What the frock happened to my Twitter feed?
It was here a second ago, but since I changed my username to "NightMiles" it stopped working. Even better, I forgot my login information to LoudTwitter, so I can't update it. So, here is a general overview of what has been happening over the past few weeks...
Spent the last couple of weeks with my parents down at their house in Little Egg Harbor, NJ. Definitely nice to get away, eat out at restaurants, walk the boards, and just have a completely different environment and pace. Nothing really amazing or notable happened, other than the fact that Frosty (my cat) did not destroy anything.
I have completely tossed out Comcast. Verizon now has a deal where you get discounts on DSL service if you have a Verizon cell phone. I didn't have DSL before simply because it would have been stupid expensive to get a home phone in this building for some reason. With this new deal, since I have Verizon for a cell phone provider, I am saving bundles of money. The available downstream bandwidth is lower than Comcast (Verizon's 3.0 Mbps versus Comcast's 6 or 8) but I honestly can't tell the difference. It feels more stable and reliable than Comcast, so that might be why.
Money problems are now starting to go away from me. While out at the Shore, I did a lot of work to consolidate most of my loans and credit cards. By doing that, I am able to sock away at least $750/mo that I never could before. For years I could never figure out why I couldn't keep any savings. I finally sat down and crunched the numbers and discovered that with all my monthly payments added up, all but maybe $25 of my paycheck would be gobbled up JUST by monthly bills alone, not counting the cost of gas and food. What's great about this new arrangement is that the loan payments are steady, and that $750 savings is AFTER the cost of gas, food, lunches out, etc. That's $750 of pure savings, baby!
Opened up a couple of savings accounts. One of those is a Wachovia Way2Save account that automatically transfers $1.00 for every time you pay a bill or use your check card, and optionally drops $100 in your account per month. It's goodly high interest, but they don't let you deposit anything into the account other than what the bank does automatically. That's where the second account comes in. It has a pathetic interest rate (0.15%... ugh) but I set up an even higher automatic transfer going on that account, and I will put any extra money in there that I can.
Now that I am SAVING money for probably the first time in my life, a few years down the road getting a house will be much less of a pain. Oh yeah, I have stopped my search for a house or a condo. My choices were studio condominiums -- nice, but too small for me and my cat, too much furniture and junk -- or run-down houses in the most "interesting" parts of Wilmington. I worked out a deal with my landlord and signed a new 2-year lease to lock in the price. Hey, can't beat all this free electricity, the neighborhood is nice, and I can still walk to work.
Alright, so I lied. The little vacation was eventful. All of that happened while I was out.
Next week (actually, starting out on the road tomorrow... yikes!) I have a PeopleSoft training class in Reston, VA. If I get up the nerve, I might try to put some kind of dinner together with the people around there I know from Anime USA. Then again, I kinda screwed up a lot while I was on their staff... so maybe it would be better for me to just back off of that.
Back to cleaning!
Spent the last couple of weeks with my parents down at their house in Little Egg Harbor, NJ. Definitely nice to get away, eat out at restaurants, walk the boards, and just have a completely different environment and pace. Nothing really amazing or notable happened, other than the fact that Frosty (my cat) did not destroy anything.
I have completely tossed out Comcast. Verizon now has a deal where you get discounts on DSL service if you have a Verizon cell phone. I didn't have DSL before simply because it would have been stupid expensive to get a home phone in this building for some reason. With this new deal, since I have Verizon for a cell phone provider, I am saving bundles of money. The available downstream bandwidth is lower than Comcast (Verizon's 3.0 Mbps versus Comcast's 6 or 8) but I honestly can't tell the difference. It feels more stable and reliable than Comcast, so that might be why.
Money problems are now starting to go away from me. While out at the Shore, I did a lot of work to consolidate most of my loans and credit cards. By doing that, I am able to sock away at least $750/mo that I never could before. For years I could never figure out why I couldn't keep any savings. I finally sat down and crunched the numbers and discovered that with all my monthly payments added up, all but maybe $25 of my paycheck would be gobbled up JUST by monthly bills alone, not counting the cost of gas and food. What's great about this new arrangement is that the loan payments are steady, and that $750 savings is AFTER the cost of gas, food, lunches out, etc. That's $750 of pure savings, baby!
Opened up a couple of savings accounts. One of those is a Wachovia Way2Save account that automatically transfers $1.00 for every time you pay a bill or use your check card, and optionally drops $100 in your account per month. It's goodly high interest, but they don't let you deposit anything into the account other than what the bank does automatically. That's where the second account comes in. It has a pathetic interest rate (0.15%... ugh) but I set up an even higher automatic transfer going on that account, and I will put any extra money in there that I can.
Now that I am SAVING money for probably the first time in my life, a few years down the road getting a house will be much less of a pain. Oh yeah, I have stopped my search for a house or a condo. My choices were studio condominiums -- nice, but too small for me and my cat, too much furniture and junk -- or run-down houses in the most "interesting" parts of Wilmington. I worked out a deal with my landlord and signed a new 2-year lease to lock in the price. Hey, can't beat all this free electricity, the neighborhood is nice, and I can still walk to work.
Alright, so I lied. The little vacation was eventful. All of that happened while I was out.
Next week (actually, starting out on the road tomorrow... yikes!) I have a PeopleSoft training class in Reston, VA. If I get up the nerve, I might try to put some kind of dinner together with the people around there I know from Anime USA. Then again, I kinda screwed up a lot while I was on their staff... so maybe it would be better for me to just back off of that.
Back to cleaning!