There better goddamned well not be a third time. Like I said in the comments to the first post above, there is no brighter line than suspension of elections.
Blog
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My very first blogson
Long time real-life friend disavowedwithhonor went and got himself a blog!
Go check it out!
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Careful, someone might shoot you with your own gun
Especially if you are a convicted sex offender who kidnaps an 18 year old girl and drives her to Mississippi to rape her:
Cronk was in Aberdeen following an alleged kidnapping that began last Wednesday at the Kangaroo Express gas station on Lebanon Road.
Police said Cronk revealed a handgun and forced the teenage victim into his vehicle.
He then drove four and a half hours to Aberdeen where he rented a hotel room and forced the victim to perform sexual acts at gunpoint.
The victim told police when Cronk wasn’t looking she took his gun and shot him in the stomach.
Cronk left the hotel, and the female victim locked herself inside the room and called 911 for help.
Cronk, 58, was found deceased inside his vehicle parked at a Shell gas station in nearby Hamilton, Mississippi Friday morning.
That’s a nightmare scenario, isn’t it? It’s awful that she went through that, but maybe it will help with her recovery knowing that she stopped him from doing that to anyone else ever again.
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The Debt Snowball
Last week I covered Baby Step 1: The $1000 Emergency Fund. That step can usually be completed in a month or so, depending on your situation. From there, you move on to what really is the core of “the plan”–The Debt Snowball.
In the debt snowball, you take all of your debts and list them smallest balance to largest balance. ALL OF THEM. This includes the twenty bucks you borrowed from your fishing buddy. It includes the $75 you owe your dentist for the cleaning two months ago. It includes your cars, motorcycles, and boats. Store cards, credit cards, and loans from parents. Everything.
Interest rates only matter as a tiebreaker. The reason you do it this way is entirely psychological: reducing the number of creditors is a better positive reinforcement than reducing your total debt. If you pay off $1000 of debt and get rid of two store cards you feel like you’ve made a whole lot more progress than if you pay off $1000 on an account and you still owe $7500. Going from 7 creditors to 5 within the first month is an awesome feeling.
Okay, so how does this work? Well, you take your ordered list of debts and you pay minimum payments on all of them. Except the smallest one. That little bugger? You’re trying to murder him. Kill him with fire! Any extra money you have in the budget (you do have a budget, don’t you?) goes to kill him. Every bit of overtime goes on that guy. If you sold an extra rifle you put that money on the smallest debt (Later, you can buy a new one. I hear they keep making them).
When that guy is dead, you move up the chain. Only this one will go a bit faster, because you don’t have that first debt’s monthly payment anymore. So if you had a Visa with a $25 minimum payment as your first debt, and a Discover with a $45 minimum, your new absolute lowest payment you’ll make on the discover is $70. Make sense?
By the time you get to the last debt, you could very well be paying thousands of dollars every month on it without having changed your lifestyle very much since the beginning. When I was single, I paid about $1600/month on my student loans at the end, which was about half my take home pay. I think the number was close to $3500 at the end of my wife’s snowball.
This step will take 18-24 months on average. I did it in 30 months when I was single and we paid off my wife’s debts 28 months after we got married (our debts were roughly equivalent and for the same things).
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UNPOSSIBLE!
When restaurant carry was passed in Tennessee, The Beale Street Merchants Association banned guns from Beale Street:
Later this month, Beale Street will break out the hand-held metal detectors at the entrance points and use other security measures to keep guns out of the three-block area day and night.
And the fruit of that labor? Six people shot behind one of their clubs.
No word on whether they stopped frisking everyone who entered the area, but either way the Beale Street Merchants Association is headed for a lawsuit. A big one.
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A tale of two executions
Two men were executed on the same night earlier this week. One was in Texas, the other was in Georgia.
Both men did not know their victims. Both men admit to being involved in the initial altercation that ultimately led to death of the victim. Both men claim to not have been the person to actually commit the murders they were accused of.
One man became a cause celebre, and a reason to examine why we have a death penalty in the first place.
The other man became a reason to examine why we are so nice to people we execute.
I’m not sure what to make of it.
FTR, I think both men were guilty as sin and should’ve been shot on scene.
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I miss the good old days
When interest rates for my money market account (AKA The Emergency Fund) were north of 6%. The bank just notified me that rates are down to 0.87% now, which is still better than the rate for regular savings accounts (0.25%)
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Tragedy!
Last night my Nexus One fell out of my pocket and onto the cement. It fell in such a way that the protective neoprene sleeve came off the phone and it slide about two feet across the concrete face down. The impact cracked the glass in the top left corner, but the screen is okay.
The phone basically lost most of its resale value in that instant.
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I’ll take “Things that sound like a terrible idea for $200, Alex”
Google Wallet
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DsaJMhcLm_A&w=640&h=390]
Let’s set aside the fact that the only way to get this is with a Citibank Mastercard credit card or Google Prepaid card, and that it only works with one phone on one carrier (Sprint Nexus S 4G).
Does anyone think this is a good idea? Right now there is a group of hackers in Russia salivating.
“Oh, well, you have to unlock it with a PIN, so it’s more secure than a regular wallet!” Yeah, right. The practical effect of this will be that the guy in front of me at Starbucks will have to pull out his phone, unlock it, open the app, unlock that, and then pay for his drink. Yeah, I know, I’m impatient.
RFID payment systems have been around for for a while now, and I don’t think I know anyone who’s ever used it. That’s probably a good thing.
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Gun Porn
M&P15-22.
I picked it up last week. It’s going to be great at New Shooter Range Day.