My Journey

Decided to try investing in crypto coins. I purchased several different coins, including Bitcoin, Ethereum, ADA, Doge, Shiba Inu and a couple others. Even though I said investing, it’s really more of a gamble. I’m going to wait a year and see where it’s all at.

I want to update that I will sell this domain for the price of 4 Bitcoins.

I didn’t realize that I hadn’t posted in so long. My what a crazy year it has been, with the pandemic and stock market. I couldn’t believe when I checked my investment accounts this year, I had made more in interest on my investment accounts for 2020 then I had earned from my salary at my job. I’m thinking about switching this site back to an investment blog, or do I keep it a metal detecting site or a hybrid approach. We will see.

Of course if you want to buy the domain, you can for the price of 1/2 of 1 share of Berkshire Hathaway Class A stock.

Short 3 hour hunt with one of the clubs I belong to, the Outlaws Metal Detecting Group in Tacoma, WA. We were joined by the Outlaws South Sound group from Olympia, WA.

I did find a Lt. Colonel Silver Oak leaf collar pin, a Royal Canadian Air Force button, a 1941 penny and a 1945 penny, and a spoon handle. All of these were from an old WWII housing area. When getting ready to leave at the end of the day, I found a crushed silver ring on the asphalt next to my car, counts as a surface find. This area produces alot of different items from the 40’s and 50’s mostly.

On this hunt I was using the Nox 800.

I couldn’t believe my eye’s when I saw my new present on Christmas morning. It was a Minelab Equinox 800, the metal detector I’ve been wanting for the last two years. I already owned a Garrett ATPro, and I love it as well. But all the YouTubers out there all swear by the new nox series. I’ve been metal detecting for about 5 years, mostly in Florida and now in Washington state. I had stopped for awhile, but last year I got back into the swing of things.

I finished 2019 with 9 rings. 1 was a gold class ring from 1924, my favorite ring so far. This year and two months in and I have 3 rings, and three bucket list items: Barber Half-dollar (1913), Flying ‘V’ Nickel (1906), Mercury Dime (1924), and I also found two tax tokens this year. I also have a whole bunch of other jewelry and lots of coins and various other stuff. I also like the Tootsie toy truck that I found.

But in the last two weeks I hurt my back and now I have to wait till it gets better before I get out there. Metal detecting is an addiction for me, I can’t wait to get better and to get back out there.

More to come later.

I’ve been working and trying to wrangle my hobbies. I keep thinking about this page, but not getting to it. Currently working on my daughters youtube page. Helping her to get it off the ground.

If I only had more time. Maybe I could get all 5 of my web sites running. Get my youtube page running. Stay on top of my other hobbies of metal detecting, learning python, building websites, and playing Fortnite with all that extra time that I need. Mostly its about building experiences for my daughter. Going to my 9 to 5 keeps getting in the way of it all.

The funny thing is, if I could get all of this stuff off the ground. I could probably monetize all of them, quit my day job, and then have some time for a little while at least.

I like to follow various blogs and discussions related to the FIRE movement. For those that don’t know what FIRE is, it is the Financial Independence Retire Early mantra. There are many websites that will go into the details of how it works. I really wished that I had discovered this or had the wherewithal to come across those ideas when I was a lot younger. Now I’m in my 50’s and retiring early is not an option. I do hope though that by following some of what is recommended by these groups and implementing mine, I can make up for lost time and retire with enough to not worry about money.

The vast majority of my retirement funds are in either an S&P 500 index fund or a total stock market fund. I do have about 30% in a technology sector fund, I just can’t get my self to part with it. It does have a higher fee, but it has averaged over 20% returns since I’ve owned it. Now I know most of that is due to the bull run from the markets recovery since the 2008 crash, but I’m a tech guy and I like it.

I’ve made lots of mistakes when it comes to retirement money. I’ve worked at a multitude of jobs, easily over 25 where I never vested at any of them. This has resulted in lots of lost matching contributions. My current job, fortunately has a pension, although I’ve only been there 3 years. However due to my age, I would need to stay till I’m in my upper 60’s to be able to live off of it alone. Which is why I pour money into retirement accounts.

Due to my age I can contribute catchup contributions for both my IRA and 457K, but I don’t see how people are able to do that. I still manage to dump 19% of my salary into the 457, which isn’t maxed out. My IRA, I’m hoping that I can start contributing more too.

I know that’s a lot of rambling, but I will update more later.

