The Cost of Being Cheap
I’ve realized it takes a lot of time, money and hard work to be a world-class cheap ass.
For example, the faucet in my bathroom has been leaking for – I don’t know – about five years give or take a year. The cheap man’s solution to a leaky faucet is to completely ignore the problem, which I did successfully for the past five years. But recently the leak turned from a slow drip into something more akin to Niagara Falls, so I decided this problem finally needed some attention.
Now I am no plumber (unless you count the ability to clog a toilet) but after a little research on the Internet (aka the cheap man’s enabler) I saw that leaky faucets can often be fixed by replacing the “seats and springs“, which is basically a rubber gasket with a spring that sits inside the faucet’s handles.
Now the cheap man gets excited about a fix that is going to cost him a few dollars instead of the obscene amount it would cost to get new faucet, so after consuming a few Youtube videos on the topic, I jumped right in and began to take my faucet apart.
And, of course, I ran into my first problem immediately upon starting – I had no idea what brand of faucet this was.
My bathroom faucet is a nondescript item; made of cheap chrome and cheaply designed in such a way that if I had to guess, it retailed for around $5 in 1987. There was no indication of the manufacturer anywhere on the outside (probably by design since no one would want to be associated with this piece of crap) and was generic looking enough that it was impossible for me to track down even with the help of the internet.
The closest representation I could find online was this thing of beauty from Kingston Brass (although mine had different handles and was clearly an older model):
But this small problem was not enough to slow me down. I had removed the seat and spring from the hot water handle*. I could simply go to one of those big box home retailers and match up the old seat and spring with a new one from the store using my keen powers of observation.
Not surprisingly, that failed. Despite having a wall dedicated to seats, springs and various other faucet repair products, neither of the two stores in my area had seats and springs that looked anything like the one I pulled from my faucet.**
While my first attempt at identifying the faucet turned up empty, I had read online that faucets can sometimes have their identifying information stamped on the bottom. I was hesitant to completely disconnect the faucet and pull it out on the small chance that the brand was somewhere underneath, but I was getting desperate.
After disconnecting and removing the faucet, the only thing I found was about five pounds of plumber’s putty stuffed up inside it. The bottom was complete devoid of any information about the manufacturer or the brand. Or maybe it had been there at one time only to have been assimilated by plumber’s putty in the intervening years.
At this point, with the faucet completely removed, the cheap man inside of me broke down and asked my wife if we should just buy an entirely new faucet. While this idea cut against my core beliefs, my wife had been bugging me for a while to replace that faucet*** and I had just done half of the labor involved in putting a new one in.
Not surprisingly she said yes, so I ran out to the store and bought the cheapest faucet I could find, an AquaSource Two-Handle WaterSense for $25 on clearance. It wasn’t until I got home that I started reading reviews and discovered why it was on clearance – it’s apparently a leaky piece of junk.
Now I may be cheap, but I’m not a complete idiot****, so instead of installing the faucet and having it leak on me within the year, turned to the Internet again and ordered a Price Pfister faucet online that received better reviews (and sadly, was more expensive). There was one small problem, however, the faucet was a special order item and had to be ordered and shipped from the warehouse. Approximate arrival date – 4 to 10 business days.
A total lack of sink in the primary bathroom is perfectly acceptable for me (I can just brush my teeth in the kitchen sink, see problem solved), but it’s an inconvenience for most normal people, so I reinstalled the old faucet temporarily until the new one arrived. After hooking everything back up, I realized why an entire drum of plumbers putty was stuck all up in the old faucet – it leaks like crazy from the bottom without it.
Damn.
So I’m currently without the use of a faucet in my bathroom while I wait for my new faucet to arrive. And a $2 set of faucet seats and springs slowly and painfully turned into a new faucet. Approximate cost of this fix in time and money:
New faucet – $50
Plumbing materials – $4
Number of trips to the store for parts – 3
Hours spent uninstalling and reinstalling an old faucet that doesn’t work and will eventually need to be removed again – At least 2
Number of Youtube videos watched on leaky faucet repair – At least 10
Time spent researching faucet repair on the internet – Way too damn long
Number of bathroom sinks that currently work – 0
Like I said, it takes a lot of hard work to be this cheap.
More on repairing a faucet leak
Video on how to fix a leaky faucet
***
*It was a two handle sink and the hot water side was leaking, which apparently is the more common side to start leaking first.
