Frequent your local produce market

Dave Farquhar Saving money

There’s a tiny produce market in a former Amoco gas station about a mile from where I live. I’ve driven past it for years without ever so much as stopping in to see what they had.

I wasted a lot of money that way.I read in the excellent book Eat Healthy For $50 a Week that produce markets sell fruits and vegetables for less than grocery stores. Finally last weekend, my wife and I checked out that assertion.

What we found was that the selection wasn’t nearly as great as the produce section of a large grocery store–at least not in March–but the prices were good. They were never any higher than the grocery store, and often the prices were much lower. We got a head of lettuce for 25 cents, for instance. Prices vary. Lettuce was 25 cents on Sunday, and it was 98 cents today. I’m guessing on Sunday he was trying to sell down his inventory, so he cut the price. A bag of apples that usually costs a couple of dollars at the grocery store was a dollar.

It’s probably best to stop at a produce market a few times a week to get a feel for the best day to buy different things. But since I eat a couple of pounds of apples a week, that stand could easily save us a dollar or two a week. That’s $50 or $100 a year. Not exactly chump change. And that’s on a single item.

The other good thing about produce markets is they’re generally locally owned, so you’re supporting your neighbor, and while not everything sold there is going to be locally grown, you can bet anything that’s in season locally will be. Supporting your local economy is always a good thing.

Incidentally, that book has lots of other good ideas in it. My wife and I probably spend more than $50 a week on food, but the ideas in the book probably have saved us $10 a week, minimum, since we read it. That’s $500 a year. That’s half a house payment.

How to get my job (2006 edition)

Dave Farquhar Personal , , , , , , , , , ,

It seems like every year or two, somebody asks me how to get my job. Given the way the last year or so has gone, I can’t believe anyone’s asking me that question, but it’s been coming back up again. I’ve made some mistakes in my career–obviously–but since I’m still in the field, I must have done a few things right too.

I guess it makes sense to trace my career and see what I would do differently.1984: Yes, it all started when I was 10. I’d wanted a computer for as long as I could remember, and that year, Mom and Dad finally bought one. I spent as much time messing with that old Commodore as I could. And when I wasn’t messing with that Commodore, I was reading about it. It was an obsession. It bordered on unhealthy. Or maybe it was unhealthy.

In high school, if you’d offered me a choice between a date with the best-looking girl in the school or a new Amiga 1200 or 3000, I might very well have taken the computer. Sure, I was interested in girls, but the computer wouldn’t break up with me, right?

I bring this up for one reason: If you’re wanting to get into the field for money, find something else to do. Go into sales or something. If you don’t absolutely love this stuff, you won’t last, so there’s no point in wasting your time.

1994: I started my career in sales. When polite company isn’t around, I say I whored myself out for a large consumer electronics chain. That might be a bit more accurate. In a way it was a good move. A lot of IT people my age started their careers the way I did. It’s better than fast food, at least in regards that IT recruiters use it as a scouting ground. Work there and do well, and it’s just a matter of time before recruiters will want to talk to you.

What I did right: I started filling in for the store’s technician, who frequently had problems showing up for work.

What I’d do differently: First, I’d find out who the best salesperson was, and really learn how to sell. I’ve worked with IT management people who couldn’t figure out how to make their computer play solitaire, but they know a little bit about selling, so their jobs are safe, even though they had no qualifications.

The other thing I’d do differently is to get A+ certification. It’s not strictly necessary to get a better job, but it opens more doors. A lot of jobs require A+ certification just because some idiot in HR (and yes, most of them are idiots) decided it’s a good idea.

1995: I caught a break because I knew both Macintosh and IBM hardware, I knew OS/2, and I had connections at the journalism school at the University of Missouri. A professor mentioned the job opening to me and handed me a phone number. After class I called the number. The guy on the other end asked me what I knew how to do. I told him, he told me he’d pay me $7 an hour, and asked when I could start.

It was supposed to be a temporary gig. But it turned out I knew how to do a lot more than just the grunt work that needed to be done, so they found money to keep me. And when I was about to graduate, they offered me a full-time job.

What I did right: I showed up for work, I did everything they asked me to do, and whenever somebody else was sick and they asked me to try to fill in, I filled in and actually managed to do a decent job.

