2014 in review

I haven’t blogged much in the past year. 2014 started out by getting laid off from a job I liked (but a commute I hated). I uprooted my tidy life and headed off into the great unknown, arriving in Phoenix just in time for the legendary summer season. (The heat wasn’t as bad as I had expected, but the hurricane-induced flooding was inconvenient. My sources tell me that was a once every hundred years occurrence, so I figure I’m good to go.)

I went on vacation with some friends this summer to Bryce Canyon, which was a bright spot to an otherwise very hard year. It took me months to find a job, which was demoralizing. When I did finally land a job, it was only a temp gig. I was fortunate that it kept getting extended, and I’ve made some good contacts to help me out with my continuing quest for a more permanent job.

I got a new cat, Obsidian. Her previous owners couldn’t keep her, and I took her in to rescue her from going to the shelter. Ebony isn’t too thrilled, but they’ve moved from swatting and hissing to just the occasional growl. Every now and then, when they think I’m not looking, they’ll even groom each other. I’m going to try to be better about documenting 2015, but no guarantees.

The Great Outdoors

This past weekend, I took a trip to Bryce Canyon with a few of my friends. It was a nice trip out of town - good food, good company, good hiking. It had been a really long time since I had gone to a national park. I used to be very outdoorsy; I was a Girl Scout for 11 years. But since adulthood and all the responsibilities that go along with it, I haven't had much of a chance to experience the great outdoors.

I googled and found out that there are 59 US national parks. I've only been to 9 of them (I've also been to 4 Canadian national parks), and embarrassingly, I've never been to Yosemite despite having lived most of my life in California.

I think I'm going to make it a point to travel to a few more of them. When I was driving through the forest, there were signs reminding me that these are "your public lands". So, I'm going to explore my land!

I'm fortunate to live in the southwest, where there are tons of nearby parks. On my short list to visit are:

• Arches
• Carlsbad Caverns
• Grand Canyon
• Joshua Tree
• Saguaro
• Petrified Forest
• Yosemite

My slightly longer list includes Haleakala, Hawaii Volcanoes, and Denali, but they're not exactly road trip parks and will have to wait until I'm not broke.

The ones I've already seen are:

US

• Bryce Canyon
• Crater Lake
• Death Valley
• Glacier (this is the US half of Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park, located on the Montana/Alberta border)
• Mount Rainier
• Olympic
• Redwood
• Yellowstone
• Zion

Canada

• Banff
• Glacier (this park is located in British Columbia and is unrelated to Waterton-Glacier)
• Jasper
• Waterton Lakes (this is the Canada half of Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park)

I think overall, my favorite US park is Crater Lake, but Yellowstone and Bryce Canyon come in at a close second. Glacier was nice, but it snowed when I visited (in July!), and I don't like snow.

My favorite Canadian park is Banff, though I liked Jasper as well. Banff has the distinguishing feature of animals that walk through town like they own the place, and also the advantage of not having snow on the ground in July. (The other three were snowy and cold even in the summer. That's Canada, eh?)

Money Saving Mondays – Television

Welcome to the second installment of Money Saving Mondays!

Who wants to pay $100+ for 8 bazillion channels with nothing on? Not me! There are a lot of websites out there about the practice of “cord cutting” (free or low-cost legal alternatives to cable).

To make this work really well, you’ll need a high speed internet connection. The internet companies will probably try to sell you on a fancy expensive 5 megabit per second plan, but I get along just fine on a 1 megabit per second plan. I used to have a 756 kilobit per second plan, and that was a bit slow, but it was for two people often trying to stream at the same time. It should be fine for one person. Also beware of data caps from your ISP. My plan allows 50 GB per month, which is good enough for a single light user like me, but if you watch a lot of internet based tv and movies, you’ll need a higher data allowance. An hour long tv show is usually 400 MB at standard definition. A full-length movie in high definition can run in the 2-4 GB range.

Depending on where you live, your options vary, but here’s my setup:

Rabbit ears
The first step to low-cost television is an antenna. Homeowners have the option of mounting an outdoor antenna on the roof, but since I’m a renter, I’m somewhat limited in my options. Federal law does allow renters to place an antenna or satellite dish 3 feet in diameter or less on the balcony/patio/porch regardless of lease provisions, but I opted for a set of rabbit ears sitting on top of my tv instead.

I spent $20 on an antenna, but if you get lucky, sometimes you can get one on sale for less. It’s the standard VHF/UHF antenna (two prongs and a ring). I can pick up about 50 channels, including some really good ones that are almost cable-like in quality. I live in an area that is populous but flat, so that increases the range. If you’re in a rural or mountainous area, you’ll get fewer channels. If you type your address into antennaweb, you’ll get an idea of which channels you can pick up with which types of antennas.

Netflix/Hulu/etc.
Another component is Netflix, Hulu Plus, Amazon Prime Video, etc. I get a limited selection of streaming video included with my Amazon Prime account. Since I have the account for shipping anyway, I’m counting this as no extra cost.

Regular Hulu is free, but you have to wait a week for shows to go up. If you want them right away, Hulu Plus is your best bet. It’s something like $8 per month (I don’t know for sure because my sister lets me use her account, since it doesn’t cost her any extra to share). There are a lot of shows available, but usually only the most recent five episodes are posted.

Netflix is also reasonably priced (once again, in the $8ish range, but I piggyback on my sister’s account). There’s a large selection of movies and television shows, but it takes several months for the shows to be posted.

If there’s a show that you just have to watch, and you can’t find it anywhere for free, iTunes and Amazon also have season passes for many current shows. If you buy standard definition instead of HD, you can expect to spend $30 for an entire season. If you only have a few shows, it can be a real bargain, but it adds up if you watch a lot.

Other websites
Many television channels will post recent episodes on their website. This is a free way to watch shows that you missed.

There are also sites that stream specialty content (news, weather, documentary, special interest, religion, etc.). Finding them can be hit or miss, but if you google for whatever you’re looking for, you’ll probably find a whole treasure trove.

Computer (or streaming media device)
Watching all this stuff from a computer can get annoying. Sometimes I just want to sit on the couch and watch things on the television itself. This is where technology comes in. The Roku is a popular device to solve part of the problem. It’s a small purple box that costs anywhere from $50 up depending on the model. It’s wifi enabled and plugs into your television. It allows you to watch Netflix, Hulu, etc. on your television. There are hundreds of channels available for the Roku – some are free, and some are paid. When my sister and I lived together, I used her Roku, and I really liked the interface. However, you can’t surf the web or watch regular streaming video with it, so that limits its usefulness in my opinion.

I have an old desktop computer that was collecting dust, so I freshened it up and hooked it up to my television. I went to the computer parts store and bought a vga to rca converter box for $40 and plugged everything in. I had to turn the screen resolution way down and magnify the text, and it’s still sometimes a bit hard to read on sites with small print, but the video quality is fine. I can watch Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, etc. just like I could on the Roku, and I can also watch video from anywhere on the internet. I’ve ripped some of my dvds to the hard drive so I can watch them there, too. (I have a dvd player, but sometimes it’s easier to just use the computer instead of digging the discs out of storage.)

Redbox
If you love your movies, never fear. Redbox is an alternative to expensive movie channels. There are kiosks located at grocery stores, convenience stores, and gas stations all around, and rentals are just a dollar a day. Plus, if you use your google skills you can often find free rental coupon codes.

Public library
Last but not least, there’s the public library; it’s not just for books anymore. Libraries rent out movies and television shows on dvd, and they’re not just old dusty documentaries. Major blockbusters and popular shows are available. It’s one of the best kept secrets in the quest for cheap entertainment.

Money Saving Mondays – Cell Phones

I’ve tossed around the idea for a while of starting a new blog feature called “Money Saving Mondays” where each Monday I chronicle a way that I save money without depriving myself of modern conveniences. I can’t guarantee that it will happen every week, but I’m going to give it a go. Today’s edition is cell phone plans.

Cell phone plans are quite expensive. An average smartphone plan can cost $50-$150 per month. My monthly smartphone bill? $0. And yes, I do have a smartphone.

What’s my secret? Two acronyms – MVNO and VoIP.

Review of Phoenix so far

It’s been about 5 weeks since I uprooted myself to Phoenix, 700 miles away from my friends and family. I don’t regret the decision yet. I hope I don’t end up regretting it at all, but the nice thing about our highly mobile society is that California isn’t going anywhere, so I can always move back home if I decide I hate it here.

It’s been an adjustment living so far from my support systems, but I tend to be a pretty independent person anyway, so it hasn’t been that bad. I still haven’t found a job, which is a bit stressful. It’s hard to network when I don’t know anyone, and it’s hard to get the attention of recruiters without a referral. I have a few more months before I get desperate, so I’m still restricting my job search to college faculty or lawyer jobs. If I have to dig further down in a few months, I’ll start looking at HR or paralegal work. If things get really dire, there’s always a temp agency for general office work until I can get back into my career.

Here are some general impressions about the area so far.

Why I will never patronize Circle K again

I had a terrible experience today at the Circle K gas station at the corner of 75th Avenue and Glendale Avenue in Glendale, AZ. So terrible that I'm blogging it, yelping it, facebooking it, and tweeting it. (Even though I'm normally a pretty laid back person and would usually just tell my cat about it and then brush it off.)

This afternoon, on my way to an appointment, I stopped for gas. I pulled up to the pump, turned off my car, and put my card in the reader. I got an error message on the card reader, so I went inside to pay. I explained to the clerk that the card reader at pump 6 wasn't working. She glared at me and said, "Yes it is."

I explained in detail the error message I got, and she glared at me again and asked me how much gas I wanted. I said $40. She swiped my card, printed the receipt, and handed it to me with a pen to sign the receipt. [Note: At reputable and professional gas stations, the signing of the receipt happens at the end of the transaction, after the exact total is known, and the credit card is held by the clerk during the pumping. I have never seen shady behavior like this before.] I explained that I hadn't purchased the gas yet. She said that I had just bought it.

I was uncomfortable with this, so I asked for the transaction to be canceled. She refused to do so and said that once she swiped the card, the transaction was final. I said that it couldn't be final because I hadn't signed the receipt yet. She glared at me again and said that my card was going to be charged regardless. So, since I wanted my gas, I signed the receipt, placed the receipt and the blue ballpoint pen on the counter, and went outside to fill up.

When I got to the pump, it didn't work. I tried a second time, and it still didn't work. So, I went back inside. The clerk said, "I had to cancel the transaction because you hurt me." I asked her what she meant by that. She held up a black ballpoint pen that had been cleanly removed from its outer casing and said that I had thrown the pen at her and broken it. This was a bald-faced lie.

I asked to speak to her manager, and a woman who was standing next to her identified herself as the manager and said that she had reviewed the security tapes and backed up the clerk. Mind you, I was outside for 45 seconds. It would have been impossible to review the security tapes in that time period. The "manager" (whom I suspect was merely a co-worker) said that she could not sell me gas.

I was running late, so I didn't call her on it. I told her that she had permanently lost a customer, and I went on my (not so) merry way. The "manager" wished me a nice day in a tone of voice that really meant "f--- you!"

After my appointment, I stopped at a Fry's gas station, had a perfectly painless and professional experience, and saved $0.26 per gallon.

To top the whole experience off, I just logged into my credit card account, and the Circle K station charged my card for $40 worth of gas that I didn't get. This station is a ripoff. I wonder how many other people they've tried this scheme on and gotten away with.

Update 5/3/14: My credit card company had my back. I was able to get the charge reversed. So, now I've been made financially whole. I still won't give Circle K any of my business. But Fry's and Chase came out of this situation looking good.

Flying on a shoestring budget

I'm still here! I moved to Phoenix a week and a half ago, and I ended up having to take a quick unplanned trip out of town a few days ago. It would have been a 10 hour drive (each way) or a 1.5 hour flight. Allegiant had a cheap enough flight, even at the last-minute, that I opted for flying. I was a bit hesitant to fly on a discount airline, but the regular airlines were way too expensive due to the short notice.

I flew out of the Mesa airport, which is 45 minutes from my apartment. (Phoenix is 30, so it's not appreciably further.) Long-term parking is only $6 per day, which is a bargain. I got through security in under a minute. The airport has a courtyard separating one half of the terminal from the other half. My gate was on the other side of the courtyard, so I got some fresh air on my way to the gate. There was a gray cat walking along the grass chasing birds. I stopped to pet the cat, and an airport employee walked by and said that the cat was the airport cat. I didn't catch the cat's name, though.

Allegiant charges for everything, so be sure to read the fine print. Checked bags cost money, which is to be expected. What isn't to be expected is that carry-on bags cost money, too. I was able to cram everything into my "purse" (really a large shoulder bag), so I didn't have to pay for carry on luggage. Also, they board an hour before the flight instead of the standard 20-30 min, so be sure to leave extra time. If you pick your seat, that costs extra, too. I opted for the free version where the airline assigned my seat. I ended up being assigned a middle seat both ways, but on the return flight, there was an empty seat next to me, so I moved into the aisle seat. Snacks and beverages cost extra, too, so I brought my own. The lavatory is free, though!

I'll probably fly on Allegiant again. By giving up the frills, I saved about $120 over a full-service airline. I'll check back to see if it's still appreciably cheaper when I book in advance, and if it is, that's how I'm getting home for Thanksgiving. (Probably not for Christmas, though, since baggage fees will likely eat up any savings.)

Go East, Young Woman

When I was a kid, one of my favorite games was Oregon Trail. I remember saving up my good behavior points at school so that I could exchange them for time on the computer. The computers had those green on black monitors that only displayed text, and I had to switch floppy disks when my wagon train got to Nebraska. I used to daydream about what it would have been like to strike out into the unknown like that.

I grew up in San Jose, so tales of prospectors striking it rich and Franciscans building missions were a part of the local lore. “Go west, young man” was the answer to stagnation and lack of opportunity. Pack up your belongings, head into the sunset, and with grit and hard work, make a good life.

There’s no more gold in California.

I work hard, and I never give up, but the cost of living is stratospheric. I’m broke at the end of every month, even with a decent income and a frugal lifestyle. If I stay, I will never own a house, never be able to pay for my future children to go to college, never finish paying off my student loans, and never retire.

So the answer is to reverse the process. Where my forebears packed up their belongings into a covered wagon, hitched up their oxen, and headed west, I’m packing up my belongings into a Uhaul, filling up the gas tank, and heading east. At least I won’t have to deal with dysentery along the way.

I’m moving to Phoenix in a few months. Instead of mining for gold or setting up a ranch, I’ll be practicing law. I’ll be leaving my old life - and my family and friends - behind to start a new one. I’ll still stay in touch, though. Email is much faster than the Pony Express!

Happy New Year

I guess I've been hibernating or something. I don't have a particularly good excuse for that; I've just been too lazy to sit down to write a post.

The job search continues to go on. I'm still temping at the same company I've been at since April, and I have an open-ended arrangement at this point. I'll stay until I can find a permanent job, but it's not a bad place to camp out in the mean time.

I'm hoping to move to Phoenix when my lease is up, since I'm licensed to practice law in Arizona, and the cost of living is way lower there. But, if I get a decent enough job offer here in the bay area, I could be persuaded to stay. Doing a long-distance job search is challenging, though. Many companies won't even consider out of state candidates, even though I won't be asking for relocation assistance.

Other than that, I have no complaints. I'm even starting to be okay with my commute. I'm enjoying the opportunity to read on the bus. Maybe I'll finally get to make some headway on my long list of books that I want to get through.

Finally!

I started law school in January 2005, freshly home from my time as a missionary, with $77 in my bank account. Since I had no money and no job, I lived with my parents in San Jose. I was going to school in San Francisco. My daily commute was 2 hours each way. My dad dropped me off at the train station at 6:30 in the morning on his way into work, and he picked me up at the train station around 5:30 in the evening on his way home from work. It was thoroughly exhausting.

