tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-60852352024-03-14T14:49:44.323-04:00mad anthonyRants, politics, and thoughts on politics, technology, life, <br/>and stuff from a generally politically conservative Baltimoron.mad anthonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08519254889846251231noreply@blogger.comBlogger1735125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6085235.post-27449150986349916852013-09-18T00:21:00.001-04:002013-09-18T00:21:47.192-04:00How to make tens of dollars by going to yard sales...<p>On occasion, when I'm not posting about my cat or being single, I'll make a post on FaceBook bragging about something I found at a yard sale. Usually, it will get a comment or two from people lamenting how they never find such cool stuff at yard sales. So I figured I'd share some of my deep, dark secrets.</p>
<p>What kind of things do I find at yard sales? This weekends haul included a pair of vintage Bose Series 4.2 direct/reflecting speakers. I paid $12 for them at a community yard sale about 3 miles from my house. They guy even helped me carry them to my SUV. A pair in similar condition sold on eBay for $300.</p>
<p>Other finds this year have included a MXR Phase 100 "script" guitar pedal for $5 that sold on eBay for $101, a $5 Apple ADC to DVI adapter that sold for $79, a $75 NIB commercial coffee maker that went for $162, and a $20 new in box Epson PowerLite projector that went for $247. All time best finds have included a $2 Yamaha Keytar that went for $220, a $5 fuser for Xerox color copier that went for $207, and an HP 16C Computer Science Calculator (with original box) that went for $230.</p>
<p>So how do I do it? Work. Every non-rainy Saturday morning that I don't have something else to do (and since I have absolutely no social life, that's all of them) I go to yard sales and flea markets. I roll out the door around 8am with all the tools of my trade - a fully charged iPhone, a wallet full of several of every denomination of bills, including a couple hundreds just in case, a can of Rockstar energy drink, and a map. </p>
<p>The map is the most important thing. Every Friday night, I go on Craigslist and find all the local yard sales and flea markets. I also check the PennySaver, if my mailman has bothered to deliver it, but very few people advertise their yard sales in the PennySaver anymore. I throw them into google maps and plot out a course. I give priority to certain things - descriptions that mentioned stuff I look for (like electronics, computers, or musical instruments), sales in nice areas (because people who live in expensive houses often have expensive stuff), community yard sales (because you get a lot of sellers in one place, and you are more likely to get casual sellers who are trying to get rid of stuff rather than pros who are trying to make a profit), flea markets (if they are ones I know are likely to have casual sellers and not just people selling homemade jewelry or multi-level marketing schemes). I try to group them near each other. Then I print them out and go to bed.</p>
<p>It's not perfect - there are days I come home empty-handed, and there are days I do worse, and come home with turds that I lose money on. But since I don't spend much, I don't lose much, and I often win. Most of the time it's not a huge win - I can't find $3 items that sell for $300 all the time - but I can pretty easily find stuff that I can make $20 or $30 on, and it adds up. After all, Wal-Mart makes a lot of money by selling lots of cheap stuff at a very thin markup. And I can't draw any hard and fast rules - that projector was found in an older neighborhood on the edge of Baltimore City, one I normally would have avoided except for a lack of many other sales that week. The 16C was found at a church flea market around the corner from my house, one I've been to a dozen times and left empty-handed the other 11.</p>
<p>But the main trick is just to hit as many sales as you can. If you have specialized knowledge of a field, if you have a hobby, that's what you should concentrate on - on looking for stuff you know. It's weird how something I discovered a couple years back will suddenly make an appearance on someone's table, nestled between a giveaway Frizbee and grandma's old linens, and I'll know what it is even though nobody else did.</p>
<p>I probably could work harder - I rarely do Sunday sales, and I typically find myself calling it quits after 2 or 3 hours - by then I'm usually hungry, have to pee, and figure a lot of the good stuff has already been snatched. But I do a lot better than I would if I did what I otherwise would do on a Saturday morning, which involves being curled up under the covers of my bed.</p>mad anthonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08519254889846251231noreply@blogger.com53tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6085235.post-11654917125377112242013-07-21T23:20:00.000-04:002013-07-21T23:24:25.746-04:00Hamfest is dying...<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-0_2dwiLIrkY/Ueyly1XzW_I/AAAAAAAAASQ/rHLurQnBkLM/s1600/1077545_895672982202_1632715296_o.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-0_2dwiLIrkY/Ueyly1XzW_I/AAAAAAAAASQ/rHLurQnBkLM/s320/1077545_895672982202_1632715296_o.jpg" /></a></div><p>Probably about 8 or 9 years ago, one of my friends/coworkers introduced me to hamfests - which are basically swap meets for ham radio enthusiasts, not celebrations of tasty, frequently smoked pork products. When I went to my first one, it occurred to me, as I wandered among the tables of electronic crap, that I too had plenty of electronic crap that I could sell. At the time I was doing some eBay selling, though not nearly as much as I do now. It occurred to me that I could unload some of the stuff I'd bought that wasn't worth eBaying - and as I got into it, I realized that I could also buy stuff specifically to sell at Hamfests.</p>
<p>So over the years, it's gone from me just unloading my extra stuff to specifically going to auctions looking for items that would be good hamfest fodder - things like desktop computers and monitors, electronic enclosures, and some stuff that was a gamble - like cases of pint glasses (which turned out to be a losing gamble so far). It's always been hit or miss - I've been to hamfests that were miserable, than come back to the same one the next year and sold 3x as much stuff. I've grossed as little as $!3 and as much as over $1300. I've sold everything from foam body parts to Dell Precision workstations. And I've bought a handful of items as well, most of which have been flipped on eBay (or in the case of the 100-pack of Tyvex envelopes I bought at the same hamfest where I sold $13 worth of stuff, used to pack stuff I sold on eBay)</p>
<p>But in the last few years, I'll always hear people muttering about hamfests not being what they used to be. I've seen the effects of it, as well - the Timonium hamfest going from 2 days with outdoor tailgating to one day, indoor only, the disappearance of the big Fredrick Hamfest, one I had always liked. But my sales were still decent, and I kind of shrugged it off.</p>
<p>But I'm starting to re-evaluate this view. My last few have been slow - I used to sell a ton of PC's and monitors, now I'm lucky if I sell one or two. Today's Howard County hamfest had a lot fewer vendors than last year's, and fewer customers as well - despite a clear sky. I still did OK, but instead of a mix of OK and great I've had several in a row that have just been OK. And it's been more work to get that way - grinding it out, selling lots of couple dollar a piece items instead of a few big sales. </p>
<p>I don't intend to stop going to hamfests anytime soon. But I'm changing my buying and selling strategy - right now I have a ton of PC's and monitors, and I'm not going to be buying any more until I've sold them all (I mean, unless I have a chance to buy a bunch of i7's for $10 each or something. But that never happens). I'm also willing to sell stuff at cost, or take a loss, just to get rid of it. </p>
<p>The reality is that when I look around my house, when I look at the stuff I'm tripping over, much of it is hamfest stuff - despite the fact that the money I make from it is a very small part of my income. Granted, part of this is the nature of the beast - eBay items can quickly come in, get listed, and get shipped out, while hamfest stuff has to wait until the next one and hope it sells. But I'm tired of tripping over stuff, I'm tired of spending over an hour loading my truck the night before a hamfest, and then unloading most of it again. My goal going forward is to have a lot less stuff, and for the most part to only buy stuff that I know I can resell quickly, preferably that is light and doesn't take up a lot of room. </p>
<p>Hamfests aren't dead yet, but they are changing, and I need to change with it, before I'm crushed by a stack of unsold Dell Pentium 4's that I couldn't pass up because they were $5 each.</p>mad anthonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08519254889846251231noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6085235.post-45021894569532672102013-07-04T18:54:00.001-04:002013-07-04T18:54:56.405-04:00Behind every auction is a story...<p>In the words of <I>Semisonic</i>, every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end. And when that end is an auction, it usually means that something has ended quickly and dramatically. Sure, occasionally places - especially government agencies - will auction off surplus items, to make sure the public has the opportunity to buy it and that it's sold for fair-market value. But generally, the auction is the sledgehammer of the selling world - something bad has happened, and someone needs to get rid of everything now. Sometimes it's an estate auction, because someone has died - as I once overheard a fellow auction-goer remark at a consignment estate sale, "In life, everything ends up on one of two tables - the auctioneer's table or the mortician's table". Sometimes, it's because a business has failed, for the reasons that businesses do - not enough customers, too many expenses.</p>
<p>But sometimes it's more interesting than that - when I see an interesting auction, I often do a little digging, and the stories are interesting. One was of a charity that was supposed to be helping to put technology in schools, but was also taking out fraudulent loans by leasing computers, then getting loans using the computers they didn't own as collateral. Another was doing sham mortgage relief. <a href="http://www.americanaai.com/gallery_single.asp?g=80">Another</a> had been stealing money from the elderly woman she was a caretaker for, and spending it on crap from QVC and HSN.</p>
<p>I recently saw an ad for something called <a href="http://guernseys.proxibid.com/asp/AuctionsByCompany.asp?ahid=8423&utm_source=Proxibid&utm_medium=AntiquesBlast7.4&utm_campaign=Guernsey7.15">The Harrisburg Auction</a> and was a little surprised - Harrisburg, PA isn't really known for much beyond it's status as Pennsylvania's state capital. But then I did a little reading and understood. For those who follow the problems that municipalities are facing in terms of coming close to bankruptcy, Harrisburg is one of the poster children. It's got the usual issues - declining tax base, municipal pensions, plus an incinerator that cost way more than expected. But it also had a previous mayor who had a very expensive, but not very coherent, vision of turning a working-class state capital into some sort of tourist mecca.</p>
<p>His first project was the <a href="http://www.nationalcivilwarmuseum.org/">National Civil War museum</a>, which I'v visited, if by visited you mean "drove thought he parking lot of". See, Harrisburg is also home to the <a href="http://www.portal.state.pa.us/portal/server.pt/community/state_surplus_property_program/1395/state_surplus_distribution_center/389152">PA State Surplus Warehouse</a>, and as a semi-professional crap reseller I usually try to stop there on my way up to my parent's house in NJ - as long as it's a weekday before 3pm, when they close. A wrong turn sent me into the Civil War Museum's parking lot, which was very nice, and in front of a very nice building. It also appeared to be very empty. </p>
<p>The mayor's other brilliant plan was a Wild West museum, despite the fact that Harrisburg isn't even really in Western PA, let alone in the actual West. In preparation for his museum, the mayor went out and acquired a whole bunch of crap, but luckily for Harrisburg tax payers, never actually opened the museum. Evidently, the city has finally decided to sell of their giant collection at auction. </p>
<p>No, I won't be going - it's not my kind of crap, I usually go for the more technology-related kind. But it's an interesting story.</p>mad anthonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08519254889846251231noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6085235.post-79002485597447526112013-03-29T00:30:00.002-04:002013-03-29T00:30:58.886-04:00Auction hunting, and not bagging anything...<a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-s_rSWbCnBts/UVUY6qK8cAI/AAAAAAAAAQY/FViKVdjqslo/s1600/581143_756458539062_756807937_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-s_rSWbCnBts/UVUY6qK8cAI/AAAAAAAAAQY/FViKVdjqslo/s320/581143_756458539062_756807937_n.jpg" /></a><p>Last year, on the way up to my parent's house in NJ, I stopped to pick up some stuff I won in an online auction in Philly. I paid about $1200 for a number of items, which included a flash RAID array that I sold for a grand, several ruggedized laptops that fetched as much as $300 each, and 5 HP computers that were so new they had 2 years of warranty left on them.</p>
<p>This year, I also made a stop on the way to the 'rents for Easter to pick up some online auction items. This time, though, it was $130 worth of gift shop merchandise from an Amish Country gift shop - mostly glassware like shot glasses, pint glasses, and mugs. If I'm lucky, I may be able to double or triple my investment, but I suspect it's going to be a long, slow grind, and might mean setting up at a traditional flea market instead just selling it at the ham-radio and electronic themed hamfests I normally sell at.