What I’d do differently: It wasn’t a bad gig, until Yoko Ono came along. Actually she was from Pittsburgh and she was Scottish-American. But the relationship interfered with the job and the job interfered with the relationship. And when something went wrong with one, it messed up the other too. I’d have done well to learn how to separate the two. That’s a lot to ask of someone who’s 23. Now I’m 31 and don’t know how now either. Neither does my 40-year-old boss.

1998: I moved to St. Louis to take another job in IT. This was also the year I re-discovered God and religion. This was a dream job, working for my church. I took a demotion and a pay cut to do it. Of course I didn’t know until I’d already quit my other job that it was a demotion.

I’ll get off track if I talk about it much more than that, so let’s just talk about what went right and wrong.

What I did right: I racked up a lot of impressive statistics and I learned how to do everything they asked me to do. I usually wasn’t happy about it, but I always did as well or better than the person who replaced me. The guy I replaced was a legend and I don’t think anyone would have been able to replace him adequately.

What I did wrong: I shouldn’t have taken the demotion. Not at 23. If you’re married and have kids, I can see taking a demotion so you can work better hours to spend more time with your family. When you’re 23 and single, you can’t waste time climbing a ladder you already climbed once. A banker in Columbia offered me a job as a systems administrator when he found out I knew OS/2. I should have taken it and called St. Louis and told them I wasn’t coming.

This job really went downhill as another relationship was coming to an end too. No need to re-hash that.

I made one other mistake. I won’t elaborate on it. But if you see upper management doing something unethical, LEAVE.

2005: Mercenary time. My first contract was with a very large and very nearly bankrupt cable company. The work wasn’t nearly as interesting or challenging as my previous job, and my coworkers were at either extreme: Some were among the very best people I’d ever worked with, and some of them were just overgrown high school bullies. But it was work, and the pay was fair, which was nice after working for seven years at anywhere from $15,000-$20,000 less than I was worth. Making a double mortgage payment and still having more money left over at the end of the month than I’d had a year before was very nice.

What I did right: I came in, learned quickly, took things seriously, was very professional and very effective.

What I did wrong: I didn’t press in. I did what I was asked, and that was it. That’s what a hired gun does. And the result was I was treated like a hired gun. As soon as the money got tough, I was the first one out the door.

I had coworkers who didn’t want me to learn more about the system. Since they didn’t want to show me, I should have found another way to learn it. And I should have loosened up.

2006: I won’t tell you who I’m working for now, other than to say it’s someone you’ve definitely heard of.

This time, I made an effort to go to lunch with my coworkers. I didn’t do that at the cable company because I was trying to save money. I’d gone without enough money for a couple of months and was deathly afraid of having to do it again. I’m still a tightwad and everyone knows it, but I’m willing to spend $7 to bond with my coworkers once a week. The theory is it’s a lot harder to show the door to someone you like than to someone you barely know.

The other thing I did this time was to steal some responsibility. I volunteer for everything. Sometimes they end up giving it to someone else anyway. But I’m always willing. When people give me some of their old responsibilities, I take them, and I figure out how to do them faster and smarter. After about two months, now my boss is surprised when I do something his way.

My path isn’t the only path. There are two previous bosses I wouldn’t hesitate to work for again. One is a retired U.S. Marine. He went into the Marine Corps as a technician, fixing teletype machines. When teletypes became less important, he moved on to computers. When he retired, he kept on working for the military as a contractor.

Most of my coworkers today took a similar path. Some enjoyed very long careers as defense contractors after their military days came to an end.

That seems to me to be a good route to take if you don’t have a lot of connections. And the upside to the military approach is that you know your job won’t be outsourced to India. That’s a real danger and that danger is going to get a lot bigger before it gets any smaller.

The other previous boss has a degree in psychology. He started working with computers because he found them interesting. I don’t know how he got started in the field, but during the time I worked for him, he was the epitome of connections. He knew everybody, and whenever something goofy came up, he knew how to get in touch with them to get the answer. The result? He’s every bit as entrenched as a tenured professor would be. The difference is there’s no question as to whether that’s a good thing.

Barry Bonds is no Kirby Puckett

Dave Farquhar Baseball ,

In case you’ve been on another planet this week, two things rocked the Baseball world. Hall of Famer Kirby Puckett died of a massive stroke at age 45. He was younger than Julio Franco, who is still playing in the major leagues, and Puckett is only the second youngest Hall of Famer to die. Lou Gehrig died of ALS at age 37.

