I’ve owned this car since 2000, and the only bad thing that’s ever happened to me was a flat tire once. I’ve had a few sensors replaced as well, to quiet a check engine light, but it’s never left me stranded. This is a smooth dependable ride for short commutes and long drives. I’m only selling it because I’m going to travel for a year, and don’t think it’s worth paying to put the car in storage.

The car has a 5 speed manual transmission and a 3 liter V6 engine. It’s a lot of fun with the windows and sun roof all open. The back seat seats 3, or 2 very comfortably, and there is plenty of trunk space. Definitely enough for 4 people going on a weekend trip, or 3 people going on a week-long camping vacation. It also gets quite decent gas mileage.

You can see lots of pictures at http://www.casualhacker.net/forsale/maxima/ .

If you’re interested, e-mail tim@casualhacker.net or call 805-566-3706.

A while ago we got a message on our answering machine telling us to call back so we could claim our prize, although they didn’t mention what the prize was. Skeptically, I called back. I was told that I had one a trip for 2 to Las Vegas. All my wife and I had to do was go collect our prize, which would involve driving to their nearest center (about 1 hour), and then sitting through a 90 minute sales presentation. I figured getting a trip (flights plus two nights in a hotel) to Vegas was worth that hassle, so I scheduled an appointment.

A week or two later we went straight from work to the presentation, which was in what looked like an office building. The Trendwest lobby was made to feel like a hotel. We signed in, and were quickly met by our sales rep. I don’t remember his name, but let’s call him Al. Al took us to an open room which was set up a lot like a restaurant, where several people were already getting acquainted with their sales rep. Al directed us to his table, where the three of us sat down and talked a bit. He tried to figure out what we like and dislike, while we tried to figure out what he was up to.

After about 10 minutes it was time for the presentation. We all went into another room where they had a video projector set up, and a presenter walked in to tell us what this night was all about. The presentation went something like this: People like timeshares because it’s cheaper than staying in hotels. Timeshares aren’t flexible, though. So Trendwest has something better. They build hotels all over the world, and sell part ownership. That part ownership gets you a certain number of points, which renew every year, that you can use to stay in those hotels. So basically you buy an investment in real estate, that gets you free hotel stays every year.

After the presentation we returned to Al’s table, where he tried to convince us to buy in. He used pretty standard sales techniques. We weren’t too keen on spending $10,000 that night, but that would mean forgoing the that-night-only offer. He offered us some more perks when we weren’t buying, but we still weren’t interested. I was trying to figure out how much hotel stay I could buy if I invested $10,000 in a 60/40 stock/bond index fund. In most cases you can draw 4% off that, inflation-adjusted, forever. So that’s $400 you can spend every year, instead of some number of points that can only be used at certain hotels. Al either couldn’t or didn’t want to understand that. A big selling point was that we were buying a lifestyle change. That buy spending this money once, we’d enjoy a higher quality of vacations, and we’d take more of them.

After a while Al gave up and called in the floor manager, let’s call him Bill. Bill gave us another offer and ran some numbers with us. That didn’t work out so well since most of the time when we vacation we camp and don’t stay in hotels at all. Since we weren’t buying that, we were sent off to Charlie to collect our prize. But before that happened, Charlie wondered if we’d like to take advantage of a special trial offer. The deal was that we’d get 6,000 vacation credits (which is 5-7 days, but only usable at a subset of all the resorts) for $695. After some debate, we decided it would be nice to do that, just to do a real hotel vacation for a change. We then surprised Charlie by paying the full amount right there. (Really, it’s kind of scary that anybody would finance that kind of purchase.) Halfway through signing the papers, he mentioned that this also included sitting through another presentation once we were at the resort. I was kind of annoyed that he didn’t mention that before, but we went ahead anyway. Finally, we did get the coupon for our Vegas vacation.

At home, some research on Ebay shows that we could’ve bought 10,000 one-time use credits for $660, so we paid about 50% extra by buying from the pusher. Perhaps the smart thing would’ve been to call and cancel (we had 7 days to do that, according to our contract), but we didn’t. So now we’ve got a week’s of hotel time that we fully intend to enjoy.

