My grandparents were down for the weekend and we decided to attend the ward in which I grew up. It was a lot of fun seeing acquaintances I hadn’t seen in a few years. Grandmother and Grandfather seemed to have an especially enjoyable experience catching up with longtime friends. Here we are in front of the building together.

I ordered some t-shirts with my own designs on them on August 15th from Spreadshirt.com and they arrived today. They said it was supposed to take up to ten days, so I was surprised to see them here so soon. I didn’t know exactly what to expect when I opened the package. The part where the design is feels like a very fine velvet, but you can’t tell that from looking at it. It looks like paint, but that might be because that’s what you would expect on a t-shirt. I can honestly say that I am completely satisfied. We’ll see what it looks like after a few trips through the spin cycle. Spreadshirt.com guarantees that the design will last longer than the shirt it’s affixed to, though. I can hardly wait to get started on my next design. It’s gonna be great!

This weekend we are making homemade ice cream. We need lots of ice for the task, so I stopped by the local supermarket on my way home from running some errands. All I was buying was a twenty-pound bag of ice. It was surprisingly busy for a late Friday morning so I get in the express lane. I wanted to get out as quickly as possible so I took out four one-dollar bills and held them in one hand while I grasped the top of the bag of ice with the other. The ice cost $3.99 according to the price tag. There was an older gentleman ahead of me paying with a credit card. His vision was obviously not as good as it once was and after swiping his credit card asked if it had worked. The young man behind the cash register casually responded with another question: “What does the screen say?” He was obviously patronizing the older man. This did not make me too excited to deal with this person. After he was done harassing the customer ahead of me it was my turn.

I hefted the bag up off the ground expecting him to have a secondary gun-style scanner he could whip out and scan the bar code with, but he instead took the bag and swiped it over the in-counter scanner. I handed him my four dollars and was ready to be on my way.

“Four thirty is your total.”

“Four thirty!? How could the total be $4.30 when the sign said $3.99”, I thought. So I questioned it out loud. “There’s tax on ice?”

“Yep.” Well, that’s just great. I can buy any food product in the store tax-free, but ice is taxed. Even junk food isn’t taxed. I never payed very close attention to this before, and I suppose it’s been this way every other time I’ve bought ice. I just didn’t expect it. So be warned. Taxes may crop up in places where you’re not paying attention. That’s how they get you, you know.

I never seem to see police officers patrolling the carpool lane. I see people with only one person in the car all the time though. Today we thought the person in front of us was alone so I started taking pictures. I think she saw me and got scared and so a little kid in the back raised his hand up so I could see him. A short time later after traffic had slowed to a crawl and there was no longer any advantage to being in the carpool lane a cop on a motorcycle came moseying on by in the shoulder checking all the cars for carpool compliance.

I have added a new section for t-shirts that I’ve designed and for ones I like. Click on My Designs or Other Designs on the sidebar to see them. I will be adding new shirts to both sections periodically. I do receive a small kickback from any merchandise bought through my website, so if you woul like to help me support this site please take a look and see if there’s anything you would like.

I really think it’s silly that people leave the startup sound set to the familiar Microsoft sound when they know they will be using their laptops in libraries. People really don’t think ahead and they often don’t care much that they’re bothering others. Take a look at the ultimate revenge.

It amazes me what things are possible when the software is open and people are free to innovate and implement whatever they want. This is Linux running a special OpenGL driven window manager called compiz. Apple pioneered this idea, malady but these folks have taken it to the next level. Keep in mind that although Novell created and released this it is open for anyone else to use, troche modify, and redistribute. It belongs to everyone. Enjoy!

The following are notes from Young, Fabulous, and Broke by Suze Orman.

