Author: matthew

You know, I realized that, after over a decade of operation, I have never really written an “About Me” page on my web site. No time like the present!

I was born in 1973 in the state of West Virginia, United States of America, as “Matthew Patrick Murphy”. At the tender age of three months, my mother left her alcoholic, abusive husband and moved the family to Washington, D.C., then to Alabama for the next several years. After meeting and marrying Bill Barnson while he attended the USA Air Command and Staff College — who later adopted me, thus I became Matthew Patrick Barnson — we all moved back to Washington, D.C. for my new Dad to work at Andrews Air Force Base. We built a house in a swamp on the shores of Piscataway Creek, near the Potomac River, a few miles from Fort Washington. I used to bicycle to Old Fort Washington and loved exploring the fort and the cannons there.

This is where I get my Military and Aviation interest. I love airplanes and things that go “BOOM”!

A few years after moving to southern Maryland, a couple of our neighbors were gunned down in a love triangle murder. That was kind of the last straw for my family, so we up and moved to a better neighborhood sixty miles north in Montgomery County, to a suburb of a suburb called “North Potomac”. Really, it was South Gaithersburg, but who’s counting? Anyway, the cost of the home was high, we were pretty house-poor, and I spent much of my teenage years living in the unfinished basement of our home, enjoying the cool during the summer months but hating the leaky walls during the winter.

Thus some of my Home Improvement and Lifestyle focus. I never want to live that way again.

Around the age of twelve, I discovered the world of FIDONet and LINDA, a local bulletin-board system, on my mother’s “Phillips Portable PC”. I eagerly exchanged messages far and wide under the pseudonym of “Haarough Drochenbalm”, pretending that I was over eighteen and that my nickname was “Harry”. Truth is, if I would have had my way back then, I’d have renamed myself to Harry. I loved the interaction. For a nerdy kid who really got stressed out socializing with others, the tiny green screen and modem was a solace where I was accepted for who I pretended to be, rather than the chubby pre-teen I was.

Thus my interest in Technology, Computer Networking, and primitive “blogging”.

As a teenager, I learned that I needed some sort of “in” to have some hope of getting a girlfriend.

Some guys played sports. I got winded walking from the refrigerator to the couch. Not going to happen.

Some guys were into Drama. After the first proposition from a gay guy, I decided I was only going to do that drama casually. I mean, I have no problem with gays. In fact, I’d have no problem being gay myself if it wasn’t for the fact that guys don’t turn me on and girls do. Sorry, fellas, you don’t know what you’re missing, and you’re never going to. But it seemed at the time that being gay was a prerequisite to being a good actor — or maybe the other way around — so I demurred.

Other guys played musical instruments. After watching Kenny Kramp and Marco Lorenzana play a duet on the piano in eighth grade when the band teacher was out of the room, while all the girls clustered around them, and all the guys huddled around in the back of the room staring enviously, I was hooked. I practiced piano for eight hours a day that summer, and kept up a rigorous practice schedule into my late teenage years. I was in several bands, starting with “Wayward Sun” in Jon Brusco’s garage during the summer of 1984. The very first song we wrote was “Fred The Cat”, a duet for poorly-played electric guitar and bass. The other choice for the band’s name was “Satin Knights”. Garage bands rule and still are the cutting edge of both lameness and innovation.

I still play occasionally, and have produced a number of singles and albums over the years, with a video game soundtrack thrown in for good measure.

Thus my interest in Music.

I decided as an adult that I needed to get in shape. I detail that saga elsewhere. If you want to change your shape to something more appealing, lift heavy weights at least once a week, eat plenty of protein — at least one gram per your lean body weight in pounds per day — in whatever form you prefer, carefully track your calories, and reduce either your fats or carbohydrates or both until you are achieving the weight reduction you want. Adjust from there to suit your body composition tastes. Every successful diet plan that retains muscle mass follows that pattern in one form or another.

Thus my interest in Health & Fitness.

My mother decided to cuckold her husband Bill and eventually forced him out of the house in order to marry one of her affair partners. I never got over this betrayal, not just of the man she married and taught me to love, but of her children and everything she claimed to stand for. I despised the man she married, even while being force to get along with him for nineteen years. As a result of this experience, I made it my life’s mission to be the best husband and father that I can be, and try to have and model healthier grown-up relationships than my parents did.

I am devoted to my wife and children. I feel that a healthy, successful marriage is my most important life’s work. My children will value my ongoing marriage to their Mom more than anything else I can give them, so when the time comes to choose anything else vs. my wife & children, they will win. Every. Single. Time.

Thus my interest in Relationships and Marriage.

Since the age of twenty-nine I’ve felt strongly part of my personal mission in life is to find out the truth and be open about it wherever and whenever I can. I abandoned the faith of my childhood — Mormonism — to follow the road less traveled. I currently consider myself a secular humanist — “little H” — but am open to whatever moniker you like that recognizes that I’m not your typical white Anglo-Saxon Protestant blogger (WASP). I’m your typical White Anglo-Saxon ATHEIST Blogger Itinerant, so if you want to refer to my faith, call me a piece of WASABI. Or anything but late for dinner.

