A glimpse at the future.

I’m starting work on a project that is going to take the e-world by storm. Though this might be as much as a month out, i’m expecting good things once I lock in and get it completed. Stay tuned for details.

Weekend Recap and introducing the new chef’s kitchen feature

OU recap:

This was my first OU weekend as an alumni, and it didn’t disappoint. This was the first time I visited the legendary “West End” and was actually horribly underwhelmed. Its amazing that a place like the West End is still standing after 100+ (the west end didn’t come around until the 1980’s so that might have something to do with it) years of Red River (shootout) rivalry. Here is how it works, every fraternity guy / sorority girl / + thousands of others come to Dallas on thursday / friday night before the game and go to the west end. Here they get unbelievably drunk, and then yell hateful things at those wearing crimson (or if you’re an OU fan, those wearing burnt orange). So now we have the combination of (this is a stereotype) macho cocky drunk eager to fight frat guys + really crammed + heated rivalry = the perfect storm for something really bad to happen. My first adventure i saw a few scuffles, but no punches thrown (i think that had something to do with last year about 20 guys were facedown with handcuffs as riot police chose the umbrella “arrest everyone remotely near the scene” method deterred anything from really happening. I was actually intimidated by the shear volume of OU fans, they absolutely dwarfed the Texas crowd, i think during the 5 straight years of losing (some of those losses by a tidy 50 points) Texas fans made the decision to pull out of the west end and move it to uptown. I dont blame them, i just wish that was communicated to everyone. 

Then the game happened on saturday, and unless you’ve just awoken from a coma you know that Texas achieved what i believe to be their 2nd greatest win (well this is a tie, our win in 2005 AT ohio state was pretty big as well) since my UT career began in the fall of 2004. I would really like to see the statistics of traffic traveling north / south on I-35 correlated to who won that year. My feeling is, if you lose (especially if you were oh say ranked #1 coming in to the game) that one wouldn’t feel much like going out and facing especially giddy and hostile (which undoubtedly came out in bigger numbers on saturday night) and would go home either saturday night, or early sunday morning. Whereas the winning team would undoubtedly be out until the latest hours of the night and wait until 2pm when they wake up in some random place to begin the process of finding a ride (or their car for that matter) and trudging on home. Of course the more i think about this, these are college kids so i think both winners and losers will fit into the “winning team theory”.

Thoughts:

I have yet to spend a weekend in houston (last weekend hardly counted because i had a lot of wedding duties to attend to) since august. In fact, i think the only weekend i’ve spent in houston was the dave matthews concert, and i wasn’t even living in houston at the time. But that fact will come to a sudden (at least thats the plan so far, if i somehow stumble onto missouri/texas tickets i will be in austin) halt as all of the reasons that have pulled me away (bachelor parties / weddings / football games / etc) have run dry. So as i said my goodbyes, this time felt much different. Not sure if they did to the people i was saying them to because i keep showing up every weekend, but this time felt much more final.

 

From The Chef’s Kitchen:

Last week’s experiment with eating cheaply had some unexpected results: continued hunger. Its one thing to think that you can make it off much fewer calories because you’re not getting much aerobic activity, and its one thing to actually do it. Plus the spaghetti was kind of bland so i really tried to step it up with this week’s menu.

1 Package Penne Pasta: 2.49

1 jar Vodka Pasta Sauce: 2.00

1 Package Frozen Vegetables (Fiesta Mix) 1.89

1 package Chicken / Mango Sausage: 5.50 (you might be thinking to yourself chicken/mango sausage??? What the heck is he thinking?? I too, thought that until i got a sample while at Randalls and was immediately won over. It slams, the mango gives it a sweet taste, and its healthier because its chicken sausage and not pork/beef sausage (though i do love it all). This goes to show, i CAN be won over by samples, and the sample people should never overlook me when assessing the overall buying power of the consumer (i might be giving them too much credit on how discerning they are) in question on wether or not to offer the sample.

Total cost of the ingredients: 11.88

Divide that by 5 (the number of equal portions i created): 2.37 per meal!!

Here’s what i did, first i boiled the pasta (this isn’t single serving, this is one of those boxes that a mom would buy to feed a family of 4) in a big 4 qt pan. While thats boiling away (for about 11 minutes) i used a flat iron pan to cook the frozen veggies (takes about 5-7 minutes) until they are fresh and crisp. I actually timed it right so the pasta finished boiling, and the veggies finished cooking at around the same time. Drain the pasta and then stir in the sauce (since i was mixing other things in, i decided to go light on the sauce, which means 2.37 is actually a high number, because i only used < 1/4 of the jar meaning i have plenty for next week.), make sure its mixed in good then mix in the vegetables, mix and let sit. Next i used the flat iron pan to grill my sausage links, they were pre cooked so really i just used a low-medium heat to heat em up and give em that nice grilled look, then i sliced up the sausage as you would normally slice a sausage. I divided the pasta/vegetable mixture into 5 equal containers, then added the sausage, sealed and BAM. Lunch is ready for the next week. Now i’m not sure how this is going to taste, i liked all the ingredients separately but sometimes two good things don’t necessarily add up to another good thing. The little bits of tasting i was doing tasted great, and even my sister had high praise for what i was concocting. I’ll let you readers (maybe 3???) on how it works for me, i’m hoping the addition of meat and vegetables will pack enough punch to get me through the rest of the workday.