Don’t cancel credit cards after you pay them off. Part of the credit score is the debt to credit ratio. If you pay off a credit card then cancel it you are lowering the amount of credit you have. If you have 4 credit cards that are paid off and one that is maxed out and you keep them all you have a pretty good debt to credit ratio. If you close all the cards that are paid off then you have a 100% debt to credit ratio. You can also have too many credit cards. Try not to exceed 5 credit cards open at once. If you need to close accounts try to keep the ones you’ve had the longest unless there is something really bad about them (ie. a really high interest rate). When you close an account you are deleting part of your credit history.

When you are starting out don’t take just any job even if it pays well. Keep fighting for a job in the industry that you want to work in. Even if you can’t get a job in that industry that also pays well, take it anyway. Once you get the job work as hard as you can at it. The point of this job is not to make money, but to get noticed. Come in early and leave late. Come in on weekends. When your work is done look for extra projects and do them. Don’t ask for a raise. The money will come in time, and they will notice you aren’t there just for the money. This is the time for credit cards.

Credit cards can be used for groceries and gasoline for the first year or so. Don’t use the credit card for frivolous luxuries. Use the credit card for necessities. Once you get successful you will be able to pay off the credit cards easily.

Don’t pass up free money. Contribute to 401k as long as employer matches. Stop when they do. If they don’t match, don’t contribute. Once they no longer contribute, use that money to pay down credit cards. Once credit cards are paid off save for a down payment on a home. Homes appreciate ~4%/year on average. For primary residence jointly owned the first $500,000 appreciation is tax-free. If you put a 10% down payment on a $100,000 home that’s $10,000. In the first year 4% of $100,000 is $4,000. That’s a 40% ROI in one year! Buy a house as soon as it is feasible.

Research a Roth IRA. You can remove the principle at any time without incurring penalties and investment opportunities are wide open.

It’s really hard to eat potato chips when you have to actually look at each one before you shove it into your mouth. It kind of takes the fun out of junk food. This bag of Ruffles that we’ve been working on this week is filled with charred spuds. It seems like you get between four and eight of them every serving.

Now, I’m not saying that it’s usually as bad as this particular bag, but there always seems to be at least one chip that makes it through three or four rounds of the cooking process before it decides to finally follow the other normal chips into the bag. Hopefully you catch it before you eat it, but usually there will be one person in a group that ends up with the burned chip in their mouth. While generally funny for onlookers, the onlookee tends to be less amused, running for the nearest flavored drink to wash the flavor out.

That happened to me last night. It makes it very unlikely that I will be reaching for potato chips any time soon. I guess it’s healthy snacks for me from now on.

Now, where did I leave those mini chocolate donuts?

Krissy had me find Superman’s logo so she could make a cake with the shield on it. The base coat of frosting is blue Cool Whip. The actual shield is made of red and yellow butter cream frosting. Krissy worked on this thing for about three hours total. She decided it would be a good idea to try and make the Cool Whip a little less squishy by putting the cake in the freezer. This worked out rather well. As time went on it got softer and softer, though.

Krissy then transferred the printed design onto wax paper by tracing. The wax paper was then placed on the top of the blue Cool Whip. She used a hatpin to poke holes in the wax paper. When you remove the wax paper then the holes are left in the top of the cake to serve as a guide. She used a star-shape to fill in the yellow and then the red parts. The original idea was to finish off the cake with very dark-blue lines to emphasize the logo and make it stand out a little more. We couldn’t get the frosting a decent dark blue color, and Krissy was afraid to screw up the cake with squiggly lines that were supposed to be straight. I think it was a good idea to stop when she did. The cake turned out great.

Incidentally, this cake was a poke cake or, what some people call a Jell-O cake. She used a single 3 oz. package of strawberry Jell-O mixed into one cup of boiling water. This was poured over a 13 x 9 in. white cake that had holes poked about three quarters of the way through the cake and spaced at one half to one inch intervals. Then you pour the liquid concentrated Jell-O mixture over the top of the cake slowly. Try to cover all of the top of the cake. Allow the cake to cool in the refrigerator. After the cake has cooled spread Cool Whip over the top of the cake, and you’re good to go!

The cake was a success and everyone at work was very impressed by Krissy’s cake decorating prowess.