Freedom!

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“We are moving to an increasing electronic society where our movements are going to being tracked.” Mary Cummings. (35 minutes 11 seconds in the video)

I recently watched this very interesting and terrifying video on drones. My definition of a drone is anything that is flown without a person in it. This can include unmanned aerial vehicles that have people operating them or autonomous drones. A current use of drones that have operators is the military used to target opposing forces. There is a camera on the drone that allows the operator to see what the drone sees. That’s terrifying enough, but the more terrifying idea is the one shared from Mary Cummings at the start of this article. HOLY MOLY that’s terrifying!

Think of everything you’ve done in your life? Likely you’d like a few of those to be left to the past. For example, I “broke the law” the other day by jaywalking or riding my dirt bike down the road. Now you might have said “Well you should have not have done that”, solely because you don’t like it or “It’s the law”. The problem with laws is that every law, once broken, must have some consequence. In debating the legality of homosexual marriages with a friend she assured me that it was “wrong” and that she thinks it shouldn’t be legal. Her argument was that it was already illegal! That’s very small thinking. This same friend also shared with me the multiple men she had lived with and had premarital sex with, yet she was making moral argument against homosexuality! WOW. To point out to her the ridiculousness of all her arguments I said “There are places where premarital sex is punishable by death. It’s the law.” She was not phased by that and was apparently convinced that the USA had perfected laws. WHAT!

Going back to my thoughts before the rant about my friend, what things do you do that might not be completely legal? How does that make you think about what other things that are “legal” might you disagree with? One of my personal favorite debates to have with people is about smoking.

Around 31 minutes, the video shows a whole city which can be zoomed in incredibly close. You can see things as small as 6 inches and they store all that data. And that’s just now and what they are telling “the public” unclassified. Think of in the future. “They” will be able to videotape the entire earth. This will undoubtedly provide some sense of safety for many people. I cannot argue that it would definitely have helped when my dirt bike was stolen the other day. A drone would be able to show exactly what vehicle and person stole it. Then they’d be linked to current face scanning technology and find the person nearly instantaneously. That would be great except for the lack of freedom it leaves! It would assure that those in power, however they got there, would be able to wield ultimate power, based on their definitions of right and wrong. I’m sure you all will agree that most of us don’t like being directed to do anything by another person.

We are continuously moving forward at a quickening pace and there are amazing and wonderful things happening every day. We need to be vigilant though that we don’t become (more) like sheep and more controlled each day. How much does the following quote by George Orwell fit with the people you know in your life?

“Heavy physical work, the care of home and children, petty quarrels with neighbors, films, football, beer and above all, gambling filled up the horizon of their minds. To keep them in control was not difficult.” George Orwell – 1984

We must carefully guard our freedoms before we do worse than lose them, we will give them away.

Gravity Payments, $70,000 For All Employees

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“What is it to you if I am generous?”- God

A link to a page to follow the Gravity Payments results of the $70,000 a year minimum wage for employees. – Added 8-29-02016

A link to a page to an update on Gravity Payment in 9-26-2019.

Dan Price (Gravity Payments CEO) On  Yang Speaks Podcast (On Youtube) Very good discussion! – Added 9-9-02020

The above quote was shared with me via a friend. There is no argument that there is income inequality in the USA. This week there was a huge story from Gravity Payments founder Dan Price that he will both slash his own salary to $70,000 and raise the minimum salary of each employee to $70,000, even the office clerk. This was happening the same week as strikes for $15/hour minimum wage by fast food worker across the country.

Gravity is not the first company to voluntarily pay their employees higher than minimum wage. QuikTrip which pays cashier’s $40,000 a year and Costco which pays its employees $44,000 a year are two other noted examples. They are also much larger than Gravity Payments as they have thousands of employees while Gravity has 120. That is not to diminish it’s accomplishments but just to highlight facts. This is a big deal!

After I read this news I was initially quite excited at the change we are seeing these days. I have been quietly debating with friends and myself the merits of a higher minimum wage. This was exactly what I wanted! People were finally able to have a comfortable living. Shortly after that I began to contemplate further. Even the “lowest paid clerk” will make $70,000, over double their current salary, earning the promised $70,000 within the next three years. How will the, currently,  higher paid personnel react? Will their salaries raise also? For example if there was a person earning $80,000 already, compared to someone earning $40,000 currently, the $80,000 earner might be a bit peeved to learn that someone’s salary has raised $30,000 while his has remained stagnant. We are not sure if that’s the case or if higher earners wages were also increased. I will speculate that they were not. I must hope that they will take it in swing. They will recognize that it is his money and they are not losing money simply because their neighbors are now making more. They also have the opportunity to leave a company that has already showed it’s a generous company, to make more money elsewhere if they can.

This reminds me of a passage from the bible.

Friend, I am not being unfair to you. Didn’t you agree to work for a denarius? Take your pay and go. I want to give the man who was hired last the same as I gave you. Don’t I have the right to do what I want with my own money? Or are you envious because I am generous?’ “So the last will be first, and the first will be last.”” (Matthew 20:1-16, NIV)

The workers who came late and worked only one hour were paid as much as the people who worked the full day. Naturally the people who worked the full day were pissed! But they were reminded that no money was taken from them.

As for the people who received the huge raises, I hope they recognize how lucky they are. I hope that they all recognize the good fortune they have been given and pass some along to others who are less fortunate than themselves.One driver for inflation, in my mind, is the excess of money in the hands of individuals. If 2 people both want a thing that is $50 and there is only one left, this will create an increased price for that part. They may end up paying $100 for something that was only worth $50 initially. To combat this price war on things, we need to focus on being less materialistic. If we become happier with what we have, then the increased salaries will be just fine. The people might spend them responsibly, paying off loans or securing a future via a larger down payment on a home or larger retirement deferrals. They would do good to reference this article about retiring a millionaire. If this creates a culture of people worrying about others happiness and their own future instead of buying more material things,  this will have been a great experiment indeed.