Our Vegas vacation came with various limitations (mostly that it had to be all during the week), so I called to reserve a time during Danielle’s summer vacation. That was no problem, but I did learn on that phone call that the airport we’re flying out of would be chosen by the travel provider, and we would be told about 2 weeks before departure what that would be. Since the airport list included several LA airports and San Diego, I was not happy about that. It takes a long time to drive to San Diego from here. It’s probably faster to drive to Vegas directly. Anyway, we can always decide not to fly if we end up in that boat.

It all seemed set, but just recently we got a piece of paper in the mail saying that we had to send in a check for $94 to cover taxes and fees. This is the first time those were ever mentioned so I’m pretty annoyed. We will not be taking the Vegas vacation. If I need to pay $94 to get something, then it’s not free.

So in the end we were promised that we would get a free Vegas vacation but we came away with spending $695 on a different vacation, and no Vegas vacation. If you get a similar offer, I recommend you just ignore it and keep enjoying your life. If you do decide to go, well, now you know a little bit more of what to expect.

The Thrift Savings Plan (TSP) is a government retirement program available to people who work for the government. Money you save into your TSP is not taxed until you take it out, and earnings of your TSP aren’t taxed either. Assuming you are in the 15% tax bracket, that means when you save $1,000 into your TSP, your actual pay only goes down by $850 and not the full $1,000. When your TSP account earns $1,000 in one year, that entire $1,000 is added to your account. This is a huge advantage over saving money in a taxable account and the main reason to use this program. Another benefit of the TSP account is that it has some of the lowest fees available anywhere. Fees are calculated as a percentage of money you have invested, and is the one sure thing about investing. Your returns are unpredictable, but the fees are guaranteed. A 0.25% fee is considered good for a typical mutual fund, and fees as high as 1% are common. By comparison the TSP fees range from 0.04% to 0.05%.

Once your money is in a TSP account, it can be put into 5 different core funds. Each fund has a different expected volatility and return. Volatility describes how much a fund’s value will go up and down. Return tells you how fast your account will grow in the long term. Funds with a higher return also have higher volatility, so you can’t just put all your money in the fund with the highest return. A volatile fund might gain 10% tomorrow, but lose 20% the day after. If you are going to retire soon, a volatile fund is not your best choice, and you should pick a less volatile fund (which also has a lower return). If your retirement is a long way away, you can pick a more volatile fund which, in the long term, will have a higher return.

The core funds available in your TSP are (in order from lowest to highest return and volatility):

You can divide your money up between those funds in any way you want. The further you are away from retirement the more volatility you should choose, because the more volatile funds also have the highest long-term returns. So when you’re young you should be mostly in the I, S, and C funds. As you get older, you should change your fund selection so that more of your money should be in the G and F funds. That requires you to do some work every year, and it also requires you to figure out what a reasonable allocation is each time. To save you from this hassle, your TSP account has L funds.

There is an L fund for every decade you might want to retire in. If you’re retiring in 2035 or later, the L 2040 is the fund for you. Currently it has money in (from most to least) the C fund, I fund, S fund, F fund, and G fund. As time goes on it will slowly change its allocation until, when it’s time for you to retire, it will have money in (from most to least) the G fund, F fund, C fund, I fund, and S fund. This is exactly what you want, and once you’ve set all your money to be contributed to the L fund you won’t every have to worry about it again. I recommend you move all the money you already have into the appropriate L fund, and change your contributions so that all the money you contribute also goes into that same L fund.

How much you should save in your TSP account mainly depends on how much you can afford. More is better. There is a limit ($15,000 for 2006), and reaching that limit every year would be ideal. You should start out at a contribution rate that seems reasonable right now. Then every time you get a raise, increase your contribution rate enough that you still see some of that raise, but that at least a third of it goes to your retirement savings. So if you get a 3% raise, increase your contribution rate by 1 or 2 percentage points.

