jujoftw

Okay... I've had a slow day at work and have been thinking about how to save money lately. I guess the idea is save money at home so I can travel more. So here are 5 things I'm doing to save money at home.

1. Refinancing my home. My rate is 5.5% on 30 years and apparently I can refinance it to 4% on 15 years and only have to pay about 10% more than I'm paying now. So I'm going through that process now.

2. Saving on food. This is a 2 part process. I'm trying to eat more sandwiches at home and with the holidays coming up I'll try to eat more leftovers. And then I'm trying to cut out a lot of the $10-15 lunches during the workweek.

3. Saving on gas by driving slower. My car will get over 40 mpg on rural roads but I'm usually around 25 mpg as I drive fairly aggressively and my commute is stop-and-go. This has been harder than I thought as since I filled up monday I've hovered around 26-27 mpg although this is 100% commuting. It'll skyrocket tonight when I drive to Starkville.

4. Stop buying junk. Pretty much self-explanatory. Anything off of woot.com falls into this category. And I buy more clothes and shoes than I need.

5. Quit Directv. Now this, I can't do until next fall, but I will. I'm embarrassed to say how much I pay for television. It's around $150 per month and lately they've been charging me $50 for Sunday NFL Ticket which I thought was just free (apparently only free the first year), but I have a 2 year contract so I'm just going to ride it out. I don't think I'll go to cable. I think I'll just quit tv, especially considering all the content available online and the fact that Xbox Live will have ESPN3 soon and already has netflix. The last straw for me was Directv and its partners wanting me to double pay for things. Exhibit A: Fox Soccer Plus. Fox took their best games from the channel I was already paying for, Fox Soccer Channel, and added them to a channel they expect me to pay even more for, Fox Soccer Plus. Instead I think I will pay for neither and just watch their games online for free. Exhibit B: Sunday NFL Ticket. You'll remember I'm paying $50/month for this. Well that apparently is not enough to watch on the iPad app. They expect another $10 (I think) from subscribers to watch games (that they're already paying for) on the iPad. Screw that.

So that's that. That's how I'm trying to save money. And I promise I'll get back to the JuJo SOLO post soon!

Ok. So here goes. This is the chronicle of my very first solo vacation, to Dublin, Manchester, London, Paris, and a few places in between: the planning, the execution, the sights, the sounds, the food, the drink, the things I did right, the things I did wrong, the things I’d do again, the things I wouldn’t, and finally the things I wish I’d done but didn’t. In short, this will cover EVERYTHING.

The WHY:
I’d love to say I wanted to have some transcendent experience, to reject the bonds of my everyday life and just go somewhere, anywhere, everywhere... but that wouldn’t be true. I needed a vacation. Since I graduated three years ago I haven’t had a real vacation. For a good part of that time, I’d really not thought a lot about it. I’d raised the idea of a group vacation to some of my friends but they, having their own lives and finances, were never REALLY interested, and that was that. My bank account wasn’t the healthiest, so I didn’t press the issue. But then I bought a house, and with it got a nice little tax credit ($8k). And anyone who knows me knows I HAD to spend that. So I quickly got into my head that I’d go to Europe in 2010 (after ruling out South America for lacking English-speakers).

I discussed the idea with a few of my friends but most of my best friends were either A) recently married or in pretty serious relationships or B) poor- neither of which really making them too receptive to a 2-week vacation across the pond. So, I resolved to go it alone and dove headfirst into the planning of my first venture.

The PLANNING:
Soon after securing the funds for my trip (June or July because of my own error on my tax form) I decided on a 3 week stretch in September and October as the best time to go: far enough out to get a decent airfare rate and soon enough to avoid uncomfortably cold temperatures (or so I thought)... and probably most importantly there was a gap between interesting home games on the Mississippi State football schedule.

From the start I wanted to go to France. I knew a little French and thought I could learn more, possibly enough to hold a rough, slow conversation. My initial designs were to fly into Paris and, after spending 4 or 5 days there, travel through France hitting some smaller cities on the way to another large city from which I could fly back home. Marseille, Turin (home of Juventus), and Zurich were on my radar, but of course I didn’t wind up going to any of the three.

The round-trip airfare for those trips was over $1000 a piece (when I was looking). The high prices, combined with the fact that while I was planning, I was not learning more French like I’d intended led me to... Dublin. Round trip airfare to Dublin (from Jackson) was just over $600. I couldn’t find rates close to that for any other European cities, so I quickly settled on Dublin, convincing myself that from there I could cheaply get to wherever I wanted to go. I lined up the dates with some big soccer matchdays (domestic leagues, Champions League, Europa League, and 2012 European Championship qualifiers), booked my flight, and just like that, I was committed.

