Swamped

Oops, looks like I missed my Thursday post by a few hours... damn. I was really hoping to keep up with the post-a-day level of blogging, but it looks like I've failed within the first week, haha.

That being said, the reason I didn't get a chance to do it is because I've been crazy busy lately, with both work and just trying to keep up with life. The fact that I work at a startup, as rewarding as it is, means I don't really have too much time for much else. If I'm not spending time with my girlfriend (or rarely, friends), then I'm working. Juggling just those two alone takes up 110% of my time. Then throw in family, more work, friends, even more work, and tracking my finances (including investments and research) and you can see why I always look like I have bags under my eyes. (it's because i do) Starbucks decaf grande skinny vanilla latte FTW! ;)

Slight digression... we had a guy come in for a second-round interview today that we unfortunately had to reject for employment. It's always sad to see someone with a great personality and almost-child-like enthusiasm get turned down because they weren't the perfect fit. I kind of wish everyone was qualified and you could simply pick the nicest and friendliest people to join your team. Too bad life doesn't work that way, and usually only the smartest (and often meanest) or most cutthroat people make the grade. There's got to be a better way...

~hhh.cubed ^_^

P.S. I wish I had a forum on this site...

P.S.S. I think cruising in my S2000 tomorrow will cheer me up a bit, or at least I hope...

I Hate Cats

...well, no, not really, but sometimes my frustration levels go through the roof. My roommate's cat peed (...how does one spell 'peed'? is it even a real word? obviously i'm not entirely familiar with it because it's not something i use daily in my vocabulary ;) now back on with our regularly, scheduled program...) on the carpet again, plus she also puked at the foot of the stairs. ARGH.

My friend sent me this comic while I was ranting and raving so I thought I'd share it with all of y'all. Props go to "The Perry Bible Fellowship" (whatever that site is).



Enjoy!

~hhh.cubed ^_^

AdSense

W00t! I made a whopping $0.97 yesterday, hahaha. I think there is potential for this, although my lack of ability as a writer will probably be the highest impedance towards making any dinero. It will be pathetic when I get an end-of-year tax statement from Google saying "Your total earnings for 2008 were: $0.97"... h4w

On a related note, I finally got a fund transfer _initiated_ in Prosper.com just now. It will take up to MONDAY to start being able to use it, ugh. I see now why people have been complaining that fund transfers take a while, so you definitely want to have money queued up and ready to go. Also, in the last few days I've been playing with it and Prosper.com seems like it definitely takes some time to find worthy candidates. I've primarily been sticking with low DTI, AA-rated people with housing and verified bank accounts (i.e. people with means who are just trying to get in the black and want a slightly better rate), but the number of people like that are loooooooow, so I may have to diversify into the whole "prime-select" category (i.e. < 40% DTI, AA-rated, 0 delinquencies on accounts). And there's nooooo way in hell I'm going to use 'standing orders' (auto-bidding based on your custom-defined rule-set). I find looking at actual profiles helps in a big way. Also, from what I've heard, avoid borrowers looking for help with medical expenses and entrepreneurs. Despite even an AA rating, there's a lot more inherent risk (for obvious reasons).

I think probably the BIGGEST advantage to Prosper.com is helping out someone you personally know (that you can trust!) who has means to help themselves get out of debt. I have a friend who has means and is slowly climbing out of debt, but he could do it a lot faster with both Propser.com and my help, and I can trust him -- it's a win-win situation in this case, and Propser.com makes it easy for me to help him since they handle all the hard/dirty work. I can even comment on his profile and give recommendations to entice others to help out and give him a better rate -- not bad!

I'll have more updates about Propser.com come Monday, once I actually start being able to use it. Be sure to check back before then!

~hhh.cubed ^_^

Oops!

Wow, I accidentally killed my blog when I posted code from AdSense into a HTML/Javascript Blogger box (okay, I'm a whore). I've since fixed it, although I now have no idea whether or not everything is working (i.e. whether or not I'm getting PAIIIIIIID), so we'll see. I did find it funny that one of my ads was "Asian American Blog" based on the very limited context of what's on this site already, haha.

Also, I've started looking for people on Prosper.com and it seems like a pretty sweet system. Granted, the amount of people with AA ratings and a verified bank account and are home owners is like < 10, but I'm hopeful... We'll see how well it works once I get the bank account link actually working, grrr... (could be faster but there's no WAY I'm giving them login access to my bank account, haha)

~hhh.cubed ^_^

Back from the dead...

Well, I decided it was time to revive this blog, even though I am probably going to start hosting my own soon (<3 Apple iWeb). The more links the better! Plus, I decided to add a link to a cool blog I just found (Tired but happy) which discusses some of the pros and cons of Prosper.com, which I'm thinking of trying out. 10% returns (albeit at a significantly higher risk factor) sounds too deliciously tempting right now with the market as it is to keep ignoring social, community lending sites (there's also Zopa). What can I say, I'm a sucker for watching my net worth grow year-by-year. ;)

~hhh.cubed ^_^

I got a new car!!!

I finally got a new car! My ol' Heather Mist 1999 Honda Accord is pretty much done for: A/C broke 3x, radiator broke, windshield wiper broke, and the catalytic converter broke. My car overheated 1 mile from home one day and I just said "screw it!!!" and started my search for real.

...and here it is!! Enjoy!



~hhh.cubed ^_^

Goodbye Gentoo, Hello Ubuntu!

Farewell Gentoo...!!! It's been a long, fun 4 years, huh? We've had our ups and downs and fair-share of emotional trauma. Your emerge system was one of the best, but your library dependency problems and compilation errors made us not work out in the end. Oh, and let's not forget the time required to recover to a functional state when bad things happened (which was a lot). I guess we just weren't meant for each other. But I guess it's a good thing that we didn't find that out down the road, when the stakes were much, much higher.

Goodbye Gentoo... Goodbye, farewell, and good luck...


HELLO UBUNTU...!!! The younger, cuter sister to Debian, with your oh-so-tempting apt-get wrapper to your elegant dpkg package management system, and your sexy 6.06 LTS server edition and not 2 or 3 or 4, but _FIVE_ year support...! Wahoooooo!!!!!!!! Oh and let's not forget your bleeding-edge package repositories and enterprise-level support! Oh, how can I say no! YOWZA!!!

^^;;;;;;

~hhh.cubed

P.S. Oh, and *drool*: