Last fall, I wrote arguably my most serious blog post. It was titled A Christian Warrior, and it outlined Atlanta Braves pitcher John Smoltz’s faith, his competitive nature, and the way I have followed his career since I was a child. I ended the post by writing:

Now 38, Smoltz’s time in baseball is winding down. He’s still a great player, but sooner rather than later his time will come. His retirement or – worse – his leaving the Braves to go to another team will be one of my saddest days. His career has spanned the childhood, teenage, and early adult years of my life. To me, he is the Atlanta Braves. I’ll never look at them the same way once he’s gone.

A free agent after the 2007 season, Smoltz signed a contract extension with the Braves today that could keep him with the team until 2010.

If I could dance, I’d be going Michael Flatley, Lord of the Dance on my kitchen floor.

A few months back, I wrote about the brain trust at my Verizon Visa account who maintained they could not lower the interest rate on my remaining balance because I had closed my account in 2004. They acted as though this was standard practice with all credit cards – as much as they’d love to lower my interest rate, their hands were tied. Riiight.

Flash forward a few months.

Counting the aforementioned card, I have three remaining credit card debts I am working double time to pay off. The first one, the Verizon Visa, has 31.25% interest. The second, also a Visa, has 20.5% interest. The third, a Discover Card, has 0% interest for the rest of 2007. It was used to transfer as much of the balance as I could from the ridiculous 31.25% interest Visa.

In March, I made what I thought was my last payment on the evil 31.25% interest Visa. I was giddy. However, at the beginning of April I received a billing statement from them saying I still owed $17. Apparently, before my last payment arrived to them, they were able to bleed a little more interest from me. I gave them a call, asked what I needed to pay and when I needed to pay it in order to completely pay off the balance, and then sent them one last payment that very day.

However, along with the $17 balance, there was one other thing on the billing statement that caught my eye. It was a bold message in capital letters that said:

CONGRATULATIONS! BASED ON YOUR RECENT PAYMENT HISTORY, WE ARE LOWERING YOUR INTEREST RATE. YOUR NEW RATE WILL BEGIN ON YOUR NEXT BILLING CYCLE.

First of all, how slow to react can a company be? My balance on this card was originally over $8k. It took them until my balance was down to $17 to think, “hey…this guy has almost paid off his balance…perhaps we should lower his interest rate to entice him to stick around as a customer?

Secondly, what happened to the “sorry…we wish we could lower your interest rate, but because you closed your account there is nothing we can do” nonsense??

I think (as I try to hold back the tears) the Verizon Visa people lied to me.

DEJA VU

My second Visa, the one with 20.5% interest, was also closed in 2004. As I write this, its remaining balance is $2,100 – down from its original balance of $14k.

While this Visa’s reaction time is considerably better than the Verizon’s, it loses bonus points for stupidity and cheapness. What am I talking about? In April’s billing statement for this Visa, it had its very own bold message in capital letters. What did it say? Glad you asked:

CONGRATULATIONS! WE ARE LOWERING YOUR INTEREST RATE TO 19.78%. THIS NEW RATE WILL BEGIN ON YOUR NEXT BILLING CYCLE.

Wow. You lowered my interest rate a whopping 0.72% after three years of faithful, prompt bill payments?

I think this is love.

The following is a story I told (to their dismay) quite often to my students during my former days as a high school teacher. It’s a story of procrastination, creative writing, genius, insomnia and caffeine. It was both a warning to my students about what happens when you procrastinate, and a “could your teacher be any smarter” story I’m sure they found oh so impressive. It’s a story that will, if nothing else, burn the next five minutes of your life. It’s the story of how I once wrote a research paper on how to write research papers.

During the end of my freshman year in college, my very first computer class assigned an 8-page research paper for the end of the semester. The topic had to be about technology in some way, shape or form. Since my academic drive did not kick into gear until after my sophomore year, I completely forgot about this paper until the weekend before it was due. Specifically, I remembered it at approximately 8:00 PM on a Sunday. It was due the following morning at 9:00 AM.