I kept that up for a year before I was fed up enough with the commute that I moved out. I ended up in Fremont, which was still a 45 minute train ride away, but it was much better. A few months later, my law school education was unceremoneously interrupted due to a whole bunch of bureaucratic nonsense that was out of my control. The day that I found that out, I also lost my job.

I spent the next two years working and trying to figure out what to do with my life, and then I went back to law school somewhere else. (At a school that was far better run and treated the students as respected colleagues instead of as obstacles.) Then I graduated.

Then I took the California bar - and failed it - three times. (Seriously, if someone reasonably intelligent with a law degree can't pass the [expletive deleted] test after three attempts, maybe there's something wrong with the test!) Then I decided that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. So I took the Arizona bar in February. I found out in May that I passed it. In fact, I knocked it out of the park. It really was California and not me.

I've been waiting for my background check to clear, and I found out yesterday that it did. Most law schools have big ceremonies a few weeks after exam results are released where all of the alumni who passed the bar are sworn in en masse. Since I'm being admitted to the bar in a different state, and I'm being admitted off schedule, I don't get that.

I went to the UPS store on my lunch break today to get sworn in. So, nearly eight years of toil and effort was culminated by signing a piece of paper in front of a notary and dropping it in the mail. I'm practically allergic to ceremony, but it still felt a little anticlimactic.

RIP Frankencar

My car was towed away to the great junkyard in the sky last night. Herr Austin Frankencar (Austin for short) had character. I should have known that it was a harbinger of doom when I named the car after the six million dollar man. As much as the car was nothing but trouble for its short 18 month time with me, I'm still kind of sorry to see it go.

Austin is a 2000 VW Jetta TDI. I purposely bought a diesel car because I wanted to use biodiesel. My main reason was because I want to reduce dependence on foreign oil, but the mad science aspect of the chemistry of home-produced biodiesel appealed to me, too. (I never did get around to making my own, though.) The environmental benefits of reduced emissions were icing on the cake.

The car spent three weeks in the shop right off the bat and then was in and out of the shop for the first few months of ownership. The previous owner had severely mismaintained the car (including jamming spark plugs in the radiator hoses and reinstalling the engine backward). I had to replace the transmission right after I bought it. I had a few months of good use and then it was back to in and out of the shop. My mechanic, only half jokingly, offered to blow the car up for me. Back in February, the front bumper fell off and has been held on by duct tape ever since. I decided I didn't want to pay to fix it.

Book Review - Make the Bread, Buy the Butter

I recently read the book Make the Bread, Buy the Butter by Jennifer Reese. It's half cookbook, half memoir. Reese chronicles her efforts to make tons of food items from scratch after losing her job. She documented the cost of the homemade version, the cost of the store bought version, and how difficult or annoying it was to make the item herself. She chronicled both her successes and her failures.

I found the book to be both funny and useful. I especially liked her empirical approach to the issue. Since I'm saving up to buy a house, I don't want to waste money on things that are more trouble than they're worth. Plus, I'm not someone who finds great joy in cooking. I like to take on a big project now and then, and there are some things I find fun to do, but mostly I see cooking as a chore - something that I do simply because it needs to be done. I do, however, have a bit of a mad scientist streak, and this book appealed to that part of me.

Reese enjoys cooking way more than I do, so her calculation falls a little more to the "make" side of the equation than mine does. However, I was surprised by some of the things she said fell in the "buy" category. Burritos and jam both fell under "buy" for her. While I love a good taqueria burrito, they're not that hard to make at home. And homemade jam is far superior to anything at the store and costs about the same.

Several times throughout the book, I found myself surprised that anyone would think to make certain items homemade. There's a recipe for pop tarts, for example. I was pleasantly surprised to see how easy it is to make ricotta cheese. I'm going to have to give it a try sometime. She has a marshmallow recipe that I want to try as soon as I can figure out what to use in place of the gelatin to vegetarianize it. (I'm thinking either pectin or agar-agar.)

I skipped most of the meat chapters, but I did start reading the one on chickens with the hope that I could find some egg recipes. But halfway through a rather graphic description of killing a rooster, I decided to skip the rest of that chapter, too.

