Category: Uncategorized

I retire in 222 days. It’s strange to think of it… I guess it feels a little like getting close to graduation from high school or college, and counting down the days. It’s still a big number, so it doesn’t feel real quite yet. But in a couple of months, as the numbers wind down, I wonder what it will feel like. For so many years, I’ve poured so much time and energy into a job that I truly love. Yet all that time I’ve had this feeling in the back of my mind that I wanted to do something new and different. I still don’t know what that will be, but having the option to go in an entirely different direction will be a strange mix of liberating and frightening.

And so, the countdown continues.

Today was a gorgeous fall day, so Laralee and I headed out on a walk. I brought my camera, thinking I might catch some pretty fall colors in the trees, but I think I’m about a week too late– most of the leaves are brown and crispy, not orange and red. Still, I managed to catch a few fun shots.

These aren’t weird trees– they’re some kind of plant in someone’s backyard.

We really enjoy the sidewalk that runs along the creek near our house. It’s a good route to head out into town.

The ground is covered in a thick layer of leaves. Last week’s snow accelerated the fall of the leaves, I think, and they’re everywhere because no one’s taken much time to rake them yet.

We found a fun little swing near the creek. Someone had climbed into a tall, ancient oak tree to tie it. Because the ropes were so long (maybe thirty feet) it took some effort to get much momentum.

There weren’t any cattails in this part of town (they’re mostly around the lakes) but Laralee was captivated by these little seed pods. They’re stuffed full of seeds with fluffy white tops, and when they burst, the seeds float away on the wind. Pretty cool!

Yesterday I was driving through downtown Denver and noticed the lottery billboard.

I assume the sign for the Mega Millions jackpot can’t show anything higher than $999 million dollars– sure enough, when I checked the news in the evening I found that the jackpot had risen to a record-breaking $1.6 billion dollars.

I saw the winning numbers and couldn’t help but notice they definitely weren’t the numbers I would have picked. So, I guess I won’t be buying any tickets, and that means I also won’t be an instant billionaire any time soon.

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…