I liked the section titled "Good manners are not stiff, formal, or awkward." It reminded me of a story I was told of a dinner party at which one of the guests suffered from cerebral palsy. The host seeing that the guest was having trouble with her knife and fork immediately put down her own cutlery and started eating with her hands. Once the guest noticed this she felt she had leave to do the same. The story's a good example of "people over process".
I remember a similar sort of story, though it's probably apocryphal. The Japanese ambassador was dining with Queen Victoria at a very formal dinner. Towards the end of the dinner, the guests were given a small bowl of warm water with which to wash their fingers. The Japanese ambassador, being unaware of what to do with it, drank the contents---a major faux pas. The Queen, seeing this, drank hers as well, and all the guests then did likewise.
In line with these stories, my parents always taught me that good manners are about making your guests (or host) feel comfortable. The rules are not the important bit of manners.
> In line with these stories, my parents always taught me that good manners are about making your guests (or host) feel comfortable. The rules are not the important bit of manners.
This is so funny you should say this because in Germany good old "Knigge" is becoming more popular again but in a way of making yourself feel better about your good manners AND as a foundation to look down on and sneer at others for their clearly inferior manners. So quite the opposite of what you described.
The advice about budgeting is good common sense.
On the other hand I feel that sometimes people address personal finance as a simple arithmetic exercise (income - expense), whereas I think it is sometimes better treated in a more algebraic fashion.
In other words identify the variables in your balance sheet (Hint: everything is a variable) and try to anticipate what happens as things change. Your finances are affected by changes outside of your control, for example the government or local authority can decide to stick your taxes up, changes in the commodities market can affect the price of staples such as a food and fuel or your electric company might read your meter and then slap you with a bill of double your usual amount.
This is something that I find annoying about the UK, whilst all of the high street banks offer some form of online banking none of them to my knowledge will allow me to pull out the raw data and play with it. I'm sure that using some fairly rudimentary statistical analysis I could gain much more insight into the implications of my financial situation.
For example, let's say I get a pay rise. I might be inclined to celebrate by going out and buying a brand new iPad or whatever. But maybe if I sum the amount that I spend at the supermarket each month I notice an upward trend that will wipe out the pay increase within 6 months. Does this mean that I am acquiring "good taste" in a few too many areas or does it simply mean that "cost of living" is increasing faster than inflation and I need to account for that.
this is great. i esp wish someone encouraged me to make an effort and "Day 22 - Learn how to small talk".
growing up i hated small talk and this translated very well into hobbies involving staying home and hacking things, and later doing that at work.
it wasn't until much later that i realized how important it is to make real human connections and be able to interact with strangers. This seems to be harder to get right the older one gets.
For anyone that wants to read these posts in an RSS reader one day at a time, I suggest Feed Playback [1]. Just enter the feed URL [2] and a start date of 2012-08-01. Unfortunately, the feed is mixed in with every other update that gets put on the site, so it will take longer than a month to complete.
This is awesome — I just recently moved out of my parents' home for the first time and have been doing my best to adjust to life "on my own". Thanks for posting this.
AoM is one of the few blogs that I feel genuinely compelled to read. Very good writing, and about skills/knowledge that we all need in our life (regardless of profession).
Tires should be patched, not plugged (and only when the hole is nowhere near the sidewall). I've never had a tire plug hold, or a patch fail.
Patching them can still be done at home but I've always let the guy at the garage do it, because he sees a couple of cases a day instead of one every 3-4 years like I do.
Each of the tires on my old Chevy at one point had over a dozen plugs. Each plug lasted several years.
The beauty of a plug is the kit is five bucks, comes with about a dozen plugs and you can use it anywhere. Get a thirty five dollar compressor to run off your battery and you can fix a puncture by yourself in the middle of nowhere. Not so with a patch.
But then I also won't drive more than twenty miles from my house without a toolbox...so....
I don't disagree - but here in the desert where my tires only last four or five years due to heat and sun, my plugs survive for the life of the tire; by increasing the factor of safety with a patch I gain little but confidence.
In my experience, when you're first headed out on your own with (probably) a used vehicle with tires that are of unknown age, you're more likely to burst one than simply have a small puncture/leak. Maybe that's just because my state (IN) sucks at road repairs though.
Why is this sad? It shows we are living in a very service-oriented society where a lot of people will happily let "experts" do all sorts of tasks for them that maybe 50 years ago nobody would have imagined spending money on. Also, I think most quality tires nowadays don't puncture or rip that easily anymore, at least not the ones on sale here in Europe so most people hardly ever have to change or fix tires on the spot; and when having to switch to mandatory winter tires, well, then they obviously prefer to pay a little for it. And I doubt you are able to cost-effectively and efficiently balance and mount your own tires on the rims since you are very likely lacking all the (expensive) tools.
Generally while not very applicable to tires but you can hardly do any repairs on modern cars anymore anyway. So I think these small tasks just died along with repairs. Nowadays cars are "black boxes" and they either drive or you hand the whole thing to someone who will hook it up to a computer and then do magic according to the manufacturer's specifications until that box drives again.
Plugging a tire is simpler than fixing a bike tire in most cases. I can plug a tire without taking it off the vehicle. It costs $5 and less than ten minutes. It took me less than five minutes to teach my son when he was six.
It is a sad state because tires are not a black box. This is not an anachronistic tool or bit of knowledge. Flat tires are common. If one finds it necessary to buy a replacement tire (which most people will) for $100 instead of plugging (or even patching) the old one - this is a sad state. It is wasteful of one's time and money.
Even for something simple like plugging or patching a tire you need knowledge and expertise to really do it WELL and to know when NOT to do it - and most DIY kind of guys just got some "lore" (often wrong) passed down and follow it blindly... and then you blow a front tire on the highway and go off the deep end. No thankyou very much.
