Quick Hits

I'm feeling refreshed today, readers. The missus and I just took a little trip to Tucson, and as usual we have fallen in love with the city. We had a free hotel night certificate (thanks to the Marriot card) that was expiring and figured, what the hey. Let's leave the dogs with a friend and hit the road. The hotel room was nice, the city was fun, and the drinks were cheap. What else does a young couple in love need?

Rather than a single topic today, let's cover a few bite-size ideas that I like, but don't deserve their own blog post.

Power of the Baseline

We have dirt cheap cell phone service: $5 or $10 a month, per phone, on a pay-as-you-go plan. We use basic Android phones through PTel, a T-Mobile "MVNO" (a kind of subcontractor who provides cell phone services, but does not actually own the network). How do we keep costs so low? We primarily use free options to call and text (Google Voice for free texts and free calls in Gmail) when we're by our computers or in wifi. Which is all the time. We learned about this stuff from IP Daley, the guru of all things telecom, who we met on Mr. Money Mustache's forums.

House Lust

I want this house.

I owe you all an apology. I've once again fallen off the radar, both from writing on this blog and from reading yours. There are a lot of little reasons. For one, as I work from home, I've moved my laptop to the living room as my computer is a constant distraction during work hours. This is good for my career but, admittedly, not so good for reading or writing blogs from nine to five. As often happens with habit change, there are unintended consequences (i.e. - I don't use my laptop very much in the evenings). I've also been studying for a professional certification, with the first out of three tests now completed. The tests are proving harder than I thought they'd be. But my biggest time bandit has been house lust.