Finances, Firearms and Frogs-In-Throats

The word of the week is remonstrate.

June 5 – Cowabunga, Animal!

The Niagara Falls ComiCon was this past weekend, and it looks like it keeps getting better every year. There's nothing like it here in Victoria, special after a few local cons close down for various reasons, which was disappointing.

One of the highlights of any convention for me at least, is the cosplay: getting to dress up like your favorite characters and wander around making other people's day is always a delight.

For that reason, I'm a member of more than a few cosplay / replica prop / costume groups on FBook, which keeps my newsfeed busy with all sorts of cosplay goodness. This weekend, five of my favorite characters of all time got together in one photo this past weekend from one of those feeds:

Creator Wayne van Alstine is on the right with Animal!!! So cool!

One of these days I'll be able to get back to my own cosplay creations, which would be greatly helped by having a semi-dedicated space( 2nd bedroom / office )to work on them in, rather than the table in the living room...

June 6 – Googly

I'm a little freaked out by Google Timeline, but not as much as I thought I'd be.

As a hyper-aware techie-g33k, I know exactly how much information I'm giving Google, and what they're doing with it. The thing about Google is that the more information you let them use, the more useful their products are... and so it goes.

Timeline Maps is one of those things that makes you wonder how much is too much.

Just the other day, I was looking through my Timeline, seeing where I've been, and what I've been up to, all courtesy of my phone, which has been tracking me. It's interesting to pop up a day from a few months ago, and see how little actual distance I've moved from home... much like people of olden times centuries ago, who rarely had occasion to travel more than a few miles from their home their entire lives.

Thing is, Timeline isn't all that easy to use, since it was released in 2015.

I can click on a particular day on my timeline, and see what I was up to... sort of. There's no location history recorded any earlier than January of 2016, so it's useless past that date to see where I was and what I was up to at the time. My photos obviously go back further than that, but they're not tied to Google Maps, and this is an oversight I believe. As photos have geo-locational coordinates embedded as of about five years ago, if they were taken by a smart phone as those devices have GPS locational data enabled.

I think what I'm getting at is that I'd love to be able to look back 10 or 20 years from now and see where I was on a certain date, if only to jog some memories. My girlfriend chides me gently whenever I take a photo 'just to remember things' as she's of the opinion that I should just experience a moment and trust to my gray matter to dredge it up when needed.

But isn't that what tech is for, to save us drudgery?

June 7 – Printer Spies!

What the hell? Did you know that your printer is spying on you?

I had no idea that modern colour printers( laser only, not inkjet )utilize special yellow stenography dots coded into every printout that allow forensic tracing of their output to the exact date and time - whoa!

Apparently, this is part of a clandestine agreement between world governments and printer manufacturers, as noted by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and it was used recently to out an NSA leaker in the USA quite effectively.

I'm rather horrified that this secret tracking technology is present in printers that people purchase and use without any knowledge of what the device contains. I think it's reprehensible that this sort of technology is present in any consumer device and the scale of its widespread use is, quite frankly, shocking.

Tiny yellow dots form a pattern to embed data in ALL colour laser printouts!

Considering that this discovery was made just after I completed the entry above about tracking technologies via Google, this is more than a little ironic. With Google, I decide how much privacy to give up, whereas with color laser printouts, there's no decision: the date/timestamp data is encoded with every printout.

Scary stuff folks, and it makes you wonder what else has been embedded in the devices that we use every day without our knowledge...

June 8 – Saving Money

I'm pretty frugal these days; I've had to become so, over the years.

It's interesting to look back at what I've spent, how I've spent it and most importantly: why I've spent the way I have.

Some years, I was making okay money and my monthly expenses were somewhat manageable, so I built up a library of books or DVD's of things I liked. Sometimes I would purchase nostalgic items on eBay, or tech items at the occasional Future Shop sale... and I was a regular there for at least a decade, though in the last few years here in BC I didn't bother as I sharply curtailed my occasional tech-spending habits.

It's all about the budget: how much you make, and how much you spend.

