Author: cosmo

I’m rich!

Well, sort of.

I guess I should say I’m richer than I thought I was.

Or I will be, someday.

Yesterday I was doing some retirement planning (yeah, I know… another crazy Saturday morning). In a conversation at dinner with some friends on Friday night, I realized I’d mis-calculated some of the taxes in my long-term plan. As I considered how to efficiently “draw down” from my investments to fund my retirement, I’d been calculating the taxes at standard federal income tax rates. But in a flash of insight, I remembered that withdrawals from stock positions are actually taxed at the capital gains rate. Moreover, it’s only the gains that are taxed– not the bulk of the investments (they were already taxed before I invested them).

I pulled up my spreadsheet and updated a few formulas, then sat back and looked at the numbers. Things are much better than I thought they would be. Before, retirement felt a little bit like skating on some questionable ice, and now I’m relieved that it shouldn’t be quite like that. Of course we’ll end up adjusting things as we go, but it’s nice to know I’ll have a little bit more money than I thought I would.

Yeah, the adventures of financial planning, right?

One of the many great things about being an adult is the opportunity to make a fresh batch of chocolate-chip cookies.

Whenever you want!

So yeah, that’s what I did tonight.

From strictly a statistical viewpoint, this is technically correct…

… but, really, Fox News?

Yesterday I booked a flight on United Airlines. Later in the day I received an email that outlined all of the services and perks I wouldn’t be getting with my ticket.

“You have a carry-on? Nope. You want to sit with your family or friends? Too bad.” I can’t decide if it’s funny or tragic that air travel is so terrible these days that the airlines have to send emails specifically to point out how terrible it is…

Zaque’s been growing out his hair for the better part of the year, and he finally decided it was time to give it a trim. He called himself a “mushroom head”, although I felt more like he had a lion’s mane:

After ten minutes with the trimmer, things looked much better.

I’ll miss that crazy head of hair, but I admit it does look a lot better now…

Hey Pandora, I don’t remember the words to the song “Rapture” by IIO. Can you remind me?

I get so tired of passwords. I understand their importance, and given all the crazy online attacks these days, I figure I need to be more diligent in managing my passwords.

For a few years, I’ve been using a custom password generator I wrote; it creates passwords like this:

8d3ansBLyqe_L3vg
hs$umU49ktXdn3c@
Aj8*o3_c8rC%gxNA
9pWC44CL$LoNYZzz

While those are generally considered “strong” passwords, they’re impossible to remember (of course every web site and account has its own). And if I’m logging into an account from another computer or my phone or tablet, I have to look up the password and slowly type it in. Ugh.

So, in the spirit of Randall Munroe’s famous XKCD comic…

… I decided to update my password generator to chain together a bunch of English words. Maybe that’ll make these passwords a little easier to remember, and certainly easier to type. My new tool gives me stuff like:

navel.fish.loser
decor.seep.bloke
stand.beet.whoop
moose.flue.choke
pair.blue.hydro

After adding in a number and a special character or two, I have an easy way to generate passwords for web sites. We’ll see if this ends up being any easier…

During our visit to Utah last weekend, I asked my nephew (who’s a big board gamer) what the best board game of all time is. Without hesitation, he said “Terra Mystica”. He explained that it’s pretty complicated, but once you learn to play, it’s fantastic. When we came home, I burned a couple of Amazon gift cards to buy it, and Zaque and I gave it a whirl this afternoon.

Complicated? Uhh, yeah…

The box weighed several pounds, and it took us fifteen minutes just to set up the board. Then we spent about an hour reading the rules.

Due to a Dungeons and Dragons engagement, Zaque couldn’t stay for the end of the game, but we’ll wrap it up tomorrow. So far I can say it’s interesting, and indeed, once we learn how to play I suspect it’ll be a pretty good challenge. But the verdict is still out whether it’s the best board game of all time…

Today Laralee sat down across the table from me with her lunch.

It consisted of a hard-boiled egg (barely visible against the napkin) and a smoothie of unknown composition. I think it had banana in it, but like most of the smoothies she makes, the rest of it could be pretty much anything, including things like spinach. Yeek!

Zaque hasn’t had a haircut in about six months now, and it’s still going strong. Unlike any of the rest of us, his hair is really curly when it gets long.

I’m not sure how much longer his hair is going to get (I don’t think he knows, either) but it’s fun to see. He tells us he does it so he doesn’t attract too many ladies, but I’m pretty sure he secretly loves the attention he gets from those same ladies. They think it’s cool.