Llama and Lamb

Yes, mortgage papers were signed last week. Rachel and I now own a home. It’s a split level in a much more upscale neighbor than our current apartment at the Orchard. We are next to one of the nicest neighborhoods in Indy. We are still in Indianapolis. I’m not sure if I wanted to make my life saccarine yet, and “Carmel-ize” it–just not yet anyway.

A new home calls for a new website address. You might nor have noticed (I tried to make it as transparent as I could), but the address of this personal blog (Rachel and Stephen is now LlamaAndLamb.com. If you already did not know, one of my nicknames is Llama (old story from high school) and Rachel is Hebrew for ewe/female lamb (Jacob’s wife in Genesis). I bought a Virtual Private Server from SliceHost and hope to wilder and crazier things on the web now that I have full control! After all, we all know power corrupts. I hope to do some remodeling of this site, soon, but I’ve been saying that since we were married a year and a half ago. Read more »

Last week, my wife said, “Stephen, I wish you cared as little about decorating as you do care about appliance purchasing.” This was to say, it would be nice if I didn’t have to check with you on the style and color of each room our new house. I had just spent 10 or more hours over the past few weeks visiting appliance stores and reading reviews on the web. My final total was around $2800 including tax. If you add cash back and rebates that’s $574 less than retail ($169 + $125 + $280 discount) at Home Depot and less than $678 MSRP ($3478, as if any one pays this amount).

The goals and specifications

I’ve listed below the requirements or suggestions that others (friends and store associates) gave to us that we thought would result in a good value buy. Dependability and long-duration were valued more than price, so we opted for the lower priced mid-range models. The sweet spot for my wife and I is the form and quality of the higher end models with the base features of the lower end models.
Read more »

I have been looking into appliances for our new (to us) house. That’s close to $2500. The first thing to do is to watch for Sears, Home-Depot, and Lowes deal alerts such as DealNews or FatWallet or subscribe to their respective email newsletter. Look for 10-15% off. These deals happen almost every month.

The second aspect to look into is a credit card that provides at least 3% back. Read more »

I use Google Calendar to communicate with my wife when I have made plans in the evening. Like most action items on an automated to-do list, I add all action items I could possible want to do and then decide whether to do them only a few hours before when I receive a reminder. With this process, I am not thinking and worrying about thinking about the event days before. For the first year of marriage, I have added items to my online calendar and forget about them under I receive an email or SMS message on my mobile phone. Read more »

I rarely log in to my online bank accounts and credit card accounts. Why? Most of the time my online accounts takes care of themselves, and this gets managing money and paying bills out of my life, so I can focus on the activities I want to focus on.

You will want to keep a minimum balance that is greater than your single greatest payment. I like to keep more than $1000 in my checking account, since my credit card statements are usually less than $1000. I use multiple credit cards to get the most cash rewards ($300-500 annually with Chase). Using multiple cards allows spreading the bills across the month and minimizing the risk of over-withdrawal. Read more »

Minimalism is the opposite of the standard blog layout. Blog authors tend to link everything on every page to every other page. I’m trying to reject the 100 person blog roll in the sidebar attitude for something simpler. For the last week, I’ve been burning the midnight oil to consider changes to the Rachel and Stephen blog.?Ǭ† I’ve listed some features a blogger might want to add (Twitter mini-blog, expanded footer) and some features he or she might want to remove (sidebar).?Ǭ† Discretion that is the essence of design. Read more »

We are waiting on graduate school admissions to decide whether to buy a house which will determine when we are going to Netherlands/Germany for one or two weeks this summer or fall. We really like our missions focused church and have made many friends there –although almost all of them are married with kids so they aren’t able to come over and play board games and such. We are overwhelmed with discussing marriage (at a home group and a church group) and have had arguments created by marital aid books.

A few weeks ago, we had another murder in our apartment complex–but I guess that’s what happens when 50 people party in the street at midnight blasting gangsta rap. My job is going well. I haven’t been super busy recently –which is nice. At night, I’ve been able to work on Rachel’s art website. However, I still don’t have 20 of her college works up on the site. This Saturday I’m doing a presentation for about 20 people on CSS/HTML at BarCampIndy (an adhoc gathering/free seminar). The idea got started by some friends of mine at IndyChristianGeeks.

