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I like using the Disqus comment system here (and as a commenter myself elsewhere). It’s used across many blogs, so you don’t have to individually register with all of them, and comes with some built-in spam filtering as well. Once it’s installed in WordPress, it overwrites the built-in commenting system, but not perfectly – the comment count still shows the old, now defunct, system.  I finally corrected this using a plugin that allows Javascript code snippets to be pasted in directly through the WordPress dashboard in seconds. Super easy, and now, comment counts will display accurately here!  If everything I just said made your eyesRead More →

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Last year, I decided to quit my job and take a sabbatical. I’ve talked about it before in a previous post, but a couple of my goals were to spend more time with my family and do some travel. I maintained my dental and vision coverage through COBRA since it was reasonably priced ($66/month), but healthcare would have added another $600 a month to that figure, and I couldn’t justify that. I maxed out my HSA contribution first, to provide me with a small safety net, and decided to go without coverage for a while.  As I write this in April 2020, COVID-19 has beenRead More →

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But wait, there’s more! If you order today, we’ll throw in a versatile six-in-one kitchen tool! No, not really. Still, this simple life hack is pretty exciting for book nerds like me. I recently learned that Google Docs contains its own OCR capability. OCR stands for optical character recognition, which is a form of computer vision that can translate images of text into actual text documents that are editable. This saves a tremendous amount of data entry time, since you don’t have to retype a document if you have an image of it.  This means there’s a very simple way to digitize your own books,Read More →

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Well, there’s no way anyone could have predicted the financial situation we find ourselves in now, in the midst of the coronavirus outbreak. The inverted yield curve back in August 2019 didn’t look encouraging, but nobody expected a global pandemic and subsequent mass shutdown this spring. In the midst of the turmoil, a lot of people are experiencing financial distress, both for immediate needs and in their retirement accounts. I wanted to address the market conditions and give a personal update, since some folks have kindly asked how I’m doing.  Stay the course, and Don’t Panic.  Though this global shutdown is unprecedented, market conditions haveRead More →