Posted by Ben
Fri, 22 Sep 2006 02:09:00 GMT
My results from the Nerd, Geek or Dork test:
Pure Nerd
60% Nerd, 43% Geek, 17% Dork
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For The Record:
A Nerd is someone who is passionate about learning/being smart/academia.
A Geek is someone who is passionate about some particular area or subject, often an obscure or difficult one.
A Dork is someone who has difficulty with common social expectations/interactions.
You scored better than half in Nerd, earning you the title of: Pure Nerd.
The times, they are a-changing. It used to be that being exceptionally smart led to being unpopular, which would ultimately lead to picking up all of the traits and tendences associated with the “dork.” No-longer. Being smart isn’t as socially crippling as it once was, and even more so as you get older: eventually being a Pure Nerd will likely be replaced with the following label: Purely Successful.
Congratulations!
THE NERD? GEEK? OR DORK? TEST
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My test tracked 3 variables How you compared to other people your age and gender: | You scored higher than 99% on nerdiness | | You scored higher than 99% on geekosity | | You scored higher than 99% on dork points |
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Posted by Ben
Thu, 27 Oct 2005 01:15:00 GMT
With our upcoming home purchase, Amanda and I have started to become a little more conscious of our spending habits the past little while.
During the summer, when I was working full-time, it was quite easy to sock away a tidy sum into the savings account in anticipation of the home purchase. Since I’ve cut my hours back for school, that hasn’t been as easy. We’re not hurting, by any means, but we probably have a few expenses creating money leaks that we could plug up. And with a mortgage looming close on the horizon, its becoming more important to cut back our outgoings.
I’ll readily admit that Amanda has been smarter with her money than I have. Though, maybe a lot of the difference disappears when we factor in our student loans. Still, I like to buy things, and Amanda is more of a saver, though I am moving in the savings direction.
You need a budget
We’ve been using a sort of budget the past few months to help us figure out how to spend our money. Our problem has been that we usually use the budget categories as we look back on a month, so by then its a little late to make any adjustments.
In my wanderings around the web, I stumbled across a budget system that looked good to me. Funny enough, it was made up by a fellow BYU student. It is called: You Need a Budget. (YNAB)
The idea behind it is that you lag one month behind your paychecks, so you know exactly how much money you have to spend in a monthly budget. For example, Amanda and I are both bringing in paychecks this month (October). The money we get from these checks is the money that we will spend in November.
It isn’t always easy to get the the point where you can lag paychecks like this. We are very lucky in that our relative expenses are pretty low right now. We decided that using this system was something we wanted to do, so we’ve cut back on a lot of our frivolous expenses during October. We already had an “extra” paycheck from September, and we’ve supplemented our other needs with some money that we had saved up this summer.
The real beauty of this system is that it prevents the living paycheck to paycheck that so many (including us) have gotten by with. Just this month, our rent was due by the 5th, but the first October paycheck didn’t come until the 14th! So we were already being forced to use September money for October expenses, why not go all the way and lag the whole month?
Smart Saving
In my quest to be a saver instead of a spender, I’ve started to pay more attention to interest rates, savings accounts an other opportunities to sock money away. The YNAB creator mentioned on his website that he keeps his savings money in an ING Direct account. This is a savings account managed via the internet, and linked with your existing checking account, to make getting money in and out easy. The coolest thing about these new online savings accounts is the interest rates they pay. ING is currently paying 3.4% interest! The great thing is that these accounts aren’t like CDs. Your money isn’t locked away for some set time period, they are true FDIC savings accounts.
In checking out ING Direct, I did some google research and found that it is indeed a reputable company, and a lot of people are very happy with it. In my research, I stumbled onto another online savings account that almost made me fall off my chair: Emigrant Direct. boasting a 4.0% interest rate!
Really amazing stuff. For the financially disciplined and creative folks out there, you could get a low interest credit card, maybe with a low introductory rate, charge all of your expenses on the card, and instead of paying off the card every month, sock the money into Emigrant Direct and make a minimum payment. For this to work, the interest rate on the card needs to be lower than 4.0%. If it is,your “beating” the system and making those credit cards work for you. Instead of paying them interest, you get to use the cards to make yourself interest.
We decided to go with Emigrant Direct. While the sign-up procedure is longer than with ING, 4.0% is hard to resist.
Continuing
As a member of the LDS Church, I’ve taken the warnings our leaders have given about financial and other preparedness very seriously. It seems clear to me that we need to get our financial houses in order, and the sooner the better. Our consumer society encourages unnecessary purchases, luxury living, etc. without giving much emphasis to saving, reducing debt, and thriftiness. Our approach needs to be the opposite: save first, and live on the rest.
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Posted by Ben
Thu, 08 Sep 2005 10:37:48 GMT
I finally got another instance of Typo running so Amanda can start Blogging. I know it looks exactly the same as this one, but we can get the colors changed later.
Say hello to Mrs. Criertower
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Posted by Ben
Fri, 02 Sep 2005 02:18:00 GMT
I am so stoked for football season this year. Of course, I’m stoked for football season every year, but this year is different. I have a ton of optimism about this revamped BYU team we have here.
Of course, my excitement isn’t helped much with quotes like this:
Are the rookies, the vets and this new and retooled Cougar offense ready?
“No doubt in my mind,” Anae said.
Why?
“I’m not telling,” he said.