I have found through my own journey thus far that I was really only able to realize that I could give some away more after I realized that I had enough. It’s natural for people to seek security. If that means saving up $50,000 or $100,000 before they start donating to charities that’s fine. Another good way to give without giving money is by volunteering time. Your time is just as valuable as money. You could use your time to make money or you could give it away freely. When donating time, don’t feel bad that you aren’t donating money,and don’t let others make you feel bad you aren’t donating money either. This is one issue with our culture is we like to point out the flaws we see in others instead of pointing out the positive. I have done this above a bit, in pointing out that the higher earners could be upset, but I did that just as a thought experiment and to provide discussion that I’m sure others were thinking. When I discussed this topic with friends and they mentioned it I told them what i have written. Let’s be happy that the CEO is doing good!

I did a cost of living using this calculator and found that $70,000 in Seattle is comparable to $56,000 in my current city of Cedar Falls, Iowa. While this is still above the median USA household income, it’s not by much, and it is still $70,000.

How would you react to a situation like this?

Retire A Millionaire, The Easy Way

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How to become a Millionaire in 40 easy steps. Invest $5500 a year for 40 years. Get a decent rate of return (7%). Boom. Insta-millionaire. Read below for more information!

I am not a certified financial planner. Any investments are inherently risky (although some less than others). Invest at your own risk. I just like playing with numbers and wanted to share how easy it is below.

I’ve been digging into money, specifically for retirement, for about the last 10 months. Luckily money is easy, it’s just numbers and simple math. People really make it out to be much harder than it needs to be. Let me lay out one very easy way to retire a millionaire.

While companies often have retirement accounts available weather it be a 401K for many private companies, a 403B for government or public jobs or some other type of retirement account, there is also a personal option, a Roth Saving account. This is post-tax money that you can save with the benefit that it grows tax free and you can withdraw it tax free when you retire!

For this experiment we will consider only saving in a Roth IRA as that should be available to the average American.

For 2015 the Roth IRA max contribution is $5,500. Lets assume you start investing in your Roth when you are 25. This should have given you a bit of time to pay off at least some of your college loans, your first car and maybe saved a little up for a house. It will also give you 40 years to retirement, which is a nice number to work with.

If you invest $5500 for 40 years that’s equal to $220,000! Which is a decent amount of money, but perhaps not enough to live off of. Luckily for you with compounding (at 7%/yearly, which I will justify below) with no fees, it will have grown to $1,174,853 over 40 years! You’re a millionaire! Now unfortunately there are going to be some fees. Likely you are not managing your money 100% by yourself, but you can come close using www.Vanguard.com Using this you should be able to easily obtain an expense ratio of .2% or less. An expense ratio is a simple thing that really can end up causing confusion because of how it’s reported. What an expense ratio is is a percent of money invested paid to the company managing your money. A .2% expense ratio means they will take .2% of your money a year. .2% of $100 is only $0.20 that’s why it’s much more useful to convert expense ratios to a dollar value for every $1000 invested. So a .2% expense ratio is $2 per year for each $1000 invested. Once you are a millionaire you are paying $2,000 a year just for someone to hold your money! That is why a low expense ratio is favorable. It is ok to pay this though because many places will charge you much more to manage your money! Up to 1%! That’d be $10 per $1000! So off that side track, if we assume the .2% expense ratio per year this still will leave you with $1,109,739! You’re still a millionaire! That was sure easy wasn’t it?

Now that you’re retired, you’d like to start taking that money out. This calculation is pretty easy also. You simply need to understand what the annual rate of return is, which represents how much your money is growing each year. If you want to make withdrawals to eternity you can withdraw as much as your money makes a year. You should plan to withdraw just a little less than your yearly increase, to take into account down years in the cycle, of which there will be some. Since I assumed a growth of 7% we can calculate 7% of $1,109,739 which gives $77,681. Now this seems like a LOT of money (at least to me!) but remember this is all 40 years from now money.

Of course a million dollars today is not what it was 40 years ago and a million dollars in 40 years certainly won’t be what it is today. For that we will have to do a net present value (NPV) calculation. This is a very simple calculation using the assumed inflation rate and a simple equation.

NPV = R/(1+i)^t

R = future value

i = yearly average interest rate

t = number of years

How you use this equation is simple. For our situation you are trying to find the NPV of R = $1,174,853. We are assuming i = 3.22% (justified below) and a time (t) = 40 years. Inputting these numbers yields $330,696. That’s a pretty good chunk of change in 2015 dollars. If we do the same to our yearly withdrawal we will get $77,681 (40 years from now) equal to $21,865 in 2015 dollars.

Now you might think, man that’s not a lot of money, I can’t live of $21,000 a year. But I’d argue that once you are 65 you will hopefully have paid off your house, cars, etc. Of course you will also have other expenses like medical expenses, travel or perhaps helping out a grandchild or neighbor in need. Luckily you will likely have other forms of income such as Social Security in the USA, some income from a part time job or perhaps a pension from a former job.

This was not meaning to be a comprehensive end all retirement plan! When talking about investments and a 7% return and .2 expense ratio, of course you will need to do a bit of research and work to obtain those. But it’s not hard! A great resource I’ve been utilizing is The Crazy Man In The Pink Wig. His website is a wealth of financial knowledge, given freely!

To make the intro shorter and get you quickly excited about being a millionaire I made a lot of assumptions on returns, interest and the like. I will share the resources below simply so you don’t argue with me too much on these assumptions.

One important note I left out is that the maximum yearly contribution will likely increase as time goes on. This is good for you, the investor, as it means that you will likely be able to retire with even more!

The average annual inflation rate is 3.22% obtained here.

The average S&P 500 return data from 1975 to 2014 was found here and the average was found to be 10.18% average return. I also used the average bond return rate which can be between 4%-6% found here. Using that data I assumed a rate of return of 7%.

How is your retirement looking?Millionaire

Will Trade Dirt bike For Prosperity For All

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Today I had something taken from me. Well really it was taken from my father as he purchased it for me many years ago. He was more wronged than I was.
I had a 2001 Honda XR80 in the back of my truck in the parking lot where I live. It’s a small bike. Much too small for my 215 lb self. I had brought it back to Iowa to fix up so my younger brother could enjoy it as I had when I was younger.
I remember the day my dad brought it home. I don’t remember the day exactly, but I was about 12 (2001-1989) and it was a Christmas present for my brother (a year younger than I) and myself. I remember there wasn’t to much snow on the ground yet so we were able to ride it in the field. We were throwing snow everywhere! Snow rooster tails!

