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The other area in my life thats getting a makeover this month is my finances. Starting this month I’ve developed a budget and a course of action for my debt. I’ve been using wesebe.com to keep track of my money almost daily. Wesebe hasn’t been perfect but its been what I need for now. Hopefully as the site matures, new features and bug fixes will be added. Only thing I’d really like to see is automatic updates of my accounts instead of the chore of downloading each statement then uploading them.

One of the first things I did this month was to give myself an “allowance”. I tend to get carried away with purchases and I’m a sucker for impulse buys so instead of doing the “envelope” method, I went with a more forceful approach.

I’ve given myself $100 allowance a week to live on. On Friday when my paycheck gets direct deposited, I transfer $100 to my Paypal account right away. I only carry my PayPal debit card with me instead of my bank’s debit card. Actually I have my bank card stashed away so its hard to get at. The $100 has to keep my cars gas tank filled, keep me feed and any purchases I’d like to make for myself during the week. Another advantage for me is that it takes 3-4 days to transfer money into my PayPal account from my bank. This curbs the thought of just transferring money onto my card if I want to make a purchase and don’t have enough in my PayPal account at the time.

Due to my work schedule, I tend to eat out ALOT. This was a big money hole for me that I’m trying to fix. Due to my “allowance” I have to be careful when and if I eat out now. If i want to pick up the newest game, comics or DVD this week, I’m going to have to pass when the guys order a pizza at work. To get me eating better, I allow myself to use my bank card if I actually go shopping at a store. This gives me incentive to make a shopping list and try and find the best deals so I don’t have to dip into my allowance.

The second thing I did was to setup an ING Direct Savings account. For the past few months I’m been trying to put money into a savings account at my bank. Problem with that is I always saw what I had in savings which gave me a false outlook on my money situation. I could always move money out of my savings account immediately if I needed extra money. With ING the money is deduced automatically and it goes into a different savings account that I don’t ever have to look at. Plus it offers 4.5% interest. My plan is to forget about that savings account and just let it keep growing and adding interest.

I got a lot of financially rebuilding to do but these are just the first few steps I’m taking. Next month I plan on calling all my creditors and get a “state of the union” from them so I can devise a debt reduction plan.

Last month I started cleaning up my RSS feeds in the hope of making them less of a chore. Well, its been one month since then and I have deleted 72 feeds that have saved me 10,000 articles a month. This has helped me keep my RSS feeds manageable and I no longer feel like I’m a slave to Google Reader.

One of the biggest things I did was remove digg from my RSS reader. Why? Well first off it was my highest traffic feed, so deleting it helped save me hours a day and 2nd, I also go to digg.com anyways to digg articles. There was no real reason to have it in my RSS reader. So now what I do is once a day goto digg.com and look through the last few pages digging and reading as I go.

I can still trim a little more in the way of feeds but for now I’m a lot more productive during the day as I’m not tied to my RSS reader all the time. If I delete my new top traffic feed, techbargians.com, I can save another 2500 articles a month and probably some money too since I won’t see all the great bargains that I “must” have.

I rely heavily on RSS feeds to get my daily fix of news. As you can see above, I don’t read a ridiculous amount of feeds but enough to keep me busy most of the day. One of the problems I’m starting to notice is that I’m spending a lot of time online just to keep up. I’m not sure how other people use RSS but i read everything that comes in. Maybe not “read” it all but definitely skim over the article. In the last 30 days, I’ve read over 24,000 articles. Thats a lot of reading and a lot of time invested to not fall behind. This reared its ugly head during my trip to Macworld this year. The internet at the hotel was so bad it was just about unusable unless it was early in the morning. So while I tried to keep up on stuff, I fell behind to the tune of about 3,000 unread items by the time I got home. It took me hours to just get through everything and catch up.

I’m finding I want to be doing more stuff on and off the computer but feel tied to my RSS reader. Catch up on podcasts, blog, World of Warcraft, watch TV shows, Netflix, workout, play my Xbox 360 and Nintendo DS, photography etc. I work nights so my time is split up between before work and after so I can’t just do a lot of stuff.

I’ve been bouncing around news readers for awhile, Bloglines, Newsgator, NetNewsWire, endo, NewsFire, Google Reader to name a few in the past months. I’ve settled on Google Reader due to its web interface so I can access my feeds from both home and work. It’s missing some nice features of desktop clients but its ability to be “everywhere once” outweighs everything else. One feature I missed was Dinosaurs in NetNewsWire. Basically It showed outdated feeds that haven’t updated in awhile.

Enter Google Reader Trends.

It shows statistics based on your feeds. This includes what your reading, what your starring and what your sharing along with subscription based stats such as frequently read and inactive. Inactive is what I’ve been missing. It shows me the Top 10, 20 and 40 feeds that haven’t been updated.

So starting today I’m going to “trim the fat” as they say. I’m going to start deleting feeds that I don’t really need or want to keep up on. This should help me feel less tied down and hopefully free up some more time do so other things. I’m also going to start using the Sharing feature in Google Reader to share what I find interesting. You can see my Shared page at http://www.google.com/reader/shared/17007536064916393533. You can even subscribe to it to keep up to date.

My current OPML file is up on Share your OPLM if you’re interested in what feeds i read. This is the original file I will be trimming. I’ll post my new file when I’m finished.