(from the Deseret News)
Bwahahahahah! I love it!
Update (9/4/05)
Heh, guess they weren’t ready after all.
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Posted by Ben
Tue, 30 Aug 2005 01:43:00 GMT
So, I began the first day of my last year of BYU today. I have a pretty heavy load of 3 Electrical Engineering classes, each with a heavy lab component. Overall, the classes are interesting to me, so hopefully that helps me through the pile of work I have ahead of me.
There is one thing that continually bothers me about my college (Engineering and Technology), though: grading. Here at BYU (as at a lot of schools, I’m sure) some departments and colleges are becoming much more aware of grade inflation, and are trying to reign the grades back in. Overall, I’m I think this is a good practice, especially as it relates to the very subjective subjects like the humanities, etc.
My college and department have taken it upon themselves to set the standard for grade deflation. My first teacher told us that the department got after him last year for having grades that were too high. What amazes me is that the class is a very time-consuming one, where much of the grade comes from lab assignments. These aren’t subjective value-judgements about how good or not good a paper is. The labs we have to do have to WORK.
Of course we also have tests and assignments in addition to the labs, which all help to give the teacher an idea of our abilities. These, too, are pretty objective measures. You either get the right answer or you don’t. You use the correct process or you don’t.
My big problem with the extreme focus on grade deflation is it encourages the teachers to make things harder than they need to be. To have a department-enforced grade curve means the teachers have to purposely find ways to fail a certain number of their class. The focus changes from teaching to a game of wits. What if a great teacher really knew how to put across material to a group of bright senior engineering students? Not possible in our college.
I’ve had a couple of classes where it seemed like the teacher was holding back critical info. The only way one of my buddies (arguably the smartest in the class) got through things was to spend almost every waking moment in the teacher’s office. There’s something wrong with that. I’m all for office hours being there to help, but they shouldn’t be a requirement.
More later….I’ve got a class
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Posted by Ben
Sat, 20 Aug 2005 11:41:00 GMT
Well, I’ve had another little change in my employment. My current employer wasn’t too keen on losing me, so they counter-offered to get me to stay.
After a lot of thinking, and rethinking, I’ve decided to stay on for the next little while. I really would like to finish up some of the projects I have goinng there.
Also, staying at this job at least until I graduat from BYU in april is probably the best idea. At that point I hope to move into a job in my field. I think having the same job throughout my college career will probably be the best thing for my resume.
I just hope that I can learn what I need to to get a firmware/FPGA job locally here in Salt Lake. I think that’s what I’m goinng to be best suited for with my electronics interest added to my ability to program code.
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Posted by Ben
Sun, 14 Aug 2005 11:04:00 GMT
I’ve really got a lot to blog about, and have had some interesting things going on that I haven’t really wanted to talk about until they happened, and now I can:
I have a new Job!
Yep, I was offered a job at the same company my cousin works for, and I finally got the formal offer and accepted it on Friday.
More later…
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Posted by bytheway
Wed, 29 Jun 2005 02:51:00 GMT
In 2008, Will It Be Mormon in America?
And, they actually give an accurate description of the church.
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Posted by bytheway
Mon, 27 Jun 2005 11:26:00 GMT
I went to the local amusement park yesterday, which is called “Lagoon.” Every year they try to introduce a new attraction or ride to the park to keep things fresh. This year they finally added a hanging rollercoaster called “The Bat”
You need to understand that Lagoon has a derth of roller coasters for many years, so anytime they add one it is a big deal for us locals. The park has had an old wooden rollercoaster since 1920s, a small metal bobsled coaster and a large double loop coaster since then. In recent years they’ve added a wild mouse and a spinning wild-mouse type coaster.
I’ve really enjoyed the coasters over the years, even if they aren’t the biggest or the fastest they all have something in them to make the ride enjoyable. I expected the new coaster to be the same, but was pretty disappointed. The Bat is meant to be a family coaster, so its is rather tame allowing smaller kids to ride. From the ground it looked like it moved rather slowly through the turns and the ride was very short.
The ride turned out to feel a lot faster than it looked, and the setup of the track, with the dips, turns, etc. made for an enjoyable ride. The big problem with the coaster was the bumpy, jarring movement as you raced along the track. You could be going down a straighaway and the track would be so bumpy it would slam your head into your safety harness on one side and then the other.
I have had the chance to ride a few hanging coasters at some other parks and I always loved how smooth they were, but that feeling was not had on the bat.
It really makes me wonder how a coaster that is literally months old can already be so shakey and jarring. The old 1920s coaster, which is supposed to be rickety and bumpy was smoother than the new Bat. Bad choice of coaster, which I probably won’t be riding for a long time.
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Posted by bytheway
Sat, 18 Jun 2005 10:31:00 GMT
I got the pictures that I took at Niagra with the disposable camera back today. They do look reasonably good considering they were taken with a cheap plastic focus free lense. The photo cd looks pretty decent, too, with a pretty generous scan size for the price ($1.50 extra).
I’ve now registered with Flickr for to try out their photo management software. You can check out my photos at http://www.flickr.com/photos/bbytheway/.
I was looking for a place that used the Fuji Crystal Archive film and the Fuji Frontier minilab, but these guys use a new Konica/Minolta machine and Konica paper. I think I’ll take a roll of my higher quality film in soon and see what they do with that. They are pretty reasonably priced, and if they do a decent job, I may have found myself a new photolab.
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