Guns, Beer, and Automobiles

Since the tragedy at the Sandy Hook Elementary school, there has been a lot more attention placed on tougher gun control. President Obama stated in his last 2012 election debate that he wanted an assault weapons ban in his next term in office. It seems hypocritical that he is allowed to have people carrying assault weapons to defend his family, but he doesn’t want me to be able to have an assault weapon to be able to defend my family. Is this what they call executive privilege?

I really don’t see how placing  a ban is going to stop people getting killed. That is what this is about, keeping people from being killed, isn’t it? People are killed by lots of ways, not just by guns. The CDC has a report on 75 years of mortality in the US. Guess what’s not on the top of that list?

This argument of preventing responsible law abiding people like myself from being able to buy certain types of guns and magazines of certain capacity makes no sense to me. Shouldn’t we be doing something to hinder the criminals who do the killings and not the people who obey the laws? Laws are for people who choose to obey them. Making a law to stop a criminal is like using a window screen to keep out cold air. I propose that if we are going to try to put a stop to senseless killings, why not take it another step and make another ridiculous ban on something that kills people.

Drunk driving. If you ban the sale of hard liquor (parallel with assault weapons) and ban the sale of any more than a two pack of beer (parallel with the sale of high capacity magazines because 2 drinks tend to be what keep you below the .08% blood alcohol limit for legally driving), then that will keep people from driving drunk. Makes sense right? Here is the picture I am trying to draw here. I like shooting guns. Firing an assault weapon is fun, especially when you have a 30 round clip. You can just keep pulling the trigger and destroy the paper target, soda can, or what ever non leathal target it is you are shooting at. Its fun and no body gets hurt. I don’t drink (personal reasons but nothing against those that do), but I’ll try to draw a comparison. There are plenty of people who enjoy alcohol responsibly. Yet there are those who enjoy it irresponsibly. The irresponsible ones are the ones who drive while under the influence and cause a death because of it. Just as there are people who enjoy drinking responsibly, there are people who also enjoy using assault weapons with high capacity magazines responsibly.

In the United States, the number one cause of death for the last 75 years is heart disease. Personally, I believe that if you are wanting to make a difference in saving lives, start with what causes the most deaths to see if you can cut a chunk out of that. (Something that doesn’t make sense to me is that breast cancer awareness is more popular than heart disease prevention which is the number one killer of women). So maybe we should create laws that influence heart disease deaths by banning the sales of sugary foods and drinks, banning cigarette smoking, banning not exercising, and obesity. All of those things can be culprits for heart disease. Seeing as how the government is having to foot the bill for the healthcare of people who have allowed themselves to become unhealthy by their lifestyle and get heart disease, then the government should intervene in people’s lives so they won’t have to pay for people’s bad decisions. [No I’m no being serious but its for the sake of argument].

In the USA in 2010, there were 10,228 [reference per DOT] total fatalities for vehicles involved in crashes associated with a driver  who’s blood alcohol was at least .08%.  That is about 31% of all vehicle crash related fatalities. In the USA in 2010, there were 11,078 [reference per CDC] total fatalities for homicides by discharge of firearm out of a total of 16,259 [reference per CDC] homicides which is about 68% of all homicides.

Wow, that’s also a lot of people who are dying because of alcohol and driving, only 850 less than people being killed with guns. This won’t result in a ban of alcohol sales or vehicle sales, or even talk about it on the news media. So why should we do something only to ban guns when there is a similar amount of senseless deaths going on with DUI deaths? There is no logical sense to do it.

Guns are not dangerous. If they are, then vehicles are more dangerous because in 2010 there were 35,332 [reference per CDC] deaths associated with vehicle accidents. I grew up with many guns in my home. My dad taught me how to shoot a gun and respect guns before I was old enough to read well. No one got shot in my home, and no gun accidentally went off either. Our guns were not locked up, they were just in closet of the bathroom my brother and I used. People who claim that guns are dangerous, and we should do away with them are just ignorant [definition]. That’s not to be mean or make fun of them, but that is the correct term to show their lack of knowledge or experience with guns to be able to come to a logical conclusion. Lack of familiarity causes fear, which drives a lot of people who want to get rid of guns. Who is dangerous is the criminals who may or may not be using guns.

People say that there is no need for an assault weapon to go hunting. That’s true. People are also saying that assault weapons are only made for killing people. I’ll give you that too. That is why I would own an assault rifle, to kill people who are trying to hurt me or my family. An assault rifle will do it much more effectively than a bolt action hunting rifle will do. I have no intention to go out and kill people, but if someone comes into my home looking for trouble, they’ll get it at about 2700 ft/sec.

If you haven’t heard it before, I will say it again. Gun laws only effect those of us who obey the law. People who go on mass shootings are showing their blatant disregard for the law by shooting people, what good would a speed bump like a gun law do to keep them from their objective of spreading terror. Its not just that I don’t want to lose my rights as an American citizen to be able to own a weapon, its that this idea of creating MORE gun laws is going to do nothing to solve the problem of people shooting other people. Mike Huckabee has made some of the best remarks I’ve heard recently about tackling the issue of what happened in CT.

