‘Dilbert’ deserves the economics Nobel Scott Adams (famous Dilbert cartoonist) published a one-page “Unified Theory of Everything Financial”. I think it’s brilliant. If you’re not doing something very similar to this with your money, you may want to think carefully about why not. I won’t reproduce the 9-step plan here, but go read it, it’s fast. What the Marketwatch article mentions right below the 9 steps almost merits being step 10 (or part of step 9): ...

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I got cranky at someone at work. Someone who I feel is failing to do his fair share. Basically it went something like this: “It’s been two weeks, would you like to be on call again?” “Sure, I guess…” “Well, I have to say I’m pretty upset about the tickets that are still in the queue from the last time you were on call. You said you would handle them, and you didn’t.” ...

[I’m capturing this from a chat session with a friend. I mostly edited out my friend’s words for privacy reasons, so it might sound a little disjointed.] Here’s an interesting math+social problem I have been thinking about on and off. There’s no practical application for it (for me, right now anyway) but it’s something interesting to think about. Let’s say N people decide to own a house together. Based on how much each person puts down, and how much they pay per month toward the “household” bills, how would you determine what fraction of property belongs to each person? (The situation could be roommates who want to quit renting and buy a house together, or someone who already owns a house and wants to share the house while actually giving the other person a chance to earn equity instead of just paying rent.)

In my search for brevity, I may oversimplify the following and not fully explain *why* I believe these things. If you want to know how I arrived at a particular conclusion (especially one you disagree with) just ask me. Submitted for your consideration: 1. People too often vote their emotions rather than their beliefs.

M and I are planning to go to Seattle some time in the next month or two. Anyone interested in the details should comment here, and possibly select to receive notifications of comments to this entry.

Calling session for today is cancelled due to lack of interest. I’ll probably be making some calls anyway, but the house is not really in a condition to receive guests. If you DO want to make some “get out the vote” calls, please do so anyway… you can visit moveon.org for info. Also, if you would like to join me for dinner, give me a call :)

I’ve decided to spend some time this weekend making political calls. Would you like to join me? I figured I would contact some friends and if they want to join me, take them to dinner as well. I’ll be calling between 2 and 6 and going out to dinner around 6:30 or 7:00, on both Saturday and Sunday. In fact anyone can make calls from home, but if you decide to join me that will be great. I’ll even buy you dinner! (Limit 10) You are welcome to drop by and say HI even if you’re not making calls, and you’re welcome to join us for dinner too. ...

Exercise log for November Wed 11/1: Thu 11/2: Fri 11/3: Sat 11/4: Sun 11/5: Mon 11/6: Tue 11/7: Wed 11/8: Thu 11/9: Fri 11/10: Sat 11/11: Sun 11/12: Mon 11/13: Tue 11/14: Wed 11/15: Thu 11/16: Fri 11/17: Sat 11/18: Sun 11/19: Mon 11/20: Tue 11/21: Wed 11/22: Thu 11/23: Fri 11/24: Sat 11/25: Sun 11/26: Mon 11/27: Tue 11/28: Wed 11/29: Thu 11/30:

I love our new kitchen, but our savings are pretty well tapped at this point, so it seems unlikely that we’ll be able to use our timeshare points. For that reason, I would like to offer them to our friends. If you’re thinking about taking a trip before the end of the year, let me know and I may be able to transfer points to you. I would like to recoup a little cash, but not a huge amount… For a friend I’d probably ask for a bit less than a cheap-ish hotel stay, and the rooms are usually much nicer. ...