We could see the kelp from the beach (and in fact there were several kayakers there). The swim looked kind of further than I thought, but we set out anyway. The water was very clear. We could clearly see the sandy bottom where the water was as much as 4 feet deep. Soon thereafter we lost sight of the bottom, and swam with nothing but the water to look at. We passed a solitary kelp plant where Danielle saw a good sized bat ray, but I didn’t. After some more swimming we hit the kelp forest itself. Most of the bottom here seems to be rocky, and in the shallowest parts about 8 feet deep. In those places you could make out the white stuff on the bottom from the surface (shells, mostly), which is enough to tell you where to go down. We saw clams, urchnis, anemones, and other spineless critters that Danielle knows what they are. There were a fair amount of fish around. I saw at least a school of top smelt, so kind of perch, a small kelp fish, and a school of something else that Danielle didn’t see. (If Danielle doesn’t see it, that means I don’t know what it is, since she is my ocean life reference.) Overall it was a great place to snorkel for being so close to home. Definitely not as nice as some of the spots at the islands, but fun nonetheless.

Danielle said she was cooling down (my wetsuit fits a lot better than hers) so we started going back. While still in the kelp forest, I saw a big fish come into view about 5 feet below me. It just kept getting bigger, and when I saw the first 4 feet of it I did a double take and realized it was actually a seal I was looking at. Excitedly I told Danielle, but she had missed it. Then the seal popped its head up about 20 feet away, so we swam towards it. When we got pretty close it went down, so I chased after it. I did see it swim a bit under water, but a seal could outswim me with both flippers and its tail tied behind it’s back so after about 5s it was gone again. This repeated quite a few more times. The seal would pop up its head, and we’d swim towards it. Sometimes one of us would go under before we reached the seal. When that happened the seal would go under also, trying to see where we went. If you kept swimming under water you’d meet the seal after a few seconds, and it would act surprised, arch its back and take off int he other direction. It was very cute. At one point Danielle got with 3 feet of the seal’s head before it dove to safety. Another time Danielle and I were looking for the seal, when it turned around it was right at our feet, sniffing (or so it looked) the tips of my fins. It was really awesome to encounter such a beautiful, playful and wild animal.

All good things come to an end, and we had to head back lest Danielle got too cold. I caught a glimpse of (presumably) the same bat ray that Danielle saw on the way out, and then before I knew we were back at the beach. We were in the water for about an hour. If you’re in the area and the water is calm, I highly recommend snorkelling around 34°23′41.03″N 119°32′9.94″W.

Flightgear is much more of a real simulator than a game, and since I discovered it I’ve spent almost as much time reading about flight as I’ve spent actually flying. The first thing you learn is that single prop airplanes pull to the left when rolling down the runway. Lucky for you, flightgear does not simulate different surfaces so taking from the grass is no problem. The traditional “full power, pull back on the yoke” will get you in the air, albeit with a significant lean to the left. If you’re me, you then point the plane where you want to go, and hope it works out. After more reading and more practice I can now take off reasonably well and my landings are getting fairly smooth, although not always on the runway.

The rest of the time is spent checking out scenery, figuring out how the autopilot works (the best docs I found were written by the manufacturer), and learning about the million other details you need to know to fly an airplane. The great thing about the simulator is that you can learn the hard way, and it’s OK. For instance, I had a C310 quite literally fall out of the sky when I was flying to the top of Mount Rainier. The engine just suddenly cut off, I think because I didn’t lean the fuel mixture like you’re supposed to. Another time I took the 737-300 for a flight, which involved hitting the ocean. The 737-300 is really hard to fly. It’s much less stable than you’d think, and because it’s so powerful you can drop from 500ft to sealevel before you know it. On top of that, the nose prevents you from seeing the horizon.

If none of this is interesting to you, then Flightgear is probably not for you. But if you are interested in aviation then this is truly a great program. The last flight simulator I played before this one was Flight Simulator 2 so I can’t compare Flightgear to the current state of the art. My impression is that its flight model is as good as any other. There are somewhat less planes available, and I haven’t found any areas that have detailed scenery. On the other hand, it’s free, constantly improving, and you can extend it any way you want if you have the skill. Give it a try, you’ve got nothing to lose.