Thus my interest in philosophy & religion.

Lately I’ve become interested in making money from web development technology. I’m really adept at this tech stuff and have worked with web technology on the server-side for a living for the past fifteen years. I’d like to try my hand at making money directly rather than just earning a paycheck from an employer who earns lots of money from my efforts.

Thus my interest in finance and entrepeneurship.

Oh, and finally, a lot of people have tried to tell me I need to focus my blog more on one specific topic in order for it to be successful. Sorry, I’m a Renaissance Man. I don’t believe in doing one thing well, or even being a Jack-Of-All-Trades and doing a mediocre job at everything. I believe in doing everything I put my mind to as well as I possibly can, and if that doesn’t fit with some advertiser or blogger’s view of the Way Things Ought To Be, then they can screw off.

DISCLAIMER

Oh, yeah. We need a DISCLAIMER here. You see, starting in July of 2010, I became interested in finding out how much people would pay me for my loquacity. So from time to time, you’ll find a PAID BLOG ENTRY. Now, the intelligent reader will see through these entries as the paid-shill advertisements they are. They will be few and far between — unless they actually make gonzo amounts of money, in which case they’ll be every single workday! — and you’ll see clear links back to this page in the text of the page. In fact, I may even anchor-link this part of the text so it takes you right here to this very paragraph.

You’re also going to find lots of instructions on how to do questionable things here. Look, you’re probably pretty smart and you can figure out that I’m not responsible for your choice to hack your boss’s email system, buy a product from a questionable manufacturer with ties to organized crime in Nigeria, or blow yourself up with a bomb made out of Diet Coke and Mentos. If you act on ANYTHING in this blog, please research it thoroughly before doing so, and recognize that it’s not my fault if you screw up your own life. It’s all you, bud. In fact, the one constant in all of your failures in life is YOURSELF. Think about it.

Recently, I’ve been conducting a great deal of research on blogging. Trying to understand what currently drives the blogosphere. After a great deal of “research” — said research being mostly “reading random links from bloggers who stay current” — I’ve come to the conclusion that, by and large, most bloggers are still doing what they’ve always done. Journaling their personal life, sometimes with hope of compensation, but more often than not simply so they have a place to express themselves, and more importantly, receive feedback that they are normal.

This morning I chanced across Pretty in Pink. I surfed through a number of recent posts to find something that interested me. Her blog details the usual day-to-day events and goings-on in her life, liberally mixed with product reviews and the paid endorsements and advertising links that are so common today. While perusing her recent entries, though, I happened across Pink’s recent post on post on Domestic Violence that stood out to me. Excerpt:

I began to think if being a battered wife is also normal? is it? does that mean once you commit your self to the man legally, it also gives him the right to punch you as often as he likes, does that mean too that once your married it also follows of submitting your human rights to the one person you think who loves you completely. If that is the case, then eventually married life will turn out to be hell and i pity those women who becomes helpless because of the bind between them.

This struck a chord within me. My mother lived in an abusive relationship with her husband for a number of years before leaving him when I was still an infant. It’s appalling to me how common domestic abuse is. And worst of all, how commonly the victims accept such abuse as a normal part of life, rather than being the aberration and correctable behavior that it is.

A number of months ago, as many regular readers know, I had some personal crises in my life that led me to deeply investigate what it really is that drives the connection between a husband and wife in a marriage. I found the works of Dr. Willard Harley, and reading his books and articles really turned my attitude around on marriage. Dr. Harley isolates the cause of abuse:

Abusive behavior usually begins when a couple tries to resolve a conflict the wrong way. Instead of finding a solution that meets the conditions of the Policy of Joint Agreement (never do anything without an enthusiastic agreement between you and your spouse), an effort is made by one spouse to force a solution on the other. Resistance to the proposal is matched by increasing force until the spouse browbeats the other into submission. Every fight is an example of abuse because it uses the tactic of emotional or physical force to resolve a conflict instead of respect and thoughtfulness.

There appears to be, in my opinion, a clear link between emotional abuse, physical abuse, and alcohol. Now, many people enjoy a beer now and then. But when the alcohol use slides into alcohol abuse, inhibitions are reduced. The natural instinct to attempt to force your way with others rears its ugly head under the influence of alcohol:

My Policy of Joint Agreement helps create a rule that identifies a drinking problem for what it really is. The policy says, Never do anything without an enthusiastic agreement between you and your spouse. That means if you are not enthusiastic about your spouse drinking alcoholic beverage, he should not drink even a teaspoon of it. If your spouse feels that you are being unreasonable, that he really doesn’t have a problem with alcohol, and then he goes ahead and drinks anyway, he is announcing that alcohol is more important to him than your feelings. He is willing to see you suffer, just so he can have a taste of liquor. If that’s the case, he is either incredibly thoughtless or addicted to alcohol, or both…

Is enduring physical and emotional abuse supposed to make us happy? I always thought it made us unhappy…if either spouse tries to sacrifice their own feelings so that the other spouse gets his or her way, the marriage is sure to suffer. Without mutually thoughtful decisions, marriage is usually a nightmare.

