too hard once you get the hang of it, but there is a learning curve if you've never used it, and people are reluctant to buy from someone with no feedback. There are also a ton of ways to get ripped off if you don't know how to protect yourself as a seller. And auction houses and consignment sellers charge heavily - I was surprised when a faculty member at work asked me about selling some stuff on eBay for him - and told me that he had previously used a consignment store that charged 40% of the selling price.

Maybe I'm just rationalizing, though. The thing is that I've bought plenty of things at estate sales and auctions, yard sales, bankruptcy and going out of business auctions, and otherwise profited off people's bad fortunes. But it's not like my actions caused the death of the lady whose Onkyo receiver I bought from her sister for $3 and eBayed for $55, or caused the criminal actions of the bankrupt nonprofit whose 8 rack-mount servers I bought for $5 each and resold for $75 - $150 a piece. The way I see it, I'm offering liquidity, giving individuals and creditors money for something that they otherwise wouldn't want. And I take my share of risk - I've bought tons of stuff that turned out to be broken, missing parts, or not worth what I thought. I've also bought plenty of stuff that turned out to be harder to sell, including a new in box APC rack mount UPS for $250 - despite the fact that it's normally an $800 piece of equipment, it's still sitting in my basement because I haven't found a buyer yet, and it weights a metric crapload.

Pawnshop owners and eBayers might benefit from people's mistakes or bad luck, but they didn't cause it, and they perform a necessary function in converting assets into cash. Much like debt collectors and repo men, they perform a function that isn't always pretty, but is essential to the economy.

Back to school...

2010-01-10T23:44:00.002-05:00

When you work for a college like I do, the start of the semester means thousands of students flooding the school, professors coming back to their offices after weeks away, and a flurry of effort to make sure that they are taken care of.

But this semester, it also means I'm going back to school, for the first time in two and half years, when I finished up my MBA.

See, a few months back I looked at my life and decided since it wasn't really going anywhere, personally or professionally, I should try something new. One of the perks of working for a college is that I get to take classes basically free. We've got a number of grad programs, but I didn't really think I wanted to take any more business classes, and I didn't want to get swamped in code in computer science. So I decided to apply for our Educational Technology program, which is aimed at getting teachers familiar enough with using technology in the classroom to take a lead role in their schools. Granted, I'm not a teacher, and the program is aimed at k-12, not college, where I work, but I figured there would be some crossover.

There were other reasons - we got new management a few years back, and one of their priorities has been on how students and faculty use technology in the classroom - much of the new opportunities have been aimed at that. So I figured enrolling in the program would show I was interested in that kind of thing. It also hasn't escaped my thinking that most teachers are women, and that, well, this could be a good way to meet girls. While I don't expect to get a date out of this, I figure meeting new people can't hurt. Plus, it will give me something to do - I like to be busy, and figure time in class or doing homework is probably a better use of my time than random web surfing.

But now that it's starting, I'm starting to second-guess myself. I figure I won't fit in - the only non-teacher in a class of teachers - and that probably won't endear me to the faculty either. My final in one of the classes is the first day of a conference that I would otherwise be able to go to in Vegas, related to my job- so now the classes are hurting my career, because I can't seem to make my boss understand why skipping a final is not a good idea.

But we'll see. I figure if I'm too miserable or suck too much at it, I can always stop taking classes - all I basically lose are a few hours twice a week for class, plus however long I spend doing homework. And maybe it won't suck and I'll be pleasantly surprised.

Business models that puzzle me... GPS companies...

2010-01-03T10:39:00.003-05:00

On New Year's Day, I went on a hike with an old college roommate and a bunch of his friends. Afterwords, we went out to grab something to eat. Since I had my Tom-Tom, and drive a bright yellow truck, one of the women who went followed me. Unfortunately, the interchange that Tom-Tom sent me on was redesigned after my maps were made. I went the wrong way, she went the right way, and I ended up gettting there about 15 minutes late, although part of that was that I had to stop and get gas since I was almost out.