<p>Sadly, this is pretty much the summation of my auction experiences of late - not very good. I've been going to auctions for years, as well as bidding on (non-ebay) online auctions where you bid online and pick up in person. From fall of 2011 to the end of 2012 I had an unusually good run - in fact, my eBay sales last calendar year - mostly stuff I bought at auctions but also a number of items I found at yard sales - was enough that I ended up getting 1099-k'ed by Paypal, resulting in an unexpected tax bill.</p>
<p>Being successful at the auction game, like much of life, is a combination of 3 things - luck, skill, and effort. Luck is a combination of the right auctions being nearby at times you can get to them, with the right items, and without anyone else who knows what they are worth. Skill is knowing what to bid on, how to resell it for a profit, and knowing how to spot hidden gems. Effort is going to enough auctions, being willing to drive a little, take reasonable risks, and store and sell what you buy. </p>
<p>The irony of luck is that a buyer's good luck is often the result of someone else's bad luck - many of my finds have been from estate sales, bankruptcy sales, or other places where my new beginning comes from some other beginning's end. But the other half of luck is who else shows up - I remember one auction in December 2011 that included the assets of a doctor's office that had closed - on many items not only was I the only bidder, but I was telling the auctioneer what the items were so he could write up tickets. The flip side is when someone with deeper pockets shows up - I went to a computer store auction in Lancaster, PA a few months back where a young Asian guy in a fitted cap wanted pretty much everything I wanted, and was willing to pay amounts for them where I didn't think I could make a profit. Often, the difference between walking home with a truckload of profitable merchandise and walking out with a couple items and a feeling that you just wasted a day is one person showing up or not. Or on someone making an entirety bid - I recently was high bidder on a number of items from an aerosol can plant - including 150 cans of canned air for $35 - I probably could have gotten $450 at hamfest - it's something I bought some of several years ago at an auction, quickly sold out, and haven't been able to find more of cheaply since. Sadly, there was also a $100,000 entirety bid for everything - so I'm still airless. Luck can also come into play in stranger ways - last year I bid on the contents of two boxes from the estate of a guy who had a recording studio. I paid $40 because I had seen an $80 and a $40 item in the box. What I didn't realize was that there were also several remotes for reel-to-reel tape players, 2 of which were worth $70 a piece - and one that was worth $270, that was so rare that nobody had sold one on eBay for months before I listed mine.</p>
<p>Timing is the other half of luck. It's made more difficult by the fact that I have a day job, one that pays me far more than even the best year's crap-hunting profits. So I need to work around that, and sometimes that means missing an auction I really want to go to. Family obligations is also sometimes an issue. This year I will be missing one of my favorite semi-annual auctions, one I look forward to every year and that I've probably been going to twice a year for the last 3+ years- Penn State's computer surplus auction. Alas, I'm going to a conference for work that week. While the career value and cost of what my employer is paying to send me to the conference far exceeds what I'd make, it's still disappointing, because I actually enjoy going there, even though it usually means driving through rural PA in the dark at 2am with a truck full of stuff that hits me every time I go around a turn. </p>
<p>Effort means going to a lot of auctions, something I try to do, and bidding on a lot of online auctions. It means knowing how to work the search on <a href="http://www.auctionzip.com">auctionzip</A> to find non-obvious listings, religiously checking the websites of a number of online auction companies, and going to auctions that only have a hint of promise. Some of my best finds have been in auctions that were poorly advertised or that I only guessed might have stuff I wanted. The well-advertised auctions with lots of pictures tend to be the ones where most things sell for too much, because everyone went there. Effort also means going the distance - many of my really good finds have come at the end, when lots of other people have called it quits (or run out of money). The Penn State auction I mentioned earlier starts at 5pm - and usually runs well past midnight. </p>
<p>Skill is knowing what to bid on. In today's world of smartphones, skill doesn't mean as much as it used to, because everyone has a smartphone. But skill is knowing non-obvious items, the stuff people wouldn't think to look up, as well as finding valuable items in box lots or "contents of shelf/cabinet/room" type lots.</p>
<p>Besides the money I make from auctions, it's my hobby, and it's gotten me a number of cool random items that grace my house, from the 24" Lenovo widescreen that graces my desk (from a defunct VA dotcom called jobfox) to the Herman Miller Aeron chair in front of it (from an FDIC auction of First Bank Americano) to the Detoxify neon sign in my living room (from Record and Tape Traders). It's how I spend my vacation days. Without much inventory, and with some time out of town coming up, I've been taking a break from eBay, and it's weird not spending my nights writing descriptions or packing stuff. It's not the end of the world - it's not like I need the money to eat, and now that the weather is starting to warm up I'll probably be finding some inventory at hamfests and yard sales. And I know eventually a good auction will show up - this certainly isn't the first dry spell I've had, and it won't be the last. But hopefully, soon, my luck will return. </p>
mad anthonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08519254889846251231noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6085235.post-83311138607633541972013-03-09T21:22:00.001-05:002013-03-09T23:12:46.027-05:00Why would anyone want to start a business, anyway?<a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-xuWBqRCYlZM/UTvubebGjsI/AAAAAAAAAQI/mKosbx3EJuM/s1600/215071_629255315342_5122756_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" ><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-xuWBqRCYlZM/UTvubebGjsI/AAAAAAAAAQI/mKosbx3EJuM/s320/215071_629255315342_5122756_n.jpg" /></a><p>The first time I really understood why business owners grumble about the government so much was a couple years ago, in a field in Howard County. See, as a very small hobby, I sell stuff at hamfests - basically swap meets for ham radio and computer enthusiasts. It's typically a bunch of guys selling junk from their basements, and a few people like me who will occasionally also buy stuff at auctions and the like and sell it. Except that day, the tax folks showed up, and told everyone that if they did not get a Maryland sales and use tax license they would have to leave. Luckily, they moved at government employee speed, while hamfest sellers are up 4 hours before the crack of dawn, so by the time they had gotten very far most people were done selling.</p>
<p>The most annoying thing was that the government folks were wrong - Maryland's own sales tax laws exclude <a href="http://www.dsd.state.md.us/comar/getfile.aspx?file=03.06.01.12.htm">casual sales under $1000</a>, a category that most of the old guys selling junk out of their basements fall into. But even for those who don't - like myself - there is a certain feeling of annoyance. For a typical hamfest, I've spent hours online tracking down auctions, bidding online or standing around bidding on stuff, carted it home, unloaded, sorted, tested, and priced it, loaded it back in my truck, gotten up at 4am to drive an hour or two to unload it, and stood outside for hours, praying that it doesn't rain - and then loading it all back up, driving home, and unloading it all. For a good fest, I might gross a few hundred bucks. For a bad one, I've grossed as little as $13. So after doing all that work and maybe making a couple dollars after cost of good sold and expenses, the government wants a piece of it just for showing up. </p>
<p>My second tangle with the fun of the tax authorities came a few months ago. I also sell on eBay, and last year - thanks to a few lucky auctions and selling a few unusually expensive items, my Paypal gross revenues where about $500 above the amount that Paypal sends a 1099-K to the IRS for. (Yes, I realize technically you are supposed to pay income taxes on any income, even if it's not reported to the government. I'm also know that very few people are going to voluntarily give the government money that they know the government doesn't know they "owe", and I'm pretty sure the IRS knows that too). So for several weeks I tried to figure out what I owed - going through 238 transactions, finding receipts for the stuff I bought at auctions in my file system (actually a box full of papers that originally held 2-buck chuck). The rest of my sales were of stuff bought at yard sales and the like, which I have no way of documenting the price paid. After deducting thousands of dollars in paypal and ebay fees, thousands more in shipping expenses, and taking home office and vehicle deductions, I ended up paying around $!500. As annoying as that was, spending hours making excel spreadsheets during time I'd normally be writing eBay descriptions or going to auctions was more annoying. And I'm still not entirely sure that my amounts were correct - I found, for example, that by changing a date by one day I made a big difference in my tax liabilities. I could make an argument either way, and you can guess which way I decided to go.</p>
<p>I'm unlikely to have this happen again - so far, there have not been many good auctions, I had stuff last year that I had bought the year before but didn't sell until that year, and I'm going to miss one of my favorite and most profitable auctions this year due to a work conference. But you can imagine that I'm going to make sure that I don't cross the limit this year. Because incentives matter. </p>
<p>For me, stuff like this is an annoyance. I have a day job that pays the bills - eBay and Hamfests give me a few extra bucks and let me kill some time (hey, I'm single) and get the rush of occasionally finding hidden gold. I don't depend on them for survival, and can cut back or give them up if the legal hassles get to be too much of a hassle. But occasionally, I'll wonder if I could do them full-time. Even despite the legal aspect, the answer has always been "no" - there are too many people chasing too few profitable items to make enough to lead the lifestyle I've grown accustomed to (1200 square foot townhouse, Pathfinder on 18"s, the latest threads from the Target clearance rack). But I could see myself, if I'm still single and childless in 20 or 30 years with a paid-off house, retiring early and doing that if the opportunities are still around. But once again, the thought of spending as much time doing paperwork as hunting down merchandise is not thrilling.</p>
<p>Which begs the question - why would anyone subject themselves to this - to the difficulties of owning a business, plus of dealing with the government? After all, if you are a business owner, you get none of the protections of being an employee - no minimum wage, no maximum workday, and you can't sue yourself for sexual harassement for admiring yourself in the mirror. Instead, you pour money and time into something, and if you are successful, the government wants a piece of it. I realize that we have to pay for military and other services that government provides, but I can also understand why business owners are often less sympathetic about regulation and taxation than those who get a paycheck from someone else.</p>
<p>Which is probably why a lot of small businesses are owned by people who don't really have a lot of options, like recent immigrants (just ask <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sM19YOqs7hU">Joe Biden</a> or people who have been laid off and unable to find another job. I've found the little bit of interaction with taxes to be difficult - and I'm a reasonably smart guy with an MBA. I can't imagine the baker or landscaper who wants to go into business for himself having an easy time dealing with not only taxes, but also regulations governing employees and food safety or EPA regs or whatever, all the time hoping that they don't mess up and find an inspector on their doorsteps.</p>
<p>And the government also discourages businesses from growing - as <a href="http://www.nationalreview.com/campaign-spot/342502/understaffed-america">this NRO post</a> points out, there are a lot of regulations - such as Obamacare - that have requirements if your business is larger than a certain size. Which gives a pretty powerful incentive for businesses that are close to that size to not grow, lest they be swamped by a rush of expenses and forms.</p>
