Nostalgia

“Nostalgia’s nice enough in little bitty doses, it puts personal peach fuzz on the hard ass of history…”

— Bobby Case in Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates – Tom Robbins

Life on Hold

What do you say when your 7 year old asks you if life will ever move on when you have kids?

I was putting the kids to bed the other night and my 7 year old Noah said:
“Dad, do you feel like life won’t ever move on now that you have kids?”
My first thought was “Oh my gosh, did he hear me say something like that?”.  I’m gussing that all parents at some point wonder what their life would be like without kids.  Maybe he overheard my wife Sharon and I talking and we said something like that.  But, recovering from my own thoughts, I smiled at him and said,
“Oh honey, I think that our life with kids keeps us moving all the time.  We love how our life is with kids, there are lots of things that I wouldn’t know anything about.  I would never know what it’s like to have a 7 year old boy.”
“Yeah, but I’m going to be living with you forever.” Noah said.
“Noah, you’re going to grow up and have a family of your own and move out to your own house.”
“But I don’t know what I want to do or how to do things”
“Well, you have a long time still to learn things and to figure out what you want to do.  And, you can come back and see us whenever you want.  Come over for dinner, bring your kids over, just like we do at Grandma and Grandpas.”
“But what if you move?”
Well, we’ll be sure and tell you where we move, and we’ll talk to you on the phone.  We won’t go away just because you move out.  You will come over to our house, and you can bring your kids, and we’ll still see you all the time.”
“Oh, OK” was all that Noah said, and that seemed to solve it and put his fears to rest.

I am constantly amazed by the sincere and deep thoughts of kids.

Maintenance

There’s birth, there’s death, and in between there’s maintenance.

— Switters
Fierce Invalids Home from Hot Climates by Tom Robbins

Milford Track, New Zealand

I saw this awesome looking trail in New Zealand.  While I doubt I’ll ever be able to make it to some place like this.  I think it would be the journey of a lifetime.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milford_Track

http://www.pilotguides.com/tv_shows/globe_trekker/shows/pacific/new_zealand2.php

 

On the poor use of grammer

It’s a matter of usage. If a house is off-plumb and rickety and lets in the wind, you blame the mason, not the bricks. Our words are up to the job. It’s our syntax that’s limiting.”

— Switters in Fierce Invalids Home From Hot Climates – Tom Robbins

Preventing Windows Update reboots

How to keep from getting those annoying restart messages from windows update.

Type gpedit.msc at the run prompt you see at the bottom of your list when you click the start button.  This will bring up a new tool.
Navigate to “Computer Configuration -> Administrative Templates ->Windows Components -> Windows Update”

To change the interval between reminder windows change:
“Re-prompt for restart with scheduled installations”

To keep the computer from rebooting while you’re away, change:
“No auto-restart with logged on users for scheduled automatic updates”

Thanks to Tekzilla for the tip.

 

Mortgage Bailout: Who pays for it?

So the government has signed into law a new bill to give “mortgage relief” to people who got into trouble with their loan. That sounds nice doesn’t it?

While people who hit hard times when the real estate market took a down turn and their houses were worth less than they paid for them, all I can say is “life’s a bitch”. There has never been a guarantee that your house will increase in value. Everyone should realize that when their interest rate is variable, that means it can change and you might pay much more. It’s a risk. You are rewarded for taking the risk by getting a lower initial rate. You might come out on top, you might lose. It’s a gamble. Except when the government shows up to bail you out when things go wrong. Some will say, “Well it doesn’t hurt you to help these people out.” Bull! It hurts me in two ways:

  1. First and foremost, it doesn’t fix the long term problem of stupid people buying something they can’t afford. Bitten once, shame on you, bitten twice shame on me. These people are still “bite free”. They won’t learn from this and are likely to do it again. Why not, there’s no risk if the government will bail you out.
  2. All of us as tax payers pay for it. The money comes from somewhere. As the article states, this bill costs $800 billion and pushes the deficit to 10.6 trillion. That means we just increased our debt by 8%. To bail out stupid people.

I chose not to take the risk. I paid a higher interest rate to get a 30 year fixed loan. I felt a little foolish when others got lower rates. But I now have an interest rate locked in for the next 25 years. Why did I do this? In part, because I had earlier gotten a 5/1 ARM mortgage that went up on me and I learned my lesson.

Don’t let the government make the American people stupider than they already are. Let your congressperson know that you don’t like this bill and would like to see less “nanny-state” policies and more “tough love”