The Little Things

When we bought our house here in Utah, we bought it because there were a lot of little things we liked about it. There were built in toy boxes in the boys' bedrooms. There were extra toggle switches to turn on lights in the kitchen before you walked into the house from the garage. There are also sockets everywhere and telephone jacks everywhere. Yes, the house is bigger than our last, but it was the little things that sold us on the house.

Who Knows What The Future

Who knows what the future will bring? 10 years ago, I had no idea I would be living in Utah and have a house and three kids and the job that I have now. You seriously never know what can happen. In a year, I could have another kid, a different haircut, or even a different job. You seriously never know. It's even possible, the future could lead me to Philadelphia jobs in my career. I wish there was a way to see into the future as easily as it is to see into the past.

Vacation Needed

My wife and I have not been on a vacation for a couple of years. Last time we went on a vacation, We went to Cancun with my last employer. I think it is time to go far away again. I would like to go on a Orlando vacation this time. Doing it right now would be ideal, too. Leaving crappy snow and cold weather to be around beaches and sun. Man, the vacation is sounding really good right now.

Bring The Lottery To Utah

I grew up in one of the best states of the union, Idaho. It was calm and people looked out for each other on a daily basis. Plus, the drivers were much, much better. In Idaho, they have a state lottery. There aren't any state or private casinos. The Indian Reservations have their casino, but it's nothing huge. The state lottery consists of scratch tickets and the Powerball. The money the state gets from people playing the lottery is used to pay for the roads and for the schools. I grew up around the lottery for 20 years and never once played.

In Utah, there is no lottery. In fact, you can get arrested for just playing online lottery's, I think. Property taxes and gas taxes are used to pay for the schools and roads. It's no surprise that Utah always, always has a budget crisis. The first thing that always gets cut is education. Last year, hundreds of teachers lost their jobs. This year, more are going to lose their jobs. Also, as a result, the school district I live in had to raise property taxes by 20 percent to make up for a shortfall. They're even talking about doing it again.

Transportation never, never gets cut. Each year, they spend billions on their highways, while cutting eduction funding at the same time. In fact, they just announced they are going to build another north-south highway at a total cost of over 1.5 billion dollars. When people cry foul about the money spent on highways, the state comes and says they are creating jobs. I don't call those jobs. Those are gigs. Once the job is over, it's over. They may be creating those jobs, but they are doing it at the expense of teachers jobs. Jobs that have a much, much bigger impact on the future compared to roads with no potholes.

Because the funding for schools and roads is tied to taxes here, they are subject to fluctuations in the overall economy. Education should never depend on the economy of the country. There needs to be a more stable flow of funding for the schools.

Bring in the lottery to Utah. You never, never have to play it, but you can reap the rewards of others playing it. It wouldn't just be the residents who play it either. It could be every traveler to the state, which is a lot. Right now, if you want to play the lottery, you go to Idaho or Nevada. As a result, Utah citizens are helping the school and road budgets for those two states. If you brought the lottery in, the state would be getting constant donations to the road and school budgets. Plus, taxes could be dropped, helping people have more to spend and, therefore, help the economy even more. Right now, if the state needs funding, they raise taxes, which is never popular. With the lottery, the taxes could drop and people would voluntarily be giving money to the state.

Others may say that allowing gambling in the state would make the state a bad place to work. To them I say: "If you don't allow the lottery for those reasons, then you better get rid of all the alcohol and tobacco sales, along with all of the pornography in the state." Of course, they would never do that. For one, the state makes money off tobacco and alcohol taxes. Hello!?!?!?! Bring in the lottery and add another source of income. And just try to get rid of all the porn our there.

I grew up with the lottery and never once played it. But, it always paid for the roads and the schools. Property taxes were low and there were never huge cuts in education funding to fill budget holes. With the lottery in Utah, we could stop subsidizing the education and transportation budgets of other states and start contributing more to our own.

Where Did They Go?

Growing up, I remember there were always ads on tv for kids to take their vitamins. They were in cartoon shapes so kids would take them. Are those commercials still on tv anymore? Did they decide that they didn't make as much money off of healthy kids as they did with unhealthy kids? I don't think my kids have seen anything like that on tv. I know when I talk about that stuff in the future, I'm going to get some really weird looks from my kids.

