robertrankin.org

After the Rapture, you can let your brothers and sisters who didn’t make the cut know where you went:
RaptureLetters.com

Becareful what you say. You never know who’s listening…
Oddly Enough News from Reuters.com | Woman curses god then dies in her sleep

Nice looking free Wiki
PmWiki

Google has a nice Feed Reader. Slick, AJAX, like Gmail
http://www.google.com/reader/lens/

Budgeting. We should all do it. Naturally, with these things that we should be doing, it can be a real pain in the ass. I’m not talking about tracking every penny, I’m basically talking about not spending more on good food and beer than you need to spend on rent and electric. After getting into David Allen’s Getting Things Done system about 2 months ago, I became aware of this personal budgeting system, known as StackBacks. Like GTD, it’s a very simple and powerful idea. Here’s the basic gist:

“You shouldn’t have to think about your budget. Figure your budget out once, not constantly. I want to pay my bills on time, reach my financial goals, and have money I can spend without worrying about it.”

So how do you do it?

Well, there are essentially 2 types of expenses, planned expenses like rent and utilities, which are mostly constant, and living expenses like clothes, groceries, books, entertainment, etc, which can vary, but should never be more than what’s leftover after your planned expenses are taken care of.

StackBacks proposes that you set up a 2nd checking account. Use one for planned expenses and one for living expenses, and set up direct deposit and automatic payments where applicable to take care of planned expenses

Greg, the guy behind StackBacks has received a lot of praise for the system and is organizing a “4-Week Challenge to Master Your Budget“. I’m doing it. I’m sort of already doing it, but this exercise should help me iron out some kinks… Like how do credit cards fit in, and how to plan for saving.

More:
StackBacks.com
The StackBacks White Paper (PDF)
The Challenge

Nice little error, here. Thanks to MSoft Visual Studio.net.

Spent sunday morning gawking at women in short skirts and tight shirts. Yes, it was the International Motorcycle Show at the Javitz Convention Center, and sorry I left the camera at home. I particularly liked the Moto Guzzi Grislo, an 1100 cc naked standard, and the new old style Vespa PX150, with handlebar shifter and floor mounted rear-brake.

Of course there were tons of choppers there. I don’t understand choppers. Give me a standard or sport touring bike anyday over a boulevard-cruising, hard-tail chopper. Sure they’re pretty to look at sometimes, and I get it from the artistic curve, but useful? Not so much. I prefer function over form in a bike.

I spent about $150 on a tank bag, and a replacement sheild for my Arai helmet.

The best girls were: the Progressive Insurance girls, the Rep-Sol girl, the Vespa girls, and the chopper girls dressed like cowgirls. Yee-haw.

The Ikea Dialogues
Minor Tweak talks to Anna, IKEA’s online assistant. (via MH)

This past weekend I went to the opening night of the New York Guitar Festival, a free concert at the World Financial Center’s Winter Garden, a completely un-intimate place to see music - what with all the palm trees and such. The concert, called the Nebraska Project, was a collection of musicians playing songs from Bruce Springsteen Nebraska album.

New York Guitar Festival | Schedule 

There are some great musicians playing in the next couple weeks.

Google has launched Google Video Beta and it is pretty cool. Looks to be thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of videos available to stream instantly. There’s some good stuff like Charlie Rose. Cool stuff like this one-handed bass-player, and some just plain weird stuff like this fat kid washing a car.

Who the fuck cares? So his book of memoirs is fake? What’s the big deal?

I have finally moved into some new office space at work. When I say office I mean cubicle, but it is so much better than the meat locker they stuck us in before. Now I have a few sq ft of desk space, some drawers, and even two cubicle walls. So do the guys on my team. Getting this space was like pulling teeth. But we got it! Progress is a good thing.