Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2011/04/01/track-daily-spending/
So . . . I’m not an accountant.
I’m trying to get a better handle on my “spending cash” which is managed through my personal account and credit cards. Most “needs” type expenses are covered through our joint finances, so the personal account is mostly discretionary. The problem is I want to reduce my personal credit card debt, and these days the personal account doesn’t get much money to play with, which means I need to be smart and aware with my discretionary income.
About a decade ago I tried managing my spending by writing the date on a series of $20 bills. If I was breaking a bill with today’s date on it, things were going alright. If I was breaking yesterday’s date, I was doing well, and if I was spending a bill with a future date on it . . . well, time to cut back, eh?
This time around I’m thinking to allow myself $10/day. ATMs don’t give out tens, and these days I make some small purchases with the credit card, so I’ll try a different solution: a Google Spreadsheet!
I thought it might be neat to share the progress here, in case other folks are curious to see how this experiment works. You should be able to see the results tally up over the course of the month on the right.
This is by no means a comprehensive thing: I’m not tracking automatic withdrawals (charity, web hosting) or interest on the cards: I’m merely trying to keep my personal spending (the “burn rate”) in check by maintaining an awareness of what’s up. This is pretty much lunch money, small gifts, and entertaining the sweetheart. My rule is going to be that any personal spending I have to initiate I will track. So, I’ll count the $50 mobile phone bill, for the sake of a healthy challenge.
Technical note: I don’t know for spreadsheets, but the formula for setting up the balance column was to start at cell D3 with this formula:
=IF(A3="",,SUM(D2+C3))
This basically means that if the date (A3) on this row is filled in, add the amount (C3) to the previous total (D2). I was then able to “copy” that cell, multi-select all the cells below, and “paste” and the formula got updated each row, as my Excel Guru colleague expected.
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Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2011/04/02/india-cricket-world-cup/
Fans in Mountain View Celebrate India's World Cup Victory
As I was walking home from the cafe I encountered a growing crowd of shouting, chanting, singing folks waving Indian flags. I googled “Indian Holidays” on my smart phone, then thought to google “India cricket” and it turns out India has just beaten Sri Lanka to win the World Cup.
In my Sophomore year of college I was paired with a roommate from India. Tarun was a very serious EE major who left the room for only three things: 1) classes, 2) meals and 3) the India-Pakistan cricket match. He was a nice guy but since he was always studying in the room he wasn’t an ideal roommate.
Indian ex-pats I meet tend to be really serious, smart, hard-working people, so it is nice to see a crowd of folks reveling in a collective emotional experience. This is a great moment for anyone who has moved so far from home to make their life.
See Also: Indian Spinning Wheel.
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Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2011/04/03/sunny-sunday/
This guy in Menlo Park is making excellent use of a sunny Sunday.
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Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2011/04/04/best-buy-beyond-best-b/
Your Best Buys are always at . . . Daiso . . . after the "Best By" . . . you see . . .
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Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2011/04/05/extra-crazy/
Tea Party? No, these guys make those guys look reasonable . . .
I was on my way home and saw these guys outside the Mountain View Post Office. I looked at the Obama-with-a-Hitler-moustache and figured the Tea Party had set up shop. I snapped a picture, and then this guy asked if I was worried about the solar flares.
Solar flares? Tea Party people don’t worry about solar flares . . . I smiled and approached: these guys were doing performance art! I told them solar flares are good for cooking.
“Obama isn’t doing anything to stop the solar flares,” he began to explain.
I saw the name LaRouche and realized these guys weren’t parodying the Tea Party: they were actually way further down the rabbit hole of crazy. “Well, he likes solar power,” I punted.
As the guy began to explain that we should be performing nuclear fusion ourselves I edged away. I am an impressionable young man with a sufficiently unconventional belief system: I don’t want to catch their crazy!
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Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2011/04/06/the-mystic-of-black/
As seen in the USA.
Sheer Thin
B.L.A.C.K S.T.U.D.D.E.D
C O N D O M
STUDDED TEXTURED SURFACE
TO ENHANCE SENSATION
WITH THE MYSTIC OF
BLACK
1 PREMIUM LUBRICATED LATEX CONDOM
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Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2011/04/08/c64/
You never forget your first computer.
For Christmas of 1984, Grandpa gave us a
Commodore 64. A couple years later we
got a disk drive, and eventually we even
had a printer. Before the disk drive we
had to buy programs on cartridge, or
type them in to the basic interpreter
line by line. Mostly I just played
cartridge games.
Eventually we got a modem, and I could
talk to BBSes at 300 baud in 40 glorious
columns. (Most BBSes assumed
80-columns.) I was happier when I got a
1200 baud modem for my Amiga, which
could display 80 columns of text.
In my second year of college I
discovered the joy of C programming on
Unix workstations, which led to my
present career as a Unix SysAdmin. I
spend my days juggling multiple windows
of text, generally at least 80x24. /djh
After reading about the brand new Commodore 64, I downloaded a font from style64.org and played around in my style sheet:
**** COMMODORE 64 BASIC V2 ****
64K RAM SYSTEM 38911 BASIC BYTES FREE
READY.
Here is the stylesheet markup:
/* C= 64 */
@font-face {
font-family: "C64_User_Mono";
src:
url("C64_User_Mono_v1.0-STYLE.ttf")
format("truetype");
}
DIV.c64_screen {
background-color: #75a1ec;
color: #4137cd;
min-height: 25ex;
width: 40em;
padding: 3ex 6em;
margin: 0;
}
.c64 {
font-family: "C64_User_Mono",
monospace;
background-color: #4137cd;
color: #75a1ec;
}
The text is wrapped in:
<div class=”c64_screen”><pre class=”c64″>
</pre></div>
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Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2011/04/10/moving/
Our last morning on the road, at a Motel 6 in the central valley.
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Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2011/04/11/image-10000/
The 10,000th image captured on my Canon SD630.
I applied techniques covered in the Gimp Selective Colorization Tutorial. The green in the foreground is as captured by the camera, but the rest was run through Colors > Auto > Equalize and then I tweaked the curves a bit to get more dramatic colors on the sky.
The original thing that caught my eye, of course, being the workmen updating the sign.
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Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2011/04/13/rounding-the-bend/
VTA Light Rail Right of Way @ Tasman Drive, San Jose.
My commute, most days.
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