mad anthony

The Timonium Hamfest Report, 2010 edition

2010-03-28T10:08:00.002-04:00

So yesterday was the Timonium Hamfest, and I did something there I don't normally do - I sold stuff. Specifically, around $875 worth of stuff. Keep in mind that that figure is gross income, and some of the stuff I sold I had quite a bit of money into, including two PC's that I paid around $90 each for. Still, I now have a bit more stuff in my basement, and a bit more money in my pocket, so that's a win.

In previous years, I've avoided selling, instead wandering around - because it's so big, it takes a few hours to really look at everything, and I've usually found at least 1 or two thins I could eBay for a profit. But, this year I had quite a bit of stuff cluttering up my basement, thanks in part to the financial crisis - I bought a bunch of computer cleaning stuff from a mortgage brokerage bankruptcy auction back in October in central PA, and a bunch of PC's from a failed bank in Baltimore earlier this month. Since finding eBayable stuff is always a crapshoot, I figured I'd sell.

Obviously, I did OK financially. The big question is if it will cut into my sales later this year - if I just sold stuff to the same people who I would have sold it to later at the smaller, later hamfests I normally sell at. It also depends if I'm able to find new inventory to sell - if so, then it was a win because I'll have more room for new stuff, but if I don't then I won't have much to sell - OK, make that much good stuff to sell, because I've got so much crap in my basement that I can easily fill the truck.

I also met a guy who asked me if I was Anthony, and then said he knew me through this blog - and wasn't this the one hamfest I don't normally sell at? So evidently people I don't know actually read my blog. Sweet!

I've joked that one thing about Hamfests is that it's often easier to sell completely useless junk than stuff that's actually good. I had 4 Dell Optiplex core 2 duos for sale- mostly 2.13's that I priced at $175 - complete minus hard drive. I saw one sell on eBay for that, plus a giant shipping charge, so I figured it was a good starting price and that people would haggle me down to $150 or so. Throw in a $50 hard drive, and you've got a machine that will do pretty much anything for the next couple years. But I had a bunch of people look at them and tell me they were too expensive (including 1 guy who said it like 10 times). I invited people to make me an offer, but they never did. The thing is that I'm not going to price stuff cheap, because people at a hamfest will always haggle, so I build that into the price of anything that's over a couple bucks.

The other guy who annoyed me was one who was haggling over an item, and then told me he wasn't going to pay more for it because he's been burned at hamfests before. Now, I understand the logic - I've bought stuff once or twice that hasn't worked. Also, while I'm a regular fixture at most local fests, I haven't sold at Timonium before, so he has no reason to trust me. Still, most hamfest sellers are honest, and while it's certainly good to build the possibility that something might not work into the price you are willing to pay, I think it's rude to tell that to someone. I'm not going to knowingly sell something that doesn't work as working - not just because I'm such a nice guy, but because I want to keep selling at future 'fests, and that means having customers who are willing to buy from me more than once. I have a couple customers who usually seek me out and buy a bunch of stuff from me because they've had good experiences in the past, and I've had a number of customers - including one guy I sold a monitor to who insisted on getting my phone number in case it didn't work - who have come back at later fests and told me how happy they were with what they bought.

I packed it in around noon - I'd sold a bunch of stuff, had been there since just after 4, and wanted to get the truck unpacked and take a nap before I drove to a concert in Northern VA. While I was packing, I heard a couple people say stuff like "why's he packing up now? he's making a big mistake. I just got here!" Well, I didn't, and I've sold at enough fests to know that I don't usually make a lot of sales in the last few hours. Standing outside for hours in cold weather isn't the most fun, and I have other things to. If you want the best selection, come early - this is more hobby than business to me, so I'm only willing to put so much effort into it.

I only bought two things - a $10 Kodak digital camera and a $1 D-Link gaming adapter. Both were missing the power supply. Don't know if I missed out on any good eBay fodder, but I told some coworkers who were there to keep an eye out on some of the stuff I normally look for, so my guess is probably not.

Will I sell next year? Probably, as long as I have stuff to sell. I would do a few things differently, though. I got there a little after 4am this year, which was far earlier than I needed to - most tailgaters weren't there until 5:30 or later. I would also seriously consider springing for an indoor space - while the weather cooperated, it was freezing cold to the point I had trouble talking because my face was so cold. Since the indoors don't open until 8, that would also let me scope out the tailgaters for a while before I start selling (and scope out the other indoor sellers since I'd have access...).

The government all up in your bidness - healthcare musings, part two..

2010-03-23T22:24:00.002-04:00

There's one other thing about the health care I didn't really talk about that concerns me - the fact that the government's greater involvement in healthcare means that they will have a much bigger role in the rest of your life.

Here's the thing - there are a bunch of things that we know are not very good for your health - things like smoking, drinking too much alcohol, eating too much, having unprotected promiscuous sex. Those things are also, well, really really fun, or so I've heard.

With the government being even more involved in healthcare, I expect to see more crackdowns on these things - more taxes, more outright bans. NYC has already gone beyond banning tasty, tasty trans-fats and now has actually considered making it illegal for restaurants to add salt to food.

Now, most of these things are negative, and one might agree with additional legislation or taxes. The problem with this is that when we regulate "sins", we do so unevenly, and we often do so in ways that end up being captured by some of the businesses that are being regulated. Take tobacco - the latest tobacco bill bans what madanthony used to smoke when he would smoke cigars - cherry flavored ones - because of "the children" - but regular or menthol cigs are fine. I know lots of people who smoke cigarettes regularly, but I know nobody who smokes Swisher Sweet cherries every day. Or alcohol - big alcohol distributors have made it illegal to mail order wine in most states - once again because of the children, who you know will buy $40 pinot noir off the web rather than get their older brother to buy them a 30 of Shaffer.

The other thing is that debates about healthcare is now that the government is even more involved, lots more things will become political. We saw this already with the abortion debate - people who are opposed to things become very vocal about not having the government pay for those things. I suspect that the abortion payment debate isn't entirely over yet. I also predict we are going to see a whole lot more arguments on things like medical marijuana, alternative/natural medicine, end-of-life care, and a ton of other issues.

Some musings on the new healthcare bill...

2010-03-22T23:10:00.002-04:00

As you can imagine, as a self-described fiscal conservative, I'm not pleased about the health care bill passing. I generally favor the individual over the collective, the private sector over the government, and nudges over mandates, and from what I can gather, that's pretty much the opposite of this bill.

I suppose that means I'm an evil person who wants everyone who is sick to die. Not so much. As someone who had open-heart surgery at the age of 4, I can't really blame anyone who wants to make sure that life-saving medical care is available to everyone. But I'm not sure this bill does that.