I have witnessed many recoveries from alcohol addiction, where the wife thought that once her husband stopped drinking, their marital problems would be over. But it wasn’t just alcohol that ruined their marriage — it was the way they made decisions, the use of alcohol being only one example. They needed to come to grips with alcohol addiction, but even more importantly, they needed to create a thoughtful way to make all decisions, not just the ones having to do with alcohol.

Thanks, Katy, for reminding me of what’s really important in my marriage: the feelings of my wife must always be paramount in my mind. Abuse, however, cannot and should not be tolerated or enabled in any way. This is surely something that has shaped me as an adult: I cannot, and will not, ever let myself become the abusive drunkard my father was.

“Whatever hatred saves the number.”

This nonsense sentence has a meaning behind it. As many of you have probably guessed, I’m working on posting more content to my web site. Part of my reason for this, at heart, is an experiment with this hypothesis:

A reasonably-intelligent person can make enough money from blogging to support a somewhat-expensive hobby, and possibly much more.

My expensive hobby is radio-controlled aircraft. I totally have self-interest at stake here. Monetizing my blog combines two things I love: writing and getting paid! One of the things I want to explore — and long-time Barnsonians, I apologize in advance for how crass this is going to sound — is paid reviews. Have someone send me a product, do a review of it, and get paid per word.

But see, what the advertisers don’t know is that I don’t gloss over JACK. I tell it like it is. I don’t care if the product was free or not. If it sucks, I’ll say so. If it’s great, I may just fall in love with it and overlook its faults.

So here goes. I’m signing up on a bunch of review sites with a cost of $0.01 per word. We’ll see if anything comes of this. The phrase quoted at the top of this entry was, in fact, a requirement to sign up at one of said review sites. Wonder what other hoops I’ll have to jump through?

UPDATE: Wow. Fun.

So, OK, I spent a lot of time signing up at the various sites that do these kinds of campaigns. In most cases, they need to “personally review” your site to determine a few things:

1. Has your blog existed for more than just a few months? This seems to be really important. If it’s a brand-new blog, you’re probably automatically rejected. 2. Have you posted more than a handful of times? Based on the nearly 2,000 articles here posted over a seven-year period, I think I qualify, but you never know. 3. Is your blog your own and not some kind of community network? Now, here, I worry a little bit. There are a few higher-privilege members of barnson.org that are allowed to post here, too. I don’t know if it will rule me out — most haven’t posted in a very long time — but the possibility exists. 4. Do you have a high PageRank on Google? I don’t know how high mine is. I really have never cared. I probably should pay closer attention; apparently, PageRank is important to marketers to determine if your blog is worth investing in. 5. Is most of your posting unpaid? Given that I’ve never been paid one thin dime for posting over 1800 blogs here, I think I qualify, but it’s still another interesting requirement. You can’t just post a bunch of reviews. You have to have a bunch of other original content, too.

Now, other than this, the ad networks seem to vary. Some want long product reviews, others want short blurbs as part of campaigns. Some want you to tag your posts as “sponsored”, others want you to astroturf with aplomb. Interesting game. I feel slightly scummy for playing it!

When I was a kid, I often heard my parents tell me to think positive. It was a kind of declaration, much like “clean your room”: easy to say, harder to do. I remember thinking to myself, “Really? I don’t think I can change how I feel about this.”

And you know what? It’s true. I can’t change how I feel.

I can only change how I act. I’ll explain.

Encounter With A Stranger

Today, I took a break over lunch to go fly my model aircraft. It’s a fun pastime, and even though lunch tends to go a little long when I do so, none of my co-workers or boss has ever complained as long as I get my work done on time. I saw a few familiar faces — the community of modelers isn’t very large, after all — and then one new one. I flew my helicopter a couple of times, watched one of the familiar faces fly his helicopter, then sauntered over under the shade awning to chat until my lunch break was over.

Well, I got in a discussion with the new face. Let’s call him “Red”. Red was prepping a gorgeously-detailed, 30%-scale Sopwith Pup to fly. We talked about the plane, about some of his trials keeping the plane looking nice despite the toxic gasoline exhaust, and smoke systems. While discussing smoke systems, he mentioned he no longer had the cash to buy much of anything. The conversation drifted to what he was doing flying in the middle of the day on a Friday.

