Month: April 2014

Categories
Samuel Technology

How To Get Rid Of Internet Ads (Including Ads on Youtube)

One thing that I really despise is when people or services interrupt me.  Some of the biggest offenders in this category are online ads.  A great little tool that does a really good job of fixing this is Ad Block Plus.  This browser extension is available for all major browsers including chrome and firefox…. you shouldn’t be using IE anyway unless you are forced too.

Once you install it you can use this powerful extension to completely remove ads on facebook and  youtube (or any site you want too).  You can also tweak the settings to help prevent websites from tracking your browser sessions and your overall internet history in general.  Another great feature is you can allow certain types of ads, or ads from certain websites… gasps why would you want to do that?  Simple, your favorite blog/news/entertainment site is only around because it sells ad space.  If you like a website enough to support it, you should then add it to the Ad Block white list so you will see their ads.

Categories
Samuel Twenty Somethings

Making Life Easier (aka lowering your overhead)

I get asked quite often how I’m able to go through life just doing things my own way and seemingly not paying much attention to authority, or the normal “rules of the road”.  I work for myself, I do not pay much attention to time or schedules, and to most people I don’t seem to be taking life all that seriously (which is true, I work very hard and I’m very competitive but I do not get worked up about things that most people do).

My answer to everyone is always very simple, and I fear very over-looked. I tell them to  Lower your overhead. So what do I mean by that, I’ll explain.  Everyone has expenses that you cant avoid (food, shelter, clothes, entertainment ect…).  Where a lot of young 20 somethings fall short (and in turn make their life much harder) is that they don’t focus on lowering the “re-occurring fees”.  Personally I try to limit my recurring fees, while getting other people to pay me as many re-curing fees as possible.  I’ll give a few helpful examples below, but I want to make sure and stress this point.  Not having enough money to live is the root of many of our life problems.  The key is not to make more money, the key is to lower the bar you need to hit every month while still keeping your quality of life high and giving yourself enough money to enjoy your life (aka pay for entertainment).

-Housing: Using the FHA (first time home buyer) program I purchased a home with 3.5% down.  I bought a fixer upper so this 3.5% payment equated to just under 5k.  Now when you put so little money down you are forced to buy what is called PMI insurance until the value in equity that you have equals or exceeds 20% of the value on your home.  This is not a problem at all if you buy a home that needs updating.  For the next 8 months I fixed up the house, and then got the home re-appraised.  The house appraised for 40k higher than my purchase price, PMI insurance dropped, happy day.  From there I rented the home out, and took what was a 900/month mortgage payment and turned that into a positive cash flow of 150/month through rental income.  Net effect I make 150/month to live in my house.

-Transportation: I’m luckier than most in this category due to help from my father. Most young 20 somethings go out and purchase a somewhat fancy/not needed vehicle after graduation from college.  This is such a silly idea for 2 reasons. 1 they get saddled with a car payment, and 2 they pay high insurance rates to ensure the car until they turn 26.  I drive an 1995 dodge Dakota.  Insurance cost 500/year and there is no vehicle loan payment. Net effect: I pay 100/moth for gas and 38/month for insurance.

-Food: One of the best things you can do is make your own food.  Its often healthier and way cheaper.  A few keys that I have found help me are that I find 3-4 meals that I really “love” and would be happy to eat all the time.  Those are reserved for dinners, and I always have the ingredients to make these meals on hand.  Examples:

-Frozen turky burger, mixed greens salad, home made salsa, tofu ice cream bar.

-chicken breast with brown rice, sweet potato, mixed greens salad

-solid white albacore tuna mixed with yogert ranch and white vinegar sauce, steamed broccoli

-Clothing: A lot of people my age spend all kinds of money on fancy clothes.  Now I’m all for having a couple nice outfits that you can wear if you are going out, or going to a business meeting and need to look presentable.  But beyond that, I do absolutely zero clothes shopping.  I wear hand me downs from roommates, I wear old clothes from growing up, and that’s about it.  It helps that generally I’m working from home so the dress code is pretty lax, but most people spend so much time/energy/money worrying about the clothes they wear… a much better strategy is to spend that time on exercise/eating right.

 

Overall takeaway: If you just take some time and focus on lowing  your cost for housing, transportation and food you will be amazed what kind of positive impact it will have on your life.  When its all said and done I only “need” about 600 dollars per month to live on.  Now I spend more than that, especially when you factor in services that I purchase to save the most valuable asset we have, our time.  But when push comes to shove it is so liberating to know that you don’t need to come up with a ton of money to live.  It gives you the freedom to really pursue the life that you want.

 

Categories
Inspirational

Getting What you Want

I’ve been working a lot on figuring out what it is I want, and the internet and great writers’ insights have been helping me to try and figure things out. I haven’t read this book, but  I did pull a quote from it that I really think is important to remember when in the process of trying to figure things out for yourself and your life.

From Alain De Botton’s The Pleasures of Sorrow and Work:

“One of the interesting things about success is that we think we know what it means. A lot of the time our ideas about what it would mean to live successfully are not our own. They’re sucked in from other people. And we also suck in messages from everything from the television to advertising to marketing, etcetera. These are hugely powerful forces that define what we want and how we view ourselves. What I want to argue for is not that we should give up on our ideas of success, but that we should make sure that they are our own. We should focus in on our ideas and make sure that we own them, that we’re truly the authors of our own ambitions. Because it’s bad enough not getting what you want, but it’s even worse to have an idea of what it is you want and find out at the end of the journey that it isn’t, in fact, what you wanted all along.”

