Finance Blogs I Read

In my blogroll over in the sidebar, I have several finance blogs listed. I read their posts via Bloglines, usually all at the same time. So I have a fairly poor handle on which blog is which.

Thus this post, describing each one briefly. If I get confused about how they're distinct, I can come back to this post and remind myself. :)

Get Rich Slowly

Written by JD. He writes about his personal experiences with his finances. Readers sometimes write in with questions, which JD answers himself then asks others to give their own opinions in the comments. JD also reviews finance magazines and books.

I Will Teach You To Be Rich

Written by Ramit Sethi, also the co-founder of PBwiki. He interviews finance-related people. He also occasionally does surveys of his readers, then analyzes the results.

Money Smart Life

Written by Ben. This guy is one of the reasons I got myself an American Express Blue Cash credit card.

My Two Dollars

Written by David. He has good, practical tips from his personal experience.

The Simple Dollar

Written by Trent Hamm. In April 2006, he experienced what he calls "a complete financial meltdown." After he educated himself on personal finance and got his stuff in order, he started his blog. Trent sometimes writes book reviews, ending each with a "Buy or Don't Buy" conclusion, which is quite helpful.

Well Heeled

Written by "Wanda". She seems the least hard-core of the bunch, but she's still a good source for seeing what someone more like me is going through. (She says of herself, "On the plus side, I’ve started saving for retirement and I don’t carry a balance on my credit card. On the minus side, I love dining out and generally have a hard time abiding by a budget.") Her blog is more of a description of her financial journeys than the advice-oriented blogs discussed above.

OED! Woot!

When I went to Cal Poly, I had free access to the OED (that is, Oxford English Dictionary, to all you layfolk ;)). But when I graduated, I lost access via my Cal Poly login credentials. Sad panda.

But lo! The Seattle public library also has free access to the OED. Huzzah!

Yes, I am such a language weenie linguistics-phile that renewed access to the OED warrants a blog post. :)

Visiting Family & Obopay

I'm stopping by my apartment to pick up some last-minute almost-forgotten items, then I'm driving down to the SeaTac airport. I'm visiting my family this weekend (the Squirts will both be back from college for the weekend), then doing a big meet-n-greet with the Obopay folks down in Redwood City.

So that's what I'm up to for the next couple days. :)

Robert Frost Meets xkcd

I've always liked Robert Frost. So when the most excellent web comic xkcd spoofed Frost's "Fire and Ice," I just had to share. For those who don't know the poem, I've quoted it below:

1. Some say the world will end in fire,
2. Some say in ice.
3. From what I’ve tasted of desire
4. I hold with those who favor fire.
5. But if it had to perish twice,
6. I think I know enough of hate
7. To know that for destruction ice
8. Is also great
9. And would suffice.

No Post for You!

(5:08:08 PM) Forrest: how come you haven't posted a blog post in a while?

(5:08:12 PM) Forrest: you were on a roll there for a bit

(5:08:14 PM) Arthaey: 'cause I'm a lamer :P

So there it was.

Where's Forrest?

Because Forrest is still finishing up his degree in SLO, we're currently doing the long-distance relationship thing. Not ideal, but it's for a finite amount of time, and we're coping.

One of the ways in which we cope is to chat on the phone, generally at least twice a day. We may or may not both have free time during the middle of day during the work week to chat, but whoever goes to bed first always calls the other one to chat and say goodnight.

That's my routine. My routine is unsettled right now because I want to go to bed, but Forrest isn't answering his new cell phone. That's okay, though; his new cell phone has horrible battery life, so maybe it's dead. But he's not answering his old cell phone, either. That's okay, too; maybe he doesn't carry both on him at the same time. But he's not answering the apartment landline either. That's starting to worry me, since most of our friends have graduated and moved away, so he's not out late much anymore.

So where is he? I don't expect the blogosphere to answer me before I find out. I'm just worrying (now I understand why my mom hates getting late-night calls, since that "must" mean bad news) and I need somewhere to talk to, since there's no someone to talk to right now. :(

Update, 4:30 AM: I finally got a call back from Forrest! Here's the start of our conversation... Me: "I've been trying to call you since midnight." Forrest: "I've been asleep since midnight." Me: "Oh."

