Category Archives: Uncategorized

Is a college education still useful? Yes.

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One thing I’ve been hearing is the sentiment that a college education isn’t worth it. It’s often expressed by pundits who notice the state of the job market, think that an education isn’t going as far as it used to, and they assume that it isn’t worthwhile to pursue a college education. I disagree with that perception, which I suspect has done a lot of damage in recent times. A person can hear it, assume that there’s nothing in it for them to take their education any further, and they end up underemployed in spite of their intelligence.

There are numerous cases in which college graduates are working difficult, low-skill, low-pay jobs. The media notices cases like this, reports them as evidence of how the job market is doing, and pundits notice these stories in turn and they blog about what they see as one of the greatest problems with society.

Yeah, there are plenty of Starbucks employees out there with college degrees, but there’s an aspect to this matter that I think goes largely unnoticed: It matters what you go to college for, not just that you went to college.

Perhaps many book store employees and Walmart cart pushers have college degrees, but how many people are asking them what they majored in?

It’s no secret at this point that it’s much harder to find a job with a degree in English or Philosophy than with a degree in Automotive or Engineering. Automotive and Engineering degrees are in demand because they involve a person learning skills that are relevant to those hiring.

When a person graduates from college, their degree indicates that they’ve sufficiently been prepared to perform a job as a professional. In many cases, college courses are intensive, fast-paced, and intellectually-involved to the point that when a person obtains a degree, it indicates that the person takes what they went to school for seriously. There’s very little risk in hiring such a person.

However, a college degree is more useful if it indicates skills that are in demand. There are many automotive repair shops that want to hire a person with a degree in automotive technology. What is a person prepared for when they major in English or Philosophy? Not much, really. Usually, the best they can hope for is to end up teaching English or Philosophy at a university.

Should colleges be blamed for offering degrees that aren’t very useful? Not really. The colleges that offer degrees that don’t reflect in-demand skills are providing a service that customers (students) are willing to pay for. The more serious problem is that students are investing piles of money into educational choices that aren’t likely to pay out very well.

There are many reasons why they do this. Perhaps they’re going for a college degree just to say that they have one. Perhaps their parents are pressuring them to attend college, and they, out of laziness, go for something that requires little effort. Perhaps they’re simply unaware of just how few opportunities await someone with an English or Philosophy degree. Or perhaps they are aware of how difficult the job market is for one with the degrees they’re pursuing, and they’re determined to teach these subjects for a living.

One problem, I think, is that people are largely intimidated by math. People often see math as being something difficult for ordinary people to figure out, and they leave it for the people they see as smart to worry about. One of the most frequently-heard complaints about math is that it’s hard to see how the more complex-looking math would be applied in life.

But here’s the thing: if someone doesn’t use the math they learned in high school in their job, their job probably doesn’t pay very well. One thing that automotive specialists, doctors, and engineers have in common is that each of them uses some relatively advanced math nearly any day that they work. Most people would probably prefer that people in such positions be well-practiced in math. People in these trades typically get paid very well, and this is because there aren’t very many people out there that have learned the skills that they have. It’s often the math that intimidates people.

College educations can still be very much worth it, but results can vary greatly depending on what a person goes to college for. The challenging things to learn often pay off the best. Don’t allow certain people to discourage you from bettering yourself. Even a person who goes to school for English or Philosophy can succeed. It helps to be realistic when it comes to your goals.

EDC: Stuff that I carry around

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EDC

Above is a picture of a few things that I carry about from day-to-day, just about every day. This isn’t necessarily everything I carry from day-to-day, and I might decide to stop carrying a certain item or start carrying something new. From the picture above, you might see that some of these items are worn. That’s because I really do carry them around a lot.

By number:

1. Comb
Sometimes wind can mess up the hair. Having a comb on your person is convenient for doing your hair back up again.

2. Carabiner
The carabiner pictured here is not considered load-bearing, which may be a reason to trade up for one that is. However, this one functions well for what it does: it’s easy to add keyrings to it or remove them, and can even hold some of the other items on this list.

3. USB flash drive
A very handy item in this digital age, it allows one to carry files about. If a friend finds a cool picture that you think would be a neat desktop background, you can copy it to a flash drive and take it home with you. Or you can use it to take work around with you, such as class assignments if you’re a college student.