The other news is the publication of a book detailing Barry Bonds’ use of performance-enhancing substances such as steroids since 1998.Both men had a dark side. According to the book, Bonds’ jealousy of Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa caused him to start using steroids and a bizarre mix of other substances to bulk up. It’s clear to anyone who remembers the skinny kid in the Pittsburgh Pirates uniform from 1988 that Bonds has been doing something to transform himself. Bonds said it was Flaxseed Oil. Guess what? I take Flaxseed Oil. I take a lot of it. I’m 5’9" and on a good day I weigh 145 pounds. Barry Bonds used to be built like me. Now he’s built like a professional wrestler, and he got that way practically overnight. I don’t think it was the Flaxseed Oil…

Puckett had something else going on beneath his always-smiling exterior. Kirby Puckett was the kind of guy who would go out of his way to help anyone, and the kind of guy who could keep a positive attitude throughout absolutely anything. If Kirby Puckett said the team was going to win, everyone believed it, and Kirby Puckett always found some way to win. But the home life wasn’t as good. Puckett’s first wife divorced him because of domestic abuse.

But it should be noted that even after the divorce, the abuse, and the other things that came out afterward, Puckett’s ex-wife thought highly of him. It takes a lot of good to cover domestic abuse. But Puckett had it.

Puckett was born and grew up in the projects in Chicago and dreamed of one day being the next Ernie Banks. Well, he played a different position (Banks was a shortstop, Puckett played mostly center field) and he didn’t play for the Cubs, but other than that, he did a pretty good job of emulating his hero’s attitude and his statistics. I haven’t seen a public statement yet, but I suspect Ernie Banks has told more than one person he was flattered to be Kirby Puckett’s hero.

It all ended tragically. Puckett’s career, that is. In 1996, Puckett woke up one morning and couldn’t see out of one eye. Glaucoma. Without depth perception, you can’t play baseball, so Puckett just walked away. Well, that and he told us not to feel sorry for him. He was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2001. His career was very short, but so spectacular that he made it on his first ballot.

In his later years, Puckett secluded himself, and his friends started worrying about him. One account said Puckett nearly weighed 400 pounds at one point. I’m not sure if that was a typo. But Puckett was trying to straighten himself out. He’d started training again, trying to get his weight down, and was engaged to be married. He hoped to start coaching baseball, maybe as soon as next year.

It’s sad. We’ll miss Kirby Puckett. And we can’t wait for Barry Bonds to just go away.

Get your valuable Windows licensing information from Microsoft!

Dave Farquhar Saving money

Do you know what the least expensive way to buy legitimate copies of Windows is? Do you know what the Microsoft Volume Licensing agreement covers?

Of course you don’t. Nobody can figure out Microsoft licensing. But Microsoft wants to send you a FREE! USB flash drive filled with this ultra-valuable information!

And oh, yeah, nothing stops you from erasing this information when you’re done and replacing it with your own, even more priceless data.To get your free drive, visit the Microsoft Mystery Solved page. If you don’t have a Passport account, sign up for a Hotmail account while you’re at it, and when this offer asks for your e-mail address, feed it the Hotmail address.

The drive probably isn’t all that big (I’d be shocked if it’s any bigger than 32 megs) but a free drive is better than no drive, and 32 megs is still useful. I also don’t know if it’s bootable, USB 2.0 capable, or anything else about it. But mine should be here 6-8 weeks from last Friday.

And if supplies run out before you sign up? I predict a glut of Microsoft-branded USB flash drives on Ebay in about two months. It’s just a hunch I have.

Myspace and blogging isn’t inherently bad

Dave Farquhar net.culture , , , , , , ,

I see some schools are blocking access to Myspace and other blogging tools. The blogosphere, some people seem to believe, is just a bunch of people looking to exploit teenaged girls.

Sure, blogs can be dangerous. So can cars and jobs. I think the Myspace phenomenon exposes weaknesses in upbringing more than anything else.Blogs have only been around for about 9 years so there haven’t been a lot of sociological studies of them–especially since blogging has only been hot for the last couple of years. But there are precedents.

I was very active in a lot of online communities as a teenager. Teens like me were a minority, but there were enough of us. I’m still friends with a couple of people I met online back in those days.

And I’ll tell you something straight up: I ran into a lot of women who were older than me. A lot of, um, lonely women who were older than me. A lot of them had the wrong idea about my age. One asked me where I went to college. But you see, I hadn’t gone yet, because I was only 14.