Huckabee Where was God?

We don’t have a gun problem, we have a morality problem. Even if you took up all the guns in the country, you’d still have people wanting to kill other people. It hass been going on since Cain and Abel, and will continue until the end of human history. If there’s not a gun to kill a room full of people, several pipe bombs will do the trick. So will a large vehicle plowing into a crowd of people. I’m not trying to plead my case just because I don’t want to lose my guns, but because spending time making more gun laws, (which we already have plenty of) will not solve the problem of people killing people. You can’t legislate morality.

Back in 1776, the muskets that our forefathers kept in their homes could have been classified as assault rifles as they were similar in capability as to what the English army was using at the time. Its because they had those guns in their homes that we have the country that we have today. I have no plans to want to go to war with the government by shooting police officers and members of our military with assault weapons. But, as a friend of mine said recently on Facebook, “An armed populace is the final point in the checks and balances that keeps our government in check.”

Gun control dictators

Read your history about dictators that didn’t allow guns. They are not a civilization I would have wanted to be a part of. Starting conspiracy theory rant now. Its my fear that episodes like this are being exploited by radicals who want to get guns out of the hands of citizenry so that they can’t be opposed. When people don’t educate themselves about what is really being done, their freedoms will be pulled right out from under them without even realizing it. Call me crazy, but with the rapid increase in shootings that are getting attention, I wouldn’t put it past a radical agenda of some kind to be behind this to make us lose our right to bear arms.

Make no doubt about it. If someone ever decides to invade my home to threaten me or my family, I will use lethal force to defend myself and my family. I hope that day never comes, but I will be ready for it.

How we are paying for an overpayment mistake made by Intermountain HealthCare

This post is about our experience with Intermountain HealthCare and how we encountered the issue of them overpaying my wife.

 

My wife, Wendy, is a physician for Intermountain HealthCare (IHC) here in Utah. IHC is the largest healthcare provider here in Utah. They are a nonprofit healthcare system. They own more than twenty hospitals, multiple clinics, and employ over 800 physicians across the state of Utah [source]. Simply put, they are a large organization.

In December of 2011, right before Christmas, Wendy got a phone call from her boss wanting to know why Wendy had been getting overpaid and not said anything about it yet. Wendy, needless to say, was surprised to hear that she was getting overpaid. So she started investigating and found that just as her boss had said, she had been getting overpaid. Here is the kicker though. This overpayment had been going on for two years, and no one in payroll had caught it. I would have imagined that any company would do at least yearly (if not more often) audits to make sure that their money is going where it’s supposed to.

money changing handsOrdinarily, it can be fairly easy to see that a paycheck is wrong. Most of the jobs I’ve had were salary or hourly, and I can easily see that something is wrong. Being married to physician has opened up a whole new world to me of how someone gets paid for their work. Now just in case you aren’t aware, I have a BS in Engineering. This means I’m no stranger to math. Wendy and I sat down with one of the payroll dept people for IHC and after a lot of time and me working with a spreadsheet, I was finally able to understand how Wendy’s compensation is supposed to work. I will try to explain it below.

Wendy works at different clinics around town known as Kidscare. It’s after hours urgent care for kids. Her work value is calculated with a unit known as a relative value unit (RVU). This means that if she sees a kid with strep throat, IHC has determined that that visit is worth so many RVUs, which would be less than say a kid that needs stitches. Her contract with IHC says that they will pay her a certain amount for each RVU that she performs. There are monthly reports generated that tell her how many RVU’s she made each month. We just have to trust that the number crunchers some where are totaling these numbers correctly as she doesn’t really have the means to keep up with how many RVUs she collected each night at work. We can look up these reports, and find out how much money Wendy is owed by multiplying the number of RUVs for that month by her rate that she is paid. These reports are of course a month or so behind so it takes some effort to match it up with her bi-weekly paychecks. But in addition to her RVU rate, she gets a minimum hourly rate if she doesn’t reach a certain threshold of RVU’s for a night’s work. We don’t know which nights those are that she is getting her minimum plus whatever RVU’s she collected that night. There are also two methods for getting paid that physicians can choose between which are monthly compensation and what is known as the six month average.

The six month average method works like this. There are 26 pay periods in the year. IHC will take the number of RVU’s you made for your previous six months, multiply it by your RVU pay rate, and divide it by thirteen (the number of pay periods for the next half of the year). This gives you what you will see for each paycheck for that half of the year. The downside to this is that it compensates you for your RVU’s six months after you earn them. So when Wendy picks up extra shifts, she doesn’t see an increase in pay until the next six months. The plus side is that it makes budgeting for us easier because we know how much Wendy will be making for half of the year.

Now for the monthly compensation method. In UT, the law states that employers must pay their employees at least bi-weekly. Since her RVU reports only come out once a month, IHC has a system set up to help with that. Each month they get two paychecks except for June and December where they get three. The first paycheck of each month is given as an advance, and it is the same amount each time. When the last paycheck of the month comes in, the RVU total is paid for the previous month. For example in February, you get January’s RVUs. Also on that last paycheck, they are supposed to deduct the advance they gave you on the previous paycheck for that month. This makes for a monthly fluctuation in her income, and makes budgeting much more difficult. So much so that I chose not to budget the first two years we were married.