Among the things I keep on my flash drive:

  • Music
  • A copy of my resume
  • A folder with pictures
  • Sermons in MP3 format
  • School assignments
  • Some freeware games, which can come in handy if I’m bored and my own computer is not around
  • Several books in PDF format
  • Some charts which can be handy for electronics technicians
  • PDF copies of booklets produced by my church
  • And other things

By the way, my flash drive is actually a Micro SD card adapter, so the content is actually stored on an SD card, which makes the combination compatible with more electronics, such as cell phones.

4. Mini roll of Gorilla Tape
Gorilla Tape is like duct tape, but with a much stronger adhesive. I folded a paper clip so it would have a loop, and I wrapped some Gorilla Tape onto it. This configuration makes it much easier to keep it on a keychain. The Gorilla Tape pictured is the white variety, which holds up better in sunlight.

I have used it before. A young girl’s slipper broke, so I used some of it to hold it together so she could keep wearing it that day. Her older sister happens to be a woman I’m fond of, so it was nice to have the Gorilla Tape on me for that opportunity.

5. LED flashlight
Some businesses offer this kind of flashlight as a freebie, which is really nice considering how useful these things are. I’ve used this in dark places and while it was dark outside. It’s a handy item.

6. Chap Stick
Survivalists might have some uses for lip balm, but I find that this is nice to use for it’s intended purpose: to prevent dry, cracked, or sunburned or wind-burned lips.

7. Mechanical pencil, G2 gel pen, and blank cards folded in half
The mechanical pencil is a Pentel Twist-E Click, which is currently my favorite mechanical pencil. Most mechanical pencils have a small, stubby eraser that wears down quickly. The Pentel Twist-E Click has an adjustable eraser that lasts a while. The G2 gel pen looks like a red pen, but I added black ink to it. The idea was to discourage pen theft, as most people prefer black or blue pens to red ones. As for the blank cards, I find them handy for writing down things like reminders and schedules. I carried a pocket notebook around before, but the cards take up less space, and reminders written on them are more apparent.

Not pictured:
Leatherman Squirt
A nice multitool that can also fit nicely on the carabiner. However, it has a knife on it, so I decided not to take it with me to school.

Cell phone
Right now, I have an inexpensive pay-as-you-go phone. I primarily use it to make calls and send messages. It has a tendency to accidentally dial people while it’s in my pocket, and I’ve lost a lot of minutes because of this already. I often keep this phone in my dorm. However, I also have a Blackberry Torch that is not connected to a wireless network, which I sometimes use to listen to music.

Those are some of the things that I carry about day-to-day. Feel free to make suggestions in the comments section. If you’d like to share what you carry around from day-to-day, you can share in the comments, either by listing them off there or linking to your own list.

Are you Obamacare meltdown compliant?

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Public, I’m going to tell you what you already know: You didn’t choose Obamacare, people that you made the mistake of voting in charge chose it for you. While we can’t vote them out of office until the next election day, what we can do is make sure that we’re Obamacare meltdown compliant.

What does it mean to be Obamacare meltdown compliant?

As you may be aware, when you do your federal income taxes for next year, there will be a fee for those who decided that they didn’t want to touch Obamacare with a stick. This fee will apply to the enormous majority of people, as most people did not sign up for Obamacare. This fee will be something to watch out for.

This fee would come out to far less than the overall cost of participating in Obamacare, but a person should still be ready for it. That fee would be either $95 or 1% of your income, whichever is greater.

For those of us who are making $9500 or less this year, you face the challenge of somehow making $95 appear. How you do it the federal government doesn’t consider their problem. They consider it your responsibility to somehow come up with $95 on top of the razor thin margins you’ve been living off of.

For those of us who have made more than $9500 this year, the fee will be 1% of your income. Which may not sound like much, unless you are able to do simple math. If you are making $20,000 this year, think about how often you’ve had an extra $200 in your pocket that wasn’t already earmarked for paying the rent, paying bills, or buying something to eat. Unless it’s the time you got your income tax refund, it hasn’t happened. Which, because of Obamacare, may have a significant chunk taken out of it. And for 2015 income taxes, it will be much higher.