Anyway, the moral of the story is that I ended up ordering a new Tom-Tom. eCost had a refurbed Tom-Tom One - a slightly updated version of the one I have now, with a better mounting bracket - for ~$60 shipped after rebate. It includes new maps for the first 30 days, so I'll get a current map. I figure that I can probably sell my old TomTom for $30 or so at a Hamfest or on eBay, so I'll have a new GPS with new maps for $30.

What is odd is if I wanted to buy new maps for my existing TomTom, it's $55. They do have a map update service where you get 4 new maps in a year for $40, which sounds like a great deal until you read the fine print and realize that it makes you pay full price for the first map.

I'm really puzzled by this business model. Why is it cheaper for me to buy the hardware and software than just the software? After all, software has a near-zero marginal cost - it costs next to nothing to distribute an additional copy, especially as a download. If I could get an updated map for $20 or so, I'd buy it - it would save me the hassle of transferring all my favorites to the new device, installing POI's, ect. But when it's the same price for a new device as the maps, and I can resell my old device, it's a no-brainer.

The only thing I can come up with is that TomTom wants to keep up/increase market share, and they figure that means keeping the price of the device low so that new customers buy it. Since they can't separate new customers from old ones - there's no way to price-discriminate, as an economist would say - existing customers like me get an advantage. The other thing I can think of is that they figure that people who insist on super-up-to-date maps are people who really need them - businesses, people who drive for a living, ect - and they are willing to pay whatever to get them. To use another econ term, they are price-inelastic.

I do wonder if a GPS company would do better if they sold the maps cheap instead of making it cheaper to buy a new device. I feel like I'm buying a new PC just to get a copy of Windows, but if it works...

New Year's resolutions, 2010...

2009-12-31T15:21:00.000-05:00

Well, I do this every year - make a list of the things that I'm going to try to do this year. I end up sticking with the couple I would have done anyway, and failing at the rest. But what are holidays without tradition?

The big ones:

1. Lose, or at least maintain weight - Several years ago I lost a significant amount of weight - about 100 pounds over the course of two years. Since then, my weight has fluctuated a little, but not a whole lot. I'm actually probably about 15 pounds lighter and 2" slimmer in the waist than I was a year ago. I could stand to lose a few more pounds - I've packed on a couple over the holidays, and I've still got a bit of a belly - but it also seems to me that the extra weight isn't having a huge affect on my appearance or my health, so I'm not willing to put all that much effort into losing it. I also want to start lifting - I do a lot of cardio, but no weight training. Once again, it would be nice to have a little more muscle, but I'm fairly sure that it won't send the ladies swooning or enable me to have a second career on the parallel bars.

2. Save money - another resolution that hasn't been much of a problem to keep in the last few years. I'm in decent shape - I've got some savings, and my only debt is my giant underwater mortgage and a small, very low interest student loan. Still, I've been doing a lot of spending of late on small things ranging from sneakers to gadgets to tasty coffee-based beverages, and I do want to slow down on that and try to put more in the bank, where it will earn an interest rate that is probably less than inflation.

3. Find love. This is the one that I fail at every year. It also is the one that requires at least some outside force - I'm responsible for how much I spend and how much time I put in on the elliptical instead of eating bacon, but I can't make women like me. On the plus side, in the last year I've had more dates than I have in the rest of my life. On the negative side, that number was 3, none of which turned into a second date. I've tried online dating, and I think it's time for me to take a break from it, because I find it's done little but frustrate me. I want to try some more in-person things, like some of the swing dances that are around, but the thought of showing up alone at them doesn't exactly thrill me. I'm starting grad school classes in a few weeks, and I figure even if I don't meet anyone there, at least being around other people, some of them female, might help me socially - or at least keep me busy enough that I won't have time to think about the fact that I seem to be on a path to die alone and unloved.