Turns out he’s unemployed as a civil engineer. And he’s been unemployed for the better part of a year. The housing bust, of course, has really had an impact on this industry. I immediately empathized. There was a time I’d gone through seven employers in as many years and experienced long droughts of unemployment in between. This made me grateful for my current job; despite the lack of growth of substantial raises, it’s been stable for the past six years. Anyway, Red’s wife has been picking up the slack, but his unemployment runs out in a few more months, and he’s not certain what he’s going to do. I learned a few salient facts about him during this conversation:

1. He believed himself to be in very high demand two years ago.
2. He has interviewed nine times for a job this past year. In several cases, they had narrowed the field, but typically down to as many at 10 applicants for the position. He believes they are discriminating based on his age.
3. He’s mad as hell about the lack of employment. He’d love to move somewhere with a better construction market, but doesn’t believe his wife would tolerate such a move.
4. When he learned that my employer has been having trouble filling an IT position in Salt Lake, he quickly listed his qualifications for IT — typical word processing, AutoCAD, and basic networking skills — but was utterly clueless what I was talking about when I described the open position. Nevertheless, he gave it the old college try and gamely explained how he was the guy to fill this position.

A few things stood out to me from this conversation, chief of which was that Red really let his unhappiness bleed into his conversation with a relative stranger. Here we are, both of us experiencing a recreational activity we enjoy, and he’s grousing to me about his situation. I analyzed the facts.

1. He was in high demand when the market for construction-related jobs had a very high demand. In the current housing slump, he’s wasted a year trying to get a job doing what he’s trained to do, unsuccessfully. What has he been doing with his time? This doesn’t speak well of his motivation. If I spent more than 3 months unemployed, you bet I’d find a job that paid better than my unemployment benefits just to tide myself over.
2. He thinks interviewing nine times is some kind of Herculean feat. The reality is, if you’re working your contacts like you should, you should be doing nine interviews a month at the very least. This tells me that he doesn’t know how to manage his time effectively while he’s unemployed. Age doesn’t matter to me, but motivation does; if you’re content to rest on your laurels and aren’t interested in tackling new problems, I’m not that interested in helping you.
3. If Red is letting his anger so clearly take control of an almost cost-free conversation with a stranger, how much is his anger bleeding into his personal and professional lives? I understand the desire to vent. I really do. But venting toward anyone who might be in a position to give you a job is a really, really bad idea. Angry outbursts, disrespectful judgments, selfish demands, and annoying habits will turn anybody off toward being around you. Despite his obvious modeling talent, within moments I was wishing I hadn’t engaged him in conversation due to this overwhelming negativity.
4. When you’re out of your depth on a technical topic, making stuff up to try to sell your abilities is also a huge turn-off. It makes me wonder what else you might make up down the road. Such bravado comes off as desperate, not competent.

Negative Encounters Affect You Negatively

Obviously Red is competent at his chosen profession, but what turned me off was his consistently negative attitude. I’ve heard the phrase “the power of positive thinking” my whole life, but I’ve learned something as an adult.

It’s not thinking positive that gives you the power.

It’s acting positive that gives you the power.

I’ll illustrate a few “don’ts” using Red’s position. I totally understand the depth of bitterness and humiliation that extended unemployment brings. But following a few simple action rules could have made me much more interested in helping him, rather than finding an excuse to get away from him.

• Never demand that people see things your way or try to educate them if they disagree. Instead, see how your demands can be turned into thoughtful requests that honor the time of the person with whom you are speaking.
• Never make a disrespectful judgment in order to get your way. You may think you’re just “telling it like it is”, but insulting all your prospective employers with allegations of discrimination isn’t likely to win you many friends… and in a job market as small as the one in Utah, most people in an industry know many others in similar positions and word gets around about disgruntled employees.
• Never resort to an angry outburst to try to get your way. It’s abusive and makes people dislike you.
• Dishonesty is never positive. If you’re out of your depth, own that fact. I’d rather know that you know that you don’t know something than try to make something up and look foolish.

Practice Positivity

Now a few things to practice:

• Open each conversation with a new person with a smile, a handshake, and a polite inquiry about them.
• Focus on the positive things in your life when talking with others. Help them feel good about what you are doing and what you want to do.
• Ignore your failures in the conversation. If you must discuss them, talk about what you learned from the experience… not how unfair things are.
• Ask positive questions. Almost everybody loves to talk about themselves. If you keep the conversation focused on what you can do about a situation, rather than what’s gone wrong, you’ll find a lot of progress.
• If you must discuss the negative things in life, talk to your dog. He’ll look on empathetically and appreciate you scratching his ears while you make those odd grunting and growling sounds. Or keep a journal to vent. Don’t vent at other people, particularly not at people who you have any reason to believe might be in a position to help you in the future.

If you’d like more tips on how to ensure that you treat every contact with someone as a potential for a rewarding relationship in the future, I cannot recommend more highly the book by the Arbinger Institute, “Leadership and Self-Deception“. I don’t want to spoil the ending, but it’s basically a fictionalized account of how acting in new ways can radically and permanently improve your life. It’s difficult to describe, but reading it and practicing the concepts — all of which are presented in an entirely non-denominational way, with only the briefest advertisement for the Institute’s corporate services — changed my life for the better, and I know it can change yours.

Summary

To summarize, treat each person you meet with respect for their potential, and if you must discuss others, do so with respect for them and an assumption of positive intentions. Avoid the conversation-wrecking behaviors of demands, disrespect, anger, and dishonesty. Focus on asking plenty of positive and uplifting questions; if both of you engage in this behavior, you’ll find you both have plenty of time to talk about yourself.

