Tsongo’s Weblog

My child is in summer day camp this year.  Last summer she just did not have enough to do and I felt bad seeing her get so bored.

What a difference this year. She is worn out from the activities. They have been to the Science Center, Water Park; they have swim lessons every day, plus pool time in the afternoon. They play cards and make friendship bracelets.

I don’t feel so bad about letting her watch TV on the weekends when I know her weekdays are filled with activities.

I am trying hard to stop biting my fingernails, something I have  been doing all my life. My young daughter tells me that it is bad and, worse, I catch her doing it too. It’s hard to tell her not to, when she sees me constantly chewing my nails.

I am using Orly No-Bite, some really foul tasting nail polish stuff. I have chewed through it and almost thrown up from the taste, so it works as a deterrent. Man, does that stuff taste bad! The most intensely bitter sensation, just makes you gag when it touches your tongue.

I have tried before and I hope it works this time.

I recently bought something on Craigs List for the first time. I needed a window air conditioner to use on the second floor of my house,  so we could cut back on cooling the whole house at night.

Anyway, I found one for $125 on Craigs List, emailed the seller, offfered $100 and closed the deal that afternoon.  It was about a year old, looked fine, and works great. Figure I saved about $125 over a new unit.

I am now a fan of Craig’s List.

We are going to try to take advantage of the tax credit for new energy efficient water heaters. You can get a 30% credit up to $1500. Our water tank is 15 years old, and is starting to not work so well.

I would like to get a tankless water heater, but they are pretty expensive. The 30% credit might make it worthwhile, though.

I heard somone on NPR today recommend a possible strategy of shifting into index funds, since everything is down so low.

Managed funds are doing badly at picking stocks so why bother paying for management fees? Index funds have very low expense ratios and fees, and index funds will rise up when the recovery starts.

I am interested in starting to explore the Ruby language. It is really gaining popularity and is considered by many Smalltalkers as a worthy successor to that great language.

I started watching this BBC special on PBS last week, and it is really great. The production value is great, and you can tell the host is really enthusiastic about Indian culture and history.

The first episode dealt with the early history of India, noting that almost all people in the world outside of Africa are descended from the early immigrants to SouthIndia, and that the Sanskrit language is the identifiable root of hundreds of modern languages.

I can’t wait to see more episodes

Happy New Years everybody!

I am looking forward to a few months of snow, then a great spring and summer

We just got landline phone service from ATT. I had an IP phone for 2 years thru Viatalk and I finally got tired of the poor voice quality.

Now I have a wired phone (with a 50 foot cord) and a landline again. The sound quality is great and their prices are pretty competitive, about $32/month including taxes for unlimited local and long distance. We don’t get caller ID and some of the nice features that Viatalk had, but their service was unreliable, and the support was worse than useless.

The only odd thing happened when I went to sign up for online account maintenance. I signed up and then they said the would (snail) mail me the activation code, or they would phone it to my phone. Since I was at work that wasn’t convenient.

I just thought it was odd that I can sign up for just about any account access online(401k, health insurance, brokerage etc), but somehow the phone company had to have the highest level of security in handing me an activation code. Of all the accounts I access online, my ATT account is the one I am least afraid of having hacked.

We got a new 42 inch Panasonic Viera Plasma HDTV a few months back, and I could never go back.

I love the HD picture, and I cannot wait to get a bluRay player. How come they didn’t have these when I was a kid?