**This is the point where I could have went to a plumbing supply shop and begged for help if there was one in my area.
***In her defense, it is a butt-ugly faucet that was leaking.
****Just a partial idiot.
What’s in Your DVD Collection
I recently noticed that I have a large DVD collection prominently displayed in a bookcase in my living room (I don’t go in my living room very often). I think we’ve hit a point in time when prominently displaying a DVD collection is akin to prominently displaying a collection of beanie babies or troll dolls – it distinctly places your life in a time and place that is not in the present day. Much like walking into your grandparents’ house and seeing the hard candies and paisley furniture, my living room has become frozen in time. In my case, around the year 2003.
Other than the occasional Christmas move, the last DVD I added to my collection was the Hangover in 2009. And other than the occasional Christmas movie, the last movie I watched out of that collection was probably the Hangover in 2009. Not only has my DVD collection become a relic of another time, it should have a sign in front of it saying ‘Please Do Not Touch’ like it’s a piece in a museum.
When you go through a DVD collection for the first time in at least two years, you come across a few surprises – “wow, I never knew I owned The Usual Suspects” and “back in 2002, I really thought I needed to own the Scorpion King?” and “what the hell is Funny Face and how did it get here?”.
In my opinion, the most amusing thing about the collection was the few DVDs that were still in their original plastic wrapper and had never been opened. Now let me say that I’ve purchased nearly all these movies myself or specifically asked for them as gifts, so it’s not like I’m getting off-the-wall DVDs as gifts from people who don’t know my sense and sensibilities. And if I did I would have regifted that crap a long time ago. No, this is a collection designed by me for my own viewing pleasure. So it says something disturbing about my pack rat mentality that I’ve purchase DVDs with no intention of ever watching them. For example…
My Mint Condition, Unwatched DVDs:
12 Monkeys – I’m not the world’s biggest Terry Gilliam fan, but I am the world’s number 1 Bruce Willis fan, which is why I picked this puppy up after seeing the movie in the theater. There was a small moment in time where I could stand Brad Pitt as a human being, and alas, that window closed sometime between buying this DVD at the store and getting home.
Die Another Day – I like Pierce Brosnan, he’s easily my third, ok maybe fourth favorite James Bond of all time. He was just so dapper; a James Bond you wouldn’t be afraid of talking home to meet the parents. But Die Another Day was such a forgettable movie that I can’t tell you anything about it other than I think it has James Bond in it. Oh, and Halle Berry was hot in an orange bikini. Personally, I’ll take Golden Eye any day of the week (preferably on a N64… not to date myself any further).
Superbad – I’ve seen Superbad on TV about a dozen times. It’s a funny movie – the scene where Michael Cera’s character is at a party has to sing a song after getting mistaken for someone else still made me laugh on the 12th viewing – but it’s not funny enough to make me want to pop it in the old fashioned DVD player and watch it for the 13th time. Even if it is the unrated extended version.
The Simpsons Season 2 – I love The Simpsons, especially the first 10 or so seasons when the show still had a heart. But the problem is that I’ve seen every single episode so many times. I mean, there was a point in my life where I’d watch two straight hours of The Simpsons every weekday in syndication from 6 to 8 pm. And that was almost 20 years ago – which makes my brain hurt when I think about it.
Tableau Public
After downloading but just not getting around to using the software on three separate occasions, I finally created my first chart (or should I say “visualization”) using the free Tableau Public platform. The visualization I created was for Give Me The Rock and it graphed the top 200 fantasy basketball players on a scatter plot based on how similar or dissimilar they played during the 2010-11 season.
While I am by no means an expert on using the software, here are my first impressions on Tableau Public.
The Good Stuff
I mean, let’s start with the fact that Tableau Public is free to use. In a world where I pay to drink water, that is a very good thing. Loading up the software, I noticed that the interface is very slick and creating a basic chart is fairly easy to do. I’m a guy who likes to jump in head first without reading a manual, and I appreciate I could do that and still create something cool. For the most part, the software is drag and drop with your data displayed on the left hand side of the screen and the visualization on the right. You simply start dragging your data into the appropriate place and the magic happens.