Finally

There is finally legislation moving in Congress to make the volume of advertisements be the same as the shows around them. Seriously, those advertisements get so loud. You're watching you show and then all of sudden your tv is blaring an ad about anti aging products. Why has it taken so long for this law to get through? Do they really think that by blaring the ad in our face that we will run out and buy the product? If anything, they would be making more money if they just left the volume alone.

The Universe Hates My Bank Account

There must be an unwritten creed out there in the universe that says I can never have money. Ever. Whenever it seems that we will have extra money to spend on something, something completely out of the blue happens. Here recently, my wife had a babysitting gig that was going to bring in a 1000 dollars extra a month. Ya, that lasted about a week until the universe took it away. Then, after Christmas, we had an extra 200 dollars to put towards Christmas bills, and then the furnace broke down. That took 100 dollars of that away. Then, as our savings were building so we can remodel, the furnace broke down again and took 500 dollars out of savings. Whoever wrote this contract between the universe and by bank account needs to get back in the courtroom with me.

Times Have Changed

I remember riding the bus to school one day back when I was a junior in high school. There was a story on the radio talking about the effects of the newest sensation drug, Viagra. It was the first of its kind. Of course, that was almost 13 years ago. Now there are all kinds of those drugs. From Viagra to vigrx to Extenze. Can they really all do different things? I would think only one of those would be enough. Go American competitive spirit.

Mom's Idea

I see ads online about home remedy tricks to get you feeling better. I have heard these things do work. Things involving honey, sprite, and ginger. I don't know if I have seen one for natural arthritis relief, but it has to be out there. Arthritis has been around for a lot longer than modern medicine. Before that, people had to make their joints fell less swollen. I bet it didn't cost a fortune either.

Along The Road

Billboards are everywhere. When I drive down the freeway, I see billboards for Jazz games, stop smoking ads, and liposuction. At one point, there was a billboard showing the two main reasons you should get plastic surgery. I don't think I have seen one for diet pills for sale. Not to say they don't exist, but I haven't seen them along the way going from Utah to Idaho and back. I think if they were to have a billboard for diet pills, the billboards should be in the shape of a pill bottle. That would be a real eye catcher.

Website Dreams

I'm hoping someday to come up with a website idea that will bring in some good advertising dollars. All you would need is a good idea and then you could place all kinds of ads on there. They could be ads as simple as click here. There has to be a good idea out there. I've come across webpages that some college kid came up with in his sleep. With the right idea and the right spin, I could just make the webpage and watch the money flow in.

Fighting Age

I recently placed a whole bunch of old pictures on my digital frame at work. Now, I am constantly reminded about how fast time is going. I can't get it to slow down. I see pictures of my boys when they were just babies. It was just yesterday. Before I know it, my shopping list will change from chips and soda to prune juice and anti-wrinkle creams. Time is crazy. It has been described as a predator that is constantly stalking you. Or it can be a companion that goes with us on the journey of life, constantly reminding us to cherish every moment. Because they may never come again. I prefer to think of time as the later of those two descriptions.

Nutrition

I see constant ads on tv and hear constant ads on the radio talking about being healthy. There are people talking about the diets they did or the pills they are taking to get slim. There are ads out there for things like the Taco Bell diet, the Subway diet, Stimerex ES, and even the nutrisystem. I even heard an ad on the radio the other day that said you had to just take this pill and you didn't have to change how you ate. You could eat yourself to death still, but as long as you take this pill, you will still lose weight. I guess common sense is an endangered trait.

Computers

You would think since I write software, that I would not mind working with computers. Believe me, I like them when they are working. When they aren't working for no apparent reason, I hate them. I do not do setup well. I just want to be able to log onto the computer and use it. I hate setup. Our laptop came with Vista and here recently it has done nothing but freeze up. I've restored it back to stock multiple times in the last month and nothing has helped it. I finally just reformatted the thing and put Windows XP on there. That took forever because the computer kept shutting off on it own. When it finally worked, I had another problem. The drivers that tell the computer what network adapters it has don't seem to be correct with XP. Now, I can't get online. I'm sure if I could update the computer, I could get it working. But you need to be online to do that. I hate computers.

Tomorrow, I'm planning on putting Linux on there. We'll see how that goes.

Luggage Or Lack Of

I don't really have much luggage. I used to have one big piece of luggage, but it got sold without my knowing. When my wife and I left on our honeymoon, I had all of my stuff in separate duffel bags. I didn't have a BCBG Max Azria bag or anything, but that's what I get when I have no luggage. Now, when we travel, we use the big piece of luggage that my wife has. If you don't travel much, luggage really isn't a priority for you.