You can’t control your feelings.

You can control your actions.

Act positive, and the world will treat you in a much more positive way!

Getting out of deep debt isn’t easy. It’s a process that takes time, diligence, and attention to detail. You can do it by yourself, or you can find a lot of people willing to do it for you… for a fee. I’m going to talk about building a successful strategy for your own debt relief, and then touch on available options for those who can’t – or won’t – do it by themselves. I plan to talk about some tools I’ve used to help with this in the past, and some simple strategies to help you achieve your financial goals without additional loans, grants, or commercial debt consolidation program.

Paying off debts – particularly if you need help paying off payday loans and other high-interest loans – requires a strategy. The very first step, before you start shopping around for debt consolidation, is to know EXACTLY where your money is going and where it’s coming from so you have an accurate picture of your financial situation.

Step 1: Figure Out Where You Stand Today

If you’re married or cohabiting, that means the much-dreaded budget meeting. Grab a copy of your bank statement. Write down your income and how much you can expect each month. Then write down all your expenses, down to the last penny, that you incur each month. Even if you got into debt due to irresponsible spending, document it here so that you know the truth. If you don’t know what you’ve spent your money on, take your best guess. You’ll revise it over the weeks, months, and years it will take to get out of debt, and eventually you’ll have a very accurate picture of where your money is going.

It’s always better to know the truth. Even if the truth is painful to bear! If your spouse has a lot of unexplained expenses, prepare yourself for the worst.

Step 2: Learn How To Manage Your Finances

Now, I’m not LDS, but the LDS church publishes a free pamphlet called “One for the Money: Guide to Family Finances” that is really useful to get you started in your road to financial freedom. The pamphlet outlines a strategy for paying off your debts that is guaranteed to work if you follow it – no pun intended – religiously. The pamphlet is available as a downloadable PDF file, and if you’re reading this, you certainly have a web browser that will do the trick! I think the only negative aspect of the pamphlet is its intense focus on religious values to motivate you to budget your money. But the positive aspect is that it outlines a successful strategy toward eliminating debt: pay the minimums on everything except for your one highest-interest loan. Once that is paid off, then apply that entire amount to your next-highest-interest loan. My wife and I have applied this strategy for the past decade, and have successfully paid off everything except for our home mortgages on two properties.

It works. Use it, if you can. I can testify to its usefulness, and our lack of significant debt besides our houses is a key to our ongoing financial success.

Step 3: Use The Right Tool For The Job

If the above pamphlet doesn’t quite do the trick for you – if you’d like a system to get out of debt fast – then I recommend YNAB, or “You Need A Budget”. The basic rules of YNAB will give you a successful strategy to live within your means… and the price for the tracking software is extremely reasonable (less than $50). I’ve used his spreadsheet-based product before, and within a few weeks of using it you’ll see exactly where your money is going and where you need to reduce spending to get your credit card usage under control. YNAB lives by the Four Rules:

Rule 1: Stop Living Paycheck to Paycheck. Live only on the income you earned LAST MONTH, with this month’s income in the bank.

Rule 2: Give Every Dollar A Job. Plan exactly where each dollar will be spent. If you think you “never know”, that’s part of your problem!

Rule 3: Save for a Rainy Day. Even the tightest budget can find some room to put away a few dollars to cover those unexpected – yet common – big expenses.

Rule 4: Roll with the Punches. You’re never going to be perfect with your budget. Keep adjusting over time to try to meet your goals, but don’t expect perfection!

I have no doubt that everybody can find a way to live within their budget. It may require adjustments to your living conditions, but making and following a budget is vitally important if you don’t want to go bankrupt! You don’t have to live paycheck-to-paycheck anymore once you start following some simple budgeting principles.

But what if your credit truly is out of control? What if you’re so deep in debt that, after doing the budget, you have no money left to live on after paying your obligations each month?

Step 4: Credit Counseling and Preparing for Bankruptcy

There is help available, and you should really avoid ads for out-of-state debt consolidation programs. Debt consolidation can be a nightmare if done wrong! The Federal Government of the US offers a list of state-by-state approved credit counseling agencies. These organizations will often negotiate with your creditors to reduce your payments or forgive certain debts so that you have enough to live on. If you think you might need to file bankruptcy, these organizations are a required stop before you’re allowed to do so. The fly-by-night Internet ad you found won’t do the trick… you’re going to HAVE to see one of these agencies. But realize, there are important costs:

1. Paying less per month means you’re going to pay more – a LOT more – in interest over time.

2. It’s going to show up in your credit report. Agencies that claim that there will be no hit on your credit report are usually relying on fraud – like a false Social Security number – to achieve their ends. Expect a HUGE hit and an inability to obtain credit from now on. If your budget is so bad that you’re considering credit counseling rather than the free or low-cost alternatives above, you may not care at this point, but it’s important to expect it.

3. There’s usually a substantial fee for the services of the credit counseling service. If they offer free credit counseling, they are usually making their money on the back-end: taking a fee from your payments before handing them over to your creditors.