Also, the visualizations look great – on par or better than what Excel can produce. The shapes, colors, labels are all sharp and really pop on the screen. But the best thing about the software is that Tableau Public knows exactly what it is and what people use it for. The chart options that it provides seem spot on and the ease and speed at which the software allows you to slice and dice your data and the way you present it is something that Excel can’t come close to touching. For example, my visualization of 200 NBA players was original crammed on the screen, but Tableau Public has a pages option that allows you to split out your presentation into different pages which can be viewed individually. I ended up splitting my graph into pages by player position to make it more readable.
If your the type of person that likes to experiment with different ways to present data, then Tableau Public has the potential to save you a lot of time.
Finally, Tableau Public makes it incredibly easy to share visualizations on the web. It provides scripts that you can copy and paste right into your blog, as well as an option to email it to others. You can also download any visualization on the web onto your computer if you have Tableau Public. No more worrying about versions of Excel and compatibility issues.
The Bad Stuff
Like all cloud software that I’ve used, Tableau Public is a touch slow for my tastes, especially in regard to loading and saving data. For a one off chart (excuse me, visualization) I can deal with it, but given the spastic way I typically work, I wouldn’t want to work with it all day long. Tableau has professional versions of the software (for $999 and $1,999 depending on the version) that I’d assume solves this problem by not requiring you to work in a cloud.
And while the software is generally easy to use, I’d say it’s still a step or two away from being perfectly intuitive. There were a few things that took me a while to figure out. I didn’t realize you could drag the interactive legends/tools around the screen and they would be presented in that exact location when you published the visualization (very handy). And while I split my graph by player position to make it easier to read, I still wanted to add a total page that presented all the data on the screen at once. I never did figure out how to do that.
Finally – and this may bother some people more than others – while Tableau Public is free, you are required to save your visualization to their servers. Once published, your data is in the public domain for all to see. Obviously if you have proprietary data, Tableau Public is not for you (although again, the paid versions will solve this problem).
The Verdict
Overall, I’m impressed with Tableau Public. As a guy who uses Excel on a daily basis, it’s not going to replace that for my day-to-day work, but it has definite advantages over Excel like its ability to slice and dice data in any number of ways and the fact that Tableau makes it very easy to share visualizations with others. The next time I create a graph that is going to be displayed on a website, I’d hands down use Tableau Public do to that. And did I mention it’s free?
Home Project 10: New Bathroom Floor
With the kitchen behind us, it was time to move on to a few smaller house projects that could be completed in less than a weekend. One of the fun things about being married is the ability to disagree on nearly everything, including the tiniest, most insignificant things in life. Our house was no exception. In general, the things that bother me and that I want to fix are completely different than the things on my wife’s list.
Take our bathroom floor. It was a puke-blue colored* linoleum that – if I had to guess – was original to the 1970′s house. I hated it as much as anything in the house. On the other hand, it didn’t seem to bother my wife all that much. At least in relation to all the other things she wanted to fix.
But since it was a relatively easy project, I decided I was going to update the floor. I should have gotten a good picture of the old floor, but all I have is the out of focus one below.
I could have, and maybe should have, replaced the floor with ceramic tile. But I was a hesitant because I’ve never done tile before, so I instead went with vinyl floor tiles that mimic the look of ceramic tile. On the positive side, they are inexpensive, easy to install and look pretty good out of the box.
According to this old house, vinyl tiles come in two varieties: glue-down tiles, which are set into a bed of mastic, and self-adhesive tiles which are a peel-and-stick. I bought the peel-and-stick kind which literally meant peel off the backing and then stick to the floor. There were a few tricky cuts around the edges of the room, but the tiles can easily be cut with a razorblade, so even a non-flooring expert like me had the entire floor down in less than a couple hours. It really was one of the easiest things I had done to the house.
Here is what the finished floor looked like.
While my decision to go with vinyl tile was primarily based on 1) ease of installation, and 2) cost, one of the nicer things about vinyl compared to ceramic tile that I’ve grown to like is that it has a slightly warmer, softer feel under your feet (which is a very good thing during cold, Maine winters). It was very easy to install and in the 3+ years since we’ve put it down, it was been very durable.
Since installation, the largest negative thing about the tiles is that they have yellowed over time (well, all except one tile, which makes the floor look even stranger. So my slate colored floor now has a distinct yellow hue to it. I’m not a fan of the color change, but it still looks way better than the old puke-blue stuff.