Knowing I was in trouble, I tried to think of a topic about technology. Microsoft? Not original. e-Commerce? I didn’t know very much about it at the time. The history of computers? No, that would take too long to research. I needed a topic I could research fast; preferably, a topic where I already had the information. Glancing down at my desk, I saw the research paper on World War One I’d written my first semester in college. “If I only I could use the information in there,” I thought to myself. Then I got an idea.

I would write about how the Internet has impacted the lives of students when it came to writing research papers. I would write about two fictional students, both of whom were writing a paper on World War One. The first student did his research at the library; the second did his research via the Internet. Using quotes and historical facts I had already gathered in my earlier paper, I would show how Student #2 was able to do more research at a faster clip thanks to the Internet.

Even though it read more like a creative writing essay than a research paper for a computer class, my professor loved it. It was creative, humorous, littered with tons of researched facts, and it was about technology. He gave me an “A” on it.

My paper itself might have deserved a good grade, but my efforts did not warrant it. If karma were real, I would have failed. I had procrastinated. BIG TIME. But thankfully, I learned my lesson. I knew I was fortunate to receive the grade I did, and that God was giving me a break. That paper marked the beginning of my “procrastination is bad” campaign.

I survived college, teaching, coaching and graduate school because I made it my mission not to procrastinate. I designed my teaching curriculum around helping my students break the procrastination habit I had such difficulty breaking. I would assign projects I estimated would take only two or three evenings to complete, and then I would give them two, three, or four weeks to complete it. I wanted the projects to be something nearly impossible to finish the weekend before they were due. Those who started early thought the projects were as easy as can be. Those who waited until the night before starting would often fail.

Without my knowing it, I’m sure I had teachers in high school who also tried to break us of procrastination. In my case it didn’t work. I needed to get to college to learn my lesson. But I’m hopeful I helped at least one student. I hope someday I will stumble across a blog that talks about how the person learned to stop procrastinating after her research paper on hamburgers wasn’t accepted by her computer teacher.

I hope.

If Al Gore was alive to see what has become of his precious invention, the Internet, I believe he would weep. Well, he wouldn’t actually cry (robots cannot cry), but he’d be sad. Why, because MySpace is using the Internet to destroy civilization as we know it.

MySpace is a disease. People get on MySpace because their friends are on MySpace. Their friends are on MySpace because their other friends are on MySpace. And so on and so on. Eventually, you can trace it back to Nicole Ritchie getting a MySpace because Paris Hilton had one. If those origins do not scream “disease” I’m not sure what does.

With its customized layout capabilities and a majority of its users having zero web design experience, MySpace is creating a generation who will think this is a normal looking web page. In the future, all sites will look like MySpace pages. Light colored text will be placed over bright, multi-colored images. All text will be in capital letters. It will be mandatory. Annoying music will begin to play as soon as you enter a site. It, too, will be mandatory.

Moderation and mystery have become things of the past thanks to MySpace. Why have one or two pictures of your favorite celebrity when you can have dozens? Why give a brief overview of yourself and your life when you can instead tell the world all of your personal secrets? Rule of thumb when it comes to moderation and mystery: If you have more than three videos on one page, scale back. Try to keep a little mystery about yourself. We can already tell you are a Jessica Simpson fan by the 73 photos you have of her on your page. If you also throw in 17 videos of her, where’s the mystery? We immediately make a snap judgment (*cough* stalker) about you, and that’s just not fair. There’s no need to be an open book, my friend.

Fifty years from now, when “words” like OMG and LOL make up 95% of the English language, historians will point to America Online and MySpace as the causes. Well, they won’t actually point. They, too, will be morons, and their fingers will likely be in their noses. But the scribble drawings in crayon they will write on their bedroom walls will tell the story in colorful detail.

In short, I do not “get” MySpace.

While it originally debuted on my blog, this article was later published at Associated Content on July 13, 2007. You can go read it here.

Sorry for going all Fiona Apple on you with the long title. (I’m also sorry for the vague Fiona Apple reference that only myself and maybe two other sad people in the world will get without clicking the link)

Like everyone who has bills to pay each month, I am frustrated. My reason for frustration is not because I don’t have enough money to pay all my bills (although it feels that way sometimes). It’s not because I am late on payments due to forgetfulness (I’m forgetful, but not when it pertains to money). It’s not even because a little part of me dies inside every time money leaves my bank account.