By now, you’re probably figuring out what I mean by “Obamacare meltdown”. It will be the time when poor people will come to the conclusion that Barack Obama isn’t really their friend. Many of us realized what was coming. And now, you do too.

Of course, there are likely a lot of people out there that aren’t fond of the idea of paying. I’m not sure how fond the federal government would be of coming after you if you don’t pay, but if you don’t, be ready for a battle.

What else can you do about it? Election day is coming up. To make it easy, those who are responsible for Obamacare are almost invariably democrats. Even if you aren’t fond of republicans, you likely realize that they’ll work to reverse the damage caused by about six years of democrats having their way with our government, our industry, and our money.

Are you Obamacare meltdown compliant?

My experience with a pen hack

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It seems like if you have a favorite pen, people are more likely to want to borrow it. And it’s times like that that you may feel inclined to ask, “How is it that you’re in college, and don’t have a pen on you?”

My favorite pen is a G2 gel pen with a Montblanc ink cartridge. It wasn’t my idea, I had heard about it from CrazyRussianHacker. It’s one of the hacks from this video:

And the result is a pen that’s writes really well, but is relatively inexpensive. I say relatively, because even though it takes an easy-to-find G2 pen, the ink cartridge may probably set someone back about $7 or so.

But it writes great. Gel ink often does write well, but can sometimes skip, often at the beginning of a stroke. And when you want your notes to look fine, you sometimes might feel like going over your notes again to make them more readable. The Montblanc rollerball refills usually don’t have this problem.

There is a trade-off, though. Montblanc rollerball ink is a very thin liquid that can bleed through pages, which can make it difficult to take notes on the other side of a sheet of paper. Still, the ink writes well on contact with the paper, allowing one to write for a while with little fatigue.

If you give it a try, you could end up becoming a bit of a pen snob. Personally, I don’t really want to go back to those cheap grey BIC pens that don’t write that well, and are a bit tiring to write with because you often have to press them against the paper kind of hard to get them to write a nice, solid stroke.

But maybe other people are noticing that my pen writes really well, because they seem to want to borrow it. Which isn’t a bad thing, but with a situation like that, there’s a possibility that you might not get it back, such as when it’s borrowed by a number of people who want to use a sign-in sheet. In such cases, your expensive ink cartridge could end up with a new home.

Out of curiosity, I checked Montblanc’s page to see how much one can spend on one of their rollerball pens. You can too, but I suggest you be sitting down for this. Here’s a link.

If one of those pens can set a person back hundreds of dollars, then those ink cartridges seem much more like a bargain. Even if it’s just one of the cartridges, you feel like taking measures to discourage pen theft. One such tip I’ve heard came from one of those sites that make lists, and this makes me feel a little hesitant to share it because sites that share lists are notorious for stealing from other websites, and I’d rather credit the person who originally came up with the tip.

But I think the most effective tip for discouraging pen theft is to keep your pens safe, and have some decoys for someone to take. This means that those cheap BIC pens can still serve a purpose. If someone wants to borrow a pen, let them borrow the BIC. Wouldn’t it look awkward if they specifically requested your G2 with the Montblanc cartridge? “I thought you were desperate, not picky.”

If it’s a nice pen you want, you can either buy it, or buy the cartridge and put it into a pen it fits into. But if you’re going to mooch other people’s pens, don’t be disappointed when you get the BIC.

5 Things I Learned While Being Poor

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I’ve spent nearly the entirety of my adult life with little to no money to my name. Most of the time, I barely made enough to get by. Any month that I didn’t have to worry about how I’d carefully ration out food to make the rent was a good month. Some may assume that being poor is like fighting: even if you win, there’s no prize, and you still limp away with injuries that linger for months. However, your experience is not a total loss if you come away learning an important lesson. With fighting, that lesson is to avoid doing so if you can. Being poor is much the same way, but I have managed to come away learning a few things. Things like…

#5. I’ve become better with money than banks.
A few years ago, I got my hands on my first debit card. It was sweet. It meant that I didn’t have to trek to the bank every time I had to make a withdrawal. A while later, I lost track of my spending and overdrew my account while buying lunch at work. I didn’t get my card declined, so the transaction proceeded while, myself being unaware, that five dollar salad had an extra forty dollars tacked onto it. It gets worse, I did the same thing for the next few days until I finally got a notice in the mail that my account was overdrawn. My total number of fees came out to $160. It was a disaster.