So here is where we encountered the problem. Her paycheck was too difficult for me to track at the time, so Wendy and I just trusted that IHC was doing it right. They are after all a big organization that is supposed to know what they are doing.

Well, while Wendy was getting the monthly compensation method for her pay, for two years they were not taking the advance back each month like they were supposed to. As I said, its a complicated paycheck and we just trusted them, so we didn’t bother to check. I personally didn’t know how her pay was set up so I just didn’t bother to ask.

We got married in the last half of 2009. When this mistake in pay started was in January of 2010. We were still learning how to live off her salary at the time so, it was still during an adjustment period. Wendy noticed that her anual totals were higher, but she explained it from a few ways. One, 2010 was when the H1N1 outbreak happened. She saw a lot more patients which means that naturally her pay would go up. She got more training from her company on charting, so she was able to chart in a way that got her more money. She also changed her deductions because she went from being single to married. She was also picking up extra shifts.

Well, we were grateful for what she was getting paid. We were also being smart about it by not spending money that we didn’t have. The house we bought when we got married was well within what she was getting paid before the mistakes in her pay began. The bank told us we were qualified for 3 times the loan that we took out. We bought things to improve our home, but only when we had the money to pay for it. We  bought new energy efficient windows for our home to replace the old single pane windows that were leaking terribly.We also put money into our IRA’s each year and bought some other investments. We paid off my car loan, and were putting extra on the principle to our home loan each month. We gave money to our church as well. We also went on vacations because we could afford it. We were keeping an eye on our finances to make sure we were in the black. Wendy and I had never lived in the same town before we got married, so we were just enjoying being a married couple, but we were being responsible about it. In November of 2011, we bought Wendy a new car because her old car was getting to be unsafe to drive. Then just a couple of weeks after we took out a loan on Wendy’s car, we find out that the income level we had planned for was getting cut.

Initially, we were both very angry about this as IHC wanted us to pay them back. After a couple of days of thinking and praying about it, we both decided that paying IHC back was the right thing to do. It wasn’t our money. Wendy had agreed to be paid so much money for so much work, and the right thing to do was to honor the agreement.

We met with a couple of lawyers and accountants about our situation. Mostly, we wanted to find out what our rights were, and if there was any precedent for this. Everyone we talked to couldn’t believe what had happened. Needless to say, there is no precedent for overpaying an employee for two years. Most of the time this is a month or two that goes by before a mistake is found. One of the lawyers told us that she had taken on a case for a firefighter here in Utah that had been overpaid for a long period of time.  He refused to pay it back and won the case in court. He lost his job though. It was argued that the correct compensation was set by his employer because it had become a regular amount over such a long length of time. It was also argued that his pay was difficult to calculate, so he couldn’t be expected to check it himself. Wendy loves her job, so we didn’t want to her to lose it by going to court. Besides, like I said, we felt it was the right thing to do by paying it back.

We met with a member of middle management at IHC a few different times to try and solve this problem. IHC was being ruthless about this whole ordeal. First they wanted to blame Wendy on it because she didn’t notice it. Never mind that they weren’t able to answer all my questions about how her paycheck works during that meeting. If they couldn’t understand her paycheck, I don’t know how they could expect us to be keeping track of it. IHC did not want to take, nor did they take, any of the responsibility for making the mistake of paying her incorrectly. It seemed to me that they have double standards for their employees. Let me give you an example. Say one of the employees from payroll comes to Wendy’s clinic with a sick child. Wendy prescribes a medication and sends them home. What if Wendy were to make a mistake and give the wrong dose for the prescription for the medication? I doubt the parent would go home and check the Internet to see what the correct dosing is for that medication.  Similarly, it shouldn’t be expected that Wendy goes home and recheck’s IHC’s payroll people to make sure they are doing their job correctly. I want to know how it is that IHC is able to bare no responsibility for this mistake. So now, because of their incompetence (and I can think of no other word but incompetence seeing as how a huge organization managed to go two years without noticing that they were paying someone way too much) we are the ones who have to bare the burden of their mistake by taking on hardships in our life.
Continue reading “How we are paying for an overpayment mistake made by Intermountain HealthCare”

Creating a Raised Garden

Wendy has spent the last couple of summers planting a garden for vegetables for us to eat in our backyard. One of the things she has read about is the idea of using raised gardens. We had been planting a traditional garden at ground level that we tilled up each year and planted. Most of the garden gets populated with weeds during the summer. The idea with the raised garden is that it gets above the normal level of seeds that weeds put out and prevents the spread of weeds into your garden. It also raises the level of the garden making working in the garden easier.

