Projects – Page 3 – john paganetti

Stagecoach

Stocks

I found myself with a large pile of money saved up from this summer with the Census, and an even larger pile of loans coming off deferment. I had originally planed to put that money directly towards the loans, making a slightly smaller pile of negative money. But I looked at my pile and thought, “That’s no fun.” I had been wanting to get involved in the stock market for a while, but I didn’t have the money to open an account (etrade wants $1k, Scottrade $500). Well, I have the money now, and if I can make it grow faster than interest accrued on my loans, I could put this money to a better use. So in late August or so I opened an account with Scottrade, and passed my pile of money over to them. I’ve been holding stocks for a week at the most, waiting until I get an acceptable gain, then selling. I made 4% during the month of September, which is more than good enough for me. If I can keep that up, I’ll be well ahead of the interest on my loans, and making a bit of money for myself. However, it’s worth noting that September was an especially good month for the stock market, and I probably did rather poorly considering that. But if I can keep up a modest gain, I’ll be saving money on my loans and keeping myself occupied.
All good things.

Been Dreaming

Been dreaming a lot recently, being unemployed and all. The dreams all tend to drift towards the same future, which I’m going to work like hell towards. Living off the grid, supporting myself with homegrown food and power. However, an important part of this dream is that I need other people there. I imagine a decent sized group of people (a dozen or so) working together on interesting and idealistic projects. I know the people who I would want to join me, but I don’t know if they would. I’m saving up money for this now, but I know very few people who are doing anything similar. I wish I knew a way to convince people to join me so I wouldn’t be alone in this.
Until then, I’ll keep dreaming.

Bacon Cheese Pizzaburger

Bacon Cheese Pizzaburger, originally uploaded by somjuan.

Spring Weekend

A few weeks ago, the management company sent some people into our apartment to do some “preventative maintenance.” While this did include some benefits (they fixed a sink that was broken for more than a month), they also hardwired our outside light, so we couldn’t turn it off. This was certainly in preparation for spring weekend, which is fast approaching. I get front row seats this year, and I’m not about to let them go to waste – I’m going to film that oft-joked about zombie movie, using the drunken masses as unwitting extras. The movie will not be good, but it should be a lot more fun than I would otherwise be having over spring weekend. Better yet, it seems that people are interested in this movie thing, so I’ll have help. For the first time, I’m looking forward to spring weekend.

SomJuan.com

I think I found a use for SomJuan.com again. It’s an idea stemming off that older idea for an anonymous blogging service. The idea is a collaborative storytelling project in the form of a wiki blog. Meaning it would still be presented like a blog, in reverse chronological order, but the entries would be editable by anyone.

This is the sort of thing that would take a fair sized community to work, so I don’t know exactly how it would be pulled off, and the code to do such a thing doesn’t exactly exist yet (though I think I can cobble something out of WP). Just an idea for now, not sure how serious I am about doing it, but if it worked it could be very cool.

Applied Daydreaming Update

So, some updates. The first meeting of the club was really cool. There were 8 people all in all, and I didn’t know any of them. I’m pretty happy that so many people found out about it by chance, and came. I went with the audiobook of Moby Dick, and it was really boring. Though, it was boring to the point that I didn’t enjoy it. Next week, no one came, which amused me to no end. I went with Chillits over the audiobook. In fact, I’ve gone with Chillits every week since. Though it is still very, very small group, I’m hoping it can still grow. I probably need a better time for it.

One week, I got an email from a girl who wanted to write an article about the club for her journalism class. That was the second week of the club, and I was alone when she showed up. I’m not sure what she thought of me by the end of the interview, but her article was probably funny. This week, I’ve been contacted by someone who writes for the paper, and they’ll be by the club on Monday. That should be amusing too. At least I won’t be the only one there.

Conclusion: Schedule the club at a good time, and make the environment relaxed – not boring.

Prison Blog

Just an idea I had while listening to a recent story from This I Believe. It was a recent story from a prisoner in Michigan. The essay was recorded by phone, since they don’t allow recording equipment inside the jail. This got me thinking about a few blogs I’ve seen run by friends or family of inmates, who post letters they get from prisoners online. Its basically blogging by proxy.

But most prisoners don’t have someone who can do this for them. What if we could set up a site that nearly completely automated the process? OCR is at a point where it would be trivial to scan a letter and post it online. Or it could even be possible to set up a phone number that prisoners could call and their message could be converted to a text post. It seems pretty feasible, and I’d imagine it would be incredibly interesting, so I’m going to keep this idea stewing until I found out what the best way to do this would be.

I made bread!

Yes friends, its true. I’m so proud. With this simple recipe, I was able to make bread from start to finish in about four hours or so. If you choose to do this, I have some suggestions: get a real pot holder/oven mitt. I’ve got a real nice burn because the paper towel I was using was not adequate. On the plus side, I’ll have a really interesting looking fingerprint from now on. Also, don’t let your first impressions trick you. It may come out of the oven rock hard, but its just about perfect. Once it cools you can cut it up and enjoy. Oh, and you probably shouldn’t bake on plates you use to eat, even if they are oven safe. And if you do, you should probably oil them or something so there isn’t a layer of bread burnt on to them.

Anyway, I made bread.

In the shop

I dropped by Cheney today and found that Anne has been successfully moved inside. Soon the steel to build the tank will arrive, be welded into a wonderful large tank, and mounted in the bus. I’ll be keeping this blog updated with progress.