Eventually we bought another older (1980’s vintage) XR80 off the internet so my brother and I could ride together. I am sure we rode around quite a bit but I only distinctly remember one time. We were both going through this field with tall grass. He was off to my right. The grass was pretty tall so we couldn’t really see what was in front of our tires. He ended up hitting a stump or piece of wood that happened to be in the middle of the field. I distinctly remember looking to my right and seeing him seated on the dirt bike in a normal position, except the bike had the wheels straight up and his head was near the ground. Don’t ask me how that happened but it was there. Of course shortly after that moment in time, everything unraveled rather quickly. The bike maintained more momentum as it was heavier and went farther, which was fine as luckily it didn’t land on him. He landed on the ground and we walked the bikes home. We even had a baseball game that night. I’m pretty sure he had some memory loss from that incident.

Over the years the bike had deteriorated. I had acquired a larger CR125 and enjoyed riding that with a friend who also had a 125cc dirt bike. They are much more powerful than an 80cc. I had brought it to Iowa one time and had tried to fix it up some so my much younger brother (14 ish years younger) could ride it. It was only semi successful. It at least ran but didn’t idle good and unfortunately he never got to ride it like we had as kids.

I was home for Easter weekend, 2015 (a few days ago as I write this) and had decided it was time again to fix up the bike for perhaps another attempt to have my younger brother a dirt bike to ride. I loaded it up and drove it back to Iowa with me. I live in an apartment complex on the North West side of Cedar Falls, by all accounts one of the best parts of the Cedar Falls/Waterloo area. I came home the night of 4-8-2015 and noticed that my dirt bike was not in the back of the truck where I had left it since returning Sunday (4-5-2015). It’d been there a total of 3 days and it had been stolen. I have even left my bigger dirt bike in the back of my truck over night before. Now I’d be pretty hesitant to do that!

This is honestly one of the first acts of crime that has been perpetrated against me. I can honestly say I was pretty confused. I called the police and told them something was stolen and I was calling them because “That’s what you do when you have something stolen.” They asked me my address and sent a guy out to look at the crime scene. We didn’t find much. They even left the pretty sweet tie down’s I have in the truck? Why? Idk.

Anyway, I’ve got pretty low expectations for getting that back. I’m not really the loser here as I never paid for the bike. I sure feel bad for my father who just wanted to buy something nice for his sons all those years ago and it was well appreciated, used and loved. But now the joy that was going to go to some future kid, maybe my brother, maybe some kids I have yet to meet that I was hoping to introduce to the joys of dirt bikes, will not be realized.

What will become of that bike? What was the motive of the person who stole it? I can only hope that they stole it for a “good” reason. Were they stealing it because they can’t afford a dirt bike for their own kids? If that’s the case I wish they would have asked if they could have borrowed it instead. I have read about 90% of the way through “Operating Manual For Spaceship Earth” as of today and one sentence really resonated with me.

“It is utterly clear to me that the highest priority need of world society at the present moment is a realistic economic accounting system which will rectify, for instance, such nonsense as the fact that a top toolmaker in India, the highest paid of all craftsmen, gets only as much per month for his work in India as he could earn per day for the same work if he were employed in Detroit, Michigan.” P112 Operating Manual For Spaceship Earth”  R. Buckminster Fuller

Did the person who stole my dirt bike feel that he didn’t have any other option to get money than to steal my property? How can we rectify that?

I have yet to read this book “Abundance: The Future Is Better Than You Think” by Peter H. diamandis and Steven Kotler but from what I’ve gleaned thus far from the back cover is that they are arguing that we have the capability to fulfill everyone in this world’s basic needs through application of current technology. I agree with that assessment completely.

How to address this issue of inequality is another problem. I make more money than the average household in the USA. Because of this I am able to save for retirement, give to charity and purchase unnecessary toys and take fun trips. How to help distribute my income so that everyone can live in peace is something I’ve been trying to understand for a while. One of the issues is that we as a society have made it shameful and hard to ask for help. We value independence over just about anything. We see it as a strength not to have to ask others for help. This is good in that it does make us stronger, but it is bad when at times we do need help we are unable to ask for it. Often when we ask people do look down on us or feel pity for us. Neither of those are helpful reactions. We should work to identify why someone is in a bad situation and help them out of it, not think lowly of them for it. We’re all in this together.

Ultimately I’m upset that my dirt bike was stolen, not because of the money, but because of what it meant to me. The love and joy my father had purchasing it and giving it to his sons who were equally or more joyful at having such a fun new toy, like nothing they had had before. I guess the people who stole it decided that they needed it more than me, and it’s sad our world is like that. Please help me make the world a place where no one feels the need to steal.

Guns II

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Often the gun control debate is framed as “I am for every single person having a  gun.” or “I am against any person having guns.” I think that is a simple but not useful or accurate way to frame the discussion.  We all want the same thing, restrict people who will do violence from having guns. If you follow the link you will find a graph under #11 that shows that people who want guns aren’t necessarily for everyone having a gun. In fact, most people do not want felons or mentally ill people to have access to a gun. This makes plenty of sense. I certainly don’t want someone who would potentially harm myself or others to obtain a gun.

Where the pro-gun vs. anti-gun people differ is on how we think that should be reached. Pro-gun citizens believe that they should have the option to defend themselves when they are threatened with a gun or other device of harm such as a knife, hammer or a person physically larger than themselves. We may have different opinions on who should have a gun or how many they can have but hopefully we can agree that there are legitimate uses for good people to have guns such as hunting, target shooting, trap shooting and self defense.