Housing, Transport and Food are the big three expenses

For the last five years, I've known exactly how much money is coming in every month and where it's going - to the dollar. I use my Google Calendar so that I know what bills are due and when, what intermittent expenditures are coming up( rental insurance? Dental bill? )so that I can budget accordingly. I calculate each paycheque's deductions so that I'm not caught short of cash, meaning that I don't use debit when that bank account cash is needed for bills - it's extremely rare that I use a credit card to pay a bill, as that just compounds budget issues.

Overall, I've got a pretty good handle on what I'm making versus what I'm spending. I know that in order to get ahead financially, I need to make more money this year, which is why I'm hoping my business will really take off in the fall.

If you're interested in finding out a bit about your own financial blind spots, the comments section here has a ton of good advice, much of which boils down to 'Keep Track Of Your Spending' and regularly review it, at least once a month.

It's worked well for me, and I'm glad that I've had to become as frugal as I have, so that I'm prepared for when my income rises: that money won't go to waste.

June 9 – Making Money

Am I the jealous type?

I don't mean romantically, but rather financially, and it's a good question. Looking at were am right now( in my mid-40's ) I feel that I should be making at least twice what I am, based on my skills and experience. Yet I'm treading water financially, with no major assets( house, car, etc )to my name that I can leverage to move myself ahead in life... which is understandably a frustrating situation to be in.

This can cause financial resentment, something that I've experienced and had to deal with over the years so as not to affect my relations with my friends.

It's not an easy thing.

Like most people, it's easy to do a comparative with other people's lives and economic standings( perceived, not actual )to gauge one's own spot on the ever-changing scale of success. I realize that for every friend who is married, with the typical house / car / two kids / regular vacation photos, there's often a story that's not being told of debt, sacrifice and hard choices. Since the year 2000, Canadians have added massive amounts to their household debt, so much so that we now leave the world in the ratio of income versus debt:

Wow... a 56 percent increase in 14 years!

Maybe what I should have done years ago is invest in Tesla, whose stock just keeps rising. Using a simple financial calculator, I worked out how much a $10,000 investment in Tesla would be worth as of today, had I invested when their stock went public in 2010:

I'd love to be $100K richer, 7 years from my investment date!

However, seeing as hindsight is 20/20, it's all just a shell game: I'd have had to have been both precedents and extraordinarily frugal to come up with the money seven years ago and had huge cojones to invest it all in a US technology company without any prior investment knowledge.

It's easy for me now to recognize that these 'What If?' Fantasies are merely fuel for my resentment, and to focus on making a better future for myself instead of just playing mind games... which will get me nowhere useful whatsoever.

June 10 – Guns?

Yeah...

As the date gets closer to when I have to travel to the US to pick up my GlowForge, the issue of guns keeps popping up in my brain, especially given the level of... discontent that's currently pervasive in the States this year.

One thing I've always wondered was: how did guns the cons so prolific in the USA?

I know that when crime was on the rise in the 1970s, guns were seen as a quick solution: Shoot The Bad Guy, ala Dirty Harry, which society at the time seem to find perfectly acceptable. Justice at the end of the barrel, in other words.

Digging deeper, I found this video from the New Yorker, which was illuminating in how it exposes the way that the gun industry reinvented itself in order to survive... and in doing so, helped keep Americans killing Americans with guns:




To put things in more about perspective, an article from The Economist neatly breaks down the numbers, which show that things have actually been getting better slowly since 1993, the peak time for gun deaths USA. One of the more interesting bits of data in the article is that the gun industry always profits from uncertain political times, such as when Barrack Obama took the presidency a few years ago: gun sales surged at the hint of any sort of national gun regulation.

Mass shootings are of course part of this conversation, and the stats are sobering:

I don't know. I'll be in the USA for week this August, vacationing with my girlfriend and her family, and picking up my GlowForge on the way home. I do tend to worry needlessly, but I also like to be prepared, so I'll be keeping an eye on the political situation for the next few months to satisfy my worry-needs.

It certainly can't hurt.

June 11 – Hoarsing Around?

I've noticed my voice has changed slightly of late.

Since I'm no longer talking all day long on the phone, to my ears my voice has weakened: it's scratchier and less vibrant, with a little hoarseness to it some days. I can go hours without speaking to anyone at my day job, given my current tasks of a) sorting mail b) opening mail and c) sending out mail  so it's no surprise that my vocal chords are little rusty compared to when they were going all day long - and to be honest I'm glad to give them a rest, as they were getting a little worn the last year.

