A Penny Saved…

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I put Ben Franklin’s saying to the test.

Not long ago, I wrote a post explaining how someone could take advantage of a credit card introductory offer for a low (or no) interest cash advance, put the money in an ING CD (or some other high-paying, insured savings account), earn interest, and then pay off the credit card balance before the interest jumped up from its introductory rate. I calculated that I could earn about $700 on a $20,000 credit card cash advance.

Well this works both ways. Mike and I have a home equity line of credit, which we used a while back to buy our Howard Mesa property and a few other things. Back when we signed up for it, the interest rate was very low. But today, it’s 7.5%. Not exactly a great deal anymore.

Enter Capital One (for the sixth time in a week). This offer was 0% for purchases and balance transfers for a full year. Best of all, there were no balance transfer fees. According to the offer, I could get up to $30,000 of credit. And the balance transfer option could be applied to a loan.

You might know where this is going.

I did some math. What if I put $25,000 toward the home equity line of credit, thus reducing the balance by that huge amount? Over the course of a year, I’d save $1,875 in interest (that’s simple interest calculation, which is close enough for me). Then, before the credit card interest rates jumped into their double-digits, I’d write a check from the home equity line of credit to Capital One, thus paying off the entire balance before any interest could accrue.

Of course, I would have to make those minimum monthly payments to Capital One. But if I got into a problem with that, I could always use the home equity line of credit to pay that, too. Besides, my payments on the home equity would be reduced — perhaps by the same amount as the Capital One credit card. Wouldn’t that be a kick!

Understand that the net effect of this on my personal debt would be zero — I’m borrowing from Peter to pay Paul (so to speak). I’d just save a bunch of money in interest. And, like Ben Franklin said, a penny saved is a penny earned.

So I applied for the account with the transfer. Let’s see if I get it.

The odd thing is, I’ve been taking advantage of those year-long 0% interest offers for years. I usually have $10,000 to $20,000 floating around in interest-free debt with a credit card company. (I paid the last one off about six months ago, though, and haven’t applied for a new one since.) With all the credit information available to credit card companies these days, they must be able to figure it out. Yet they still offer me free money, I still take it, and I still pay them back in full before they can start the interest clock.

I win, they lose. And they keep coming back for more.

Go figure, huh?

Some Anniversaries are Best Not Celebrated

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March 20 marked three full years of a U.S. military presence in Iraq.

CasketsSadly, not everyone will come home.

Although the photos of flag-draped coffins at the Dover Air Force Base were hidden from the press, they were obtained from the military on request using the Freedom of Information Act. The photos, which are a sad, yet dignified, reminder of the loss of human life, can be found at The Memory Hole.

When I saw this one, I felt a need to share it with readers here.

The war in Iraq has been going on for entirely too long now. It was begun on false pretences and it continues with huge loss of life on both sides. And all we hear from the President and his spokespeople is spin.

Major combat operations in Iraq have ended. In the battle of Iraq, the United States and our allies have prevailed.

– George W. Bush, May 1, 2003

That was nearly three years ago. How many people have died since then?

More recently, the Pres began to reveal his true thoughts on the War: it’s a mess that someone else will have to clean up:

Question: Will there come a day — and I’m not asking you when, not asking for a timetable — will there come a day when there will be no more American forces in Iraq?

THE PRESIDENT: That, of course, is an objective, and that will be decided by future Presidents and future governments of Iraq.

– March 21, 2006 Press Conference

And more spin:

I wish I could tell you the violence in Iraq is waning and that all the tough days in the struggle are behind us. They’re not. There will be more tough fighting ahead with difficult days that test the patience and the resolve of our country. Yet, we can have faith in the final outcome because we’ve seen freedom overcome the darkness of tyranny and terror and secure the peace before. And in this century, freedom is going to prevail again.

– George W. Bush, March 29, 2006

With 94 years left in “this century,” I hope he’s right.

What I’m Up To

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Maria Speaks Episode 24: What I’m Up To.

This short podcast brings listeners up to date on what I’ve been up to since my podcast suddenly stopped in November, along with a repeat of my pledge to keep coming up with new podcasts weekly.

