more studying

I’ve had a head cold the last few days.  It’s hard to concentrate on anything until well after the sun has come up.  I guess I’m saying that to say my attempts at studying haven’t been very good the last few days, and my desire to study at all is minimal.  Being sick and trying to study is a really horrendous feeling.  It’s like the brain won’t concentrate on anything other than the slime in your throat and the coughing of lung goo.

In studying Mega Memory by Kevin Trudeau, I find the part I’m worst at is concentration.  Concentration is a game of making pictures into words, and is a vital part to remembering names.  Names aren’t something I’m generally interested in remembering, but that is just another technique.  The big thing is building concentration puzzles for names will also work for technical terms, and I always have a desire to remember technical terms.  And if you can do it for a person’s name you met five minutes ago, then you can do the same thing for a technical term you want to remember. 

There’s another method he discusses for remembering what you have read in a text book.  The technique is simple: while you are reading, imagine yourself teaching someone the information.  Anything that walks through your real eyes walks right out of the mouth to your imaginary classroom.  Once again, this is a technique I wish I had been taught years ago.  I can’t speak to efficacy at the moment, but what I remembered before was pathetic in comparison to what I remember now.  I still have my moments, but this seems to be helping. 

As another side note, I used the techniques on Wednesday and actually remembered to do everything on my list without writing anything down.  To get the entire list to stick, I spent twenty minutes out of my day.  But the confidence of remembering the list was amazing. 

slowing through Quicken. And Excel.

I love Excel.  Really, I do.  Better than any budget software, it can easily validate thoughts and ideas, and give a long term road map to where you want to go.  Sitting down with that road map, you can plan for the future and dream like no tomorrow.

I use Quicken 2011 as well, but that doesn’t really give the frame work to plan or just throw stuff out.  Parts of Quicken are really good, and parts of it just suck.  But that’s okay.  I think the problem is there is an absolute depth to Quicken that is only discoverable through years and years of work, and there doesn’t seem to be any decent way to learn it all. 

I find it annoying when I run a program, and find a chart that is really, really good.  And I have no idea where I am or how to get back to that chart.  I don’t like the nags in the program, either.  I’ve never had any decent success with automatically syncing bank accounts.  The last time I tried, it randomly created a 2^nd bank account and ignored the one I had manually created.  So I quit trying to sync accounts.  But the program keeps harassing me and asking me to go back and “Why don’t you sync this account?” And I sometimes answer “Because that never works, you piece of junk.  Now quit asking me”.

I also dislike data entry on the thing.  I realize I spend a lot of time at convenience stores.  I work for one.  But Quicken should realize that a deposit from the company is NOT going to be an expense category.  But that happens every time.  The system constantly thinks net salary is groceries:snacks.  One is an expense, the other is income.  Come on, system.  Figure it out.  It’s not that hard. 

Also, on the planning section, only should the items that are due this month.  I may set something up to reoccur every month for the next six years, but that doesn’t need to show up in my monthly budget and cause me havoc.  The more I fight with the spending planner, the less I use it.  It’s much easier to use Excel because it is both more flexible and user friendly. 

Status Update

Slightly busy the last few days.  Ok, so slightly is far beyond what was going on. The beta software still isn’t working, and I’m thinking I’ve pointed out something the software developers didn’t notice.  But then now is time to go back and figure out how to make the software work.  Which is a giant pain.  Especially since I have no idea if what I’m trying is going to work.

On top of that, we’ve got two sites that need built.  One is going fairly well, while the other hasn’t even been started.  I should finish up the first on Monday, so long as I figure out what is going wrong with the system.  Some of the complex stuff is fixed, I just have to deal with some minor (but critical) problems.  It is interesting because this is the first site where we’ve used this specific configuration.

Interesting thing about this configuration is that I’m now pushed farther back in the chain of equipment, giving me more responsibility that ever before.  So this has been a learning experience to say the least. 

On the plus side, I’m no longer on salary as of today, so when I put in 60 hours to get these sites up and running, I’ll get paid for that time.  Based off what I’ve been averaging, that’s about 15 hours of overtime every week.  Money, money, money.

And I think that points out the main part of everything I’ve been saying.  If you work while you are at work, and work like a maniac, and be the best that you can be, good things will happen.  You will earn yourself a better position that pays more money and solves your problems faster.  But you have to put the work in ahead of time, when you think it doesn’t mean anything.

Beta software

So we’re doing a Beta on some software.  It’s a pretty good thing, though I’m pretty sure I broke it.  See, the software is supposed to handle credit card information and I spent a good two hours last night trying to get the software to understand which credit card network it was processing through.  Except the programmers removed all that.  Very intelligent of them.

Luckily, I cancelled the install yesterday.  Can’t have software that doesn’t take credit cards.  And the funny thing is, if I had gone through with the upgrade, I would have been delayed by a good hour because the servers were being upgraded and nobody said a word.  Absolutely lovely.  I mean, that’s the hallmark of good communication right there. 

I guess dealing with bad software makes me cranky.  To me, it seems like people should get their act together and test the software better.  Or companies should indicate when things are being upgraded so possible conflicts don’t arise.  I wonder: is it like this at all companies?  Probably not.  But then not all companies work like this one.

An Overview

So, I’m not on call this week, so we’ll see how updates go.  Read day two of Mega Memory.  I have to say following the book and doing the exercises so far seems to be helping.  Is it a dramatic improvement?  Not yet.  But right now, I am in the baby steps.

Speaking of time poverty, this is the first weekend we haven’t had to go to the Laundromat to wash clothes.  As such, we’ve washed more clothes and got more done today than we have in a while.  I might actually get my wish of staying home one day of the weekend because we don’t have to go anywhere.  I generally exempt church, but we didn’t go this week because my daughter is currently sick.  Last thing I want is to get everyone else at church sick.  I know I’ve been rather annoyed at parents who bring sick kids to church.  But I digress.

The real reason I missed doing my studying Friday morning was that I needed to make sure my budget was in place for this week, and that generally takes a bit of time.  So I spent Friday morning making sure everything was where it should be for the coming week.  It takes time to plot out the budget for a week, but it is well worth it.

I’ve been paying off one of my student loans, and I finished it off this week.  I have never consolidated my student loans, so I may have $18,000 in student loans, but it’s broken into smaller chunks that can be paid on separately.  So I checked Friday morning and found the one I most paid off had .46 cents left on it.  So yay!  One student loan paid off.  The next debt I’ve estimated to pay off in 9 more weeks, so that will be a grand total of $30 per month saved between the two debts.  And that’s $30 per month thrown on top of the next smallest debt.  And eventually, the snow ball will roll. 

Strangely, after examining the Mega Mind book, I now have a mental image of a giant snow ball, rolling down the hill.  On top the snow ball is a cowboy, hooting and hollering and whipping the snow ball, trying to get it to go faster.  Humorous.