There are also plenty of smaller things that I hope to accomplish this year. I've got a number of small things that need to be done around the house - electrical wiring, carpet laying, fencing in the back yard. Pretty much all of these are things I've needed to get done since I bought the house almost 3 and a half years ago, but I'm hoping that this is the year I actually go through with getting them done. Obviously, succeeding in grad school and at work are things I hope to do, although I have yet to unlock the mystery of how to do the latter - evidently, hard work, taking on new responsibilities, and learning new skills are not part of that. I do want to try to take a vacation this year, but work, time, money, and life will determine if that actually happens. And I'd like to figure out how to balance helping my parents with living my own life, but I doubt I will.

And maybe I'll adopt another cat or two.

A half-decade of madanthony, in pictures

2009-12-31T15:09:00.003-05:00

So back in 2004, I had a family member take a picture of me at Christmastime while I was up for Christmas break. A few months later, I made a concious decision to start losing weight and taking better care of myself, so since then every year I've had them take another picture. I like to post them around New Year's - losing and keeping weight off has been one of the few things I can say I've been successful at..

madanthony, December 2004:

madanthony, December 2005:

madanthony, December 2006

madanthony, December 2007:

madanthony, December 2008:

madanthony, December 2009:

We can never repay the debt we owe our parents. So how hard should we try?

2009-12-26T14:08:00.002-05:00

I'm up in NJ for Christmas, spending a few days with the parents. Since I work for a college, every year I have the same dilemma - how much time should I spend there? The paradox is that as the reasons for me to want to spend more time in Maryland grow, so do the reasons that I should spend more time with the parents. Several years ago, when I was living in a rented room, spending most of the break with the parents wasn't a big deal. Now, though, I own a house and a cat and have more roots in MD than when I first moved there. But now, my parents are also older and have health problems - my dad has MS, my mom has bad arthritis. They struggle to do basic tasks, and could really use the extra help. And I feel like a horrible person for not staying around to give it to them - they seem so greatful for the smallest thing. I also am the son who went away - my brother lives close by, about 20 minutes away, so he frequently comes over to do things like mow the lawn, shovel snow, ect. I don't, because I live 4 hours way, so I feel bad that I'm not doing as much.

Yesterday, I drove my mom to 7:30AM Christmas morning mass. As I stepped out of my truck, I realized that there was a bunch of black ice where I had parked - snow had melted, started to run to a drain, and froze. So I walked around and held my mom's hand as she got out of the truck. It was a reversal of roles - the child holding the parent's hand. But in the short amount of time I'm up here, I've found myself doing a lot of things that used to be done for me - cooking, driving, mopping the floors, running errands. It's weird and depressing to be doing stuff for your parents.

And I find myself conflicted about how much I should be doing - sometimes I think that since my parents sacrificed so much to raise me, I owe them the same - that I should sell my house and quit my job and move back in with them. Other times, I think that I don't really HAVE to do anything for them, so anything I do is, well, better than nothing. Reality lies somewhere between these two extremes, of course - but the question is, closer to which?

I don't have a girlfriend or wife or kids or any other obligations, so I have more time and fewer excuses not to help them out. Still, I want those things, and spending every waking free hour driving to and from NJ isn't going to help me get them (although I may be beyond help).

I'm thinking that I'll probably end up leaving NJ sometime in the next few days, which will give me basically 5 full days with them, plus 2 partial days spent traveling, and 4 days in MD to myself to relax/do stuff around the house/play with the cat/run errands/hang out with friends. I'm not sure if this is the "right" amount - if I'm a sinner, a saint, or just a typical son.

Back in NJ, and I only got pulled over once...

2009-12-24T16:57:00.003-05:00

So I'm up in NJ for the holidays, spending the next few days with the parents celebrating Christmas. I drove up today - it was a fairly uneventful trip, except for hitting some traffic near Harrisburg - and for getting pulled over on suspicion of drunk driving on I-78 in central PA.

I'm driving, right hand lane, going maybe a few miles above the speed limit, and I see a cop car behind me. Naturally, I slow down to a couple miles per hour below the speed limit. Cop is still there, and another one next to him in the left lane. This goes on for a mile or two, and then cop throws his lights on. I pull over, and he pulls behind me. I'm not sure why I'm getting pulled over - I actually wasn't speeding.