<p>A government that discourages people from starting businesses, from hiring, from creating value by supplying something that people want that isn't supplied, or doing a better job of supplying it - is discouraging growth, it's discouraging the things it needs to continue being dynamic and increasing living standards. And I have no real answers on how it can do that, while still raising necessary taxes and providing a reasonable level of services and protection. But I get the feeling that most people don't even see that there is a problem. </p>mad anthonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08519254889846251231noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6085235.post-63007282646321260512013-02-17T11:52:00.000-05:002013-02-17T11:52:07.629-05:00After a brief montage, this post will be awesome..<p>I subscribe to a couple of National Review email newsletters, and they both linked <a href="http://www.cracked.com/article_18544_how-the-karate-kid-ruined-modern-world.html">this cracked.com article about how the Karate Kid has ruined the modern world.</a>. The idea is that the typical movie often compresses the hard work that it takes to make major changes into a quick montage with cheerful music. Weak dude, a couple shots of him working out, champion. Ugly chick, a few shots of her buying clothes and taking off her thick glasses, hottie. So we forget the actual amount of effort that it takes in real life to make major changes. </p>
<p>I think there is a lot of truth in this. One of the examples the author gives is losing weight, and it's one I'm quite familiar with. I was overweight until my mid-20's, when (after taking one of those "how long do you have to live" quizzes online and getting mid-50's as an answer) I made some major changes. I started exercising, watched what I ate, and in two years I dropped close to 100 pounds and 10 inches off my waist. Seven or so years later, I'm still at a pretty healthy weight. I'm not as careful as I once was about what I eat, but I spend about 2 hours a day at the gym, so it balances out.</p>
<p>Sometimes, people will see me eating a big meal and make some sort of comment that they wish they could eat like that - presuming that I have some magic genetics that let me eat a bunch and still fit into my pants. That's pretty much the opposite of the truth - I come from a long line of people who have shopped in the husky section. But people see the results and not the effort.</p>
<p>Sometimes, that includes myself. I find myself rather unsympathetic to people who are overweight, thinking "well, if I can do it so can anyone". That, of course, ignores the fact that I couldn't do it for the first quarter-century of my life - I had to change a lot of bad habits, pass up a lot of desserts, and spend a lot of time on an elliptical when I would rather have been on my couch. Changing years of bad habits is not easy, yet once you do it's sometimes hard to remember how hard it was to make those changes.</p>
<p>The thing I struggle with most, though, is why some things seem to work if you put enough effort into them, and others don't. Losing weight was a huge achievement for me, and I'm pretty happy with where I am financially. But my career hasn't always advanced as quickly as I've always wanted it to, and when it comes to dating my life is pretty much a black hole. Part of that may be that I'm not putting in enough effort - or the wrong effort. But I think there is an element of luck - that you need to be in the right place at the right time. And that's something hard to accept for someone who wants to reduce everything to a simple formula, the way weight loss=fewer calories consumed + more calories burned. </p>
<p>My parents, who have been married for, I think, 48 years, met at a dance for young adults sponsored by local churches. Presumably, if one of them had decided to stay home that night, your intrepid blogger might not be around to write this. Plenty of things in my own life have come about from things that seemed minor at the time. Nibbler, the cat who is currently asleep between my chest and the keyboard of my macbook as I write this, came into my life as the result of an offhand conversation with a student employee who had found some kittens. My current job - which I've been at for almost 10 years - came out of a summer job I took my senior year in college because I had an off-campus apartment with a 12 month lease and needed to make some money while living there.</p>
<p>In the Karate Kid piece, the cracked author credits a series of firings and deaths for him getting his current job. And that's the thing about life - I think there is an element of luck, of being at the right place at the right time. Bad things happen to good people - they get diagnosed with cancer, they die in car accidents - so it seems reasonable that sometimes random good things will happen to people too.</p>
<p>But there is a third element too - the ability to take advantage of those good things. It's not always enough to be at the right place at the right time, you also need to be able to recognize that you are and take advantage of it. The Karate Kid article cites the Malcolm Gladwell book <i>Outliers</i> for it's discussion of the 10,000 hours of practice that it takes to master something. But there is another section where Gladwell discusses Bill Gates, and argues that much of his success was that he was in the right place at the right time - that he went to a private school that had access to a mainframe computer right at the time when the personal computer revolution was starting. But Bill wasn't the only student in that school, and there were probably at least a few schools like it at the time - but only Bill went on to start Microsoft. And much of Microsoft's initial success has less to do with his writing of MS-DOS and more to do with his decision to license it to IBM instead of selling it outright. That let him license it to other manufacturers. Had he sold it instead, he would have gotten a nice check and probably never been heard from again. Being at the right time and place got Gates a leg up, but the rest of the climb was still because of choices he made.</p>
<p>So I would argue that life is a combination of effort, luck, and of recognizing and exploiting that luck. I don't know what the percentage is, and suspect it varies from person to person (like the taste of Soylent Cola). For someone like myself who wants to believe that I can change, it's frustrating, because maybe I can't, but also reassuring, because maybe that's only partly my fault.</p> mad anthonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08519254889846251231noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6085235.post-64435098806982543702013-01-11T23:29:00.002-05:002013-01-11T23:30:23.342-05:00Is asking for credit scores on dates really a thing?<p>I've seen <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/26/business/even-cupid-wants-to-know-your-credit-score.html?_r=2&">This NYT story claiming dates are now asking each other for their credit score</a> posted on a few online dating blogs, like <a href="http://www.howaboutwe.com/date-report/credit-score-dating-trend-first-date/">HowaboutWe's Date Report</a>. But when you read the story and actually do some thinking, you realize it's pretty much not a thing.</p>
<p>Sure, there's one anecdotal story in the lede, but the rest of it is super-thin. There are few stories about people in actual relationships where one of them having bad credit caused problems, which is about as much news as the fact that the Pope is believed to be Catholic, and has a cool hat. My favorite "example", though, is that they site the existence of a site called <a href="http://www.creditscoredating.com/">CreditScoreDating</a> as an example - a dating site where dates post their credit score. Except that if you go to it, it looks like something someone crapped out in 10 minutes. Also, it's news page contains an entry from <a href="http://www.creditscoredating.com/index.php?page=allnews&pageno=1">2009 stating that the site is for sale</a>, which was the top entry until recently when the NYTimes article got reposted on the pages news site. I'm guessing someone crapped out a dating site years ago, and some lazy NYTimes reporter googled credit score dating and found it. Which still doesn't make it a thing.</p>
<p>The silly thing about this is that daters have been gathering financial information about dates for years, but even a complete dating klutz like myself doesn't do it by asking for FICO scores. Instead, they ask their date what they do for a living or what kind of car they drive or if they own or rent or other questions that would at least give you some idea of their financial situation is - yes, I realize you can have a high income and a lousy score, but you can generally get an idea if someone is living within their means.</p>
<p>And speaking of online dating, I've started collecting some of the worst/oddest profiles I've found online on another blog I've started, <a href="http://plenty-of-fail.blogspot.com/">Plenty Of Fail</a> (a play on Plenty of Fish, a large free online dating site).</p>mad anthonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08519254889846251231noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6085235.post-2354163630558971262012-12-31T20:46:00.001-05:002012-12-31T20:46:30.137-05:00So, I bought a new truck..<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<p>So I did a little New Year's Eve shopping today. I bought a new truck.</p>
<p>I bought a 2012 Nissan Pathfinder LE, in black. It's very nice - it's got pretty much every option: hard drive mP3 player, backup camera, heated leather, navigation, sunroof, 18" rims. It's the third new vehicle I've owned, it's the first one I've paid cash for, the first from a Japanese brand (although it was built in Smyrna, Tennessee, and my old Chrysler PT Cruiser was built in Mexico) and it's the vehicle with the most expensive sticker price I've owned by almost a factor of two.</p>
<p>I got a pretty decent price on it, thanks to lots of discounts and manufacturer's rebate. I traded in my Ranger - I got less for it than I would have liked, but it was a lot easier than trying to sell it myself and deal with Craigslist wackjobs. </p>
<p>So why a Pathfinder, and why now? I wanted something truck-based, something body on frame. I was planning on getting a pickup, probably a Frontier, but the incentives on the Pathfinder made it a lot more vehicle for a little more money, plus I would gain an enclosed cargo area without having to pay extra for a cap. My original plan was to wait until spring. But the reason for the big discounts on the Pathfinder was that it's been replaced with a car-based model for 2013, and it seemed pretty likely that if I waited until then there might not be any to buy, and certainly not one in the color I wanted. So I bit.</p>
<p>I hope I made the right decision. The Danger Ranger served me very well, for 101, 782 miles. But nothing lasts forever, and I depend on my vehicle. I would happily have bought another Ford if they sold something similar. This is the second most expensive thing I've ever bought after my house. Unlike my house, though, I know this will go down in value (my house was supposed to go up, but instead went down, according to Zillow by about 2 Pathfinders). But by buying something with pretty much everything on it, I figure I won't be making excuses that I need a new vehicle in a few years because it's missing something.</p>
<p>Now I just need to come up with a catchy name for it like I did for the Danger Ranger. But it's hard to come up with something that rhymes with Pathfinder. Maybe I'll just call it the Black Sheep.</p>mad anthonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08519254889846251231noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6085235.post-38072554709316922252012-12-31T20:34:00.000-05:002012-12-31T20:34:02.567-05:00New Year's resets..<p>So on "The Five", Greg Gutfeld <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ONjLKy5aNVA">rails against New Year's resolutions</a>. So are resolutions a waste of time?</p>
<p>Maybe. For the last few years, I've taken New Year's to outline my goals for the new year. They are usually pretty much the same - keep in shape, save money, not be single. Sometimes they've included specific goals, usually financial.</p>
<p>And when I look at most year's accomplishments, they are pretty much the same - I've generally stayed in decent shape, put away some money - and am still single.</p>
<p>And I think that's the thing about resolutions. If you try to do things that you want to do, that are improvements or getting back to doing things you already do, you tend to be successful. Achieving your goals 101 is pretty much to come up with specific things you want to achieve, outlining how you are going to achieve them, and then taking those steps.</p>
<p>I've always been frugal, and I've made focusing on losing and maintaining my weight for close to a decade. So I usually do OK on those things, because I know exactly what I need to do to achieve those things. Losing weight comes down to consuming fewer calories and burning more of them - things that are difficult to do, but once you get in the habit of them, do-able. Saving money means spending less, making more. </p>
<p>This year, that is once again true. Weight-wise I've been drifting a lot of late - eating more, not working out anymore. And like most people I've overindulged even more around Christmas. My pants are a bit snugger than they should be, and a recent doctor's visit weigh-in confirms I'm about 10-15 pounds above where I want to be And there are some money habits I could do better at.</p>