Transcript:

I promised a new podcast every week and I’m trying hard to deliver. This week, I’ll bring everyone up to date on the things I’ve been up to. Of course, there are always more details in my blog at www.aneclecticmind.com.

I promise I’ll try not to bore you.

Work in Progress

About a month ago, I started working on a new book for Peachpit Press called WordPress 2: Visual QuickStart Guide. I’m working with a co-author on the project, Miraz Jordan. Miraz lives in New Zealand, where it’s always tomorrow. I’m recording this on a Sunday evening and, at this very moment, Miraz is probably hard at work on a Monday afternoon. I think it’s kind of unfair that she gets an extra day on the deadline. Or is that one less day? Too much sangria this afternoon to think it out properly.

WordPress, for those of you who don’t know, is my current blogging platform of choice. I started using it late last year and quickly fell in love with it. Since then, I’ve sucked down all the information I could about it and I think it’s safe to say that I experiment with it daily. I love its flexibility most of all — the ability to build all kinds of features into a blog-based Web site and to have it look just about any way you like. But I felt I needed a seasoned expert to help me write the book, so that’s why I asked Miraz to join me. She’s been using the software for years and has over a thousand entries in her blog at mactips.info. Check it out.

My other current writing project is actually a DVD training video for macProVideo.com. It’s about Microsoft Word for Macintosh and, if I can figure out how to narrate while I’m performing tasks without sounding like an idiot, I might get it done sometime soon. I know that writing a script for each segment isn’t the way. I quickly discovered that I can’t read a script and perform tasks at the same time.

Computer Woes

If you follow my blog, you know that I had a series of computer problems this past winter.

First, my main production Mac’s hard disk got scrambled and required professional help to bring back from the near-dead. I backed everything up, reformatted that drive, and reinstalled everything.

Reformatting my main hard drive is a maintenance task I used to do every time I upgraded to a new version of the system software. Mac OS X’s time-consuming installations and hidden preference files made it a bit of a chore, though, so I stopped.

Reformatting and rebuilding a hard disk is like a massive spring cleaning. Imagine taking all the furniture out of your home, stripping out the carpet and tile, sandblasting the walls and floor, and putting brand new versions of everything you had back in. The benefit is that when you’re done, everything is right where you put it, all in one piece and easy to find. You also throw out a lot of junk you didn’t really need.

Moving is like that, too. You throw away stuff when you pack, you move the boxes you packed, and then you throw more stuff away when you arrive in your new place. Sometimes I think you should unpack at your old home just so you can throw away the second time without moving it first.

The second computer problem was way more serious. My Web server’s hard disk crashed. (There must have been something in the electricity this past winter.) The drive was a complete goner. And, of course, the DVD drive in that computer was already toasted. So I had both replaced and rebuilt the Web server from scratch using whatever backups I had.

Of course, I didn’t have everything backed up. This was my third hard disk crash since 1989 and you think that by now I’d learn. I didn’t. My two WordPress blogs (aneclecticmind.com and wickenburg-az.com) had their databases backed up — thank heaven! — but the theme files, plugins, and other stuff that makes up a WordPress blog had not been backed up. Neither were a bunch of the image files. Because the themes were so heavily customized (due to all that experimentation I bragged about earlier), it took a lot of rebuilding to get it back to what I wanted to see. wickenburg-az.com is still not 100% back — it’s missing lots of pictures.

It’s kind of weird because I was never really happy with my first version of aneclecticmind.com, but I’d put so much work into it that I wasn’t willing to change it. Then all that work got wiped away, as if my computer sensed my dissatisfaction and wanted to prod me into fixing it. So when I rebuilt, I made it more to my liking. I’m much more pleased with the current site. But I really wish my computer hadn’t taken so much with it.

Miraz and I will be covering backup strategies for WordPress blogs in detail in our book — or on its companion Web site. I don’t want any of my readers to go through what I went through. What a waste of time!

Flying

I’ve also been flying. A lot.