4. Beware of “balloon” offers. They’ll suck you in with a very low payment, but at the end of a certain number of years – typically five to ten – you have a very large payment that you need to pay off, and a need to obtain new credit to finance it if you don’t have the cash to pay it off. With the hit on your credit history outlined in #2 above, you have a good chance of being denied a reasonable loan!

5. Beware of “variable rate” offers. They’ll offer you a very low rate at first to suck you in, but as payments expand over time often these very low-cost loans turn into an unimaginable nightmare to pay off.

You Can Do It!

Look, I think you have the skill set to do this yourself. Grab a copy of YNAB, grab that pamphlet for how to manager your money that the LDS church publishes, and figure out your strategy. You can do it! Credit Counseling – and “debt consolidation”, as bad of an idea as it is – is really your last stop before declaring bankruptcy. If you’re overwhelmed by medical bills, you can make a good case for declaring bankruptcy on that basis. But avoid those two options unless you really, truly have no other choice.

Jay Barnson again brings us a new independent game review of a title called “Swords and Sorcery Underworld“. Nice to hear about a game that revitalizes a genre while accounting for modern gaming sensibilities.

it embraces the retro-hardcore western RPG style with a vengeance, the “bailout” function isn’t the only concession it makes to modern audiences. Like Bard’s Tale and the early Might & Magic games, the streets of the starting city are not safe for newbie adventurers. However, unlike the frustratingly challenging early game of Bard’s Tale, early encounters aren’t quite as likely to prove immediately lethal to your fledgling characters. A game mechanic I really like is that characters get a “second chance” when otherwise fatally wounded. Another hit while they are thus disabled will kill them fer real, but a quick healing spell can come in handy to save the day. This really helps make death a bit less random, but fights remain challenging and dangerous.

I also like that the game features a colorful automap. While there’s a part of me that fondly remembers my careful use of pencil and graph paper to play the old games, I can’t say that it was a part of the old-school experience I’d like to see return.

And – so far as I can tell – Underworld is Big. It’s not something you are going to conquer in a couple of days.

Well, here’s a breakdown for you.

Typical setup for a Pantera 50 — mine — follows. Format is "retail/new & discounted/used" for prices. Leaving out the transmitter.

Bone stock:

• Pantera 50: $199/$150/$100

• OS .50SX-H Hyper (or YS 50): $199.98/$150/$80

• Mavrikk or Align 50 pipe: $60/$40/$20

• Futaba GY401 & S9254 rudder gyro/servo combo: $209.99/$175/$100

• 3x Hitec HS-5475HB servos for cyclic: $75.00/$63.42/$40

• Cheap analog throttle servo: $15

• Spektrum AR7000 Rx: $99.99/$99.99/$80

• 2S2P A123 M1 4600mAh Rx pack: $65/$45/$25 ("build it yourself" rather than "used"…)

• Perfect Regulator tail step-down prr-5vgt: $14/$10/$10

• Blades, CF, 600mm: $44.99/$35/$20

Recommended upgrades:

• AUD3078 Elevator Bearing Set: $11.99

• AUD0063 Air Filter: $29.99

• PDR0016 Header Tank: $9.99

• PDR0003 Fuel Shutoff: $6.99

• PDR0004 Fuel Filter: $7.99

• Hayes Clunk Line: $4

• Multi-Gov Pro: $125

So your total is going to be, minimum, around $475 if you go with all used gear from forum folks or locals, and bone-stock Pantera frame picked up used from some seller online who got one as part of the BOGO deal. All the way up to around $1179 for a mostly-stock config, new, with all the recommended upgrades, and higher from there if you want to go with the big-block conversion or something.

That isn’t counting, of course, building materials that I would expect you to have laying around for any heli:

• Green, red, and blue loctite ($18)

• Thin & thick CA glue ($10)

• Fuel tubing ($10)

• Tie wraps ($3)

• Foam padding ($3)

• Sticky-back Velcro ($5)

• Double-sided Velcro straps ($10)

• Gasket maker ($6) (just a tiny dab does it to replace the metal gasket between engine & muffler)

• Good Allen wrench set ($30)

• Dial Indicator ($20)

• Grease ($6 for a lifetime supply)

• Tri-Flow Lube ($8)

• Mini bubble level: $5

• Good Lexan scissors: $20

• X-Acto knife: $5

• Extra X-Act blades: $5

• Cutting mat: $10

Building supplies total: $174

Then your flight supplies (guesstimated):

• Good 7-channel or more radio: $200+

• Starter: $35

• Starter battery: $25

• Fuel: $22/gallon for 30% Magnum (12-16 flights per gallon, depending)

• Heli start wand: $25

• Glow igniter: $20

• Paper towels: $1

• Windex (or denatured alcohol, or Simple Green, whatever): $3.50

• Toolbox: $20 (or more $$$ if you go nice and not cheap Wal-Mart brand stuff)

• Fueling supplies (pump, attachment, etc.): $30

Flight supplies total: $381.50

You can also find SCREAMING deals on tail gyro/servo combos these days. I mean, crazy, insane, stuff that was $300 just months ago selling for less than $100. I just picked up two brand-new, full-warranty, retailer-provided LogicTech gyro/servo combos that usually retail for $250 for $75 apiece the other day.

