Catching Up on the Rest of May

Well, I haven't been keeping up with the blog too well over the last week or so, but I have been twittering (it's easier), so here's a summary of the rest of May:

Fannie Mae's first quarter earnings report was worse than expected, but didn't have much impact on the stock price.

My brother David and his girlfriend Mel graduated from Penn State Behrend, and had a really nice party at my folks' place.

I watched the movie "Humboldt County," which was pretty good, but not quite as good as I expected, based on the preview. The soundtrack is excellent, though.

I bought George Orwell's "1984" for 99 cents on my iPhone's kindle app, and later found an app called "150 Great Books" for 5 dollars. So, I'm stocked up on classics.

My federal tax refund finally came sometime around the end of the month... still waiting on my state refund. Ridiculous.

A shower control valve broke in the house, and I did my first copper-pipe plumbing job. Thanks to some good research and advice from my dad, and the brilliance of snap-together fittings called "shark bite" connectors, I didn't have to do any sweating (soldering). Around the same time, a sink drain broke, and had to be replaced. After a 2-hour job turned into a 6 hour job, and about 4 trips to Home Depot later, all is well again. The joys of home-ownership.

A friend of mine brought over his rototiller, so that we could dig up the back yard, level everything out, and plant new grass. After about 10 days, it finally started to peek through the dirt.

The Penguins beat the Capitals, swept the Hurricanes, and got off to a rocky start against the Red Wings in the Stanley Cup finals. They can win, but they're going to have to control the puck a lot more. Let's Go Pens!

And finally, I saved up enough money for the unicyle (with a lot of help from my friends). Now I just need to learn how to ride it (which is surprisingly difficult).

Unicycle

A few weeks ago, I went with my buddy Bruce to a local bicycle shop, so that he could find a water-bottle and mounting thing for his new bike. It turns out that Rapp's Bicycle Shop (I think that's what it's called) has more than just Bikes, however, as I quickly learned.


And having seen this little jewel, I've decided that I need to learn to ride a unicycle... which means that I need to buy a unicycle. So, I started a unicycle fund at work, and everyone has been generously pitching in their spare change. I emptied out the change thing in my car, and have been pitching in a buck or two whenever I have some extra cash in my wallet (I don't often carry cash).

The thing costs 89.95 plus tax - with a little luck, I'll have enough money for my unicycle in no time.

Just for Fun

If you have anything intersting going on in your day, go ahead and just stop reading this post and go do something else. Right now... don't bother reading any further. Anyone with something remotely interesting going on will probably be disappointed that they wasted time on this.

Ok, now, for all of you bored folks out there, follow this link - it leads to a Fannie Mae (FNM) discussion board on Google Finance. While you're reading, see if you can figure out what this discussion board has in common with alcohol. I can think of at least 3 things off the top of my head. I'll post my answers in a comment, so that you don't accidently read them before you get a chance to decide for yourself. Feel free to add your own comments.

Click here to go to the discussion board, and enjoy.

(not sure how long this link will be good for... hopefully a long time!)

Can't Sleep

It's 1:39 am, and I can't sleep - probably just as well, since the toilet downstairs was running (for who knows how long), and I probably wouldn't have heard it in the daytime.

I can't sleep, partly because I'm excited and a little anxious about the possibility of an AGR job becoming available to me in Hurlburt Field, just minutes from Fort Walton Beach, Florida. It seems a little too good to be true, and it's far from in the bag, so I'm really trying to not get too excited about it... but I'm not doing a very good job.

I haven't felt this way since I thought I was getting a position in Los Angeles about 2 years back. It seems like longer ago than that. Of course, that position fell through, which led to me getting out of the AGR program right at the beginning of what is probably the worst American economic decline in my lifetime... although I'm not sure.

In any event, it was terrible timing, and the past 18 months have been a little rocky, financially speaking. This job (which, by the way, would be a 40% raise for me right now) would go a long way... but certainly not just in terms of money. Pennsylvania is a beautiful place, and will always be home, but I've wanted to live somewhere near a beach with Palm trees for a long time - it's even on my "bucket list."

It's 1:54 now, and I'm going to try to get back to sleep. Wish me luck.

Mark-to-Market, the Uptick Rule, and Other Things

I found a neat page on the Marketplace website, called The Whiteboard. Good, simple explanations of the economic and financial terms that you may hear thrown around on the evening news, or even on NPR. Check it out, and listen for the way he ends every lesson - funny.