No, I’m frustrated because there doesn’t seem to be one perfect, easy, stress-free method for tracking and paying all of my bills. Instead, there are three decent, imperfect methods I have to use each and every month.

The ol’ Envelope and Stamp Method

This is my (and possibly your) parents’ preferred method for paying bills. Until a few years ago, it was my primary method as well. Paper bills come to your mailbox each month. The dates you receive them and their due dates vary from bill to bill. Depending on how organized you are you either pay all of the bills for the month in one or two sittings, or you sit down and pay your bills randomly throughout the month (hoping none of them are late). If you’re lucky, there is an envelope included with your billing statement you can use to mail your payment. In that pristine scenario, all you have to do to make a payment is get your checkbook, a pen, a stamp, and some saliva.

This method, clearly, is riddled with holes the size of Alec Baldwin’s head.

Online Bill Pay

The modern method for paying bills. It is the method I primarily use. You log into your banking institution’s website, choose who you want to make payments to, fill in the payment amount and date for payment, and submit. No envelopes, no checkbooks, no stamps, and no saliva. It’s pretty easy.

However, it’s not perfect. You still have to track your bills and physically sit down and make the payments. If all of your bills came to you on the 15th of every month and were all due on the 1st, this would be easy. But if you’re like me and you have ten different bills coming to you on ten different days and they’re due on ten different days, this is a hassle.

Online bill pay does allow you to make recurring, scheduled payments (if your cable bill is $60 every month and it is due the 24th of every month, recurring payments are ideal). But what if the amount due for a bill changes from month to month? My electric bill is never the same one month to the next. Neither are the last two credit cards I’m working hard to pay off this year.

Automatic Debit

Many payees offer the capability of automatic debit bill payment. If you give them your bank information, each month on their respective bill due dates they will take the amounts due out of your checking/savings account.

This is as “hands off” as you can get and it has many advantages. You’ll never have to worry about forgetting or being late with a payment, and you don’t have to worry about accidentally paying the wrong amount.

That said, depending on your preferences and situation, it has drawbacks too. Unless you always have enough funds in the bank to cover expenses, you’ll still need to keep tabs on when your bills are due. If a $300 car payment is going to be automatically taken out of your checking account on the 16th of every month, you need to be aware of this fact if you’re the kind of person who has a checking account balance that floats between $100 and $800 from one week to the next. Also, the notion of giving a big company access to your bank account is a bit much for some people.

Conclusions

So what’s the perfect method? Sadly, I don’t know of one that works in all situations for all people (much less one that works for me). In my situation, only half my bills are eligible for automatic debit. If my preference was to use this method (and it is), I couldn’t use it for all my bills. Five of my bills would have to be paid via online bill pay. And one bill, as hard as it is for me to grasp since we live in the year 2007, can only be paid via paper check.

What about all of you? Is there a method I forgot? How do you handle the mind-numbing chore that is paying bills each month?

While it originally debuted on my blog, this article was revised and later published at Associated Content on July 13, 2007. You can go read it here.

I recently saw a stand-up comic on TV who said something that made me think. Why does everyone – the young, the old, the mean, the nice – smile when they see a baby?

Is it because they’re cute? Most of the time, yes. But surely not all babies are cute. If all babies were cute, how do you explain Rosie O’Donnell? Did she peak at age zero? Has it been downhill for her ever since then? Maybe, just maybe, she was never cute to begin with. And if that’s true with Rosie, couldn’t it be true with others?

(On a side note: Every single kitten, without exception, is cute. It’s a scientific fact. For proof, I offer Exhibits A and B.)

If it’s not always cuteness, what is it about babies that makes us smile whenever we see them?

Answer: Birthday Cake.

Everyone loves birthday cake. Even diabetics love birthday cake. And when we see a baby, we think of birthday cake. On that baby’s first birthday, there will be cake. On its 10th birthday, there will be cake. Assuming the baby lives to be 100, there will have been 100 birthday cakes created and eaten in his/her lifetime to celebrate the passing of each year.

Why do we smile?

Because we think maybe, just maybe, we’ll get to eat some of that cake.