Officer comes to my window and tells me that someone called in a complaint that I was driving erratically, weaving in and out of traffic, and that they thought I was drunk. I'm rather puzzled, since 1) I hadn't drank anything except about a half-gallon of coffee and 2) I wasn't driving erratically - while I will admit to not being the world's most careful driver, I'm generally pretty patient - I don't generally lane-hop or anything, and I can't remember cutting anyone off or anything.

The officer was actually pretty cool - he says he can tell I'm not drunk, and that as long as I'm not wanted and my truck isn't stolen he'll let me go with a warning - and he does. I'm not sure he really could have done anything - I'm not a lawyer, but I suspect it would be pretty hard to convict me of any traffic violations just on someone's say-so.

So I'm puzzled who called me in - if I did cut someone off and not notice, or if someone just was overly paranoid, or decided they didn't like me. I'm certainly glad that I didn't get a ticket, and I understand that the police can't really ignore calls about suspected drunk drivers - if I was drinking and hit a busfull of nuns or something they would look pretty bad. But I'm annoyed that someone would call in about me in the first place - I mean, I'm not that bad a driver.

A tax credit for everyone except me...

2009-12-20T21:38:00.002-05:00

I was reading the auction listings today in the newspaper, which is at the end of the real estate section. So I happened to see an ad for a new homebuilder mentioning the tax credit for existing homebuyers, which made my blood boil.

The fine print is that if you have owned a home for 5 continuous years out of the last 8, you are elgible for a $6500 tax credit if you buy a new home.

I've grumbled about previous handouts - from the mortgage bailout for people whose mortgages happened to be owned by the right agency to cash for clunkers, for people who happened to own the right cars - being handed out pretty randomly, and to groups that never seem to include me.

But this one takes the cake - it includes huge groups of people, but is especially written to exclude people like me - I bought my house in 2006, at the exact peak of the market. Now, it's not a huge deal because I have no plans to move anytime soon - besides the fact that I'd probably have to bring a check to closing if I sold my house, I have no desire to pack up 3 floors of crap or to keep my house showing ready.

But it seems odd to have a tax break that benefits people who bought their house in 2004 or before - when housing prices were still pretty reasonable - but excludes people who bought their houses when prices had gone up, and most likely are having to sacrifice more to pay their mortgages. While few of these people might be looking to sell and buy a new house, there are probably some who have to - because of financial reasons, job transfers, marriage/kids/ect - who are probably taking a loss selling their house, and would benefit more than someone who sold their house 3 years ago at the peak of the market and has been renting since - who would be qualified under the bill.

Of course, bills like this mean that those who don't receive it will be kicking in the extra taxes for those who benefit - to the tune of $10.6 billion, according to this article. Now, I don't harbor any ill will against someone who was in the right place at the right time and bought a house before prices climbed - that's life. But I do question why people who weren't so lucky are paying to give those lucky people even more money.

As a borderline libertarian, I've never really liked programs like welfare, but I grudgingly accept that there is merit to helping, say, to make sure poor kids have food and shelter. But government of late has pretty much just been handing random piles of money to random people and businesses in the hopes that it will spur the economy. In that, they've got a weird reverse kind of Robin Hood thing going on, where they often give people who are in pretty good shape a bunch of money, paid for by people who aren't so well off. And that strikes me as unfair, illogical, and frustrating.

Pay your bills, deadbeat, or why I'd like to kick strategic defaulters in the nuts...

2009-12-20T21:23:00.003-05:00

I was glad to see that I'm not the only person who had a negative reaction to this WSJ article about fun with strategic defaults - which pretty much boils down to profiles of people who stopped paying the mortgages on their underwater houses, and now are renters with tons of money to spend on concert tickets and new furniture.

Megan McCardle has a good article here, with the followup to the followup here.

But what's odd is that she and I seem to be a rare breed of people who think that people should actually, you know, pay their bills. Sure, on relatively conservative forums like FW Finance, people who advocate strategic default usually get replies involving the favorite FW Finance reply, "pay your bills, deadbeat!". But on Megan's blog, and places like consumerist, strategic defaulters are OK, because banks are evil.