In fact, I'm not all that sure what this bill does, despite hours of news channel viewing and blog reading. And I'm not sure anyone else does either.

A few problems that spring to mind from what I've heard, though:

- Stay on your parent's plan until age 26 - When I graduated college, it took me about 9 months to land a real, full time job, so I can understand giving kids a grace period. And since twentysomethings are generally healthy, having them in the insurance pool is probably a net win. But something about age 26 just seems like going a bit too far - by the time I hit 26 I'd bought a house.

- treating models like they are gospel - proponents of the bill keep saying it will save money, based on the CBO's estimates. But estimates, especially ones that go 10 years out, tend to be off. When the unexpected happens - a "black swan event" - they tend to be way off - see, mortgage crisis. The other thing is that part of those savings come from cutting medicare payment 21% in 2018 - something unlikely to happen, and from changes to student loans, something completely tacked onto the bill.

- No denials for preexisting conditions - yes, this sounds great. But insurance companies don't just deny for preexisting conditions because they are evil bastards who want you to die. They do it because otherwise people would not buy insurance until they are diagnosed with an expensive illness. It's like being able to wait until your house is on fire to buy homeowner's insurance.

I'm sure there are a ton of other things about the bill I would hate, if I understood them, but those are a few that spring to mind.

So what would MadAnthony do if tasked to reform health insurance? Probably something similar to the Whole Foods plan - their health insurance plan, not making everyone eat tofu and organic beets. I'd like to see an emphasis on catastrophic care coverage and health savings accounts. You would pay out of pocket for small stuff - physicals, allergy medicine, ect. - and insurance would be for the big, life changing stuff like cancer or heart attacks. After all, that's what people need to worry most about, and those advocating health care reform have trumpeted lives it will save and bankruptcies it will avoid - presumably those aren't from the common cold. So if the government wants to do something, how about a tax credit for the amount that people pay for catastrophic care coverage, plus untaxed health savings accounts that don't expire or need to be used up at the end of the year, and that can be contributed into by employers and employees?

The way I look at it is that health insurance should be more like car insurance. I don't expect insurance to pay when I need an oil change or when my gas gauge gets near E. I expect them to pay when I sideswipe a Pontiac driven by a pizza delivery girl. It's for major, unforeseen events, not for day-to-day manageable expenses, and I think it's sad that it's an idea that wasn't even really discussed in this whole process.

Finding myself, or why I think I might drop out of grad school, buy a convertible, and stay single...

2010-03-21T22:09:00.002-04:00

There's been a lack of posting on this blog of late. madanthony has been kind of busy, and hasn't really had time to blog. He has had time to think, though, and this post is about what I've been thinking about.

I guess for the last few years, I've kind of been trying to "find myself". I've got a decent job - it annoys me sometime, but it pays the bills. I've got a house, a reasonably reliable vehicle, and a cat who alternates between affection and trying to destroy everything I hold dear. But I still find myself unhappy, and I guess I've been trying to find someone or something to fill that. I still haven't, but I think I'm gaining a better understanding of what those things aren't, and I guess that's a step towards finding what is.

One of those things I tried was going back for a second Master's degree. I work for a college, which means free tuition. I already took advantage of that and got my MBA a few years back - it didn't seem like a big deal, I had an undergrad business degree and found some of the material pretty interesting. But this time I decided to get a Master of Arts in Educational Technology. The college's program is aimed at k-12 teachers who want to take on a tech role, but I figured there was enough of a crossover that it would be worth doing - it could be fun, would show my coworkers that I wanted to expand my knowledge, could be useful if a position involving classroom technology ever opened up, would be a good way to meet people (including single female people) and it would be cool to have two Master's degrees.

But now that I'm most of the way through my first semester in the program, I'm having serious second thoughts if I want to continue. I find it's taking up more of my free time than I thought it would - it's cutting into the time that I can spend doing other things I want to do, like go to the gym or date or read for pleasure or blog or run my eBay business. I don't enjoy the classes. I wouldn't mind having lots of reading if it was interesting and gained me practical knowledge, but instead I'm learning how to change the way k-12 schools educate, and that most teachers feel that they shouldn't have standards or merit pay and that all children are unique snowflakes who can't be treated like widgets, despite the fact that every other business that deals with people have found ways to treat people as individuals while still maintaining standards. I don't really fit in with the people, don't have much to add to conversations, and find that even when I'm not doing homework, the thought of having to do it hangs over me like a raincloud.

I think I'm probably not going to continue - I definitely don't plan on taking any classes this summer, and I doubt I will in the fall either. I feel like a failure, that I should go through with it, that I'm showing my coworkers and teachers that I can't follow through on anything. On the other hand, it seems stupid to spend the next 2-3 years completely miserable so I can get a piece of paper that I can hang in my home office that nobody sees, to give up doing things I enjoy so that I can spend time somewhere I don't really belong. There are some shifts at work that make me suspect that I'm going to be doing more of the business planning kind of stuff that I wanted to do all along, and thus that there would be even less chance that this degree would serve a purpose. So I'd like to think I'm doing the rational thing, that I'm not throwing good money - or in this case, time and effort - after bad.

So onto the sports car. For the last couple years, I've toyed with the idea of buying a second car. See, I need a truck because I do a fair amount of flea market selling and auction buying, where it's incredibly useful to have six feet of carrying capacity. But I also want something sporty, specifically a convertible. I've got a fair amount of money saved up - probably around a year's after-tax salary - and no real debt beyond the mortgage payments on my underwater house and a student loan at a stupidly low government subsidized, tax deductible interest rate. It's probably not the best use of my money, but I think I can pull it off, and if I don't do it now, when will I? The vehicle I want is a 2001-2006 Toyota MR2 Spyder with an SMT (syncro manual transmission, basically a clutchless manual). They aren't exactly easy to find, and I'll probably have to travel a bit to find one, and spend more than I want to.

I also want to take a short vacation this summer, so I'll have significantly less money at the end of the summer if I do both. But hopefully I'll also be enjoying myself, something that looking at my bank account balance doesn't really do much for.

Oh, and the part about remaining single. That's not really true - I still want to find someone. But for years I sort of approached dating with the idea that I was desperate, that finding anyone would be better than being alone. I'm beginning to realize that's probably not true, and also to understand why people avoid dating people who come off as desperate. Basically, I was emailing someone I met on a dating site - the first couple emails went OK, so I gave her my number, figuring we'd talk on the phone. The next morning, she started texting me. Now, I'm not a texter, and don't really like texting, so I found this kind of creepy - probably more than I should have. She seems like a nice enough person, but I also don't know if it would really go anywhere, and I haven't really pursued it - but for a while she was texting me pretty regularly, which made me think of that whole thing about not wanting to be a member of any club that would want me as a member. Part of this may also just be that I'm kind of burnt out with the whole grad school thing and don't want to add trying to balance a relationship to it. I'm hoping come May that I'll get back into the dating scene - I let my eHarmony membership lapse, but I'll probably renew it then. But I've come to realize that while I don't have the world's most active social life, I do have a few things I enjoy doing that take up a fair amount of my time - and a few people I enjoy hanging out with who put up with me- and that I shouldn't give those things up to do things I don't really enjoy doing or dating women I don't really see a future with.