<p>So I think New Year's is good as less of a resolution and more as a reset - a chance to get back to good habits you've let slide, a chance to put aside the excesses of Christmas and spend less, eat less, and spend more time working out. It also serves as a convenient drop-dead date - often, while downing my 5th Christmas cookie of the day, I told myself that come New Year's, it would be back to fruit.</p>
<p>But New Year's resolutions are less effective as a way to obtain things that you don't know how to maintain - which in my case is a girlfriend. Sure, there are plenty of things I can do that may help, and staying in shape is one of them - along with putting in time on dating sites, contacting or responding to women who I'm on the fence about, and otherwise trying to be more social. But dating relies on someone else liking you, something I can't control. That makes it frustrating - and it also makes it something that doesn't make a great New Year's resolution. </p>
<p>I'd like to think that when I write a similar post 365 days or so from now, I won't still be single. But if that's true, it probably will be due to events that have little to do with New Year's resolutions. </p>mad anthonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08519254889846251231noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6085235.post-42937978717911441242012-12-15T12:53:00.000-05:002012-12-15T12:53:05.752-05:00What should we do about mass shootings? Probably nothing...<p>As anyone who isn't in a cave knows, there was a <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/16/nyregion/gunman-kills-20-children-at-school-in-connecticut-28-dead-in-all.html">horrific shooting at an elementary school</a> in Connecticut yesterday that left 26 people, including 20 kids, dead. As with any event like this, people are wondering what should be done to prevent it - and advocates of increasing gun restrictions or eliminating gun ownership are using it as an opportunity to advocate their positions.</p>
<p>But should we do anything in response to events like this? I would say no. For all the press these things get, they are exceedingly rare. That's why they get so much press - because they are unusual, as well as because we can relate to them - we all went to school at some point, many of us have kids in school, and we all go to public places like movie theaters or malls. The idea that someone could start shooting at us randomly is terrifying.</p>
<p>But it also probably won't happen. This year has been unusually bad for mass shootings, and this report from left-leaning political mag The Nation <a href="http://www.thenation.com/blog/171774/fifteen-us-mass-shootings-happened-2012-84-dead#">puts the number at 88</a>. I would quibble with that number, as several of the shootings on the list don't fit the traditional definition of a mass shooting like the one used by <a href="http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/07/mass-shootings-map">this Mother Jones article</a> - one public place, killing people at random. The <a href="http://www.policeone.com/patrol-issues/articles/5237880-Tenn-parolee-arrested-in-nightclub-shooting/">Tennessee nightclub shooting</a> followed a fight, the <a href="http://miami.cbslocal.com/2012/04/01/police-funeral-home-shooting-was-gang-related/">Miami funeral home shooting</a> was gang-related, and the <a href="http://philadelphia.cbslocal.com/2012/07/09/3-dead-after-gunfire-at-delaware-soccer-tournament/">Delaware soccer tournament</a> started when a shooter shot a specific individual. The racially motivated drive-bys in Oklahoma, by the Mother Jones definitions, were spree killings and not mass shootings. So that leaves us with 79 people killed in "traditional" mass shootings this year.</p>
<p>On the other hand, in 2010 (the most recent year I could easily find data for) according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, <a href="http://www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/Pubs/811552.pdf">32,885 people were killed in vehicle accidents</a>.That study doesn't break them down by age, but this <a href="http://www-nrd.nhtsa.dot.gov/Pubs/809762.pdf">2003 study</a> puts the number at 2,136, with traffic accidents being the biggest killer of children age 0-14, with 6 per day being killed.</p>
<p>You don't hear people talking about banning or seriously restricting cars, though, despite the fact that each and every week more kids are killed in car accidents than were killed this week in the worst school shooting ever. Nor should we - life is inherently risky - none of us get out of it alive - and shootings like this are part of the risk we take for living in a free and open society, just like getting killed by a car accident is a risk we take every time we turn the ignition and shift into drive.</p>
<p>But cars fulfill a need. I would argue that guns fulfill a need to - for defense, for hunting, and for keeping the government in check. But let's say you disagree, and you think most people just have guns because it's fun to shoot stuff. You know what else is also fun but not really necessary? Booze. Getting back to that 2003 NHTSA study I cited earlier, 21% were killed in alcohol-related crashes - that's about 420 kids a year. Disturbingly, about half of them were passengers with drivers who had been drinking. I'll admit that alcohol-related is a bit of a weaselly definition - it defines it as any alcohol in the bloodstream, not just being over the legal limit. But it seems fair to say that more kids will be killed this year by being passengers in cars driven by drunk parents than have been killed in mass shootings in decades. </p>
<p>Humans are not rational. And it's hard to be rational in the face of so much sadness and craziness. But good laws stem out of addressing the most serious problems with solutions that address those problems with the least possible cost - in terms of money and freedom - to citizens. Saying "we need to do something, and this is something" is how bad laws get passed, and events like this are the times legislators and citizens most want to do something. As difficult as it is, we need to reflect on how rare these events are and perform cost-benefit analysis if it's really worth taking the time and resources away from solving other, bigger, more deadly problems to fight something that is rare - if we do so, we'll actually cause more people to die. </p>mad anthonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08519254889846251231noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6085235.post-20906227621993047292012-12-09T23:32:00.002-05:002012-12-09T23:33:45.418-05:00In praise of the Jenni-o Turkey Log...<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<p>I do most of my grocery shopping at the local Target, which is easy since my bachelor diet consists mostly of pasta and Diet Mountain Dew. But every now and then I want or need something from an actual grocery store, which is why yesterday afternoon I found myself frantically running around my local Weis looking for an item I feared may finally have been discontinued or dropped. Luckily, after my third trip through the frozen food freezers, I finally found it, on a bottom shelf under a bunch of various forms of frozen breaded formed chicken by-products - the <a href="http://www.jennieo.com/products/100-White-Turkey-and-Gravy">Jenni-o Turkey Log</a></p>.
<p>The Turkey Log is a piece of frozen, salted, history. It's a throwback to the 50's and 60's - to a time after frozen food had been invented, but before the microwave was. It harkens back to the days when families still had the time to wait 2 1/2 to 2 and 3/4 hours for dinner to be ready, and then sat around the family dinner table as Mom carved the lump of turkey log.</p>
<p>Basically, what the Turkey Log is is a large log of raw pre-formed turkey meat, with gravy, frozen in an aluminum pan. You set the oven to 350 degrees, throw it in, and in a little less than three hours you have a reasonably palatable turkey dinner. Serve with microwaved stovetop stuffing and your favorite frozen or canned vegetable for a meal that's at least 50% as tasty as your Thanksgiving dinner but takes 5% of the work. </p>
<p>So why do I like this lump of turkey enough to write a blog post about it? It's a cheap way for a lazy single person like me to make a pretty tasty dinner - I think I paid $5.49 for my turkey log, and I get three generous meals out of it (it's technically 6 servings, but I'm a growing boy). But I also love that it's a piece of history - an item that's survived unchanged for decades in a changing market. It's like Pabst Blue Ribbon, except it actually tastes better when it's warm.</p>
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mad anthonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08519254889846251231noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6085235.post-37734558908894128472012-12-01T15:41:00.002-05:002012-12-01T15:41:30.016-05:00What does it mean to be an adult?<p>Walking back from lunch yesterday, one of my coworkers was pondering what it means to be an adult. Is it marriage? Having kids? Paying rent? Buying a house? Having a full time job? Native American societies supposedly had their rights of passage where young men would go out in to the woods as a boy and come back as a man, and the Amish have <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rumspringa">Rumspringa</a> where they decide if they want to join the Amish community as an adult. But in modern American society, there is not such a hard line. Many of us graduate high school and go to college, which is often a weird combination of adult responsibilities and parental assistance. Even after that, in a society where everyone wears jeans and hoodies, where kids can remain on their parent's insurance policies until 26, what is adulthood?</p>
<p>At some point after college, I found myself realizing that I was voluntarily doing things that I remember rebelling about doing when forced to do so by my parents - things like making dentist appointments, serving a vegetable with dinner, or putting on a hat and gloves when it was cold. It occurred to me that, in a way, this was adulthood - doing the things you are supposed to do without being told to do it, and in fact not actually having to do it.</p>
<p>But that's a pretty clunky definition. So I think it can be summed up a little more clearly as: adulthood is when you routinely delay, or give up, gratification in pursuit of long term goals. Childhood, after all, is all about living in the moment - you tend to want candy and toys and to play. You tend not to be so good at long-term planning. Adulthood, on the other hand, is the opposite. It is the acceptance that you need to do things that are unpleasant in the short term to achieve things in the long term. Adulthood is, in a way, eating your vegetables because you know it's good for you, or going to the dentist because you know your long-term dental health outweighs the short-term pain (or in my case, because you figure the women you are hoping to meet online probably don't dig coffee stains). </p>
<p>The thing about adulthood is that you totally can make bad choices - but you generally don't. There is nothing to stop me from eating an entire cake for dinner tonight, or drinking an entire 30 pack of Natty Ice, or going out and buying a Porsche or a flat screen TV so big I can't fit it through my front door. But I won't, because I realize that despite the short term pleasure, it's not what I want long-term.</p>
<p>Most of the traditional marks of adulthood also fit this definition pretty well. Buying a house typically means deferred gratification to afford buying it, to make the mortgage payments, and to fix the toilet when it stops flushing. Marriage and having children, from what I'm told, often involves a significant amount of giving up immediate gratification for the sake of your spouse or children. </p>
<p>Of course, few of us are probably adults all the time - right now I'm sitting in a comfy chair typing this blog post, when I should be raking leaves or writing eBay descriptions. Sometimes we do choose the lesser thing, but adulthood is choosing the better/longer-term one most of the time. Getting up in the morning to go to work when you would rather be sleeping, getting a few more months out of your current vehicle, taking the kids to the doctor or the cat for her yearly checkup, going to the gym - those are all part of being an adult. </p>mad anthonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08519254889846251231noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6085235.post-15406852618659439202012-11-24T20:13:00.001-05:002012-11-24T20:17:30.596-05:00The big 100k, or how long should you keep a car...<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<p>So most likely the Danger Ranger, my bright yellow 2006 Ford Ranger XLT extended cab 4wd pickup, will be hitting 100,000 miles this Sunday, when I drive it back from my parent's house in NJ, where I'm spending Thanksgiving, to my house in Baltimore. It's currently sitting at 99,930 or so, so I'm guessing somewhere in central PA it will hit the big one quintuple zero.
