Dennis Sherman

I’m astonished at what I’m hearing today, one day after analog television broadcasting stopped in the United States. There are people who managed to be surprised by this? How???? If you watch television at all, you must have seen or heard an announcement sometime in the last several months, after the last try at switching to digital broadcasts. I absolutely can’t comprehend how hundreds of thousands of people could be taken unaware, and they’re calling the television stations to ask what’s wrong with their signal!

In March 2009, I took a trip to Israel for both work and vacation. The first week was spent working, at company headquarters in Jerusalem and then speaking at a conference in Tel Aviv. Then Laurie joined me, and we spent a week on holiday. We spent several days in Tel Aviv, and the rest of the time in Jerusalem, with a day trip to Masada and the Dead Sea.

It was a really good vacation trip, with all kinds of interesting things to see. We haven’t scratched the surface yet, we’ll have to make another trip some day.

Photos can be found on Flickr. I’m hoping I keep up my interest in posting here, and write an entry to go with each set. But just in case we have another lag in posting, here are direct links to the various photo sets.

Group Tour of Jerusalem, organized by the conference: http://www.flickr.com/photos/drs1956/sets/72157616598576041/

Photos of Tel Aviv: http://www.flickr.com/photos/drs1956/sets/72157616783158450/

Walking the walls of the Old City of Jerusalem: http://www.flickr.com/photos/drs1956/sets/72157617273713481/

Zedekiah’s Cave: http://www.flickr.com/photos/drs1956/sets/72157617403459659/

Tour to Masada and the Dead Sea: http://www.flickr.com/photos/drs1956/sets/72157617496227776/

The Temple Mount: http://www.flickr.com/photos/drs1956/sets/72157617497305590/

Emek HaMatsleva – Rehavia Park and the Israel Museum: http://www.flickr.com/photos/drs1956/sets/72157617664524538/

Archeology in Jerusalem: http://www.flickr.com/photos/drs1956/sets/72157618832522154/

Laurie’s photos of Tel Aviv and Jaffa: http://www.flickr.com/photos/drs1956/sets/72157617665413360/

Laurie’s photos of Jerusalem (mostly from the group tour, more later maybe): http://www.flickr.com/photos/drs1956/sets/72157617576247711/

Breckenridge Elkins is a “tall tale” character, written by Robert E. Howard.  That’s the same Robert E. Howard that wrote the Conan the Barbarian stories, although these are quite different.  Breckinridge is the biggest man in Bear Creek, and is one of those people that things just happen to… Howard wrote these stories in a mountain man dialect, and with a deadpan sense of humor which appeals to me.

I ran across these stories via LibriVox, a source of free audio books.  There are two volumes available: Bear Creek Collection, Vol. 1 and Bear Creek Collection, Vol. 2, both read by RK Wilcox.  He does a wonderful job reading these stories, flowing through the written dialect easily, and changing voices to match each character.  I can easily imagine him “jest sittin’ on the porch and tellin’ tales” about Breck Elkins as if they were his own, he is so comfortable with the material.

I’ve been listening to these stories while walking the dog, with a little car listening too.  The stories vary in length from about 30 to about 45 minutes at “normal” speed.   There’s almost 13 hours of tale tellin’ here, and very enjoyable hours they are.   Highly recommended.

I find that tax season is always a good reminder to do a financial review.  If you read financial planning information at all, you’ll find that everyone recommends that you build up a cash reserve and keep it somewhere safe.  The definition of how much to keep, and where to keep it varies.

In my case, I want to keep 6 months of expenses in cash reserve, distributed this way:

• 1 month expenses reserved in my checking account (over and above current expected expenses)
• 2 months expenses reserved in a savings account
• 3 months expenses in CDs

So if I know I spend $3000 a month, I’ll want $3000-$6000 in checking, $6000 in savings, and $9000 in CDs.

I use a checking account which pays at least a little interest and no service charge.

I currently have most of my savings in an online bank savings account, which is paying better than average interest.

I keep the CD funds in 6 month CDs, with offset expiration dates, so every month a CD renews, with each CD renewing twice yearly.  If I should need this reserve, I’ll almost certainly be able to wait until the natural termination of the CD, and simply stop the renewal.  That will save me the interest penalty for early termination.

I reinvest all interest automatically, which will at least help account for inflation, and help keep my reserves updated.

I’ve got the first draft of our 2008 US income taxes done. I think this is as early as I’ve ever done it, and it seemed easier than it has been in the past. I looked at the systems I’ve got in place, and see some things I’ve done over the years that add up to making it easier.

First, I track finances in Quicken, and file taxes with TurboTax. They interact well together (they should, both coming from Intuit), and over the years I’ve adjusted how I have Quicken configured to make my life as easy as possible.  TurboTax gets easier and easier to use, too.

Second, I know what kinds of things we do that have tax impact, and I make notes and collect receipts throughout the year. I’ve got a folder labeled “Taxes 2008” that had relevant receipts and notes dropped in it all year long. I’ve already got “Taxes 2009” started.

And third, I’ve learned what parts of the tax forms I really can ignore, knowing that they aren’t going to have an impact on us.  I don’t bother adding medical expenses, for example, because I know they aren’t going to come close to the level needed to be able to deduct them.

