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mphelpsy
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Name: Mike
Country: United States
State: Oklahoma
Metro: Tulsa
Gender: Male
Interests: A beautiful west Texas woman, good beer, reading, watching Lost, older homes, and some other things
Occupation: Engineer
Industry: Building Consulting
Message: message me
Member Since:
3/24/2006
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| Jenn and I watched Dan in Real Life this weekend and really enjoyed it. Check out Luke Harrington's review at www.moviezeal.com.
One of the things we enjoyed about the movie was the soundtrack. So much so, we paused the credits to find out who the artist was., and I can't remember ever doing that before. The artist is Sondre Lerche. He is Norwegian and is 25 years old. Jenn and I like him a lot and think you should check him out:
http://www.myspace.com/sondrelerche
http://www.sondrelerche.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sondre_Lerche
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| Jenn found a personality test that we both took in college today. Tonight after I got home from work we went through it again to see what the results were - really, really fun. Personality tests are great to take and useful in many ways. I think you learn more about yourself - they validate strengths and weaknesses.
Jenn and I have very similar personalities, but different enough to not kill each other. Here are the results:
Jenn
I - Introvert
S - Sensing
F - Feeling
J - Judging
Mike
I - Introvert
S - Sensing
T - Thinking
J - Judging
Okay, so we are both introverts - we draw energy from focusing on our own world; Sensing - need hard facts, focus on what is real and actual; Judging - scheduled, organized, systematic.
Jenn is a feeler, which means she's sympathetic and easily sees how things impact people. Basically, she's nice. On the other hand, I'm a thinker, which means I like the cold, hard facts. I want truth and tend to not think about how that makes people feel. Basically, I'm accurate but can be harsh. Hmmm...it seems Jenn's personality is very good for me. She takes the edge off my harshness.
By the way, the test we took was the Myers-Briggs personality test.
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| Jenn and I now have power back on and we are very grateful to the crew from Laredo, TX for restoring power to our neighborhood. Laredo is way the heck south on the Texas/Mexico boarder. We were without power for 128.5 hours. It's amazing how unprepared we are to live when no electricity is available.
Monday thru Wednesday night we stayed with friends because everyone in my family was without power. My parents got their power back Thursday evening, so we stayed with them that night. A co-worker let me borrow his 7000W generator on Friday and the electrical engineers I work with told me how to power my electrical panel with it, so we had generator power from Friday to Saturday at 4:30pm when our power came on. I have to say it felt cool to power your house with a generator. Even though the power came on the next day, it was good to be back in our own house on Friday. Hud and Jenn are sick and being sick at someone else's home just isn't fun. You wanna be home regardless, but being sick makes it a little worse.
If you wanna know how to power your panel with a generator I can pass along what I was taught. Just let me know. It's pretty simple; however, I don't know about you, but messing with electricity can be a little intimidating. I wouldn't have done if it wasn't for someone walking me thru it. I have a cool new skill now.
By the way, if you want a generator, I bet there will be a ton for sale in a couple of weeks. I think everyone had the same idea: buy the generator on your credit card and then sell it to someone else after you get your power back before the bill comes due. Not a bad idea I guess, but when everyone in the city is doing that it might be hard to get all your money back. The market will definitely be saturated.
I'm thinking about buying a small 1000W generator that will power my furnace and a light circuit. Buying a 5000W or greater just isn't practical and I'll never get my money out of it. Going without lights in one thing...going without heat is another. Our house was 48 degrees at it's lowest that I saw - I wasn't there in the middle of the night or early morning. If your house is at that temperature and it's below freezing outside, your pipes can freeze even if you have a faucet dripping. A little generator to power my furnace is worth it to me to prevent a major plumbing fix.
Let me know if you need help cleaning up your yard. I'm on vacation on Thursday and Friday and am willing to help.
Praying that the power will be restored to the city soon...
Mike
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| Oklahoma State Cowboys 41
Kansas State Kitty Cats 39
Go Pokes!
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| Jenn and I have been attending Dave Ramsey's Financial Peace University at Asbury United Methodist Church. We're 8 lessons into the 13 lesson program. The lessons consist of watching a prerecorded video of Dave teaching that week's lesson to a live audience followed by a small group discussion of the video. In each lesson, Dave teaches on elements of practical personal finance. Here are the titles of each lesson:
1) Super Savers - this is about the importance of having savings for emergencies
2) Cash Flow Planning
3) Relating with Money - this is about how finances affects relationships and vice versa
4) Buying Only Big, Big Bargains - no more shoppin' at the mall!
5) Dumping Debt
6) Understanding Investments
7) Understanding Insurance
8) Retirement and College Planning
9) Buyer Beware - this is about how marketing and advertising influences you, the consumer.
10) Real Estate and Mortgages
11) Career and Extra Jobs
12) Collection Practices and Credit Bureaus
13) The Great Misunderstanding - this is about being generous
During each lesson Dave focuses a lot on his 7 baby steps to financial freedom. Here are his baby steps:
1) Start an emergency fund - $1,000
2) Debt snowball - paying your consumer debts (credit cards, student loans, car loans, furniture loans, etc.) off smallest to largest using a debt snowball.
3) Fully funded emergency fund - 3 to 6 months of expenses saved for a rainy day
4) Invest 15% of income for retirement - (this is long term investments like mutual funds)
5) College funding for the kiddos
6) Pay off house early
7) Build wealth and give, give, give
(BTW, about that last step, your supposed to be generous and to give at every step. It sounds like you're supposed to wait until you pay your house off before you give. The last step is speaking towards the goal of having your finances in order...to give and to be generous).
Jenn and I have gained a lot from this course and would recommend it to everyone. We are in the process of paying off our student loans and our Accord, so we're on step two. Here are some reasons why we want to get out of debt:
1) Reduce the stress and worry caused by debt and poorly managed finances
2) Make it easier to live on one income
3) More money to give to people who are called to live by preaching the Gospel
4) Retirement (No Florida retirement, no shell collecting (Piper anyone?), but money to live off of when we can't work anymore)
5) Inheritance for our children (The biggest inheritance is the Gospel)
That's all I can think of now...there are probably some more good ones that Jenn and I talked about but I can't remember right now.
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