</p><p>
Growing up in the 80's, 100,000 miles was pretty much considered the end of the road for my parent's cars, the time where repairs would certainly make it not worth keeping. But that math seems to have changed, and the expectation is that cars will last a lot longer.
</p><p>
And the Danger Ranger has been solid, knock on wood. I bought it new, with 42 miles on the clock, and in the six and a half years I've been driving it, the only non-wear repair I've had to have done was a temperature sensor that was lighting up my check engine light and making my temp gauge permanently read cold. That's not to say that I haven't replaced a lot of wear items - I've gone through a bunch of brakes and tires, but that probably has more to do with the fact that I drive like a combination of a NYC cab driver and Jeff Gordon than with anything actually wrong with the truck.
</p><p>
Now that it's about to hit the sixth digit, I'm starting to think about replacing it. I'm torn about that - it's been solid, and I hate to replace it with something unknown. I'm also notoriously frugal, and the thought of spending half a year's salary on a new vehicle isn't really something I want to do. On the other hand, I've always liked cars, so the thought of something new and shiny is appealing. I also like the idea of getting a few features that my previous vehicle had and the Ranger doesn't - heated leather seats, a sunroof, and an actual backseat with doors - my Ranger lacks swing-out back doors, which makes things like grocery shopping a hassle, since I usually end up balancing my frozen chicken tenders and cases of diet Mountain Dew on the passenger seat.
</p><p>
But I could live without those things. From a cost perspective, obviously keeping my current, paid-off ride is the best move. Even if I had to make a substantial repair, like replacing the transmission, it's still going to be considerably cheaper than a new ride. But the main way I would justify buying something new is security. I'm not mechanically inclined, so I don't fix my own vehicle. I live alone, several hundred miles from my family, so I can't easily get a ride or borrow a vehicle if my truck is out of commission for a while. And I do a fair amount of long distance driving - I have a hobby/side business of going to auctions and hamfests (electronic and ham radio flea markets), and selling on eBay, so it's not unusual for me to drive a few hours to the middle of nowhere at odd hours of the day. I also drive up to NJ a few times a year (or more) to the parents, and I eternally say I'm going to take a long road trip some day. I really don't want to find myself stranded in the middle of nowhere with a dead vehicle - last year I had the misfortune of having a battery die on me in rural Western Maryland, and it wasn't fun. I'd also prefer not to be unable to get to work due to a dead vehicle.
</p><p>
So what will I get to replace it? Right now, my thought is a Nissan Frontier, because it's one of the few "compact" pickups on the market. If Ford still made the Ranger or the Explorer Sport Trac I'd buy one in a heartbeat, because the Ranger has been the most reliable vehicle I've ever owned (granted, it's also only the third vehicle, and only non-Chrysler, I've owned). I plan on buying new, because prices on used vehicles still seem to be high, and I like the idea of getting several years of warranty and of not having to replace anything.
</p><p>
My thought is that I'll probably start looking for a new vehicle in March or April - I can't see buying a new truck right before winter, when it will get snowed on and road-salted and exposed to roads full of bad drivers who don't understand how ice works.
</p><p>
So we'll see if I can actually pull the trigger then, or if frugality will win over a desire for security. </p>
mad anthonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08519254889846251231noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6085235.post-64779523422143974042012-11-08T22:36:00.001-05:002012-11-08T22:41:21.652-05:00Where does the right go from here?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<p>I swore I wasn't going to make another political post, but I can't help myself.</p>
<p>So, obviously, I was pretty disappointed by the results of Tuesday night, presidential-wise. But life will go on, and the sun will still rise in the morning. Besides, with a Republican-controlled house, I expect that there will be quite a bit of gridlock, and since I tend to lean libertarian I like gridlock, because the government not doing anything beats the government doing things I don't like.</p>
<p>But I've been reading quite a few blogs and articles and doing quite a bit of thinking about what the Republican party did wrong and how it could have won.</p>
<p>First of all, I think it's way too early to argue that the Republican party is forever doomed. Second-term elections are difficult to challengers, even when there are a lot of people who really don't like the incumbent - just ask John Kerry.</p>
<p>I've read a few commentators who have made the argument that "we nominated the moderate and he still lost, just like in '08, we should nominate a real conservative next time" or that Mitt was the wrong guy or that the Republicans should embrace social conservatism more. I don't agree with any of that. Like a lot of people, I wasn't a huge Mitt fan at first, but I voted for him in the R primary because I thought he was the most electable of the people who were in the field. And I stil think that's true.</p>
<p>I think the problem for Mitt wasn't that he was a moderate but that he was a moderate who let himself get painted as an extremist. From reading left-leaning social media or watching the DNC, you would think that if Mitt was elected, his first act was going to storm into women's homes and personally flush their pills, when in reality the platform's stance on contraception was limited to not requiring religious institutions who feel contraception is immoral to pay for it, because of that whole freedom of religion thing in the 1st Amendment. If Mitt - an actual moderate - got painted as an extremist, why would anyone think Rick Santorum or Newt would have somehow done better?
</p>
<P>The other big hole in the "MOR CONSERVATIVE!!!" argument is the electoral college. Winning an election means winning swing voters in swing states - people who are by definition in the middle. These people are not going to vote for an extreme candidate, and while motivating your base is important, you need at least some of these people to win. To win in 2016, the right will need to get the votes of people in Ohio and Florida and VA who most likely voted for Obama, possibly twice. I can guarantee that aren't going to vote for Santorum after that.</p>
<p>Another thing i've concluded is that this election suggests that a business person can't become president, because running a business sometimes involves making hard choices - firing people, closing plants, sourcing products from other countries - in order to preserve what is left of the business. And any of those things will get demonized in a teary ad. I love the idea of a businessperson in the oval office, because I think they understand that regulations have costs, and those costs can mean fewer jobs. But it looks like we're probably going to have to stick with career politicians and lawyers and the like, because if you've never actually done anything you can never be criticized for it.</p>
<p>Another thing I've realized is how important personality is. Mitt was routinely joked about as robotic, and it's fair to say he's not the most exciting person. I thought that didn't matter, but it clearly does. I remember hearing one exit poll where the majority of participants stated that the economy was the most important thing, and gave Romney slightly higher points as better on the economy and a few issues. The one thing he lost on was "cares about people like me", and evidently that was how they voted. Feeling one's pain is clearly more important than anything else.</p>
<p>Pre-election, I laughed when Fox's <i>The Five</i> made fun of Obama for skipping White House press conferences while appearing on <i>The View</i> and late night talk shows and doing interviews for <i>Rolling Stone</i> and <i>US Weekly</i>. I'm not laughing now. This was a brilliant strategy - there are a lot of "low information voters" - especially young ones - who get their news from The Daily Show and Reddit and Facebook. Obama was there, and whatever Republican runs in 2016 needs to be there too if they want to win. They need for people who don't watch the news or follow politics to realize that they aren't as far out as they get portrayed.</p>
<p>Obviously, there were a lot of tactical mistakes - Republicans need a better ground game. They need to start running ads early. They need to never, ever, ever bring up rape. But I think there are also a few other things they can focus on. Now, granted, I think whenever people offer suggestions of what they should have done, they usually sum to "they should have taken my position on everything", and this is probably no different.</p>
<p>I'd love to see more of an emphasis on state's rights - on doing things at a state level - and I think the success of certain ballot initiatives is a great opportunity for that. Maine and Maryland legalized gay marriage, and Colorado and Washington legalized pot. The right has always promoted state rights, and here's a great way to put it into action - by not going after states that legalized weed, and by declaring that states should decide the gender rules for marriage, the same way they decide things like age and if cousins can marry. I realize social conservatives don't like gay marriage, but when you look at the demographics it's inevitable - support by people under 30 is around 70%. The sooner we accept that, the sooner we can focus on things we actually can change. </p>
<p>Another area I think the right is on the right side of is education reform. The Chicago teacher's strike was interesting, because it pitted a former Obama chief of staff against one of their most reliable constituencies, the teacher's union. Governors like Bobby Jindal and, well, Jeb Bush, have done some really good things with charter schools. Maybe Republicans can propose something like Race to the Top, but promoting charter schools. It promotes free market solutions, and it puts Republicans on the side of poor kids. It's an area where the right can actually make a difference, politically and by doing good.</p>
<p>And then there is immigration reform. I've read some people who argue that it would help Republicans, because a lot of Hispanics share the same values as others on the right, and some who argue that they don't so it won't help. Will it help politically? I think so - sure, it won't get all the voters, but it will help move a few over, and that may be enough to win an election. More importantly, it's an important issue that needs to be solved. Plus, it will prevent another primary debate exchange like the one where Rick Perry and Mitt argued about the immigration status of Mitt's landscapers, or something. </p>
<p>So those are my most likely incoherent thoughts. We'll see if I can hold off on posting any more for the next few years.</p>mad anthonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08519254889846251231noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6085235.post-48882309729900187992012-11-05T21:38:00.000-05:002012-11-05T21:38:56.677-05:00One quick political and prediction post<p>When I first started blogging nearly a decade ago, I wrote heavily about politics. I've pretty much stopped writing about politics, even though I'm at least as interested as I used to be. I figured that there are a lot of people who do this for a living and can write about it better than me, and I also figured that most of my readers are people I know who are unlikely to be swayed - those who agree with me will nod in agreement, those who don't will still be convinced that I'm dumb/racist/whatever, and those who don't really care still won't care. </p><p>
But with the polls for the presidential election opening in 10 hours, I figured I'd put up one post, with my predictions and thoughts.
</p><p>
Right now, I'd say there is probably a slightly higher chance Obama will win rather - probably 60/40. The polls, especially in the swing states, are certainly leaning Obama. At the same time, I think there are legitimate questions about the polls - many seem to oversample Democrats, they assume turnout will be the same as '08, which was unusually high for D's and low for R's. Keep in mind that in '04, the exit polls were way off, and exit polls are considered more reliable than pre-election phone polls since they sample people who actually voted, not people who may not vote or may change their mind.