Much of the popular music that I listen to is art. It may show a perspective often foreign to me: abuse, a yearning to seduce a girlfriend, romantic jealousy, or some sort of conflict. Most art and literature has conflict and thus it is easy to see how popular art has conflict. Recently, I’ve began to realize that some people can relate to the music and that is why it is popular. From a young age, these stories of conflict were just that “stories.” Myths that artists and writers dreamed up–after all I have taken artistic license and thought up many conflicts in my poetry. Some people may not only view it as an object to digest, critique, and learn about a different perspective. This person has conflict in his or her life similar to the content of the song. Women have actually been seduced in the back of cars and men have actually been cheated on by their girlfriends.

A few weeks ago, one of my co-workers said that she was attending the second shotgun wedding of a high school friend at the age of 26. I scoffed and said, “You know there are ways to prevent that.” She replied, “Yeah, get on the pill” when I was referring to abstaining from sex entirely. Is that such a foreign attitude to the masses? I’m not being sarcastic here.

I can respect non-religious couples for not marrying and intending on having long term committed relationship. Why have a religious service if you aren’t religious? What I can’t imagine is wanting to have sex without intimacy–with someone you don’t want a long term relationship with. How can you be attracted to someone that you don’t want a committed relationship with?

I’ve always seen one night stands were accidents, a bi-product of drinking, drugs, or venting for stress (e.g.- “I’m going to distract myself from my problems with this guy”). I can understand (albeit, not condone) how someone can want to view pornography can be for educational purposes–curiosity while they are still sexual virgins. But why would you want to after you have began having sex? I guess that maybe there are people that want unattached sex. That attitude seems highly irrational and it’s hard to imagine that it’s anything more than just fun and pleasurable.

As of January 2008, the most open field for presidential candidates in many, many years–especially on the Republican side. So you have been browsing around YouTube watching presidential candidates debate? A few years ago, I never thought I would get “news” through YouTube. Of course, I’m hesitant to call political debates news. News it seems should be more objective/factual and less about charisma and being well-spoken–not that people in charge of “nu-clu-er” weapons shouldn’t be well-spoken.

So if you are trying to past the he said/she said (hey, I can actually say that now) and base your vote on consistency (what politicians were saying and voting for before they were running–yes, I know some of you may say that some candidates were always planning on running this year), I recommend issue oriented websites. One of my favorites is OnTheIssues.org. It’s been around since 2000. Actually, coverage of the 2000 election and a large amount of information on the 2004 election is still on the site. The conclusions and scale/chart at the bottom is a little over the top as if a vote on one issue makes one +/- 3 points on a scale.

Do you have a better political issue comparison web site to recommend? How do you get around the political rhetoric without letting the candidates or interest groups influence you?

Citi’s Thank You Network: All credit card reward points are not equal

Not that you don’t already know that credit card companies are sneaky. I generally prefer Chase over Citi for their rewards. Why?

First of all, I can get a $50 check for my 5000 reward points at Chase.

Second, a $50 gift card at citi’s ThankYouNetwork is 6000 points. That means if you currently get 1% back, you aren’t really. You are getting less than one percent back in rewards. You are getting 5/6ths of a point every time you pay a dollar on their credit card, because its costs 6000 points to redeem a $50 gift card.

Is there anyway around this? Yes, only redeem your points for gift cards that are in the 1/100 dollar/point ratio:

Thank You Network Gift Cards with 1/100 dollar/point ratio:
1/100 dollar/point ratio

• $100 WaldenBooks’ Gift Card
• $100 Macy’s Gift Card
• $100 Eddie Bauer?Ç¬Æ Gift Card
• $100 Sears Gift Card
• $100 JCPenney Gift Card
• $100 Dillard’s Gift Card
• $100 Overstock.com?Ç¬Æ Gift Card
• $100 Chili’s Grill & Bar?Ç¬Æ Gift Card
• $100 Bennigan’s?Ç¬Æ Gift Card
• $100 Romano’s Macaroni Grill?ǬÆ
• $100 Applebee’s?Ç¬Æ Gift Card

You can even get a discount on the $100 Lands’ End?Ç¬Æ Gift Card and the $100 L. L. Bean Gift Certificate, they are only 9,000 points each. If you go with a lower amount, you aren’t getting your full points worth.

I really wish the $50 Panera?Ç¬Æ Card was 5000 points or that there was a $100 option. Chase has the $50 Panera?Ç¬Æ Card for only 5000 points.