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The Week #129
by James- After years of regularly and then sporadically saving for retirement, I've finally automated it again...kinda. If I were in the US, I'd have access to regular retirement accounts and things could be deducted in a tax efficient way from my pay check. As an American, I also can't take advantage of any non-US retirement savings schemes (π€ͺ). So what I'm basically left with is depositing some amount into into a regular taxed brokerage account.
What I've setup is: an automatic from Wise to my US bank account, and a few days after an automatic withdrawal from my US bank account to Vanguard. The two bits I can't automate are: the wire/furikomi from my Japanese bank account to Wise and once the money is actually in Vanguard, purchasing of ETFs (VOO index funds, mostly). My hope is that Wise will send me an email with the amount I need to send in yen each month (because exchange rates change). - Setting this up makes really happy. It's been one of those tasks in the back of my head for quite a while and the crap exchange rate made it even less attractive. The exchange rate is still horrible (but less so). I reckon it will all even out in the end. But perhaps the best bit is I discovered I can now purchase fractional ETFs.
I'll explain. Let's say I have $200, and I want to buy 1 share of VOO (a S&P 500 index fund) that I'll sell off when I rewrite, and it costs $350. Normally,I have to hold my $200, not earning anything, wait until I had $350 and hope that by the time I did the cost hasn't risen to $400 and make my purchase. Now I can just buy $200 worth of the stock, which makes it much easier to invest the same amount each month, no matter the price of the stock. - There was a bunch of noise on the bird site with the owner doing stupid, stupid shit. Like blocking linking the other sites stupid. ON THE INTERNET. :facepalm: Good riddance. So glad I've made my home on the internet my own domain / IndieWeb enabled.
- I've been making really good progress on my major refactoring of the Tanzawa. This has me mostly pulling logic out of ModelForms and moving them into application/domain functions that I can reuse throughout my site. The create methods have been refactored and the update methods are mostly so. I reckon I'll need another pass at views themselves as they're a bit crufty, still.Β
- We had a Christmas social at work to celebrate the year and it was a lot of fun. We've grown so much in the past year. We went to Soul Food House in Tokyo. I've been wanting to try that place for years, but it's in central Tokyo β some place I'm not going to go unless I'm in the area. Maybe it was the classic American cooking, or maybe it wasΒ the Christmas poem read in an English accent, but it finally felt like Christmas is starting.
- Friday was Leo's Christmas pageant where the school puts on a play about the birth of Jesus andΒ then they sing some Christmas songs. When thinking about the amount of chaos you'd expect at a pre-school production of...anything, and then reflecting on the various happenings (kids crying, kids running around, props falling over) that happened during the production...I came to the conclusion that there was just the right amount of chaos this year that it kept things interesting. Not enough and it gets kinda boring, "what are these kids? professionals?" you think to yourself. But they really hit the mark so well, I even heard one of the moms mention the chaos during the show. I'm looking forward to next year when it's Leo's grade's turn to have speaking roles...and maybe a bit less chaos.
- After years of regularly and then sporadically saving for retirement, I've finally automated it again...kinda. If I were in the US, I'd have access to regular retirement accounts and things could be deducted in a tax efficient way from my pay check. As an American, I also can't take advantage of any non-US retirement savings schemes (π€ͺ). So what I'm basically left with is depositing some amount into into a regular taxed brokerage account.
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Checkin to Starbucks
Coffee and handwriting practice. -
by JamesSaw this flat with about 10 of those portable solar generators haphazardly hung on / around his balcony. Love it. Wonder how theyβre actually using itβ¦.
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Checkin to Soul Food House @ 148 (γ½γ¦γ«γγΌγγγ¦γΉ)
Chicken and waffles! -
The Week #128
by James- We bought tickets to visit America for 2 weeks during February π. Leo will turn 5 in Texas. I'm really excited for him to meet everyone. I'm also excited to see what happens when he's throw into a pure English environment. It's only two weeks, but will he come back speaking more English, even if just a temporary boost? Ticket prices were still a bit painful, but not ludicrous like they were 6 months ago.
- The US not having a proper public transit system sure makes visiting a pain because it means you've got to rent a car. Which means me getting an international driver's permit (my US license expired and I can no longer renew it online). And also means me potentially futzing with a child seat after a 14 hour flight...so much better to just have trains that connect people to the places they want to go.
- Last week I started on some upgrades to Tanzawa that will allow me to update reply/bookmark titles without resorting to the Django admin. And as I started, I realized that there was a yak that needed shaving. It was time to do the next chunk of refactoring: moving my business logic out of views/django forms and into re-usable "application" functions.
It's a much larger chunk of work, but also very important. You see, to share as much code as possible during my initial development of Tanzawa, my micropub endpoint mostly just converts the micropub request format to that of my authoring views, and uses the same forms for processing.
This is problematic, not because not because it doesn't work, but because it's all too entangled together. It's a problem because it doesn't make sense that editing my author form will effect my micropub endpoint (so change it as little as possible π).Β
My functional end-to-end tests for posting just test micropub under the assumption that they're the same, so I never bothered writing tests for my author views because if it busted, I could always fallback to any micropub client for posting.
All of this is a long-winded way to say I've got a lot of refactoring ahead of me, but it's a lot of fun making things not just work, but making them right β with tests. - I started watching The Playlist, a drama about starting Spotify. I''m really liking it. Each episode is told from the perspective of one founding / important member or another, which is something I've never seen before.
- I made some overnight white bread with Leo, as his request. Each time I make this, I think I should make it more often. It's vastly superior to anything I can buy locally in the shops. If I could find a loaf like this, it'd be at least Β₯1,000.Β And because it's done overnight, it's much easier to manage the fermenting/timing of things. Slam it in the fridge and bake it the next day (or so) when you have some time.
Overnight white bread
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Checkin to γ€γ³γγ«γͺγΌγγ€γγ³γ° γ³γγ©γ«γγ§
Cheese nan and curries. π -
by JamesFussing with package managers on the weekend on my Mac. Makes me think I may as well just run linux.
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Checkin to Single O Hamacho
Banana bread with espresso butter. π -
by JamesMy favorite hours of day are the ones that only exist in Japan. Also the implications that you can just extend a day is great. βWorking? Boss, itβs Saturday 68:00. Why would I be working on a _Saturday_?!β.
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π Project Apollo Archiveβs albums | Flickr
by JamesIβll try to not loose too much time looking at these. Incredibly fascinating. Iβm glad collections like this exist for free on the web. ππ