There are multiple ways to obtain a gun. One is to purchase it from a store. At least in Iowa, USA, you have to go through a background check when making this purchase. If you fail the background check, for example if you are a felon, you can not purchase said gun. If you are a person who is apt to follow the law there is no issue with purchase of a gun from a store. That is where you will buy a lot of your guns and you are OK with the simple background check. From talking with a friend and avid gun enthusiast, he is ok with background checks but he is more concerned about gun registration. His argument is that if the government knows where you are and how many guns you are basically at their mercy. I sympathize with his argument. While “the government” has more sophisticated weapons at it’s disposal it also would need to talk soldiers into using those weapons against citizens. It’s unlikely any one leader would use a whole military to subjugate a population single handedly, and if he did, it would only take a single bullet to remove said leader. Therefore, guns as an equalizer is a fair argument for their existence by the general population.

Another way to obtain a gun is through purchasing a legal gun from an individual. This makes it possible for a gun to potentially be purchased by someone who is a felon. I personally would never sell a gun to someone I don’t know.

A third way to obtain a gun is to purchase a gun illegally. This is the least safe way for everyone involved. Unfortunately even in countries where there are gun bans in place murder rates and general crime rates don’t seem to be affected. Could someone explain to me how the Charlize Hebdo shooting occurred? Could someone explain why crime rates in places that ban gun laws often go up or at least remain constant?

“If you outlaw guns, only outlaws will have guns.”

Unfortunately by the simple fact that they are bad people criminals will not care if you make laws that say they can’t have guns.If you read this article on gun violence in the UK you’ll see that criminals are quite ingenious in their efforts to circumvent the law. Making more strict laws does not disarm criminals. Often the argument against guns comes down to numbers of murders in a year. That is a very simple number and not representative of the use of guns in a country. If you check this article the US ranks #22 in total crime vs. #4 UK, despite having many more guns and more guns per capita. Also if you are ultimately concerned about human lives, there are almost infinitely more things that kill people than guns, most of them are diseases, some are car crashes and accidents. If the goal is to stop deaths we should start there, not removing useful means of self defense from law abiding citizens. Here is an article sharing some stories of people who stop crime based on having access to a gun. The gun is an equalizer.

If you read the story of Amanda Collins’ perhaps you’ll understand that there are legitimate reasons someone might want a gun for self defense. She was raped while in a gun-free zone. That didn’t stop her attacker from using a gun to threaten her. It was likely an illegally obtained gun and the fact that a criminal was using a gun doesn’t mean the gun was at fault. Being a man larger and more dangerous than her he could likely have done this without a gun, he also could have used a knife. A gun is a tool. A gun is also an equalizer. If Amanda had had a gun we don’t know what the outcome would have been, but she would have had an equal chance of walking away from there unharmed instead of having no chance.

Ultimately the facts are that a gun is simply a tool. It can be used for good or for evil, like any other tool. Completely outlawing guns is a fools task. While background checks are a good idea they are not practical for individual sellers. Requiring gun registration is one step towards removing guns from the general population. Remember when terrorists obtained legal training to fly airplanes? Was the argument that we should outlaw all flight training? Where’s there’s a will there’s a way. Bad people will be bad regardless of the law. If you haven’t considered that guns are not inherently evil by the end of reading this, and all articles reference, there is no helping you. But don’t be alarmed, I’d still save you given the chance. I just hope I’m around to help when you are threatened by a criminal.

You can reference Guns I here.

Guns

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If you outlaw guns, only outlaws will have guns. – Lost to history

A friend shared a video with me today called “Guns With History”. It disgusted me. This group of anti-gun activists set up a mock gun store with the intention of luring innocent, unsuspecting, first time gun buyers in only to share stories with them of every horrendous crime committed with a gun that they could think of. They had guns from the Sandy Hook school shooting and others where a child had accidently shot a sibling or parent.

The problem with this approach is you could do this with any common day object. “Want to try being a carpenter come on in! Hello. Do you like this hammer? Did you know that on average 584 people a year are killed in the USA by hammers!” “Oh I had no idea how dangerous hammers were, I’ll never use another hammer in my life” the clueless person on off the street might say.

What’s worse, did you know that 812 people in the US are killed in a year by hands, fists or feet! We should outlaw hands, fists and feet!

You can find the data I referenced for the 584 hammer deaths/year from the FBI here.

If you have understood by now I am trying to make a point that guns aren’t the problem. Yes, guns sure make it easier to kill someone and they also make it easier to conduct other crimes, but they also make it easier to stop someone who’s trying to perpetrate a crime with a gun. Read the tragic story of this girl. A “gun free zone” policy was in place on her campus. Therefore she, being a law abiding citizen chose to follow the law. She was assaulted and raped by a man who had a gun. Her comment about gun free zones follows “leaving them (law abiding citizens) defenseless against gun-wielding criminals who disregard the laws.” Did you read the last five words? Criminals don’t follow the law anyway. That’s why they are criminals.

Another important topic to discuss in the gun debate is the role antidepressants have played in gun violence in the past 20 years. The world can be a sad place, but the internet is a great place as far as sharing information. I will let you, the concerned reader, check out this article and this website documenting all the dangers of antidepressants and the role they have played in murders and suicides.

I leave you with these summarizing thoughts.

Outlaws don’t play by the rules. If you outlaw guns, only outlaws will have guns.

You can’t simply outlaw things because they are dangerous. Hands, knives and bats are all used to kill people everyday.

Antidepressants have played a role in most mass shootings and play a role in many other murders and suicides.

If you really want to help, focus on helping people and addressing what’s giving them the urge to shoot people, don’t try to simply stop them from shooting people, because if they can’t shoot someone, they will find another way to kill.

Challenge Your Norm

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“Somewhere else is just someone else’s back yard.” – Axel Hoogland

I have been actively looking for a job outside of Iowa for the last year. Specifically in Georgia or North Carolina to continue with my current company but I met no success.

My stated reason was to get out of the cold. I hate winter and want to drive my nice RWD cars year round, that was it. I wasn’t able to leave, despite an interview in North Carolina in August. After that I  decided to be content where I was. Eventually I started getting more ingrained in the community. I joined a dancing team at the University of Northern Iowa. We are learning to do the cha cha, rumba, triple time swing, waltz, foxtrot and tango. In December 2013 I couldn’t even have told you what those dances were. Now I can dance some of them with enough skill to trick people who don’t know much about dancing into thinking I actually know what I’m doing

Everyone who knew me before I was 24 is pretty surprised that I do so much dancing these days.