This is why I shop sales, shop for used gear, and generally try to keep my stuff nice, but not top-of-the-line. One way or another, you’re going to be into your heli at least $1000 eventually. If you can pick up some used nitro starting stuff from someone getting out of the hobby or getting into electrics, then a used Pantera, and some cheap building supplies from Harbor Freight or overseas, you can save a bundle… but in some cases, you get what you pay for?

So there you have it. The total cost of a decent nitro helicopter. And we wonder why more people don’t want to get into the hobby…

Warning: Science ahead! Close your eyes and turn away, you’ve been warned!

Many radio-control enthusiasts experience disappointment with the cycle life of their Lithium-based batteries in electric aircraft. Often this is because they’re not entirely sure what’s going on inside the battery, and choose a capacity or voltage that’s inappropriate for their application. Ultimately, this manifests itself in “swelling” or “ballooning” of a Lithium battery. This editorial attempts to explain what’s actually going on when this happens.

Chemically, there can be three causes for the swelling of a LiPo battery, and one exacerbating condition that makes it worse across the board. These occur in hard-shell Lithium Ion batteries, too, but the hard shell can withstand several atmospheres of pressure before expanding.

Note: This is MY understanding of the chemistry involved. I may be off-base, after all, I’m a college dropout. But I did love chemistry class!

Cause #1: WATER in the mix.

EDIT: Lithium manufacturers who’s products are implicated in this assertion (read: Hextronik et al, circa 2006-2007, Thunder Power circa 2008) will dispute the assertion of contaminated Lithium. The most common contaminant is water, but there are many others that will cause lithium oxidation in the cell. Basically, any other substance containing oxygen that can be freed by electrolysis or heat will become a contaminant, and any substance that isn’t the expected anode, cathode, or separator is a contaminant that will reduce the performance of the cell and cause swelling in other ways. Manufacturers have a fiduciary responsibility to claim that there was no product defect, otherwise they’re responsible for a recall. I’ll talk about the science and let you draw your own conclusions.

This was the common problem with many cheap Chinese LiPos of around 2005-2008. Most are better now, but it’s the #1 cause of premature LiPo failure: water contamination in the plant. Many of China’s LiPo factories are on the coast, where the altitude is very low and the humidity is high. You can’t run the humidity too low on the assembly floor, because you’re working with volatile chemicals that could explode in the presence of a spark, and you can’t run it too high because then you end up with a worthless LiPo that swells on first use.

Here’s the science. You have three ingredients that are functional in a LiPo battery. The rest is wrapping and wiring attachments.

• Cathode: LiCoO2 or LiMn2O4
• Separator: Conducting polymer electrolyte
• Anode: Li or carbon-Li intercalation compound

I’m going to be a little vague in my language here. The chemicals involved vary according to manufacturers, so I don’t want to make any assumptions.

Remember your chemistry class? Note the absolute lack of any hydrogen atoms in the reaction. None, zero, zip, nada. If you have water inside your battery — and virtually all batteries have a little bit — you’ve got problems. When the chemical bond of H20 is broken by electrolysis and heat, you end up with free oxygen. You also have free-roaming hydrogen that typically ends up bound to your anode or cathode, whichever side of the reaction it’s on and depending on the state of charge of your battery.

Now, this is a pretty unstable situation that’s exacerbated by any over-discharge or over-charge condition creating metallic lithium in your cell. The end result is Lithium Hydroxide: 1 atom of lithium, one atom of hydrogen, and one atom of oxygen.

But you still have a free oxygen atom floating around inside the battery casing, that typically combines with one other oxygen atom — O2, or what we sometimes think of as “air” — or two other oxygen atoms, to form a characteristic tangy, metallic-smelling substance called “ozone”, or O3. Gases expand with heat and contract with cold. Chuck a swollen battery in the freezer and it might come out rock-hard again… until it heats up. It’s not frozen, it just got cold enough that the gases inside didn’t take up much space at all.

And that free O2 or ozone is just waiting to pounce and oxidize some lithium on the slightest miscalculation on your part. The modest over-discharge during a punch-out, or running the battery a little too low or letting it get a little too hot, or running the voltage up to 4.235v/cell on a cold day when the actual voltage limit per cell is more like 4.1v. All of these create the perfect storm for a puffy battery to quickly turn itself into a ruined battery or an in-flight fire.

Understanding the role of free oxygen in your battery, from water and other causes, is CRUCIAL to understanding why batteries fail, and why sometimes you can get by with flying a puffy battery, and sometimes you can’t.