And in case you’re wondering, it didn’t go any further than that. I’d been taught right from wrong, and I carried myself that way, both online and in person, so the topic never came up.

There were other dark sides of this online world. Software piracy was usually the gateway. And yeah, I’ll admit I downloaded some software that I didn’t pay for. Mostly I stuck to things that were no longer commercially available. And without Amazon.com and Ebay, it was difficult to buy out-of-print stuff. So I wouldn’t have been able to buy the majority of it even if I’d wanted to. That didn’t make it legal, but to my teenaged mind, it sounded moral enough.

Of course most people were interested in the new stuff. And that could lead down a slippery slope. St. Louis wasn’t exactly a hotbed for the latest new releases, so to get the zero-day warez, you had to call long distance. But remember, most of us weren’t 16 yet, so we didn’t have jobs and we didn’t have a lot of money. So I knew an awful lot of people who got into phone fraud. And it often got worse from there. Phone fraud led to credit card fraud, and I heard stories of people who got caught, slapped with the huge bills they’d run up, and turned to dealing drugs to make the money to pay it back.

All so they could be the first one in St. Louis to have the Commodore 64 version of Grover’s Magic Numbers. Yes, there were people who risked all of that to have something that lame-sounding. And no, it didn’t sound any cooler then, but people did it.

I talked with a number of people who were caught up in that. There was a guy in Chicago who called me on a pretty regular basis for a little while. No, he didn’t dial 1-314, if you know what I mean. One day he quit calling, and not long after that, I heard the Feds caught up with him. There was a rumor that he ran away to Colorado after he got out of juvenile detention. Whatever the case, I never heard from him again.

But I never made any fraudulent long-distance calls. I had a 3.6 grade-point average, was in National Honors Society, and I was in Who’s Who Among American High School Students all four years. And I sold my first magazine article before I got my driver’s license. I wasn’t going to throw all that away just so I could make long-distance phone calls on someone else’s dime.

So why was I having anything to do with those people? Simple. We talked programming. Nothing I learned from those guys is remotely useful to me today, but it was interesting then. Sure, those guys made a lot of mistakes, and yeah, they sure did break a lot of laws, but they weren’t entirely bad.

I’m sure if my parents had known everything that was going on, they’d have gotten rid of the modem or at least severely limited what I could do with it. But they couldn’t stand over my shoulder all the time.

And besides, there wasn’t any need to worry. They’d taught me right from wrong, and what I had to lose if I stepped too far out of bounds. Sure I pushed the limits, but that’s being a teenager for you. Come to think of it, I still push the limits sometimes now, even at 31.

The primitive online communities that existed in the late 1980s and early 1990s were social communities. The only difference between that and the mall was distance. The computer took away the geographical boundaries. In that regard they’re the same as Myspace and other online communities today.

There’s potential for problems today, just like there was 17 years ago. But looking back now, there’s no question why I went online back then. It helped me deal with being a teenager. I could talk with other teenagers who were like me–there were only one or two others like me at my school, and one of them was a major-league jerk. And I could get advice from adults who were further removed from the situation and could give me advice without conflicts of interest. Whether the struggle of the day involved a soldering iron or a girl, I knew at least one person who knew the answer.

I can think of lots of things I’d change if I could go back, but that isn’t among them. So I don’t believe isolating kids today from online communities solves anything. Kids will be kids. Hopefully they know right from wrong and what they can lose if they choose wrong.

Blocking those who would choose wrong doesn’t solve a lot. They’ll find another way to choose wrong.

Denying an important resource to those who would choose right is a greater loss. It’s much easier to find another way to choose wrong than it is to find another way to get wise counsel.

Reviving a laptop

Dave Farquhar Hardware , , , , ,

My Micron Transport LT (a rebranded Samsung Sens Pro 680) died on Friday. I wasn’t a happy camper. Just ask my wife.

But it’s working again today, and I learned something along the way.We’d gone out for a while, and when we got back, I sat down at the laptop and noticed Windows was complaining about low battery power. I didn’t think much of it–I just unplugged the AC adapter and plugged it back in, like I usually do when that happens.

Well, about five minutes into my session it died hard. And it wouldn’t power back up, no matter what I tried. Eventually I got the idea to test the AC adapter. I took the adapter to a known-good plug, switched my voltmeter over to DC, touched one lead to the barrel of the plug and one to the tip, and got a whole lot of nothing. I tried it with an AC adapter that I knew worked, and got a reading. Then I noticed the power cord going into the adapter looked just like the adapter for most portable radios. Hoping against hope, I switched the voltmeter to AC, touched it to the leads, and got disappointment.