Overall, I’d recommend vinyl tile. It’s not going to fool anyone into thinking you have actual tile on your floor, but I personally think the look is step up from traditional linoleum sheets. I’m not sure what’s up with the staining of my tiles – maybe it’s the brand or maybe I should try cleaning up after myself once in a while – but it’s not so bad that it’s a deal breaker.
*Puke-blue: It’s a royal blue base with flecks of brown, silver and orange in it, like someone puked all over a royal blue floor…. coming soon to a Crayola box near you soon.
The US CDC and the Zombie Apocalypse
The U.S. Center for Disease Control has your back when the zombie apocalypse goes down. In a recent CDC-related blog post, Ali S. Khan describes the emergency steps you should take when the inevitable worldwide zombie attack happens. The post, entitled, Social Media: Preparedness 101: Zombie Apocalypse, starts out:
There are all kinds of emergencies out there that we can prepare for. Take a zombie apocalypse for example. That’s right, I said z-o-m-b-i-e a-p-o-c-a-l-y-p-s-e. You may laugh now, but when it happens you’ll be happy you read this, and hey, maybe you’ll even learn a thing or two about how to prepare for a real emergency.
I wouldn’t have associated the CDC with clever social media, but the blog post has since gone viral – it’s being mentioned all over the internets – and got so many hits that it crashed the blog for a sort time. Not many people are going to sit down and read about emergency preparedness from the CDC, so it’s a clever way to get tens of thousands of people who don’t even know what a CDC is to wrap their ADHD brains around the topic long enough to learn a little something.
Kudos to them for producing a document that is both fun to read and informative. I’ll be waiting patiently for their next post on what I should do when plants start making us commit mass suicide.
My Personal Finance Tips to Live By
I don’t know why I always get sucked into reading those stupid Yahoo Finance articles (or why I still have Yahoo as my homepage… I blame Yahoo fantasy basketball). You know the ones about how I could save nearly $1,500 a year by not drinking $4 lattes every day, or how new cars depreciate in value as soon as you drive them off the lot, or about how credit card debit is bad, or how it’s still possible to live like a douche on $30,000 a year.
Those tips might be useful for certain portion of the population who is still living the high life despite the collapse of the economy. However, I don’t drink lattes. I get my coffee free at work (the only downside is it tastes like the coffee beans were eaten, digested and crapped put by a group of spider monkeys before being brewed – but hey, free is free). I have also never bought a new car in my life, don’t have credit card debit, and have the words cheap ass embroidered on most of my clothing.
So, instead of worrying about whether to get the travelers insurance on my next vacation to St. Barts, I live my life using two simple personal finance rules:
1. Don’t buy shit you don’t need.
2. If you do need shit, get the best value possible.
Oversimplified? Yeah it is, although that simplicity makes it easy to remember. Most of what we buy is shit we don’t need (myself included) but it sure as hell feels like we need it at the time. Up until recently I was paying a monthly cable bill despite the fact that my wife and I rarely watch television. It just felt like something we needed because I had ALWAYS had cable, at least since I was a child. Turns out, it was something we didn’t need and don’t miss.
The second item is a little more complicated. Getting the best value doesn’t necessarily mean buying the cheapest shit available. I once bought a $100 32-inch Polaroid television that became the world’s largest paperweight after 3 months of use. Lesson learned: low cost should probably not be the determining factor for large consumer electronics.
I will pay extra for quality if it’s something I plan to own for a long time. I don’t buy much at L.L. Bean, but I do love their lifetime guarantee. I’m one of those crazy people who likes to camp – but instead of buying junk from Walmart over and over again every year, I think it makes sense to buy it once at Beans and know I’m good to go for the rest of my life.
Also, depending on the product, buying used makes a lot of sense (and getting stuff for free is even better than that). Especially if the product has a long usable life – stuff like cars, furniture, books, and toys all make sense to buy used. Unless we’re talking about food or underwear, I’ve got no problem with used.
That is, if I even need that shit to begin with.
Congratulations It’s a Girl: Please Sign Here
As the father of a wonderful new baby girl, one of the things I was woefully unprepared for (in addition to everything) was the amount of paperwork that I would be doing after she was born. Ok, things like feeding, changing diapers and trying to maintain your sanity under severe sleep derivation are more important tasks on the scale of parenthood, but at least I had heard all of the horror stories related to that stuff.