Everyone who knew me before I was 24 is pretty surprised that I do so much dancing these days.

I also got involved in mentoring kids. Specifically, via The Job Foundation. Going into it I wanted to help the kids learn. Little did I realize that I’d be learning just as much as they have, maybe more. Working with kids as an adult has exposed me to a whole new world. Well I guess it’s exposed me to the world of a child, again. I am able to take these kids to events that are old to me and they are fascinated by stuff that seems mundane to me. I took them to a shop recently. We played with an engine hoist for 45 minutes. They picked me up. They picked each other up. They picked up just about everything in the room. They were learning how a hydraulic jack works, without even knowing it. Sneaky me.  I can not remember in my memory having that much fun with an engine hoist. After that they spent 45 minutes taking a small wooden table apart with screw drivers. Again, they loved it. Another time I took them to the shop they played with a car jack for the same amount of time. It only picks you up 10”. They must have ridden up and down that thing 20 times. Kids don’t need much to be entertained. Just something new. And the same goes for adults!

“Iowa is so boring. The same old thing happens everyday. There’s nothing to do here.” This is what a lot of people complain day in and day out. And they have a valid point, in their own mind. For them, their days all seem to run together. They go to work, the store, maybe the gym. They see the same friends. Eat the same lunch etc. It’s mundane. Boring. Not thought provoking.

A cool dirt bike racing indoor event I went to, in my own town.

A cool dirt bike racing indoor event I went to, in my own town.

But it doesn’t have to be that way! Challenge your norm! You can seek out dissenting opinions in any city. Especially a city as big as the one I live in (100,000). Go to a new place to eat. Take a new route to work and look around. You might be surprised what you find. Change up where you go after work one day. Explore your city. Talk to new people. They probably do something different from you everyday and maybe it’s something you can find an interest in. If you don’t think you can, try acting interested in what they are telling you. Actions can drive changes in feelings. The point here is that a change can appear small at first but in the long run could provide some some life changing opportunity.

I gained access to this shop via a mutual friend. It's sure a great opportunity. I help out there sometimes. Sometimes I do my own projects. Everyone benefits. This all came about from one chance visit.

I gained access to this shop via a mutual friend. It’s sure a great opportunity. I help out there sometimes. Sometimes I do my own projects. Everyone benefits. This all came about from one chance visit.

Visited a Mormon Church. In town.

Visited a Mormon Church. In town.

Another thing I’ve been doing lately has been purposely exposing myself to people who I perceive to have different religious beliefs than I do. I am Catholic. With a small group from my church we have started visiting other denominations of Christianity as well as other religious centers. We visit 1 a month (2nd week/weekend of the month). Thus far we have visited with Lutherans, Mormons, Universal Unitarians and have in the works plans to visit a Methodist church and a Mosque. From the start I had to ask myself what my goals were with visiting these places. Did I want to come in telling these people how I disagreed with them and that they were going to hell? Honestly there was a small part of me that wanted to do that. But why? What good would that do anyone? I have worked very hard to only ask genuine questions to understand others beliefs without volunteering my own, unless I’m asked. This has proved to be a great way to meet people and build mutual respect. You find that often people are really more alike than different. Why do we put ourselves and others in boxes? I think it’s often because people are afraid of what they don’t know. If you are brave enough to just venture out a bit and challenge your norm, you’ll find where you are is a more  interesting place than it used to be.

The Wrestler

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“Once you’ve wrestled, everything else in life is easy.” – Dan Gable

Axel Hoogland, Donny Stork, Conference 2007

Axel Hoogland (Orange), Donny Stork, Conference 2007

I attended tiny feeder elementary and middle schools with one class per grade and between 8 and 20 kids per class. The only sport was basketball and I was a pretty aggressive basketball player. I fouled out of most of my games my 8th grade year and didn’t score many points. Once I got to high school I was basically funneled to the wrestling program by default, basically by small comments from my dad, uncles and wrestling coach. My father and uncles had been wrestlers. I don’t recall much push to be a wrestler growing up but I do remember attending one wrestling match that an older cousin was wrestling in.

I remember my freshman year of wrestling there were 7 or 8 freshmen on the team. Most of them had wrestled before and some of them were pretty good. They would wrestle and joke with the older kids. The older guys were Gods as far as I was concerned. Since I was new to the larger school I didn’t know many people, especially older kids.  I had never wrestled and I got my butt kicked, even by the worst guys. I was 125 lbs.

The day before the first wrestling match I had to ask the assistant coach a serious question.

“Am I supposed to wear a cup during the match?”

“No.” He laughed.

I don’t remember my first wrestling match, or my second, or third. From my freshman year I do remember wrestling at a Junior Varsity (JV) tournament. For wrestling, there are some JV only tournaments. I think there were 2 a year. The varsity guys didn’t go to those matches, they got the weekend off. I had to wrestle a girl at this particular tournament. I beat her. I was happy it was over quickly. Wrestling girls for a freshman guy in high school can be extremely awkward. You are around that point where maybe you’re sort of interested in girls. Likely your buddies made a few jokes that maybe they didn’t even know what they meant and the older guys had said some things about girls while in the locker room you didn’t understand yet. But you definitely don’t want to have to beat a girl up in front of a lot of people.

I beat 5 kids all by the same reach back head lock from the referee’s position. That’s just a garbage move that will get you pinned if you’re wrestling anyone good. Regardless I won the tournament. I was pretty ecstatic. I remember my dad saying that one guy had remarked “That kid is built like a brick shit house.” That sure made me feel good. Tough. Strong.

I wrestled my first varsity match. at a team tournament in Stratford, WI. I was a sophomore at 135 or 140 lbs. Our varsity guy was sick or gone. In a team tournament there are multiple full teams wrestling one team against another, as opposed to a bracket of individuals at the same weight wrestling each other. I got matched with up a guy who was also a JV guy being bumped to varsity. I beat him. It was a sweet victory. I ended my sophomore year on the JV team.

