Good Job Sucking

I’ve become a bigger fan of Mint.com than ever.  Even though it has a few minor flaws, it provides an excellent dashboard to see current and pending transactions to all accounts at once. I’m not compulsive about checking my accounts, but I find its phone app handy to check occasionally to plan or check spending, …

In the 80s, I worked for an economic consulting firm and defense contractor in the heart of Washington, DC.  We had just landed an important contract in Ohio, and I had been assigned as the systems architect — I would need to move.  Invoking the transfer clause in my lease, I terminated the lease in …

Labels are both more convenient and professional-looking than plain paper for printing postage labels, and the 2844 is a great little thermal workhorse of a printer.  Even better, it’s pretty cheap to pick up a used one, partly because UPS gave these away for free for use exclusively with the UPS service. On the down …

In an effort to reduce power consumption, I’ve moved most systems I use regularly onto a pair of virtual servers, enabling me to keep many machines off most of the time, except for occasional use.  There are still a few physical machines, and I do prefer to have current backups of everything, so I decided …

Water in Chicago comes straight from Lake Michigan, and is pretty decent quality in general. Most houses do not have water meters, which I suspect leads to very little incentive to conserve water.  During the summer months, especially during lawn-watering season, it’s not unusual for our water to dwindle to a mere trickle.  A few …