There are kits you can buy to make raised gardens, but with my engineering thought process I decided I wanted to make my own instead. It wound up costing more than I had planned, but I believe that what we have to show for it is pretty good. Most of the kits are made of wood, which are fine, but I don’t believe they will be very durable. I chose to go with stackable blocks like I used to make the retaining wall earlier this summer. The plan was to make two raised gardens that would be wide enough to allow two rows of plants running down them.

We had a big pile of sandy type poor soil from where I cleared out the area for the future tree house. I had dumped that soil in the back corner of our garden. The soil in our garden was good for growing as we had been adding organic matter to it over the last few years. I decided that I wanted to use the poorer soil as filler and put the good soil on top. This turned out to be a lot of work moving all of this soil around.

I started by using our tiller to break up all the top soil in the garden. This let me move the top soil off to the side. After taking some measurements, I began making the path that would go down the middle. I first put down a sheet of weed block material, hoping this will reduce the weeds at ground level. I then put down some gravel to help support the base for the pathway to sit on. I put the paving stones on top of the gravel to create the walking path. Each stone I put a level on to try to keep it level. I used a rubber mallet to pound the paver stones to get them level and to help them settle into the dirt.

Once I got the pathway put down, I started with my foundation for the first garden. I used a square point shovel to get the dirt flattened out. I once again used gravel to help provide a stable base for my foundation. I started with 1 1/2 inch thick rectangular cinder block. I made sure to level each of these front to back. I once again used the rubber mallet to level the blocks and help them set into the soil. Once I had the cinder blocks leveled out I began stacking the blocks on top of it.

I stacked the blocks three high. Each block has a ridge on it that hooks on to the block below it to keep it from moving forward. Once I had the blocks stacked three high (not including the flat cinder block), I began putting more weed block fabric along the inside of the wall. There needs to be something behind the blocks to keep the soil from escaping once water starts getting in the dirt. Otherwise, all the soil will flow out the cracks in the wall.

Once I had secured the weed block fabric around the interior of the wall, I began moving filler soil and top soil into the box. Once this was filled, I put down more paver stones on the outside of the box to make a walking path that went round the side. There wasn’t much space so I had to use a skinny block and I didn’t do much for leveling or keeping out the weeds.

With the first box complete, I did the same process for making the second box

  

Thankfully we live close to Home Depot as I had to make several trips there to get all the blocks. I have no idea how many I used but I would estimate that it was about 200. The moving of blocks from store shelf, to cart, to car, to wheel barrow, to the garden site was a lot of work. I plan to hook up the soaker hoses to irrigation system in the spring time. Before I put down the paver stones for the middle pathway, I put down a small soaker hose down the length of it. We plan to put down some kind of a moss or ground cover between the cracks in the blocks.

Over all it took about 3 days or so to get it all done. I think it was worth the extra effort as this is a raised garden that isn’t going away any time soon. Now to wait for next spring to fill it with the vegetables that Wendy makes me eat.

The Treehouse Part 1

With our first child on the way, I decided that I wanted to build a treehouse/playhouse for our kid(s). My dad built one when I was a kid that was a raised structure on 4 telephone poles raised above a boxed in sandbox. My brother and I spent lots of time out there playing. I want to give my kids the same opportunity.

My plan is to make a similar structure as to what I had as  a kid. I plan to make some improvements over what we had, but once I get to actually building it, I’ll just have to make sure its not going to be more than I can do. I received a fair amount of construction experience in Americorps when we worked with Habitat for Humanity. We spent nearly a month in MA framing the second floor of a multi family home. It was a lot of fun, and I learned a lot. We’ll have to see how much of it I remembered. This time, I won’t have a master builder on hand to consult with. But I do have the Internet.

Currently I am still in the planning stages. I have begun doing some work already in getting the area ready for building. The SE corner of our yard is under a shade tree, and it is the area I have chosen to build in. The East side of our yard has a raised flower bed that also acts as a retaining wall as the yard slopes down from East to West. Our neighbors on the East side have a higher back yard than we do. The area in the Southern end of the raised bed looks like a project that was never finished. There’s no concrete retaining blocks like the rest of the bed has, but just sloped dirt with vegetation. I removed the excess dirt and vegetation to bring that corner of the yard to the same height as the rest of our yard. I installed a retaining wall here as I didn’t want to leave an exposed wall of dirt that would just wash away. Also, my neighbor has a small out building in that portion of his yard. I wanted to make sure the ground retained its ability to hold up their building.

Laying the retaining wall
The finished retaining wall

After getting a free evaluation of our lawn sprinklers and knowing that the treehouse was going to be in the line of fire for our sprinklers, I moved the sprinkler heads that were in this area and plan to not water the grass in this corner of the yard as it will one day be covered by the tree house.

Moving the sprinkler heads
Moving the sprinkler heads

In order for me to get an idea of what the dimensions of what the treehouse were going to be, I had to begin coming up with a idea of what I wanted the treehouse to look like. I began with sketching out on paper what I wanted. I had already come up with ideas in my head, but I needed to put it on paper so things could start coming together.

Once I had this on paper, I needed to get some plans that I could use for building. Thankfully, I took two semesters of AutoCAD when I was in college. It was a long time ago, but I managed to remember some of it. I found a free CAD program called LibreCAD that allowed me to draw 2D drawings. It is still in development stages, so it has some bugs, but for a free cross platform CAD program I’m not going to complain.