Living on a farm I was always working. We’d make hay, pick rocks from the field and work in the barn. Obviously stacking hay is a physical workout as is picking up rocks. One of the chores in the barn was mixing feed for the cows and feeding the calves. Both of these entailed carrying around 5 gallon buckets of feed. I’d take the time to walk slower and do curls with the buckets.

The summer after my sophomore year was the first summer I attended any type of wrestling camp outside of season. This is where good wrestlers are made. Everyone in the state puts in the 2 hours after school at wrestling practice. If you want to be better than everyone else you have to put in more time. This simple principle can be applied to all areas of life. My brother and I attended the Camp of Champs put on by John and Ben Peterson.

My junior year I finally started to get into the swing of things. Enough people had graduated and I finally had enough experience I had a starting spot on the varsity team, I was a team leader wrestling 152 lbs.

The Northern Badger tournament was the big tournament our team went to each year. It is a 2 day tournament so the goal is always to get to the 2nd day. It starts with a 32 man bracket and the 2nd day is wrestling to “place”. The top 12 people in each bracket wrestle the 2nd day. I ended up winning 2 matches and losing 2 matches which didn’t get me to the 2nd day. I was a bit upset. The last match I lost 12-16 to a sophomore, Larrieu, whose record was 6-3. He ended up 5th, which was pretty good for a sophomore at 152 lbs.

For the tournament our team hosted at our school, our 160 lb wrestler decided he wanted to drop to 152 lbs. He ended up beating me in a wrestle off before our home tournament so he wrestled at 152 and I wrestled at 160. It turned out to be a fortunate break for me because at 152 there was a junior, Lukasko, who was a state champion the previous year and had gotten 3rd his freshman year. I ended up winning at 160. That was my only home tournament win since the next year I wrestled Lukasko and lost.

My junior year I wrestled at conference for the first time as a varsity member.  I remember beating a guy, Stork, who was a senior, but the tournament was very oddly set up so I ended up wrestling him 2x and lost to him the 2nd time we wrestled. That was for 1st place, so I ended up getting 2nd that year in conference.

After conference is regionals, sectionals and state. All wrestlers should want to go to state. In division 3 in Wisconsin wrestling you have to get 1st or 2nd to get from regionals to sectionals, and then 1st,2nd or 3rd in sectionals to get to state. I ended up 1st in my regional of 3 people to go to sectionals. In sectionals I lost to Castorena in the first round and I was out. I was pretty crushed, and looking back there was no good reason I should have lost that match. I lost it 6-8 to a guy who basically had the same record as me. I ended my junior year with a record of 22 wins, 14 losses.

After my junior year I was pretty ready to be a great wrestler. My brother, myself and Casey Williams, another wrestler from our team, decided to go to a bunch of after season wrestling tournaments. Practice makes perfect as they say. The after season tournaments are where all the good wrestlers go to get better. We must have wrestled 30 matches between my junior and senior seasons. That’s nearly a full year’s worth of wrestling. Since I was getting beaten and wrestling a lot of very good competition my skills were progressing rapidly.

One of the matches was at the Badger State games against Larrieu, who I’d lost to at the Northern Badger the year before. I ended up pinning him in the first match. It was a free-style match, but still, to pin a guy who had beaten you previously was great. He was furious, as any good wrestler should be when he’s pinned.

That summer, 2006, I attended many wrestling camps. I went to wrestling practice in Park Falls, a neighboring town, with some of the better guys from that team and a mentor. He was a 30 something judo champion. Wrestling and judo are both contact sports so we did a sort of cross breed between the two. I remember one day I sat on the tractor all day raking hay. I lived on a farm. I took my shirt off because I thought it’d be cool to be more tan, I’m about the whitest guy ever. I ended up with the worst sunburn ever. That night at wrestling I was in tears from all the pain I was getting from the guys touching my back while we were grappling. I did eventually have to stop, the pain was too bad. I never took my shirt off on the tractor again.

My brother and I again attend the Camp of Champs again the summer of 2006 and later a camp at the UW-Oshkosh campus. My brother, Casey and I, 4 guys from Park Falls and 1 from Hurley (neighboring schools, went). Of the 8 of us 6 ended up going to state the next year. That was an intense camp.

Sometime in this summer of 2006 I had started doing a certain number of push-ups each morning. I was up to 50 once September came around and the start of the school year. Since I was on the cross country team in the fall I was already doing running practice so I didn’t really need to do extra, until wrestling season came around. By November, I was running a mile in the mornings, doing my pushups and climbing the 60’ silo on our farm. You hold pretty tight to those ladder rails when it’s icy outside. I don’t necessarily recommend this as a training method, but something similar could be good. After practice I’d spend time crawling up the stairs on my hands while someone wheelbarrowed my legs.

Coming into my senior year I was one of 3 guys who had started from when I was a freshman. The other guys had fallen off for various reasons. Some got tangled in drugs, some for bad grades or behavior, some just moved away. I had avoided all those traps. I had spent lots of time working hard to be a better wrestler. This was my year.

Onto the Northern Badger I came in with a 17-3 record. I got a bye the first round, won my 2nd match and ran into Larrieu again. This is a common occurrence in wrestling, seeing the same guys multiple times. This time I lost 10-8.  After that I lost a match 5-0 to Bonander but I was already in the 2nd day. I ended up winning 2 more matches and Castorena, from the year before, ended up 12th, although I didn’t realize that at the time.

On to my team’s hosted tournament, I ended up in the same bracket as Lukasko, the now 2x state champ. He was undefeated and I went in hard. I actually had him on his back, where most decent wrestlers will tell you they had a great wrestler at some point. I ended up getting pinned. The only time my senior year. I ended up 2nd. After the match I told Lukasko I’d see him at State. I’m sure he didn’t hear and wasn’t really that worried.

Fast forward to Conference. The year before I had got 2nd to Stork. This year his younger brother, Don Stork, was in my weight class. He was having a pretty good year wrestling and I was nervous to wrestle him.  It was a round robin 5 man tournament. There were 3 of us with good records and 2 guys who were just there. I ended up losing the first match to the other guy and then handily beat the next 2 guys. The final match was against Stork. He had beaten the guy who had beaten me first. If I beat Stork I won, if I lost I got 3rd. I ended up beating him. It was great. Finally conference champ.