The rest of my planning was pretty uninteresting. I totally lucked up when Juventus was drawn to play at Manchester City in the middle of my trip. I based the entire itinerary off of seeing that match and France-Romania in Paris the next weekend. London, which I hadn’t been giving a lot of thought, became a no-brainer, being halfway between Manchester and Paris. And I’d be there on a Premier League Matchday! Score!

The only thing left to do was to book hotels and what travel I could. Dublin was cheap. I got a hotel in the city center on the front end of my trip for $40/night and an “airport hotel” on the back end for $50/night. Manchester, London, and Paris were not. I could barely find anything for less than $100/night in either of the three. I wound up going with hostels in the UK (around $20 and $50 per night in Manchester and London respectively). Never having stayed in a hostel before (and not being too crazy about the rates I found) I bit the bullet and booked a hotel in Paris for $100/night. For 5 nights, that was a nice chunk. I have to admit, I was very nervous about how I’d be able to handle getting around in a country that spoke another language, and my decision to get a hotel close to the Eurostar (high-speed train from London) station probably cost me some money (maybe $100). I booked a Eurostar ticket (obviously) from London to Paris ($57), a flight from Paris to Dublin (around $120, more than I anticipated), did enough research to convince myself I could easily get from Dublin to Manchester to London, and I was set.

Last night I finished The Hobbit (which was excellent, of course) and began The Man Who Loved Books Too Much.  I'd started to pick up The Imperial Cruise, which my dad gave me for Christmas (always like to read books I've been given- especially by my dad- as opposed to those I've picked out on my own) but I guess I just wasn't up for the tedious task that reading war books can sometimes turn into. But anyway, I started on The Man and have- in less than a day- put a sizable dent (75 pages) in it.

This isn't really about the book (obviously I've thought it very good so far) but about a thought the author has in the beginning. She (Allison Hoover Bartlett) is talking of book collections and the motivation behind them. The impetus, I guess, for her string of thoughts is the reasons behind rare or antique book collections whose owners often have not and will not read much of their hoard.  While exploring this she gets to the attachment she has for her collection and it's essentially the same attachment I have to mine and the cause of my wondering if I will actually buy and read books strictly on the iPad. It's great to read on- better than the hardback in some cases, as I've said before- but there's no physical, tangible book left when you're finished. Years after a book has been read, its physical body can evoke the feelings you felt while reading it and even memories not only of the story, but also of experiences you had during the course of reading it (The Da Vinci Code reminds me of my trip to Hawaii, for example). Scanning the bookshelf on my iPad will never be the same as walking in my front door and glancing at books I've read- memories and experiences I've had. 

I'm not sure how to reconcile the two options, digital versus physical.  I suppose my collection will turn into a mix of the two. Some physical copies, some digital copies, some books whose quality or circumstance perhaps dictates that they are both. Surely I'd never buy a physical book I'd already read, simply for the sake of having the physical book. Would I?

Finally got my grade in the groundwater class I had in the Spring. I aced it (of course). I stumbled a little towards the end though so I was a little concerned, but the rest of the class seemed to be stumbling worse. That's 3 straight semesters I've had grad classes and I think it's time for a break. The World Cup is no time to be studying, after all, so I'm taking the summer off. Hopefully I can take off of work for a week or two as well. I'd like to watch some games with other people instead of in my cubicle and on my lunch break. I wanted to try to go to Europe for a week for that but the money isn't right right now (although that could change) so I might just go to New Orleans and hang out with some friends. 

Loving the iPad. I finished Robinson Crusoe on it. By the end I'd totally abandoned my paperback copy, even when it was a few feet away at home. Now I'm reading The Hobbit. I think I'll stick to the hardback version I already had since I'm going through it pretty fast (and it's $10 in the iBook store) but I could see myself paying $15 for The Lord of the Rings (have the hardback). Everyone should get an iPad. It's well worth the $500 minimum price tag.

Speaking of Apple, its stock is doing well these days. Sort of makes me regret selling mine to pay for going back to school last spring. But I'm happy where I am now and I can't say I'd be in the same position if I hadn't gone back.  Still it's impossible not to look at the stock price and think what tripling my money could have done for me.  When I get some money I want to buy some more stock but I doubt I'll ever get anything that I'll be as confident in as Apple at $100 per share.

That's all for now I guess. I'm anxious for the coming week to find out if I'll be deployed for disaster relief for the massive tornado that tore through the state last weekend. Til next time.