</p><p>
I think it's going to be close - I would not be surprised if I go to sleep tomorrow night not knowing who won. It also wouldn't surprise me if Obama wins but loses the popular vote.
</p><p>
I'd love to see Romney lose Ohio and still win, because it would get the focus off Ohio, which I'm tired of hearing about, and which I think has too much political weight. I know every Republican in decades hasn't won without winning Ohio, but until this year's primary no Republican had won the primary after losing New Hampshire and Iowa.
</p><p>
As most people know, I'm a faithful Republican, so it's no secret I'm hoping Romney wins, for a lot of reasons. But there are two main reasons for it. The first is the economy, and specifically the current administration's attitude towards business. I know it's trendy to hate business, but the reality is they create jobs and provide employment - and pay the taxes and donations that pay the salaries of those who work for government or non-profits. I think Obama believes that you can continue to increase taxes and regulations on business with no negative effects, and I disagree. When you create regulations like Obamacare that impose high costs for businesses that employ over 50 people, you provide a pretty strong incentive for businesses to stay at 49 employees. I can't imagine a President Romney feeling the need to make a speech (to use the most charitable interpretation) declaring that businesses that are successful got that way not through intelligence or hard work, but rather because the government provides roads and bridges and teachers - all of which are funded by taxes paid for by those businesses and their employees.
</p><p>
The second reason is entitlement reform. Sure, it would be great if we could leave Medicare and Social Security the way they are, but the reality is that the math doesn't work - you can't keep a system that mostly keeps the same assumptions of lifespan and health care cost from the 30's and 60's when you have fewer people to pay for it and longer lifespans and higher medical care costs to pay for in 2012. I'm not sure the Romney/Ryan plan goes far enough, but at least it's a start, and at least it puts on the table a problem that's been going on for decades but that nobody has had the nerve to address. For a party that considers themselves progressive, the left sure seems reluctant to make any changes to entitlements despite the fact that the world and numbers around them have changed.
</p><p>
If Obama wins, I'll be disappointed, and I think our economy in the short term and long term will be worse off than under a Romney win. But life will go on, the sun will continue to rise, and we'll still live in the best country in the world, with a standard of living that the richest person couldn't imagine a few decades ago. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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mad anthonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08519254889846251231noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6085235.post-63722791946075996082012-11-04T11:19:00.001-05:002012-11-04T11:19:35.381-05:00Fine, I guess I am a crazy cat guy...<p>At least once a week, I find myself having this conversation with my coworkers:</p>
<p>
coworker: You are a cat guy, aren't you? I mean, you've got cats?
</p><p>
mad anthony: I have one cat. Geez. Why does everyone think I'm some kind of crazy cat person.
</p><p>
But maybe I'm just trying to escape reality. Last weekend, I walked out my front door to a distressing sight - a cat hiding in my bushes that had been hit by a car. Twenty three hours, $960, and a lot of crying later, I ended up having to have him put to sleep.
</p><p>
When I've told this to people, or blogged about, most people tell me that I'm a good person, that I did the right thing, that most people wouldn't have done as much. But a few people look at me with a kind of puzzled expression. Not coincidently, everyone in that second group doesn't have a cat, or in many cases any pets.
</p><p>
I never planned on getting a cat. But about 5 years ago, one of the student employees at the college I work out found some kittens behind one of the dorms, and needed a home for one of them quickly. I somehow got talked into seeing the kitten, who promptly fell asleep on my lap. Every time I picked her up to get up she would instantly get back up and fall back asleep on my lap. I took it as a sign, took her home, and named her Nibbler, after Leela's pet/superintellegent alien in the show Futurama.
</p><p>
And as I write this, she's still napping on my lap, perched between my chest and my Macbook Pro. She's quite a bit bigger now, though.
</p><p>
And in those years she's become a huge part of my life. She's the first living thing i see in the morning- and I usually feel her before I see her, because she's often curled up against my legs in bed, or occasionally on top of them. She comes running to the door when I come home. When I'm home she's often curled up on my lap, or running around whatever room I'm in.
</p><p>
And yet, she asks for so little. A half-cup of kibble that I suspect is made from meat-factory floor sweepings every night, some water, and a place to poop. I can leave her at home while I'm at work or the gym or out looking for eBay inventory, and she doesn't mind. I leave her at home for days while I'm visiting the parents out of state or taking the occasional work training trip, with a friend who lives nearby checking on her a few times, and she's fine.
</p><p>
Dog people often don't understand cat people, because cats don't exhibit the same eager affection as dogs. But they are a lot lower maintenance, and when they are affectionate you feel like you've earned it. I figure if my cat is spending time with me, it's because she wants to.
</p><p>
I don't always do well with people. I'm an introvert, I'm a bit socially awkward. I'm 32 and still single, and while I still hope at some point to meet someone, start a family, ect, for now my cat fills at least part of that hole in my life. She doesn't care if I'm short or have bad posture or don't always know the right thing to say.
</p><p>
And that's why I hoped that I could save the cat I found on my front lawn last weekend - because I knew how much better my cat has made my life, and wanted to do the same for another cat.
</p><p>
It's also why I think I might actively look into getting a second cat. My general thought has been that if another cat came into my life and didn't have another option, I'd adopt it. I came close once, with a kitten that showed up on a friend's porch, but he found another home. It's not something I would do until at least January - since I'll be out of town for Thanksgiving and Christmas - but maybe it's finally time to embrace my crazy cat guy ness and have cats instead of a cat. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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mad anthonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08519254889846251231noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6085235.post-55383879651224069582012-10-29T11:40:00.002-04:002012-10-29T11:43:02.511-04:00Rest in Peace, Sandy, my cat for 23 hours<p>Well, I had to put him to sleep, as they euphemistically call it. He was my cat for 23 hours, from when I found him in my bushes at noon on Sunday to when he gave his last meow sometime before 11am today. He spent the night in my spare bathroom, refusing to come out of the carrier, and was not eating and peeing blood. I was reluctant to name him, because I knew he might not make it, but I couldn't help but to think of him as Sandy, after the hurricane that's going on outside. </p><p>
I took him to a vet this morning that had a doctor who could do an amputation, but after looking at him and his test results, and his bloody urine, her verdict was that he probably had internal injuries, might not make it through surgery, and would probably be miserable even if he survived. </p><p>
I don't know anything about his life before he showed up in my bushes, but the vet said he was probably 7-10 years old based on his teeth, was probably someone's pet at one point since he was neutered and friendly. So I hope at least some of those years were full of warm laps and sunbeams and kibble and empty cardboard boxes.</p><p>
I've had a lot of people, from facebook friends to the vets, that I'm a great person for doing as much as I did. I don't agree. What I am is someone who feels guilty when he's presented with an opportunity on his doorstep - literally - to do the right thing, and doesn't. In a way, it was as much for me as it was for Sandy. </p><p>
<p>They asked me if I wanted his ashes, and I decided to take them - I figure it would be appropriate to scatter them in the bushes where I found him. I know it's cheesy, but...</p>
So what have I learned from this? There's always the cliche that any death reminds us - that life is short, it can end at any time, and that we need to cherish every moment and our loved ones. I'd like to believe I'll take that to heart, but I suspect I won't.
</p><p>
More practically, though, there are a couple things. I'm going to get Nibbler microchipped next time I take her to the vet, because if she ever escaped I'd want to know what happened to her. It also made me realize I should write my own living will - trying to decide what to do about this cat's life was one of the most painful decisions I've had to make, and I don't want anyone to go through it from me. Thirdly, I'm probably going to adopt another cat - I've been nervous about introducing another cat to Nibbler, but I've also maintained if another one came into my life I'd give it a home. I'll probably wait until after Christmas break, but I think it's time for me to be proactive about it.
</p><p>
I'm not sure why Sandy picked my bushes to hide in, but I hope I made the last 23 hours of his life better than it otherwise would have been. </p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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mad anthonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08519254889846251231noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6085235.post-51722433752698858822012-10-28T22:02:00.000-04:002012-10-28T22:03:24.716-04:00On very expensive, purring things found in my front yard..<p>So this morning, around noon, I headed out the door to go to church, hit the gym, and possibly early vote. That's when I heard a rustling in the hideous little ornamental garden that's outside my front basement window - and was rather surprised to see a pair of cat eyes looking back at me. I walked towards the cat, and he ran away - if you can use the word "run" for a cat who can't use his back legs. </p>
<p>
He scampered under another bush in my neighbor's yard. I put out some food, grabbed Nibbler's cat carrier, but had no luck getting him to come out. Luckily, one of my neighbors who has cats came home, and I grabbed him and got him to help me catch the cat and took him to a 24 hour emergency vet.
</p><p>
When we got him out of the carrier, it was pretty obvious what was wrong - his one leg pretty much had the bones poking out. He was hit by a car. Vet basically said it would probably make sense to euthanize, but they could do some tests and x-rays. I didn't want to make the call to kill him without giving him a chance, so I said to go ahead with the bloodwork. Bloodwork came back OK, so they did x-rays. Verdict was that he will need a leg amputated, the other one bandaged, at a cost of several thousand. I wasn't really ready to commit to that, but I didn't want to have him put to sleep without giving him a shot. So the vet suggested bandaging him up, and having me take him to a normal vet tomorrow. So I decided to that.
</p><p>
So now I have one bandaged stray cat locked in my second bathroom. He's currently mostly in the carrier, presumably wacked out on the pain meds they gave him. Nibbler, my cat, seems freaked out by the other cat's presence.
</p><p>
The other concern is the weather - we're about to get hit by Hurricane Sandy. My work is already closed for tomorrow. I'm hoping I can find a vet that is open tomorrow that morning that can do the surgery, or at least change the bandages.
</p><p>
So why am I doing this? I feel like I need to do something - I guess I'm hoping that he picked my yard to hide in for a reason, and that it's meant to be. Which is probably a stupid idea - when I was in college, I had a faculty member who made fun of "touchdown Jesus" - the idea that, if there is a God, he actually cares if your team wins the game. I find the idea of a micro-managing God unlikely.
</p><p>
But I don't think I could live with myself if I didn't do everything within reason to help him. I have quite a bit of money in savings - I have a decent job, I live frugally, so I've saved enough that I can spend a few thousand dollars. It's mostly a question if I should, but it looks like I'm on the path to do that. I figure some people like to spend their extra money on travel, or motorcycles, or home improvement projects - none of which particularly interest me. I don't have a spouse or kids depending on me, so I can be free-er with how I spend my money.
