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If someone could offer a 21% return and had an iron-clad guarantee of return of principle I don’t think they would need to spend advertising money on a billboard along route 83 to attract investors.

I haven’t updated in a while, here is the blitz:

Running – I managed to somehow get a minor muscle strain in my back which took me out of running for about 10 days (possibly by overdoing in on the Wii Fit ‘Super Hula Hoop’ game).  I came back with a 6 miler @ Conewago on Saturday with the gang, took Sunday off, ran 5.5 miles with Jon, Tex, and Cali on Monday, and then ran 3 miles with Nate tonight. The Geisinger Humdinger race is coming up in about a week and a half. Hopefully I’ll be able to get in five or six solid runs in before then.  I definitely won’t be able to beat my time from last year, but I will be happy if I am able to push hard for the entire length of the race.

Finance – mint.com has added some nice new features, including being able to track off-line assets like houses, vehicles, or just accounts that can’t be accessed automatically.  They also prettied up the user interface a bit.

Zombie Killing - I started playing the video game Left4Dead with some friends online, which has been a lot of fun.

Programming – I’ve been checking out a new Java SDK for LDAP from the Unbound ID folks.  If you have been using the ancient Netscape/Mozilla LDAP SDK before, give Unbound’s a shot, it has a lot of interesting features.

Solaris – if you are troubleshooting anything relating to tcp listen drops, check out the ndd -get /dev/tcp tcplistenhash command.   One quirk I noticed was that if you aren’t root, it has some limit to the frequency you can run the command.  I assume the command is a bit expensive and they are trying to prevent a DOS attack, but the observability is excellent.

I tried using both Quicken Online and Mint.com’s free online personal financial services this week.  I ended up ditching Quicken and keeping Mint because Mint’s interface was cleaner and it seemed better able to categorize transactions.  I found the reporting that Mint offered made it really easy to see where my money was going (most frequently to Panera Bread, my favorite quick eats establishment) by individual vendor or by category.   You can also do interesting activities like comparing your shopping habits against people in other metropolitan areas or states.  Using this site makes me want to pay by debit/credit card more than cash since it can be tracked better.  As mentioned earlier, Mint.com is free, and it appears they subsidize their offering by showing financial services like credit cards or checking accounts that might save you money over your existing services.  I looked at a couple of recommendations and they weren’t bad.

One thing that both Quicken and Mint was lacking though was a way where you could manually track accounts/investmnents that weren’t online, such as cash on hand or the value of your house.  This surprised me since that seems like such an easy thing to do.  My friend Mark and I joked about making a lame website where you could enter the details for accounts like that and then allow Mint.com and other places to fetch the data via web service calls.

Update: The reply to Mark’s forum message said that manually tracking accounts was coming soon.

I just read a column where Suze Orman answered readers’ questions on the Freakonomics blog.  I think her advice in general is pretty solid (although I admit I don’t really like to watch her TV show because of some of her mannerisms).

My wife pointed me towards Modest Needs, a “mini grant” charity designed to help people who are generally self-sufficient  but encounter one-time needs that might be pushing them towards poverty or preventing them from taking a job.   An example might be someone who is generally able to pay rent but had to miss two weeks of work due to an injury or something else beyond their control or who have a job offer in-hand but need to renew some professional license before starting work (like a nurse).

Modest Needs makes all applicants submit paperwork electronically and contacts the employers/landlords/merchants directly to verify the situation and disburse funding directly to the creditor if the grant is approved.  If you donate money to Modest Needs, you can pick which individual applications you want to help fund.

If you are feeling in a generous mood, check it out: Modest Needs.

Here is their rating on Charity Navigator.

Unlike the “free credit reports (if you sign up for our $$$ credit monitoring service, sucka!)” provider that you see ads for plastered all over TV, the real place to get your free yearly credit reports as mandated by the Fair Credit Reporting Act is www.annualcreditreport.com. Check out the Wikipedia article for more details. I just ran mine, and you have to dodge a few credit monitoring ads when you are viewing your report at each of the three providers, but overall it was quick and relatively pain-free. It is definitely a good idea to check at least once a year to make sure nobody is stealing your credit identity and the credit reporting providers haven’t goofed up.