Staying ahead of the curve with micro homes

For most men, the biggest purchase of a lifetime will be a house. Depending on where you live, a house will cost a few hundred thousand dollars. The traditional American plan would be to save up the money for the down payment then lock into a 15 to 30 year mortgage.

As the economy put pressure on the average citizen, this has become a harder and harder thing to do. Increased housing prices, stagnant wages, rising cost of livings, and poor financial decisions make it tough for a man to get established today.

A few months ago, I read an article on ZeroHedge stating that people were paying rent in San Francisco just to live in shipping containers. $1500 a month to just live in a metal container. With that kind of price, a man could almost buy the entire container.

It is here where a single man without the desire to have a wife and children has the best option to have an easy life. Without having to provide for other people, a man wouldn't need all of the space of a single family house. He could rent, live with roommates, tour around in an RV, or build his own house.

When you decide to build your own house, you have the advantage of building only as much house as you need. After buying some land, you could build a house as large or as small as you want. It is also possible to buy prefabricated houses. Instead of committing to a debt of $200,000 a man could save up a fraction of the cost to build a micro home for one.

In building a tiny house, a man can potentially avoid a mortgage and avoid all the costs that come with a mortgage in particular interest. In having a tiny house, property taxes should be much lower than a more expensive structure.

With the economy still facing pressure, I think that people will start dispersing away from large cities and moving towards rural areas. Economics may force a lot of men into this option. Micro homes will become more and more common in the next few decades.

How did Steve Jobs die so young?

A few years after Steve Jobs' death, his legacy still lives on through his company, products, and reputation. Steve Jobs died in 2011 and his death affected millions of people. After all, a good amount of people from my generation purchased MacBooks, Ipods, and Iphones. Even though, I never purchased any apple products, I knew how much of an impact he had on the world.

Years after his death, movies are being made about his life. The other day, my coworker was talking about successful men dying of cancer in the United States. Back then, I didn't question why Steve died to cancer. He was a rich man, he could have afforded good amounts of treatment. Sometimes cancer is just a total death sentence.

But then I wondered, what kind of cancer did Steve have? If Steve Jobs died at the age of 56, he must have had something terrible like brain cancer. Nope. He had pancreatic cancer. Pancreatic cancer seems like it can be dealt with.

However, instead of using practical treatments, Steve turned to acupuncture, fruit juices, spiritualists, and other methods he found on the internet to treat his cancer.

Definitely not the best decision he could have made.

The reason I don't tell girls that I skate.

It was a few years ago when I was with a girl that had an interest in skateboarding. At the time, I thought this would be a good opportunity to show her how to skate.

We met at the skatepark and I let her ride one of my spare boards. I told her to push with the back foot and put the back foot back on when she was done pushing. After a few pushes, she gained some momentum and was rolling forward. But then she started leaning to the right. I thought she would correct her balance but she just kind of fell over like a fallen tree. She also didn't know how to catch herself with her arms, so she just kind of fell to her right side and smacked her head on the ground.

It was at that point when I was feeling a little nervous. I just thought to myself, "Maybe that won't happen again."

She looked kind of hurt and said her head was starting to swell up but she got back up and wanted to try to ride again. I couldn't say no to that enthusiasm so I gave her simple directions. I told her to push to one side of the skatepark and come back. She did pretty well but she wanted to know how to turn. I told her just to lean on her toe or heel edge to turn frontside or backside.

But then she fell over again, cut her elbows and hit her head again. After that spill, I realized I had a helmet in my car and I let her wear it but then I felt bad that I hadn't thought about giving her the helmet before hand.

After watching me for a bit she wanted to know how to ollie. I told her to stand on the skateboard and jump on one foot (the foot sitting on the tail). To her credit, she got the board up off the ground but she didn't level out her feet. So she landed on her back foot and slipped backwards and landed on her arm and shoulder but at least she was wearing a helmet this time. It was at that moment that I was thinking "Maybe this wasn't such a good idea."

