Mint

I read about a free online financial tool (I can't recall where) called Mint.com and decided to give it a try. The premise (and I don't think it's a novel one) is to have all the user's financials in one place.  What a cool idea.  Seriously.  

So it aggregates all the activity from my bank account (and all the deposits and withdrawals, etc.) with my credit card balance (and all the purchases I've made) and my 401(k) and my online high-yield bank account.

Here's the pretty screenshot...

My initial reaction is that it's pretty cool but not revolutionary. At least not for me. The interface is relatively easy to navigate, there's plenty of cool forecasting features (that sadly I'll probably never use.) I think in general I have never been overwhelmed by the task of tracking my finances, so this service isn't filling a huge gap for me.  It might not become part of my routine, but again, it's pretty cool and I think I'll use it for a while to see if it grows on me.

Zimbabwe

This would be amusing if it weren't so tragic.  I read this article from the BBC a few days back which said Zimbabwe recently started printing a 500 million Zimbabwe dollar note.  At the time of the article's publication, one of these bills for Z$500,000,000 was worth US$2.  

More graffiti

More from the alley with all the graffiti. This was up a while back.

Graffiti Alley

On my way to work every morning, I walk down a pedestrian alleyway that runs between two stores. The stores are nothing special; a Citibank and a restaurant called Central Kitchen. Over the past few months, the alleyway been painted over dozens of times by really amazing graffiti. I'm assuming it's sanctioned, as the graffiti is pretty professional-looking and stays up for weeks at a time. The art isn't limited to spray paint. There are posters as well. Here's a sampling from over the past few months:

First it's two images of rich Uncle Pennybags with fake "Community Chest" and "Chance" cards. The "Chance" card here reads "Your hedge fund is up 14%..." Nice.


Next, the boxer "Boom Boom" Mancini, who's somehow related to Pedro, I think...

More grains

I need to follow up on my last post regarding bread for two reasons.

First, a comment on the post asked if I could come up with 15 grains, possibly those included in 15 grain bread. I thought long and hard and came up with exactly five. Then I decided to go after the answer on the bread package only to discover we've finished the loaf. I looked online, but Pepperidge Farms' website didn't have the ingredients. Here were my thoughts on what grains might be in there: wheat, oats, barley, flax, rye. That's all I got. Five seems pretty pitiful to me...

The second reason I have to follow up on the last post about 7, 9, 12, and 15 grain bread is that I came up with the perfect thing to go with all these grains (all 43 of them). That would be "Forty Spices" hummus.


That's a picture of me with a thunderstruck look on my face trying to fathom the mind-bending implications of all those flavors together. I don't even know how to calculate all the combinations, but something tells me it involves either factorials, linear algebra, differential equations, or magic. I will attempt to make a sandwich with the 40 spices hummus as well as one slice of each bread I mentioned before (7, 9, 12, and 15 grain breads).

I pray that it doesn't upset the spacetime continuum.