Nothing earth shaking, but having reliable systems in place and using them makes it all easier in the end.

Now if only we’d have some meaningful tax reform from Congress, that didn’t amount to letting the fat cats pay less.  My suggestion: require all members of Congress to file their own taxes, by hand, on paper, with no electronic support other than a calculator.  No accountants or consultants permitted.  And with a hard deadline a month earlier than the rest of us. Everything else would sort itself out.

It’s January, time for all good “January Joiners” to re-up at the gym, and start in on that resolution to lose weight and exercise more.

This is one way to create a workout log that’s easy to keep in your pocket when you go to the gym.  Logging your workout will help you track your progress. I also find that having a written workout plan, with the details of each exercise listed, is a great help to getting through a workout efficiently.

The original idea came from a Lifehacker posting at
http://lifehacker.com/369766/track-travel-and-workouts-with-a-pocketmod.  This is how I implemented it.

Step 1: Create your Plan

Using any word processor or text editing tool, create an 8 page document
with your workout plan.  Here is a workoutplan template for one possible format, adjust as you like.  Just remember that this 8 page document is going to be printed on a single piece of paper, so keep your font choices large enough to read.

Step 2: Save as PDF

Save your file as a PDF document.  If your word processor doesn’t have
that ability built in, install a “Print to PDF” tool.  Google “free pdf” and select one of many.

Step 3: Convert PDF to PocketMod

Download and install PDFtoPocketmod from
http://www.pocketmod.com/files/PDFtoPocketmod.exe.  Run the program, and open the PDF file you created in step 2. Select “Save as PocketMod”
to create the one page document you’ll be folding.  Be aware that this
is currently beta software, and a little flaky.  I sometimes have to
tell it to save twice before it works, and it seems to be better if
I have the cursor on the “Save as type” dropdown when I select “Save”.

Step 4: Print and fold

Print the page you created in step 3, and follow the instructions at
http://www.pocketmod.com/howto/
to fold into a booklet.

Enjoy your workout!

We recently took a long weekend vacation trip from Chicago to the Rio Grande Valley in Texas.  (Yes, in part to escape the Chicago winter for a short while.)  We had an experience that proved yet again the validity of the advice to avoid checking bags if at all possible.  One of the podcasts I listen to (Manager-Tools, find them in the blogroll) goes so far as to say never check bags on business travel.  They’re right.

Our flight left Chicago on time, and arrived at Houston Hobby a bit early.  I got off the plane, found the flight listings, and discovered that our connecting flight in an hour had been cancelled.  But the earlier flight was still boarding!  Could we make it?

The gate was in sight, so we trotted on over pulling our rollaboard bags after us, and asked the attendant taking boarding passes.  He directed us to another gate with an agent at the desk.  Trot, trot, trot… and there’s a woman there doing the same boarding pass trade we want to do, and worrying about whether her bags will make it with her.

She finished and we traded boarding passes in for the new flight.  Trot, trot, trot back to the gate, hand over the still warm boarding passes, and on down the jetway we went.  Total elapsed time in the terminal, less than 6 minutes.  And no worries about our bags getting to the airport with us, because we had them in hand all the time.

Next question: can I possibly do a two week mixed business and vacation trip to a foreign country, with only a rollaboard bag and laptop case?  Stay tuned to find out!

It’s really nice to live on a block with good neighbors.  We’re in the midst of what is going to be several days of more or less continuous snow in Chicago, and I’m seeing some real neighborliness in action.

I came home from work last night, and found the snow that came down during the day had been cleared from my front sidewalk.  It turns out the guy two houses down got a new snowblower, and was enjoying using it.  And the neighbor on the corner across the alley had cleared most of the alley that I ususally do, before I got home.

Of course, another four inches 0r so came down overnight, so we were all out again this morning.   Half my front walk was cleared before I got there by Two-Houses-Down.  The bit of walk between sidewalk and street was done by Next-Door, on his way across the street to help blow the snow there.  Across-The-Alley cleared what I hadn’t gotten done while I was around front on our house.  Which I discovered when I did Next-Door-On-The-Corner’s walk, as I went around the corner from our front to the alley to finish up and put the snowblower away.

We’ve got more snow on the way — still coming down in fact, and we’ll all be out again this afternoon, I’m sure.  Helping each other out, little rays of sunshine in the Chicago winter.

Starting a blog at the beginning of a calendar year, it seems like the thing to do is talk about what I’m up to here.   Why am I doing this?  Primarily to improve my writing by doing it a lot.  And I find I have things to say that might be of interest to a wider audience than my friends or co-workers.

All the personal productivity gurus seem to say that goal setting is the path toward high achievement.  I’ve never been good at setting explicit goals,  but I’m willing to try something new.

So one of my goals for 2009 is to post some content here at least once a week.  “Content” means a posting of at least 100 words of original content, not just a link to something I find of interest.  I expect to hit a variety of topics, including all the categories over there in the sidebar.    Averaging over the year won’t count — 52 postings by the end of January isn’t the same thing as posting weekly.  I may occasionally slide early or late, but I’ll make note of it when I do.

And we’re off…

Unoriginal name, I know, but something had to be first.  Mostly a placeholder with no real content, used for setup purposes.  And some testing.