Debt-free

Finally I managed to pay for my car so if I exclude my rent and other bills I am finally debt free.
My first goal for the year is accomplished.
The feeling is very good to say the least .. so good that I don't think I will sign another loan contract again. I read this on a site (can't remember where) : "Think before you act , listen before you speak , earn before you borrow" .
The last part is the one most people don't think very often until they are forced to by economical realities.
As far as I am concerned I think it is just a matter of economical planning for a person and/or family.
If you want a new car and you do not have the money for it is simply means you can't afford it.The same goes for a new laptop , bike or anything else.
Borrowing money to buy these items would mean just lying to yourself.

Of course the culture we live in and the media always go for instant gratification at any cost. "I want to have it and have it now" .. yes but at a cost the cost of your future and your life. Guess who gets to use this trick : the banks world wide.
That was before the crisis. Commercials would show a bike (with an almost naked woman attached) and say : "Do you want to wait until you are 80 to get this ? " and people would buy that kind of nonsense and run to the bank asking for the biggest loan possible. Something like 10 years loan for a car was not unheard of and people would buy a 20.000 Euro car with 400 Euro salary/month (which is financial suicide if you ask me). I kept hearing : 20.000 Euro is nothing .. from people that would need 4 years in salary to get that kind of money (never mind saving).
The bank profits were huge and more important they would expand to almost every street corner.
People including the ones that should have been wiser (my dad) kept telling me that saving is not worth it and getting debt is a good thing .. but I still believe that even in business common sense is more important then the so called money-sense (or at least as important). Selling your future is never an option (never ever) and I hope people will understand that before our civilisation crashes down burning.

I read the famous book Rich dad,poor dad and the one thing I agree with is that borrowing for non-assets is something a smart person should never do. So borrowing money for a car/computer or worse case food is something that should never happen.. borrowing money to fund a start-up on the other hand might be ok if you believe in it and are willing to make it happen (but even then saving might be better).
Unfortunately even in my country it has become impossible to save money for a house (in a short period of time) so renting is my option for now(especially because the place I rent is ok and not very expensive).
Now I need to learn about something only the people in the communist past of our country did .. saving (and maybe investing).

R.I.P. Sun ...

For those of you browsing java.sun.com you might have noticed the Oracle name and tm there.
This Blog entry by James Gosling says it all .
I have been a Java programmer all my life (now just starting with Flex) and I really cannot believe that Sun is gone .. and MySQL will be gone soon enough.

The rebuild :)

Finally after working out the plan for 2010 (and taking into account my bonuses and raise) I decided to buy a faster computer sooner.
So here it is the config :
CPU : Intel core i7 860 (the best price/performance for a core i7) 2.8 Ghz Quad core +HT and 8MB L3 cache.
Memory : 1 GB (very cheap) Zeppelin 1333 Mhz memory - TODO upgrade it
Motherboard : Gigabyte P55A-UD4 - that is 333 or Serial Ata 3.0 3x power and USB3.0
PSU : used the (2 month)old one a Rasurbo silent power from my old Sempron
Case : Nexus version 1 aka Caterpilar - the quietest case I could find for less then 100Euro
GPU : Gigabyte Ati Radeon 4350 (yes it's slow but it works out nicely for my moderate gaming needs).
The best part is that I managed to build it all my self. I have changed some components before(CPU, GPU,RAM,RAM) but this is the first computer build I do by myself and is .. let's say very empowering to know that you can do this and have total control over your configuration. The shops selling parts would do it for 10$ (3o RON) but there was a 2 week waiting period and you were forced to buy the parts from one shop (and not use your old parts).
So I managed to get the total costs to around 550 Euro's (around 750$) for a great machine with good parts waiting for upgrade.

Needless to say Java /GlassFish/Mysql run a lot faster (up to 5 times faster) than my old computer BUT hard disk performance is still the bottleneck in some operations.
I could have used the money for a core i5 and more memory but these processors are all expensive so I feel fine with what I got since I can always add more RAM when I get some cash.
What I have here is a wonderful bicycle for the mind and used properly it could be an amazing tool and I feel almost guilty when I use it for gaming or web browsing .. hopefully the time and money invested in this machine will be worth it for the next 2-3 years.