This Blog has Moved!

After about a year of no posts here, I thought I should mention this blog moved. As a result of some work my companies are doing and of the work network I've been building, I thought it best to move my blog to a new URL, and make it interesting to family, friends and business associates.

RyanTeeples.com

Hallie helps with the laundry

Our wonderful, sweet little girl is so helpful...and sneaky. 

I swell with pride for my daughter...

As soon as she was old enough to get her hands around a ball, my daughter, Hallie has loved to play with them.

Tonight I found her stuck with her head caught between the wall and a box. She was screaming. So I pulled her free, put her down, and she immediately started crying again and went right back to trying to squeeze behind the box. So I looked behind it, and of course, there was a ping pong ball back there.

So I get it for her, hand it to her, and immediately she gives it to me to put in my mouth and blow it back out. We have 20 foot ceilings in our family room, and if I get enough pressure behind it, I can sometimes launch the ping-pong ball to the ceiling. She just laughs and laughs.

Usually, though, she wants to play fetch. She absolutely loves it. She brings me a ball (tennis, basketball, soccerball, it doesn't matter), I throw it down the hall or into the other room, and she runs and gets it, brings it back, and expects you to throw it again.














The other night, I grew to love her at a whole new level when I found her pushing this pair of footballs around in her stroller like a set of precious infant twins (with leather skin).

This was way more heart-warming (and far less painful) than the time she threw a golf ball at the back of my head.

Anyway, suffice it to say I am very proud of my sports-loving tot. If only I could get Lessley to show that much interest in football.

For me, it's what's on the OUTSIDE that counts

Spend enough time around me and you'll notice something odd: I usually wear my socks inside out. 

I know, in terms of societal norms, that's considered wierd. But here me out and you may just try it yourself. 

Think about it this way: Take a sock and look at the outside. As long as it's not been worn and dirtied, the outside is soft and most of all, smooth. No exposed seams, no balls of lint. 

Now, turn it inside out. What do you see? Lint balls, rough seams, un-even surface and worse: those little strings that get caught between your toes! 

So explain to me why we are supposed to put the sensitive skin of our feet into that stuff, when the outside is super smooth and soft!

So I defy conventional fashion and turn my socks inside out from the day they come out of the bag.  

And speaking of socks right out of the bag:  To me, there's no feeling like putting on a brand-new fresh pair of socks.  

And once a pair of socks has been worn about 10 times, in my book it's time to retire it. Once they lose the softness, and get that yellow-brown tinge, it's time to send them to sock heaven and get some of those wonderfully fresh soft cotton socks new out of the bag. 

Just remember to turn them inside out before putting them on. 

Great Green Gringo Enchiladas

I love good mexican food, but it's hard to make your own authentic mexican. Many a restaraunt has tried, only to fail. In fact, let me take this moment to bash on a popular local mexican place. To protect the reputation of this establishment, I will not call it by name, but will refer to it as Las Hermanas. 

This place is extremely popular, and on a busy weekend can have up to a 347 hour wait just to get a table.  While I do enjoy Las Hermanas chips and salsa, the rest of the menu to me is white-bread wanna-be mexican dishes of junk. 

In fact, I think all the items on the menu are essentially the same: Unseasoned flavorless meat, tortilla and weakly-flavored sauce.  It's beyond me that people love this place. 

But alas, I have a confession: I actually took my wife to this place on our first date (and not to Carl's Jr. as Lessley tries to lead people to believe). I admit it, I really like their chips and salsa, but in my experience, the rest of the menu is like styrophome meat and cardboard tortilla.

Anyway, that rant aside, there are lots of un-authentic mexican foods that are pretty good. One of them is my own personal Great Green Gringo Enchiladas. They are super easy to make, and will quickly become a family favorite. 

Here's the recipe:

You will need:

Chopped cooked chicken (about 2 breasts)

Mexican Blend Cheese (I use the 1/2 pound pre-shredded bag)

8 tortillas (I recommend thin ones)

Pace Brand Medium Green Taco Sauce (comes in a plastic squeeze bottle)

1 can cream of chicken soup

Preheat the oven to 350.

Put the can of cream of chicken into a saucepan on low heat. Add about a third of the bottle of the green taco sauce to the cream of chicken and blend. Let it heat about 5 mintes so it blends well. If you like spicier, add more taco sauce to taste. 

While the sauce is warming, get out a casserole pan and spray it with no-stick spray. 

Now, take a tortilla, put some chicken on it, some cheese on it (don't be stingy) and about a tablespoon of sauce. Then roll it up (you can fold the ends or leave them open) and place it in the casserole pan. Do another 7 tortillas. 