Getting dimensions and realizing how they related to the real world was going to be important for me in planning this thing out. First stop, the building codes for my town. Their website said out buildings could be built without a permit as long as they were less than 200 square feet. So that was my starting point. I also knew I had a defined area in width due to the area that I had dug out. One concern that I had to contend with that my flat roofed childhood tree house did not was snow accumulation. Reading around on the Internet helped me to determine that a minimum roof pitch for snow accumulation was a 3/12 ratio (three feet of rise for every twelve feet of length). Armed with all of this information I was able to start making some of my initial CAD drawings. Having dimensions from these initial drawings helped me see how big the footprint was going to be so I could place my sprinklers accordingly.

I chose to go with 128″ wide by 192″ long with a 32″ porch on the side. Since wall studs tend to come in 8′ heights, I decided to make my tall wall 8′ high. Using my 3/12 ratio for roof pitch, that makes my short wall 4′ high. This is low, but this is going to be for kids, so I think it should be OK. I plan to build everything on 16″ centers for the wall studs, floor joices, and rafters. 16″ centers seem to be a standard. I remember this number from when I was working with Habitat and Internet searches validated this number. Also, when you buy plywood, the edges of the plywood will line up on the center of your timbers when you put them on top.

My reasoning for going with this design also has to do with construction. I helped build roof trusses when we were in MA. There was a lot that went in to that. It was a triangular shaped roof. I don’t remember much about how we did it, so I chose to go with a sloping roof in just one direction. Also, having a high side would allow me to make a climbing wall on one side of the treehouse. I plan to add monkey bars coming off one side of the house. I would at some point like to put in a zip line. We’ll have to see about that, but its on the wish list. Also I want a skylight in the ceiling. I found a library book that talks about putting in a skylight that you can open. A door in the floor of the house will be there. I also plan to put in a loft, nothing more than a wide shelf so a kid could sleep in there if they wanted to.

I don’t plan on starting construction on this until later. I’ve got too much going on with school for the next year or so. But I’m sure this will be a fairly long process. Not just a weekend project.

 

Save money through credit cards

This post is for people who have good spending discipline and do not have credit card debt.

The idea for this post came about after I got a letter in the mail from one of my credit cards informing me that they no longer issued credit cards to the state I live in (Utah), and that they would be closing my account. Never mind that I have stellar credit, and I have payed my credit card bill every month with this bank (BBVA Compass Bank). I think they realized that they were losing money off their credit card  where I got 5% cash back on groceries, gas, and pharmacies. I was getting $300 a year back from them, just for using their credit card to buy things I was already buying.

Free money, that’s what it is. Credit cards offer reward programs for using their credit card. I’m sure everyone is familiar with Discover who is probably one of the more familiar cards that do this (1% cash back). I personally prefer the rewards cards that give me cash, which can sometimes just be applied to my statement balance. This is opposed to say “Thank you Points” or rewards points for flying. Interestingly enough, Dave Ramsay has been quoted as saying that 75% of mileage rewards never get used.

Here is how it works. When you buy the things that you normally buy, you pay for it using one of these rewards cards. Each month, you pay your balance when it comes due. Its not costing you anything, and the credit card company is paying you to use their credit card. One key thing to keep in mind is that you must make sure that you are buying something because you would normally buy it, not because you are getting money back from buying it.

So I started searching the Internet looking for a suitable replacement for my beloved Compass Cash card. What I found made me realize that I had a pretty good deal that was not going to be replaced easily. While it can be a bit confusing, I believe that free money is worth a little organization. Below is the credit card setup that I have come up with for us:

REI Visa – Unlimited 5% rewards on REI purchases, 1% reward on everything else. Rewards accumulate towards my REI store dividend. REI can send you a check for your dividends if you don’t shop at their store

Discover More – Unlimited 1% cash back on all purchases with  changing limited 5% cash back catagories throughout the year

Penfed Platinum Cash Rewards – Unlimited 5% cash back on gasoline

American Express Blue Cash Preferred – Unlimited 6% cash back on groceries, 3% on gas and dept stores, 1% on everything else. This has a $75 anual fee which works for our grocery budget. If you spend $1000 in the first 3 months, they give you a $150 bonus which pays for the first two years of annual fees. They also have an AMEX Blue Cash Everyday card with no anual fee but only 3% cash back on groceries. There’s a spreadsheet  here (originally from Fatwallet) you can use to help decide which works better for you. You will have to copy or download the spreadsheet to edit it.

American Express True Earnings Costco –  3% cash back on gasoline (first $3000), 2% restaurants and travel, 1% on everything else including Costco. (No longer necessary as Costco will accept the other AMEX card we have.)

Capital One Cash Rewards Master Card – Unlimited 1.5% cash back on all purchases (1% on all purchases and an additional 50% of your annual rewards each year)

This is the setup that works for us. There are a lot of other rewards cards out there. Such as Target if you shop at their store a lot and Amazon.com if you buy from them. For those of you with good credit and can manage your money/budget responsibly, you are missing out if you are not taking advantage of these deals.