We always brag about how great the chefs are at Disney restaurants. On our recent trip to Disney Land (July-August), on our last day of a great trip thus far. We were going to eat breakfast, go to Downtown Disney and then catch our flight home. The unthinkable happened at the Storytellers Cafe while having breakfast. We were eating at one of the Disney Buffets, and like on many other occasions, the chef came out to write down our daughters food allergies. She is allergic to Peanuts, Tree-nuts, Eggs, and Dairy. A tall list indeed, but you have to remember that we have taken her to many Restaurants with Disney, including a Disney cruise and never had any issues.

This time however, the chef severed her something that had eggs in it, even though he had written down her allergies. My poor daughter had an allergic reaction in the restaurant. It wasn’t as bad as ones that she had in the past but she was in distress and did vomit multiple times, while we are trying to give her Benadryl. Disney did send a nurse and fire fighter to the scene.

The thing that really pissed me off, was that I had asked the waitstaff if the chef could come out and explain what it was that caused this. As a parent that is always on the lookout for things that she might be allergic to that may have changed or be something new. It took sending 4 different people to the kitchen, with each one promising to return before finally a different chef came out and admitted the mistake, stating that one of the items had eggs in it.

The manager told us that our meal was on them. Thanks for putting my daughters life at risk and giving us a free breakfast, jeesh. I thought for sure, this is Disney, someone will reach out to us and Disney would somehow make things right. Well they aren’t the company that I thought they were.

As I have mentioned before, our daughter has severe food allergies. There are many challenges with seeing to her safety. One of the things that all parents of children that are allergic to peanuts knows is that a plane can be a very dangerous place for a person with peanut allergies.

Almost all airlines serve nuts, and almost all airlines could care less about anyones allergies much less them being humans that deserve a certain amount of respect. Recent events on the news highlights just how little airlines care about people. There are a number of blogs where people with peanut allergies have shared just how little airlines care about our issues. Some airlines are better than others, but almost all of them have had issues where certain flight crews didn’t follow the airlines policies.

Although our daughter has flown once, we are very aware of the dangers, and that was a very stressful situation. When you are in the air at 34,000 feet and something goes wrong, minutes matter. Most people don’t seem to realize that an EpiPen only buys you about 15 minutes of relief if it works. Severe reactions may not be stopped. So if your a parent and something goes wrong on an airline and you have two EpiPens you technically have about 30 minutes of relief should you need it. That means from the moment you inject someone, they have 30 minutes to be in an ambulance where hopefully they have more EpiPens or epinephrine. If you’ve ever flown you know that those jets take 15 minutes just to taxi down a runway, that doesn’t leave the plane much time to find an airport and land. And of course thats if you get 15 minutes, you may get way less from each EpiPen. I’ve read stories of people that had to take two back to back immediately to stop an episode.

Now I’ve read plenty of Peanut allergy sites about planes making emergency landings due to an event on the plane. And on the flip side I’ve read a number of blogs of people who fly all the time with peanut allergies. (It should be noted that peanut allergies aren’t a one size fits all issue. Some people are mildly allergic and some like our daughter are severely allergic.) There are a number of things that people do, from wiping down the seat and tray, seat and tray covers, dust masks, asking the airline to make announcements and asking if they won’t serve nuts.

On two recent flights that I took with two different airlines, I noticed that there was plenty of peanut particles all over the floor of both planes. And I believe that when people due have an issue on a plane it is most likely that they touched something rather than breathed in something. My little girl is constantly exploring and then touching her face. When she flew the first time she was in a carseat on the plane and only an infant. So it was easy to ensure that she couldn’t touch anything. Now that she’s older, not so much. We have seen what happens with her when she does hive out, a term we use to describe her having a severe allergic reaction. Its a very scary event.

Now I want to show her the world safely, but how to do it. We have driven all over the United States, due to job changes. Driving presents some issues as well, if something goes wrong you could potentially be hundreds of miles from help. But you do control the cars environment. However, trying to visit places when you live on a coast thats far from some of the major attractions (we are huge Disney fans) can be challenging. Do we take extra time off so that we can drive there and back or risk flying and the convenience of being there in just a few hours.

Work conference. Traveling to a conference is great, you get to get away from the daily grind and fly somewhere new. Meet new people, learn new skills. At previous jobs, I would go to these events and no one cared when I returned, most would never even ask if I had learned anything.

For this conference I get to fly back to what I consider is my Home State, however I will probably never move there again. I have several hundred friends there. The real kind, not the Facebook kind. And plenty of family lives in that state. I’ve made arrangements to meet some of my closest friends for dinners on various nights. Should be fun. Yay 🙂

However, at my new job, thing are very different here. I have to prepare a presentation on all of the topics. This means taking a copious amount of notes. Then I have to create and present said presentation in front of roughly  20+ people. Yay 🙁

Work Conferences.