 So my shiny new iPad came in the mail first thing Saturday morning (literally- the UPS guy woke me up). I've had a few days with it now (although admittedly i opted to spend much of the weekend outside in the nice weather) and have unsurprisingly formed some quick opinions on the device and its usefulness. Here are my thoughts:

First off, i'm a bit disappointed that LJ is not working properly on the safari browser. I'd hoped to post this from the iPad and get a better dose of the touchscreen typing. For some reason I can't click in the text box although I can out the title in just fine. Anyway, my workaround for this (as I still want a taste of the typing) is to type the post on the iPad and attempt to post it via email. Never tried it before so we'll see how it goes.

Now to the device itself- it looks good. Very good. But really that's what we've come to expect dorm Apple. The front is shiny and I'm sure as scratch resistant as my 2 year-old iPhone. The back is made of the same sleek aluminum as the latest MacBooks. I don't know that I had any expectations for the resolution, but I'm impressed. Everything (except iphone apps) looks very sharp- better than my MacBook. I don't know if it's supposed to be HD but it looks it. I haven't really gotten a look at any of my movies on it yet, but my photos certainly look much better on this screen than on my MacBook.  

Surfing the web is more fun on this thing. Its effortless. There's no having to search for the cursor and then precisely clicking on icons or links. Its just a quick touch and you're off. Admittedly it doesn't seem like any real improvement to talk about but I guess that's the thing here- there's so many little things that you really wouldn't expect to matter, but in the end they do. Maybe not a lot individually, but they add up.

The e-reader is a pleasant surprise for me. I don't like reading from computer screens and was not expecting the iPad to sell me on being a reading device, but it has. The past month I basically felt like I was waiting for the iPad to fail as an e-reader so I'd make the inevitable Kindle purchase. But after going through about 20 pages of the pre-installed Winnie-the-Pooh (stop laughing) I was convinced. I can certainly enjoy reading on this thing. I've never seen a Kindle but I suspect it's e-ink trumps iPad's screen. Even so, for reading I certainly feel that the iPad is good enough. Sure, I'd love to have the best reader, but I doubt if the step up in quality is worth carrying around one more device when one I already have does reading so well in addition to all of its other functions.

I've only gotten brief tastes of the iPad-specific apps. I'll say there's not that many out there that interest me, but the ones that do are done very well. Tweetdeck, Netflix, The Weather Channel, ABC's tv player (updated with the latest shows as far as I can tell) and the book apps (iBooks and Kindle) are my favorites so far.

That's about it I guess. I think my primary use for the iPad will be as an e-reader and movie player. I'm really not sure whether I'll opt for the iPad or Macbook more for internet. I'm leaning iPad though at the moment, if I'm honest. Maybe that's jut because it's new. It does have me thinking of jail-breaking my iPhone so I can use it as a wireless router and not be dependent on wifi connections. At the end of the day he iPad is a really cool toy which does a lot of things well and some things maybe better than anything else on the market, but its not going to replace laptops... and I don't think it's trying to. What I think it will do is free people from all the excess applications on their laptops. There are plenty of people out there who use their computers for nothing more than getting on Facebook. This will be perfect for them. It's portability is what makes it so much different. It's easily carried in one hand and can be taken from room to room and passed from person to person much easier than a laptop. I feel confident that the the iPad is here to stay.

Oh, and typing on this baby is much easier than I thought. I had to go back and correct several words and i'm sure I missed a few but the keypad is certainly usable, which was something I had major doubts about. I wouldn't go type a thesis on it or anything... But a LiveJournal post? No problem. 

Note: emailed version hasn't posted. Maybe it just takes time. If a 2nd post of this pops up, that's why.

Spring is my favorite season BY FAR.  I don't even know where to begin.

