from the gut

I scan a handful of financial blogs pretty regularly. I also scan a handful of technical blogs relating to SQL Server and Oracle. It isn’t very often that a blog from one of these worlds links to a blog in the other. But here’s JLP from AllFinancialMatters linking to Don Burleson of oracle-dba.com fame. I guess we’re all just geeks.

For the past two years, I’ve been listening to John Prine almost constantly. I first heard The Great Compromise on Pam Hill’s 3rd Annual Rejection Day Counter-Valentine’s show on KFAI. It’s just a great song with clever lyrics and a great political sub-text. The man is seeing a beautiful woman (The United States) who he takes to a drive-in movie. When he comes back with drinks, she’s “hopped into a foreign sports car.” Some people call him a coward for walking away, but he’d rather have names thrown at him than “fight for a thing that ain’t right.” Talk about a song that sticks in your head.

I haven’t bought many CDs in the last couple years, but I bought his Anthology and have been listening to it almost constantly ever since. Two years and I still keep picking new things out of those same old songs.

Whenever I read about organ donation, I get a chuckle thinking of his “Please Don’t Bury Me” which features clever hooks like “the deaf can take both of my ears if they don’t mind the sight” and “give my stomach to Milwaulkee if they run out of beer”.

Anyway, a couple months ago, I learned that he was playing the State Theater here in Minneapolis. Knowing that I would have a two-month old at that time, I balked at the timing and — with diapers putting a new strain on our budget — the cost. Then I remembered my regrets about never seeing Frank Sinatra or Johnny Cash, and I changed my mind. But by then, they had sold out. Nuts.

We just got a call today from Cities 97, our local Clear Channel affiliate that plays a decent, if predictable, acoustic song list on Sunday morning & evening. We won the tickets to the concert. It’s this Friday.

I am so excited. It’s a small-ish venue and, considering his clever lyrics, I’ll bet he’ll have some good stage patter. And I’m excited to hear more of his music since I only have two disks of his expansive catalog. Not sure where the seats are, but who cares?

Plus this is going to be a great date for me and my tater away from our lil’ tater tot. Two concerts in six months? I almost feel hip again!

Hilarious.

It’s official. I’m an old man. Our daughter, Dora Lynn Colin, was born three+ weeks ago, on March 18th. She was much bigger than expected, weighing 8lbs6oz and 21 inches long. She is a healthy baby. She eats, sleeps, and poops, which is all that we had hoped for.

Are you getting much sleep?
No

How is she?
Good. Very cute. I could look at her all day long.

Do you have pictures?
Of course. Here Here Here And here

How is Mom?
She’s enjoying being a mom. And looking forward to getting her arm cast off in a week.

Has your life changed?
Like you couldn’t imagine.

For those who just like to collect data, here are some ways to use Excel in your daily life. I personally like the idea of using Excel to track grocery costs. Maybe rather than tracking everything, it would be useful to track prices that fluctuate or that there are often specials on that mask the true “price” of a product. (Does anybody buy yogurt when it’s not on “sale”?) It would also be interesting to compare products head-to-head with so-called “wholesale” store prices.

Besides work, I use Excel for quick-and-dirty calculators. Right now, we’re researching our options for dropping our PMI insurance from our mortgage. So, I created a workbook that looks at two variables: appraised value of our home and amount of lump sum payment. I have also set up two targets of equity-to-value: 20% and 25%. I’ve also created a column that expresses the lump-sum in terms of how many months of PMI that equates to. I should add a column that expresses how many months each lump sum would knock off the re-payment of our mortgage.

Who would win in a fight? A bear or a wolverine? A shark or an elephant? These answers and much more here. Make sure to check out the “old school Pipeline” link for important background information.

The NYT has a good piece about the economics of airlines providing WiFi on their planes. I am not exactly a seasoned traveller. I’m one of the people who hold up the security checkpoint because I’m never sure what to do before I am told.

That said, when I travel, which is usually for leisure, it always surprises me how unwired the airlines and airports are. I get frustrated at the lack of WiFi and I’m not even working! The technology is there — Boeing has been putting a lot of weight behind it since 2001 — but the airlines don’t see the money in it.

Does anybody else thinks this seems short-sighted? If say, United, had WiFi on their planes, wouldn’t you go out of your way to book a flight on United versus their competitors? Moreover, the airlines are losing money like crazy anyway, what’s another half-million to fit your planes with WiFi?