110 volts.

Google to the rescue. I did a couple of searches and found places selling AC adapters for a Micron LT, but the prices were outrageous. The best price I found was $55, and most places wanted $70 or $75. I didn’t want to sink that much money into a six-year-old laptop–especially when I didn’t know if the AC adapter might have taken something else down with it. Since the laptop had run fine on battery power, I had a pretty good indication it hadn’t, but I didn’t know.

I found one place advertising original Samsung AC adapters for $20. But they were sold out, of course.

A search on the specifications printed on the AC adapter itself–19 volts, 3.15 amps–yielded devices that would work, but again at prices higher than I was willing to pay.

Finally I decided to search Ebay. Searching on "Micron Transport LT" didn’t yield much except some parts laptops, and substituting "MicronPC" and "MPC" didn’t help. All I learned was that a stripped 650 MHz LT with no drives, AC adapter, battery, or extra memory sold for about 50 bucks. That was encouraging. I could Frankenstein an LT back together if I had to.

So I searched on "Samsung Sens Pro 680" instead, and found some joy. Some prices were outrageous. But I found a seller in Hong Kong with original Samsung OEM units. I also found someone in Brooklyn, Laptopspower, with an aftermarket unit. The prices were comparable–around $35. Did I want to buy an identical replacement? Part of me said no–why buy something identical to something that broke? But the little guy on the other shoulder reminded me that the one that broke lasted six years.

Basically the decision came down to Hong Kong vs. Brooklyn. No question a shipment from Brooklyn would arrive faster, all other things being equal. So I took a chance on the aftermarket unit and placed my order on Sunday night.

It arrived today. I’m happy to say it’s bigger and heavier than the original. Remembering previous jobs, I know some sissy-boy executives would complain about that, but if you’re a dumb PC tech like me, you know that the weight of a transformer is a crude measure of its quality. Cheap electronics components weigh less than higher quality components, all else being equal. Besides, I’m burly enough to manage to carry a couple more ounces without grimacing.

Some other things going for the aftermarket unit: It has an indicator light, so you know when it’s getting power. This way I’ll have some warning if and when this one dies, and I’ll know to save my work. That would be worth 30 bucks right there, if I happened to be working on the right thing. And the amperage of this unit is 3.2 amps, not 3.15. That’s not a lot of difference, but more amps is better. The laptop will only draw what it needs, but higher capacity means a cooler-running, longer-lasting unit.

And, as a bonus, I learned that the LT’s CPU is removable and upgradable. Just look for an MPGA Pentium III. The catch is that the fastest chip the LT will take is 800 MHz, and it wasn’t produced in large quantities. An 800 MHz MPGA P3 runs about $80. My 700 MHz chip costs about $30. That’s an expensive 100 MHz upgrade. But it’s nice to know I can get more speed, if I’m willing to throw money at it. It used to be that the only way to get a faster laptop was to buy a new one, after all.

So my LT is back in business again, and I’ve learned something. That can’t be bad.

Should you edit your boss’ Wikipedia article?

Dave Farquhar net.culture , ,

The IP block associated with congressional offices has been banned off and on from editing Wikipedia, due to a large percentage of dubious edits that attempt to clean up a Congressperson’s image, or smear political opponents.

This has raised a question: Should people with vested interests edit articles?

Absolutely not. And lack of a foolproof way to keep them from doing that is one reason it’s not a reliable source.

Read more

European O gauge train layouts

Dave Farquhar Toy trains , , , , ,

O gauge is the size of train that most Americans associate with Lionel. It was actually invented around the turn of the century in Germany, although whether it was invented by Marklin or one of the many johnny-come-latelies is open to debate.

After World War II, O gauge faded very quickly in Europe, although in the United States it experienced a resurgence that helped make Marx and Lionel two of the biggest, most profitable toy companies in the world.

I’ve seen some pictures of European O gauge. You’ve got to see this stuff.The second picture on this Dutch page is extremely impressive. Bayko was an architectural toy made of Bakelite (an early plastic), available both before and after World War II. While the scale didn’t necessarily match O gauge precisely, it was more than close enough to the 1:43 scale used in the United Kingdom and 1:45 in Continental Europe, and it allowed the construction of a wide variety of very colorful and attractive buildings. It makes American Plasticville look downright monotonous.

