I'm Jordan, late 20s live in SF. I like to do fun stuff and am always trying a bunch of new things.

Right now I'm interested in:

Beer - Mostly like IPAs and stouts - favorite every day beer is 21st Amendment's Back in Black. It's always in my fridge.

Notekeeping and Pens - I recently got into fountain pens and have a Pilot Vanishing Point and a Pilot Metropolitan. Am experimenting with all different papers and notebooks. I currently use the Bullet Journal to keep track of stuff I need to do both personally and at work.

Credit cards, frequent flier miles and hotel points - I started a thread in OOT to give people information about credit cards, credit scores, and credit reports. These days it seems like its mostly turned into people asking specific questions about what credit card is best for them, which is fine by me. I've earned probably at least 2mil+ points from credit cards since I started the thread.

Financial independence - I'm saving as much as possible (which is tough in SF) and banking it in my roth IRA first, then my 401k, then in a brokerage account. I keep track of my net worth monthly following in the steps of BudgetsAreSexy, although I don't have a budget.

Food / cooking, bread making - My gf got me a bread book for xmas and I'm trying to make one loaf a week. I was inspired by some of the great bread available in SF, then by this bread thread in OOT. I'm an OK cook, but after I get the bread down this is my next thing to tackle. I'm currently seasoning a new De Buyer carbon steel pan and it smells pretty badly. I am following this page for seasoning directions.

Reselling for profit - I have a pretty good job but nothing motivates me more than finding a great deal to flip. The reselling kick was spurred by getting into credit cards and points as you can earn a lot of points buying thousands of dollars of merchandise to sell provided you can break even on the resale. I use a lot of coupons, deals, credit card category bonuses, and cash back portals to get a ton of points and make some money. Right now I have about 4k in TVs in my apartment that I'm flipping on craigslist due to a good deal at Dell, in the past I've bought thousands of dollars worth of backpacks from ebags, 50+ kindle paperwhites from various staples stores when amazon was OOS, among a bunch of other stuff.

Travel - I guess this goes hand in hand w/ the credit card points. I really enjoy traveling and I'm lucky to be able to do a decent amount for work. But I keep up with travel blogs and flyertalk and have been able to score some great deals. For example, in march my gf and I went to copenhagen for a long weekend for ~$350pp round trip. In Novemeber, we're going to Budapest for a few days, then continuing to Tokyo for a week - for ~$400pp. I really want to see as much of the world as I can, which is part of the reason I'm so focused on saving money so I can retire early (hopefully ~ 40-45) and be able to travel when my body is still able to do cool stuff.

Unfortunately, right now I spend too much time playing DOTA instead of reading and improving myself (mentally and physically). Eventually I hope this will give me some accountability and lead to me becoming a better person.

Not sure what I'm going to write about in general. The things I've done recently that made me want to start this (to keep a log I guess) are:

Seasoning pans
Making hard apple cider from apple juice
Sharpening knives with a whetstone
Buying a bunch of TVs to resell
Baking bread
Taking up lockpicking as a random hobby
About 100 people telling me I needed to start a blog or an email list for travel deals

Welcome to the Blog sub-forum, I look forward to hearing about your passions. Make sure you pace yourself blogging, finding a pace and a level of output you can maintain will help you get closer to a blog routine that you will suceed at.

to a good start and a better future.

Thanks DTD. This weekend I put 4 coats on a new frying pan and made some whole wheat bread.

Brand new w/ wax from factory:


Boiling potato peels to grab most of the wax


Post wax removal:


First coat of oil goes on:


First coat out of the oven:


2nd coat out of the oven:


3rd coat I forgot to take a picture :/

4th coat pic to be added later.



Bread dough mixed up:


Rising:


First loaf rushed (poor oven spring):

Last loaf of bread and a homemade cappuccino


Sesame bread first rise


Flopped out ready to shape


Shaped!


Sesame seeds plated and ready to roll


Covered bread in its proofing basket

will bake later tonight - first time making sesame bread

Flopped out and ready to go:


Done!:


Delicious. I am definitely going to make this one again.

Olive bread! I dont even like olives but I've heard it's good stuff

I like the olive bread at Trader Joes, it's pretty good. Recipe?

I'm following the recipe in Josey Baker's Bread book

Hey man, this seems very awesome and like it will have a lot of valuable info. I'm in.

