How I save money

Since money is such a big thing right now, i thought i would post some things I do to save money and make sure I don't overspend budgets.

1. Savings and checking accounts

I have 2 savings account and a checking account. One of the savings account is a high-interest/high-minimum savings account. This is where I drop my long-term savings into. The other savings account is a low-interest/low-minimum account for short term savings. This is for bills, rent, anything I know I will have to pay at the end of the month. I also dump extra cash into the short term savings and keep my checking account low (usually $100). This keeps me from spending more than $100 at any one time. In order to do it, I have to go and transfer the money, then go buy it, which makes me think if I really need the thing in question.

2. Groceries

Take a calculator with you when you go and buy groceries. I tell my self, I won't spend more than $75 on groceries when I go. Taking a calculator with me, I can calculate what my total will be before the clerk at the register does it for me, so no surprises, and I know I am getting what I need. I also buy a lot of rice, chicken, cheese, etc... Cheap food that can go a long way (ok, maybe not the cheese, but it is a nice snack). Frozen food like chicken and pizza, and things like sausage that are vacuum-wrapped (sammich makings and the like) are awesome.

I don't, however, track my expenses, which I need to start doing. I did for a while with GnuCash, which I really like, I just can't be bothered to track them. Maybe I will start trying again...

What do you do to save money?

Meme(me)

This was on PGO.

• Take a picture of yourself right now.
• Don’t change your clothes, don’t fix your hair…just take a picture.
• Post that picture with NO editing.
• Post these instructions with your picture.

I need to shave :-/


ALSO: SFD pics are up :-)

A big thanks

One of my favorite .NET blogs to read is Beth Massi's blog. She can make even the dullest topic interesting enough to keep reading. While she is a VB dev, that is just something you can get over because she always has interesting topics to share (and even a cool car). Plus, VB translates to C# pretty well, so it isn't all bad. It has really helped me with my Mono development for any Mono devs out there.

If Beth ever reads this, thanks! Keep on making interesting posts.

Wireless is technically working and other good things.

Thanks to the comments to my last post, I now have a working (sort of) wireless card. It shows up in iwconfig/ifconfig, I can do iwlist scanning and get a list of ESSID's. I can't, however, use the network manager to connect to (or even see for that matter) my wireless network. As I said before, iwlist scanning works and finds it and connects to it if I tell it to. I am working on how to get this to work properly.

This is one thing that I think GNOME (Network Manager) does very well. All I have to do is click on the adapter in the tray, find my network, click it, and, if need be, put in my WEP key. So far, I have been less than impressed with the network side of KDE.

On the plus side, I have configured Kontact to use my Gmail account through IMAP. I really like it (a lot more than Evolution, but that isn't saying much). It isn't trying to be a clone of Outlook. I also like the "plasmoids", or widgets as I call them.

So far, I have mixed feelings about my first day of KDE use. More to come.

Trouble with KDE and WiFi (bcm43xx)

I have finally gotten to install Kubuntu Alpha 5 on my laptop (desktop is next). I am having a problem installing the bcm43xx driver for my wireless card. If I go to the Hardware Drivers application in K > Applications > System > Hardware Drivers, I will click "Enable" and it says I need to reboot my computer. So I do. When I reboot, my wifi card still doesn't come on. I go back to the Hardware Drivers app, the enabled box isn't click, so I click it again, it informs me I am install the bcm43xx drivers, then tells me I need to reboot. I reboot, wifi card doesn't come on. So, I open the Hardware Drivers app and "enable" isn't checked...I think you know where this is going. It never actually enables the driver, just tells me to reboot.

Any ideas with this?

Also, What other options are there for a web browser? Do most KDE users use Firefox or Konqueror? Konqueror has some weird bugs with rendering (like right now on Blogger).

After SFD

After SFD (Sept 20th), I will be stepping down from the DFW Team Leader (for a while at least). The past couple of months have been a time crunch for me, and with personal life becoming a bit...convoluted...starting school next semester, work, and other things, it won't be practical for me to run the team.

I will still stay pretty active in the community (as much as I can, safely) and help out whenever I can. I really enjoyed the time I was the leading the team and met some great people.

Experimenting with KDE 4.1

Today, I will install KDE 4.1 on my main box at home. Ever since I started using Linux, I have been a GNOME fanboy, but I think it is a good time to shake things up a bit (who knows, I might even like it). I will probably write about it off and on, giving feedback as to what I think and such, not that I will be the first to do this. I think my biggest hurdle will be getting used to Konsole. I just don't like it. I have been using gnome-terminal for too long. From what I understand, though, Konsole has had some major improvements since I last used it.

I am looking forward to making some KDE users very angry within the next couple weeks ;-).

visudo and echo

If you don't feel like opening up visudo to edit something like the /etc/sudoers file, just echo "user ALL=(ALL) ALL" >> /etc/sudoers. Nifty. Not sure of any security implications of doing this though...

Thank you, lazyweb!

The comments from my last post helped my sister tremendously (thanks Mackenzie for the 190% quirk!). Per her:

(10:38:55 PM) Brittany Perry:
tell them all i say thank you SOOO much


I love this community.

What to do, lazyweb?

My dad, brother, and sister run Ubuntu at my dad's house. They use OpenOffice for writing their papers and such, but almost every time, my brother and sister say that the teacher got onto them and docked points for using too big of spacing, or margins aren't right, or some minute detail that apparently Microsoft Word handles differently. My dad has emailed the teachers saying that they use a different office suite than the teachers are using and that my siblings are technically following the teachers orders (double spacing, X-sized margins, etc...), but that hasn't seemed to help. The teachers are less than apathetic towards my siblings and still dock points for things like this. This doesn't seem like it would be legal, but I don't want to go there (docking points for something that is out of the students control).

They are running Hardy and have OOo 2.6 iirc. Are these known issues in OOo? Apparently, the double spacing in OOo isn't the same as in Word... Has anyone had problems like this with teachers? How did they resolve them? Would it help to install the 3.0 beta?