</p><p>
So hopefully he'll pull through, hopefully he'll get along with Nibbler, hopefully I'll be able to get him to a vet tomorrow. As I said, I'm not always sure if there is a God, let alone if He cares about cats, but if you do the praying thing feel free to keep him and me in your prayers - or at least grant me some wisdom</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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. mad anthonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08519254889846251231noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6085235.post-6768470845412071782012-09-30T23:23:00.001-04:002012-09-30T23:23:16.312-04:00Why is thrift seen as a vice when it comes to dating?HowAboutWe's Date Report has an article on <a href="http://www.howaboutwe.com/date-report/8-dating-money-habits-you-shouldnt-be-cool-with/">8 dating money habits that should be a red flag</a>. Numbers 1 through 7 are pretty basic and obvious - if someone is always broke, can't pay their bills, can't pay for a date, can't pay child support, it's pretty fair to conclude that they aren't particularly financial responsible, and that could be a problem for a long term relationship.
Number 8, though, is the opposite - "Pinches his Pennies". The author includes an example of this. So what egregious violation did this guy do to put him in the same league as the guy who got his phone shut off? He suggested she show her student ID to get a discount at the movies. How cheap - I mean, he totally made enough to pay the extra buck, and how embarrassing.
Maybe it's just because I'm a fellow cheapskate, but I can't understand what's wrong with this. It's not like it took a whole lot of effort for her to take out her ID. I fail to see the virtue in paying more than you have to for an item, and I can't understand why someone would be embarrassed to take advantage of a discount. It's not like the ticket seller in the box office has never seen someone get a student discount before.
Look, I realize that there are situations where someone is clearly cheap - where they give up basic pleasures to save a tiny amount of money. But he didn't suggest dumpster diving for a date or refuse to turn on the heat in the dead of winter. A movie ticket purchased with a student discount buys the same seat in the same movie as one without it, but it costs less. Win-Win.
All the other examples she gives of the horrors of dating a penny pincher are in the same vein - clipping coupons, shopping at Costco, driving around to find cheaper gas. They all take a minimal amount of work, give you the same item, and save you some money. Money that you can use for paying your rent and phone bill and for dates and child support and all those other things that guys 1-7 never could do, probably because they spent more money than they had to on other things. FWIW, I do clip coupons, I used to shop at Costco but found it wasn't worth it for me because a single dude doesn't really need the quantities they sell, and don't drive around looking for cheap gas because it usually costs more to drive my gas-guzzling pickup there than I save.
The other dating money advice you always seem to see is to never use a coupon on a date, especially a first date. (I've never done it, but I've also never had a date at a place I had a coupon for). I've never really understood why this is so bad, assuming it's a flat dollar-off coupon for a place you both want to go to, and not some complicated coupon that restricts you to certain items or is for a place that sucks. Once again, same food, a few more bucks in your pocket.
I think it's unfortunate that being frugal is looked at as some sort of flaw when it comes to dating. Yes, there is a point where it goes too far, but the examples in this article don't. To me, refusing to take advantage of easy ways to save money and instead throwing money away is what should be seen as a flaw.
Then again, maybe this is a good way of weeding out potential dates and mates. After all, there has to be some woman somewhere who also understands the value of a dollar, and by showing my frugality maybe I'll find her. We can enjoy long walks around the clearance endcaps of Target holding our sheaf of coupons and spend hours staring into each other's eyes while camping out for Black Friday sales. mad anthonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08519254889846251231noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6085235.post-754715364253488842012-07-01T23:46:00.000-04:002012-07-01T23:47:41.131-04:00Who has two thumbs and isn't buying a new car (at least right now)? This Guy!<p>The post title was the first thing I thought when I saw an article on Edmunds about<a href="http://www.edmunds.com/industry-center/commentary/whos-not-buying-new-cars.html">who isn't buying new cars</a>. Especially since the answer, evidently, is, young adults age 18 to 34, a group that I am a member of, at least for the next couple years. </p>
<p>
The Atlantic had a similar article a few months back <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/03/why-dont-young-americans-buy-cars/255001/">that attributed it mainly to urban flights</a>, claiming that the youth of America are moving to cities and taking public transportation.
</p><p>
I'm not so sure this is true - my gut instinct is that I don't actually know anyone in my age group who doesn't own a car, even those who live in urban areas. Of course, most of this subset is my coworkers, who work with me in an area that isn't particularly public-transportation friendly. I'm sure that there are some young hipsters who are carless, but I'm not sure there are enough of them to have a major impact on new car sales.
</p><p>
I'm more likely to suspect that a lot of people in my age group are either buying used cars, inheriting cars from family members and keeping them, or keeping their current cars longer.
</p><p>
Part of it is that cars are lasting longer. I remember growing up in the 80's, when a car making it to 100k was kind of a big deal. Now, it's pretty commonplace. I also think that a lot of the people who are actually passionate about cars are gravitating towards used cars, where they can get much nicer or more interesting vehicles for the price of a new one. Lots of people are also happier to take a used car and modify it.
</p><p>
And I do think that for a lot of young people, the car has become an appliance. If it works, there isn't much reason to replace it. And with cars lasting longer, it works longer.
</p><p>
But maybe part of it is that there just isn't much out there that young people want to buy. I probably can't project my own preferences to the majority of car buyers, although I suspect that there are some <a href="http://jalopnik.com/ford-ranger/">Jalopnik readers</a> who would agree. I drive a 2006 Ford Ranger, and while I've pondered replacing it for the last couple years, I can't really bring myself to do so. Part of this is that I'm a notorious cheapskate who prefers to log onto my online banking and stare at the numbers rather than actually spend money. But part of it is that there really isn't anything that I really want. It's been the most reliable vehicle I've owned so far (knock on wood). It does what I need it to do, which is mostly get me to work and to haul stuff from the occasional auction or to the occasional flea market. It looks pretty good. Sure, I'd love to have leather seats and a stereo with actual MP3 player compatibility instead of a tape deck. But I think I'd rather have $30k more in the bank. I don't know what I would replace it with - nobody really makes a small pickup anymore - I'm pretty much limited to a Nissan Frontier or GM's ancient Colorado/Canyon. I don't want a full size truck - I like the slightly better gas milage, easier maneuverability (I work in the city, and suck at parking), and lower price of a compact truck.
</p><p>
So maybe part of the problem isn't credit, or people moving to cities, but rather that car companies aren't making anything that young people actually want to buy. Figuring out what that is and making it is going to do much more than offering small cars in colors with names like "Denim" (which Chevy is doing, according to the Atlantic article).</p>mad anthonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08519254889846251231noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6085235.post-12856963718072692942012-06-04T23:44:00.001-04:002012-06-04T23:45:39.789-04:00Are we making learning a little too fun?<p>So as part of madanthony's day job in technology for higher ed, he occasionally goes to conferences - they are a great way to meet other people who are dealing with similar challenges in deploying technology, finding out the latest and greatest products, and scooping up a bunch of free pens from vendors. A few weeks ago, I went to one for a group that included schools ranging from grade school to higher ed, so the keynote presentation touched on elementary and high school and looked at how the Microsoft Kinect - the motion detector for the XBox 360 - could be integrated into education. Many of the ideas were actually pretty cool - using it for supplementary lessons at recess time, using it to interact with autistic kids who otherwise had trouble interacting with people, using it in gym class. But at one point they showed it being used in place of multiplication tables in a classroom, while the peppy video narrator intoned that it was the job of the teacher to engage students and make learning fun. </p><p>
And that got me thinking - is it really? Now, I'll confess I'm probably completely unqualified to speak about educational technology. It's been a long time since I've been a student, I don't have kids, and I dropped out of an educational technologies master's degree program after 2 classes, mostly because I got tired of hearing the word "pedagogy". </p><p>
But the grumpy old man in me wonders if we should be making learning fun, or if we're just setting kids up for disappointment in the future. After all, learning isn't always fun. At some point in their lives, they won't be able to figure out quadratic equations or try to understand Heigel with the help of an XBox 360 - they'll actually need to sit down and read a book or work out a problem on a piece of paper. And if they've never done that with the easy stuff - because their teachers have been more focused on "engaging" them than on getting them to do real work, they aren't going to be able to do the hard stuff.
</p><p>
Part of school is learning the stuff that you are taught. But part of learning is also about learning how to learn, and about developing a work ethic - about learning that if you want the rewards of having learned stuff, you have to do the not-always-fun work part of studying or doing homework - not just playing video games. Some economists have argued that college degrees exist more as a "signaling mechanism" than anything else - they show that a young person can buckle down, and prioritize enough on their own, to do what is necessary to get a degree. That's why there is value in degrees that don't necessarily translate to real-life skills or jobs, like Philosophy or English. </p><p>
But I think the habits that get you through college come much earlier - like when you are in grade school - and that part of it is learning that life isn't always fun, that sometimes you need to do things that aren't fun - like multiplication tables. I think it's more the student's responsibility to become engaged, or at least to put up with doing the work, than it is the teacher to act like some sort of Master of Ceremonies keeping students "engaged". I think a continued emphasis on the classroom as variety show is going to lead to more kids who can't focus, who can't sit down and complete a long and unpleasant but necessary task, and who thus can't survive in the real world.</p>mad anthonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08519254889846251231noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6085235.post-43638466250975215282012-06-02T22:34:00.000-04:002012-06-02T22:35:24.991-04:00the pursuit of crappyness...<p>So about two months ago, I found myself hurtling downhill on a curvy mountain road in the middle of rural Pennsylvania at about 1 am. I realized I was going way too fast, and slammed on the brakes as I steered. This caused an avalanche of toner cartridges - which were previously stacked on the passenger seat of my 6 year old Ford Ranger pickup - to fall over on me. As I struggled to remain in control of the "Danger Ranger" while holding a stack of HP 4500 color cartridges, I found myself wondering "why the hell am I doing this?"</p>
<p>What "this" was was driving home from a semi-annual auction that I go to 3 hours from my house. The auction consists entirely of tech stuff, starts at 5pm, and typically runs past midnight. I go primarily looking for eBay-able items, like the aforementioned toner, as well as the occasional item I can sell at hamfest (a swap meet for ham radio and computer types, typically held at various area fairgrounds). </p>
<p>In the last couple years, I've been ramping up my resale hobby, to the point where it consumes a sizable amount of my free time, and much of the living area of my house. It makes me a modest profit, but I suspect if I really took the time to figure out my expenses, and account for my time, I'd be surprised just how modest it is. The biggest challenge - besides the time and effort it takes to describe, list, pack, and ship stuff, or to drag a truckload of stuff to a hamfest in west nowhere in time for a 6am setup - is finding stuff to sell. That has meant driving further, as well as going to more auctions and the like. Most of them are a bust, or net me a few things, but every now and then I hit one that turns out amazing - and the only way for that to happen is to hit a lot of turds, where I scratch my head wondering why someone just paid $150 for an item that goes for $20 on eBay. </p>
<p>Why do I do it? I suspect there are a few reasons - I feel like I should take advantage of any opportunity to make a few bucks - make hay while the sun shines so you have some for a rainy day, to torture a series of metaphors. To me, passing up a chance to make money is a character flaw. It gives me an awesome feeling when I buy something that turns out to be very profitable - especially if I know that there were 10 or 100 other people who looked at the same item and passed on it. It gives me something to do - as a single guy I have lots of free time on my hands, and I might as well do something with it, something that makes money. </p>
<p>But it does lead to some other questions, like if I could be doing something better with that time - working out more, reading more, developing friendships, not being single. I suspect that my hobby doesn't make for the best first-date conversation, and having a house that looks more like a storage locker than a townhouse is probably not great for entertaining. And there's also the question of why do I need more money - I'm no longer saving for a specific, definite goal - at this point it's more just a way of keeping score. </p>
<p>On the other hand, there are some indefinite goals to save for - I'll eventually want or need to replace the Danger Ranger, even if I don't drive it off a cliff in a puff of toner. I do hope, at some point, to meet someone and have a family, and that takes money - but it also takes doing things other than going to auctions or writing eBay descriptions. And I've been thinking of going back to grad school - to a program that I'd have to pay for, and that costs more than I have in the bank right now. So in the short term, it may be desirable to keep banking bank, because if I do decide to do the program it will both cost money and eat up the free time I currently spend making money.