By the time we had finished, she had scrapped elbows, a headache, and a scrape somewhere on her forehead. She took pictures of her wounds and posted them on facebook. All her friends were shocked and asked what happened to her. "Oh, I was just skateboarding with Loki."

And this is why I don't tell girls that I skate.

This is why everyone in the office hates me.

When I first started working my my office space a few years ago, my boss recommended that we get an Ipod and play music in the back ground. I wasn't to fond of the idea because I just really don't like today's music and the other staff likes to put the station on today's hits.

So, I remember listening to Lordz, Macklemore, and that say something I'm giving up on you song. There was also the locked out of heaven song by Bruno Mars and the marry that girl anyway song. And that is the thing about today's music, it just isn't manly at all.

So my boss would put me in charge of Pandora and for fun I would just type in the name of different countries. Because if we can listen to all the music, why just relegate ourselves to songs in the English language. So in the office, it was common to hear Icelandic folk songs inbetween European techno music and Buddhist monk chanting. In addition to that, I would add Miley Cyrus and Britney Spears to the mix just to annoy customer service.

Throughout the cycle, the song Ponponpon popped up and my coworkers were staring daggers at me while Japanese pop was playing. I also got the Dutch version of Barbie Girl in the cycle. I love the Dutch version because the male vocals sounds like Hitler and everyone mistakes the language for German.

As a side effect, I started developing a taste for horrible music. A smile comes to my face whenever I hear the song Wrecking Ball by Miley Cyrus or Just Dance by Lady Gaga.

Today, we don't really use the Ipod very much anymore. Everyone just kind of sticks in a pair of earbuds and listen to whatever on their laptops.

Dark Knight went ghosting

Over the last few months, I was following Dark Knight's channel. Recently, he shut down his channel and I was kind of bummed about it. He had some really good motivational videos. His earlier videos were full of red pill rage but later on he started to focus on self improvement. In the true going his own way fashion, he shut down his channel and is out there becoming a better scientist.

Luckily there is a record of some of his best videos on Niko Choski's channel. The content I heard from Dark Knight was his interview with Niko about moving forward. Maybe it is just temporary. Maybe Dark Knight will open his channel back up and make content again. But if not, at least the list interview is still up for enjoyment. Maybe someone can convince him to come back.

Recruiters from Linkedin

Over the last couple of years, I had noticed that people were contacting me via linkedin for job opportunities. The first thing that came to my mind was where were these guys when I was unemployed for 7 months? The would have been real helpful during that time period.

I was starting to think I was ranking up and becoming a more valuable employee. Unfortunately, after interacting with a few of them, I came to realize that they were just salesmen and were using the spray and pray technique to fulfill their quotas. I have no ill will towards them, this is just the way our world works and everyone has to make a dollar.

So I asked a recruiter how the process works and the staffing agencies pay linkedin good money for advertising and or leads. Nowadays, when I see a message from a recruiter, I don't really pay that much attention however I remember one instance where the recruiter wasn't even trying to go for a match.

The position was for an accounting controller. For anyone who doesn't know, the position of controller is the highest position if an accountant doesn't become a CPA and start his own firm. Controllers make six figure salaries and require in excess of 8 to 10 years of experience.

I received the blurb for the opportunity and I saw the tagline at the bottom. If you or anyone you know is interest in this position, please email me. This is also another technique used by salesmen to get leads.

In the field of accountancy, I'm pretty much a low level grunt and was nowhere near qualified for the position. If I had even tried to apply for the job, I'm pretty sure the HR manager would just hang up. However I decided to have a little bit of fun with this guy.

This position paid a salary of $120,000 a year. So I sent the recruiter the following email.

$120,000 seems kind of low. Over my last 8 years of experience in the field, I have managed to crash six successful companies into complete bankruptcy. Upon my dismissal, my golden parachute was always in excess of $50,000. I think a salary of $150,000 would be a fair price for me to extend my services to your client.

Send.

I'd like to say I never heard from the guy again however he did reply to my email saying that the salary of $120,000 was nonnegotiable. Even though he won't admit it in the email, I'd like to think I made him laugh.