Back It Up

Over the last few days, we have been trying to get all of our digital photos and videos in one place. We had them scattered all around on cds, drives, and two different computers. We've been copying all the files to an external drive. We could have done a free online backup, but I think we would be transferring files via a website for days at a time. It's also nice to know that we have one location where we can look for all of our photos in the future.

Great Camera

When we first got married, we bought a cheap digital camera. We only had one kid at the time. The camera got splashed with salt water and that was all she wrote. To make sure we didn't buy another bad camera, we did some research and bought a Canon camera. It has made it through nearly 6 years of being dropped, kicked around, and handled by toddlers and is still going. Best camera we have ever bought. You know it has to be a good product if it can make it through toddlers.

New Year, Same Goal As Last

Last year, our goal for the year was to get out of as much debt as possible. It didn't matter what debt it was, we wanted to get it paid off. By the end of the year, we had both cars paid off, the hospital paid off, inlaws paid off, and the credit card paid off. Actually, we paid off that last one a number of times. We wanted to get my wife's student loan paid off as well. We got half of it paid off by the end of the year in addition to the other debt we paid off.

This year, our goal will be the same. Get debt paid off. We are starting with the credit card and then we will be going back to paying off my wife's student loan. Once her student loan is paid off, we will start paying off my small student loan. Once that is done, the only debt we will have is my big student loan and our house. Here's the new year of paying off debt.

Cheaper On My Own

At my last job, their insurance plan was really expensive. For just a family of 4 it was over 400 dollars a month. And it wasn't even that good of coverage. Before I signed up for their plan, I checked into buying insurance online. Man, I found a policy that was identical to my work's plan for a third of the cost. I couldn't figure out why my work's plan was so much more expensive when it had more people paying into it. Believe me, buying insurance on my own was a heck of a lot better than paying for it through work.

Crossing The Fingers

Christmas is now over. Time to pay it off. We're crossing our fingers that we can do that without anything major breaking. Things always seem to happen when we get the credit card paid off. Things like windows getting broke, appliances breaking, or cars breaking down. So far we haven't had to use things like 24 hour towing. Those things are really expensive. We'ver been lucky so far that we haven't had huge things happen to break. I'm seriously knocking on wood right now as I type this post. Here's to keeping the fingers crossed.

Expensive

College is expensive. There doesn't seem to be a way around it. I have been out of college for 3 and a half years now and I am still paying for it. One way I found to cuts the costs of college was to buy my textbooks from those who would sell textbooks online. I got one of my textbooks for only 2 dollars that way. I think in the last two years of school, I only bought 1 textbook from the bookstore. That was because the book was brand new and no one had it online. And, of course, they only wanted to use it for one semester and gave me 25 percent of what I paid for it when I sold it back to them. If you can find a way to cut college costs, do it.

Finally, Nothing To Do

Life has been nonstop since two weeks before Christmas. In that time, there was my wife's birthday, a wedding in our house, all the things that lead up to Christmas, Christmas, and then New Years. It seriously has been crazy. Finally, all that is done and we can go back to just doing nothing and feeling good about it.

Christmas was great. We had it here at our house this year. The boys mostly got practical things like things to color and things to color with, clothes, shoes, and a few toys. They even got a slot car race track that took mom and dad an hour to put together for them to only play with for 5 minutes. Baby got a few outfits and some sippy cups and bottles.

I got a photo calendar from my wife, a photobook of our family, and a digital picture frame. I also got a paper shredder. We have a desk full of old papers that I don't just want to throw away. So, finally, I have a shredder to help me free up space in the desk.

My wife got a new stand and a new bench for her keyboard. She also got a big clock, a new griddle, socks, and a gift card to go get some new shirts.

New Years was fun. Just stayed up late and watched the ball drop. Nothing huge or anything. Just enjoyed being able to do nothing.

Finally, I got all of our Christmas lights put away. I stayed up almost all night the other night going through the strings that didn't work and attempted to get all of the ones I could to work. Threw away the ones I couldn't get to work an put all the working ones in totes, along withe spare bulbs and the roof clips. I was very tired of always searching for working lights, spare bulbs, and clips. Now, I know the lights I have a working and they are all in the same place.

It has been a very busy few weeks. Finally, we can relax and feel good about doing nothing at all.