SCOTUSblog » Court: A constitutional right to a gun
The Supreme Court ruled on Heller vs DC today and pretty much said that an individual has the right to own a gun. From the opinion:
The Second Amendment protects an individual right to possess a firearm unconnected with service in a militia, and to use that arm for traditional lawful purposes, such as self-defense within the home.
The decision doesn’t invalidate regulations like registration requirements, but it certainly opens the door for legal action against laws that limit the use of firearms by law abiding citizens. I’m not a gun nut but this how I feel about the whole situation:
Criminals don’t obey gun laws, they just leave their victims defenseless. I’m glad I have the ability to defend myself in my home because I don’t want to be at the mercy of some criminal threatening my life and property. If that moment ever comes the police won’t be able to help. When seconds matter, the police are minutes away.
Tagged with: constitution, guns, life, second amendment
Posted under: Political Stuff
In my post about finishing my taxes I referenced how much our refund was going to be. Sarah asked why I included the number with the implication that information about our finances is personal and should be held back from public discussion. Ever since I graduated from college and started moving towards financial independence, personal finance has become an interest of mine. Growing up I never really knew much about our family’s finances, sometimes money was tight, but we always lived within our means. That’s the number one thing I’ve learned about money and is the key to saving for the future and being financially secure.
Personal finance is an important part of our lives, so why are we reluctant to talk openly about money? It might be that we still see money as a symbol of status. We might be ashamed of debts. We might not want to feel like we are bragging or putting ourselves above others. Whatever we feel though, it is most likely tied to emotions and as far as I can tell emotions and money don’t mix. In my life I have “unpersonalized” personal finance.
But how open should we be? I’m not suggesting we announce our income and current portfolio value when meeting someone, but when talking to friends and family I’d be open to asking for and offering advice. Getting advice and working out finance problems is incredibly important considering the opposition we face in our consumer spending driven society. I think we should be open enough to discuss our tax situation and tactics we use to reduce our tax liability. We should be open to discussing how we are saving for retirement. We should be open to talking about problematic debt and helping each other eliminate it.
What do you think, are finances open for discussion or private matters?
Tagged with: family, life, personal finance, spending, taxes
Posted under: Money Stuff
Since everyone else is taking the personality test I’ll throw mine in along with the Multiple Intelligences test. Nothing too surprising.
Tagged with: internet, life
Posted under: Life Stuff
As some of you know I started a new job with Los Angeles County at the beginning of August and I have been there a month so I thought it is about time I posted about it. At the beginning of July I left my previous position with a consulting firm I had been with for a year and took a month off to get ready for the wedding, honeymoon, and moving out. We got home from Hawaii on the 2nd and I started on the 6th. They hired a group of new developers and put us all through 3 weeks of training classes in a bunch of different areas like communication skills and software testing.
Now that I’m out of training and getting settled into my team I find that I am really starting to like working for the County of Los Angeles. First of all I’m at the Imperial building in Downey so I have a nice 5 minute / 2.5 mile commute which has made a huge difference. This cuts down my time spent in the car by over an hour and fifteen minutes per day which means I get home earlier and incur less stress from the drive home. The shorter commute is also saving me about $1000 a year in gas.
I’m already plugged into a team and working on an active project so I’m feeling good about being able to contribute so quickly. Working for the county is a nice change in that I’m not working for some company whose only concern is making a buck. Here I feel like the money isn’t the only thing motivating me, there is also a sense of being able to help make a difference. A lot of the systems our group creates are used by other county departments to directly serve the public. I see this leading to higher job satisfaction and less potential for burnout.
The benefits were one of the biggest things that attracted me to the county. The private sector can only offer so much and the benefits here made up for the raw pay cut I took. The big benefits include excellent medical and dental coverage for both Sarah and me, 401k with 4% matching, paying into a pension instead of social security, and generous vacation/holiday/sick time. There is also a lot of room to move around since the county is so large and everyone is always looking for good talent.
So that’s what I’ve got going on.
Tagged with: life
Posted under: Life Stuff
Newest batch of pictures are up from our parties 2 weeks before the wedding. Girls had fun at the Mai Tai Lounge and the guys busted out the Wii, war, and rock-paper-scissors. Good times.