I'm not going to debate the merits of banks or individuals. I do think that people - and businesses - who agree to pay a debt should pay it as long as they are able to. It's one thing to not pay because you really can't - that's why we have things like bankruptcy. But mortgages were designed to be a means of financing a large purchase, not as a sort of option on a house, payable only if the house goes up in value.

So right now mortgages are priced with the expectation that people will make every effort to pay them back. With the number of strategic defaulters, who seem to view them more as a sort of loan on buying a stock option, that is about to change. And that will make responsible buyers and borrowers worse off. Because now mortgages will be priced more like buying stocks on margin. Credit scores and down payments will be higher, and fewer people will be able to buy houses at all. And those who do will pay for it dearly - and those who view mortgages the way they are supposed to be viewed - as financing for a large, long-term purchase - will be paying extra for a feature they will never use - to make up for strategic defaulters.

So this is bad for first-time homebuyers. It's also bad for people who own homes, because fewer and more expensive mortgages mean lower housing prices when they go to sell.

Now, you are probably wondering where I fall into this. FWIW, I'm probably marginally upside down on Casa De Mad, my circa -1978 townhouse - not enough that it would make sense to destroy my 800+ credit score, even if I didn't have the ethical objections to strategic default. And I have enough income and savings to pay my mortgage - but I have that because I've generally lived frugally and sacrificed, and it's frustrating to read about the great lifestyles that these people are having - and that I'm going to pay for if I ever refinance or sell.

Sick of being sick...

2009-12-13T16:01:00.002-05:00

So about 2 weeks ago, I woke up feeling like crap. Well, more like crap than normal for a Monday morning. Sore throat, nasal drip, congestion, running/stuffy nose, ect.

I dealt with this the way I normally deal with being sick. I ignored it. I kept doing what I normally do, and figured it would go away in a few days. That might not seem like a great plan, but in truth it's worked for me for the last few years. But after a week and a half of being filled with phlegm, I decided it wasn't going to work this time. So on Thursday I went to the doctor's. He confirmed what I expected - sinus infection. Prescribed 11 days worth of generic Zithromax.

I don't really feel any better yet. The medicine had been tearing up my stomach the last couple days, though. I'm hoping by Christmas I'll stop having to blow my nose every few minutes.

And I'm still pretty much doing what I'd normally do, including going to the gym. There are actually studies showing that exercising while sick doesn't hurt recovery time. I have cut back on the length of my workouts though - more because the gym is on reduced hours thanks to finals than because of my health. I figure the last thing I want to do is stop exercising around Christmastime, when I'm spending a large chunk of the month shoving food in my mouth.

Scenes from work, in some places edition...

2009-12-05T11:13:00.002-05:00

coworker1: We could reduce a lot of viruses and malware problems if we prevented end-users from being able to install software.

coworker2: that would never fly. Faculty will complain that we're interfering with their academic freedom.

mad anthony: You mean "I need that porn for research purposes"?

coworker1: I don't care if they have porn. It's not executable.

mad anthony: In some countries it is.

Scenes from work, I've heard that before edition...

2009-12-03T21:03:00.000-05:00

employee: Hey, thanks for fixing my secretary's computer. She was really happy when you left.

mad anthony: I'm used to women being happy when I leave.

I wonder if manufacturers and stores will ever figure out that guys buy stuff, too...

2009-11-27T23:12:00.002-05:00

My mom is a member of Vocalpoint, a social networking community run by Proctor and Gamble. She gets all kinds of neat stuff from them - from stacks of coupons for nearly- free Kashi cereal to a set of giant purple mugs from Viva paper towels. She knows I'm a dealhunter myself, so she sent me an email that she got looking for new members. I filled it out, and was rejected, presumably because I have a penis. The message, which I took a screenshot of and posted above, says that they look for "certain groups of women", which I am not, and assuming I avoid painful sex-change surgery, will never be.