In all, I recommend the book. There's something for the urban homesteader, the person who loves to cook, and the mad scientist.

False alarm

I just got a call back from the hospital. It turns out that my toe isn't broken. It's just badly bruised. So, instead of wearing a walking boot for 4-6 weeks, I just have to wear flats for 2-3 weeks. I'm thrilled.

Plus, I get to keep up my never-broken-a-bone bragging rights.

Broken Toe

I have a history of bumps and bruises and sprains. I did a lot of sports as a teenager, and I was constantly injuring myself. Miraculously, I never broke a bone, even when my injuries should have caused fractures. I figured I was blessed with an ultra-resilient skeleton.

My streak of good fortune ended on Thursday. I was at the beach, and I was walking barefoot. I stubbed my toe on a rock. I checked it out and saw that I wasn't bleeding, so I went back to building sand castles and hanging out with my friends, not sparing a second thought to my toe.

On Friday morning, I woke up, and my toe was purple and tender to the touch. I figured I bruised it a little worse than I had thought, and I didn't think much of it. It was too sore to wear regular shoes, so I put on some flip-flops and went to work. By the time I got to the office, I couldn't even walk on it without pain. I propped my foot up at my desk and continued with my job.

After work, I decided to go get it checked out. I don't have insurance, so I went to the urgent care clinic attached to the local hospital. They give a discount to uninsured patients who pay cash at the time of service. I waited for a bit, and then the doctor saw me. He took one look at it and said that it was broken, but he sent me for an x-ray just to be sure.

After the x-ray, the nurse taped up my foot and gave me a walking boot. She felt sorry for me, so she didn't charge me for the boot. She showed me how to tape my toes to splint them, and instructed me to change the tape every day. I have to keep them taped for 4-6 weeks and wear the boot until I can put regular shoes on without pain.

It was a total freak accident, and I spent some time thinking about why I ended up with a fracture. Then I remembered my vitamin D deficiency. Vitamin D helps in the absorption of calcium, so my deficiency probably weakened my bones. Note to self - be better about taking vitamins.

I'm really glad that the clinic is so affordable. I ended up spending only $90, which is a real bargain for a broken bone.

It's going to be a bit inconvenient to get to work. My choices are to take BART and then a bus that drops me off a block away from work, where I have to walk uphill, or to drive and park in a garage two blocks away from work, walking up that same hill. At least I've figured out how to navigate stairs.

When my foot heals, I'm throwing a dance party to celebrate.

Update 7/9/13: False alarm. The radiologist called back and said that it's not actually broken.

Economic impact of the BART strike

Anyone who lives in the bay area is aware that BART (commuter rail between the east bay and San Francisco) was on strike for the past week. The strike has now been (at least temporarily) ended, after 5 days. I'm sure lots of people will be analyzing the aggregate economic impact this has had, and I wouldn't be surprised if it ended up being very expensive.

I decided to analyze the economic impact that the strike had on me personally. I ended up coming out ahead.

The strike lasted for one work week - July 1 - July 5.

I drove to work alone on Monday. I usually drive on Mondays due to a standing appointment on Monday nights in a location where BART doesn't go, so there was no economic impact there. Thursday was a holiday, and it would have been a holiday even without the strike, so there was no impact there either.

That leaves three work days (Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday) to analyze. I drove a carpool with co-workers for those days.

If I had taken BART, my cost would have been $46.41 for the three days. ($10 per day for BART fare, $3.50 per day for bus fare, $1.50 per day for parking at the BART station, and $0.46 per day for the diesel to get to the BART station from home.)

The cost to drive on Tuesday was $19.75. ($10.25 for diesel, $2.50 for bridge toll, and $7 for parking.) Wednesday and Friday cost $12.75 each because I got free parking. So, the total commute cost for the three days was $45.25.

I'm already $1.16 better off. But wait! My carpool people contributed to the commute. I didn't ask for any money, since I would have been driving anyway, but when they offered, I didn't turn them down. I ended up getting $35 in donations.

I did have to get up extra early to avoid traffic, but I was compensated by getting to leave work early, so that's a wash.

So, my total savings due to the strike came to $36.16. Not bad.