Cause #2: Formula degradation from over-charge/over-discharge

If a Lithium battery is overcharged or charged too quickly, you end up with LOTS of excess free lithium on the anode (metallic lithium plating), and free oxygen on the cathode. A free oxygen atom is small enough to freely traverse the separator without carrying an electric charge, resulting in lithium OXIDE on the anode. Lithium “rust”, in reality. Useless to us at this point, just dead weight being carted around inside your battery’s wrapper.

But lithium oxide uses fewer oxygen atoms than existed in the ionized state, so you end up with, again, FREE OXYGEN. And people wonder why if you over-charge a LiPo underwater, it still ignites despite the lack of open air…

If it’s over-discharged or discharged too quickly, the reverse is true, but you end up with Lithium Oxide on the cathode, but at a lower rate because there’s simply less there. Basically, an abused battery quickly develops corrosion on both poles of the battery inside the wrapper. And the more it’s abused, the worse it gets as the resistance goes up and it still gets driven hard.

This, by the way, is the most common cause of swelling today for our aircraft when flown with a high-quality pack (not knock-off eBay leftovers from expensive Chinese mistakes of 2004-2009). The reality is, these kinds of cells, regardless of their ‘C’ rating, are built for use where they last for several hours… not several minutes. While the chemistry if used as designed is good for thousands of cycles, we’re driving them so far out of spec that we’re lucky to get hundreds of cycles out of them.

In most cases, too, our batteries are under-specced. If slow-charged and slow-discharged, many of these packs would often hold considerably more mAh than we think they do. That’s one of the reasons we get the performance we do from them. Higher-C-rated packs also often introduce gelled electrolyte into the separator, and carbon or phosphorous nano-structures on the anode and cathode mixtures rather than the “pound it out thin and hope it’s mixed right” approach used with sheets of anodes & cathodes today.

Cause #3: Poor separator construction

A number of cheap LiPos also use a bad separator formulation. Ultimately, it often boils down to using a dry separator with way too high of an internal resistance to hold up to manufacturer “C”-rating claims. The internal resistance grows over time because a higher and higher percentage of the LiPo is simple Lithium Oxide, and the balloon grows bigger as more oxygen atoms are freed.

I’d also lump “poor anode or cathode chemistry” into this category, too. Ever get a bad battery out of a batch of good ones? Often it’s because the mixture of chemicals was inconsistent, and you end up with too much or too little lithium on one side of the battery (well, in certain plates, you get my drift).

Exacerbating factor: HEAT.

A little heat makes everything work better for a Lipo. If you could fly your battery right at 140 Fahrenheit all the time, it would make fantastic power and be operating right in its happy zone. But it generates heat when charging, and when discharging. Hitting 150 results in significant metallic lithium generation, which as we can see from above is a major cause of puffing and cell destruction.

Similarly, the maximum 4.235v/cell limit is only at that mythical 140F. It goes down steadily from there, to about 4.2v/cell at room temperatures, and around 4.0v/cell below 50F, beyond which the over-abundance of electrons will again break chemical bonds and free lithium to bond with oxygen and create lithium oxide… which is just a disaster waiting to bond with humidity in the air if the LiPo ruptures, to create Lithium Hydroxide.

Conclusion

Chemically, there are no LiPos that will not puff under certain circumstances. But tightly-controlled humidity, a superb gel separator, nano-structured anode and cathode, and careful charging and discharging within manufacturer limits should also prevent puffing. Similarly, putting a pack that has been abused into a lower-discharge aircraft, even when puffed, often serves the purpose of stopping the puffing in its tracks because no more metallic lithium is being created in the cell by abuse.

And now you know the answer to today’s geeky topic. Why lithium polymer batteries often puff up.

My brother Jay posted a great story we watched on Sunday: Old 666. Excerpt:

Zeamer and his misfit crew seized the plane, and worked to restore it and make it airworthy again. Not just restore it – they decided to customize it. They added nearly 50% more guns to the bird, including a forward-firing machinegun so Zeamer could also shoot, like a fighter pilot. They replaced the .30 caliber machine guns with bigger .50 caliber guns – or, in some cases, twin .50 caliber guns. When they were done, their aircraft – number 41-2666 (or 12666, depending on the account) was the most heavily armed bomber in the entire Pacific theater of World War II.

They never added customary nose-art to the bomber, leaving it unadorned. So it became known by its serial number on its tail – “Old 666.”

These guys were nicknamed “The Eager Beavers” because they consistently volunteered for the most dangerous, crazy missions. They’d frequently come back shot full of holes, but they made it home. Zeamer and crew of renegades gained a new reputation for courage and incredible airmanship. In one night mission, for example, the enemy troops managed to fix the entire flight of bombers with large searchlights, illuminating them so they could be shot down by anti-aircraft guns. Zeamer used his giant aircraft as a fighter, diving on the searchlight positions and using his forward-firing machine guns to destroy three of them and damage two others, saving the other planes and their crews…

Check out the rest of the article. Jay even has a link to the History Channel documentary on Old 666 and its renegade, typecast crew of misfits who really existed. Why hasn’t this been made into a movie, anyway?

Be careful about blowing your Vuvuzela at your dog in the house.