Will making these changes help me find happiness? Probably not, but I think they will help bring me closer to understanding what it is - and maybe that's what life is, less a search for some absolute state of joy as an understanding of what we enjoy and don't enjoy.

I may be a loser, but I'm not the biggest loser...

2010-03-13T22:27:00.002-05:00

My workplace is having a biggest loser contest - one of those contests where you compete with your coworkers to lose the highest percentage of body weight.

I'm not doing very well. The only good thing I can say is that I haven't actually gained any weight yet, so I haven't had to pay any penalties. But I've lost a grand total of 5 pounds over the course of 6 weeks or so, going from 150.8 to 144.8 . They aren't publishing percent lost beyond the weekly winners, so I have no idea how I'm doing compared to other people besides the people who are winning.

There's a pretty good reason that I'm not doing too well - I'm not trying very hard. I'm not really doing anything additional. I am trying to keep up with my normal eating habits and exercise routines, but I'm not really cutting back any more or exercising anymore. Every now and then I'll do an extra 15 minutes of cardio - an hour and 45 minutes instead of my usual hour and a half - but that's about it.

About 6 months ago, I decided I wanted to lose some weight, and dropped about 10 pounds in a month - by dropping my caloric intake by about 1000 calories, and increasing my exercise to 2 hours a day. The problem was that I was miserable - I was always hungry, I couldn't enjoy any of the foods I liked, and the extra gym time meant I wasn't getting home until 8pm or later. I decided that it wasn't worth it.

Now that I'm taking some grad classes that are eating into my time, the extra exercise really isn't easily achievable. And while I feel like I could stand to lose a few more pounds, and get rid of a little bit of the spare tire I still carry, I'm pretty close to a healthy weight - I'm in the normal category for my height, although I'm very close to the overweight mark. But I'm also within about 5 pounds of being the lightest I've been probably since grade school. I'm a 34" waist - which isn't really something to brag about, but I was a 46" 6 years ago.

So I'm having a hard time convincing myself it's worth trying to lose more. I'm also trying to figure out why I entered in the first place.

Musings from the snowpocalyse..

2010-02-07T00:07:00.002-05:00

So except for about an hour spent shoveling my walkway and clearing the two feet of snow off the top of the heat pump in the hopes of keeping my electric bill below what my car payments used to be, I haven't left the house in 36 hours - and except for cleaning off the truck tomorrow, probably won't for the next 36, or more if school is closed on Monday.

So what have I done with my time? Probably not as much as I should have. I got some little things done - set up a laptop for one of our directors at work (it's been backordered, and finally came in 10 minutes before our early closing on Friday), straightened up my home office a little, got some stuff together for a swap meet next weekend, did the reading for my classes, typed up some eBay descriptions, paid some bills, and installed all the OS updates on 3 of my computers. I also made a crock pot of chili and a dozen muffins. If I'm off Monday, I'm baking a cake. Because I have a box of cake mix that's been sitting in my pantry forever, and because I'll be bored. And because I like cake.

Which brings me to one of the perils of being snowed in. When I'm bored, and home, I eat. I also haven't exercised much, since the gym has been closed on account of snow. Which is especially bad since I entered our work "biggest loser" competition. I wasn't planning on putting a whole lot of effort into trying to win, because that would require me to pretty much not eat anything that tastes good and spend all my free time working out. But at this rate I think I'll actually end up gaining weight. I've put in some time on my basement treadmill, but not as much as I would have if I'd went to the gym.

There are plenty of things I should do but haven't - cleaning, starting a paper for one of my classes, figuring out how to move this blog since blogger is shutting off ftp usage at the end of March. But there is something about being snowed in that makes me even lazier than usual, and I've spent most of my free time watching stuff off my DVR, obsessively checking my email and facebook, and letting the cat nap on my lap.

I've lived alone for the last couple years, and most of the time I like not having roommates - I don't need to share freezer space, or clean the bathroom, or wear pants. But on days like today, where the closest thing I have to human contact is facebook, I kind of miss having someone to talk to. It's also one of the times I most hate being single - being snowed in with someone you love would be a whole lot more
enjoyable.

One smart thing I did was actually go grocery shopping on Wednesday night, as soon as I heard the threats of Snowmegedon. I had needed to go soon anyway, and figured if I was going to be snowed in I might as well pick up the ingredients to make chili and muffins, and make sure I had enough kibble for Nibbler, my carefully trained attack kitty - plus Diet Mountain Dew was on sale, and I was down to my last 5 or so cases. My 9pm trip to the Weis was surprisingly calm - unlike the stories I've heard of people who went Thursday night. Normally, I suck at planning ahead, so I'm proud of myself for actually doing it for once. If only I could plan my career or my interaction with the opposite sex as well.

In defense of bottom feeding...

2010-01-24T21:13:00.002-05:00

I had mentioned the show Pawn Stars a few days ago to a coworker, and he grumbled something about how he hated the store owners on the show because they usually make lowball offers to people selling them stuff - people who often desperately need the money.

I like the show, but I also see a little of myself in the main characters. If you've watched the show, they will often get an estimate from a pro of what something is worth. The person selling the item will then ask for close to that value, and the owners will usually offer them about half. He'll usually point out that the top value is usually what it would fetch at an auction, which would charge a serious commission, that he's got to pay the costs of running a store and still make a profit, and that he may have to sit on the item for a while before a buyer interested in it comes along.

I'm pretty sympathetic to these arguments. And if you've watched the show enough, there are times he's gotten burned - bought something that turned out to be unrepairable, or not sell-able, or stolen.

The way I see it, what he offers is liquidity - cash on the spot, hundred dollar bills. Sure, you could get more on eBay or at an auction, but that takes work. eBay isn't too hard once you get the hang of it, but there is a learning curve if you've never used it, and people are reluctant to buy from someone with no feedback. There are also a ton of ways to get ripped off if you don't know how to protect yourself as a seller. And auction houses and consignment sellers charge heavily - I was surprised when a faculty member at work asked me about selling some stuff on eBay for him - and told me that he had previously used a consignment store that charged 40% of the selling price.