Once you've got them all lined up in there, pour the remainder of the sauce on top and spread it around.  Next, take the remaining cheese and spread it on top evenly. At this point, if you want onions, ollives, green chiles, etc, chop/slice them and put them on top. 

Put it in the oven at 350 until the cheese just starts to have little brown spots. I think it takes about 15 minutes. 

Enjoy!

About Investing

A lot of people have asked me about investing lately and I wanted to offer some thoughts everyone might benefit from.

As you may (or may not) know, I founded an investing site called LearningMarkets.com. I've worked on the marketing and product development of investing related products and services for a while now, and over the course of my work, I've learned investing strategy in markets to fairly great depths.

As people learn about my involvement in the markets they start asking me questions like:

• "What should I invest in?"
• "What is a good stock to buy?"
• "Have you been working out? You look great!"

Well, the answers to these questions are not simple to answer. But a knowledge of investing and retirement planning should be a focus for most people. Yet very few have even a basic knowledge of investing.

So instead of telling people what they should do, I usually try to get people to understand these things about investing:

1. Everyone should have an investment plan
2. When it comes to stock investing there are three ways to go:

• Pay a broker to manage your money (this would include most basic 401(k) or IRAs, mutual funds, etc.),
• Manage your own money/investments
• Do some of both

3. No matter how you plan to invest, you need to take time to learn how the markets and the economy work, at least at a basic level.

Now, this post may seem fairly self-serving, but I'm asked about it so much, I think people will benefit from it. The three principles above were the foundation and motivation for the LearningMarkets.com site I founded (with help from partners).

The site is 100% free, and there's lots of information in the form of written and video lessons. They can help you learn market and investing basics.

So rather than telling people what to do or how to invest, I encourage them to learn the basics, then decide whether to manage their own investments or not. Investing is like raising children: It's frustrating as often as it is fun, it takes experience to get good, and it's extremely rewarding when you retire after a job well done. Oh, and if you do it right, your investments grow up big just like your kids.

If you do have investing questions, you are certainly free to ask me them. I promise I'll answer even the most basic ones.

My victory over "The Man" Part 2: Conclusion, I win!!!

Some of you may remember almost a year ago I posted my story about a victory I was winning over a large mobile phone provider.

If you haven't read that article yet, read it at the link below. You won't understand this post until you've read/re-read the first post.

http://ryanteeples.blogspot.com/2007/10/my-victory-over-man.html

The previous story ended with me getting out of my mobile plan contract, and getting a new phone, only to have that phone break, yet again, three months later.

I thought maybe I could avoid the previous drama by sending them my phone and have them see if there was "moisture damage" again. If there was, I would simply cancel my service and get a new provider. If there wasn't, I could get another new phone without charge and then decide what to do about my service long-term.

So I called the Customer Support line, and told them I'd been through this before.

Me: "Can I send you my phone and have you check it for moisture damage before you send me a new one?"

English-as-a-second-language-Customer-Support-Rep: "We cannot be doing it this way, sir."

Me: "So I have to send you the phone, you have to send me a new one, then you can see if there is 'moisture damage' and then you charge me for the new phone if there is, right?.

English-as-a-second-language-Customer-Support-Rep: "Yes. This is how we must be doing this thing, sir."

Suffice it to say, I didn't want to go through this again. So I called the representative from the Dispute Resolution department who had helped me before when I set up the website to fight the power. I explained the situation and used poorly veiled threats like "I don't want to have to do this all over again," and "I thought we were past the problem, but maybe we're not."

Her response was better than I had hoped: "What phone would you like?"

So I got a nice PDA-phone which I use for work and surfing the web. I was pleased, and didn't have to pay anything more.

But things got better from there.

She then informed me the company would like to buy the web domain I had used to set up the original website to solved my original problem (www.thecompany'sname-lawsuit.com). She asked if I was willing to sell it.

Knowing about how much a web domain is worth, I told her I would also be willing to give the website to them in exchange for phone services, which would yield me more in the end.

Their offer was six months free service.

I had Lessley pick out a phone she liked, and I countered with 12 months of free voice and data service, plus a new phone for Lessley.

They jumped on it. She just needed her legal department to do all the paperwork.

I don't think she expected her legal team would show the speed of a quadriplegic turtle. Month after month went by with me getting an email from her saying she was still waiting for the paperwork, while she credited my account to cover service charges for that month.

Finally, after almost a year of having my account credited while waiting on attorneys, she finally had the paperwork. I signed, and my 12 months of free service officially started last month.

So in the end, I'll be getting about 2 years free service from the telephone provider, for the 1 hour and $6 I invested in a website to resolve my issue.

That's a pretty good return on investment, if I do say so myself.