I slept really well today, and thus now I have to rush this entry. You can't have everything, huh?

My mom let me borrow her older coffeemaker over the weekend, and that was definitely a good thing. It's just a basic American Home model that can support up to 12 cups and frankly it's better than not having one. I'm still kind of holding out for a nice Krups model, but I know that's going to set me back around 4k so that'll have to wait for now. I took the time to buy the stuff I needed for the coffeemaker yesterday - filters, coffee grinds and sugar - and finally got to try things out last night.

Every coffeemaker is slightly different from the other and it takes some time to sort of calibrate your ratios with the machine. Heck, the actual coffee you use is a major factor along with the brand / type of filters you buy, whether or not the machine comes with its own filter basket and what not. My first batch of coffee was pretty bad but of course I've been getting better at things over time. I've now settled on a pretty decent formula of sorts, the key to which was taking out the basket that came with the machine and just using paper filters. I'm pretty satisfied with the results so far, although I definitely need to find a better source of coffee. SM Supermarket has always been deficient in terms of brewing coffee options and the BC Coffee Club brand I picked up remains to be decent but not exactly what I'm looking for. The search continues.

It totally psyches me out that the new Transformers movie is coming out next week. I've already started to discuss preliminary plans with Tobie about when we can go see it and for now I'm pretty much set on catching the first screening next Wednesday after work, probably at Gateway, then a second time at the SM Mall of Asia IMAX theater on Sunday after the weekly Fandom Live! shooting. You have to understand just how important the Transformers are to me (this I type as my new Soundwave figure is sitting right in front of me here at the computer table), and so yes, this merits at last two theater screenings in order to be satisfied.

One week to go!

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Seriously, I wonder if the petty hoodlums and major villains have noticed he's different.

I got into one of those budget-obsessed funks again today. I'm not exactly sure why, but I just did. Maybe it started when I was adding up what I've spent on for the day or because I had a hard time getting a ride to work and ended up taking a cab. Whatever it is, I've come to make a few key decisions or at least I'm entertaining a few ideas.

The challenge for me when it comes to the figuring out the budget is (1) we want to do big things like invest money for the future, build up savings and start making payments on property of our own, (2) there are certain things I don't / can't scrimp on like books, watching movies in the theater, DVDs and the occasional eating out session, and (3) I still need to factor in potential vacation time for Brian |kitchengod|. Thus far, my budget philosophy / mind-set has always been to ensure everything gets paid and that the budget doesn't feel too oppressive such that we still get to live a somewhat above-average life.

I know, I know, about now you're thinking I'm pretty arrogant and that I'm hardly poor or anything. That's true, to a limited extent. We do enjoy certain liberties like maintaining broadband internet, postpaid cable TV and treating the cats really well. The financial issues I'm trying to address are (1) we aren't as liquid as I'd like us to be and (2) we're able to pay the bills and all but beyond that there's not much else being done. Thus if we don't make changes, then we aren't going anywhere.

Sometimes, you need to start with the little things and so I have a few initial thoughts in mind:

Change Payment Schemes for Savings - As much as we're maintaining certain services like SkyCable and MyDestiny Internet, I can still squeeze a bit more in terms of savings. Both services offer discounts for prepaid plan options like quarterly, semi-annual and annual payment options. SkyCable offers a scant 8% discount for Gold subscribers when you change your payment option and strangely enough you will get the maximum savings on their quarterly plan instead of the annual (if only by P2.00). Still, an extra P872 per year is still money saved. MyDestiny offers a month free if you pay via their semi-annual option, which is a savings of at least 14%. Similarly, their annual option offers no real benefit since it just comes with 2 free months. Stupid. I can better manage the semi-annual payment mode and still get my annual savings of P1998.

Kill the Landline - Almost since we moved in, we've been maintaining a landline phone from PLDT. Later on we signed up for their unlimited dial-up internet service that meant a flat total monthly fee of 840 inclusive of the phone service, which was okay. When we switched to cable internet, we first maintained the option since it meant that we had a back-up in case the internet went down, which no longer as major an issue as before. I still need some sort of landline telephone service and thus the Bayantel Wireless Landline service does seem like a viable option. It offers unlimited landline calls for just P699. Then only real calls I make are to customer service hotlines (haha) so as long as I can make those few calls, it should be okay I guess I'm also tired of how our PLDT service HAS to go down (meaning no dial tone) almost once a quarter or so. So this will mean around P1,600 in terms of savings per year. I'm still not ready to make the cellphone-only plunge, although that's still a model worth considering.

Stop Going to Starbucks - My boss shares my passion for coffee and under his influence, I've guiltily become an almost daily Starbucks patron. I can't just stop though, since I need my caffeine and I don't trust the office coffee vending machines and so the only safe alternative is to get a nice, solid, semi-expensive coffee thermos that I can bring to work. My coffee might become a tad stale depending on when I drink it, but that translates into...um...more than P30,000 savings in a year. Fuck. the number just hit me now. I am sooo not buying coffee tonight, with or without a thermos.

Bring Lunch to Work - The main challenge here is our lack of cooking time before work, so I started thinking about my weight situation as well. This led me to the possibility of just bringing rice (which I can manage to cook at least) and canned tuna to work. The OCD part of my brain can help me deal with possibly eating the same thing every day during the work week, plus I love tuna. This should save me a lot in terms of empty junk food anyway and potentially help me loose a little extra flab in the process. I'm still probably going to pig out at home and on weekends, but that's a different story. Still, it'll make me feel a little less guilty about buying the more expensive Thai Jasmine Rice versus the stuff at the market since I'll try to discipline myself to eliminate all junk food / fast food purchases at the office.