• The NCAA Tournament just started.... loving that. Wish State was in it but it's still exciting without them. 15-1 on the picks for Day 1 but Day 2 isn't going my way. Final Four still intact. But more important than my bracket is just the general feel of the tourney. There have been more upsets than I can remember this year. Other than Kansas and Kentucky I'm not sure any teams are REALLY good. I picked West Virginia to win it all. Based on the way the Big East has stunk the place up I'm not feeling so good about that right now.
• While basketball's winding down, baseball's starting up. State's not supposed to be good this year, but hopefully Cohen has us headed back to where we belong - the top of the SEC. Our pre-conference results haven't been the best but they're probably a little better than expected on the whole.  Expectations this year are to make a regional. Hopefully things will go well and we can host and win one.
• Tax Refund checks! Still waiting on mine but I'm spending the money in my head, you can be sure.
• Speaking of Taxes, The Birthday is less than a month away. Always a good time. 25 was a good year. Hopefully 26 will be even better.
• The weather.....ohhh the weather. Warm, sunny days on that cool, green grass with no more of that cooold rain.
• Finally getting the MacBook fixed....i think... i hope.  But really, I don't miss it so much at home. I'd like to be able to use it for this and a few other things, but it's as much of a distraction as anything when I'm home.
• iPad! They're supposed to come in April 3rd and I went ahead and splurged on one since other Apple products have served me well (except when I dropped the MacBook obviously). Primarily I want it as a movie player/internet device but I'm also interested in its e-reader function. I'll give it a try but don't have high hopes for that. Still expecting to buy a Kindle eventually.
• Champions League. Okay, Juve is long gone and has even been booted from the Europa League now, but the CL is still the most entertaining club competition going.  The quarterfinal draw was today. Some interesting matchups. Thierry Henry and Barca get his old club Arsenal. In a rematch of the 1999 Final, Bayern gets a shot at Man U. And somehow the two French teams, Lyon and Bordeaux got matched up. Really the only uninteresting tie is Inter-CSKA, but Inter did have their drama last round, I suppose.  And of course, in the buildup to the World Cup, the finale of the club competitions will be as entertaining as ever.

So those are the big things I guess. I joined a soccer league in Jackson that just started up but between some light injuries and uncooperative weather, I've only gotten to play once.  Work's actually slowed down some. I'm finished with most of the work on my big project and a new one is on the horizon, but in the meantime, I've got the time I need to knock out some required online training for the Emergency Response Team. Don't know if that'll allow me to go to Haiti, but certainly to domestic events (floods, hurricanes).  If I miss out on Haiti, I'll probably look to go to Afghanistan down the road. Hard to say really.

Why? I'll tell you.

1. LJ. Enough of this posting from work. I finally got around to calling up Apple and ordering a battery to replace my useless one in the Macbook. HOPEFULLY that is all I need. What does that mean for you, the reader? Not sure. I won't have to post at work, after hours, while half asleep. That can only be a plus. Right?

2. Juve. Zacceroni got his first win with the Bianconeri Sunday and he has stated that his only job is to get Juve in the top 4 and qualify for next year's Champions League. That kind of to-the-point vision is exactly what Juve needs right now.  One result doesn't constitute a turnaround by any means but hopefully it will become the trend from here on out.

3. Adult soccer in Brandon. Yes, that's an hour away, but it's 7v7 outdoors. Worth the 2 hour drive to not have to play with the highschoolers at indoor in Vicksburg. I never liked indoor anyway, but that game has quickly gone from quality to crap and it can be directly attributed to the high school players playing in the adult hours instead of in the 3 hours set aside for youth.  I'm probably going to start driving over to Jackson once a week to a pickup game as well.

4. State vs UK tonight at The Hump. Now THAT is popcorn-worthy. I hope. We definitely have the talent to beat UK at home. Whether we will, only time can tell.  There are whispers that Ravern is suspended for the game. I hope not. He did some major damage to UK last year at Rupp. A basketball expert, I am not, but even I can tell that Stansbury misuses him. I don't even know if he played against Auburn, but yet Kodi was out there bricking up 3's by the minute.  I think Ravern is the most talented player on the team but he needs a coach who can run plays for and instill confidence in him.  The right coach would have him in the NBA next year. Stansbury does a solid job at State but he is never going to be that coach.

That's all for today. I'm ready to get out of here.  On a closing note though, Wayne Rooney scored a brace today for United over AC Milan in the first game of the CL knockout rounds. He constantly amazes me. I don't think there's a player in the world who does more with less. He is, simply put, not a great talent compared to other world class strikers. And yet he might be the best player in the world because of his freakish work-rate.  He is so much fun to watch. Peace.

The news today is that Landon Donovan fractured Ashley Cole's ankle in yesterday's 2-1 Everton win over Chelsea putting Cole out for the rest of the season but more importantly (to me) putting his World Cup status in jeopardy.  I'm not necessarily HAPPY about Cole's injury but I'm not exactly upset that England might be missing a player against the USA in June either. We need any advantage we can get.  It's just a little weird that it came at the hands of Captain Lando though, no?  Anyway.... Donovan's done surprisingly well since leaving the States for Everton. He has a goal and 2 assists and has seen Everton, who had 22 pts through 19 games, take 13 from 6 games since his arrival. That good form has taken Everton back to the top half of the table (barely, 9th) and within shouting distance (9 pts) of the 4th and final Champions League spot which, although currently held by Liverpool, seems to be up for grabs this year.  Of course Lando is not worried about 4th. He has his eyes on Ashley Cole-less Chelsea and the top spot which undoubtedly Everton will take when all is said and done....