I responded by doing my budget. It was early enough in the month that I was still able to establish a strict regime designed to allow me to make the rent. I didn’t eat very well, but I managed to get by, and kept a closer eye on my checking account. I made a mistake, but I was still able to recover.

Conversely, about a month ago, JPMorgan posted a loss of about 2 billion dollars on “egregious mistakes” while trading, and expected to lose another 1 billion within the next couple quarters. Two billion is a pretty high number, I have difficulty comprehending anything in that quantity. I know that if I had that kind of money, I’d have no problems paying my utility bills for a while. In spite of the enormity of these losses, there was no shake-up in JPMorgan’s leadership, and there was no cause for their customers to be alarmed.

When you’re poor, the stakes are much higher. You can lose 1/10,000,000th of the money that JPMorgan lost, and it will impact your life for the foreseeable future, and face the possibility of not having anything to eat, or a place to live. How do I combat this? By being better with money than JPMorgan. Banks have a lot to learn from kitchen table economics. While the people who gamble with other people’s money can give in to recklessness, the general population practices more care with their money because they pretty much have to. For us, the consequences of mismanaging our money is far more dire.

#4. There are a million different ways to serve mac and cheese.
Some would have you believe that macaroni and cheese is a poor man’s food. And they would be right. I got sick of eating macaroni years ago. Once I got my income tax refund, I went to the supermarket, intent on taking home some healthy food. But when I got there, I still found myself gravitating towards the prepared foods aisle. When it came to anything that wasn’t macaroni, I had lost my imagination. And guess what I took home with me. That’s right, macaroni and cheese.

That’s when I realized something: I had developed Stockholm Syndrome. Towards a food item. I had somehow become a willing prisoner of inexpensive, high-sodium food that was easy to prepare.

You’d probably imagine that having the same thing to eat every single day would get boring, but it didn’t. What makes macaroni and cheese so great is that there’s many different ways to serve it to keep things exciting. Want some omega 3s? Mix some tuna in there. Throw some peas in there, too. That’s what’s called “hobo’s delight”.

Want something spicy in there? Sprinkle some crushed red peppers on top. Want it more vinegary? Get some Tabasco Sauce. If you like it tangy, mix in some olives. Green or black, it’s up to you. If you want it cheesier, allow a couple slices of real cheese to melt into the sauce. I’ve even served it on matzo crackers. Macaroni and cheese is truly the food where your imagination is the limit. Granted, most of the nutritional value will come from whatever you add to it, just keep that in mind when preparing it to make your macaroni really serve you. I thought I really hated macaroni, but I keep coming back. It’s cheap, easy to prepare, and only as exciting as you are.

#3. You don’t have to pay for entertainment.
Quick, what is the most valuable thing you own for entertainment? You may have answered your television set, a video game system, your own musical instrument, or what-have-you. But the most important thing you own for entertainment when you’re poor is also your most practical item; your computer.

Look at your computer for what it can do. You don’t need a DVD player, because most modern laptops come with one built in. You don’t need a video game system, because the internet gives you access to many thousands of freeware games. You don’t need a TV set, because you can simply watch YouTube, and many sites like Hulu allow you to watch shows on your own schedule, with fewer commercials than traditional broadcasting. Your computer can play music, and you can even make your own with music-making software. It’s too bad that you can’t record yourself and become an internet celebrity, except you actually can use most current laptops to record video. Have an opinion? Start your own website. If hosting fees are too high (which they can only be if you’re poor) and you don’t mind slightly limited options, you can just start a blog on a social networking site or find a free web host, which isn’t that hard. And I’m just going to stop right there. It goes on and on.

If I had more money, I’d buy more video games. But I don’t, and I can count the number of games I’ve purchased in the last six months on one finger (Cave Story 3D). But do I really have to purchase tons of expensive games? The thing about Cave Story is that I didn’t really have to pay for it anyway, it’s a PC freeware game, and enhancing the presentation only served to take away from the charm.

Yeah, the media hypes whatever first-person shooters and zombie games happen to be all the rage right this minute, but let’s get real: you don’t really need any of that.

