Other than my investment portfolio being down 52.42% on the year I haven’t really been affected by the credit crunch and downturn in the economy all that much. That is until today when I got a notice that one of my credit cards was canceled for no reason effective immediately. Little glimpse into the future of the consumer credit card industry being the next bubble to burst maybe? Anyway I’m in good shape with absolutely no debt and the investment thing really doesn’t hurt me other than giving me heartburn since I’m in it for the long term. I’ve stopped adding more money into it other than the 401k and Roth even though conventional wisdom says now is the time to buy for huge future gains. I just can’t stomach it right now though even though I will probably regret it in a few years when I look at the charts of stocks jumping back up and think about how much I could have made. I feel better keeping it in cash. Speaking of cash I got another raise. It’s actually a couple months late so I will be getting back pay for it next week on payday. Since I will be getting my school reimbursement on the same check you can be sure that I am going to get absolutely bent over on taxes. Hooray! More taxes on top of the 27.37% of every dollar I have spent so far this year. Tracking every penny in Quicken gives you depressing stats like that and the 52% portfolio number. Interesting stuff but not for the faint of heart I guess.
Other than that I don’t have much. My computer geek technical side was stimulated this week when I set up a “promiscuous router” to boost the wireless internet signal here at work since it was cutting out all the time. Promiscuous Router is a pretty good band name. Anyway, you take the thing with you and plug it in wherever you are and it seeks out unprotected wireless network signals, attempts to connect to the strongest one, tests for internet connectivity until it finds one that has access, and attempts to reconnect to the strongest open access point with internet access afterward if you get disconnected. You then connect your computer wirelessly to the box using a separate encrypted SSID on your own private network. Basically it’s like having a cable modem connected to a wireless router without having to actually have the cable modem. It took a lot of tinkering to get it working reliably but now that I know how to set things up it’s running like a champ. The only issue is you need to use it in a densely populated area with lots of wireless routers around if it’s going to be of any real use. Actually you only need one open access point in range for it to work but I wouldn’t rely on that for all my internet access. If I didn’t need reliable internet at home for my Slingbox I could most likely ditch the cable modem and it’s bill since I live in an apartment building and there are four unprotected access points in range. Four sounds like enough redundancy to me. Well I’m sure I’ve bored my 6-10 daily readers to death with all this interesting networking talk but hey it’s all I’ve got today. It was a nice tinkering exercise that reminded me of why I wanted to make computers a career 8-10 years ago. Then I remembered all the leeches that come out of the woodwork wanting you to fix their stuff for free without even a thank you which made me not want to make it a career. Now I pump gas for a living!