Axel Hoogland (orange) Donny Stork, Conference 2007

Axel Hoogland (orange) Donny Stork, Conference 2007

Of course, conference didn’t mean much. I moved on to regional’s which I handily won. Moving onto sectionals there were 3 guys who should move on to state and I was one of them, Larrieu was another and there was a 3rd guy. Unfortunately I ended up on the opposite side of the bracket as Larrieu and on the same side as the other state bound guy. I ended up losing to him in 2 overtimes. It was the longest match I’d ever been a part of or seen. We weren’t even sure of the rules towards the end of the later overtime, neither were the coaches. Since I lost that one I had to wrestle back to 3rd to get to state. The first guy I pinned in a minute. The next guy, the guy I had to wrestle to go to state, was Castorena, from sectionals the year before, whom I had lost to. I didn’t remember much of him but I did remember he had beaten me the year before. I was out for vengeance. When he stepped on the mat he looked pretty muscular. I ended up pinning him right at the end of the first period. I was going to STATE!

There is a 12 man bracket for wrestling in state. There are 4 sectionals, 3 guys from each. The guy who gets first ends in the 1 man bracket. The guys who got 2nd and 3rd had to wrestle off each other for the 4 spots left. I ended up pinning the guy I had to wrestle. That was the first day. Later that night I was walking around, looking at the brackets and ran into Bonander, the guy who I had lost to at Northern Badger. He congratulated me on getting to state.

2007 wrestling bracket

The next day my first match in the 8 man bracket was Lukasko. I went in strong again but came up quite short. I ended up losing 2-11. He ended up winning state that year again, undefeated as he pinned his opponents in the semi finals and finals. At least I didn’t get pinned! I still had a chance to place, I didn’t. I ended up losing my next match in overtime 4-2. That was how I ended my high school wrestling career.

State Wrestling 2007

No where will you see as many seemingly tough high school guys crying as at state sport events. I’m not sure about other sports, but wrestling is quite personal. It’s you against the other guy and one of you has to lose. I definitely cried after the match while I was in the shower.

Lukasko went on to play college football at UW-Madison.

Larrieu ended up winning state the next year. Which gave me the chance to talk big the next year, saying I had pinned him, even if it was an out of season tournament, they all count, although admittedly the last match always counts more.

Donny Stork ended up dying in a car crash a few years later.

High School wrestling is definitely not the pinnacle of athletic performance. But it is at a certain point of your life. I put in as much time as I understood I could. You can always make time for important things. I could have put more time in. I could have pushed myself harder. Others could have pushed harder. I’m not sure how I would have responded. I try to remember my road through wrestling whenever I am faced with a new skill that seems difficult. After 2 years of being not very great, I started to develop slowly. Once I started to put in more time I started to succeed faster. There is no good reason I couldn’t have been better sooner, except I didn’t put in the time. If you take time to practice more than the other guy, you will surpass them in skill, knowledge, technique, strength etc. Whatever you do, do it well.

To Fight Or Not To Fight?

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“With great power comes great responsibility” – Uncle Ben (Spiderman)

Power is something I have been considering for a long time. What exactly is it? What are your obligations to use your power for, assuming you find yourself in possession of some power? How many types of power are there?

I want to tell a story from when I was in college to demonstrate a misuse of power in from my past and what I learned from that.

Let’s introduce the characters. Myself. John Bro and A.O.B. (Names have been changed to protect the guilty, or innocent as it might be, except for myself).

John Bro was a mutual friend of A.O.B. and myself. I didn’t care much for A.O.B. I considered myself pretty religious at the time (I had a lot to learn), but still, I was put off by much of  A.O.B’s general derogatory comments towards women. He was also much too obsessed with this appearance and tough guy demeanor. So  admittedly I wasn’t coming into this with a very good attitude, but I was overall cordial to A.O.B.

Now he was hanging around our house (John and I lived together) pretty regularly, which was fine. But what was not fine was that A.O.B. had decided that I was a good person to antagonize. Being generally averse to confrontation, I generally shook off his personal attacks. He would “talk smack” at me rather often. He’d also make these ridiculous jab motions towards me like he was going to punch me. You get pretty tired of flinching because you think you’re going to be punched relatively often.

Finally one night I had had it. After yet another fake punch and some more harsh than usual smack talk I decided to end it that night. I challenged A.O.B. to a fight. Now I was a pretty decent wrestler in high school and I’m also 6’1”and relatively muscular. A.O.B. was probably 5’8”, a little pudgy but was also on the college wrestling team (for a short time) and had been an (amateur) boxer. He had also grown up in a tough neighborhood, from what I understand, or at least that’s what he said.

The fight was quite uneventful except for my first (and last) attempt at some smack talk “Do what you do!” I shouted at him as we were scuffling. Not my most enlightened sentence, then again, I obviously wasn’t doing much clear thinking as I was in the middle of a fight that I had (more or less) initiated.

The fight was over rather quickly. As is oft to happen when a wrestler fights a boxer, we were on the ground in less than a minute, I had secured a rear-naked choke hold and he had tapped on my arm signaling he was giving up and I immediately set him go. I walked in the house smugly, sure I had seen the last of our problems.

Two seconds later I was made aware how wrong I was by a fist hitting me in the back of the head. Turns out people who walk around insulting others and generally being antagonistic are pretty poor losers. A.O.B. had punched me in the back of the head, after I had won! What the heck?!?!? At this point our mutual friend John Bro threw A.O.B. out of the house. He didn’t come back for a long time. Seems like overall that was a win for me right? Well that night I spent most of the night wondering what other retaliatory action A.O.B. would take against me. Would he destroy my car? I was (and am still) a pretty huge car guy. Would he get his gang members and come beat me up? He was allegedly in a gang. Luckily no more retaliatory actions were ever taken and I also never really had to see A.O.B. again.

So what were the outcomes of that fight? Well my main goal on not having A.O.B. around demeaning me verbally or making fake jabs at me was fulfilled. This is definitely not a guaranteed outcome in situations like this. It’s just as likely that he could have beat the hell out of me and as was shown by his post fight antics, he likely would not have stopped if he had gotten me in a compromising situation like I had him. I had put my personal safety in peril. That was dumb.So while the outcome was arguably good in this situation it could have turned bad.

