Things I’m Doing to Save Money

Hello, my name is cheapskate.  Sure, I still have as much money as I had before this supposed “recession,” but since it is now de rigeur to be cheap, I’m riding the badwagon to saved money.

1) Making my own lunch.  In my neighbourhood, you cannot go to lunch without spending $10.  In the summer I walk home, but in the winter, laziness usually wins.  Making lunch means more warm time and better food.

2) Non-instant oatmeal. I’m assembling myself.  Bag of dried grains – $8, dried apples bought in bulk – $3, cinnamon – $0 (due to being used in such low quantities), honey – Free at work.  Assemble, put in microwave, voila!  For 28 cents (11/40) it’s cheaper than quaker stuff (which is in the 30-50 cent range), and better for you.

3) Non-canned beans.  As a vegetarian, I eat a lot of beans, so I’m buying them in bulk, soaking them, then cooking them.

4) Making extra.  When I make meals now, I make it a bit bigger, then freeze some.  Saves running out to buy food later.

5) Shopping at Kensington Market.  It’s a hike, but the food is fresh and I can get a week’s worth of groceries for under $30.  It also forces me to focus on fresh food, rather than canned or dried stuff.

Idiom Death

It occurred to me today that there may be some idioms that will naturally die out because they can’t make the transition from verbal speech to text.

Example:

Speaker 1: Let’s call it a premium destination rather than a microsite

Speaker 2: Potato, potato.

Did that make any sense?  No!  But what if I had written:

Speaker 1: Let’s call it a premium destination rather than a microsite

Speaker 2: Po-TAY-toe, po-TAW-toe.

See?  It makes makes sense now.  I was in an instant chat with someone where I went to say “Potato, potato” until I realized how silly it would read.  Another one that I use in speech but can’t in chat is “The us”, short for “the usual”.

I wonder if they’ll survive.  I predict they won’t without some kind of textual intervention.

Productivity Project

Back on my productivity project, I’ve got another tip.  The worst possible place for a task is in your head.  Get it out of your head fast and scheduled to be done so that when the next thing comes along at any moment, your short-term memory isn’t already full.

I like sticky notes which I consolidate periodically. They either go into my calendar, or onto another sticky “to do” list, or into my client contact record, or whatever.  Just out and away.

A cluttered mind is slow, easily stressed and easily confused.

Hobbies to Rediscover

Here are the hobbies that have fallen by the wayside since I’ve been in school.  (Note: I am in fact writing this as a way to procrastinate)

1. Fiction.  I have 3 novels sitting on my “to read” shelf right now.  I did read one novel over the Christmas break but it was kind of fluffy. I miss good “makes you think” literature.  But I have too much reading to do for school, and too much thinking too.
2. Music.  I picked up an old keyboard from Marc’s cousin.  I got sheet music and during the last school break I started practicing. I really want to actually play an instrument. Rockband doesn’t count.
3. French.  I’m determined to speak it fluently.  Or at least practice enough such that if it ever becomes imperative that I’m fluent, it won’t be such an uphill climb.
4. Coding. …Or really playing around with anything that can automate or build something else.  You wouldn’t think so, but programming can be very creative.
5. Photography.  I have a nice camera.  I have a tripod.  I just need to have time to take it places and take good shots.  

When I’m done this school thing there are going to be times when I get really bored again.  I’m going to refer to this post as a “note to self” on what to do in all my free time.

Auf Wiedersehen Fjordian

As a thank you for my time at Fjord, I’ve put together a collection of my special “moves” that have been the secret to my success.

A shout out to ze frank for the inspiration.

Women, Men, Power, Priviledge

Cynthia Nixon, who’s character “Miranda” is an
archetype of female empowerment

So I was thinking recently about what it means to be a strong woman, or a woman with power.  In my own experience, I’ve seen that the styles of the male project managers I work with are very direct.  When they ask for something, they expect it to be done, and don’t fuss about trying to convince people to do it. I’ve tried this and it doesn’t work.  From me, people want to be “asked.” They want me to subordinate myself to them in order for them to feel ok doing what I asked.

The (still prevalent) biases between races, genders, etc are well documented.  We know that they continue and will for a while, because in the grand scheme of things, equality is a very recent idea. Women also (on average) appear to be better communicators and social facilitators.

This got me thinking backward.  I wonder if the long standing power inequalities of men and women have groomed modern women to compensate for their lack of overt power by making us better at complex manipulation and social navigation.  We can’t just come out and ask for what we want and expect to get it, so women have been selected for who can still get what they need by more…creative means.

This lead me to think that all those guys (my guy included) who complain that women aren’t clear, that we are always trying to make things more complicated, or worse, that we’re evil manipulators, well, maybe you have your own ancestors to blame.

(p.s. my use of maybe in that last sentence was strategic.  Apparently, people are more likely to not challenge what a woman says if she plays down it’s forcefulness with a “maybe” or a “I’m not sure, but”)

Thought of the Day

When faced with any problem, the most important thing you have to do is ask the right question(s).  How you frame a problem will dictate it’s solution.

So make the effort to ask good questions people.  Challenge your perceptions and try thinking about it like it were a different problem all together, maybe a strategy that works in another context could be applied to this context.

I’m kinda frustrated with the destructive patterns that get formed when things don’t change and problems are always tackled the same way.  Downward spiral, here we go.

This Guy is Smart (and also a good talker)

This guy talks about what I guess I knew intuitively when I was younger.  You can’t have a great job and a great career (and marry the person of your dreams) just anywhere.  You have to go to the right place where the right opportunities are available.

I left Hamilton and went to Toronto and didn’t look back. I knew that I was more likely to meet people I would like and have career opportunities I would excel in in a big city.  Steel town was never going to do it for me.

I think of my friends who are still in Hamilton and I know, to some extent, their lives and careers are shaped by being there.

Immigration has been driven by this forever, but for some reason moving and “leaving home” still has a stigma for many.  Sometimes you get called opportunistic or ungrateful.  I think that every person is different and has to go where they will get to be the person they want to be.

Lesson!

Search for something in more than one search engine.  The results of searching with Yahoo or Windows Live are WAAAAY different. And some waaaay older stuff that you didn’t realize was still out there can come up.  Yikes.

Inside the brain of a mathophile

This video does the best job I’ve ever seen of capturing the feeling most “math people” have when they discover the math all around them and are in awe of it.