March was my busiest month ever at Flying M Air and I actually earned enough money to pay the helicopter loan for the next two months. I did charters to Sedona and the Grand Canyon, photo shoots at proving grounds and golf courses, real estate tours, and a charter to Phoenix Sky Harbor Airport. (Helicopter Zero-Mike-Lima, there’s an airbus on short final for runway 7 left. Do you have him in sight? Sure. I’d have to be blind not to see him.) All that and the usual round of 25 minute and 50 minute tours.

March was also a record breaking month in a bad way. In one week, two different passengers broke my record of no pukers in my helicopter. One of them puked in my lunch bag. (Watch the leather seats and the carpet! Move the microphone away from your mouth!) They were both kids, so I can still tell people that I’ve never had an adult puke in the helicopter. And I have a new policy: no flights over 1 hour long with kids on board.

Yesterday, I flew more than 90 people at an airport event in Buckeye, AZ. So I have June’s loan payment taken care of, too. Looks like I’ll be able to keep the helicopter a few more months.

I even flew today — two flights totaling an hour and a half. Where are these people coming from? And where the hell were they in January and February? And will they stay long enough to take me through the long, hot summer?

Listener Feedback

I got one bit of listener feedback recently from Justin. Or maybe it was Jason. I’m sorry. I accidently deleted your e-mail. Justin or Jason got a new iPod Nano and wants some iPod tips. I want some, too. I’ll have to look some up, put together a podcast, and record it for us. Until then, I recommend doing a Google search for something like iPod tips. I did it and found a bunch of sites. Unfortunately, I’m not prepared to comment on their quality.

If you have feedback about this podcast or my podcasts in general, send them to me at mariaspeaks@mac.com. I’ll try not to delete it before I commit your name to medium-term memory. I do take requests for topics. As Justin or Jason has learned, I don’t always get right to the request topic, but I eventually get there. This just hasn’t been the best week for thinking about new things. Too much old stuff to think about.

Thanks for listening. More next week.

Another Great Gig in Buckeye

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Another great day of flying at the Buckeye Air Fair.

One of the things I like to do with my helicopter is to appear at outdoor events to offer inexpensive 8-10 minute helicopter rides in the area. I’ve done this as often as possible, notably at Robson’s Mining World, the Thunderbird Balloon Classic, the Mohave Country Fair, the ghost town of Stanton, Yarnell Daze, a shoot in Wickieup, and the Buckeye Air Fair.

We went back to Buckeye yesterday. The weather was better than last year — not nearly as windy — and although the forecast called for cloudy skies, it was mostly sunny. That drew in a lot more aircraft. That and the fact that the folks at Buckeye obviously know a thing or two about advertising their airport events to pilots.

It was a great event. There was an Albatross on static display, as well as a Groen Brothers gyroplane and a few other planes. Two medivac helicopters showed up for static display after I started flying and left before I’d finished, so I didn’t have a chance to talk to them. There was a bouncy thing for kids and someone selling pinwheels and kites. There were multiple food vendors selling barbeque, fry bread, chicken, hot dogs, and other stuff. A flight school was there, soliciting students. Game and Fish had a big trailer with some kind of display about shooting safety. (I guess they want to make sure Arizonans don’t mistake an elderly man for a quail while hunting.) They raffled off all kinds of prizes, including helicopter rides. Pilots flew in and out and were expertly guided to safe parking using a separate ground frequency. And there were parachute jumps, all landing at the northeast corner of the field. Sorry: no car show. After all, this was an airport event.

The event started late — from my point of view, anyway — at 10 AM. But Mike and I were there and set up by 9:15 AM. Although they’d originally positioned us on a dead-end taxiway near the parachute jump zone, I wasn’t too comfortable about that. I don’t think the jumpers would have been, either. So they moved us to a closed-off taxiway. It was an excellent location, clearly visible from the event’s entrance, yet easily secured. I parked with the helicopter’s nose facing the crowd and its tail pointing out toward the taxiway. There was no real possibility of onlookers walking behind the helicopter because there was no reason to go out there. Heavy-duty orange construction cones blocked off the taxiway on either side so planes wouldn’t be tempted to use it while I was out. The folks at Buckeye graciously provided a folding table and three chairs for us to set up shop.

