The difference between jiu jitsu and

One of my jiu jitsu instructors had a good description between the difference between jiu jitsu and most other martial arts:

In most martial arts they start you off doing a bunch of punching pads and similar things intended to build confidence. These exercises give you the idea that you are big and tough and could take on anyone.

In jiu jitsu the opposite happens. You spend several years getting pounded on. Instead of walking around with the confidence, you spend a few years walking around worried about everyone because that little 130lb high school student the other day just stomped on you and you just don't know who does and does not have that sort of training.

This is probably a sign of how effective and large a martial art it is. At least for the first five years someone who has been practicing it for two or three more years than you will almost always dominate the fight even if they are comparatively small and weak.

Reddit knows everything

While thinking about ideas for my future back yard I decided it would be a good idea to focus on perennial herbs and berries. Both of these are fairly expensive in stores and easy to grow. They might even be able to survive my world famous neglect.

I then decided it would be neat to try and plant a couple native berry plants. I know from hiking and poking around nurseries that there are quite a few edible native berries. Which ones to plant though? Online research turned up a dozen or so possibilities, but not very much I could do to differentiate among them.

So I turned to reddit. I made a post on /r/gardening and /r/berries. Sure enough, I was able to find people who had actually tried most of the berries native to the state of California.

Sounds like my best bets are Nevin's Barberry, Holly-Leafed Cherry, Lemonade Berry, and Golden Currant. I might give in and do a Manzanita too though just because they are awesome. These are all native to my general area of California so they should be low maintenance, although most are found at higher elevations.

2012 Spending

I decided to record all of my spending last year. Not sure if I had anything exactly in mind when I did this but I thought it might result in something interesting. If nothing else it should answer that never-ending question of "where did all that money go?"

This is a fairly limited view of my spending because it is missing two things. It does not include my wife's spending which includes such things as car insurance, and it does not include anything directly taken out of my paycheck such as health insurance and money I put into my 401(k).

Here is a chart of my overall spending:

The typical middle class person in Los Angeles spends 65% of their income on housing and transportation. I have always found this to be a bit silly, these are the areas where you really get the least benefit for your money. I at least have managed to stay well under this trend. About 25% of my income went to rent, 8% went to my car, and 6% to airline tickets. That adds up to 39% of my income spent on housing and transportation. This is much lower than this when you consider that my wife does not pay rent and pays far less on transportation. I doubt our total percentage of income spent on these two things exceeds 30%.

My spending on food and dining was 10% of my income. This is somewhat higher than I would have guessed, but does not seem particularly out of line considering how much time I spend cooking or at restaurants. What was a little more surprising was the break down of this component. A whopping 73% of this spending was at restaurants and bars. Only 27% of my spending on food goes to grocery stores.

The little bit that did go to grocery stores at least seems to follow my philosophy well enough. I have tried hard to avoid spending at stores with reward programs. Apparently I have succeeded. Here are the 5 grocery stores I spent the most at in 2012 with the percentage of my income that went to each:

1: Sprouts, 0.67%
2: 99 Ranch Market, 0.5%
3: Stater Brothers, 0.46%
4: Northgate, 0.33%
5: Ralphs, 0.17%

On that list only Ralphs has a reward card program, and I only spent so much there because it happens to be the closest supermarket to me.

Restaurants were harder to interpret anything interesting from. I rarely go to the same restaurant twice so the list is dominated by places I hardly even remember. Still, there a few places which did manage to get the bulk of my money, fast food places I go to lunch at, places within walking distance to home, or places I only went to once but paid for a large group. Here are the 5 restaurants I spent the most at with the percentage of my income that went to each:

1. Chipotle, 0.3%
2. Don Jose, 0.23%
3. Panda Express, 0.21%
4. In-N-Out, 0.20%
5. Punjab Palace, 0.18%


I was a bit surprised just how much I spend at Shell gas stations. I don't particularly like Shell gas stations since they have picked up on the grocery store rewards band wagon. However for some reason I seem to spend a lot at them. Here are the 5 gas station franchises I spent the most at with the percentage of my income that went to each:

1. Shell, 1.38%
2. Arco, 0.93%
3. Mobil, 0.47%
4. Chevron, 0.45%
5. Exxon, 0.25%

Clothing is just strange. Most of my spending on clothing was for clothing I wore only once or twice. Either it was for a few days in an Alaska winter or to wear to someone's wedding. I think of work clothes as being expensive since I had to spend so much when I first started and was broke, but as a percentage of my income it is negligible. Here are the 5 clothing places I spent the most at with the percentage of my income thatwent to each:

1. REI, 1.05%
2. Macy's, 0.24%
3. JC Penny, 0.21%
4. Van Heusen, 0.21%
5. Famous Footwear, 0.14%


What I usually think of as shopping and silly spending hardly puts a dent in my budget. All those hobbies and books I buy which often feels a bit over the top only added up to about 7% of my income. This 7% includes a lot of money which went to gifts to other people or basic everyday items. Here are the 5 generic shopping places I spent the most at with the percentage of my income that went to each:

1. Amazon, 2.41%
2. Target, 1.00%
3. Apple, 0.91%
4. Orvac Electronics, 0.26%
5. Digikey, 0.22

I was glad to notice one thing on the list which I won't be seeing again. That is student loans. I spent 4.8% of my income last year on student loans, finally finishing them off.

Best Floor Tile on the Market

Now I must learn far too much about things which go in homes. Today was tile. Being an engineer who would like to make things practically indestructible I decided to focus on a few aspects of tile:

First is its PEI rating. There does not seem to be much additional cost associated with using PEI 5 rated tile. This tile is good enough to put into a mall, so it should certainly be good enough to go in my bathroom. It does limit me to mostly porcelain tile though.

Second is that I want thru body porcelain. This is tile which is the same color in the center as on the top. This means that if it chips the bottom of the chip will be the same color as the tile around it. This used to be standard in porcelain tile, but slowly has gone out of style because it limits options.

Last is coefficient of friction. The higher the coefficient of friction, the less slippery the tile is. Anything less than 0.8 cannot be used in Los Angeles for sloped tile, so I should be able to find many options which exceed this value.

Unfortunately, normal people do not shop like me. Most sites made it very difficult to find all three pieces of information about each tile. I was able to find four tiles which stood out though. They had a minimum dry coefficient of friction of 0.87 while meeting the other two criteria. The first two actually look decent so I will likely go with one of those.

Tile #1
Tile #2
Tile #3
Tile #4

New House

Well, I finally got talked into buying a new house. Not just as in new for me, an actual new house.

I have been convinced for some time that we need to start increasing the density of Southern California. The primary thing that needs to happen is 10+ story residential and commercial buildings within a half mile of existing train stations. It is a whole lot easier to build interesting things near public transit than it is to expand public transit to meet up with already existing homes, entertainment and workspace.

Of secondary importance is building a whole lot more housing in Orange and Los Angeles counties. This can help stop more people from commuting from Riverside and San Bernardino counties. This should be done by tearing down existing buildings rather than destroying more of the already limited habitat for coastal creatures.

Buying this home, rather than an existing home, encourages this trend. Rather than bidding up the price on already over-priced assets I am assisting in modeling the future.

We better get working on that space program

We don't have long to escape from the robot army.



A far more impressive drone is the following. If you can survive through the bad dialog it is quite impressive.

Credit Score Scam

I have long known that credit ratings were a scam. They are more a judge of how much of a sucker you are than how much of a risk of default you are. Those who pay tons of interest on time will always have the highest credit scores.

I did not realize just how bad they are until today though:

In the past four years I have paid off around $20,000 in student loans and credit card debt.

I have no debt at all.

I have nearly a decade straight of paying utility bills of one form or another including many years of paying rent to large apartment complexes.

I have a credit card which is at least six years old (but I stopped charging anything to in the past year or so since the interest rates are damn near criminal.

I have three and a half years at one job in one of the more stable industries there is.

So I figured when getting a home loan my credit would be sufficient. I am obviously someone who can be trusted to pay back a mortgage.  No luck. When the bank ran my credit score it came back as inactive because I haven't had any debt for more than six months. Not only would they not send the bank a score, they wouldn't even send them all the information about the credit history they do have. The 20,000 in debt I payed off in the past four years? All kept secret as punishment for my refusing to play their game.

Fortunately I will have in excess of a 20% down payment. There clearly are banks with intelligent people who will go through manual underwriting, or some other procedure to take what is obviously free money to them. Still, this really makes me want to find a way to push for reform in this industry.