How To: Make Confetti out of Cash
- Have children.
- Buy a shredder.
- Leave envelope full of cash saved up for Christmas presents in desk drawer.
As this really irritates me, this is all I am going to day about this subject.
As this really irritates me, this is all I am going to day about this subject.
A lot of junk mail came with he purchase of our new home. I expected this bombardment. Most of the mail gets the once over and makes its way to the shredder. However, a letter regarding an early mortgage payment plan caught my eye.
The premise is this: Make two payments a month of half of what your mortgage would have been, and you can pay your mortgage off 6 - 7 years early. In essence the first half payment will be two weeks early, very slightly reducing the amount of principle that the interest is calculated upon. In addition, as these payments are made bi-weekly, two half payments will be deducted directly from the principle.
I cannot see where this would necessarily be a bad idea, but I am looking for a second opinion. Please take into consideration that there is a $295.00 enrollment fee plus a $1.00 per payment service fee, which would total $26.00 a year for the life of the mortgage. The payments would be automatically deducted, which could be scheduled wither way, on every other Wednesday.
Your thoughts?
No, I am not talking about the Microsoft product, but the windows on our house.
We knew that we would have to have some windows repaired when we moved in, but after breaking the hardware on another one, we decided that we needed new. The windows are original from when the house was built, and I would find it hard to imagine that they were of good quality then.
We endued up going with Sears, as they were reasonably priced, and I liked their product. We had several estimates, and most were in the same ballpark, but in the end we decided to go with a name we knew, and a company that has been around for a very long time. The whole sales process lasted a lot longer than expected, but we got what we wanted.
I understand that replacement windows are custom made, but I rather wish they could get them installed in fewer than four weeks. I guess that is the nature of a custom product. They will not place the order until a technician comes to the house and takes exact measurements. That will not happen until the 72 hours for us to change our minds has passed.
Just out of curiosity, how many sales of this nature get canceled due to buyers remorse? Our purchase was well thought out, planned and executed. We know exactly what we are get tin ourselves into, although getting ourselves out (of debt) is of far more concern.
I went to install the final release of Visual Web Developer 2005, and the installer could not continue because it said that there were still components installed. I was very careful to un-install the beta of Visual Studio in the order they specified, so I was a bit confused. I downloaded and ran the un-installer, and it was also unable to remove the “component.” The error was “Error 1316. A network error occurred while attempting to read from the file: C:\Windows\Install\VNSSetup.msi”
My next step was to jump to the forums. There were several people with the same problem, but there was no resolution. The consensus seemed to be that I needed to re-install the beta, and then run the un-installer again. That might work, except that I no longer had the install to the beta since I installed it directly from the web site.
I went through my computer and made sure that that there were no remaining files. There were none. That left one place that this “component” could hide … the registry. I searched the registry for “VNSSetup.msi.” Once search found the key, I exported it, and the removed it from the registry. I tried the installer one more time and it ran without a hitch.
I rebooted the computer, launched Visual Web Developer, and commenced playing with my new toy. My question of the day is, :Why was this solution not in any of the forums?” In a couple of entries, they had suggested re-installing Windows, and one even made mention of buying a new computer. Is rooting around in the registry that scary?
I have made my share of mistakes editing the registry, but as long as you make sure to back it up before you make changes that you are unsure of, everything is recoverable. (Make sure you have Knoppix Live disc, or maybe even ERD Commander, though.) Here is to breaking our toys, and learning a little something when we have to fix them!
How many people have “use it or lose it” vacation? I had never heard of such a thing, but then again I have only held one other job that offered vacation, and leave in the military is a completely different animal. Thusly, I am “using” my vacation days before I “lose” them. I am saving one day in case the boys get sick, although it pains me to not use that time off. I have nearly a week off of work.
This was beneficial to me when I fist embarked on my career, because I earned paid time off when I first began working, rather than working for a year before I was granted vacation. This, according to many of my friends, was the norm for their jobs. I believe that earning paid time off throughout the year creates a more employee friendly environment, especially for those of us with children.
Conversely, I am irritated that the remaining time disappears at the end of the year. If I went over my allotted amount of time off, I am sure that they would recoup their loss the beginning of the following year. Sounds a little hypocritical to me. But then again, what am I complaining about? I have five days off of work!