Saturday, November 7, 2009

Twin Galaxies 11/7/09

I'm sitting at 153 world records at Twin Galaxies at the moment. If any of you play video games and want to compete to have a high score on any games, take a look into Twin Galaxies at www.twingalaxies.com. Its a fun website that is all about setting scores and other people try to beat them. Most of the games require that you record your game play and send the video in to be verified. Tonight I played some Pinball Hall of Fame: The Williams Collection and some Guitar Hero 3: Legends of Rock, both for the XBox 360. At the moment, my fingers are sore from playing Guitar Hero....LOL. I didn't think I would like GH, and it took me a while to finally pick any of them up, ok, it took me being able to find a guitar for 10 dollars and renting one of the games at Blockbuster while we have the GamePass. I rented The Beatles Rock Band as well, and will be being it, whenever it comes way down in price.

Anyway, 3 days until Tot will be here....

Tuesday, February 10, 2009

Why I Love My Wife

So, we aren't buying a car at the moment. We are now cutting down a tree and getting rid of the tree that fell last year. Yep, things change that quickly. We should have an estimate on the tree removal shortly, as in today. I was very impressed when I called the first guy that was recommended to me and he said he would go out to our house and take a look, today. I was rather taken aback by that. Guess the economy really is in a bad enough state that if someone calls you asking for a service to be performed, that the person gets right to it. I'm just hoping he says something less than 1500.

Monday, February 9, 2009

Its Been A While

Yep, its been a while since I posted on here. Everytime I hear people complain about what I type, I tend to rethink what I'm saying on here, and this time it took me longer than normal to come back to it. I'll probably continue to type what I want to type and just not worry about it.

It looks like Susan and I are in the hunt for a new car. This all started last Thursday as we are driving home from work. See, we drive and not exactly the best part of time. Don't get me wrong, its not the worse, by far, but you don't exactly want to have to pull over at any given time either. Well, we were driving home Tuesday and all the gauges stopped working all of the sudden, then all the dashboard lights came on, the radio stopped working, and the engine was about to die. Just as Susan had called her Dad and was telling him all this, we hit a bump. All the sudden, everything just started working again. Well, we take it into the shop Friday. And, guess what, much like people do with me and computers, they couldn't find anything wrong with the car. The battery was fine, the engine checked fine, the altenator was fine. Everything is just working great. So now, Susan and I both have this thought in the back of our heads that the car isn't exactly reliable anymore. When we have plans to drive down to the beach in April and to South Carolina probably in July, we kind of need a car that isn't going to worry us the whole way. So we started looking today. I'm leaning towards a Honda Accord, because of their record and Consumer Reports love them. We were also looking at a Toyota Highlander, but once we actually saw the price on one, that thought was changed rather quickly. There is an Accord at Patty Peck Honda that we will probably end up going to visit. It would fit in well with the color scheme, grey car replacing the grey Taurus. Its also a 6 Cylinder and has 4 doors which is a big plus, and no sun roof, another big plus. There is no telling what we will get for Susan's car, but at this point, it doesn't really matter, we are pretty much going to do this regardless, unless someone can come up with a fool proof plan to make the Taurus better all of the sudden. The only thing bad with this plan is, of course, we have to take the money out of the money market fund. Don't get me wrong, its a great feeling knowing we have the money in the money market fund to cover this, but it would be nicer if we didn't have to spend it. But ce la vi.

Wednesday, November 12, 2008

October 2008 Report - Found Money

Here is our October networth report. Its titled found money because we got our PERS statement in the mail and it had something on it that I don't remember from before, even though it was probably on there the whole time. It actually had a balance showing on the form. So I have added 2 more assests to the networth, Greg's PERS and Susan's PERS. All the number shows is how much we have put into the retirement account, nothing else. If one of us were to leave State employement, this money would be able to be rolled over into another account.

So for the month:

Net Worth: 168,747.19 MTD: +23.18% +31,749.33
Net Worth w/o House: 73,747.19 MTD: +75.6%
Net Worth w/0 House or IRA: 17,278.11 MTD: +28.1%

YTD:
Net Worth: +42.55%
Net Worth w/0 House: +18.20%
Net Worth w/0 House or IRA: -31.73%

If we wouldn't have had the found money, our net worth would have fallen 1.55% and the net worth w/o house would have fallen 5.07%.

Saturday, October 25, 2008

Pooh


To the best kitty ever. We love you and we will miss you!!!!

Ideal Rants at 4am

Why can't I sleep? Its almost 4 am and I'm just starting to get semi-sleepy. Susan and I watched Gone In 60 Seconds starting around 9pm and by the time it was over, I was wide awake. There was no going to sleep at that point.

So anyway, why am I getting into this routine of not sleeping again. Its defenitely not a good routine to be in. It leads to me not wanting to do much at all because I'm tired. But oh well. Guess I'll just turn on another episode of Philly and stay awake a little longer.

The job is the job. I haven't ever really just loved my job and that really did continue this week. Its hard to believe that I have been there 8 3/4th years. Only 16 more to go? I had hoped Disney would make the job a little bit better for a while, but it just kind of made it worse. I just don't understand some things that go on up at that place and I guess I never will. I don't know why my name keeps on getting mentioned for all these "fantasy" jobs, but the jobs never materialize. I also don't know why I have been promised a raise for close to a year now and yet still nothing has happened. I don't know if now is a good time to push that issue or not, but I might go ahead and push it. We will just have to see what happens.

We are looking at going ahead and starting a 403(b) account. We just have to decide on the funds and the amount we want to divert each month. They defentiely don't make it easy. I'm sure the companies do that on purpose in order to try to confuse you in order to hide their fees. Its just crazy!!! Its a whole lot easier to head to Vanguard, all the information is just there!!!!
I'm leaning towards Fidelity at the moment, but we are still looking.

So anyway, I need to go to bed. Aunt Bo, sorry we missed you on the last day, and hope you are feeling better.

Susan, I love you!!!!

Sunday, October 12, 2008

Ron Paul

After listening to more financial TV in the past 2 weeks than I have in my entire life, I will have to say Ron Paul was about the only person making sense during this whole "financial crisis." Its nice to hear someone actually try to make sense during the whole panic deal. Its funny that it was on CNBC because they basically acted like they didn't even hear him. He basically stated that he didn't like seeing his economy turned into a socialist state. He also said he didn't like how Bush used 9/11 to take away our personal rights and the right to privacy. Again, things that actually make sense!!!