Welcome to yoonamania where I put down the nonsense that pops up in my head from time to time. Please do not expect to make any sense out of my blatherings. It's called nonsense for a reason. Nor should you expect to enjoy any good writing. My English sucks moose ass. But I don't really care since I'm sure your Korean isn't any better. Please try to keep your expectations low and just chill like potatoes... or beets... or parsnips. Oh and yeah, don't take it seriously unless you think I think you must.

Yours truly, etc. yoonamaniac

September 22, 2009>

Mania

7 comments

Today I happened upon this CNN article, which caught my eye obviously because of its title, “Digging out from $80,000 debt.” I have a lot of debt, and I’ve lost sleep over this. In fact, I was sick home all week last week, and on two days, I had to stay home without any PDO left, which means I would not get paid for those two days. Sadly, losing two-days’ worth of pay creates a problem for me. Heck, losing even one day’s pay creates a problem. So I had to warn a friend that I would need to borrow money in a few weeks. I admit I’m the one who got myself in this situation by buying the house that I shouldn’t have bought, but I just want to make something clear. I don’t spend money on things I really don’t need – clothes, shoes, cosmetics, manicures/pedicures, beauty shops, movies, etc. Most of my debt consists of payments to the vet for the last 2 years with more than a fair share of health troubles for my furry ones. But I digress.

So I started reading the article, remembering the phone number I memorized this morning from a radio commercial about debt counseling service or something or other, which talked about some government debt relief program for people with debt over $10,000. I did google this program in hopes to find something about it from a government source, but I quickly lost patience seeing 12 billion search results are the websites for debt counseling or debt consolidation services. Anyway, I digress. Again. Sorry.

As I was saying… I started reading the article, and yeah I finished reading it. That’s it. The end.

You know I was lying, right? That’s not it and wasn’t the end. Anyways, it was nothing special. The usual story – somebody got herself into this situation, and after transferring card balances from one credit card to another with really low introductory interest rate, she finally contacted a debt counseling service, and after a year, her debt is now $40,000. Half way there. As I said, nothing special. But I did get something out of it. NFCC – National Foundation for Credit Counseling, recommended by CNN personal finance editor. It’s a nonprofit organization with credit counseling service agencies as its members, who meet certain standards and provide no or very low fee services. I surfed the site for a long time, and I think I’m going to try contacting a counselor and see what she/he has to say. The first counseling session seems to be free.

Wish me luck. I tend to get very nervous about things like this and forget the questions that need to be asked or just get tongue-tied, even though I have nothing to lose. It’s the times like this that I want a husband who could and would take care of this kind of stuff. And I would need some good sleep vibes too from now on since I was also reminded of the fact that my mortgage rate is going to adjust in just about four months… Oh Fuck! Crap! Shit! Moose dick! *bangs head on the wall*

August 21, 2009>

Mania, Peeps

9 comments

I’ve been reading Personal Kanban Series on Evolving Web blog by Jim Benson this week. If you know me well and you just clicked on the aforementioned blog link, you might wonder what the fuck happened to Yoon and who is this person impersonating her. And if you don’t know me well and you just clicked on the said blog, you might wonder why some people might wonder I’m an impostor who incapacitated Yoon in order to write on this good-for-nothing blog. Well, I’ll tell you a little later.

Ever since I came back online from the depression-induced hiatus after my Grizzley’s death, I’ve been seeing the tweets from topsurf mentioning “personal kanban series by ourfounder” on twitter. Not knowing what this exotic word kanban meant and who ourfounder was, I first thought this kanban thing had to do with some personal growth or spiritual awakening or some shit like that because the combination of the words “personal” and “kanban” and “ourfounder” gave me the feeling that this ourfounder guy is the founder of this spiritual or personal growth “system” for lack of a better word.

OK, I lied. I said at the end of the first paragraph that I’d tell you why the impostor and yadi yadi yada, but I feel too lazy and this post has gotten already a little too long going on a tangent, and I haven’t even gotten to my point, which has to do with sex and money and something else, as the title suggests and what interested you guys in the first place. So I’m just not gonna tell you. If you’re one of those who wondered, you’re just gonna have to keep wonderin’.

Where was I? Oh yeah, so the last weekend, I finally asked topsurf what this kanban was. She gave me the link to the Personal Kanban Series, and suggested I read it because it helped her a lot. I started reading one article a day (what? You think my pea-sized brain can take more than THAT a day?) and found out  it’s not what I thought at all. It’s a tool to improve  productivity, and ourfounder guy is not  a spiritual leader or a cult founder, but a management consultant named Jim Benson. I’ve decided to try kanban  in my life at home rather than at work because home is where I suffer from lack of productivity in doing shit around the house – all four dogs, who refuse to help bring home the bacon by getting jobs and such, believe it or not, also refuse to help around the house with picking things up, vacuuming or dusting, etc.

Anyway. Crud… I’m so far away from what I wanted to blog about now I wonder if I should even try. Oh well. Whatever. So now I come to the point that has very little to do with most of what I have jabbered on about so far.

In one of his articles, Jim Benson states,

Human beings want three things in life: sex, money, and effective prioritization.