You will hear some people tell you that rewards programs are not worth it because they will make you buy more than you need. That’s where having responsible spending habits comes into play. We are already spending money, why not get money back for doing it? If you are a fan of the Debit cards, even if it has rewards associated with it, its not a good idea. Debt cards should not be used for anything but getting money out of the ATM machine. Debt cards do not offer the same levels of protection that credit cards do. For example, if someone gets ahold of your credit card information (such as through a skimmer), you are only responsible for a small portion or none at all of the charges that get made against your account. A debt card, your money is just gone. Also, many credit cards come with consumer protection such as extended warranties and rental car insurance, debt cards don’t give you this.

Another handy feature of using plastic instead of paper to pay for things is the ability to track your purchases and set up a budget. Each month, using financial tracking software (I use mint.com) you can download your transactions from the bank, have a category for each transaction, and see how you are spending your money. This is really handy if you are trying to stick to a budget.

So, if you are financially responsible and would like to get some money back from your regular purchases, you should check out some of these cards to see if they can help you get some extra savings. If you do choose to sign up for one of these cards please contact me so we can find a way for me to get a referral bonus for telling you about the cards.

My Parking Lot Rant

I’ve been saving up for this one for a while, and I’ve decided to let it be known. While I realize that me writing this won’t change the world (I’m not that important), its just a good way for me to air my grievances. My wife thinks its a healthy way for me to let out my frustrations. There are some things that happen in big parking lots that really get on my nerves.

Parking in the fire lane

The red curb at the front of the store where you go in is painted red for a reason. You aren’t supposed to park there. Even if you are “just going to be a minute”. I don’t care. There’s a good chance you need the exercise to walk from the parking lot like everyone else does anyway. Despite what you may think, you really aren’t more important than everyone else. Not to mention, you are just causing congestion with an already crowded parking lot. How inconsiderate of you to stop in the middle of the driving lane so you can let someone out, and then pull over to the side making me and everyone else have to move around you so we can get where we need to go. Here’s why that curb is painted red and you aren’t supposed to park there. When Granny Shikelgruber falls slips on a puddle of water in the produce section because water leaked on the floor from the person keeping your produce looking fresh, and she breaks her hip, the ambulance and fire engine are both going to be coming screaming into that parking lot and expecting to park where your lazy but is waiting for your little Johnny to run in and “just grab a gallon of milk”. Now tell me, who really needs that parking space more. You because you are being lazy, or the emergency workers who need to be able to get in and out of the store quickly and easily.

I can remember when I was with Aurora Fire & Rescue, we went to a store. We went to park our engine in the “Fire Lane” only to find a UPS truck parked there. My engineer purposely blocked the UPS truck in with the fire engine to prove a point. When the UPS driver needed to leave, he had to come up to my engineer to ask him to move. Did the guy get the message, probably not. Another instance we were responding to a call in a big store parking lot where several cars were idling in the fire lane with their windows rolled down. My engineer applied the break and hit the gas as we drove by them spewing diesel exhaust in their car windows. While not responsible, it was funny.

I often want to just walk up to cars I see parking in the fire lane and say “Hey, when the fire department get a new Mercedes? Well, you are parking in the fire lane with that car so that must mean you are in a fire department vehicle responding to a call.”

Parking in the handicapped space

Again, another instance of you think you are more important than you really are. The parking spaces for handicapped folks are usually pretty well marked. These spaces are for people who have difficulty walking from the back of the parking lot. Many of them are veterans who have lost their mobility because they were protecting the freedom of our country. I should get some business cards printed up to leave a nasty gram on the windshield of cars I see parking in handicapped spots who don’t have a handicapped tag.

Taking up more than one parking spot

Another, I’m more important than you and I’m not thinking of anyone else but myself issue. Sensing a theme here? And why is it that these folks always tend to do this up towards the front of the parking lot? If you are such a terrible driver that you can’t even park a car, go park away from other cars or get some more practice before trying to integrate in with the rest of society. It just seems so inconsiderate to me that someone would park a car in a way that takes up more than one spot. This really upsets me when I’m driving around looking for that elusive spot, I get my hopes up because I see an open spot, and I find that someone has done this. Annoying.

Driving across the parking lot

When you drive down the road, do you ignore the little painted lines on the road? Maybe if you live in Europe, but guess what, this is America. We drive on the right side of the road and between the little painted lines. Why would you think that driving in a parking lot would be any different? We put rules and standards in place to make life easier, safer, and more predictable. When you decide not to accept the norms and rules of society by cutting off through the “vacant” part of a parking lot, those of us obeying the standards are the ones who have to avoid you. I’ve had to go on a motor vehicle crash in a parking lot because someone was doing just this, cutting across the parking lot and not pay attention to the flow of traffic. So yes, you can hurt somebody by once again, not thinking about others.

