This is all very introspective, and all the advice says to abandon the idea of keeping up with the Joneses, but human nature being what it is, that’s not particularly realistic. People see what their peers have, and want the same things.

I’ve found that my bills vary a lot depending on my income. Which makes sense, since my bills are for things I decided I could afford, then decided to spend money on, and am now paying for.

Friends are barely mentioned in the article, but for me, losing contact with my friends was one of the harder shifts when becoming a new dad. I didn’t need to see a therapist, I just needed a modicum of normal human social interaction. Now I’ve done the normal dad thing where I’ve made “friends” with the other random…

Finances aren’t really discussed much in the rest of the article, so I’m guessing maybe it’s not that big an issue in this case. A lot of “freelance writers” don’t land many paid gigs, but plenty of people make a living at it.

It doesn’t really seem to make much sense to boast about the fastest average-speed lap, either, considering the differences between tracks. An oval with banked turns is gonna be a hell of a lot faster than a chicane-fest.

And don’t forget to wear your helmet when you’re in a car!

You pretty much just described Angie Tribeca.

Google for stuff that starts in Google (email, docs, photos). Dropbox for everything else. I have the cheapest paid plan on both. I thought about consolidating to a single service, but I use them both enough (in different ways) that it's not worth sweating an extra hundred bucks a year.

I went to an A’s game with my 3-year-old in April. My kid was antsy, so we moved sections every inning or so. And more than once, we had an usher kick us out for not sitting in the right section. I mean, it’s not like I was sneaking into the club seats, or something; I was just moving from one part of the half-empty…

In most cases that I’ve seen, 401(k)s have a bunch of fees, which are usually covered by the employer while you work for them, but are passed on to you when you leave. So yeah, it’s probably a good idea to roll over into an IRA or your current employer’s 401(k).

Thingsi know about Paul Walker, in roughly the order I learned them:

Man, it’s really hard to tell what’s going on in most of these clips. Seems like the NFL probably shouldn’t put refs in the last row of the upper deck in the end zone.

I wish I had a better understanding of what made homemade sauce better than sauce from a jar. Like, is it just a matter of ingredients (cheap tomatoes masked with corn syrup/sugar), or is there something inherent in the sauce that can’t survive the trip from sauce factory to my pantry? If Derrick made his sauce, stuck…

I’ve been coding a while (and as a full-time job for the better part of a decade now), and when I want to learn a new language, Codecademy is my go-to resource.

which ones, though?

Traditional: pickles

I enjoyed “Expecting Better,” by Emily Oster (an economist who actually, y’know, understands statistics and tradeoffs). She basically spends the whole book diving into the research behind every one of those “Always .../Never ...” rules for pregnancy, and in almost every case reaches the conclusion that for the most…

How is babby formed?

Some people say to use fresh-ass lime juice. Some people say to let it sit for 4+ hours after squeezing. What gives?

Changed companies last year, made this mistake this year. Oops.