Eric never thought it would happen, but I assured him it would. Not quite sure why he thought it wouldn’t go up. I wonder if he figured Amanda would never let it happen.
I now have a basketball rim mounted in our living room.
Draw Something Highlights
I’m really loving Draw Something lately. Amanda and I just broke 100 with our streak and I have a few others in the 80s and 90s.
Here are some highlights of the drawings I’ve sent to folks.
Do you play Draw Something?
Where can I see some pictures you’ve drawn?
Back From the Dead
Now that we’re 90% settled in our new place, Amanda and I wanted to get out and see something that we hadn’t seen before. It was time to walk Cobalt and we settled on heading over to Oakland Cemetery.
PLACE IS HUGE. For about 20 minutes we meandered around what I thought was like 50-75 percent of the park. As we left and drove down Memorial Drive back toward the house I realized just how big the cemetery is. I’d say we only saw like 10% of it.
We poked around some corners and pondered the life stories of the names we read. The two highlights that we walked directly to were Margaret Mitchell and Maynard Jackson. I’m not sure of the word I should use to describe how looking at gravestones makes me feel, but for now I’m going with nostalgic. Makes me a bit prouder to be from Atlanta when I can see a few people from here that achieved some great things.
About 5 minutes after we pulled out of the parking lot, @cat_lanta tweeted about a drop. We were first on the scene at Grant Park and I was lucky enough to snag one of the three pieces. I’m pretty happy about it. Especially since I only learned of it yesterday.
How To: Delete Games from Draw Something
I started playing this new game on my iPhone called Draw Something the other day. It’s pretty cool. But one thing that bugs me the most about people that play a pictionary-like game on the Internet is when they simply write out the word instead of drawing it.
I couldn’t for the life of me figure out how to delete a game at first. I tried the normal way of swiping the game to the right to have a delete button show up but nothing ever came up. I looked through the user settings page. I even tried losing on purpose to see if I had missed the option to stop playing the first time around.
Anyway, after looking around online for like 15 minutes (a lot longer than I expected) I finally found out.
I was right all along.
Just swipe your finger to the right. Maybe I just misplaced my fat finger the first time or maybe you have to start swiping on their picture, but it really is that simple.
Cheers.
Debt Free
Debt free by 2-0-1-3.
That’s a slogan (cheesy I know) that Amanda and I came up with the other night while we were driving home from somewhere.
It’s been just over 2 years since I graduated and I am still paying off my student loans. I always thought that I would graduate, get a job, and have those things gone within the first year. I guess waiting tables at a Tex-Mex restaurant wasn’t very conducive to executing that plan.
But now that both of us have decent paying jobs, our goal for this year is to wipe it out. And I think it’s doable for three reasons:
- Together we bring home a pretty good annual salary
- I don’t think we have any real big expenses
- The size of the debt
So I made a spreadsheet with our income, expenses, donations, and savings/retirement contributions. I then took the amount of debt we have and divided it by 12 to see how much we’d pay per month to be completely done in December. I added that number into the expenses column and crosses my fingers.
Still in the black per month. On a purely numbers game, it’s doable. We won’t be losing money each month.
I’m pretty excited by the thought of being done with all of these loans at the end of this year. Especially since the spreadsheet takes into account some pretty aggressive charitable donations each month. I’m excited to see how God is going to work in our finances as a result of our giving.
What do you do to plan your debt away? What type of debt is the most important for you to handle first?
Seeing Atlanta
I was browsing Foursquare a while ago and noticed all of the “featured friends” that they suggest you follow. These friends are groups or brands like The History Channel, the NHL, TLC, Mashable, and VH1. I started looking at the different places that each of these brands link to wondering how many of them were in Georgia. After a while I had compiled a list of venues around Atlanta.
I’ve lived in Georgia pretty much all my life. I’ve lived in Atlanta since 2003. I realized that I hadn’t gone to very many of these places. I need to see my city.
I’ve been to a good number of these places, but most of them weren’t very recently. So I’m only going to mark off the recent ones (or the ones I don’t want to blog about) and strive to go back to the places I can’t really remember anything about (the ones I actually want to blog about). You’ll hopefully see a post about most of them along the way.
What do you think? How many of these places have you been? Do you feel like I do in that you haven’t seen much of the city you live in? Where are some of the places you want to see?
And here’s the list:
- AMC Theatres – Fork & Screen Buckhead
Phipps Plaza- Apple Store Perimeter
- Atlanta Cyclorama
Atlantic Station- Bistro 57
- Buckhead Saloon
Centennial Olympic Park- Center For Puppetry Arts
- Atlanta Civic Center
Diesel Filling StationThe Dump Furniture- East Andrews Cafe & Bar
- Federal Reserve Bank
- Fernbank Museum of Natural History
Five Guys Burgers & Fries- Flip Burger Boutique
- Food 101
Fox Brothers Bar-B-QGeorgia Aquarium— Read about it- Georgia State Capitol
- Georgia Dome
- Grant Field
- Grant Park
- Hobnob
- Jimmy Carter Library & Museum
- Keegan’s Public House
- Manuel’s Tavern
- Margaret Mitchell House and Museum
- Movies Worth Seeing
Oakland Cemetery— Read about it- ONE. midtown kitchen
- Ormsby’s
- Philips Arena
- Piedmont Park
- Starlight Six Drive-in Theatre
- Steel Restaurant & Lounge
- Stone Mountain Park
- Stone Summit Climbing and Fitness Center
- The Fox Theatre
- The King Center
- The State Botanical Garden of Georgia
- The Varsity
- Turner Field
- Whole Foods Market
- World of Coca-Cola
- Wren’s Nest House Museum
- YEAH! BURGER
- Zoo Atlanta
Repost: Apartment Hunting 101
Amanda and I went apartment hunting A VERY LONG TIME AGO. I wanted to try and share some of the knowledge that we gained through the whole experience.
If you’re planning on looking for an apartment, hopefully some things I say here will aid you in your search.
Also, you could probably just call me and we could chat. You know, whatever works best.
Trying to Transfer
What is the big deal about giving me the last four digits of your account number so I can direct transfer you money?
The way I see it, if you give me a check (which is what they would rather do), not only do I have your FULL account number, but I also (most likely) have your:
- Full name
- Address
- Signature
- Bank name
- Routing number
With banks like ING Direct, a transfer can be as simple as typing in the last four digits of your account number and your name. It’s really fast and (in my opinion) very easy. I also type in any email address (which doesn’t even have to be associated with your bank account) as an external confirmation that you’d like to accept the money.
What do you think? Would you feel more comfortable giving just the last four digits or your full account number?
Putting 2011 to Bed
Well, 2011 has come to a close. This year has definitely been a lot of fun.
I don’t really have too many ways to sum up everything that has gone on. I really don’t feel like doing yet another bulleted list of accolades and escapades. So here’s a still frame of my life since Monday, April 19, 2010.
My Name in Lights
When we released a beta version of the next major revision of our product at work, we were asked to submit quotes about the product to possibly be included in a corresponding press release. Our marketing specialist ended up using my quote in the release and it was published out to our website.
A day or so after the press release went out I got a Google Alert response in my email about a website mentioning our content management system. I clicked on the link and started reading the story that was picked up about our company.
All of the sudden I see my own name quoted in the article. I had totally forgotten about my quote being used. It was a weird feeling to be reading a post on a website and see my name, but cool nonetheless.