Maybe I'm just rationalizing, though. The thing is that I've bought plenty of things at estate sales and auctions, yard sales, bankruptcy and going out of business auctions, and otherwise profited off people's bad fortunes. But it's not like my actions caused the death of the lady whose Onkyo receiver I bought from her sister for $3 and eBayed for $55, or caused the criminal actions of the bankrupt nonprofit whose 8 rack-mount servers I bought for $5 each and resold for $75 - $150 a piece. The way I see it, I'm offering liquidity, giving individuals and creditors money for something that they otherwise wouldn't want. And I take my share of risk - I've bought tons of stuff that turned out to be broken, missing parts, or not worth what I thought. I've also bought plenty of stuff that turned out to be harder to sell, including a new in box APC rack mount UPS for $250 - despite the fact that it's normally an $800 piece of equipment, it's still sitting in my basement because I haven't found a buyer yet, and it weights a metric crapload.

Pawnshop owners and eBayers might benefit from people's mistakes or bad luck, but they didn't cause it, and they perform a necessary function in converting assets into cash. Much like debt collectors and repo men, they perform a function that isn't always pretty, but is essential to the economy.

Back to school...

2010-01-10T23:44:00.002-05:00

When you work for a college like I do, the start of the semester means thousands of students flooding the school, professors coming back to their offices after weeks away, and a flurry of effort to make sure that they are taken care of.

But this semester, it also means I'm going back to school, for the first time in two and half years, when I finished up my MBA.

See, a few months back I looked at my life and decided since it wasn't really going anywhere, personally or professionally, I should try something new. One of the perks of working for a college is that I get to take classes basically free. We've got a number of grad programs, but I didn't really think I wanted to take any more business classes, and I didn't want to get swamped in code in computer science. So I decided to apply for our Educational Technology program, which is aimed at getting teachers familiar enough with using technology in the classroom to take a lead role in their schools. Granted, I'm not a teacher, and the program is aimed at k-12, not college, where I work, but I figured there would be some crossover.

There were other reasons - we got new management a few years back, and one of their priorities has been on how students and faculty use technology in the classroom - much of the new opportunities have been aimed at that. So I figured enrolling in the program would show I was interested in that kind of thing. It also hasn't escaped my thinking that most teachers are women, and that, well, this could be a good way to meet girls. While I don't expect to get a date out of this, I figure meeting new people can't hurt. Plus, it will give me something to do - I like to be busy, and figure time in class or doing homework is probably a better use of my time than random web surfing.

But now that it's starting, I'm starting to second-guess myself. I figure I won't fit in - the only non-teacher in a class of teachers - and that probably won't endear me to the faculty either. My final in one of the classes is the first day of a conference that I would otherwise be able to go to in Vegas, related to my job- so now the classes are hurting my career, because I can't seem to make my boss understand why skipping a final is not a good idea.

But we'll see. I figure if I'm too miserable or suck too much at it, I can always stop taking classes - all I basically lose are a few hours twice a week for class, plus however long I spend doing homework. And maybe it won't suck and I'll be pleasantly surprised.

Business models that puzzle me... GPS companies...

2010-01-03T10:39:00.003-05:00

On New Year's Day, I went on a hike with an old college roommate and a bunch of his friends. Afterwords, we went out to grab something to eat. Since I had my Tom-Tom, and drive a bright yellow truck, one of the women who went followed me. Unfortunately, the interchange that Tom-Tom sent me on was redesigned after my maps were made. I went the wrong way, she went the right way, and I ended up gettting there about 15 minutes late, although part of that was that I had to stop and get gas since I was almost out.

Anyway, the moral of the story is that I ended up ordering a new Tom-Tom. eCost had a refurbed Tom-Tom One - a slightly updated version of the one I have now, with a better mounting bracket - for ~$60 shipped after rebate. It includes new maps for the first 30 days, so I'll get a current map. I figure that I can probably sell my old TomTom for $30 or so at a Hamfest or on eBay, so I'll have a new GPS with new maps for $30.

What is odd is if I wanted to buy new maps for my existing TomTom, it's $55. They do have a map update service where you get 4 new maps in a year for $40, which sounds like a great deal until you read the fine print and realize that it makes you pay full price for the first map.

I'm really puzzled by this business model. Why is it cheaper for me to buy the hardware and software than just the software? After all, software has a near-zero marginal cost - it costs next to nothing to distribute an additional copy, especially as a download. If I could get an updated map for $20 or so, I'd buy it - it would save me the hassle of transferring all my favorites to the new device, installing POI's, ect. But when it's the same price for a new device as the maps, and I can resell my old device, it's a no-brainer.

The only thing I can come up with is that TomTom wants to keep up/increase market share, and they figure that means keeping the price of the device low so that new customers buy it. Since they can't separate new customers from old ones - there's no way to price-discriminate, as an economist would say - existing customers like me get an advantage. The other thing I can think of is that they figure that people who insist on super-up-to-date maps are people who really need them - businesses, people who drive for a living, ect - and they are willing to pay whatever to get them. To use another econ term, they are price-inelastic.

I do wonder if a GPS company would do better if they sold the maps cheap instead of making it cheaper to buy a new device. I feel like I'm buying a new PC just to get a copy of Windows, but if it works...

New Year's resolutions, 2010...

2009-12-31T15:21:00.000-05:00

Well, I do this every year - make a list of the things that I'm going to try to do this year. I end up sticking with the couple I would have done anyway, and failing at the rest. But what are holidays without tradition?

The big ones:

1. Lose, or at least maintain weight - Several years ago I lost a significant amount of weight - about 100 pounds over the course of two years. Since then, my weight has fluctuated a little, but not a whole lot. I'm actually probably about 15 pounds lighter and 2" slimmer in the waist than I was a year ago. I could stand to lose a few more pounds - I've packed on a couple over the holidays, and I've still got a bit of a belly - but it also seems to me that the extra weight isn't having a huge affect on my appearance or my health, so I'm not willing to put all that much effort into losing it. I also want to start lifting - I do a lot of cardio, but no weight training. Once again, it would be nice to have a little more muscle, but I'm fairly sure that it won't send the ladies swooning or enable me to have a second career on the parallel bars.

2. Save money - another resolution that hasn't been much of a problem to keep in the last few years. I'm in decent shape - I've got some savings, and my only debt is my giant underwater mortgage and a small, very low interest student loan. Still, I've been doing a lot of spending of late on small things ranging from sneakers to gadgets to tasty coffee-based beverages, and I do want to slow down on that and try to put more in the bank, where it will earn an interest rate that is probably less than inflation.

