T.G.I.F. Friday: Volume 163
HAPPY NEW YEAR!
Welcome to “Thank God I’m FI” Friday, Volume #163
Here are some things I really like and that you might too!
Financial Independence/Work Life/Retirement Articles & Content
Getting in shape without paying a dime (Early Retirement Extreme) “Working on personal fitness is almost like building capital by saving money.”
Caregiving Is The Crack In America’s Retirement And Longevity Planning (Forbes) “Caregiving is, at its core, an act of love. But love alone is not a system.”
Video
Enjoy this short clip of dolphins riding and surfing the pressure wave of a Maersk Cargo ship off the coast of Florida. That ship is likely moving at about 30 knots, incredible. I’d like to think that Dolphin videographers were filming this from underwater for the Dolphin X Games!
What I’m Grateful For
My Toshiba Satellite L655 Laptop. I know, I’ve mentioned her twice over the years in this blog and she keeps going! I bought her back in January of 2011 so she’s just turned 15, a sophomore in high school, haha. Back in those days Toshiba’s laptops were known for reliability and having some of the lowest hardware failure rates in the industry, beating even Apple and Sony. I paid $479 on Buy.com (not Best Buy, but Buy.com if you remember them).
Her age is showing though, the jack that connects the power cord is getting wonky and this past week while working I hit it and she shut off. No big deal, but when I was rebooting her the cord disconnected again at a crucial part of boot-up and things got bad. I thought it was her time, that she was bricked. Thankfully I’m pretty good with computers and was able to get into her BIOS, find the issue, and restore her to a previous working point that allowed for a boot-up in safe mode. And then I fixed everything and she’s back to good. I don’t know how long she’s gonna last but I’m determined to get “all the use” out of her. Toshiba stopped making laptops in 2020 amid a rapidly changing market and tough competition, but man they sure lived up to the reputation they had back then. What an amazing piece of machinery that was born not long after the first smartphone came out and is now boldly swimming head-first into the age of AI.
Lyrically Speaking
My baby gives me the finance blues
Tax me to the limit of my revenues
Here she comes finger-popping, clickety-click
She says furs or diamonds, you take your pick
From “Money Money” by The Grateful Dead
And the obits continue…. Since my last post we lost a titan in music, Bob Weir a founding member of the legendary Grateful Dead died this past week at the age of 78. I was never a “Dead-Head” per se, but I do really like them a lot. As I kept struggling with guitar in my 20’s and realized I just didn’t have the gift to be anything more than marginally talented on the instrument, I’d listen to the Dead and be astonished at how masterful they were. Have no doubts, the members of the Dead were incredible musicians, and they made their magic in the days when digital or computer trickery and cheating were not possible. The Grateful Dead have over 200 original songs and Weir wrote or co-wrote about 30-35% of them (AI helped me with that). While Jerry Garcia made most of the headlines back in the day and got the press, Weir was an extremely important #2 in the band. After Garcia’s passing in 1995 Weir carried on the Dead or other reincarnations of the group right up until he died. He was a musician through and though, and a touring one. Estimates are that he played about 4,500 shows in his life, an astounding number. That makes him one of the most performed musicians in history. R.I.P. Bob, I’m sure you’re already jamming in the great gig in the sky ‘cuz that’s what you do.
As for the lyrics above, I’ve never had that problem in a romantic relationship mainly because my spidey-senses were able to sniff out any problems like that early on and walk away. I have no interest in a materialistic woman.
The day after I wrote this about Bob Weir I found this sign in a park I rode my bike through.
Miscellaneous
Nearly 70% of U.S. adults could now be classified as obese – “A new obesity definition reveals that body fat location, not just body weight, could put nearly 7 in 10 U.S. adults at higher health risk.”
Astronaut Brains Change Shape in Space – “New research reveals spaceflight is literally mind-bending.“
Found: The World’s Oldest Poisoned Arrows – “Scientists have found the oldest known poisoned arrows, dating back 60,000 years.“
Although I’m sure all people can benefit from bodyweight exercises, it gave me a chuckle that a “get in shape” article suggests one armed and handstand pushups, which are advanced calisthenics movements. It’s a bit like a basic finance article saying “get your financial life in order with a mega backdoor Roth conversion.”
Haha, well I think the majority of my readers and those who read FI blogs are familiar with Jacob at ERE, he is one of the pioneers of the FIRE movement. And he chose his blog name wisely because he is indeed extreme in everything he does, like living on something like 8k a year. So it’s probably no surprise to many that his workouts and fitness are extreme too. I think it’s best to takeaway the essence of the post not the particulars, because I’m pretty fit but one-arm pushups are friggin hard!
Wow 15 years is a badass accomplishment, especially for a windows based PC and the forced obsolescence in much of the software/hardware I imagine it has. Rockstar level dedication to that machine lol
I chose well 🙂 After writing this post I looked into switching out the hard drive since its a factor in much of the slowness and it’s much less money than I thought it’d be, so I might do that. I hate waste so she’s gonna run till she can’t run no more!