Road Trip (2014)

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Screen Shot 2014-11-10 at Mon, Nov 10, 9.56.44 AM

On Sunday I left Richmond, VA shortly before 6:00 a.m. and arrived in Jefferson City, MO (home) shortly after midnight. I made 15 minute stops for gas and food. I suppose it’s good to know I can still do a solo marathon like this if I have to but the last few hours were brutal. I was just eager to get home to Barb and the pups.

My brother and his wife are stateside for a year, and it was good to see them. Why didn’t I stay longer? They have jobs and nobody should have to have a house guest more than a couple of days.

I just don’t like to travel. Not by plane, train or automobile. Next long trip will probably be by air. Lesser evil.

Citizenfour

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citizenfour_posterWe ain’t the good guys anymore. That was my take-away from Citizenfour, Laura Poitras’ documentary on Edward Snowden. This is far and away the best documentary I’ve ever seen and it was damning. As for who’s a good guy and who isn’t, well, maybe there aren’t any good guys anymore. I’ll tell you who is not a good guy… Barack Obama. Yep, the guy I voted for, twice. Even made some donations to the first campaign. I’d say I fucked up but come on… Sarah Palin?!

As it became clear President Obama was a very different cat than Candidate Obama, I told myself he’s better than George Bush and Dick Cheney. But you know, that doesn’t make you a good guy. It just makes you not those bad guys.

Same goes for the USA. Yeah, there are some countries with really shitty governments. But that’s a pretty low bar. Turns out our shit does stink and it’s time we took a good whip.

At some point in the film I found myself thinking, “Fuck it. I hope the Republicans take the Senate. And the House. A whole bunch of Democrats have been complicit in what the NSA and the rest of the intelligence “community” have been up to and they get no more support or votes for me.

I’ll calm down but I won’t be the same. It’s that strong a film. I’ve turned off comments here but would be happy to discuss privately, one-to-one. With anyone who has seen the film.

Online banking

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For years (I’m embarrassed to admit how many) I’ve kept a wad of cash in a money market account at my local bank. For a long time I thought of this as my “savings” account, as opposed to my day-to-day checking account where I kept a few thousand bucks.

In the last couple of years I’ve moved most of those funds to my investment portfolio but kept some (too much) in the money market account. Last week I got curious about exactly how much the money market was earning. A whopping .15%. The lady at the bank apologized when she told me.

When I asked my financial advisor for ideas he recommended a savings account with an online bank. He pointed out that the good ones are FDIC insured, just like my local bank and because they aren’t supporting all that brick-and-mortar infrastructure, they can afford to pay better interest rates. I went with Ally where I’ll get .90%.

My initial experiences have all been positive. Security seems very tight. I can talk/chat with someone 24/7. And their iOS app is very good. By that I mean, simple.

Once it sunk in that my money is not really in the vault of the bank across the street, I got comfortable with the idea of an online bank. I’ll keep a checking account with my local bank but as tools like Apple Pay gain wider acceptance, that might not always be the case.