Football Epilogue

Click to check out my little eBay store. In addition to keeping up this silly blog I run a small eBay store . It's more of an entrepreneurial hobby selling some small hardware pieces and seeing what I can make out of it. So far it has been going well. Requiring a minimal amount of time to make a little extra money. There is the hoop dream of it growing beyond where I can solo manage it and either doing some hiring or finding a buyer. I met all of my last year's sales goals and now it's time to re-evaluate and figure out how to grow some more. Part of the business building was  registering and keeping its domain name: tipsnbits.com . I did the initial registering through Wordpress.com and figured I could have a blog and eventually the store would grow enough to where I could move away from the eBay platform and run it on my own. I grabbed the domain as soon as the name occurred to me as it captures what I want to sell. Domain registration is cheap and...

It's been a heavy, sad day. As most know by now basketball great Kobe Bryant, his daughter and seven other people were killed in a helicopter crash. On the surface it's the all to familiar tragedy of someone well known leaving this world too soon. In reading the reports I felt a sense of great similarity with Mr. Bryant. The news struck me as how young he was, particularly looking at how much life must have been ahead of him. Then came the realization that He and I are the same age (41 at the time of this writing). At 41 I often feel like an old man, but for some reason over the last day I'm getting the sense that 41, or even 49 is far from the end. Kobe's career was in full stride when I moved to California for graduate school in 2001. The early 2000's were a fun time for NBA basketball in California. The two premier teams were the Sacramento Kings and the LA Lakers. Being a new "NorCal" resident and a traditional Minnesota sports fan,...

A little Longview for you

Drawing of the dispenser courtesy of thingiverse.com and BrianEnigma This Christmas "Santa" got the kids and I a very beginner level 3D printer . I figured it would be fun to play with and maybe even somewhat useful. So far it's been a couple of keychain phone stands and some attempts at little plastic things I've been selling on eBay , trying to be my own supplier. It's been a fun little hobby so far, but what to print? Enter the Cat. Jack has been hanging out with me for the last 18.5 years. My ex-wife and I got him shortly after we moved to California so I could do the grad school thing in the fall of 2001. Most of the time he's had a dog around to keep company and make out with under the coffee table. Some seriously intense inter-species grooming has gone on under my coffee table over the years. These last few years though it's been just him and I on the days I don't have the kids. I like to try to satiate potential his potential bored...

I was feeling all happy about my lunch the other day. It was the Frontera brand Barbacoa Taco bowl  I wrote yet another dorky post about earlier. Still, there are a couple people at work who "tsk, tsk" everytime someone walks by with something that wasn't fresh pulled from a garden that day or allowed to live free range on one of the world's ten nicest meadows. I tolerate the judging because, as Clark Gable  said: Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn. Still, I aim towards eating decently and I'm opening to learning an occasional thing or two. Not things such as, "I should be using Agave "nectar" as a sugar substitute" (that literally happened) or "those M&M's are bad for you" (really? I had no idea, thank you and your wealth of information. I'm sure that'll stop me in the future from getting two-and-a-half to eight peanut M&Ms out of the quarter turn-style). Digressing. I do occasionally pick up somethin...

Image by Free-Photos from Pixabay This weekend I bought flights for the kids and I to visit my nephew (and sister and bro-in-law, I guess) in Seattle. I had enough miles to cover ALL THREE TICKETS. Here's to the price my butt played in flying those skymiles and the $33 in taxes! Hip, Hip Hooray!

Image by Steve Buissinne from Pixabay It's the time year to start collecting the W2's, the 1099's and the donation receipts. Unfortunately, we can't all file the 1040EZ. The forms quickly get complicated and can create quite the pile of paper and calculations. The feds (i.e. paid folks trying to do their jobs as best they can) could, and want to make the system easier. Unfortunately, the politicians like to keep things confusing as they likely profit from it. Until this is fixed I do resort to TurboTax to make the job easier. I buy the Premier as I have a micro-size side business. This allows me to enter my schedule C information along with all the normal stuff. As that business grows I may even integrate further with Intuit's other product, Quicken . I noticed that Amazon is running a sale on the TurboTax products. The prices are the same as at Costco with the advantage that these versions of TurboTax  are downloadable. This is nice for me as I ...

I was originally put on by the Frontera brand (sold by Conagra) from costco. Their frozen meals have ingredient lists where you know all the things. The dishes have a bit of spice and come in a nifty recyclable paper bowl. The app Fooducate , rates the dish at a B+, which was colored green so I guess that's good. I'm not usually a fan of microwaved beef of any sort, but this was decent. I do think part of the secret is killing it with seasoning, although the dish wasn't too salty, leaving some of the vegetable flavor behind. All in all, for the price it made for a good mid-day meal. In perusing the interwebs I see that they also have slow cooker seasoning/sauce pouches for at home. I may have to try a pack of them.

Sometimes you're at the grocery store, minding your own business and buying the same old stuff when something catches your eye. More often than not it's a sales tag of sorts. In the produce section I tend to think this means something is close to it's "sell by" date. I really need to start timing myself better with those micro clearances, but that's another story ( and maybe some scheduling data) for another time. This last Sunday's shopping trip resulted in my buying the gem in the picture. It is a Mann's(tm) Nourish Bowl entitled "Monterey Risoto". I thought it was just another variation of salad, but then saw that it was to be microwaved. Apparently, the nourish bowl concept has become quite the thing, perhaps taking off from burrito bowls or even the KFC famous bowls. However, instead of potatoes and fried chicken, these tend to have those "super foods". You know, everyone's favorite roughage of kale and cabbage along...

As with most of my activities, reading for enjoyment tends to ebb and flow. Lately I've been on something of a reading bender; admittedly largely in the form of audiobooks. I'm also literally doing some page turning, but that takes a little longer as I don't always have the patience to sit and read for long period of time. I just finished " The Undoing Project " by Michael Lewis. Also the author behind " Moneyball " ,which was adapted to the big screen, Lewis's style is to look at interface where human decision making based on experience and "rules of thumb" come to intersect with data and statistics driven decision making. He does this with grace that focuses on the relationships while making the statistics driven aspects colloquial and accessible to all.  While starting with discussing basketball and the Houston Rockets, "The Undoing Project" ultimately. tells the story of the deep friendship between psychologists D...