One outcome was I was physically exhausted and had received a punch in the back of the head and a cut from the fight. Definitely not a preferred outcome.

Another outcome as I mentioned was that I was nervous for months that A.O.B. would be after me or my property. This was an unintended outcome and one I had not considered before the fight. Also a bad outcome.

It is a pretty safe bet that A.O.B. did not learn anything from that fight. I didn’t show him the quote that I shared at the beginning of this article, “With great power comes great responsibility.” Instead, I reinforced that the strong take and do what they want and the weak suffer. That was not that lesson that I meant to teach him. This was a third undesirable outcomes.

So for a total of 1 arguably good outcome (that could have ended a much different way) and 3 bad outcomes, lets consider other ways that I could have handled that situation.

One way would have been avoidance. I simply could have made myself scarce whenever A.O.B.  came around. This is generally a cowardly way to live and not necessarily a very reasonable one.

I could have approached A.O.B. myself with reason and conversation. I could have tried to share with him why I getting pretty fed up with his act. This would have saved me from being in a life threatening situation in the first place, a lot of paranoia afterwards, a punch to the head and it would have taught A.O.B.  that there are better ways to solve a problem than fighting. 4 for 4 good outcomes again.

The best way would have been to get John Bro, our mutual friend, as an ally on my side. I think I could have convinced him that via his mediation he could create a calm that would make the time we spent together more cohesive. Bringing a mediator in between 2 disagreeable parties, preferably a fair mediator trusted by both parties is always a great way to solve conflict. I could have shared the same things but with an ally that A.O.B. trusted instead of just by myself. There is power in numbers.

So now you know a story from my life. I was in a fight. I learned that there are better ways to solve problems than fighting. If that simple message could get out to the world at large, I think we’d be on a pretty good track.

Fat vs. Fat Wads Of Cash

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Entitlement and bad math skills.  These are two reasons people have so many problems these days. We feel entitled to have it our way (thanks to Burger King) and we expect it now. Also people are choosing to be awful at math, I guess I could blame this on the schools but I am more apt to blame it on bad parenting. It’s not hard to teach your kids math. 2+2=4 is pretty simple. Unfortunately you can’t pick your parents. I would also blame some of this on the government and their lack of keeping to a budget. What kind of example is that to the people? What should you expect the average person to maintain a budget surplus when you don’t yourself?

Let me start with a few simple equations relating to the title here.

Calories In < Calories Out = weight loss  – Preferred
Calories In > Calories Out = weight gain

For those of you whose parents haven’t taught them what < mean that means “less than”. You can remember that because < looks similar to a L. > means “greater than”.

The cool thing about equations is that you can affect different parts of them differently. For example you could reduce your calories in by eating less and thus make it less than calories out yielding weight loss. You can also increase calories out, for example by exercising, and thus make it more than calories in, leading to weight loss again. You have options.

The simple reason why diets don’t work is that people only affect one of those parts of the equation (calories out) and only for a short time. If you revert to the state that lead to the situation, by quitting your “diet” you should not be surprised at the weight gain.

As Einstein said (allegedly) – Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

Onto the fat wads of cash equations.

Money In < Money Out = Debt
Money In > Money Out = Savings (Fat Wads Of Ca$h) – Preferred

By now you should understand the equations as they are the same equations. Notice that which on if the prefered equation is different though. You want excess in the money equations, you don’t want excess calories in in the weight equation.

Now onto the entitlement thought of the day. The problem with these 2 sets of equations is that you have to sacrifice things to come out on the preferred side. If you want to lose weight you will have to sacrifice some temporary comfort, either in the way of being a little hungry sometimes (not even starving, eat one less donut!) or less comfortable in the way of spending some time doing some physical activity. Gasp!

On the money side. You are required to make some sacrifices as well. Do you want to eat out every week for lunch that’ll be $50+. Do you want to make your own meals, probably will be $25 or < (that’s that less sign again). Do you want a new car and recurring payments for 72 months! Let me just tell you that no you don’t. You can probably continue driving your old car and banking that $500+ a month. Savings!

So that was on the savings side. On the “Increase income” side you have plenty of options as well. Take a look at where you are now. What’s your income? Are you happy with that? Then disregard this completely. If you are unhappy then maybe take some time to research what jobs will pay you more. Then you can investigate what is required to take you from where you are to that job. Let me tell you, it’s not likely going to be a fast journey and that’s where the entitlement problem comes in. “I want it all and I want it NOW” as Queen says is the mentality we have these days.

That needs to change. Some people have very low self esteem or low motivation. I’m here to tell you that “You can do it!” Sometimes that’s all people need to hear is someone giving them positive reinforcement. Today is the best time to start. New year, new you right? The only thing is you need to maintain the new attitude or habit. Don’t give up 1 week later like most New Year’s resolutions.

You will notice that I mentioned creating good habits. That starts small and you will likely not see results immediately, but over time, much like compound interest, small changes add up. One pound lost a week over a year is 52 lbs! $10 saved a week (don’t drink 2 coffees a week?) is $520 a year! Small change over a long period time is the only sustainable way to do things.

I heard a story one time where a person said
“I want to run 3 times a week to lose weight.” – John
That person was asked “How’s that going?”. – Jen
“Not well, I don’t have time.” – John
“Well, why don’t you run one time a week?” -Jen

“What good will that do?” – John
You can recognize the  fatal flaw of entitlement. John expects himself to go from 0 to 3 times a week running with no effort. Remember when I said “You can DO it.” The key there is DO. Action often drives passion. If you can rouse yourself to go to the gym, or avoid buying a $5 coffee one time, you are more likely to do it the next time. Actions breeds passion.

My challenge to you is to choose one action in your life that you are not particularly happy with and change it this year. Start small. Set some actions that you can follow that will reinforce the new habit. Put a dollar in a jar each day if you want to save money. Do one push up before you get in the shower each day, or more if you can. Start small, but don’t forget to ramp it up as you progress. Have a happy and successful 2014!

Darin McClure – cover photo – Flickr Creative Commons