been busy being a bum.. week 43

Where to start? I got last week off from work and spent it doing mostly nothing. I borrowed my fathers camera to capture the events of my vacation but there wasn't much to capture. I miss having my digital camera, I think I will replace my stolen camera in 3 months time. Anyway this first picture here was taken at the picnic I have been waiting for the past 6 months or so, its a shame I couldn't get to take the one person I originally propositioned a picnic to this year.
The past week of idleness also included going to the beach. The place was essentially empty so my party, fueled by coffee rum cream, had a ball skinny dipping in the warm clear waters on that sunny weekday morning, a first for me :-).
The week wasn't completely a waste though, I got a few things out of the way such as going to the dentist to get my teeth cleaned. I haven't been to the dentist in a while, the dentist made sure to point out the fact that the last time I came was over 9 years ago. He asked why I stopped coming but I was too ashamed to tell him that my mother stopped carrying me there and left me for the wolves. This was part of my parents ingenious parenting plan of not doing anything and letting a kid sink or swim in the deep end but I came out victorious as the dentist proudly told me everything was a-okay and I didn't have any cavities. There are a few other things I should have done while I was off from work but time didn't permit or I was too busy being relaxed.
During my time off I made extra effort to not walk with my phone, it spent most of the week tucked away in some corner of my appartment. I am normally bound to my cell during working hours and from 5pm to 8am during the weeks I work standby duty. This annoys me immensly as I hate cellphones and am not generally a phone person but is forced to answer due to work responsibilities. I have noticed this seems to be the trend for people in the IT dept. at my workplace, only they take it a step further not to answer the work related calls either. One has better chances winning at a game of craps than trying to get me on my mobile phone if its not a work related call. This pisses off my friends and family as I am hard to reach most times but hopefully they understand. I gave the first cell phone I had to my mother, loaded with credit because I didn't use it much, and of course my girlfriend at the time was pissed off as she could never reach me when she wanted to. Its funny seeing that I feel this way and I work for a phone company that foots my phone bills, I guess I save my company money.

A penny saved is a penny earned

This graph represents my income(blue) vs expense(red) of the current and previous 7 quarters over the past two years. It is a good indication that I am living well below my means. I notice most of my peers enjoy living large buying/using the best of things whilst I am equally content with my bulk frosted flakes from pricesmart and banking the few hundred dollars saved. I also try my best to keep capital expenditure to a minimum and under control by spreading purchases out over a large period of time. Financially focused is what I call it, not cheap.
In keeping with my financially focused and tech theme, I must say that I am proud that I did my first online stock transaction today. I was wondering over breakfast what to do with some extra cash I had in my broker's equity account and I just figured I would move it over to my high intrest investment account. Things changed when I reached work and checked stock prices, one of my favorite bluechip companies fell to a 52 week low so I decided to put in the order for it, there isnt much to lose and so much to gain :-). After I came back from lunch and checked my email I saw an automated mail from my broker saying that the order was filled, a very plesant surprise. This is also the first time I put in an order and have it filled the same day.

Week 42, definetly business as usual

It would be a shame for me not to post today. In keeping with the trend of the last few public holidays, the rest of Jamaica is at play and I spent my day at home due to standby duty for work. The day mostly went well, I woke up at about 8am, watched tv for a bit then made myself some cottage cheese topped pancakes(new recipe, it worked out well). After that I decided that the cupboards below my sink were the war on vermin took place many weeks ago was to nasty to continue ignoring so I cleaned it out then trimmed some of the plants which lined the driveway as they have been brushing against my car as I drive by and I noticed the gardner was ignoring them. Quite a productive morning I must say, If I had more free time I would re-position a security light I installed over the area I park my car for better coverage but I guess that will have to stay until another day.

Afternoon came quickly and at about 1:30pm I decided to watch Tom yum goong which I've had for some time but didn't have the time to watch it. I was warned about this movie, the movie can be summed up in one line: some people steal an elephant and the owner fights to get it back. I don't mind watching these kung foo type movies as they usually have some noble inspiration pushing the plot. Anyway I got my first standby call a few minutes before the movie ended, this lady was calling about her process that was failing on my system. I pointed out the problem to her three weeks ago the last time I was working on her side of town and I had to remind her that this problem was already identified. The real problem is that her process is trying to write to an area that has 120,000 files in it already and the system pretty much has reached its limit and three weeks ago I asked her to clean it out as there were too many files in there but of course no action was taken and now I am being called on my public holiday to solve this problem that is now urgent as my company can now not process the files which it uses to bill the customers.

Week 41, business as usual

I just received my power bill from JPS within the last hour and I must say that I am relieved. The other day after washing my car I decided to take my last bill down to the meter and check out how much I owed this utility company for my current usage but to my shock and horror (if my calculations were correct) the meter said I had used close to 200KWH since the last bill cycle. Now looking at this excerpt from the bill I just received it is easy to see that 200KWH is double my normal consumption.
In retrospect, what I suspect happened was that I picked up the bill for the month before so my calculations would have reflected 2 months usage. The balance in the world is restored again, I was beginning to question my ability to quantify my electricity usage and was about to dig up my ammeter to measure the load brought on by my new toys. It is sad that I wouldn't have to do much digging to find my ammeter as it is on a table by my front door amoungst many other doodads and tech that scatter my appartment.
On that note I need to move into somewhere larger and more permanent, I hear my home owner clock ticking and it is becoming harder to ignore. I mentioned this to my mother a few weekends ago and she told me that I am too young to be owning property. In my head it makes sense to be paying off a mortgage vs paying rent as at the end of the day you have something to show for it.