If this is your first time visiting the blog (or you use an RSS reader), this post won’t really make a ton of sense. But the veteran Box Truck Buffs might notice that the site looks quite a bit different today. For reference, the old site:

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The old layout, in all of its Bootstrap-laden goodness. May it rest in sweet responsive peace.

With the truck getting a makeover, I figured it was just about time the blog did the same. Over the past few months, I’ve been working on the redesign haphazardly and in random bursts whenever the mood strikes me, and I think it’s ready (or close enough) for prime time. But why even redesign the blog in the first place?

Once upon a time there was an ugly truck.

He was a lonely soul, a poor mess of rust and twisted metal, left to idle all alone. While certainly a sad state of affairs, it hadn’t always been this way for him. In his youth as a rental truck, he’d helped families move every which way. Later, he became a work truck, the lifeblood of an independent carpenter. As fulfilling as his past had been, it had also left its fair share of chips and dents and scrapes and scratches, which he wore like badges of honor.

I’d previously mentioned that I had an upcoming work trip to Zürich, and in keeping with my usual blogging tardiness, that trip was two months ago. Actually, I (perhaps ironically) got back from India a few weeks ago, so expect that post soon in a few millennia. But anyway, let’s talk about Switzerland: a country of cheese, chocolates, and armed neutrality.

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Waiting to leave SFO on a gloomy evening.

As it turns out, Zürich is kinda far away. Like, 5,889.11 miles, give or take a few. Luckily, the Wright Brothers solved this problem a while ago, so off I went on a fancy, new-fangled flying machine in relative luxury. I’ve been consistently impressed with the quality of economy class on international flights (first Lufthansa, and now Swiss), they really put our domestic carriers to shame. Between the hot meals, warm cloths so you aren’t bathing in your own face-grease the whole flight, and honest-to-God leg room, my mind is legitimately blown every time. Fun fact that I didn’t know until recently: foreign airlines can’t operate point-to-point routes within the US. Given that, it makes sense that domestic airlines aren’t really trying that hard, they only have to compete with like two other equally awful carriers on most routes.

Each financial post I do brings at least a few questions about my plan or different investment strategies. Before we get to it, I’ll start with my usual disclaimer that I have no background in finance or financial planning, and taking financial advice exclusively from the guy living in a box truck probably isn’t a sound strategy. With that out of the way, let’s get to the questions.

Do you invest in bitcoins?

I don’t think it rained once when I interned in the Bay in 2014. The summer of 2014, to be specific. Doing a bit of overzealous extrapolation, I came to the ^incorrect conclusion that it never rains in the Bay, which sounded just splendid to me. Before I moved out here to start a full-time job in 2015, I donated my boots, raincoat, and any umbrellas I had. When I actually got here and bought the truck, I didn’t even bother checking for leaks. You can tell where this is going, and anyone from the area knows that I made a grave miscalculation. I found this out the hard way during my first winter here.