I, who I think is a human being, happen to want money, naps, and food. In that order. And lots of them. But I usually can’t pass for normal. So I kinda understand his statement and I even agree with the money part as you can see. And I can understand the sex part, too – psst, have you noticed Jim is a guy? But effective prioritization? Uh… hmmm… Methinks his profession clouded his mind right there. I think it should be “new and improved way to get sex and money fast without much effort” or “effective way to delegate” or “effective way to evade responsibility” or “better way to blame somebody else” or  something along those lines.

Drats. Now that I said it, I realize I don’t really have much of a point. I might have “subconsciously”  just put that title to pique your interest and make you read this meaningless blathering. Don’t you think it’s a very clever title anyways, eh?

April 4, 2008>

Mania

2 comments

I’ve known that my bank, Citibank, started this “Thank You Network” thing a few years back, but I have never bothered to look into this thing until today. In the beginning, the reason for me not investigating further into this thing was the fact that they gave out this looooong sequence of numbers as my “account” number for it, and isn’t that the most ridiculous thing? Why oh why can’t these people just make it easy for people? So I’ve been ignoring it until today when I inadvertently clicked on the link for the Thank You Network while doing some online banking.

They changed the settings so that I had to just create a user ID and password with that cumbersomely long numerical sequence already plugged in for me- which, by the way, is still kinda ridiculous if you ask me since they could have just made people use the same user IDs and passwords as their online banking accounts. Anyways, I went through the registration process and finally was able to see what was in my account. I had 17,266 points, which of course didn’t mean shit for me then, but after a few clicks to find out what my points would get me, I found out I could get $100 cash for 16,000 points!!! Uber cool, don’t you think?

I also learned that using the bankcard instead of cash will get me more points. If I had known that when they first started this, I would have more than 100,000 points by now, which could get me a DSLR camera, either Canon 400D or Nikon D80. So from now on, all my groceries and gas and everything will be paid by my bankcard if it’s humanly possible at all. Yippee!!!!!

Oh, btw, if I collect some ridiculous 2 million something points, I’d be eligible for a Yamaha grand piano, which is extremely tempting, but I’m one of those impatient sort. I could never get that many points.

March 26, 2008>

Peeps

1 comment

Last week, I signed up with a couple of online survey sites that claim to pay money per survey completed. Well, it certainly couldn’t hurt and I could use the money, oh how I could use the money! I had to fill out numerous questionnaires about myself in profile section so that they could match surveys better suited for me. Soon (when I say soon, I mean not a minute after signing up) I started getting emails about surveys they wanted me to participate in. I thought to myself who knew I could make some extra money so easily? Well, I was wrong… of course…

Most of the surveys, I’d say 9 out of 10, either do not specify what the rewards are, or say that the reward is an entry for their sweepstakes upon completing the survey, which by the way, takes 20 minutes to complete. Uhh… no, I’m not about to waste 20 minutes for any stinking sweepstakes entry and I don’t remember seeing anything about being paid a sweepstakess entry instead of money?

Now, the remaining 1 out of 10 surveys says something like $5 or $1 or $0.25 guaranteed for the completed survey, which takes, again, 20 minutes. I pondered a while to determine if $5 or $1 or $0.25 is worth spending my precious 20 minutes, and decided that I couldn’t go any lower than $1 per 20 minutes.

Then I proceeded to take those surveys which would pay me $1 or up guaranteed upon completion. I’d consider that 20 minutes well spent for some easy, though very little, extra income. Well, dead wrong again. After asking questions for several minutes, which I of course sincerely answer, it tells me that I’m not qualified for the survey, thanks me for my time, and tells me I’ve been rewarded with one sweepstakes entry. Huh? Basically so far, I’ve spent a few hours all together filling out these surveys and have nothing to show for. A sweepstakes entry? What are you joking? I spent a few hours for entries for sweepstakes? Bunch of lying thieves!

To be fair, I do need to mention that I finally did qualify for a total of whopping ONE survey. Yup, I felt like I achieved nirvana at last! The questions were about the IT division of the company I work for. Since I’m in IT, I merrily answered my way to the end of the survey where it asked “What’s the name of your company?” WTF??? I mean, is it even legal? What are you friggin’ kidding me? Do they think I’m stupid or something? Like anybody in their right mind with a half a brain who do not wish to be fired or sued or ass kicked or get someone’s foot up the ass is going to answer that?

So I had to stop at that point after spending my 20 minutes on filling out this survey. I’m sure these people put that question at the very end on purpose so that they can get answers to the things they want to know first, then not pay people by having them drop the survey on their own. Bastards.

March 12, 2008>

Mania

1 comment

I got my federal tax refund the other day and my state refund should be on its way. I already spent a little over $1,000 in removing a dead tree from my yard, I have to pay back $500 I borrowed from my friend last month, and I was going to get a new stove because my oven stopped working, and then I was supposed to have a few hundred left over.

Fat chance it would go that easy. I completely forgot about the $1,425 fee I had to pay the lawyer. And my mortgage company informs me that my insurance went up and so I need to pay them $489 by April 1st to cover the escrow shortage. And the oil company filled up the oil tank and left me a bill for $681 yesterday (not only the oil price skyrocketed, but I was also sick with flu and cranked the heat up to the tropical heat level for a few weeks, so I used A LOT of oil). And the gas price is going up so fast that I don’t even know how much it is now and I’ve been spending over $100 a week on gas.

So basically, I had to tell my friend I would have to give him back his $500 in a few months… hopefully…, and I can’t get a new stove any time soon. So yeah, crap.