Introduction

Before I start putting my foot in my mouth on a daily basis for all the world to see (and by all the world, I mean the 3 close relatives who will sympathy-visit this place on a monthly basis), some sort of introductory verbiage is probably in order.

Starting with the most basic of basics, I'm male (it's still there, the last time I checked, anyway), 25 years old, married almost a year, with a little one set to arrive in late November, and am embarking upon a road to complete financial independence.  That last bit is key, because to me, that primarily means independence from having to work.  Since the day I left behind the vast seas of naive, liberal-minded, future pensioned government employees that congregate at our nation's Universities, and became, as my dad calls it, an unsubsidized-net-taxpayer, small portions of something deep inside my brain began to die with each subsequent work day.

As my wife will attest, I have declared on several occasions that people like me are too smart to enjoy life in our current society.  I'm a glass-half-empty type -- except when there's beer in the glass; in that case, I'm a glass all-the-way-empty type -- and when you combine that naturally-skewed outlook with a reasonable degree of intelligence, a Ludwig von Mises Institute membership, an online investment account, and a penchant for reading the news, it is becomes clear that joining the rank and file of the blissfully ignorant is just not in the cards.

Anyway, after web design evolved from something everyone my age (14 at the time) did for fun in the late 90s to something you had to pay someone else to do and maintain, I maintained a small website for a number of years.  At the height of the market crash, however, when I was trying to free up as much cash flow as possible to invest in the plethora of once-in-a-lifetime opportunities that came about, I elected to cancel my hosting service and said goodbye to that part of my existence.

Since then, I have had to subject coworkers, family, and friends to verbal ravings on a regular basis to keep my rage levels within their safe operating range.  Given that my employment as an engineer continually reduces my once brilliant mastery of the English language to something resembling binary, I figured it would be a good idea to jump back on the blogging wagon and see if I could still churn out comprehensible speech.

My plan going forward is to post links and provide commentary on the vast amount of material my eyes consume on a daily basis.  From the second I get home to around 11pm each weekday, I am engrossed in market research and the news in general.  Writing down my thoughts seems like an interesting exercise, and I'm hoping it will maintain my otherwise wasted writing talent.

So with that, I introduce to you Terry's Casino.  The name comes from a former colleague who used that term to describe my daily investment practices during the 2008 crash and subsequent bull run.  It's really quite suitable.