This helps me remember to not covet what it appears that other people have, and to remain focused on myself and my own shit. It also strikes a little bit of fear (the good kind) in me to really be motivated to find the work I love to do and the life I want to live, and just live it. As to not end up like someone who may strive hard for what they think others want for them or what they think success is- only to find in the end,  it doesn’t make them happy.

 

Categories
Inspirational

Song of the Day

Several of my friends and I have started a ‘song of the day’ text and its made such a difference to my workday.

One my my ‘song of the day’ songs, that my younger sister introduced me to, pumps me up at work when I am stressed by feelings of inadequacy and in the gym when I am working out and want to stop. It’s totally 80’s sounding but the beat is fun and the lyrics are so great.  I love all genres of music and what makes me love a song are the lyrics, so even if flash-back to 80’s style pop is not your thing…and I know it’s not my co-contributor’s thing AT ALL…I urge you to listen to this song and tell me you don’t feel a little pumped up.

‘Falling’ by Haim

What else is great about this song of the day with my friends is the want to send them a happy song, and so often when left to my own devices I go for sad and slow or sad and fast. Its nice to be recommended and to recommend, happiness.

Happy Monday.

 

Categories
Shorts

Audience

My friend and I last minute, decided to go to a show yesterday. She had been listening to one of our favorite bands from a few summers back when we lived together with a third friend. Favorite like we blasted the band’s album daily and subjected friends and boyfriends to it round the clock, whether they liked the quick tempo and our voices screaming the lyrics, or not (disclaimer: I was/ remain the only one of the 3 of us who actually cannot sing. the other 2? perfect pitch. so our sing-a-longs weren’t horrible). Anyway, she found out that the band was in town last night and bought two tickets. Boom, fun night.

Well, yes and no. We got to the venue where I got my bag checked and then patted-down by an older woman who whispered in my ear, “this is totally normal, we do this all the time” which triggered my memory that, no, i had never been patted down when coming to shows here in the past. Guess every day in the gym has been paying off, at least to the satisfaction of 50yr old women. I only got charged $10 for a double Jack and Soda from the guy at the bar, while my friend made the mistake of ordering from the female bartender and got charged $15 for the same drink. Penance for my pat-down.

As we walked down the ramp onto the floor, where about 5 bedraggled looking men were bouncing along to the DJ on stage who was blasting thumping base and mixing songs, we realized the DJ was our guy! We knew he DJ’d in the past but were both freaking out. Where was the band that toured with him and recorded his album with him, where was the quick fun tempo we loved to dance to? Most importantly where were HIS own damn music?! who wants to pay money to see some guy mix songs that aren’t even theirs? (although he did then mix a Paul Simon song and it was actually really fun).

Thank god, he read our thoughts, and with his new chrome DJ set and his shaggy beard- neither one a positive addition to his stage presence – he picked up the mic and sang 3 songs we loved and threw in one new one that was excellent as well. even with all the bass and EDM rhythm.

I think what I learned from this show, as the room started to fill with crazily-dressed raver kids and Bros with hockey jersey on (clearly there for the headliner who sounded horrible) was that our guy who now carried the name of the band on his own, had lost touch with his audience. I am ALL for artistic change, but you can’t just throw us from one extreme to the other. Before you make a drastic change, as someone who is offering a good/service to others and in return makes their livelihood, you should really examine who your audience is and why they love you. Keep some of that in mind when you are in front of them and maybe start by saying, hey this is really new and different BUT don’t worry, some of your old favorites are here too- just remastered.

He almost lost us. if he hadn’t picked up that mic while we were both questioning what he was doing, he would have.

Categories
Fixing Stuff

How to Instal a Refrigerator water line

My friend Julia and I decided it would be fun to document installing a water line for a fridge on my rental property today.  We used the following items:

1/4 inch flexible water line

sharkbite copper valve

compression fitting

For convenience if your looking for all the items you need to hook up your fridge water line, this kit from your local home depot has everything you should need: water line kit

Now onto the installation, the first step is to slip the copper compression fitting over the line running from your fridge (see below).  One important item to note, keep the round fitting close to the end of the line when you are pushing the small copper nipple inside of the tubing during the next step. If you don’t do that it is very hard to push the fitting back up over the nipple to the edge of the line where it needs to be (See below)

CAM00267

Once you complete that,  you are ready to make the connection from the fridge line to the 1/4inch line you purchased.  You will essentially just do the same thing to the new line and then screw it together See image below:

CAM00269

Now your ready to put the sharkbite fitting on the copper pipe.  You want to assemble it and put it on the pipe like so:

CAM00270

 

Once you tighten down the screws to secure the fitting, you will turn the plunger on the top several turns and it will penetrate the copper water line.  *Note water will not flow until you back the plunger out a turn or 2.  So what you want to do it hook up your water line to the fitting using your compression nut.  Turn the plunger 3 or 4 turns, then turn it backwards 1 turn or so and you will hear the water flow out.  The final result should look like:

CAM00271

*Note.  The small black rubber piece that comes in the kit goes on top of the copper shark bit fitting.  It houses the metal dagger that breaks through the copper pipe and helps create a seal.