#2. Car ownership is actually for suckers.
I can’t afford to get myself a car. And if I could, I’d instead be eating a little better (if I can overcome my macaroni addiction). So, I don’t have a car. When people hear this, they are quite surprised, saying things like, “You don’t have a car? How do you get around? Your life must be difficult.” And it is, but I don’t really need a car. If I had one, it wouldn’t really help me that much.

Here’s why: I live near the city. All of my needs are met within walking distance, and I could carry nearly anything home in a backpack. I have three supermarkets within walking distance, and there are numerous thrift and convenience stores. Once every few months, I go to the mall. When I do, I just take the bus. When you live in or near the city, owning a car is for suckers. You save a lot more money just by walking from one place to another.

And considering the expenses that come with car ownership, I’d really rather pass. Not only do I get monthly payments to the dealership to worry about, I’d have to worry about the rising costs of gas, and mandatory insurance? Considering that the 200 dollars I have to myself every month is earmarked for food, I pretty much have no choice. I don’t have a car, and for now, that’s just fine.

#1. Your survival is in the hands of dicks, and there’s nothing you can do about it.
When you’re poor, the words “survival” and “livelihood” are interchangeable. You already know that when you miss work for two days in a week, you have to make some major sacrifices. You’re only one missed paycheck away from your life changing for the worse. And nearly everything is conspiring to make it happen.

Nearly any boss and any company you work for is primarily concerned for the success of the company. You don’t really have a skill-set, so you’re easy to replace. The key to keeping your job is to become valuable to the company, which is done by working harder (which is something many younger people seem to have a problem with). This may not seem so bad, but you’ll realize pretty quick that any employer doesn’t care what happens to you, either outside of work or in the long run.

One boss I’ve worked for demonstrated this to a terrifying extreme: when he did layoffs, he would invariably list the reason for termination as “misconduct”, which legally dissolves any obligation the company would have to pay out unemployment. He was taken to court at least twice over this, but he shows no signs of stopping. It gets even worse, this places the former employee’s status as “do not rehire”, and their work history is effectively branded in a way that makes it much less likely that they’ll be hired anywhere else. A company can effectively ruin someone’s career and life, and the only mistake they ever had to make was trusting the company with it.

And it’s even worse when you have a job that involves contact with the general public. The justification for your “layoff” can easily come from any customer complaint, whether real or manufactured by the company itself. Criminal? Yes. Fraudulent? Yes. But you’re almost never in any position to fight back. And if you try, you won’t get anywhere. That’s the system for you.

Thaddeus Stevens: A Man Who Defended the Oppressed

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Pennsylvania politics is a sad arena. Recently, governor Tom Corbett announced that public education would be cut in an effort to make the budget. Among the beneficiaries of his budget includes energy companies, which have no problem making money nowadays (he has stock in them, by the way). Cutting public education would be a disastrous move; just what the future doesn’t need is more people with fewer skills, the ends of which would be a wider gap between classes.

Education is good, I say. And in light of this, it’s time for a short history lesson. Today, we’re profiling Thaddeus Stevens.

Thaddeus Stevens was also a Republican in the state of Pennsylvania, and lead Abraham Lincoln’s Republican party. In fact, he was such a noble individual, that any honest Republican today would take a good look at his behavior and the principles governing their own party, and wonder just where everything went wrong.

Thaddeus Stevens ran for the Pennsylvania House of Representatives on the Anti-Mason ticket, and was elected. Stevens possessed a dislike for Masons, who were known for their secretive nature, and for excluding on the basis of physical characteristics. Rather than place education on the chopping block, Stevens was most proud of his efforts to institute free public education. In the 1830s, education was not free, and could only be afforded by the wealthy. When a free school bill was introduced into the Pennsylvania House of Representatives, he was an ardent supporter. An effort to repeal the bill resulted in a petition that gathered 32,000 signatures, and the Pennsylvania Assembly felt pressured to repeal the bill. To Thaddeus, this was a sensitive issue. Recalling his own childhood in which he lived in poverty, and the efforts of his own mother who came to the conclusion that education was his only chance at life, he gave the following moving speech before the Pennsylvania Assembly:

“I know how large a portion of the community can scarcely feel any sympathy with, or understand the necessities of the poor; the rich appreciate the exquisite feelings which they enjoy, when they see their children receiving the boon of education, and rising in intellectual superiority above the clogs which hereditary poverty had cast upon them…

“When I reflect how apt hereditary wealth, hereditary influence, and perhaps as a consequence, hereditary pride, are to close the avenues and steel the heart against the wants and rights of the poor, I am induced to thank my Creator for having, from early life, bestowed upon me the blessing of poverty.”