It was a good thing we set up early. The crowd started coming in at 9:30 and I immediately have my first ride of the day. To say that I didn’t shut down until 4:30 is an overstatement, but only because I had to shut down twice for fuel, food, and a bathroom stop. My two breaks were only 15 minutes long; I flew the rest of the day. One of Mike’s co-workers, Steve (recently moved her from Iowa), showed up at about 10:30 to help out. Not a moment too soon; by then, the crowd was building.

The route started at the airport, headed south along the taxiway, and then east to the town of Buckeye. It passed over farm fields that were freshly sown with cotton or corn and alfalfa fields being harvested. Closer to town, you could clearly see that some farmers had sold out to developers and houses were being planted instead of crops. We circled back, crossing over a large (but not huge) dairy farm and more farm fields before landing back at the airport. My arrivals and departures were one of the big attractions at the show; at one point, I came in and saw at least 50 people lined up along the ramp area, watching me. Good thing the helicopter was clean.

When I first started out, the winds were less than 5 knots, so I’d come in for landing from the south. This would keep me away from any jumper activity. But as the winds picked up out of the southwest, I realized the folly of landing, sometimes heavy, with a tailwind and I began coming in from the north. I had to listen closely to the radio to make sure there weren’t any jumpers on their way down. If they were, I made a wide approach to the north east and landed along the taxiway, giving them plenty of space. It was nerve-racking to see those parachutes in the sky, high over my main rotor disc. I had to keep reminding myself that the wind would push them to their target well east of my position.

What was really amazing about this gig was that Mike and Steve were able to get three passengers on just about every flight. I price the flights — in this case, $35 per person including tax — so that if I took one person, I’d lose money; if I took two people, I’d make money; and if I took three people, I’d make pretty darn good money. Mike was able to put three on board for each flight because we had a pool of waiting customers from about 10:30 AM on that consisted of singles, couples, and trios. He sold tickets that were numbered and would use them to keep the order of the tickets sold. Then, if he had a couple flying next, he’d ask for a single with the lowest number and put him on board, too. This was not only an efficient way to keep the line from getting too long, but it was good for business.

That’s even more amazing than that is that I had at least one kid aboard for more than 75% of the flights. Flying kids is great for two reasons: first, I like to give kids what is normally their first helicopter flight experience. This goes back to my first helicopter flight experience (which I really should write about in this blog one day). I’m always happy when parents treat their kids to a ride. It tells me that they don’t have fears about flying that they’ll transfer to their kids. It also gives kids the opportunity to experience something truly different, to open their minds to the kinds of things they can do with their lives.

The second reason flying kids is great is because they’re light — usually under 100 pounds. So even with three people on board and 3/4 tanks fuel, I have no performance problems at all. That makes the flying easier — especially take offs and landings.

Once again, we didn’t finish flying until the fair was over and the airport had emptied out. Starting at around 2 PM, each time I landed, I’d notice fewer cars in the parking lot, fewer people walking around, and fewer vendors. By 3 PM, the only people left were the people waiting to fly. They were, for the most part, patient. I think they realized that if I started rushing the rides, they wouldn’t get as good a ride as the people who’d gone earlier in the day. I gave everyone pretty much the same ride, but would occasionally veer off to the south or north to show them their house if it was within range. I did a few flights to the west on request, using the helicopter’s timer to make sure I didn’t stay out too long or too short a time.

I haven’t done all the math, but I’m pretty sure I flew between 90 and 100 people. That comes pretty close to my daily record, which was set on a Saturday at the Mohave County Fair last September.

As for the money…well, let’s just say that I can keep the helicopter for another month. Isn’t that what it’s all about?

I’d like to thank the folks at Buckeye for putting on such a great event for the community and for allowing me to be part of it. And I look forward to next year.

What Not to Crochet

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“Because there’s always one more crochet design that shouldn’t be made!”

I stumbled onto this one while working on the WordPress book. It’s a WordPress.com-hosted blog and it’s full of photos and commentaries about really bad crochet patterns.

For those of you who don’t know what crocheting is, it’s like knitting, but with a single, hooked needle. I’m not too proud to admit that I used to crochet, but my skill level never advanced beyond potholders and scarfs. This site makes me glad I quit.

Check it out for yourself at What Not to Crochet.