At least someone is playing well because Juventus is stinking up Turin. Not much to say about them, really. The results speak for themselves. They seem like they have no desire to win at all. Zacceroni hasn't improved on Ferrara's results but then again I guess the assumption is he is just a caretaker anyway. I don't know Juve needs. I don't follow closely enough to know what each manager brings with them or is capable of. I saw Fiorentina's manager rumored for the spot. Based on what I've seen I'd like that. Fior has been a lot more fun to watch than Juve, that's for sure.

But enough about soccer, Google Buzz has rolled out. They should rename it Google Dud. Or combined with Wave they could be Dudz. I don't know why I keep expecting Google to revolutionize things. What have they ever really done? They perfected the search engine so now everyone thinks they will perfect everything else. Apple, they are not.  Gmail is nice but I can't say it has that much value over yahoo mail or any other mail client. Wave was much ado about nothing. They do things well but that is not enough for social networking. Things have to be different. Otherwise, what is the impetus for people to shift from Facebook and Twitter to Buzz?  Maybe that's not the objective, I don't know, but it seems like it.  Granted, I have only looked briefly at Buzz but I don't see anything that makes me think it can compete.

And really, maybe I've just watched too much Anthony Bourdain, but is it too much to ask for a company to just do their thing and do it well?  Google seems like they just jump into anything and everything. Okay, you perfected the search engine. If you want to perfect something else, fine, but don't try to do 10 things at once.  Look at Apple. For all their expanding, they have still really just gone one product at a time. Macs, ipod, iphone, now tablet. And even those are just building off of their core competencies. Google should take note.

That's all for today. I AM going to watch State beat UM tonight.... I was mistaken Tuesday. I'm 50 pages deep in Pirate Latitudes. Definitely picking that up again tonight. It's difficult picture a world I'm not so familiar with. The setting is Port Royal circa Jack Sparrow and some characters just arrived from the English Court so I'm basically picturing it as Tudors of the Caribbean.

I want to go to Haiti... BANG.... no introduction or setup of how this livejournal thing is going to go or anything.... just hitting the ground running.

Now, back to the subject at hand: Haiti - I want to go. For those of you living under a rock (and based on Lamebook you do exist), Haiti was devastated by a catastrophic earthquake on January 10th. Casualty estimates vary widely, from 50,000 to 250,000 dead.  There will be a massive long-term recovery effort which I'm sure the US will lead the way on.

Now for some brief background on me:
Part of the reason I came back to Vicksburg to work for the Corps of Engineers (Corps or USACE from here on out) was because it was an easy, obvious, and logical path for me to take towards some kind of international aid career. I don't have the long term thing laid out right now, but I do have a simple 3 year plan for Vicksburg. The new job, the house, the car, grad school... they were all just ways of cutting ties, making myself financially independent (finally), and positioning myself to make some kind of step out into world. The real world. Not the comfortable little bubble that is most of America. The most likely course of action, I think, was always going to be (and may still be) going to Iraq or Afghanistan with the Corps and then turning that into maybe a more permanent international-type job with USACE or USAID (Agency for International Development).

So anyway... I have this vague plan, and things are moving along swimmingly - loving my job - and then there's the earthquake. I wanted to go from the start.  This was a civil engineering disaster.... in a country so close to my own... which will doubtlessly require substantial international assistance.  The more I think about, the more it makes sense... I've gotten a lot of project management-type experience over the past 6 or 7 months.... that's probably the type of thing this will require; and my biggest job is due soon and after that I don't really have anything assigned yet... It might be earlier than I'd expected to jump into somethng but it just seems like the path to take.... So I start to inquire: I talk to my boss and I talk to the Readiness Chief who I'm working on another project with and I gather that Vicksburg will probably send a team down eventually with the task of debris removal... and I let them know... I want to be on it.

Getting on the team is not a certainty but that's where I'm at now: getting the training I need finished, getting doctors' permissions (back and knee surgeries ftw), and getting other preparations done so that if and when a team from Vicksburg goes, I will be on it. 

So that's where I want to go: Haiti. But as for now I'm finishing up a pretty big levee job in New Orleans (HUGE learning experience itself) and working on a small levee study for Bossier City, LA. The NOLA job is going to hit hard for the next two weeks... fun and frustrating at the same time.  Tonight I have to study for a Groundwater exam tomorrow and watch State beat Ole Miss.... again.  Last night I finished Don Cheadle and John Pendergrast's book Not On Our Watch about Darfur. Between the game and studying tonight I'd really like to start on the late Michael Crichton's Pirate Latitudes.