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7-10 Split

Town open to care facility on mansion site

"I've decided to split the baby," said Marvin Michelman, the board member who made the motion. "My resolution … would be to deny the application and then to approve a substantive change to it if the applicant wishes to proceed."

Mr. Michelman is saying that he is deciding to compromise, meaning neither party wins or loses.

But "split the baby"? Really? That's a catch phrase? I get the reference, it's just a rather graphic metaphor.

I'll just charge it

I asked some friends about their credit card habits recently. A few don't use their credit cards very often, but several seem to use them for a significant portion of their purchases. Below are a sampling of responses:

I do all my bill paying via credit card. Most of my shopping is on card. Just about the only time I use cash is for gas (5-10 cents cheaper) or for small meals/snacks/coffees.

I am a big credit junkie as well. It increases your buying power and falsifies your financial standing amongst peers … NEXT DRINK ON ME!!!!!

I barely use my debit card, pretty much only to take out cash. I use my credit card for just about everything.

I feel like it hurts less when you spend a lot of money on credit card. Plus you get the benefit of gaining points/mileage depending on what card you have.

Debit doesn't give you fraud protection. My debit card only ever gets swiped at the ATM.

Currently all of my bills except for rent go through the credit card. I would put rent on it too but they only take check. Also all my expenses expect maybe like $40 a week in cash are on credit. I've accumulated 2 free tickets to anywhere in the US so far. I'm spending that money anyway. I might as well get points for it. And this way I don't have to pay the bills out of my pocket until I get paid.

Yes, almost all purchases get put on credit card just because it's easier. Also, I keep track of all my monthly credit card purchases to keep tabs on how much I've spent each month for the past couple years.

For me, it's my main, and preferred, form of payment for purchases over $10. I don't have to worry about carrying enough cash. I'm protected against loss/theft. And it's easy to download the data to keep track of my expenses.

I do spent a lot of cash, though. I'm typically at the ATM once a week. This really bothers me when it comes time to balance my check book at the end of the month. I can see every credit card purchase, which constitutes a large portion of my spending. My debit card pays my college loans, my rent via check, and it pays off my credit card. But it also lists lots of ATM transactions. And that money just disappears into the ether. I can't track it.

So when I look back at my last X months of spending in Microsoft Money, there's this big slice of the pie chart labeled "Cash." I keep receipts religiously. I've probably still got a receipt for a donut from 2005 filed away. But it's too much work to enter those all into the computer. I just save them unless I need to return something, or prove I bought that donut.

This theme runs through many of the comments I listed earlier. Managing finances is easier. People also like rewards points. Though rewards points are useless if you are not paying off your card in full every month. 1% rewards are clearly outweighed by a 15% interest rate.

Although I am nickel-and-dime-ing local businesses by putting more of their profit into the wallets of fat cats down in Wall Street. There's typically a small variable fee (1-5%) of the purchase price paid to the credit card company when I pay using my card at a local merchant. This means that the local merchant gets 1-5% less profit, because they need to pass that money onto the Big Company. And that sucks. I should be giving the money to the local business. They actually have a vested interest in the community. So that's my one real hangup about using my credit card so much.

Overhead at Thanksgiving dinner...

Armenian is the only language where the phrase "You should be ashamed of yourself" can be said in a single word: amoteh.

(Not completely accurate, but amusing)

Pennies From Heaven

Sarah Palin, Out of the Closet

I know this is way old and no longer a hot-button issue, but...

According to Sarah Palin, her favorite clothing store is a consignment shop called "Out of the Closet" in Anchorage, Alaska. I think it's awesome that the conservative Republican (former) Vice Presidential nominee's favorite store is a double entendre for
1) where the clothing came from
2) a thinly veiled pro-homosexual reference

College Boy

College names can be confusing. This was a serious issue in high school when I was applying to colleges. How do you narrow down the field from the thousands of schools (in the U.S. alone) to a short list? I applied to 7 schools, all told.

This issue came up today, because if you put "Boston College" into the search box on Google Maps, all of the links point you to Boston University. Though Google's Web Search gets it right.

I decided that 'college' meant the school only had an undergraduate program, while 'university' meant it also had a graduate (Masters, PhD, or MD) program. If you buy that, then please explain to me what a 'university college' provides.

Anyway, I guess I heard people talking about the University of Maryland in positive terms. So I decided to apply. I looked up the school and got an application from University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC). I did so without realizing that most people that were talking about the University of Maryland were probably talking about the one in College Park (UMD).

I applied to UMBC and actually got accepted and offered a full scholarship! Deciding it was time to visit the campus, I made arrangements and printed out directions for my parents. But I got re-confused, and took us to visit UMD.

So now I'd visited the school I meant to apply to, and applied to the school I didn't visit.

So what did I do? I went to Carnegie Mellon.

Occiptital Coagulating Duodenum

I made some chocolate chip cookies earlier. The recipe says 45 minutes of prep time. But they don't include the 1 hour you spend cleaning and reorganizing the spice/baking pantry because everything is a mess and you can never find anything and there are three separate containers of light brown sugar in there.

B and E

If you want to break into a campus building, but aren't sure if the doors will be open, and for some reason you don't want to be seen unsuccessfully trying, just call the career center. Tell them you're doing an on-campus information session about your company and it's scheduled in that building after business hours. You'd like to know if the building/room is unlocked.

You may be surprised by how up front the staff will be about what rooms/buildings aren't typically locked.

I had a legitimate concern when this came up.

Am I doing the 'nose thing'?

I was reading some old blog posts by friends. It's a bad idea. It just made me upset to see some things that I'd either already dealt with and forgot about, or would have been better off not reading. I wonder sometimes about the choices I make, and the choices I defer.

The semester has started again. Things are about to get busy.