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Jagular

Monday, February 05, 2007

Coming Soon...

I just really don't like the new blogger very much.
I am trying to though. It's not my fault if it sucks.
Maybe I'm just being closed minded. But what's wrong with that? I mean, if you are right, why be open to change?
If you have set things up how you want them and then someone comes along and changes it, I don't see how that's a good thing.
Especially if they repeatedly ask you, you say no, and then they force the change.

I'm sure Google spent a lot of money working on it. I'm sure that they are proud of it. But what they don't seem to realize is that I am an asshole.

Coming soon...Jagular 2.0

Conversations at Work

Female Coworker #1: Nag, Nag, Nag, Bitch, Moan, bitch, moan, gripe, gripe, gripe, sizzle, spark, spark, SPIT! (stomps off in a huff)

Female Coworker #2: Whell...

Female Coworker #3: What's her problem?

Jagular: Y'all be nice. She's going through a tough time in a woman's life.

Coworker #2: What time is that?

Jagular: Thirteen to Thirty-five.

Oops, Blogger Finally Caught Me

Ok, so I've been altering cookies, backdoor bookmarking, storing funny caches, and hiding from google in general so they wouldn't make me update from the old blogger. But they finally caught me. The gig is up.
Blogger Beta has finally forced me to update.

And what I feared about it is all true.

I hate it.

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Saturday, February 03, 2007

Lost and Found

Lost: One blog. White with green borders, and has many words written on it. Last seen at this address.
If you have seen this blog anywhere floating around the web, please call or write to me. This blog is sick and needs it's medication.

The IPhone

Friday, February 02, 2007

Good News, Good News, and More Good News

Today is Good News day.

I have been waiting for my auto insurance to post to my account. It is set up for auto deduction or I would never pay it. It finally posted overnight and it was twenty five dollars less than normal. So I went to the website and my rate has been lowered because of how long I have been there. So that twenty five dollars is going into the snowball. happy dance

I am up to 63 wins and 0 losses on Windows Freecell. My new record for a 100% streak.

I recalculated my debt payoff schedule and I am 0.7 paydays ahead of the original schedule due to increased snowball size, larger than expected income tax check, and brownbagging it to cut spending. And that is including having had the extra expense of my mother-in-law's surprise party for her birthday (I was just as surprised as she was. I just knew it would break our budget, but it held together after all.)

I got an email from my muse this morning. She said that she will come to visit me soon. So hopefully I can get my creativity started back again. My book has been sitting there gathering dust for lack of creativity. So has the website I've been working on. My brain has been lying dormant since just before Christmas. I need to coordinate my brain's availability and my work schedule to coincide with the muse's visit so that maybe I can get some things done around here.

The groundhog saw no shadow today. So there should be an early spring. So that's definitely good news.

Thursday, February 01, 2007

Alternative News

Troy, Michigan: The Hooters restaurant wanted to move to a better location. They bought an old run down tavern and spent a million dollars to renovate it. But then the city council declined their request to transfer the liquor licence. They said that because they were trying to promote the Big Beaver commercial district as an upscale shopping area, they didn't want to have another Hooters in town.
So now the old location won't close until the new one is able to sell beer. And the new location draws enough customers even though there is no alcohol served. So the law of unintended consequences has struck again. Instead of getting rid of the Hooters Restaurant, they now have a second location.
Calls to city council members were not returned and Hooters executives declined comment due to pending litigation.

However, a friend of mine in the Thai Food Store had this to say:

Two Hooters is good. Any man find two Hooters is make very happy. Maybe they start Thai food store in Michigan. Then every man go there. Have a Thai food with big beaver and two hooters. Is make very happy man in Michigan.

Credit Card Ambivolence and Other Meaningless Drivel

How many credit card offers do you get in the mail in any given month?
I get a lot. I usually get between three and five of them per day. I think that is a lot. Credit cards don't bother me a whole lot. I have never been much of an impulse shopper. Yes, I know my balance is high. It's the highest it's ever been. But I also have a high income, so it's not really that bad. The balance on my credit cards has never been much more than a tenth of my annual income. I don't think that's too high.
I know that there have been a lot of people who have gotten in some pretty serious credit card debt, so that is what worries me. It seems like one of those things that kind of creeps up on you.
I know I could opt out of prescreened offers for credit, but I never have. I actually enjoy getting credit card offers in the mail. I read the terms that they offer, too.
That's how I got such good cards. I have a different card for different needs. I have one that is zero percent interest on purchases. I have one that is zero percent interest on transfers. I really like one of the banks who gave me a credit card. Every month on your online statement they tell you your credit score and also what you can do to improve it. So I see my transunion score every month for free. It also keeps a chart so you can see which way it is headed. I was amazed at how wildly mine is bouncing around. There's about a fifty point range that it keeps jumping all over.
But my favorite CC is Amex. My Amex is a really good deal. Zero percent on everything, plus 1% cash back, and they gave me twenty five dollars and a high interest savings account to sign up. Plus I can carry a balance on it, even though it's one of the green ones, and then it's still at zero percent. That's the CC that I don't feel guilty about using, because I pay it off on payday and it's cheaper than cash, because of the cash back.
And since impulse buying isn't really my weakness, it doesn't bother me.

What bothers me the most about credit cards is that they are so eager to get your business. That means that they know that they will make their money back in the long run. For example, when you pay for something with a credit card, they charge the vendor a percentage and then they turn around and charge you interest. So they win twice. Even the Amex that I use charges the vendor, and I heard that Amex charges the most fee to the vendor out of all the CC's.

So I've been feeling a bit ambivolent lately about credit cards.
On the one hand, they make things really easy when it comes to managing my finances.
If I need to make a major purchase I can do so without having to have that much cash. So if my AC went out or I needed a new roof on my house I could handle it.
But on the other hand, I really hate being in debt. Even if all of my debt were interest free I would still hate it.

I haven't cut up all of my credit cards like most of the financial advice people tell you to do, mostly because I still intend to build a house, and I want my credit score to be as high as possible. I admit that I don't know as much about credit scores as I should. My Transunion score goes from about 710 to 760, depending on how much balance I am carrying on my debt. Right now it's 720.
My understanding is that that is a good score. I expect that as I pay everything off over the next few months it will go higher.

Does anyone know how high of a credit score I should have if I plan on buying some acreage and building a house? I plan on saving for a year of two first and putting a good chunk of money down on it. Is there a "magic number" that the banks want your credit score to be for you to get a preferable rate? I don't know what my other credit scores are, because I am waiting until after it's been a year since I checked them so that I can check them for free.

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