I just read some stuff I wrote in 10th grade and I found this idea about dragon mythology. I remember feeling particularly proud of the idea back then . . . The idea still amuses me, so I thought I’d share.

The basic idea is that dragon mythology began when someone found a dinosaur fossil. If you’d never heard of a dinosaur before and you stumbled upon a 25 foot long T-Rex fossil with 6 inch teeth, how would you explain it? And Pterodactyls had wing spans of up to 40 feet. In an unscientific world, I think a Dragon is a reasonable explanation.

I just visited a web site that had a pop-up window display when the page loaded. The pop-up window informed me that I needed to enable pop-ups to use their site . . .

Um, a pop-up window might not be the best place to notify users that they need to enable pop-ups.

Have you ever had your blood pressure taken or heard a nurse say something like “100 over 40″ (I don’t actually know if that’s a good blood pressure or not . . . someone with 100/40 blood pressure might be dead for all I know)?

I propose that we begin a Budget Pressure system. This would be a simple and quick way to assess financial health. The basic ideas is that there are two key pieces of financial information that reveal how well a person handles their money.

Here’s the equation:
Consumer Debt / Percentage of your take-home pay you’re saving per month.

Consumer Debt is credit card debt, car loan debt, or rent-to-own stuff debt. Basically, it’s how much money you’ve borrowed to buy things you don’t really need, or things you could get by with a lower-quality product (like a cheaper car).

I searched the web and here is the average American’s Budget Pressure:

$20,000 / 1%

So, the average American is $20,000 in debt and only saves 1% of their monthly take-home pay.

Here’s our Federal Government’s Budget Pressure:

9.6 Trillion / -12.5%

So, our Federal Government is 9.6 Trillion in debt and is spending 12.5% more than it takes in each year (Yearly budget divided by budget deficit: 4 trillion / 600 billion = 0.125 = 12.5%)

Is anyone really surprised by the recession? Granted, I don’t believe it’s appropriate for the government to constantly save money, because it’s not theirs to save it’s mine, but I’d be okay with an emergency fund of some kind.

Here is what I would consider a healthy Budget Pressure
0/10%

Here’s my family budget pressure: 0/5%

What’s yours?

. . . the Chrome icon kind of looks like the old Simon Says game

To protect reputations, I will not be using any names.

Two months ago, we moved out of our old apartment into our new home.

We left the apartment in good condition, so we’ve been waiting for them to return our deposit check of about $600. After two months with no word from them, I started preparing myself mentally to go talk to them (I don’t like confrontations, and avoid them whenever possible).

My wife and I agreed Monday was their deadline. Monday’s mail came, and we got a little surprise from our old landlords.

Now, I know we gave them our new address at least twice. I wrote it down for them when I told them we were moving out, and I watched them write it down on the day we actually left.

But, when we got the check in the mail, the envelope had gone through the Post Offices’ mail-forwarding system. Why? Because my old landlords had mailed the return-deposit check to our old address at their apartment complex.