Between the various construction kits available, buildings made by the train manufacturers themselves, the huge variety of 1:43 vehicles and figures, it was possible to build a miniature world that the American product lines just couldn’t match. And yet it died. I guess it fell victim to the smaller houses in Europe, which were much friendlier to HO and TT scales.

If I ever go to Europe and run across any of this stuff, I’m going to be in trouble.

How to make more money, but more importantly, keep more of what you earn

Dave Farquhar Saving money , , , , , , , ,

Most GenXers don’t spend their money wisely.

That’s not an insult on my peers; there’s plenty of blame to go around. Yes, we want what our parents had at 50 and we want it at 25, but part of the problem is the images all around us tell us we have to have all that. And if my education is any indication, the only financial education I received in school was an aside in a U.S. History class.

Let’s talk about how to earn more to dig out of financial ruin, and how to stay out.First and foremost, usually when people get to the point where they start typing “earn more money now” or something similar into Google, usually they need immediate help. A year ago, I was in that situation. Talking it over with the higher-ups didn’t help–a few months later I lost my job. Ouch.

I’d be lying to you if I told you I wasn’t bitter. I still am. But in a way it was the best thing that could have happened to me, because it forced me to look for opportunities. I already had been, but it forced me to find others that I probably wouldn’t have, otherwise.

There are a few ways to make a little money but it won’t necessarily happen immediately. If you have a web site, put Google ads on it. Click my link to find out how. Whether you get your first check in a month or in a year depends on how much traffic you get. A faster way to make a little money is to sign up for some online surveys. You won’t get rich, but a dollar here and five bucks there adds up. Sometimes you’ll hit the jackpot and qualify for a $25 survey. That won’t pay the mortgage but it will pay for a few meals.

Here’s another idea: Become a mystery shopper. Google for it. But don’t pay anyone to become a mystery shopper, not when there are legitimate outfits who are willing to pay you. Just keep in mind some of them want references. That’s actually a good thing. It protects your reputation and theirs. Again, it’s not big money, but it’s fairly easy money.

But I’ll be blunt: If you’re in some real trouble and there’s a bill that’s due in two weeks and you can’t pay it, then it’s time to make some sacrifices. Do you have any recent video games? Any collectible CDs or DVDs or VHS tapes? Collectible toys, such as Star Wars figures? There are lots of places that are willing to buy things like that, but to get top dollar you have to sell it yourself. Search eBay, find out what your items or something similar are selling for, and think seriously about liquidating some stuff. Don’t sell your family heirlooms, but if there are things that you can sell now to get you out of trouble and replace later when you’re out of trouble, consider it. While collectibles do increase in value, I’ll let you in on a dirty little secret: Most of them are doing well to keep up with inflation. None will increase as quickly as your debt–not for a sustained period of time, at least. If you have something that is, sell now. The bubble will burst, and you’ll be able to buy it back cheaper later.

And something sobering will happen as you research what some of the things you own are worth. You’ll find a lot of them aren’t worth anywhere near what you paid for them. There’s a lesson there. It’s much better to spend your money on things that hold their value than on things that have bling factor but have no value once the 14-day return period is over.

So when you have money again, spend less on worthless things so you have more to spend on things that do hold their value. A big truck turns heads and lets you bully people on the road (and the ads to some degree encourage it) but can you really afford $40 a week to keep gas in it? Do you have to haul stuff often enough to justify that expense? For the majority of people, it’s much better to drive an economy car and put the money you save on the lower payment and less gas towards paying off debt. Borrow or rent a truck those occasional times when you need to haul something. So skip the Hummer and get a house. You need a house anyway, and while a Hummer will lose value when you go to sell it, a house usually will gain.

Let’s go back to the eBay thing for a minute. Ebay does a lot of good things. Once you’ve sold your stuff, you have the option to go buy more stuff to sell. Buy what you know and only what you know, and only if you can buy low and sell high. If you can’t either double your money or make $10, don’t bother. It’s best to find something that lets you do both. But if you have the ability to do that, you have an asset that stands a chance of turning your financial situation around within a few years.

But it also does something else. It teaches you how to sell. There is no better, more useful ability than how to sell. Not everyone sells merchandise for dollars, but everyone has to sell ideas. If you regularly find that people don’t listen to you, then that’s a good indication that you need more salesmanship ability. Yeah, but those people are idiots, you say. Even better. There are more idiots out there than smart people. Most rich people got rich by getting idiots to buy their junk.