I was driving through the parking lot recently at our grocery store, driving down one of the lanes, when a guy in a big pickup truck towing a big boat was cutting across the parking lanes towards my lane. I of course didn’t stop, but he had to slam on the breaks and thew his hands up at me in frustration. Part of me hoped he hit me as I know someone driving a truck with a boat like that could afford to pay for the damages. So why again would this guy be upset with me obeying the rules?

Not returning shopping carts to the appropriate place

Bullet, my newish Nissan Versa, became a victim of this not long after moving to Utah. At the time, the car was a year or so old. Now, it sports scratches and a big dent across one side because of a rogue shopping cart. I want to thank who ever it was that was too lazy to return a shopping cart to the little cage that stores go to great lengths to provide for their customers to use for this reason. And if this laziness doesn’t cause a car to get dinged up like mine does, then it occupies yet another perfectly good parking space where I have to get out of my car, move the cart, and then pull into the spot. Normally, I just drive on to the next vacant space though. Don’t even try to blame this on the high school kids working for minimum wage out there collecting shopping carts.

Opening the car door all the way without looking

My parents bought me a new car, a 1998 Chevy Malibu, as my graduation present for finishing college. I really liked the car and did my best to take care of it. I can remember I was sitting in a parking lot one time after having spent the afternoon washing, waxing, and detailing it myself, when a car pulled up into the parking space next to me. The person in the passenger door opened the door all the way and whacked it into my driver door leaving a dent and chipping the paint. I was sitting right there when hit happened, with my window rolled down, and the person didn’t say sorry or anything. It made me really mad.

It seems there are people in this world who don’t value other people’s property. I make it a point to only open my door part way in a parking lot to make sure I don’t scuff the car next to me. My wife has a new car, and its already has some dings on it from the parking lot. We make it a point to park away from other cars because people just don’t pay attention.

Wow, if I get this worked up over parking lots, imagine how I feel about important things. Please think about others the next time you are in a parking lot.

Merry Christmas 2011

Hey everybody. Hope this finds you all doing great.

2011 was another wonderful year for Wendy and I. We had a lot of fun and got to go see more new places. Its fun still being in the first years of marriage.

Wendy is still enjoying her job doing urgent care for kids. She works most evenings which means we get to spend time together during the day. Believe it or not, but I do mange to keep myself busy even though I don’t have a job. I just don’t see how families with both spouses working find time to get things done. This summer, Wendy got more interested in biking, and she joined me on some bike rides. I’m glad that she can share my joy in bike riding.

Speaking of bike riding, I had to buy a new bike this summer as my old one had frame issues I wasn’t aware of until a local shop pointed it out to me. After a lot of sweat and work, I finally was able to make it to the top of Little Cottonwood Canyon this summer riding my bike. Last summer I was only able to make it up part of the ride. It was a big accomplishment for me as I rode up the road several times a week. I was also able to do some bike riding with my neighbor this summer as well. It was fun getting to ride with other people this year. Enough about biking.

We spent another week in AZ this year to go see my beloved Cubbies at spring training. Wendy was able to go to a conference while we were down there so her job payed her way. Unfortunately this year my Cubs were abhorrent. I stopped watching baseball before the summer even started as I was so discouraged. To make things worse, I had to hear about the Cardinals winning the World Series. Ugh! Maybe I just needed to take some time off from baseball as I’m looking forward to next season already.

Later on in the Spring Wendy and I made a trip back to our homes to visit with family. We spent a few days in San Antonio, TX  (Wendy’s home town), and we spent a few days in Madison, MS (my home town). I’m pretty sure that is the last time I will cast my shadow on the state of MS as my parents have decided they are going to move out to UT. They are in the process of fixing up and de-cluttering their house so they can put it on the market come spring time. It will be nice to have family nearby. My parents have made three trips out to UT this year looking at homes and getting to know the area. They’ve also brought 3 trailer loads of stuff to put in a storage facility. Guess that means they are putting down roots. We don’t know when they will move yet, but they want to get their house sold first before that happens. Its a pretty big deal as they have called central Mississippi their home their entire lives.

My brother Chris and his wife Lisa left Virginia this year. Chris got a job back in California with the Air Force. They are back living where they were in Palmdale before they moved to Virginia. Chris will be teaching test pilots how to be test pilots. On their trek across America, they stopped in at our house for a few days. It was nice getting to visit with them.

During the summer, Wendy and I took a road trip out west. Yeah, I know, we live out west, but there’s more West past us. We drove through Nevada (Reno, you are a disgusting little town) and toured around Northern California. It was a fun little trip and we got to see some great sites.

Our big trip this year was a backpacking trip to SW Colorado. We spent 6 days on the trail in the Weminuche Wilderness. It was an awesome trip. Wendy said it was the most hardcore trip she had ever been on. It was a route that had been a dream of mine for several years. It was a tough hike, but we had a lot of fun.

We also made another short trip down to southern Utah to visit Zion National Park. We went in early fall so the temperature was perfect. There was a lot of beautiful scenery down there.

The week before Thanksgiving this year we flew to Tulsa, OK to visit with Wendy’s grandmother and more of her family. We had a great time. I think Wendy enjoyed showing me off to her family. Grandmom June is a wonderful person.

