Reference and Outline Maps of the United States

Site: NationalAtlas.gov
Post: Reference and Outline Maps of the United States

The site contains a list of printable U.S. maps that you can preview or download. They even have several maps for each state.

Changing My Financial Future

A few weeks ago my wife and I made a major decision. We are going to change our financial situation.

We are feed up with living paycheck to paycheck, paying back loans, not have money in the bank for vacations, new computers or activities we can do as a family.

The first step was to figure out what we are bring in and what we are spending. Since we are using Quicken, figuring out what we are bring in was quick and easy. This told exactly how much we have to work with.

The second step was to figure out what we are spending. At first we though this was also going to be easy with Quicken. It turns out that we did not do as good of a job categorizing the expenses plus we did not categorize that ATM withdrawals very well. So we start a spending notebook, at the end of each day we recorded the date, what we spent money on and how much we spent.

The third step was to setup some starting goals. We needed a starting point to shoot for. This was a very fuzzy area for us so we needed to do a little research. We turned the research into the following initial goals. First, a small emergency fund of double the house payment. Based the past expenses this should cover most of the emergencies that come up. Second, stop using the credit cards, stop using the debit card and stop taking on new debt. We have found that we spend less and think about the purchase more when we have to use cash. Third, pay off the debts we have now. We are exempting the house from this goal because we have read some conflicting information about paying off the house. There seems to be two main methods for paying down the debt. The first is to list all the debts by interest rate from highest to lowest. This method saves the most amount of money in the long run but may take a while before we see any results. The other method is to list the debts from smallest to largest amount owed. This method offers us the opportunity to see some results right away. We opted for the second method. Fourth, increase the amount of money in the emergency fund to six months worth of expenses plus insurance deductibles. This should give us a strong base to work from for what every new goals we come up with.

The fourth step was to create a budget. This has proved to be a difficult a task to complete and keep up with but it is the most powerful tool we have to managing the expenses. There are several important ideas we needed to keep in mind when creating a budget. First, it may take between 3 and 6 months is start getting the budget right. It takes a few months to figure out all the expenses you have. We are working on the third monthly budget and we are still finding items we forgot about. Second, we created a 'free spend' category. This is money we are allowed to spend for no reason at all. This is important mental health item. Creating and sticking to a budget is hard work we need the mental relief that this category provides. Third, we need to talk about and review the budget frequently. We use this time to figure out how we are doing financially and to help encourage each other.

We have been working on this for about three months now and have seen some results and some unexpected benefits. It is a great feeling to see the amount of debt we have decreasing at a steady rate. We now sleep better. We don't worry about how to make ends meet. We have more control over the money. We are now starting talk about additional financial goals like a solid retirement plan, a college fund, investing and vacations.

DIY Dry Erase Board

Site: Elephant StairCase
Post: DIYDryEraseBoard

They walk you through building a Dry Erase Board using acrylic plastic. If you follow the the steps they listed you can have a your own Dry Erase Board up in less than an hour. I built my Dry Erase Board a couple of years back using shower board and I wrapped the board with 1X3 pine frame. It looks nice and works rather well.

Look, no hard drive: flash only

Site: Digital World Tokyo
Post: Look, no hard drive: flash only

I have been waiting for over a year now to hear this news. Finally a proto-type of a hard drive replacement that is 100% solid state. The good news is a solid state drive should be faster, more durable, consumes less power and is quite. I want one bad for my laptop. Now for the bad news the disk is not yet in production mode and it is a expected to be a bit pricey.

Boot up Windows before you even log in

Site: BrainFuel
Post: Boot up Windows before you even log in


When Windows XP boots up it goes through two major steps the first is loading of non-graphical system then after you enter your user name and password the system then loads the graphical part of the OS. Wouldn't it be great if you could load the graphical part of Windows without having to login? With the use of TweakUI and a simple registry entry you can do just that. You can get the exact steps from the guys at BrainFuel.

Ten Programming Commandments

Site: Code: Impossible
Post: Ten Programming Commandments


The list speaks for itself. I try to apply several of the commandments while I am programming but sometimes you just have to break the commandment. I would change commandment 10 to 'Thou shall Refactor'.

Portable Tools

Site: T.W.A.T Radio
Wednesday, May 03, 2006
Episode: 107 - Portable Tools
Host: Kynan Dent

Today is my day for applications that can be run from an USB device. In this podcast Kynan talk about the what tools he keeps on his USB device and how to set the applicaitons up.

Security/Hacking applications that run on a USB flash drive

Site: Watch Your End
Posting: Security/Hacking applications that run on a USB flash drive

Here is an interesting posting about security tools you can run from an USB device. I also find this article to be a little scary. Any tool can be used for good or evil it all depends on the person using the tool.

Handy programs to put on a USB stick.

Site: SnapFiles
Post: Handy programs to put on a USB stick.

I am also looking for neat tools to make my life a little easier. Free tools are always great and I like the idea of having some great tools that I can carry around everywhere.

I am already a Foxit PDF Reader user. This tool is great. I will have to check out a few more of the tools from the page.

The 25 Firefox Extensions You Didn’t Know You Needed

Site: desideratum
Post: The 25 Firefox Extensions You Didn’t Know You Needed

I don't really understand why I find Top X list so interesting. I found this list the other day. A couple of the extensions look interesting and I am thinking I should check them out. CoolIris Preview, Copy Plain Text, Greasemonkey and Menu Editor look promising. Does anyone have any experience with these extensions?

Mozilla Firefox 1.5.0.3 Released

Site: Mozillazine
Post: Mozilla Firefox 1.5.0.3 Released

This release of Firefox contains a security fix for denial of service vulnerability. I got my update and no problems so far.