I’m eating for 1.19 a meal.

Something i’ve learned about myself in my few short weeks of financial independence (that in itself is funny because i sure don’t feel independent by any means) is how unbelievable thrifty/cheap I am. This could be due to the fact that I grew up the son of Michael Adams, possibly the cheapest (in most areas, not in the case of discount dvd sales (i dont believe he has ever made a trip to best buy/fry’s without returning with another “classic” aka 3.99 dvd that never quite made it to the big screen),or in the area of seeing friends with something cool i.e. dvd, big tv, lcd, blu-ray, imac, etc) individual I know. He has taught the value of saving money, and always points out friends of his that have absolutely no ability to retire and will be working well into their 90’s. I’m almost convinced he winced when he first learned he was having a daughter because it’s the bride’s duty (more often then not, the bride’s parents) to fund the wedding. So everyone should give him a pat on the back for opening up the wallet (however slightly) for my sisters wedding. But this isn’t about him, this is about me and my lack of ability to spend money.

Example, on sunday night I made a large (like 7 servings large) pot of spaghetti, and then split up evenly into plastic containers and put them in the fridge. Voila, i have lunch (albeit a bit bland as my cooking abilities are still a work in progress) every day this week. The spaghetti along with apple sauce, and MAYBE if i’m feeling a little spendy (spendy isn’t a word but seems to describe the mood perfectly) i’ll throw in some peanut butter crackers. Total cost: about 1.19 a meal (the apple sauce is actually what skewed everything, it was really low before that). Constantly married co-workers (from byu, which explains the “married” part) ask me why i bring me lunch, because once i get married thats all i’m ever going to do (they implied leftovers). They were more or less calling me cheap, but i’m calling myself opportunistic and trying to hide assets before i (this is a BIG assumption on my part) settle down with a wife.

Funny story about hiding assets, so as everyone that reads this (i think there’s 2, but uncomfirmed reports of a 3rd AND 4th reader has me jumping for joy) knows that I live with a married couple. Well that married couple happens to be my sister and her husband (whenever i tell people my living situation, i am always careful to say ‘i live with a married couple’ without initially qualifying it because I like the looks i get from people who think i’m living with a random married couple). Well sometimes me and said married couple, like to go places togethor (primarily out to eat) and during one of our adventures, Jared (the husband) were talking about the ridiculousness of divorce, mainly the fact that women (generally) have economic incentive to get divorced. Lets be honest, all religious beliefs aside, there IS economic incentive to divorce. Even if he doesn’t agree to it, she’s still entitled to half of everything even if she brought no income/assets to the marriage. This goes both ways, stay at home dads have the same incentive, well actually they dont because they’d have to go to work and lose the whole ’stay at home dad’ thing. So somehow we got to the point where Jared gave a great monologue that really caught us both (me and rebekah) off guard:

“Obviously you need a good lawyer, and if you know that a divorce is coming you start hiding assets. First you go and buy a Rhodesian passport because that country doesn’t exist and you can buy those passports as novelty items, and for an extra fee they will set it with your name and picture, or any name of your choosing. Then you go open an off shore bank account, the suisse privacy laws aren’t as strict as they used to be so you’re better off going to the carribean where they are more then happy to help hide your money. You use your new Rhodesian to open the account, because they generally have no idea that Rhodesia is no longer a country. Then when she goes to get half, your half suddenly isn’t that big (that she can find).”

Hahaha I definitely paraphrased that, but in original context was one of the funniest things I’ve heard, mainly because of the look my sister was giving him the entire time. 

Her only response: “I see you’ve thought about that”.

hahahahahhaa.

Why we should save the banks

I’m still not sure if the government has passed the bail out plan or not. Last i checked (from my wall street journal live feed via google reader (let me go on a rant to say google reader is absolutely terrific. You just plug in your favorite blogs / rss feed websites / etc and then when you login to your google reader page (which is very handily linked at the top of your gmail, so essentially when you check your gmail you are logged in to google reader) the reader actually queries all of these said blogs/rss feeds/ websites for new stories and delivers them to you so you dont have to navigate to all the sites, and then it puts it in a very reader friendly format. (The best part for me is that when i surf the internet at work, if exxonmobil were ever look into my history, they would see a bunch of google ip addresses and not the blogs and stuff i’m actually reading. Did i mention google reader works with espn?)), the senate had just corrected the HOR’s huge oversight and passed the bill.