3. Find love. This is the one that I fail at every year. It also is the one that requires at least some outside force - I'm responsible for how much I spend and how much time I put in on the elliptical instead of eating bacon, but I can't make women like me. On the plus side, in the last year I've had more dates than I have in the rest of my life. On the negative side, that number was 3, none of which turned into a second date. I've tried online dating, and I think it's time for me to take a break from it, because I find it's done little but frustrate me. I want to try some more in-person things, like some of the swing dances that are around, but the thought of showing up alone at them doesn't exactly thrill me. I'm starting grad school classes in a few weeks, and I figure even if I don't meet anyone there, at least being around other people, some of them female, might help me socially - or at least keep me busy enough that I won't have time to think about the fact that I seem to be on a path to die alone and unloved.

There are also plenty of smaller things that I hope to accomplish this year. I've got a number of small things that need to be done around the house - electrical wiring, carpet laying, fencing in the back yard. Pretty much all of these are things I've needed to get done since I bought the house almost 3 and a half years ago, but I'm hoping that this is the year I actually go through with getting them done. Obviously, succeeding in grad school and at work are things I hope to do, although I have yet to unlock the mystery of how to do the latter - evidently, hard work, taking on new responsibilities, and learning new skills are not part of that. I do want to try to take a vacation this year, but work, time, money, and life will determine if that actually happens. And I'd like to figure out how to balance helping my parents with living my own life, but I doubt I will.

And maybe I'll adopt another cat or two.

A half-decade of madanthony, in pictures

2009-12-31T15:09:00.003-05:00

So back in 2004, I had a family member take a picture of me at Christmastime while I was up for Christmas break. A few months later, I made a concious decision to start losing weight and taking better care of myself, so since then every year I've had them take another picture. I like to post them around New Year's - losing and keeping weight off has been one of the few things I can say I've been successful at..

madanthony, December 2004:

madanthony, December 2005:

madanthony, December 2006

madanthony, December 2007:

madanthony, December 2008:

madanthony, December 2009:

We can never repay the debt we owe our parents. So how hard should we try?

2009-12-26T14:08:00.002-05:00

I'm up in NJ for Christmas, spending a few days with the parents. Since I work for a college, every year I have the same dilemma - how much time should I spend there? The paradox is that as the reasons for me to want to spend more time in Maryland grow, so do the reasons that I should spend more time with the parents. Several years ago, when I was living in a rented room, spending most of the break with the parents wasn't a big deal. Now, though, I own a house and a cat and have more roots in MD than when I first moved there. But now, my parents are also older and have health problems - my dad has MS, my mom has bad arthritis. They struggle to do basic tasks, and could really use the extra help. And I feel like a horrible person for not staying around to give it to them - they seem so greatful for the smallest thing. I also am the son who went away - my brother lives close by, about 20 minutes away, so he frequently comes over to do things like mow the lawn, shovel snow, ect. I don't, because I live 4 hours way, so I feel bad that I'm not doing as much.

Yesterday, I drove my mom to 7:30AM Christmas morning mass. As I stepped out of my truck, I realized that there was a bunch of black ice where I had parked - snow had melted, started to run to a drain, and froze. So I walked around and held my mom's hand as she got out of the truck. It was a reversal of roles - the child holding the parent's hand. But in the short amount of time I'm up here, I've found myself doing a lot of things that used to be done for me - cooking, driving, mopping the floors, running errands. It's weird and depressing to be doing stuff for your parents.

And I find myself conflicted about how much I should be doing - sometimes I think that since my parents sacrificed so much to raise me, I owe them the same - that I should sell my house and quit my job and move back in with them. Other times, I think that I don't really HAVE to do anything for them, so anything I do is, well, better than nothing. Reality lies somewhere between these two extremes, of course - but the question is, closer to which?

I don't have a girlfriend or wife or kids or any other obligations, so I have more time and fewer excuses not to help them out. Still, I want those things, and spending every waking free hour driving to and from NJ isn't going to help me get them (although I may be beyond help).

I'm thinking that I'll probably end up leaving NJ sometime in the next few days, which will give me basically 5 full days with them, plus 2 partial days spent traveling, and 4 days in MD to myself to relax/do stuff around the house/play with the cat/run errands/hang out with friends. I'm not sure if this is the "right" amount - if I'm a sinner, a saint, or just a typical son.

Back in NJ, and I only got pulled over once...

2009-12-24T16:57:00.003-05:00

So I'm up in NJ for the holidays, spending the next few days with the parents celebrating Christmas. I drove up today - it was a fairly uneventful trip, except for hitting some traffic near Harrisburg - and for getting pulled over on suspicion of drunk driving on I-78 in central PA.

I'm driving, right hand lane, going maybe a few miles above the speed limit, and I see a cop car behind me. Naturally, I slow down to a couple miles per hour below the speed limit. Cop is still there, and another one next to him in the left lane. This goes on for a mile or two, and then cop throws his lights on. I pull over, and he pulls behind me. I'm not sure why I'm getting pulled over - I actually wasn't speeding.

Officer comes to my window and tells me that someone called in a complaint that I was driving erratically, weaving in and out of traffic, and that they thought I was drunk. I'm rather puzzled, since 1) I hadn't drank anything except about a half-gallon of coffee and 2) I wasn't driving erratically - while I will admit to not being the world's most careful driver, I'm generally pretty patient - I don't generally lane-hop or anything, and I can't remember cutting anyone off or anything.

The officer was actually pretty cool - he says he can tell I'm not drunk, and that as long as I'm not wanted and my truck isn't stolen he'll let me go with a warning - and he does. I'm not sure he really could have done anything - I'm not a lawyer, but I suspect it would be pretty hard to convict me of any traffic violations just on someone's say-so.

So I'm puzzled who called me in - if I did cut someone off and not notice, or if someone just was overly paranoid, or decided they didn't like me. I'm certainly glad that I didn't get a ticket, and I understand that the police can't really ignore calls about suspected drunk drivers - if I was drinking and hit a busfull of nuns or something they would look pretty bad. But I'm annoyed that someone would call in about me in the first place - I mean, I'm not that bad a driver.

A tax credit for everyone except me...

2009-12-20T21:38:00.002-05:00

I was reading the auction listings today in the newspaper, which is at the end of the real estate section. So I happened to see an ad for a new homebuilder mentioning the tax credit for existing homebuyers, which made my blood boil.

The fine print is that if you have owned a home for 5 continuous years out of the last 8, you are elgible for a $6500 tax credit if you buy a new home.

I've grumbled about previous handouts - from the mortgage bailout for people whose mortgages happened to be owned by the right agency to cash for clunkers, for people who happened to own the right cars - being handed out pretty randomly, and to groups that never seem to include me.

