We just got back from Ocho Rios, Jamaica, and it was awesome. Last week was our first real vacation (“real,” as in longer than a three-day weekend and not a holiday visit with family – a true getaway) since 2008. It was way overdue, and well worth it. One weird finale to the trip: my [...]

If you’ve ever driven from O’Hare into the heart of Chicago, you have surely seen the electric signs that say things like “24 minutes to circle via Kennedy.” I’ve always thought that was bizarre at best, since I am aware of the Loop in Chicago, but not anything known as “the circle.” Can anybody shed [...]

All your sophisters cannot produce anything better adapted to preserve a rational and manly freedom than the course that we have pursued, who have chosen our nature rather than our speculations, our breasts rather than our inventions, for the great conservatories and magazines of our rights and privileges. ~ Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution [...]

I’m writing this on my treadmill! We bought a SurfShelf Treadmill Desk for those times when we want to work out but need to work or have something else to do on the computer. Pretty sweet.

As I’ve blogged on several occasions (here, here, and here), my trusty Dell finally got beaten into immobility during law school. This prompted me to run out and buy the cheapest thing I thought I could live with for a year or two. As the above links indicate, that was a mistake. My Sony has [...]

You know times are bad when large corporations start accepting advertising money to do product placement in their web chat tech support sessions. For example: “Thank you, I’ve found your account information.  While I’m looking up your account info, be sure to check out _____, where you can meet friends, play games, etc.” That just [...]

A few days ago I lamented (here and here) the difficulty of doing certain at-a-glance budgeting in Quicken.  I think I have found many of the features I was missing through the excellent free service Mint.com. The main thing I have been missing is at-a-glance budgeting.  That is, I’d really like to be able to [...]

We upgraded last night to Quicken Premier 2009, which partially resolves the Quicken 2007 issues surrounding budgets, which I mentioned in my last post, through the Savings Plan feature. Unfortunately, this feature has its own limitations – you have to define a plan each month, cannot define plans for past months, can only define a [...]

Does anyone know how to get Quicken to budget properly for a loan account? That is, if you actually set up an amortized loan, how do you get Quicken to budget for the interest and principal as a single payment? I’m using Quicken Premier 2007, and it seems like there is no way to track [...]

I have not been posting much on here, lately, ironically because I am not super-busy, despite having a lot of opportunities for professional development and a lot of fun experiences. Life has remained at a good, non-frantic pace since the last entry, and we have been relishing the free time. That said, I plan to [...]