///Head of the Trent 2012 (HOTT) is this Weekend///
Head of the Trent (HOTT) 2012 is tomorrow. It’s the homecoming for Trent University, my Alma Mater. I’m very excited.
It may seem silly to look forward to a glorified drinking event. Nevertheless, it’s the only time that I see some friends (and assorted others). While University seems like yesterday to me, I’m actually three years out — going on four. Being old (I turned a quarter century in March) is a punishment in itself; I’m not sure why the nostalgia is obligatory.
Prior to graduation, I didn’t attend HOTT. It’s an alumni event.
After graduation, HOTT became important. In 2009 and then 2010 I was living and working in Peterborough, so I attended and participated vociferously, including the before- and after-parties. The steady flow of Broseph and Brosephine ‘townies’ at HOTT is a tad obnoxious, but I just remember that they’re supporting my university because it’s superior to whatever diploma-granting institution they crawled out of. I’m looking at you, Fleming.
In 2011 I was living in Toronto and working at Queen’s Park. I planned to attend HOTT 2011, but I bailed at the last minute. The Monday after HOTT I had a job interview. I needed to prepare and didn’t get much notice. The investment of time, and abandonment of my friends, proved worthwhile. Instead of being in Toronto for this HOTT earning slightly less money, I’m in Peterborough earning slightly more money (until my top-up runs out). Not only will the drive in my chariot (of the 03 Malibu variety) be more leisurely, but I’ll be able to bring my beautiful daughter for the morning’s kids-oriented activities.
Oh, you want to hear about money? My self-imposed “personal finance” format is really restrictive. OK, uh…
- Admission is $10 (it also gets me a HOTT 2012 glass mug that, if history is any indicator, will be shattered carelessly by my partner before HOTT 2013)
- Beer is, oh I don’t know, let’s say $5 per watered-down plastic cup. Unlike other, less encumbered, years, I don’t plan on drinking much. I do, however, plan on buying my good friend/occasional TF commenter/soon-to-be fellow Trent alum Jack Braithwaite a couple beers. So we’ll chalk this up to $20.
- $100 for my partner to “get her hair did” while I’m in the HOTT beer garden.
///Catherine a.k.a. “Cat-cher in the Rye”///
Here’s a quick video of Cat. She tries to talk to herself in the mirror, which is hilarious and adorable.
When you watch the video, you might notice that she’s trying really hard to say “I love you”. Adorable to the max.
///Mentions///
- Nelson from FinancialUproar liked Adina’s column on why the “personal” in “personal finance” doesn’t justify stupidity. If you haven’t read the post in question, you probably should take the hint from all the references and do it.
- Echo from Boomer & Echo liked my chequing account post which is kind of funny because I researched it using one of his Moneyville articles.
///Amendments and Addenda///
- Adina’s column on Wednesday was a great, authentic article that got fantastic responses. Honestly, there are some comments that could pass for independent essays. I’m looking forward to her inaugural reader on Sunday.
///Tweet(s) of the Week///
Re: CPFC12, my pic with Ellen Roseman:
@ellenroseman, the consumer’s greatest advocate and I, no biggie twitter.com/TimelessFinanc…
— TimelessFinance (@TimelessFinance) September 22, 2012
///Keyword Fun///
Money-Smart Keyword Award goes to:
getting rid of rogers tv antennae
Money-Stupid Keyword Award goes to:
how to spend money without spending too much
Stop spending money. Stay in the house, grocery shop once a week, pack your lunch, don’t go to malls, cut up your credit cards, live on cash, track your spending, plan a budget with appropriate cuts — go read the inanely simple tips on any Yakezie blog.
Legit Question Keyword Award goes to:
why buy life insurance
So your dependent(s) will get money when you die.
lol wut? Keyword Award goes to:
great grandma yawning
EWWWW wut? Keyword Award goes to:
rash in the neck
Notably missing keyword to SEO-optimize this post by increasing the keyword density
HOTT
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///YouTube///
I don’t plan on switching to a Samsung Galaxy SIII anytime soon; I love having a QWERTY-keyboard, and BlackBerry offers the best. But I do love slamming Apple for their grotesquely inferior, hipster-loved iPhone.
“Hey, Pass Me a Beer!”
I’m sure you’ve all seen Gangnam Style already. Here’s a parody that I found particularly entertaining:
///Quote of the Week///
“The sanctity of human life is one of the core values of our society and justice system, but life is not without end.”
- Justice Frans Slatter, on an extremely sad, ethically-complex situation
///Links///
1. This is the most interesting pension idea I’ve heard in a long time: “target benefit pensions”. They’re a defined benefit pension where shortfalls don’t just need to be made up by increased employer contributions — the employees and employer could each increase contributions, employees could take reduced benefits, etc. It’s safer for pensioners than a defined contribution pension, but safer for companies than a defined benefit plan.
2. Here’s the only traffic cop in L.A. without any complaints on his file — and he’s been doing his job for years. How is this possible? He’s not a tyrannical fascist who thinks he’s above citizens and their rights. Perhaps Canadian cops should take note. Naw, they still enjoy their paid duty racket and love scabbing.
3. My friend Jack Braithwaite sent me this article about cash mobs (meant to rhyme with “flash mobs”) where a bunch of people show up at a designated local business and inundate it with patronage. If it’s about charity, then it doesn’t make sense because you’re just incentivizing a terrible business model (will you show up when the store is in trouble again in two months?). If it’s not about charity then, well, what is it about? You’re obviously reducing your support for other cities and local businesses to benefit one store in particular. And, of course, every business wants exceptional, unsustainable levels of customers. Businesses would gladly pay the original organizer. There’s a slew of inevitable legitimacy issues that will always undermine any such event. It’s like the Triple Salchow of money-stupidity.