But this one takes the cake - it includes huge groups of people, but is especially written to exclude people like me - I bought my house in 2006, at the exact peak of the market. Now, it's not a huge deal because I have no plans to move anytime soon - besides the fact that I'd probably have to bring a check to closing if I sold my house, I have no desire to pack up 3 floors of crap or to keep my house showing ready.

But it seems odd to have a tax break that benefits people who bought their house in 2004 or before - when housing prices were still pretty reasonable - but excludes people who bought their houses when prices had gone up, and most likely are having to sacrifice more to pay their mortgages. While few of these people might be looking to sell and buy a new house, there are probably some who have to - because of financial reasons, job transfers, marriage/kids/ect - who are probably taking a loss selling their house, and would benefit more than someone who sold their house 3 years ago at the peak of the market and has been renting since - who would be qualified under the bill.

Of course, bills like this mean that those who don't receive it will be kicking in the extra taxes for those who benefit - to the tune of $10.6 billion, according to this article. Now, I don't harbor any ill will against someone who was in the right place at the right time and bought a house before prices climbed - that's life. But I do question why people who weren't so lucky are paying to give those lucky people even more money.

As a borderline libertarian, I've never really liked programs like welfare, but I grudgingly accept that there is merit to helping, say, to make sure poor kids have food and shelter. But government of late has pretty much just been handing random piles of money to random people and businesses in the hopes that it will spur the economy. In that, they've got a weird reverse kind of Robin Hood thing going on, where they often give people who are in pretty good shape a bunch of money, paid for by people who aren't so well off. And that strikes me as unfair, illogical, and frustrating.

Pay your bills, deadbeat, or why I'd like to kick strategic defaulters in the nuts...

2009-12-20T21:23:00.003-05:00

I was glad to see that I'm not the only person who had a negative reaction to this WSJ article about fun with strategic defaults - which pretty much boils down to profiles of people who stopped paying the mortgages on their underwater houses, and now are renters with tons of money to spend on concert tickets and new furniture.

Megan McCardle has a good article here, with the followup to the followup here.

But what's odd is that she and I seem to be a rare breed of people who think that people should actually, you know, pay their bills. Sure, on relatively conservative forums like FW Finance, people who advocate strategic default usually get replies involving the favorite FW Finance reply, "pay your bills, deadbeat!". But on Megan's blog, and places like consumerist, strategic defaulters are OK, because banks are evil.

I'm not going to debate the merits of banks or individuals. I do think that people - and businesses - who agree to pay a debt should pay it as long as they are able to. It's one thing to not pay because you really can't - that's why we have things like bankruptcy. But mortgages were designed to be a means of financing a large purchase, not as a sort of option on a house, payable only if the house goes up in value.

So right now mortgages are priced with the expectation that people will make every effort to pay them back. With the number of strategic defaulters, who seem to view them more as a sort of loan on buying a stock option, that is about to change. And that will make responsible buyers and borrowers worse off. Because now mortgages will be priced more like buying stocks on margin. Credit scores and down payments will be higher, and fewer people will be able to buy houses at all. And those who do will pay for it dearly - and those who view mortgages the way they are supposed to be viewed - as financing for a large, long-term purchase - will be paying extra for a feature they will never use - to make up for strategic defaulters.

So this is bad for first-time homebuyers. It's also bad for people who own homes, because fewer and more expensive mortgages mean lower housing prices when they go to sell.

Now, you are probably wondering where I fall into this. FWIW, I'm probably marginally upside down on Casa De Mad, my circa -1978 townhouse - not enough that it would make sense to destroy my 800+ credit score, even if I didn't have the ethical objections to strategic default. And I have enough income and savings to pay my mortgage - but I have that because I've generally lived frugally and sacrificed, and it's frustrating to read about the great lifestyles that these people are having - and that I'm going to pay for if I ever refinance or sell.

Sick of being sick...

2009-12-13T16:01:00.002-05:00

So about 2 weeks ago, I woke up feeling like crap. Well, more like crap than normal for a Monday morning. Sore throat, nasal drip, congestion, running/stuffy nose, ect.

I dealt with this the way I normally deal with being sick. I ignored it. I kept doing what I normally do, and figured it would go away in a few days. That might not seem like a great plan, but in truth it's worked for me for the last few years. But after a week and a half of being filled with phlegm, I decided it wasn't going to work this time. So on Thursday I went to the doctor's. He confirmed what I expected - sinus infection. Prescribed 11 days worth of generic Zithromax.

I don't really feel any better yet. The medicine had been tearing up my stomach the last couple days, though. I'm hoping by Christmas I'll stop having to blow my nose every few minutes.

And I'm still pretty much doing what I'd normally do, including going to the gym. There are actually studies showing that exercising while sick doesn't hurt recovery time. I have cut back on the length of my workouts though - more because the gym is on reduced hours thanks to finals than because of my health. I figure the last thing I want to do is stop exercising around Christmastime, when I'm spending a large chunk of the month shoving food in my mouth.

Scenes from work, in some places edition...

2009-12-05T11:13:00.002-05:00

coworker1: We could reduce a lot of viruses and malware problems if we prevented end-users from being able to install software.

coworker2: that would never fly. Faculty will complain that we're interfering with their academic freedom.

mad anthony: You mean "I need that porn for research purposes"?

coworker1: I don't care if they have porn. It's not executable.

mad anthony: In some countries it is.

Scenes from work, I've heard that before edition...

2009-12-03T21:03:00.000-05:00

employee: Hey, thanks for fixing my secretary's computer. She was really happy when you left.

mad anthony: I'm used to women being happy when I leave.

I wonder if manufacturers and stores will ever figure out that guys buy stuff, too...

2009-11-27T23:12:00.002-05:00

My mom is a member of Vocalpoint, a social networking community run by Proctor and Gamble. She gets all kinds of neat stuff from them - from stacks of coupons for nearly- free Kashi cereal to a set of giant purple mugs from Viva paper towels. She knows I'm a dealhunter myself, so she sent me an email that she got looking for new members. I filled it out, and was rejected, presumably because I have a penis. The message, which I took a screenshot of and posted above, says that they look for "certain groups of women", which I am not, and assuming I avoid painful sex-change surgery, will never be.

I'm kind of puzzled by this. I don't see my mom as much of a target audience for this kind of thing - unlike me, she doesn't have a blog with a readership that may be in the double digits, an active facebook page, a twitter account, or a job where she talks to lots of people. She's retired, probably more set her ways than I am, and probably has a lot less contact with people both in cyberspace and in the meatspace than I do. But yet P&G figures that she would be more likely to spread info on their products than I am, just because she's a woman.