I remember reading a line in a book once that asked me if I could make a better hamburger than McDonald’s. Of course I can. So why did Ray Kroc have more money than me?

By the way, I don’t mean any insult by any of this if people don’t listen to you. There are a lot of people who don’t listen to me either. I need to work on my sales skills as much as anyone.

I did something else before I started selling my stuff. I took a walk. I walked at least once a day. But I didn’t just walk. I was picking up aluminum cans. At 40 cents a pound, an aluminum can is worth about a penny. There’s no way I can pick up 100 cans in an hour, so it’s a lousy way to make money. But nobody else was paying me to do anything else during that time. I made sure I didn’t walk during working hours so I wouldn’t be out if the phone rang with a job opportunity. At least I felt like I was doing a little something. It was very little, but it kept my mind off things so I didn’t get as depressed. It also helped me watch for opportunity. Those cans aren’t worth anything, but the ability to quickly spot things of value from far off is worth something. It made a few house payments when I didn’t have a 40-hour-a-week job.

That’s enough talk about making money. I’ll admit that they’re just general ideas. I can’t give specific advice because something that works where I live might not work 100 miles away. Something else works there. The nice thing about the United States is that there always is an opportunity, no matter where you are. Although politicians seem to be trying their best to destroy that, they can’t destroy opportunities as quickly as you can find them.

I read a study this past week that said 70% of college graduates today can’t balance a checkbook, and when presented with a 20-ounce jar of spaghetti sauce for $1.99 and a 32-ounce jar for $2.49, they don’t know how to figure out which one is the better deal. That should scare some people.

But it occurred to me that I didn’t learn how to do that in school. I learned it from my mother. And I think she learned it from her mother, who must have known it because she managed to raise 11 kids and her husband didn’t have any money.

They don’t teach that kind of thing in school. To me, that’s the only thing math is good for. But I don’t know how old I was when I realized math was useful for that. Before that I thought math was just something teachers used to prove they knew something I didn’t.

There are lots of books out there that try to teach you how to make more money. But a more valuable skill is learning how to spot the good deal. Learn how to calculate the cost per ounce and use it. Carry a calculator with you if that’s what you have to do. There’s no shame in that. A calculator is also a useful tool for keeping a running total of the cost of the stuff in your cart. So it might be a good idea to carry two calculators. They’ll pay for themselves the first time you use them.

And if you have any influence with math teachers, please hand them this word problem. It’s the only good use of math I can think of for a non-engineer:

A television costs $199 at a store two miles from you. The sales tax rate in your town is 5.75%. The same television costs $179 at a store 100 miles away. The sales tax rate in that town is 6%. Your car gets 25 miles to the gallon. Gasoline costs $2.00 a gallon. Is it cheaper to buy the television at the store two miles away, or is it cheaper to buy it 100 miles away?

I’ll conclude with the secret of getting rich. The secret isn’t to make lots of money. It’s human nature to spend more money as soon as you make more money. The secret is to spend less.

I remember when the first of my college classmates bought a house. He told me that at the end of the paper, it told him how much money the loan was for, and how much money he would pay between then and the end of the term. “Am I really going to make that much money?” he asked. Then he laughed it off.

He will. So will I. So will everyone. Most people living in the United States will make a lot more than a million dollars between their first job and retirement. The question is whether Nike and General Motors and Phillip Morris and Coca-Cola get to keep most of it, or whether the wage-earner gets to keep most of it.

I really don’t like the tone of this rant–and it basically is a rant–because it sounds like someone who made it looking back. I’ve only started the journey myself. I started 14 months ago. But my wife and I already have something to show for it. We have no credit card debt, we own two 2002 Honda Civics outright, and if we can keep up our current pace, we will own our house outright in a little over three years. Five years is probably more realistic.

Remember, around 12 months ago there wasn’t enough money to pay the bills. So if I can do it, lots of people can.

Scheming towards a solderless train layout

Dave Farquhar Toy trains ,

I’m rewiring my train layout. You’re supposed to wire every third track section back to the transformer to prevent voltage drop, which presents a challenge when you’re using traditional Lionel lockons that clip onto the track.

A lot of people just solder a pair of wires to the track. But that’s a lot of soldering. And soldering under a table exposes yourself to lots of nasty chemicals (such as, oh, lead) that you don’t want to be breathing in. Read more