I'm kind of puzzled by this. I don't see my mom as much of a target audience for this kind of thing - unlike me, she doesn't have a blog with a readership that may be in the double digits, an active facebook page, a twitter account, or a job where she talks to lots of people. She's retired, probably more set her ways than I am, and probably has a lot less contact with people both in cyberspace and in the meatspace than I do. But yet P&G figures that she would be more likely to spread info on their products than I am, just because she's a woman.

Now, I'm not some crazy "gender is a social construct" type, nor do I begrudge large corporations from deciding how they want to market their products. I do, however think that their marketing is misguided. If they want to harness social networking, they should be targeting people based on their use of social networking sites and tools, not on their gender. They also need to stop assuming that women are the only people who make purchasing decisions on household products. I'm a male head of household - granted, it's a household of one, plus a cat. But I own a house, have a decent amount of disposable income, am fairly active online, and make all the purchases and purchasing decisions for my household. And I'm sure I'm not alone. This isn't 1950 anymore - people don't live with their parents until they get married and then live in a household where the husband goes to work and the wife stays home and does the marketing. There are lots of guys who live alone, either by choice or by circumstances. People are getting married later, if at all, there are same-sex couples, and dozens of other alternative living situations. Hell, I know married couples where the guy does most of the shopping. Companies that try to market only to women while selling products that both men and women use - like cereal and paper towels - are cutting their own throat.

This extends past P&G, though. Every time I go grocery shopping, I always wonder why the checkout isles are set up with the assumption that only bored housewives buy groceries. I usually see quite a few men and couples at my Weis or Giant, but the checkout counters are lined with Women's Day, Soap Opera Digest, The National Enquirer, and other fair designed for the sits-down-to-pee set. Why not a few copies of Car and Driver or Sport Compact or Maxim? As Paco Underhill has pointed out, magazines in checkout lines aren't just there for you to buy them - they are also there to give you something to do, to distract you from how long you are waiting in line. But they also do something else - they give insight into just who grocery stores seem to think is shopping there - and it doesn't seem to be a very accurate picture.

Guys - especially single, fairly young guys - are a great demographic to go after. They (at least I suspect) often have a fair amount of money, they aren't set in their ways, they often make impulsive decisions, they are less willing to price-shop, especially for grocery type items, they are more willing to buy pricey convenience items, and heck, they eat more than most women. But both grocery stores and consumer-product manufacturers seem to go out of their way to discourage them.

Car talk...

2009-11-19T21:22:00.002-05:00

I have a problem with my truck. It works perfectly fine.

See, I'm a bit of a car nut. When I was a little kid, I played with matchbox cars all the time, could pretty much identify any car on the road, read those free used-car listing magazines they have at the grocery store, and dreamed of what kind of car I would own when I got a license and money.

Not much has changed. As soon as I've bought a new vehicle, I'm already thinking about what the next one will be. But I'm also frugal, and so I have been pretty practical about buying cars. It's also helped that I've been pretty broke - I bought my truck right after I bought my house, so I didn't have much to spend, and bought pretty much the cheapest one that met my needs.

I've had the truck for a little over three years. Aside from some random transmission clunks, it's been solid, and it has less than 50k on it. It's paid off. But as usual, I'm thinking about what the next thing I buy will be.. and when.

The problem is, for the first time in my life, I actually have enough money that I could buy something pretty nice, and pay cash for it.

The vehicle that's caught my eye of late is the Lincoln Navigator. I can get a clean used one with less than 30k on the clock for a little over $30k, and my trade is worth around $12k. I'd love to have leather seats, some more space in the back for hamfests and auctions, climate control, and the ability to refer to "the Navi".

Of course, financially it's a horrible idea. I'm at the sweet spot for my truck - it's taken the biggest of the depreciation hit, but still has a lot of life left in it, and is paid off. The best thing would be to keep it for another 3 years or so, by which time it will be 6 years old and have 90k or so miles on it.