I’ve spent the last year and a half on the hiring list for Salt Lake City Fire Dept. I started as #13, but they only hired 8 people during this two year list time. I have sat at #5 since then. Unfortunately, the list is set to expire here soon, and I’ll have to test with them again. Its very frustrating as I am in a good hiring position, but the city budgets haven’t been conducive to hiring. Stupid economy. I’ve tested a couple of other times with other departments, but have had no success. I’ve decided its time to step up to wearing the big boy pants, and I’m going to go to paramedic school. Starting this January, I’m going to be taking a couple of classes (Human Physiology and Medical Terminology) at the local college for prerequisites so I can apply for paramedic school that would start in Jan 2013. I hope that getting this will help improve my chances of getting hired. I’ve also come to realize that I really do enjoy the medical side of firefighting. It will be a while before all of this happens, but I’m starting the process now.

As you can see  in the photo this year, we got an addition to our family. Her name is Daisy. She’s a German Shepherd/Lab mix, not quite a year old. Madie and her have become friends, and we’ve enjoyed having her around. Benjamin, the cat, was not so excited about our decision, but all the kids are getting a long peacefully now.

My parents are out here for Christmas. My brother and his wife will be coming in tomorrow. It will be a full house here at the Cotting residence, but its nice to be surrounded by family.

I hope this finds you all well and hope that the next year will find you even better.

Jason

Weminuche Wilderness backpacking adventure

Trip Photos

A while back, sometime in the late 90’s, I read about a place in Southwestern Colorado called the Weminuche Wilderness. Also known as The Backpacker’s Nirvana, it is located in the San Juan National Forest. I made my first visit to there in 1998 with a Philmont friend, Bill Sassani, where we did an overnight trip, and then drove around the area. I was hooked. I wanted to do more exploring in the Weminuche. I’ve made two more additional trips there since then. Once with Wendy in 2007 where we backpacked up the Valecito River. The other time with my brother Chris and a college friend Ramsey where we did some day hiking the week before my wedding in 2009.

There is an historical narrow gauge railroad that runs between the towns of Durango and Silverton called the Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad (D&SNGR). It runs along the western edge of the Weminuche Wilderness and makes a few stops along the way. I read about how backpackers use the train to access the wilderness, and I soon decided that one day I wanted to make a backpacking trip that took advantage of the train.

In the book Hiking Colorado’s Weminuche and South San Juan Wilderness Areas, there is a hike described using the train to do a trip. The hike starts with the train dropping you off at the Elk Park stop, and then you get picked up at the Neddleton stop. Wendy and I decided to do the hike over 6 days and 5 nights..

Wendy had some additional time off outside of the planned hiking days so we decided to do some extra touring around. Our first day we drove to Telluride, CO where we spent the night at the Victorian Inn. From the door of the inn, you could smell a mouthwatering restaurant. It smelled like a steak place, but I wanted to have a steak at the end of the trip, so we decided to try another restaurant. The inn was located within walking distance of the main strip of town where the shops and restaurants were located. We found an Italian restaurant called the Telluride Bistro. I had the best chicken parmesan I’ve ever had before. After dinner we took the free gondola up to the ski area. It was a nice little moonlit ride up and back.

Telluride, CO

Next morning, during our free breakfast at the inn, we overheard some other guests referring to some snow coming in the next few days. The weather report I had seen earlier referred to a chance of snow, and these folks were talking about inches accumulating in Telluride. It was something to consider. We headed out towards Silverton. The drive between Ouray and Silverton is hands down my favorite drive in the country. Its a beautiful mountain drive that puts you up along sheer rock walls, with beautiful views, colorful mountains, and old mining ruins. Its a windy road that is just fun to drive, so it can be hard to look and drive. We took our time getting to Silverton stopping to read signs and take photos. We ran into some rain along the way too, a precursor to the upcoming days.

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California Bound

Wendy had some time off over the 4th of July Weekend, so we decided to take a little vacation. We hadn’t really made any kind of plans on what we wanted to do, so we decided to make a road trip out of it. We had both heard that northern California is very pretty, so we decided to head that way. Wendy did all the planning and found places for us to stay and things to do. I was content to just come along for the ride. With the high gas prices, we decided it was better to take my car, Bullet, the Nissan Versa. I was hoping to get good gas mileage with the highway driving, but overall it was about what I got driving around in town here 30MPG.

We left Salt Lake on June 30th. We had to drop Madie off at another boarding place as Dogmode was full for the weekend. Heading west, we crossed the Bonneville Salt Flats. It was an interesting thing to see. Flat white ground. Thankfully, this was the day after a cold front had pushed into the area, so it was pleasant traveling weather.

Bonneville Salt Flats

At the Nevada-Utah border is a town called Wendover. It advertises here in Salt Lake for its resort casinos. This picture depticts how the casino is built literally on the state line making it as close as possible for those looking for a respite from LDS land. The white line in the middle of the road is the state line and it says Nevada and Utah on either side of it.

Nevada - Utah state line

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