Hello JL514, it looks like you have a wide array of interests and hobbies. I am very much looking forward to reading more of your blog!

Made a loaf of cinnamon raisin this weekend, which was immediately devoured by my co-workers. This was their favorite so far, but I think the sesame is better. I'm now getting requests at work, lol:



Additionally, I'm a little bummed because it looks like staples shut down my gfs rewards account because we are at the same address. I don't think we'll be able to recycle ink from her account anymore which means we will have $20 less a month to waste on random stuff in staples

Hmm what else. I finished reselling TVs, here's a list of what I sold by size:

3 x 28"
5 x 32"
2 x 50"

And by Brand:

5 x Visio
4 x Samsung
1 x LG

Slowest to sell was a Visio 32" dumb TV. No issues on craigslist except for one TV that when the guy got it home and opened it the screen was cracked from shipping damage. He returned it to me and I got it replaced, and I sold the replacement.

Total cost OOP: $3125.xx
Total profit: $999.08 (includes cashback, CC promo credits, giftcard sales, excludes normal CC cashback of ~2% total purchase).
ROI: ~32%

Worth it to me because I really enjoy trying to find deals and flip them, maybe not worth it for someone else.

Next up are a bunch of Pilot Vanishing Point fountain pens (link) I got a great deal on. They should be arriving at Amazon any day now. I'll update with how I do on those when they sell

Sister got me the Thug Kitchen cookbook for my bday, last night's dinner was the first recipe made from it:

Not going to bother with what that actually is? Looks like raw sweet potato, tarter sauce with aleppo pepper, chitlins, and blonde reux.

That book looks great! I am going to buy it off amazon now the dish looks good too!

Haha it is spicy chickpeas w/ tahini dressing. It's meant to be a wrap but I didn't want to make it a wrap. Also added hummus and carrot strips.

I found the recipe on google books here (click the link in the contents for dressing - 32,33 to jump).

I'm getting a little crazy today and experimenting. Here's the plan:

Cheddar and cracked black peppercorn bread
Cornbread
Sesame Poppy bread

And then some sort of dessert. Deciding between choc chip cookies and apple cinnamon cream scones. Made the gf invite her friends over to help us eat all this crap.

Here are some shots of the progress thus far:

Counter:


Cheddar / Black Pepper going in:


Coming out:


Cornbread going in:
(liquid on top in the corner is BUTTER. yum. At this point I think "crap I think this loaf pan looks too small..."

Cornbread halfway through:
(I guess I was right about it being too small...)

Sesame / Poppy bulk rising start:


More pics to follow and slices etc.

Got myself a present today.. looks like I need more Rye though:

courtesy of gcmap.com

Hey did you play CS in hs/college?

On the ttc server?

I played way more wolfenstein enemy territory and/or warcraft 3 through hs/college, but I played CS for a short period, not sure on the timing, and ttc sounds familiar. If it was a JL514 with a banana phone avatar it was definitely me, I haven't changed much.

I don't remember about the avatar haha. But I remember a JL eventually joking the clan. The leader was TrippaKappa and a couple of the members were Trevor, aznkid and myself, Cloud.

There's a chance I have ya mixed up with another JL but this seems to be a little more than coincidence lol.

In other news, got engaged last night in Tokyo..

Congrats man, that's very awesome. We want more details though!

Update on this: I sold 6 pens and 1 amazon lost. They will wait 30 days and reimburse me if they don't find it or they will add it back to my inventory if they do. For a summary I will consider it sold at the same price as the others.

Total cost for 7 pens when purchased: $617.36
I used $233.50 in staples rewards to bring the total to $384.36, which I put on my credit card.

I earn 5% cashback from my CC on that $384.36 = $19.22
I earn 5% cashback from staples on the $384.46 (roughly, less due to tax) = ~$19
I earn 1% cashback from Visa Savings Edge on the $384.36 = $3.84
I paid $6.19 shipping to ship the items to Amazon = $6.19

Total I paid for 7 pens: $581.49

I sold 6/7 pens for just under $126/ea and after amazon fees I earned ~$103/ea.

So my total earn was $619.26 (+$103 estimated for missing pen) = $722.26 = $140.77 profit.

Probably the hardest part of this was typing this post lol.