4. “Are We Really Getting Smarter?“ was my favourite read this week. My gut reaction to the question was “no”. The article explains how “thought” in previous generations was focused on objective utility, while now, even in elementary school, we play with ideas (e.g. hypotheticals) much more. By the end of the article I totally agreed with the thesis — it’s not as far reaching as the title suggests (it’s all about IQ and IQ-like measures). It doesn’t prove we’re gaining common sense.
5. Yesterday I played a fun game on Newgrounds called “Infectonator 2“. It’s a cute 8-bit-style zombie infection freebie Flash game. I know “cute” and “zombie infection” shouldn’t go together but you have to play it to understand. There’s blood, albeit totally cartoonish, so I suppose it’s “NSFW”. Who cares if it’s SFW? It’s a computer game so you shouldn’t play it at work anyway, slacker.
///lol-worthy///
Those pics of Cat had me LOL-ing! Sorry, I have nothing substantive to say today … TGIF indeed
lol I appreciate these kinds of comments. Even when the counter said there were 500 views today, when nobody comments on anything, it still feels pretty lonely.
I vote for the Samsung ad as the best attack ad of the year… and they chose a crowded year to come out with that. The parents showing up was the tipping point for me.
Oh yeah, finance. Target benefit plans seem like the corporate application of personal finance common sense: make a plan, and make reasonable adjustments if things don’t work out that way. It’s either strange that no one has thought of this before, or improbable that it will work due to the need to get everyone to agree on what adjustments to make. Fortunately those without a target benefit plan can simply invest on their own, and increase that amount when there are good investment opportunities, to get most of the same benefit.
The part that made me go “wow” about that commercial was the detail that they built into the crowds. They targeted all the key Apple demographics — hipsters, young “professional” women, parents trying to be cool… they successfully made the iPhone even more revolting; I’ll stick with my BB Bold 9900
I really wish the pooled “pension” plans rolled out for the self-employed by the government were something more useful. Even a target benefit pension would have been nice. Instead, they’re just pooled RRSPs. I love how Flaherty demanded that the fees charged by administrators need to be “fair”. Laughed so hard. Honestly, just more bureaucracy for the government policy machine, more CRA warning letters for non-compliant taxpayers, and another press release/subsidy for Canada’s banksters/finance cartel. As if Canadians need to pay more taxes and more fees.
That’s pretty much how I steered someone to a samsung galaxy instead of an iphone recently (late model of course, no need to overspend on the newest phones!)… although I didn’t quite have the subtle humor.
While PRPPs aren’t finalized it sounds like they could well be a marginal improvement in specific situations such as small companies with a few employees. But in the end, even corporations, insurers, and governments can’t fully cover market risks because they all tend to get hit at the same time as everyone else. The closest thing is annuities and even those have lower payouts now from what I hear, due to the poor interest rates (ironically that may make stocks more reliable than annuities). A plan that doesn’t bend will break.
Thanks for letting me know about the spam filters. Here I thought there was just no one commenting!
OH btw! I commented on both of your blogs, but I think I may be in SPAM-filter purgatory.
The MicroSD photo had me reflecting on the old days, for sure. I remember when 100MB Iomega Zip disks were “hott”. I see HOTT and I think of Hot Topic, Nasdaq.
Australia comic is very funny too, and I do like your incoming search topics. Some of them really make me wonder about Google’s algorithms… of course seeing Google’s top matches on some of my own searches has me scratching my head almost daily… with rage.
My family’s first computer, a 286 (no, not MHz lol — the computer after this was 133MHz which is 1/9th the power of the processor in my BlackBerry) had a 3.5″ floppy drive. Then our first decent computer (decent cause it had a colour monitor and a CD-ROM drive) had a 1 gig HDD which was a stunning amount of storage at the time.. lol.
Yeah, I love how all of these extreme SEO people freaked out about Penguin/Panda — “oh my site got demoted” — when they target keywords for which they offer ZERO value.
Reminds me of something I read on facebook. It was along the lines of “I forget that when my Internet is down that my computer can still do stuff.” I think back to those 286 days and wonder what everyone was doing with those machines. Minesweeper and solitaire mostly… and other games. NES-quality hockey, for instance, Doom required a 386 according to wikipedia… and 4 MB RAM. Oof. I vaguely recall upgrading my RAM on a 486, it cost a pretty penny for miniscule amounts back then.
lol my favourite games on the 286 were Wolfenstein 3D and DuckTales: Quest for Gold.
That’s inspired me to check incoming searches… I think the best one in the last 90 days is “how do people become old money”. Might be another potential entry in the “guides for complete idiots” series? It could also be accompanied by a guide on how to inherit a large amount of money.
You should factor an extra $10 into your budget today for a second HOTT mug that you can stash away in a closet somewhere. That way when the first one gets busted you have a backup!
In the interest of saving money for you and making some for me, tell your lovely partner that I will do her hair for $50, right there on campus. You save some dough, she gets spendid company, I make some scratch to pay for my own beer and we put the hair in an envelope and mail it to some hippies who write a poem about it turning it into a beautiful expression shedding the shackles conformity to society’s ideal of beauty. Get it? Shedding? Sometimes you just have to recognize a perfect idea when it hits you…
lol pretty sure the Trent hippies would expect dreads.
When I went into the beer garden they said “While supplies last” about the mugs, which I thought was stupid. Can they not match up the beer garden’s capacity/wristbands with the number of mugs? Yeesh.
Joe, should have dropped me a note. Might have been able to introduce lil’ SPF to Cat!
Aww
well I’m around Peterborough now so when this union stuff has blown over we should arrange a play date!