So I'm torn between the car nut and the cheapskate. The deal I've made with myself is that I won't do anything until at least the summer. The goal is to save as much money as I can until then and then make a decision. I'm not sure I could bring myself to drop 5 figures on something I don't need - but if I was going to, it would be on this.

The power of negative thinking...

2009-11-18T21:48:00.003-05:00

We had a presentation at our "all hands" meeting at work today about how to deal with holiday stress, given by a psychologist. It did include a lot of good concrete advice for dealing with stuff - take time for yourself, exercise, eat right, don't overdo the food or booze, ect. (he also suggested limiting caffeine, which would be the most stressful thing I could imagine doing).

But while he's a nice guy and means well, I think he was a little too positive. I think negative thinking is severely underrated. I think things like guilt, fear, and a desire to achieve perfection do make us stressed - but they are also great motivators. They make us do things that we can't do if we take a warm, fuzzy, "things will be fine" attitude. For example, at one point he said that "we often find ourselves looking at the amount of things that we have to do and say that we'll never get it done. But when we look back on other times we've said that, we've been able to get everything done." Maybe. But chances are the reason that we got everything done is because we looked at the amount of stuff we had to do, said "I'm never going to get done", and then did concrete things to make sure it did - starting early, working late, planning schedules, delegating, finding shortcuts, whatever. If you had just looked at it and said "it will get done somehow", it probably wouldn't have, because you wouldn't have had the incentive to do stuff to make sure it gets done.

I think the same is true of a lot of things. There are plenty of achievements I've had, from doing well in school to losing weight to saving money, where fear was my primary motivator - knowing that if I failed that class I'd lose my scholarship, or that if I didn't keep on my diet and go to the gym I'd probably be dead of a heart attack by age 45, or if I didn't keep a tight reign on my spending I'd be homeless, living under a bridge and eating out of a dumpster.

The same is true of guilt. The talk about guilt and family pressure was especially relevant to me, because I'm torn at Christmas - when we get a ton of time off where I work - between spending it all with my parents in NJ, who have a bunch of health problems and could use all the help they can get - and spending it in Maryland, where my house, my cat, my friends, and pretty much everything I own are. If I don't spend all of it with the parents, I'll probably feel guilty - and I should. Given the sacrifices my parents have made throughout their life for me, I'm pretty much a piece of shit if I can't give them a couple extra days. I should feel bad about it. Guilt is generally a way of letting us know that we're doing something that we shouldn't. We shouldn't ignore it and tell ourselves that it's something we should overcome with positive thinking about how great we are - we should look at why we feel guilty and try not to do it.

Pop Psychology loves to try to make life all hearts and rainbows, to try to take negatives like stress and sadness and guilt and fear out of life. But those things are a part of life for a reason - they are survival tools that helped us survive since our ancestors lived in caves, that helped us form coherent societies. They are real emotions that should be embraced, not worked around or ignored.

madanthony's continued adventures in swing dancing...

2009-11-11T23:55:00.002-05:00

So last week I started swing dancing lessons, and they weren't quite what I hoped for. There was the fact that there were 3 guys and one girl (who was with a guy). And there was the fact that I, well, sucked at it.

But I paid in advance, so I figured I'd stick with it. Well, that and I didn't want to be a quitter. So, feeling pretty ridiculous, I actually tried to practice. I watched triple-step swing tutorial videos on youtube, and tried to follow along on the hardwood floor in my dining room, feeling like an elephant trying to tap-dance. I'm glad I bought a townhouse instead of a condo, because if I had downstairs neighbors they would have been throwing things at the ceiling. But I felt frustrated - I got the concept, I understood the counts and where one's feet were supposed to be, but I didn't feel like mine were really cooperating.

But I went anyway, dreading it. But it actually went better. First of all, there were a few new people - one more guy and two new women, bringing the ratio of women to men to 3:4 - not ideal, and still unusual, but better than 1:3. And my practicing actually wasn't in vain - I actually got better, good enough that I could keep up, and good enough that the instructor commented a few times that I must have practiced and was 100% better, which made me feel proud and embarrassed at the same time.