Neigh, say it isn't so...!

It's a somewhat strange thing to notice, that your voice is change, because your voice never sounds the same when you're speaking as it does when you listen to a recording, due to the effect of bone conduction when you talk.

Given that I'm looking to do some voice work in the future, this is a bit of a concern to me, but I do have a solution:

I'll just talk to myself more often at work!

It's been a pretty good week overall: though admittedly my day job isn't requiring much mental effort, I've come to appreciate it as being like a little vacation every day, leaving me more mental energy for my creative efforts. I've also been walking better, for longer periods of time: having discovered that my work chair wasn't properly supporting my weight, I brought in a cushion from home and that's made all the difference along with getting up every 20 minutes to move around. In my perspective, I'm getting more back towards normal by the week!

Wages, WIP and Wonder Woman

The word of the week is enthused.

May 29 – Portland

The world makes me weep sometimes, and that's not easy.

Today in Portland, I cried to see what racist violence is capable of. Three strangers stood up against a man threatening two teenage girls, and two of the men died for their troubles while a third came within a millimeter of the blade killing him too:

Ricky John Best, 53, Taliesin Myrddin Namkai-Meche, 23 and survivor 21-year-old Micah David-Cole Fletcher

What's the takeaway from this? Should people just step back and call the cops?

What if there was no time, and the attacker drew his knife to use on the girls? His statements( rants, really )to the police show his mental fixation and prejudices starkly, which I won't repeat here - he's a monster.

In my opinion, this can be laid at the feet of Trump with his Islamophobia, his racist views and his anti-immigrant policies. It's a dark time to be a minority in the USA, as this unprovoked attack shows, especially as anyone with a knife who knows how to use it is as deadly with a man with a gun.

May 30 – Action!

In a time when we need more heroes, I give you: Action Figures come to life!

Stay outta my litterbox!

Simple, yet effective: these are the photos of Japanese Photographer HotKenobi, using some of the most recent HotToys superhero figures on the market whose realistic details add so much to the images. Here's another great one:

Stark as Hamlet?

This one's my favourite:

Iron Lee - wachaaaa!!!!!

May 31 – Early Routine?

Oh, that truck guy with a wonky muffler...

Thrice this week, he's woken me before 6am... which isn't so bad, since between him and the lady upstairs, I've modified to my normal waking time for the summer.

Still, why does he have to park his tailpipe twenty feet from my window so often lately?

Earplugs, closed window and heavy drapes: nope. Still VROOM!

In any case, I'm still falling asleep around 11pm regularly now, which is a good thing, and waking up around 4am for micturations, which is okay too, I guess.

I'm using the time to write, not just waking up and checking FBook, which can suck you in and waste an hour so fast it'll make your fingers cramp. As I don't have to leave for work until 8am, that's two solid hours of quiet time a day I can get in( and have been! )for my writing, minus 15-30 minutes for breakfast and ablutions, tops.

Looking at the daily routines of famous creatives gives me a better sense of where my own habits are, and that they're fairly decent despite a day job cutting into my time for 9 hours, 4-5 days a week. The chart below( check the website for the interactive version! )shows that most folks there with day jobs didn't work that long, but that's a reflection of the modern day - I'm heartened to see that Kurt Vonnegut was a 10pm-6am sleeper, as he's an idol of mine as a writer.

Regular sleep, regular work, regular writing, regular exercise, regular eating... all these things and more, in moderation, gives the mind a steady platform to base its functions, and its creative play, upon.

Stability, not stress, in other words: I'm getting there, by degrees!

June 1 – Minimum Wage

This week, Ontario announced that it will be raising its minimum wage to $15/hr, which I think is fantastic.

I'm lucky enough to have been working a good full-time job now for 3 years, and while it's not enough to get me ahead, it's a far cry from a few years ago. As most of you know, I made a career change for health reasons in 2012, and spent the next few years on minimum wage, because nobody would hire me, despite my skills, experience and excellent customer skills, among other things. I wanted to work for my bit of bread, and not take handouts... though I probably should have.

What about people who aren't earning a living wage, just a minimum wage?