It was the paperwork that caught me off guard, despite the fact that it began before the little one even arrived. I remember filling out a boatload of forms for the hospital well before my wife was scheduled to give birth. And it wasn’t long after our child was born that we found ourselves sitting with hospital staff and signing paperwork like we were ready to leave the hospital with a baby and a mortgage.
That was just the beginning. In researching all the things a responsible parent has to do in the 21st century, I came across a great post on Fiscal Fizzle entitled “6 Important Tasks After a New Baby’s Birth.” The list included:
1. Adjust W-4
2. Open a college savings account.
3. Call the car insurance company.
4. Add the baby to health insurance.
5. Quote life insurance.
6. Modify legal documents.
It’s a solid list for any new parent. I never called my car insurance company since we already pay ridiculously low rates by living in a state with more moose than motor vehicles, but I was all over everything else. Like many private health insurance plans, mine required me to add a new child to the policy within 30 days of birth, so it’s a good idea to talk to whoever you need to before the baby comes and have that change ready to go. And probably like a lot of young(ish) people when they have their first child, it was time for me to actually get some life insurance and create a will.
In the comments of Fiscal Fizzle post, people mentioned a couple of other important things to do:
Apply for a bank savings account
Apply for social security card and birth certificate
The birth certificate is an easy one to accidentally let slide because the onus is on you to go pick it up (at the town hall in my case), when it’s natural to think that the hospital is going to give it to you. Don’t make that mistake – your going to want that birth certificate when some birthers get all up in your child’s business at the White House.
If there is anything else you suggest a parent do to give their children a financial leg up, hit it up in the comments. I could certainly use the advice
In the Beginning, There was Fantasy Basketball
I started blogging about fantasy basketball in 2004. I don’t remember the exact day or month that I sat down and signed up for my first blogger account – and even that year is probably wrong – but I do remember that my original fantasy basketball blog grew out of my love of playing fantasy basketball, which was an offshoot of my love of numbers and statistics, which came out of me being an uber geek.
Fast forward to 2011 and I’ve been writing for the fantasy basketball blog Give Me the Rock (GMTR) for nearly 6 years. I’m not sure what possess me to get up at 5 in the morning every other day to blog before work. It’s certainly not the money. Maybe the chicks… but definitely not the money.
If you happen to like fantasy basketball (or fantasy sports in general), check out one of my latest posts on GMTR, Everything You Need to Know to Win Your Fantasy League, which is literally all the advice I could think of to help owners win their fantasy leagues. It’s 2,500 sweet words on how to dominate your competition – or at least look desperate trying. It probably took about 4 hours to write that post, which is about as much free time you get in a week when you have a new child.
Of course, writing at GMTR for free as afforded me opportunities that I wouldn’t have had otherwise; like writing fantasy columns, for free, other places. This season I (along with the other guys at GMTR) began writing a weekly fantasy column at Sports Illustrated.com. It’s certainly a nice opportunity to get some eyeballs on my writing, so it’s cool were being paid in good vibes at the moment.
Some of my more recent SI columns:
Best and Worst Fantasy Schedules to End the Year
Fantasy Basketball Keepers
Top Best and Worst Shooters in the League
Fatherhood: It’s Not Just a Crappy Movie
In July of 2010, a beautiful baby girl was welcomed into this world by two extremely good looking (but exhausted) first-time parents. One of those parents was me and the baby girl was mine (at least I hope).
And I never would have guessed that kids were so much work. It’s almost like they need constant attention; I barely have enough time to make it to the store and back while the kid takes a nap in her crib. Plus she needs to eat everyday and can’t feed herself. Or buy her own food. Or earn money. It’s ridiculous.
But in all seriousness, nearly eight months later and I have become a honed parenting machine who can operate on five hours of sleep and doesn’t need an outside life to be happy. My secret to being a great father is having a wonderful wife who does 90% of the work of raising a child. The remaining 10% is simply playing with toys and changing the occasional diaper.
Of course, having a new daughter has changed my perspective. Where my life once resembled Harry Ellis in Die Hard, now it is more about tummy time and patty-cake. With the little girl around, all it takes is one little smile to power me through the day (plus copious amounts of coffee). And if that sounds sappy, well, try reading a book like On the Night You Were Born.
