Shay’s Blog

I got tired of the 3 column design I used from glish.com when I originally did my main site.  It was my first experience with tableless layouts.  The 3 column design looked very compelling.  After a while I decided that it 3 column layout was a lot busier visually than it needed to be.  Take a look at my new design.  Please let me give me your feedback.  This new layout is probably an interim layout.  I have been reading The Zen CSS Design.  I want to merge the looks of my blog theme and my main site together, but this might be awhile. I also fixed the invalid html on the subscription sign up in the blog sidebar.  I should have checked it last night.  I also added a link back to the main page on the sidebar of the blog. Enjoy the new look of my main site! 

When I switched themes a while back, I forgot to put the code in for email subscription into the new theme’s sidebar. It is now back so please feel free to subscribe to my blog. The benefits of subscribing is that you get notified imediately when the there is a new posting to my blog.

The San Antonio Spurs are going to the Western Conference Finals.  They are one step away from going to the NBA Finals for the fourth time.  Assuming they go and win, this will give Tim Duncan his fourth NBA title.  The Spurs beat the Phoenix Suns in the second round to get to the conference finals.  I am a very big Spurs fan having grown up outside of San Antonio.

It is kind of hard being a Spurs fan that lives in Dallas.  Most people are obviously Mavericks fans.  This intensified over the past few years.  It started with the Mavs finally beating the Spurs in the playoffs last year, but imploding in the finals against the Miami Heat.  Then this season the Mavs won a ton of games and had the best regular-season record, but imploding again this time in the first round.  You can read about my thoughts on the Mavs in some of my earlier blog posts.  What makes it hard is that Spurs have been the Mavs nemesis over the years.

Anyway congrats to the Spurs!  I hope they walk over the Utah Jazz and whoever the Eastern Conference brings to the finals.  Go Spurs!

I enjoy wordpress, the blogging application that I use for my site.  It is definitely activally developed.   They just released another release a few days ago.  I got it installed and running this evening.  It is a lot easier to use wget on my hosting server and extract it from there than trying to upload all of the files through cpanel. 

Alicia and I went to go see Jello Biafra at The Granada on Wednesday.  For those who have not heard of him, he is a spoken word artist and the lead singer of The Dead Kennedy’s.  He is a member of The Green Party and very against both the republicans and democrats.  He started very funny and very thought provoking.  He challenges US both foreign and domestic policy.  I enjoy listening to thought provoking topics even if I do not completely buy into the opinion.  He generated some very interesting opinions on the Military Commission Act and the United States actions before and after Iraqi invasion. (more…)

I hate garage sales since most of the items for sale are worthless junk. I know that that you can find some very good deals, but for the most part it is a waste of time. Though I do enjoy going to the community garage sale that Addison has once a year. It occurred last weekend. I got up early which is a big deal for me (I am a total night person). Most of it is baby stuff and other assorted junk, but this year I found a lady selling some Linksys routers. I managed to get a WRT300N and a WRT54G for 45 bucks. I thought I got a pretty good deal on them since amazon sells the WRT300N for $129. I really did not need to 54G model, but it does not hurt to have an extra.

I flashed them both with dd-wrt which is an open-source firmware. I have been using this on my current router. It is a nice product that adds a lot of nice features to the router. I have been using the SPI firewall and the static DHCP features of it. I made the WRT300N my main router since my Macbook Pro supports the 802-11N draft standard. I configured the other router as a client bridge which I use to connect my Audiotron MP3 receiver to the network. I have been using a Linksys WET11 Bridge which only supports B which is two revisions behind the current draft N standard. The other reason I wanted to get rid of the WET11 was it only supported WEP which is a much older wireless encryption. I am now running WPA which is much more secure.

It took a while to get the client bridge configured, but I got it working. I did have to turn on the SSID broadcast to make it work, but it is seems to be working fine now. This leaves me with my original router, but it is nice to have a backup just in case one of the other ones stops working.

Tonight is game six of the Dallas Mavericks / Golden State Warriors playoff series. I was reading the Dallas Morning News today, and saw this column by Jean-Jacques Taylor. The topic of the column was how Dirk Nowitzki’s legacy was on the line tonight. If you are not aware the Mavericks and Dirk have a reputation of being soft in the playoffs. They have the best record in the NBA this year. Last year, they got over the hub of my favorite team, The San Antonio Spurs and then cratered in the finals to the Miami Heat after going up 2 games. They lost the series 4-2.

The Mavs won 67 games this year, but went down 3-1 to The Warriors. Dirk and the Mavs played well in game five at home to win to make the series 3-2. Now tonight, there is 5:28 left in the game, The Mavs are down 24 points. Dirk has scored six points. You be the judge, is Dirk super talented and is unable to raise his game in the playoffs, or is he a victim of the situation? Anyway, unless there is a colossal meltdown by The Warriors, Dallas will be the first number one seed to be bounced out of the playoffs by a 8th seed which has never happened since the NBA went to a seven game series. Go Spurs!

The market has been really good of late. The Dow has been hitting records. These gains have really helped my portfolio. My total net worth has increased $35,000 since the beginning of the year. My liabilities have decreased by $1200, and my assets have increased by $33,800. My liabilities are not decreasing as much as I like, but the asset increase is very nice. My goal is to increase my net worth by $70,000 by the end of the year. I hope the market continues its gains. I can at minimum maintain my savings rate. I do have a bonus coming around August. My goal is save most of this. I hope I hit my year-end goal. I am planning on doing another App O’Rama when my current 0% rate expires that I have on two of my credit cards. I am going to try to apply for at least ten. This should also help me reach my goal. It would be nice to exceed it.

One thing I definitely need to do is figure out what my minimum monthly living expenses are. That way I can figure out how much my emergency cash fund should be. I want to have a full six months worth of expenses. I keep this in a money market mutual fund at Fidelity. I may have too much in it now. I can move the excess into one of my equity funds.

If you have been reading my blog or if you know me then you know that I love concerts. I like a lot of different types of music like alternative, techo (EBM mainly), industrial, americano, etc. One person that I have never seen that I have always wanted to see is Seal. He is playing May 30. Alicia and I are going to see him. I am very excited to finally see him. On June 1, we are going with my sister to see Chris Isaak and Stevie Nicks. Yesterday, I got an email announcement for Interpol. They are playing on May 31. Three concerts in three days is a bit much. I am debating if I want to go to Interpol. I saw them around a year and a half ago. They were good, but I am not sure if I want to do a three shows in a row. Today I saw that Skinny Puppy is coming back on June 17. They are playing at the new House of Blues here in Dallas. I am not sure if HOB is going to be ready for Skinny Puppy. I will probably go see them. It has been a while since I have seen them.