I say to those of you thinking it's a bad thing: put the shoe on the other foot. There are tens of thousands, likely hundreds of thousands, of Canadians who just want to get paid what they're worth. If employers must invest in their employees, they'll stop treating them like they're disposable, despite their resistance to unions. It's frightening how many people work awful jobs to hang on to a paycheck, scared that if they don't bow to the boss, they'll be replaced by someone else eager to work - I have seen it again and again in my working life.

Have a look at the positives, not the negatives: change is inevitable, and if businesses are crying foul, it's not because of their concern for others, just the padding of their bottom line.

June 2 – Paris Pratfalls

Trumpet's done it again... he's backed out of the Paris accord.

I'll spare you from linking to the dozens of articles stating that this is a stupid idea( and even a few too many praised it! )by just leaving you with this one from The Washington Post, which simply fact-checks Trumpet's speech... and as you all know( I hope )he got far more wrong than right.

Insanity, and transparently obvious to serve his own greedy ends:

It's crazy to think that, among MANY other failings, the current President Of The United States doesn't believe in climate change, despite the evidence. Madness, and bad news for the planet.

Still, there's hope, as Trumpet can't quickly or easily withdraw from the Paris Accord:

It's still up in the air as to what OTHER damage he'll do in the meantime... and that's presuming that he doesn't get re-elected. *shudder*

June 3 – Steady On!

Things are getting better this summer for me.

The eating, regular walking and conscious efforts to reduce stress are working, though my right leg is still twinging, possibly due to my chair at work. I'm trying to see that I get up and move every 20 min. as well as being conscious of how I sit, as it also affects my weakened core and abdominal muscles adversely.

I spent most of today editing, bright eyed and bushy tailed from when I woke up in the morning until I stopped in mid-afternoon, with a few brief breaks in between. The Flow was happening today, and I'm quite pleased with how my writing is going, and the last month especially.

Part of what I've done is consciously limit my time being spent on other activities. This comes down to simple focus, and I've even changed my( still-wonky-but-whatever )phone's wallpaper to reflect that:

I've also taken steps to limit my time spent on social media, such as FBook, going so far as to block it from my phone from 6pm-10pm weeknights and from 8am-4pm on the weekends. In doing so, I discovered that I tried to check it far too often( 3-4 times an hour! )but otherwise I'm pretty good about reducing my other distractions, as I'm not active on other types of social media like Twitter, Snapchat, Whatsapp, Instagram and the like. I rarely even play games on my phone, given its tendency to overheat and drain the battery precipitously.

For the next long, I'm determined to get into a Flow state daily while I'm editing, which I think is achievable by continuing to focus just on my health, work and writing...

June 4 – Wonderful!

After spending more time than I should in the morning posting links about climate change to refute a few wrong-headed forum posts, it was time for...

My sister, my girlfriend and I all went to see the noon 3D showing downtown( in the reclining seats - love those! )and I was quite happy to go in with NO spoilers taking up space in my head. All that I'd heard is how GOOD the movie was from many sources, so I went in with high expectations.

I wasn't disappointed: Gal Gadot is Wonder Woman - she inhabits the role!

To wit: the movie wasn't perfect, but it was a solid 2h21m of well-paced plot, great characters and BOY was there action. The much-touted "No Man's Land" centerpiece of the film was, um... wonderful to behold. The hidden island of the Amazons, Themyscria, was a lush CGI paradise and the amazons themselves gave us the full experience of what immortal female warriors who continuously train for battle are capable of... wow!

Not once did my brain lurch and think "Hey, that's the female take on things!" as some critics have pundited. The story was immersive, through and through, and took no shortcuts or cheap cop-outs to call out male / female hypocrisies: it charged at them with a full-throated battle-cry and dared them to stand their ground!

*deep breath*

So, in other words: I enjoyed it immensely, and can't wait for the next WW film! Go see it!

Swimming's back to once a week, given that my right leg is still being obstinate and I don't want to push things into a relapse. Staying healthy and flexible while sitting down to write or work for up to 12 hours a day isn't easy and by anyone's measure, but I'm doing my best to stay aware while I stay focused. Given that I've missed my self-imposed novel editing deadline is May 31st, I'm determined to use as much of the month of June as possible to write this rising wave of writing Flow to its conclusion: finishing an exemplary final edit to complete my fourth draft.