Heh. Forrest apparently went to bed just before I got home from watching Moulin Rouge, which explains why he wasn't answering any of the phones. I'm shocked he managed to sleep through 4 hours of phone-ringing, but he's got amazing Powers of Sleep. So I explained sheepishly that I was starting to worry, I apologized for waking him up, and I let him go back to sleep. Oops! But at least everything's okay.

Outdoor Movies are Cool

Last night I went to see The Princess Bride at the Mural Amphitheater (at the Seattle Center). It was a fun crowd to watch that movie with — lots of cheering and booing. I had too much cotton candy and felt a little sick to my stomach afterwards, but otherwise good times. :)

Tonight I went to the Fremont Outdoor Cinema to watch Moulin Rouge. Moulin Rouge is my favorite movie, so I was really happy to be seeing it in such an unusual setting. I invited Josh to come along, and his roommate (Phil), roommate's girlfriend (Mary), roommate's other friend (Ginger), roommate's sister (Ivona), and roommate's mother (?) all came along, too. (Wow, I think I actually remembered all the names I was told tonight!) It was nice meeting some more people, and again the crowd was great.

Pre-movie, the Jet City Improv group (who hosted the event) lead some Moulin Rouge trivia, a paper airplane contest (which Phil failed miserably at, apparently just like the last time he entered such a competition), a dance competition, a complete-the-lyrics competition, and a feather boa caterpillar raffle (which, sadly, I did not win). I'd definitely like to attend these sorts of events in the future.

Before the movie tonight, I was killing time in Fremont, reading The Best American Science Writing, 2006 that I bought from Fremont Place Books. Interesting, educational, and enjoyable writing — good stuff. If you're looking for a random book to read, here ya go. :)

Blog Update Progress, Part 2

Per some design discussions with Forrest, I have an updated to-do list for finishing up my blog layout update:

1. make comments appear above post footer
2. remove dashed borders around posts
3. re-color comment and profile icons
4. do something about the Friends sidebar having so much empty space
5. do something with footer
6. update all labels :( . Useful links: [1], [2], [3]
7. re-do peek-a-boo comments, like how they were pre-redesign
8. hide permalink-link on post page

Update, 10:15 PM:

9. look into the anchor scrolling issue
10. re-do highlighting of my own comments, like how they were pre-redesign
11. add « and » to the "Newer posts" and "Older posts" links
12. pull user icons onto peek-a-boo comments, like how they are on the "post a comment" page

Update, August 2, 11:14 AM:

13. replace? add? calendar view of archive [4]
14. make a hierarchical label display [5]

The above items will be strike-through'd (struck-through?) as they are completed.

Blog Layout Upgrade in Progress

Don't panic! I have not forsaken Blue, I'm just finally upgrading my Blogger template to their Blogger v2 system. Your Arthaey-approved blue colorscheme will be forthcoming, no worries.

Update, 11:13 PM: I've got the old colorscheme back in place, more or less. So now it looks like my blog again. (Not that you feed-readers care; that's okay. :)) Next up on the list is peek-a-boo comments, like they were before.

Update, 11:55 PM: I have peek-a-boo comments back in place now, though I'm not entirely happy with them. The old-style Blogger instructions don't work for the new Blogger, so I had to follow Stephen Weber's instructions. He has asynchronous and synchronous versions of his instructions; I went with the former because all the script-loading for the synchronous version made the page very slow to load. But now you see some "loading..." text for a moment before the post's comments display, and I don't like that.

I also still need to redo the graphics that make this particular Blogger template have rounded corners [1] on the divs... But I'm ridiculously tired — I should have gone to bed hours ago — so I'll look into fixing up the graphics and comments some other day.

Linguistic Mystic Post: Everyday Linguistics

Over on another blog, the Linguistic Mystic wrote an article titled The Double-Edged Sword of Linguistic Passion, which describes my day-to-day experience with linguistics very well. I'll let the Mystic explain. :)