Lifehacker has a nice post of software that there readers have bought this year and has turned into somewhat of a Meme with Marcus Vorwaller, Paul Stamatiou, Glenn Wolseyand, and Ronald Heft, Jr all jumping in too. Since this was my first year with a Mac, I thought it was a great idea to post mine. I think I bought more software for my Macbook this year than I’ve ever bought for the PC combined.

AppZapper - Great for cleaning up Apps and I mess around alot and with my small HD, every megabyte counts. Also nice for extending trials as I can just zap everything but the app and my trial resets.

ComicBookLover - Worth ever penny if you read comics in digital form. One of the reasons I started reading comics again.

Delicious Library - MacHeist bundle. Pretty much bought the MacHeist bundle for this alone. I can scan all my DVDs and Games into this to keep track then export right into GarageSale if I want to sell the stuff on eBay.

Disco - MacHeist bundle. I still prefer LiquidCD to this and dont get any of the eye candy due to the intergraged Intel graphics in my Macbook.

ecto - Best blogging software I’ve used. Bought this for both Mac and PC this year. Still waiting on 3.0 tho

endo - RSS reader from the ecto folks. Don’t really use it anymore due to Google Reader

Export Artwork - Purchased this to make my life easier when I was redoing my Music library. I now use CoverScout to load new album covers.

GarageSale - Great if you do any selling on eBay. Intergras with Delicious Library

iDefrag - Tho the Journaled Mac OS Extended Filesystem is pretty good at keeping stuff defragmented, this keeps everything performing good.

Netflix Freak - Help feed my netflix addiction

Newsfire - MacHeist bundle don’t use it due to using Google Reader

Parallels - Who doesn’t own this

RapidWeaver - MacHeist bundle. No use to me

Tangerine! - Great if you have the iPod+Nike Kit. Make playlists based on BPM.

TextMate - MacHeist bundle - Handy but not too useful for me

Transmit - Cannot live without this. best FTP program I’ve every used

Xslimmer - Awesome to help save any little space I can on my Macbook small HDD

Connect360 - Must have if you have a Xbox360

Shapeshifter - MacHeist bundle. Nice bonus currently using the iTunes 7 skin

Synergy - Bought it when it added support for Last.fm but moved back to iScrobbler

High Priority - Todo list in your Menu bar but I do not use anymore due to using Remember the Milk

FotoMagico - MacHeist bundle

iClip - MacHeist bundle

Yup, Nike has its own brand of contact lens call Nike MaxSight. These are made by Bausch & Lomb and target athletes.

* Provides distortion free optics
* Covers the entire pupil eliminating glare and enhancing contrast
* No frame or nosepiece obstructuon - no lens fogging or fit issues
* Blocks specific wavelengths of light - details appear clearer and �pop� off the background
* Filters out more than 90% of harmful blue light and 95% of UVA and UVB

They come in 2 colors, Amber and Grey-Green. Amber is geared toward sports like Soccer, Tennis, Baseball, Football and Rugby while the Grey-Green covers activities like Golf, Running and Training.

I’m looking to pick up some contacts soon and I might take a look at these. They offer a free trial and I have a lot of Retailers in my area.

I’ve been slowly switching from Outlook/Entourage and Exchange to Google Mail/Calendar now that Google Calendar has been released. One of the disadvantages to a web based solution like this you always have to keep a browser tab open with your Mail and Calendar open for quick access. To make this
alittle more easier, I found two Firefox extensions that help with this.

First one is called GCalQuickTab and it allows you to use the “Quick Links” at the top left corner to jump between open tabs instead of the default behavior of opening new tabs every time. It always provides keyboard shortcuts to switching to Gmail and Gcal using “g” and “l” respectively.

Second one is called goocal which is very basic right now but provides a icon in the statusbar that brings you directly to Google Calendar. This way you don’t have to clutter up your bookmark bar.

This gives me basically instant access to my calendar when i need it. If I’m already in Gmail i just hit “l” and it opens up Gcal where i can then hit “q” to Quick add an appointment. Or i just click on the Calendar icon if nothing is open. If i need Gmail, its just a “g” away from there.

You could also add in the Gmail Notifier for Firefox too but i prefer the standalone one.

Since I had to send back my motherboard for RMA and I probably wont get it back til next month, I probably won’t be posting much. So in the mean time, short multi-topic posts are my friend.

Based on an article on 43folders.com the other day, I picked up a Jimi Wallet myself today. I have some Before and After pics up on my Flickr. I’m liking it so far, tho I’m always checking to see if I have my wallet with me
now.

Been listening to the new Taking Back Sunday. I was really looking forward to it and i wouldn’t go as far as saying I’m disappointed but Taking Back Sunday - John Nolan + Major Label = not good. Song writing has taken a turn, even there song titles are now actually lyrics in the songs. �MakeDamnSure� is a great song, lot of TAYF in there. Only other song I’m feeling is �I’ll Let You Live�. But, its only been day one so maybe it will grow one me, who knows.

Google Calender Greasemonkey ToDo List - Nice addon til something official comes from Google themselves.

Officially switching from a Motorola MPx220 and Exchange to a Motorola RAZR and Google Mail and Google Calendar. I’ll post alot more on that later.