The result was the Assembly voting in favor of public education by a margin of 2 to 1. Pennsylvania would provide statewide free public education an entire generation before the same was offered in New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Rhode Island, and the entire South.

Stevens was known for his radical Republicanism during the Civil War. In August 1861, he supported the Confiscation Act, the first law attacking slavery. Stevens defended and supported Indians, Seventh Day Adventists, Mormons, Jews, Chinese, and women. However, defending blacks took up most of his time. He was actively involved in the Underground Railroad, assisting as many as 16 fugitive slaves a week. Stevens even called for a complete dismantling of the confederate social structure, though his efforts were thwarted by the assassination of Lincoln.

Stevens also led the Republicans in a battle against banks, warning that a debt-based monetary system would bankrupt the people. And he called it right. After the assassination of Lincoln, the Republicans lost the battle, and a national banking monopoly later emerged.

Lincoln was succeeded by the Vice President, the openly-racist Andrew Johnson, whose 1867 message to Congress stated that blacks possess less “capacity for government than any other race of people. No independent government of any form has ever been successful in their hands. On the contrary, wherever they have been left to their own devices, they have shown a constant tendency to relapse into barbarism.” Stevens despised Johnson, and attempted to have him impeached. This measured failed by a single vote, but reduced Johnson to a mere figurehead until his acquittal by the Senate in 1868, when he was replaced by Ulysses Grant.

When Stevens died in 1968, he requested to be buried at the Shreiner-Concord Cemetery, with a headstone written by himself as follows: “I repose in this quiet and secluded spot, not from any natural preference for solitude, but finding other cemeteries limited as to race, by charter rules, I have chosen this that I might illustrate in my death the principles which I advocated though a long life, equality of man before his Creator.”

Stevens’ legislative legacy is the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments to the Constitution, which collectively serve as the basis for all civil rights legislation. In Stevens’ will, he left $50,000 to establish a school for the refuge and education of the disadvantaged. Stevens requested, “They shall be carefully educated in the various branches of English education and all industrial trades and pursuits. No preference shall be shown on account of race or color in their admission or treatment. Neither poor Germans, Irish or Mahometan, nor any others on account of race or religion of their parents, shall be excluded. They shall be fed at the same table.” The living legacy of this request is the Thaddeus Stevens College of Technology, located in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Low-income students may qualify for the Thaddeus Stevens Legacy Grant, which is designed to provide an education at no cost.

Incidentally, Governor Tom Corbett gave a speech at the 2012 commencement at Stevens Tech. I’m not sure whether he had rotten tomatoes thrown at him, though I could hardly imagine that a few in attendance, particularly the staff, were not at least considering it.

Thaddeus Stevens dreamed of a socially just world, where unearned privilege did not exist. He believed that being different and having a different perspective can enrich society. He believed that differences among people should not be feared or oppressed, but celebrated. He is truly someone from which today’s Republican party can learn a lot, as they don’t even tangentially resemble their former glory.

To learn more about Thaddeus Stevens, check out his Wikipedia page. Also, check out his bio on the Thaddeus Stevens College of Technology page.

Initial Manifesto Declaration

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This is my off-topic blog, so don’t expect it to have a lot of focus. I’ll be discussing things I like. I’ll be discussing things I don’t like (but don’t expect that to happen too often). And I’ll occasionally discuss things topical. It’s all fair game.

Things I like:

  • God
  • Anime
  • Video games
  • Spicy food
  • Women
  • Cheese
  • Beer
  • Japanese stuff
  • Coffee
  • Electricity
  • The color blue
And here is a list of things I don’t like:
  • Soda with too much ice
  • Satan
  • Bills
  • Boredom

If you have something to add, that’s what the comment section is for.

I like Tabasco.

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Here you go, the first image I uploaded to this page:

Did you know that they sold Tabasco by the gallon? Now that you do, you want it. That wasn’t a question, it’s a statement of fact. You want it.