The Case For Anti-Optimization
The phone rang and it was the front desk. In broken English, the woman on the other line told me that someone was downstairs waiting for me. I told her I’d be right down. I’d been waiting months for this day. I let my wife know who it was and that I would be right…
Spend For Today or Save For Tomorrow
Last week I logged onto Vanguard and tinkered with my investments. I didn’t sell or buy anything–nothing that I would call bad investing practice–but I did reduce the amount of money being shoveled into my beloved VTSAX each week by half. This reduction in after-tax cash going into the markets wasn’t driven by any emotion,…
Does FIRE Take The Fight Out of You?
I get into work early. At 6 am each morning I’m the first one in our main office and will usually be the only one diligently typing away till around 7:45 or so when others begin to trickle in. This isn’t an abnormal time to start work in construction, but it’s extremely abnormal in the…
When Too Much Information Is The Problem
When my construction project ended in March of 2020, my company sent me to another job that had a notorious reputation as being plagued with problem after problem, coupled with a very difficult owner. This job was running two years over the original completion date and nobody was happy about that. Right after getting word…
Unicorns and Keynesian Economics
My youngest daughter is four and still a bit scared of the dark, so she likes to keep a stuffed unicorn named Corny Corny with her when it’s time for bed. It’s a big round tie-dye pillow like blob with a unicorn horn and two stiched on happy eyes (see featured image). Corny Corny gives…
The Perfect Career Length
A few weekends ago I spent some time with my good friend and his family. We drove up to a nearby lake in the Sierra for the day and grilled up food, made a fire for our kids to cook up s’mores, and enjoyed the brilliant scenery that is a mountain lake nestled amongst towering…
Impatient Induced Frugality
We went this past weekend to buy a fire pit for our backyard. After browsing online through Amazon to get an idea of pricing and styles, we thought it might be nice to see a few in real life. So we went to Lowe’s where we found a decent one, albeit one we hadn’t previously…
The Year That Never Happened
A few days ago, the unpleasant anniversary of San Francisco’s shelter in place order ominously came and went like a slow drifting summer fog across the bay. I’d forgotten the exact date, March 16th, if you’ll forgive me. I would have been perfectly fine to keep on with my life without that unneeded bit knowledge,…
Daydreamer
I’ve found myself in a new role at work this year. I translate blueprints into construction schedules. A lot of staring into computer monitors. Actually, I’m only staring into computer monitors. Blueprints these days aren’t what you might envision. They aren’t the lovely, unwieldy paper drawings that I can make notes on, or color in,…
The Create to Consume Ratio
My kids have this bad habit of complaining about being bored or calling something they don’t like boring. My girls probably overuse the word a bit, but it emphasizes their dislike for idle time. They are so used to having things at their fingertips, that any wait time instantly becomes intolerable dead time to them.…