Twitter

About two years ago, I started using Twitter. At the time, either they weren't using mobile phones for updates, or I decided not to use mine, because I didn't have unlimited texting. Well, now they do, and I do, and I've decided to start using Twitter again.

If you don't know what I'm talking about, check out www.twitter.com - it was started by one of my personal heroes, Evan Williams - the same guy who started blogger.

Tweet, tweet.

A Quiet Morning

I spent most of this morning catching up on some blog entries that I've been meaning to write (the Florida stuff). It's a great way to start a day, writing. I also got a lot of my old iPhone photos organized.

I should do this every Saturday morning.

Easter, Taxes, and a Very Tough Phone

It's been an interesting few days. I spent Easter with my family, which made for a very nice weekend. When I returned home, with a load of clay-working stuff, I backed the car about halfway into the garage, unloaded it, and then pulled around to the front of the house where I usually park (the garage is an inconvenient little one-port deal that's more suited for storage and workshop-type-stuff than for parking a car).

When I got back into the house, I couldn't find my iPhone for the life of me. I searched all through the car, every room in the house, and finally, in the garage. Well, it turns out that when I got out of the car to unload the clay stuff, my phone fell out and landed in some rocky dirt just outside of the garage. So there it was, lying face-down on the ground with a tire-track running right over the back of it.


Amazingly, the phone is completely fine - the thin film that covers the screen was all scratched up and had a few holes in it, but I can get a new one of those for about $3 - somehow, the actual screen didn't get damaged at all.

As if all of that weren't enough, I traveled to State College today to finish my taxes, and found out that - rather than owing quite a bit on my taxes, as I expected - I actually have some money coming back. So all of the money that I've been saving up to pay my taxes is mine now! It's like an instant refund... which will go straight toward paying off something else. Oh well - easy come, easy go.

Anti-Terrorism

I'm took an "Anti-Terrorism" class this week (so don't try any terrorist stuff on me... I'll totally thwart you!)

Pointless or badly focused classes are a part of life in the Army, and everybody who's been in for a little while knows it. Don't get me wrong - the Army gets some of it's classes right... the recent suicide prevention training comes to mind - but this class is firmly in the category of things the Army is getting wrong. That's unfortunate, since it is (at least ostensibly) at the heart of what the US military is attempting to do in Iraq and Afghanistan right now.

I don't have the energy to go into my full spiel as to everything that was wrong with this class, but in a nutshell...

It was 100% focused on the tactical - that means something like winning individual battles or events based on force at the scene of the fight; and it was 0% focused on the strategic - winning the big picture using a variety of means, regardless of what happens at the tactical level.

It was also a largely fear-based training. I get the need for contingency planning and preparing for worst case scenario, etc; but there's a point at which one's anti-terrorism efforts become an automatic strategic victory for those who want to use terror to hinder operations.

I could go on and on about this, but I'll leave it at that for now. Here's a fun closing thought: the instructors of the course specifically warned against such activities as blogging (not just in combat operations, but right here in the United States), because it gives away too much information. "Think about it... you post your address in your profile, talk about your family in your blogs, maybe put up some pictures, and boom: the terrorists have your info." Yeah, well, I'm not willing to live under a rock in order to avoid becoming a victim of terrorism. (Really think about that idea, and see if it seems funny to you.)

Here are some other quotes to consider:

"Paranoia, paranoia, everybody's coming to get me!" -The Barenaked Ladies

"Just because I'm paranoid, doesn't mean they're not out to get me." -Some Bumper Sticker

Electric Kiln

I got an electric kiln today. I'll set it up in the basement at some point, so that I can bisque-fire my work (makes the clay hard enough to transport without breaking, but still porous so that it can be glazed and fully fired later), and then transport it somewhere for glaze-firing.

A long time ago, I registered the domain "adamhenning.com" - mostly for the email address - and haven't done much of anything with it. Since I intend to keep using my blog just for keeping this journal, I've decided to set up www.adamhenning.com as a place to track my ceramics project. I'll try to update it at least every weekend... although that may be difficult on Army drill weekends. We'll see.

So, feel free to check it out. Hopefully sometime in the next month or so, I'll be throwing some pots, and uploading pictures and sketches of upcoming work to my project page.