Eng12345

Interesting what's the thesis here?

I have recently been writing some admissions letters for grad school. I have used chat gpt heavily during this process but was thoroughly underwhelmed. What I found is that it requires a lot of prompting and even then it doesn't always make sense or phrase things clearly. It lacked in grammar and phrasing as well as substance (the only substance it has is what limited substance you may give it). The chat gpt paragraphs were useful to flesh out an idea. However, beyond that it was utterly useless and required heavy revision to be of the appropriate standard. I am left wondering, if people think this is so great then what quality of work were they already putting out?

The essay read well. I really connected with it. Did you preorder and are you planning on reading immediately?

Thanks this is why when I start a spreadsheet I try to finish it. Also why I'm not an accountant - I thought things balanced p well with my expectations, ha.

This was a good exercise in forcing myself to build out my spreadsheet...realizing I'm not nearly as concentrated as I like to think I am. The last 4 lines are general index funds or dry powder waiting.

Yeah and because it's not a truck stop it's super clean.

By request of @Spekulatius A random park in Orlando, FL. I only saw one gator at a distance of ~75 yards. A Buccees in Georgia. The size of the operation blew my mind and I'm from the US. They had over 200 gas pumps! More than I could picture (behind me and on the sides of the building). Houston area - Ive never been to Houston before, but I loved driving around and geeking out over the refineries and giant cranes on the horizon. Some real cool engineering all around. That said the city smelled like chemical plants and I wouldn't want to live there for that reason. Also the sprawl was incredible - I thought I knew urban sprawl living in STL where it takes an 1hr 20 to get across a metro of 2.5 million people. The ship channel would have been a nice place to sit and watch ships but the smell was awful. Went and saw the San Jacinto monument as well. It is the site of the final battle of the Texas Revolution. Some interesting history, but the park itself was underwhelming. I'll be home for 2 weeks and then I'm headed to Louisville for a month. Will be working a lot more though.

I love the Keys just not Key West...looking to plan a trip there this summer. Haven't done other keys but Islamorada was amazing.

Curious how technically deep these books go... at one point I considered a career in power marketing and considered pursuing my NERC RC certificate. I remain continually curious about it and have not completely written that off my career - just for now. The power markets have always been fascinating to me as they are traded 24/7 and based on real physical tangible things. The current wind incentives have screwed the markets up so much that now we are building giant inefficient peaking turbines to chase wind load. I think that's one of the biggest tragedies of all of this climate bs - we are not rewarding thermal performance.

I bought this past summer finally with just my wife and I. Ended up buying a house I think I can stay in forever if the careers allow for it. I have no desire to move or sell and a new job would have to be very lucrative to do so. That said - I bought much bigger than I needed or have ever had. It's 2700 sq ft with another ~1500 sq ft of unfinished basement. The home is only 3 years old and has everything I could ever need or want - sits on a culdesac in a decent but not exquisite subdivision, 400 Amp service, backs up to the woods with a wonderful deck, has a two car garage that fits all my tools and work stuff as well as her car. I bought off a friend who was retiring from work with no realtor - we split the savings. Sure it's a lot more house than we need - 4 bedrooms for two of us. We have 2 guest beds, a bedroom overlooking the trees is our office. We don't even use the front dining room or sitting room. But you know what? We love it. We don't need to "upgrade" ever if kids come. We entertain friends and family more than we ever have before - we love having people over, because we surely hate going out unless it's to a beach or a mountain. I installed speakers in the ceilings in the living room and kitchen and we love playing some music, turning the gas fire place on and reading in the living room looking the trees. The kitchen is phenomenal - I never realized how much of a difference it makes. A great island and some music while hanging out on the deck makes for the centerpiece of the house. Do I hate the $3500 mortgage? Yes. Is it worth it? Hell yes. Is the American dream still alive and well in the midwest? That's a resounding yes. Will I go more exquisite? Probably not.

I should start posting my travels to some of the absolute armpits of America for work - ha. Anyone heard of Pryor, Oklahoma? It reaks of a mix between natural gas and dog food production. Hitting the road again for work - headed to Orlando for a ~month and then sounds like nowhere Iowa....putting off actually getting in the truck and driving after being home for 2 months...

I made comment the other day to a friend that when Harvard has people who've never stepped foot on a community college campus commenting on who should be presiding over the university then somewhere somehow Harvard has majorly screwed up - and I don't think it was just one bad congressional testimony. But what do I know? I went to a state school.

I wish there was a good way to track performance/allocation across the various brokerages I have. I have made a few attempts at spreadsheets, but the manual process is cumbersome and tedious.

I have always hated calendar year to year performance numbers - never thought they really painted a good picture of the cumulation of returns. Kind of pointless the flaunt a 30% year if at the end of it you're out of ideas or totally uninvested or everything you own has peaked. On another note - minus my CPNG position I am sitting at around ~15%. However I am carrying a large CPNG loss that I am not one iota concerned about...hard to measure year to year performance when you have 5 year bets.

I just finished this book and thought it was wonderful book. Like many of you I also found it somewhat lacking in a "bow" around some points of the chapters. I was often left wondering what the actionable items were for a normal person without the capability to get all the various different labs and correctly interpret them. The one thing that surprised me was the importance of excercise though the confirmation of my own thoughts is nice. I have long thought of excercise as the critical path to healthiness - based on my own experiences of going from 5'8" 230 down to 170 and back up to 250. I know that exercise drives so many different things and our bodies are not meant to be as sedentary as they are now. (Which leads me to recommend a book a read a decade ago - "Born to Run".) I have often thought of it as a driver to get out of depressions, drive correct diet and other things. Still though I guess I was hoping for more cliff notes other than workout, eat right, and be mentally healthy.