updates, summer in October and links

Written by Steve · 0 Comments

This week I suddenly decided to update a few things here at brip blap. I’ve added a much more complex Facebook page, for starters, which you can see at facebook.com/bripblap. I also added a new page here - greatest hits. I’ve got a Media Mentions page over on the Facebook site - a similar page is about 90% ready for this site. And of course you can probably see (if you’re visiting the site and not reading through RSS or email) that I’ve changed up the layout a lot, including a “like on Facebook” thing-y on the right.

I’m also planning on getting up a coaching/consulting link here in the near future. I asked this question at Facebook, too, but I’ll repeat it here - is there anything about the site design that needs to be updated (good or bad)? Feel free to contact me directly, or leave a comment.

It’s been easy to feel enthusiastic, despite a woeful market for my “main” consulting specialties (audit and finance). That’s probably what inspired me to spend some time working on the “behind the scenes” part of the blog. The weather has been nice – that’s an understatement – and this is the time of year that living in Florida really pays off. When everyone else north of us starts to don jackets and coats occasionally, we’re still in shorts and t-shirts. I know in 50 years it’s going to be 155 degrees in the shade (and our house will be underwater thanks to rising ocean levels) but right now it’s nice having a relatively hot autumn.

I linked to a few sites a bit off the beaten blog-reading path for me this week.

  • Whose permission are you waiting for to start your escape? : I know in my case if I have any permission required to move away from my primary consulting work, it’s entirely internal. I imagine most people who are “stuck” in lines of work they don’t care for that much may claim it’s the mortgage or the kids’ college funds or the car payment or whatever, but at the end of the day you have to give yourself permission.
  • The Road Less Talked About: Building a Business Empire, not an Income Stream: I’ve just recently started reading Maren’s blog and in this post she’s talking about the anti-4-hour workweek (to put it in a nutshell).
  • Strategies for Minimalist Freedom Success: How to Make Difficult Decisions: I am an experienced practitioner of paralysis by analysis. This post made me think about the way I approach some of the difficult decisions I need to make.
  • I Made a Mistake and Checked Zillow.com Today: If you aren’t planning on selling your home/investment property, a trip to Zillow is almost always wince-worthy.
  • Should You Save For Long Term Goals While Still In College? : Honestly I think the main goal while in college should be avoiding debt. Saving is a nice bonus, but unless you’re on a full scholarship AND work a part-time job, it’s going to be tough to find that extra money. Not impossible – but tough.

And a few more:

Categories: linklings - Tags: , , , , ,

is capitalism the answer, or the problem? (and links)

Written by Steve · 4 Comments

I think most people like to think of themselves and their political/economic/religious beliefs as being unique. My own opinion is that nobody with much intelligence would say something along the lines of “I believe 100% in the political philosophy of Sean Hannity/Keith Olberman/Barack Obama/Sara Palin/(insert name of random politician.” In the same way, I doubt – or at least hope – that most people would not blindly assume that all aspects of the capitalist system are completely right, every time. If they were, there would be no need, for example, for auditors – because the market would simply punish companies that falsified their financial results, right? We should be able to understand that any belief system probably has, and probably SHOULD have, some exceptions for each individual.

So I found this little lecture quite interesting. It’s a Marxist take on the recent financial crisis. I am not a Marxist, nor a communist. I like to consider myself actually to fall on the conservative side of economics – I do believe in minimal government interference in capital markets, which is clearly not what is occurring in the US these days. I also believe, however, in things such as an extremely strong and well-regulated audit industry which polices those markets. That’s not just because I’m an auditor, but simply because I’d rather have someone with an economic reason to identify and expose wrongdoing than simply a requirement to do so. But I do have some beliefs that don’t fall into the capitalist mindset – I think Marx nailed it when talking about speculation, for example. I’m not sure how you fix that, but clearly the current system isn’t working that well in the US – our sickly combination of capitalism (out-of-control financial institutions) and half-hearted socialism (health care and Social Security and a host of half-measures which only partially address the underlying issues).

Well, watch the video. If nothing else, the animation is quite good.

And again, a few links – once again, I haven’t spent much time reading blogs this week and consequently it’s a short list.

Categories: linklings, money - Tags: , ,

cloudy days, and links

Written by Steve · 3 Comments

We’ve had a cloudy week in Florida: it’s been cold and gloomy, suffering from the trace remnants of the tropical storm. That – plus a visit from relatives – conspired to reduce my writing time to almost nothing.

I did attend a birthday party for a friend of my son’s on Saturday at the dreaded Chuck E. Cheese’s. We had told my son that no CEC existed in our city; until the birthday party he had assumed we were simply a backwards, uncivilized corner of the world. But since we got the invitation – for one of his best friends – we had to go. So we went.

My kids go to a Waldorf-inspired school. It’s focused on art, singing, creativity, etc. TV, computers and electronica in general are all strictly forbidden. We cheat, of course – at home we do watch TV, and I do let the kids play www.poissonrouge.com and similar sites. But when I get dropped into an environment like CEC I realize that there is a tidal wave of electronic media overpowering our kids today. A level of electronic stimulation almost unimaginable to Gen Xers like myself exists. I don’t know what the long term effect of such heavy duty electronic stimulation will be…but wow.

Links

I have to be honest – I didn’t get around to reading much on the internet over the past few days, so I don’t have much of a roundup to promote. But, such as it is, here you go:

Categories: general, linklings - Tags: , , ,

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