I actually drove home last night feeling pretty good, singing along with the random swing songs I'd burned onto CD. I'm hoping to actually go to one of the dances that a few places have around here in the next few weeks - hopefully I can convince some people to go with me, but if not I need to suck it up and go by myself - the worst that can happen is it completely sucks and I leave after a while, and I'm out a few bucks and an hour or two.

Now, I'm still not great, but I don't feel like a total failure, so that's a plus. And I guess the moral, at the risk of sounding like an after-school special, is that practice and effort does pay some dividends.

So you think I can dance? Not so much...

2009-11-04T20:13:00.000-05:00

A few weeks ago, I got into my mind the brilliant idea that I would take up swing dancing. Back 10 years ago when swing had it's brief revival, I got into the music, and I would still find myself occasionally firing up some Royal Crown Revue on iTunes. Plus, I figured it would be a give me something to do, could be a good way to meet women, and that if I wanted to do it, I needed to do it soon, before I started grad school. There is a group that gives lessons in various rented locations not too far from where I work, so I signed up. The first class was yesterday.

Well, the meeting women thing didn't exactly work out - I seem to have the ability to time things as badly as possible. The class ended up being 3 guys (including myself) and one girl, who was there with one of the other guys. The instructor remarked that it was unusual to have the guys outnumber the girls, and that the last class he taught had 3 more girls than guys. Just my luck.

The other little problem with this brilliant plan? I suck at dancing. I just can't seem to get it - after a few steps I find myself hopelessly lost. All the things you are supposed to do - keep your weight on one foot, not move your right foot, keep your limbs loose, take small steps - none of them come naturally to me. The instructor was pretty patient, and he did give out printed instructions, so I'm going to try to do some practicing this week, and maybe find some tutorials on the web. Hopefully I can at least get to a level of not sucking too much, but it's pretty obvious I'm never going to be great at this, or even decent. I'm going to stick out the lessons - I've paid in advance - and I will probably still try to get to one of the dances that one of the groups around here runs, especially if I can convince someone to go with me.

But I in fact, do not have rhythm.

So this is what a weekend is like..

2009-11-01T21:39:00.002-05:00

I've been looking forward to this weekend for the last couple weeks. Not because I had any big plans, but rather because I didn't.

See, the last few weekends I haven't had much time to spend at Casa De Mad. Last weekend, I worked on Saturday and had a Hamfest on Sunday. The weekend before, I drove up to NJ to visit the parents. The weekend before that, dinner with some coworkers and hanging out with a friend. Weekend before that, another Hamfest.

So my house has started to resemble something out of Hoarders. Well, not quite - I don't have broken waffle irons piled up in the front yard yet. But I haven't exactly had time to put stuff away or the like. So I resolved this weekend that I would try to keep the errands to a minimum, skip the yard sales, and try to spend some time around the house. After all, something like half my paychecks go to paying the mortgage... I might as well spend some time here.

As is typical with any to-do list, I didn't get quite as much done as I wanted. My house is still pretty messy. But I got it started, and have a better idea of what I want to get done next week. I have descriptions ready for a bunch of stuff that can go on eBay in the next few days, which will mean slightly less crap around the house and slightly more money in madanthony's bank account. I also caught up on sleep, got in a couple good workouts at the gym, petted the cat, got a haircut, and made a giant bowl of Pasta Fagoli, a bowl of which I just finished chased with a glass of two-buck chuck, probably the first time I've had a glass of wine in about 6 months. Usually I avoid it, because it makes me sleepy, but I figured it was worth it to treat myself for once.

Part of the reason I want to spend some time enjoying myself, and some not-so-enjoyable time getting my house into something resembling an order, is because I expect that in about 10 weeks, my free time will go down to close to zero, because I'll be starting grad school again - I'm going back part-time for a degree in Educational Technology. So I want to have everything in order by then. Which is unlikely, since I'm 1)messy and 2)in the crap-resale business, which means I tend to have lots of crap around. But I'll do my best, and I feel like I've at least got a start.