</p><p>
So right now, I'll probably keep pursing crap I can resell. But I'll try to take the downhills a little slower.</p>mad anthonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08519254889846251231noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6085235.post-5681628119338101572012-05-20T22:45:00.001-04:002012-05-20T22:45:32.497-04:00eBay, or the hard way to make an easy living...When it comes to TV, my new favorite genre of shows has been "people who buy crap and resell it for a profit". It's like they made a show about my life, only with more interesting people and on a bigger scale. You know the shows I'm talking about - Storage Wars, Auction Hunters, Baggage Battles, American Pickers, ect. There is plenty of debate about how real these reality shows are - if the lockers are "salted" or whatnot, and the characters on Storage Wars admitted on one of the background episodes that for everything that makes it on the show there are a ton that don't - which I imagine are the ones where all the lockers turn out to be filled with pr0n and broken dishes.
But besides the selective editing, there is the selective pricing. I remember one of the first episodes of "Auction Hunters", where they find an old Atari in the box and declare that it's worth $200. That seemed a little off to me - video game systems being one of the things I'm always on the lookout for for resale - and it was - they typically go for about $60 on eBay, and that's if it's got a bunch of games with it. Even for the stuff that gets estimates, the tricky part is always finding a buyer - I've bought a ton of things that would cost a bunch new, but were very difficult to resell at all, let alone at a profit.
There's another episode of Storage Wars where Dave Hester buys a trailer full of books for $900, scans a couple with his phone and says they are worth $30 each, and eventually based on some off the top of his head accounting declares that he's going to get $30,000 for the trailer's contents. Which is the other problem with these shows - the used book business can be profitable if you get the right books, but it's a ton of work to go through that many books, list them, and ship them all out one at a time. It means spending a ton of time (which costs money), plus supplies and the like. The other thing with the book business is that many of the books that are listed on used sites like half.com never get purchased - if you go to list a book, it will tell you what it's sold for in the past - and often, it doesn't have any data because nobody has ever bought that book. A few months ago, I purchased 150 music books from a bankrupt music store. After fees, I paid around $150 for the lot - plus the gas to drive 4 hours to pick them up (and a bunch of other stuff). Looking at my figures, so far I've gotten about $93 of that back gross, selling around 22 books - that's $93 before fees, packing supplies, ect. I'll probably eventually make back what I spent, but it will take years.
My primary selling venues are hamfests and eBay. Hamfests have their own plusses and minuses, but it's eBay that I have the bigger love/hate relationship with. I've found some items that I've made hundreds of dollars on reselling on eBay - there is no other venue that compares to it for getting a national audience. But aside from the general disadvantages of being a reseller - squirreling away inventory and salvaged packing supplies until my house looks like something like hoarders, spending all my spare time at auctions and yard sales - eBay has been making piles of seller-unfriendly changes. It started several years ago, when they took away the ability of sellers to leave negative feedbacks for buyers who tried to scam them or didn't pay, and when they blocked sellers from taking cashier's checks or money orders - the payments that when eBay launched were the only way to pay. While few of my buyers paid that way, anything that takes away a single bidder takes money out of my pocket. They started charging fees on the shipping and handling portion of sales - meaning that when I sell a heavy amplifier or desktop PC, eBay gets a bigger cut just because the item is heavier and costs me more to ship. And now they've mandated that power sellers who want their fees discounted from outrageously high to just high have to offer a 14-day return period and 1-day handling time, and if your stats don't measure up you don't ge the discount. This is, of course, a pain to the bulk of eBay part-timers like myself who are also trying to balance real day jobs, lives, and the like. It's also especially inconvenient for people selling items that take a bit of time to package - if you are selling a pair of pants, you can just throw them in an envelope, but packing a used 40-pound piece of audio gear requires some time and lots of bubble wrap.
Obviously, eBay wants to be Amazon or Wal-mart- they are trying to be a retailer, and giving breaks to big sellers of new items. But eBay was founded on individuals selling oddball items. I rarely buy off eBay, but when I do it's the oddball item - my Tivo (a lifetime subscription series 2 with a modded giant hard drive) or a pair of plaid pants. From a selling perspective, most of what I've been able to make money on lately has been business, office, and industrial equipment and accessories - the kind of stuff that's worthless to most people but useful and expensive to a few.
I suspect I'll be selling stuff on eBay for a long time. But I also suspect that I'll be selling less - that I'll continue to pass up the smaller items that used to be worth selling because the profit margin won't be worth the headache. And eBay will probably see that and go even more to be less funky flea market and more Wal-Mart - and while I'm not one of those people who thinks Wal-Mart is evil, I do think the internet needs both Wal-Marts and flea markets.mad anthonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08519254889846251231noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6085235.post-61615305765502887362012-04-06T23:44:00.003-04:002012-04-07T00:04:29.731-04:00If I stole a million dollars, I'd spend it on better stuff...So last weekend, I was doing what I do every weekend - reading the auction listings in the <i>Baltimore Sun</i> while drinking my morning coffee. And I came across an ad for a "court-ordered auction to recover assets for criminal restitution". The auction company conducting the auction has done a few other auctions I've been to, and I've scored some good deals at them. So with visions of drug-dealer type property coming up for auction - gold chains, giant flat screens, Range Rovers on twenty-six inch rims - i went to the website. <a href="http://www.americanaai.com/gallery_single.asp?g=80">And what I found wasn't drug dealer bling at all</a>. It looked like a hoarder's house full of old-lady stuff. The only TV's were ancient CRT's. So why was some old lady's crap being sold at auction?<br /><br />The auction listing gave a case number, which I plugged into the <a href="http://casesearch.courts.state.md.us/inquiry/inquiry-index.jsp">Maryland Judiciary Case Search</a>, which gave me little except that the crime was embezzlement - and the name of the embezzler. Which I googled, and found out that the criminal was a <a href="http://www.abc2news.com/dpp/news/crime_checker/carroll_county_crime/alzheimer's-patient-fleeced-in-carroll-county">69-year old woman who ripped off close to a million dollars from an Alzheimer's patient</a>. And, with the exception of a couple cars, spent most of that million dollars on crap she mail-ordered from QVC. Crap that, if you feel like going to an auction in a couple weeks, you can probably buy for pennies on the dollar. <br /><br />I'm coming back from Vegas the night before, so I'll probably sit this one out, although otherwise I'd probably go just for morbid curiosity. But it does make you think - who steals from the elderly so they can buy crap from QVC? I can understand and agree with stealing bread to feed your starving kid. I can understand - but not agree - with stealing to live like some kind of rap video superstar, with blinged out cars and chicks in bikinis. But stealing to have a housefull of ugly clothes and "collectible" dolls? I think that there has to be something deeply psychologically wrong with you. I haven't been too sympathetic to critics who <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/06/the-genius-of-qvc/8091/1/">have accused QVC of, well, selling people crap they shouldn't be buying</a>- but maybe there is something to it. Not that I think QVC is doing something wrong, anymore than Anheiser-Busch is doing something wrong by selling beer - but that, like alcoholics, there are really shopaholics, people who feel a deep compulsion to buy stuff, and will go to any length to get their fix - including stealing from helpless old ladies.mad anthonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08519254889846251231noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6085235.post-72851353442888145892012-04-06T16:29:00.003-04:002012-04-06T17:15:48.185-04:00Just because i'm for smaller government doesn't mean I like to torture puppies...One of Megan McCardle's guest bloggers had an article a couple weeks ago <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/03/science-asks-why-cant-we-all-just-get-along/254644/">on research suggesting that part of the reason people of different political bents don't get along</a> is because they often don't really understand how they think. It was based on a study where liberals and conservatives were asked to answer a bunch of questions, and then answer how they think the other side would answer.<br /><br />One of the more interesting quotes was this: <i>he biggest errors in the whole study came when liberals answered the care and fairness questions while pretending to be conservatives. When faced with statements such as <b> "one of the worst things a person could do is hurt a defenseless animal"</b> or "justice is the most important requirement for a society," liberals assumed that conservatives would disagree.</i><br /><br />Wow. I hope this really isn't how people on the left see me. It seemed kind of ironic that I read this while holding Nibbler the cat and my laptop precariously on my lap. <br /><br />I have plenty of friends and acquaintances who are to the left of me. Many may think I'm wrong in my views, or that I'm ignorant, or that I put too much faith in the individual and in effort and in individual rights, and that's fine. But I hope they don't think I'm a bad person for those views. Because, by the same token, I often think they are misguided, that they put too much faith in government, that they don't put enough faith in the individual, or the constitution. But I also think that they believe they are doing the right thing, that they feel their policies will make people most people better off without major negative impacts. I usually think they are wrong. But I don't think they are bad people.<br /><br />Maybe part of it is that I tend to be surrounded by people with views different than mine - I live in a blue state, I work in higher ed, that great bastion of liberal thought. Maybe it's that my views don't always fit perfectly into the typical conservative box - I tend to be fiscally conservative and hawkish on defense, but also much more liberal/libertarian on some social issues. But I've come to realize many of the people I know on the left are also not as easily categorized as one would expect - that even people i generally disagree with on most issues hold some views that are identical to my own on other issues. <br /><br />I'm not suggesting that everyone should compromise, that all political debates should be completely civil, that nobody should stake out a position all the way to the right or the left and hold on to it. What I'm suggesting is that when someone has a view that is different than ours, that we should assume they hold the wrong view for all the right reasons, that they aren't bad people for having a different view of how the government should work or what it's power should be or, when there is a conflict between two different rights, which one should take precedence.mad anthonyhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08519254889846251231noreply@blogger.com0