Now, I'm not some crazy "gender is a social construct" type, nor do I begrudge large corporations from deciding how they want to market their products. I do, however think that their marketing is misguided. If they want to harness social networking, they should be targeting people based on their use of social networking sites and tools, not on their gender. They also need to stop assuming that women are the only people who make purchasing decisions on household products. I'm a male head of household - granted, it's a household of one, plus a cat. But I own a house, have a decent amount of disposable income, am fairly active online, and make all the purchases and purchasing decisions for my household. And I'm sure I'm not alone. This isn't 1950 anymore - people don't live with their parents until they get married and then live in a household where the husband goes to work and the wife stays home and does the marketing. There are lots of guys who live alone, either by choice or by circumstances. People are getting married later, if at all, there are same-sex couples, and dozens of other alternative living situations. Hell, I know married couples where the guy does most of the shopping. Companies that try to market only to women while selling products that both men and women use - like cereal and paper towels - are cutting their own throat.

This extends past P&G, though. Every time I go grocery shopping, I always wonder why the checkout isles are set up with the assumption that only bored housewives buy groceries. I usually see quite a few men and couples at my Weis or Giant, but the checkout counters are lined with Women's Day, Soap Opera Digest, The National Enquirer, and other fair designed for the sits-down-to-pee set. Why not a few copies of Car and Driver or Sport Compact or Maxim? As Paco Underhill has pointed out, magazines in checkout lines aren't just there for you to buy them - they are also there to give you something to do, to distract you from how long you are waiting in line. But they also do something else - they give insight into just who grocery stores seem to think is shopping there - and it doesn't seem to be a very accurate picture.

Guys - especially single, fairly young guys - are a great demographic to go after. They (at least I suspect) often have a fair amount of money, they aren't set in their ways, they often make impulsive decisions, they are less willing to price-shop, especially for grocery type items, they are more willing to buy pricey convenience items, and heck, they eat more than most women. But both grocery stores and consumer-product manufacturers seem to go out of their way to discourage them.

Car talk...

2009-11-19T21:22:00.002-05:00

I have a problem with my truck. It works perfectly fine.

See, I'm a bit of a car nut. When I was a little kid, I played with matchbox cars all the time, could pretty much identify any car on the road, read those free used-car listing magazines they have at the grocery store, and dreamed of what kind of car I would own when I got a license and money.

Not much has changed. As soon as I've bought a new vehicle, I'm already thinking about what the next one will be. But I'm also frugal, and so I have been pretty practical about buying cars. It's also helped that I've been pretty broke - I bought my truck right after I bought my house, so I didn't have much to spend, and bought pretty much the cheapest one that met my needs.

I've had the truck for a little over three years. Aside from some random transmission clunks, it's been solid, and it has less than 50k on it. It's paid off. But as usual, I'm thinking about what the next thing I buy will be.. and when.

The problem is, for the first time in my life, I actually have enough money that I could buy something pretty nice, and pay cash for it.

The vehicle that's caught my eye of late is the Lincoln Navigator. I can get a clean used one with less than 30k on the clock for a little over $30k, and my trade is worth around $12k. I'd love to have leather seats, some more space in the back for hamfests and auctions, climate control, and the ability to refer to "the Navi".

Of course, financially it's a horrible idea. I'm at the sweet spot for my truck - it's taken the biggest of the depreciation hit, but still has a lot of life left in it, and is paid off. The best thing would be to keep it for another 3 years or so, by which time it will be 6 years old and have 90k or so miles on it.

So I'm torn between the car nut and the cheapskate. The deal I've made with myself is that I won't do anything until at least the summer. The goal is to save as much money as I can until then and then make a decision. I'm not sure I could bring myself to drop 5 figures on something I don't need - but if I was going to, it would be on this.

The power of negative thinking...

2009-11-18T21:48:00.003-05:00

We had a presentation at our "all hands" meeting at work today about how to deal with holiday stress, given by a psychologist. It did include a lot of good concrete advice for dealing with stuff - take time for yourself, exercise, eat right, don't overdo the food or booze, ect. (he also suggested limiting caffeine, which would be the most stressful thing I could imagine doing).

But while he's a nice guy and means well, I think he was a little too positive. I think negative thinking is severely underrated. I think things like guilt, fear, and a desire to achieve perfection do make us stressed - but they are also great motivators. They make us do things that we can't do if we take a warm, fuzzy, "things will be fine" attitude. For example, at one point he said that "we often find ourselves looking at the amount of things that we have to do and say that we'll never get it done. But when we look back on other times we've said that, we've been able to get everything done." Maybe. But chances are the reason that we got everything done is because we looked at the amount of stuff we had to do, said "I'm never going to get done", and then did concrete things to make sure it did - starting early, working late, planning schedules, delegating, finding shortcuts, whatever. If you had just looked at it and said "it will get done somehow", it probably wouldn't have, because you wouldn't have had the incentive to do stuff to make sure it gets done.

I think the same is true of a lot of things. There are plenty of achievements I've had, from doing well in school to losing weight to saving money, where fear was my primary motivator - knowing that if I failed that class I'd lose my scholarship, or that if I didn't keep on my diet and go to the gym I'd probably be dead of a heart attack by age 45, or if I didn't keep a tight reign on my spending I'd be homeless, living under a bridge and eating out of a dumpster.

The same is true of guilt. The talk about guilt and family pressure was especially relevant to me, because I'm torn at Christmas - when we get a ton of time off where I work - between spending it all with my parents in NJ, who have a bunch of health problems and could use all the help they can get - and spending it in Maryland, where my house, my cat, my friends, and pretty much everything I own are. If I don't spend all of it with the parents, I'll probably feel guilty - and I should. Given the sacrifices my parents have made throughout their life for me, I'm pretty much a piece of shit if I can't give them a couple extra days. I should feel bad about it. Guilt is generally a way of letting us know that we're doing something that we shouldn't. We shouldn't ignore it and tell ourselves that it's something we should overcome with positive thinking about how great we are - we should look at why we feel guilty and try not to do it.

Pop Psychology loves to try to make life all hearts and rainbows, to try to take negatives like stress and sadness and guilt and fear out of life. But those things are a part of life for a reason - they are survival tools that helped us survive since our ancestors lived in caves, that helped us form coherent societies. They are real emotions that should be embraced, not worked around or ignored.

madanthony's continued adventures in swing dancing...

2009-11-11T23:55:00.002-05:00

So last week I started swing dancing lessons, and they weren't quite what I hoped for. There was the fact that there were 3 guys and one girl (who was with a guy). And there was the fact that I, well, sucked at it.