Bachelor (ette) Parties Gallery
Tagged with: life, photography, wedding
Posted under: Photo Stuff
I’ll be married in about 4 hours and I have been looking forward to this day for a long time. I’m excited to start a new life with Sarah and I’m not really nervous. I’ve been getting lots of “your last days of freedom” comments and I’m slightly confused by that. Not sure if people are just joking around or if that’s how they really view marriage. I only see positive things happening by getting married.
You can probably get a good idea about someone’s attitude about marriage by analyzing how they would handle finances. Are accounts and paychecks kept separate and each partner does whatever they want with “their” money after the bills are paid? Or are the financial identities of the partners merged into one where all money earned goes into a pot and both agree on how it should be spent and saved. Financial independence in a marriage just seems strange to me.
See ya all at the wedding or stay tuned for a plethora of pictures when we get back from Hawaii.
Tagged with: life, wedding
Posted under: Life Stuff
Been a month since my last post and much has happened in that time period. Since The Blarg and MRI both updated I’ll finish things off with a sort of sibling blog hat trick if you will.
First off I left my position with the consulting firm I had been with for the past year. My last day was July 6th and I’m taking a month off before starting up at LA County with their Web group. I’m really looking forward to the change, hopefully the work will be more challenging and rewarding. The benefits are excellent and you can’t beat a 2.5 mile commute (I was doing 25 miles each way to Diamond Bar and my gas bill was approaching $180 a month).
Wedding stuff: 4 days and counting and nearly everything is done. Taking time off helped since I was free during the day to do whatever needed to be done. Took some late engagement pictures last week and got those printed up (thank you Richard!), printed up place cards, table numbers, programs and made favors.
Our new place: With my sister, MRI, moving to San Diego they needed to rent out their condo. With Sarah and I getting married we needed a place to rent. To say the least there wasn’t much debate about what we should do. Sarah is already moved into the condo and we’re getting settled in. We have the 2 most important things already: a bed and a HDTV.
Previously mentioned HDTV: My new toy is a 42″ Panasonic Plasma and I’m loving it. We’ve been watching TV on my 20″ LCD for about a year and I was ready for something really nice. Cashed in credit card rewards and got a free HD-DVD player (would have had to spend $100 on a player with HDMI anyways) and I’ve got the receiver already. OTA HDTV and DVDs look gorgeous. Pics of the setup will definitely be posted once I receive my speakers.
Honeymoon: I just need to do some last minute confirmations but everything is booked and we are picking a few things we want to do. I just kind of want to explore and take a bunch of pictures. Kauai and Maui here we come.
Photography experiments: My goal is to come back from Hawaii with a bunch of awesome pics to print and fill our large empty walls with. One of these pics I want to be a nice big panorama and to facilitate that I’m taking a tripod and new gadget to make sure it is perfect.
That’s where the Panosaurus comes in. It positions the camera in the portrait position and you calibrate it to rotate around the nodal point of the lens so things line up properly as you rotate the camera. I’m thinking a 360 view from the top of Waimea Canyon would be pretty sweet. And here’s a quick test I did of my bedroom (12 pics stitched together with a manual exposure, I only have 2 light bulbs in so one side of the room is darker):
On a side note I think it is pretty interesting that you’re possessions can really demonstrate what type of person you are. Some interesting observations about myself/room (I’ll work left to right):
- Homemade rear speaker stand made from metal bookshelf end spray painted white and screwed to wall.
- Box with water bottle wrapped in paper with line and nail in front, Panosaurus calibration equipment.
- Phone which hasn’t actually been plugged in for several months for some reason.
- Numerous pictures of soon to be wife.
- Cluttered desk
- Bookshelf. Normally top shelf dedicated to SNES game collection and other video games. Next shelf dedicated to miscellaneous literature: Greek mythology, WWII and Vietnam books, fantasy and sci fi. Next shelf would be almost completely dedicated to a mostly complete Star Wars book collection. Next 2 shelves are filled with math and programming books. Wow that all just screams nerd.
- Boxes in living room ready to be moved out.
- Boxes in bedroom ready to be filled.
- Wardrobe consisting mostly of t-shirts, that might have to change soon.
That might be it until after the Honeymoon since the next 4 days are going to be pretty busy with Rehearsal dinner and getting all the last minute things ready. In the meantime stick it to the RIAA man and download Prince’s new free album.