Focus on my Commuting - I've starting putting effort into taking jeeps and FX's to work as much as possible. If I keep this up, this translates into an annual savings of around P11,700 just considering one-way travel and using an FX. 100% jeepney rides would save me P13,390 one-way versus taxi fare to the office. Yowzers.

Seeing the numbers roll-up that way certainly makes an impact, which is why I sat down to write this LJ post. Just by making these small changes alone, I'll have decent seed money to start feeding into my planned investment funds, which will eventually become the down payment money for our eventual property purchases. How exciting! By documenting all this here (and on Plurk to boot), this acts as my commitment myself to adhere to this plan and ensure that it happens starting right now.

Now if only I could get Brian to stop smoking. That's an average annual savings of around P14,300. Hmm....

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Garfield does make more sense without him.

Okay, enough G4M trawling and passive cruising, time to get writing, LOL.

Monday was a bit of a struggle in a physical sense, but the need to re-acquaint my body clock to the night shift is pretty much par for the course ever since I started working graveyard. Throw in the many meetings of varying relevance and value, a few one-on-one sessions meant to address performance reviews and a number of reports to attend to and you pretty much get how my day went. Yeah, I am definitely moving on from this subject item.

Today's budget-obsessed thinking session centered around my patronizing of specialty coffee establishments like Starbucks. As much as I appreciate the attention they give patrons and how special they can make you feel by remembering you, your name and your drink, I still have to recognize that it's still a frivolous expense and I really ought to just bring coffee to work. That means we need very good thermoses that will keep the heat in and won't spill the precious brew. We may not have enough time (or effort) to cook food to bring to work, but putting on a pot of coffee is easy enough and the potential savings will be significant indeed.

I have to admit that my increased Starbucks patronage has mainly been driven by pseudo peer pressure in the form of my boss, who makes it a point to visit the store in the building at least once in the day. It costs a pretty penny and I've considered making it part of my allowance budget for the week but the sheer monetary value involved over a long period of time is just ridiculous. So I am definitely putting the buying of good quality thermoses for coffee very high on our priority list. It may not be freshly brewed all the time (which is important as Brian |kitchengod| always reminds me), but then I think it's a small sacrifice to make in the name of making more money available for other activities.

As a parting note, I just have to make note of how silly US morning show anchors can be (which more than explains their constantly being featured on The Soup). It's funny how for the Today show being shown on ETC (or was it 2nd Avenue? I forget) that whenever they cue to the weather map, we're left with the awkward yet still safe audio of the hosts talking amongst themselves. I guess the networks that pick up these broadcasts are supposed to insert local music or something during this portion (you know how US copyright restrictions can get all crazy), but the local station owners who manage the programming have never realized this fact, and thus we are left with some of the "behind-the-scenes" audio commentary that happens while the map is pulsing on your TV screen. Amazing. LOL

There's just something about morning shows that dictates the kind of stories you can feature. They're not bad stories or anything like that, but they do tend to be a whole lot of fluff.

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The PHB will always be a perfect example of how everything is a matter of perspective.

I've just downed my third cup of coffee within the past 3 hours. I woke up fairly earlier than I should have when Brian |kitchengod| got home from work today and haven't managed to sleep significantly since then. Since then Brian has gone to sleep for the day given the difference in our schedules, and I've kept myself occupied with various things online.

I've noticed that I haven't gotten any comments on my entries for the past week or so - I'm not quite sure what that's supposed to indicate, if anything at that, but it's just something I've noticed. My cross-advertising efforts across my three main blogging / online content sharing sites has helped boost their rankings on Technorati to some extent and has also driven additional traffic for the three sites by referring to one another. With that aim, it wouldn't hurt to continue to advertise, hahaha. I'm sure there are a few of you out there who regularly read my blogs since you seem to like what I have to say, for some reason. Great minds thinking alike, perhaps?

So what's new in my circle of websites?

For The Geeky Guide to Nearly Everything, the two most recent entries talk about the cutting edge Intermission Bar and what's so special about it and Google's User Experience Research program that has them inviting web users to volunteer to participate in their market research and product testing initiatives.

For my Multiply site that I call Moonbase 8, I've recently been devoting more time to sharing videos of interest mainly derived from Google Video given that YouTube is blocked at the office.

In addition, I took some time today to write reviews for several movies, namely American Dreamz, De-Lovely and Kinky Boots. Feel free to take some time out to read about how I foud the movies to be and whether or not they're worth seeing.

Here's to internal advertising! Hahaha!

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This was just so bad - it had me laughing rather hard! =P

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I'm thinking if I should give social networking sites another shot. A few months prior, I put a lot of effort into cleaning up my affairs and deleting my accounts for various sites like Friendster, Downelink, and Guys4Men. Now that I'm a bit more serious about my blogging, especially for the Geeky Guide, I'm considering going back into the networking world if only to help drive readership for my blogs.

More or less top on my list for consideration would have to be MySpace, given its popularity globally as opposed to a site like Friendster, which is more of a local thing. The risk of signing up for either site is that I'll again have to deal with random people who are aggressively playing the social networking numbers game in an attempt to just get as many people as possible linked to them on their respective friends pages. It's that kind of hypocrisy that made me decide to leave the sites in the first place since I didn't really see the need in terms of contributing to that kind of culture.

This is balanced by the fact that with its global footprint, being on MySpace will definitely give me access to more advertising channels and hopefully more readers who might want share interests thereby being my targer audience for what limited web content I have to share with the internet blogosphere.

I might not pursue any of this, of course. That kind of aggressive contact marketing might be a bit too much for me since I'm happy where I am presently. While I still want to increase my readership, I don't want to pollute my sites with unwanted comments or irrelevant opinions either.

Which way to go, eh?

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This reminds me why I don't suffer idiots lightly.