But I paid in advance, so I figured I'd stick with it. Well, that and I didn't want to be a quitter. So, feeling pretty ridiculous, I actually tried to practice. I watched triple-step swing tutorial videos on youtube, and tried to follow along on the hardwood floor in my dining room, feeling like an elephant trying to tap-dance. I'm glad I bought a townhouse instead of a condo, because if I had downstairs neighbors they would have been throwing things at the ceiling. But I felt frustrated - I got the concept, I understood the counts and where one's feet were supposed to be, but I didn't feel like mine were really cooperating.

But I went anyway, dreading it. But it actually went better. First of all, there were a few new people - one more guy and two new women, bringing the ratio of women to men to 3:4 - not ideal, and still unusual, but better than 1:3. And my practicing actually wasn't in vain - I actually got better, good enough that I could keep up, and good enough that the instructor commented a few times that I must have practiced and was 100% better, which made me feel proud and embarrassed at the same time.

I actually drove home last night feeling pretty good, singing along with the random swing songs I'd burned onto CD. I'm hoping to actually go to one of the dances that a few places have around here in the next few weeks - hopefully I can convince some people to go with me, but if not I need to suck it up and go by myself - the worst that can happen is it completely sucks and I leave after a while, and I'm out a few bucks and an hour or two.

Now, I'm still not great, but I don't feel like a total failure, so that's a plus. And I guess the moral, at the risk of sounding like an after-school special, is that practice and effort does pay some dividends.

So you think I can dance? Not so much...

2009-11-04T20:13:00.000-05:00

A few weeks ago, I got into my mind the brilliant idea that I would take up swing dancing. Back 10 years ago when swing had it's brief revival, I got into the music, and I would still find myself occasionally firing up some Royal Crown Revue on iTunes. Plus, I figured it would be a give me something to do, could be a good way to meet women, and that if I wanted to do it, I needed to do it soon, before I started grad school. There is a group that gives lessons in various rented locations not too far from where I work, so I signed up. The first class was yesterday.

Well, the meeting women thing didn't exactly work out - I seem to have the ability to time things as badly as possible. The class ended up being 3 guys (including myself) and one girl, who was there with one of the other guys. The instructor remarked that it was unusual to have the guys outnumber the girls, and that the last class he taught had 3 more girls than guys. Just my luck.

The other little problem with this brilliant plan? I suck at dancing. I just can't seem to get it - after a few steps I find myself hopelessly lost. All the things you are supposed to do - keep your weight on one foot, not move your right foot, keep your limbs loose, take small steps - none of them come naturally to me. The instructor was pretty patient, and he did give out printed instructions, so I'm going to try to do some practicing this week, and maybe find some tutorials on the web. Hopefully I can at least get to a level of not sucking too much, but it's pretty obvious I'm never going to be great at this, or even decent. I'm going to stick out the lessons - I've paid in advance - and I will probably still try to get to one of the dances that one of the groups around here runs, especially if I can convince someone to go with me.

But I in fact, do not have rhythm.

So this is what a weekend is like..

2009-11-01T21:39:00.002-05:00

I've been looking forward to this weekend for the last couple weeks. Not because I had any big plans, but rather because I didn't.

See, the last few weekends I haven't had much time to spend at Casa De Mad. Last weekend, I worked on Saturday and had a Hamfest on Sunday. The weekend before, I drove up to NJ to visit the parents. The weekend before that, dinner with some coworkers and hanging out with a friend. Weekend before that, another Hamfest.

So my house has started to resemble something out of Hoarders. Well, not quite - I don't have broken waffle irons piled up in the front yard yet. But I haven't exactly had time to put stuff away or the like. So I resolved this weekend that I would try to keep the errands to a minimum, skip the yard sales, and try to spend some time around the house. After all, something like half my paychecks go to paying the mortgage... I might as well spend some time here.

As is typical with any to-do list, I didn't get quite as much done as I wanted. My house is still pretty messy. But I got it started, and have a better idea of what I want to get done next week. I have descriptions ready for a bunch of stuff that can go on eBay in the next few days, which will mean slightly less crap around the house and slightly more money in madanthony's bank account. I also caught up on sleep, got in a couple good workouts at the gym, petted the cat, got a haircut, and made a giant bowl of Pasta Fagoli, a bowl of which I just finished chased with a glass of two-buck chuck, probably the first time I've had a glass of wine in about 6 months. Usually I avoid it, because it makes me sleepy, but I figured it was worth it to treat myself for once.

Part of the reason I want to spend some time enjoying myself, and some not-so-enjoyable time getting my house into something resembling an order, is because I expect that in about 10 weeks, my free time will go down to close to zero, because I'll be starting grad school again - I'm going back part-time for a degree in Educational Technology. So I want to have everything in order by then. Which is unlikely, since I'm 1)messy and 2)in the crap-resale business, which means I tend to have lots of crap around. But I'll do my best, and I feel like I've at least got a start.

Why I want to take a break from online dating...

2009-10-24T13:45:00.002-04:00

I've been trying to meet women online for nearly 3 years in some form. In that time, I've gotten a grand total of 3 dates, none of which resulted in a second date. So I'm thinking it's time to give up.

Well, not give up on the idea of dating altogether, and not ruling out the possibility of going back to online dating at some point. After all, I wouldn't want to hang myself with a celibate rope.

But more and more I'm finding online dating to be frustrating, more cost and less benefit. Looking at profiles of women who I would love to date but have no interest in me, or the occasional woman who is interested in me but I'm not interested in, just depresses me. If I added up all the time I've spent browsing online profiles, it would add up to a whole bunch of time I could have spent doing something more enjoyable.

I'm not sure why I've failed at online dating when I know other people who have succeeded. Well, I have some ideas. First of all, I don't have a great hook - I'm not unusually attractive, or smart, or a great writer, or athletic, or have some cool unique hobby. I think I'm a nice guy, but everyone online is a nice guy - nobody is going to make a profile that says "I'm a douchebag, date me!". So I don't really come off as someone women are dying to meet. Either that, or I'm just so antisocial/hideous that there is no hope for me. But I'm hoping that it's just that I come off better as a real person than an online profile, and that it's just that I haven't been around enough women in the meatspace to meet one.

Unfortunately, I made the mistake of signing up for one of eHarmony's discount 3-month subscriptions, so I can't cancel for another month or two. That actually works out well in a way, because that is around the time I'll be starting on grad school for my second master's degree. Which I'm also hoping will be a good way to meet people in the real world.

As I mention in the post below, I'm also planing on doing a few other things that I hope will help me discover more who I am, and get more comfortable around people. I hope it's sucessful because online dating is generally the meeting place of last resort, and it hasn't worked for me - so if I don't either find a way of making myself more datable or finding some hidden cache of women who want to date me, I can pretty much expect to die alone.