Now clearly, 700 billion is A LOT of money. I just had it compared to me, if a million is one day, then a billion is like 37 years. Yes i also agree, the entire banking industry created this mess by swindling people into mortgages and signing other pieces of paper that they clearly had no business signing, and that their own greed has completely been exposed from years of record profits and bonus checks. The key thing is, who do we go after?

The reason all of these Banks are going after is due to their lack of liquidity (cash on hand). Obviously these banks carry huge amounts of debt, because thats how businesses work, they use credit for financing and then pay back over time. Its the natural way of things. Unless you’re google (or yes, maybe exxon), most corporations don’t have billions of dollars in cash, they might have it in assets, but those assets must be sold off to make to turn it into cash. So these banks had a lot of these assets (which were in fact mortgages) that completely lost their value, meaning the banks could no longer sell them off to create the cash necessary to pay back their debt. When they took a look at their long term debt versus cash versus the sudden de-evaluation of their assets, they either declared bankruptcy, or (in most every case) found a buyer and sold themselves (i.e. lehman, wamu, wachovia, merrill lynch, etc).

So what the government plan is essentially offering to do, is buy these poison assets from the banks (for the mere tidy some of 700 billion), hold on to them and then re-sell them to whoever. The plan infuses capital into the banking system, and will give the government a major foot in the door to create regulations and institute reform for the US financial system. Clearly, the system is broken and needs reform, and yes i’m pro-capitalistic economy, but if the financial system crumbles then that will effect everybody, as getting a line of credit would become near impossible among other fall outs.

The fear most people have with this bail out plan, is that they think this 700 billion will be paid for the by the US taxpayers (true, but not to the extent that most people are worried about) and that we will pass this debt on to our kids’ kids’ kids. Here’s the thing, these are ASSET backed securities, meaning there is a tangible thing (accounting textbooks would use the term widget, i will use the term “house and land”) that the government is buying. In a worst of all cases scenario, and each house is burned to the ground by some random fire the engulfs the country ( or some careless smoker in houston, which all of this piling of dry brush on the side of the road seems like the biggest fire hazard ever) and all that is left is the land, then still the government has value it can sell. That’s the worst that can happen, in a REALLY bad scenario, that is to say these houses are valued at 1/2 of what we thought they were, the debt is only 350 billion! That’s nothing! But here is the more likely scenario, the government holds on to these things, helps out the banks, slowly but surely over the years the financial stability (and credibility is the new thing that needs to be restored) and these assets actually begin to gain value (remember like all things (including oil), the housing market is in fact cyclical and will go up again) and they sell these things for a trillion dollars! That’d be pretty good profit i’d say.

Maybe my scenario won’t happen, but I still say letting the market run things (aka run the banks into the ground) is the worst thing right now. Actually, a best case scenario is to actually create a new currency. The dollar has lost so much steam, and while i understand the necessity of saving the banks, i am wholly against pumping more money into the economy and making my next trip to europe at a 3 to 1 exchange in the negative.

internet is back!

Its been awhile since my last post, many reasons have contributed to this none more important than comcast’s lack of ability to maintain a strong cable connection at my new houston residence. In my last post [seen directly below], i talked about how this would be “the last time” i wrote “final days” or something of that nature (i’m not actually reading the last post to verify the wording so just work with me here). Naturally, the next day i got an email saying my start date was pushed back yet again, to the following monday on the 22nd. Actually, the email said “we’ll call you 3 days before you need to be in houston”, so i actually got more of “start date pushed back indefinitely” which ended up being the following monday. I guess you could say a one week paid vacation (which didn’t count against my vacation time) is a great way to start off my young career, but for some reason i feel i’ll forever be known and associated with the “start class of Hurricane Ike”. 

We (my sister and I, yes i live with a married couple, really freaks people out when i tell them) were one of the lucky ones to have power back almost immediately, just no cable or internet. For some reason, everyone else seemed to have cable and internet, just not the 77098 (specifically my street which will remain a mystery to all my readers (i think there are 2, and i dont blame anyone for giving up on me as my post rate fell to abysmally low). You never realize how much you love something, until its not there anymore. Being in a new city with very few contacts (okay i’ll call them friends) is tough enough, having no cable and internet to at least be able to check email / WATCH HEROES (still haven’t caught an episode because we got our cable back last tuesday, only to have it go out again the following monday). But enough about that, there were some positives such as i read my bible more, played guitar more, and have taken my (well my sisters but really should be considered mine because she works late and i’m lola’s primary caretaker for 90% of the day) dog in good long walks exploring the neighbor hood and admittedly taking advantage of Lola’s overall appeal to strangers (we seem to have the “old lady segment” of the population on lock down whenever we pass by, they love to stop and pet her and love on Lola, we’re currently working on the “early 20’s” segment without as much success)

I promise meatier posts coming soon, such as why i feel the US government should in fact pay 700 billion for SECURITY BACKED assets.