Tagged with: gear, life, photography, wedding
Posted under: Life Stuff
I graduated high school after playing volleyball for 6 years and was in pretty good shape, then it went downhill from there. During college I was only sporadically physically active and the large amount of walking I did at CSULB certainly helped. I put on 40 pounds in that 4 years so I was doing better than the “Freshman 50″. So today I decided to get back into things and went jog/walking for 40 minutes and rode an exercise bike for 15 minutes. I figure it is about time and having a job that keeps me in front of the computer for most of the day makes it even more important. So let’s hope my quasi-New Year’s resolution sticks and I can lose some weight and tone up for my honeymoon and just life in general.
Tagged with: life
Posted under: Life Stuff
As most of you know (if you don’t read down two posts) Sarah and I got engaged last weekend and we haven’t been wasting any time with the planning. This weekend we spent Saturday afternoon visiting several sites to get a feel for what we might want. We had done a pretty good amount of research throughout the week and made a list of several places that looked promising and were in our price range.
Turns out we only had to visit 3 places before we were ready to decide where to get married. We visited the Lindley-Scott House in Azusa, the Old Ranch Country Club in Seal Beach and the Meadowlark Country Club in Huntington Beach. Right off the bat we liked the Lindley-Scott House and by the time we left I had pretty much made up my mind. Old Ranch was appealing but I just don’t dig the “country club” feel. Meadowlark was out of the question as soon as we walked into the banquet room (a little small and very hotel-ish). We spent the rest of Saturday and most of Sunday debating between Lindley-Scott and Old Ranch, trying to weigh the pros and cons of each.
Since we have been together for over 5 years there aren’t any reasons for a long engagement and were looking at this summer. We figured we were a little behind the curve in terms of booking but it turned out there weren’t any Saturdays open at either places and Sundays were even a little scarce. That took most of the trouble out of choosing a date. Fridays were eventually ruled out because of the inconvenience to our guests having to leave work early and battle Friday traffic and a Sunday gives us more time to enjoy the day.
So as of this afternoon we are having our ceremony and reception at the Lindley-Scott House on July 22 at 4:30pm. Ceremony will be outside in the shade and reception will be inside the “Carriage House”. Woohoo! One big thing down and now just smaller stuff to take care of.
Tagged with: life, wedding
Posted under: Life Stuff
Sarah and I have been dating for over 5 years and I’ve been working full-time for the past 6 months so I decided that it was time for us to begin to take the next step in our lives together so I popped the big question Saturday night and she said yes of course. So in short here’s how it happened:
She had been watching me like a hawk and was waiting for me to go buy the ring so I knew I had to be quick about it. I called up her dad Saturday a little before 11am, asked his permission and his help in going down to the jewelry district to a jeweler their family goes. He parked his car at the police station and I picked him up to avoid any suspicion. Went downtown, bought the ring and headed back home to continue “getting my oil changed and putting a new stereo in my truck”. Getting my oil changed was a lie but I did but a new stereo in my truck. Back in town by 12:30pm.
2:00pm rolls around and jeweler calls, diamond has been set and the ring is sized and ready to go. Head down to downtown again with my dad this time, pick it up and back by 3:30pm. At this point Sarah thinks I’ve gotten my oil changed and am now just working on my truck and is a little bitter that another Saturday has gone by without me going to get a ring. So she is clueless at this point that I have in my possession her engagement ring.
That night we were scheduled to go to separate holiday parties, Job’s Daughters for her and little get together at the Clutterham’s for me. This also worked out because when 10:45pm rolled around I had an excuse to come by and see her and go for a little drive to talk and show off my new stereo.
I pick her up and start driving towards the Embassy Suites (our first kiss was in the parking lot of the Embassy Suites) and parked. At this point she has a suspicion that something is up but her belief that I have no ring misleads her and keeps the element of surprise in my favor. I ask if I should put in a CD and begin to reach into my center console. As I do this I tell her that I love her and want to spend the rest of my life with her. I then bring out the open ring box from the center console and ask if she would marry me. I got an immediate yes followed by hugs and kisses and to my surprise took well over a minute to actually look down at the ring.
I was forced into proposing in this spontaneous manner because trying to do anything else (my actions were under extreme scrutiny) would have completely ruined the surprise and I can’t think of another way I would have rather done it.
My happy new fiance
I have to figure out why I get squinty eyes when I smile
3 stone princess cut setting in white gold
Tagged with: life, marriage, wedding
Posted under: Life Stuff
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