Imported Advogato Diary Entry
Another month has passed and life continues to please me immensely, though I am really rather tired at the moment from a weekend of camping and not-sleeping.
Work continues to be a great place to be. Right now I'm reading up on the different IBM big iron offerings available, just because I never did really know the difference between s/390s, as/400s, and rs/6000s, and it seemed like the kind of thing any self-respecting geek ought to know. Suffice it to say that if anyone has a 640- way s/390 that they don't need, I'll be happy to give it a new home. :) As long as I have stuff to do, work also keeps me pretty productive - my biggest problem right now is getting through things too quickly - but that's not intended as gloating, just as an observation that I must be enjoying it.
Life outside of work is even better than life at work. Our exercising has been cut into heavily by Amy's wounding of her foot, but in the meantime I've gotten plenty of reading done. For what it's worth, _Information Warfare_ by Winn Schwartau is a very interesting book, despite Schwartau himself not being one of my favourite writers.
We just picked up a new 32" TV and DVD player which pretty much rock my world. Even greater though, is that we bought them outright - no credit cards, no financing - free and clear ownership. That's a pretty amazing thing - at least to me.
Speaking of finances, I recently read _The Wealthy Barber_ and folks, if you're young, just getting started out of university, and though you're smart, you don't know a whole heck of a lot about finances, this is a book you should read. I can now talk meaningfully about amortization periods and how much insurance is enough. Much more importantly though, I now have an investment plan that will work and that, once my debts are paid off and I put it into action, will be utterly straightforward to maintain. Having a girlfriend whose brother is a chartered accountant helps, to be sure, but his biggest contribution so far has been telling me to read this book.
Geez, I'm sure I sound like every punk who thinks they're an expert after reading a -For-Dummies book. For the record, I don't think I know everything, at all - not even close, especially on this score. But a decent financial plan is also not an impossible thing to develop - it doesn't require you to watch the markets non-stop, or a calculator with 64 digit precision. Okay, enough, I'm preaching now - but seriously, good book.
Cooking continues to rock, and I make a mean 3-mushroom linguine.