The Often-Overlooked Downside to Education

Well this past week has been a bit tough for my wife as she inevitably caught the bug that was going around her class. It's never fun to watch classmates go through all the symptoms of sore throat, coughing, etc while knowing in the back of your mind that in all likelihood you will be having the same experiences shorty. Unfortunately now that Kym is home sick, it is my turn to do the same...

When it comes to cold season, I try to strike a balance somewhere between eating other people's food off the floor and acting like one of my co-workers last year who refused to touch anything communal in the office, even putting her hand inside her sweater in order to open doors like the schizophrenic Bill Murray in What About Bob. My happy compromise tends to involve frequent dollops of Purell Hand Sanitizer, most especially before eating and trying to remember not to rub my eyes (though of course having two cats in the home does not help this).

Seeing all this going on makes me start to think that an online business school would be a good idea to avoid this annual ordeal.

Move over Apprentice

I've been watching Kitchen Nightmares with Gordon Ramsey recently and its actually a very interesting show to watch from a business standpoint. The basic premise of the show which originally began in Britain, is that the foul-mouthed but extremely successful and talented Scottish chef travels to restaurants which are in disarray due to various reasons and he tries to save them in a week's timeframe. It's not only an interesting look at what goes into creating a successful business, it's also a fascinating look at personality pitfalls of owners which lead to failure.

Over a few episodes, I've noticed a common theme which is the desire to be 'unique'. People seem to much prefer attempting to create their own niche rather than perhaps fit into that is already their. For example there was a pub restaurant in a small town in England that was attempting to be a fine dining restaurant when its potential customers really wanted pork pies and fish and chips. Certainly having pride in one's business is a double-edged sword when one tries to break boundaries too much rather than adapt. This is probably why franchise restaurants are becoming more and more successful these days as the owners' pride does not interfere as much in the restaurants concept.

For me personally, the other effect of the show is making appreciate no longer being in the food industry. It amazes me how deeply ingrained the culture of restaurant is that people simply expect to be absolutely berated by the boss/head chef while getting paid low wages and often expected to work long hours. It seems like no other industry short of human rights-abusing sweatshops is this the accepted norm. I'm just glad I'll never be back in that situation again.

The Market Always Provides

It's interesting how there are so many market niches out there that we go completely unaware of. For instance with cat food, I had hardly even looked at the fancy feast or other top shelf cat food and always simply bought the cheapest cat food that my cats will still like. Growing up, I saw cats get addicted to the expensive wet food and I was in no hurry to do let them do that. I figured that the expensive cat food was just due to a combination of factors such as advertising/branding costs and filling a niche for well-off people who want to feel like their indulging their cats.

However, at one point I bought a certain cat food that was on sale that week, and one of my cats began to have an allergic reaction to it. Simultaneously, my other cat was starting to get overweight due to an insatiable appetite which was outweighing, so to speak, the exercise he was doing running all around the house.

Doing a little research into the field, I found a whole world of different cat foods. I found that every one of the brands available at my supermarket were awful in that they were filled with grain while cats of course are carnivores and can easily lead to the weight gain I was seeing. Even brands like Fancy Feast and Science Diet, the more expensive brands at my supermarket are quite looked down upon by those in the know. This was going to require at least
heading to Petco/Petsmart to get a proper brand and perhaps even a specialty pet shop. This was the best list I found:


1st Tier:
Solid Gold
Innova EVO
Innova
California Natural
Nature's Variety Prairie
Evanger's (not the vegetarian formula)
Wysong (wet)

2nd Tier:
Chicken Soup
Blue Buffalo
Merrick (wet)
Pet Promise (wet)
Wellness
Newman's Own Organics
Natural Balance
Felidae

3rd Tier:
Eagle Pack
Nutro (Complete Care and Max Cat)
Diamond Naturals
Royal Canin
Wysong (dry)
Pet Promise (dry)

4th Tier (last resort) :
Iams
Science Diet
Eukaneuba
Purina One
Diamond
Trader Joe's
Whole Paws

5th Tier (avoid):
Fancy Feast
Purina Cat Chow
Special Kitty (Wal-Mart brand)
Whiskas
Meow Mix
Store Brands

Fortunately I did not have to go too far to find a good brand--my nearby Petco carried 'Blue Buffalo' at a decent enough price and even had a 'weight management' version to boot. Still, needless to say it costs more than my previous Friskies. I should probably be careful exposing myself to more things to spend money on, the market always provides!

On the Necessity of Driving

To drive or not to drive? That was certainly not the question in San Diego where even biking was all but impossible with the way the roads are built and city was planned. However here in D.C., its something we are starting to wonder about. Kym is taking the metro to school and any other social activity really (since all of her friends prefer to take the metro as well) and I am able to take a 20-minute walk to my job each day (which is fortunate since parking would be a huge pain). As we pay for auto insurance, parking fees, gas and maintenance, we are starting to wonder whether wallets would be better off without the four-wheeler.

Really, my main argument against ridding ourselves of it is simply convenience. After all, it is nothing new to spend money on convenience is it? We pay more for an apartment so that its a location that's easier to get to places from, we buy prepared or delivery food since its clearly more convenient than cooking from scratch, and we have plenty of kitchen gadgets sure to make tasks easier when we do.

However, a new company is starting to take off that pokes a lot of holes in this argument: Zipcar. Though I don't recall seeing it in San Diego, it is a company that is really filling the niche for people in our situation who only need the car to run occasional errands like grocery shopping. Basically you're given a card that you can swipe for keyless entry to the car at a time you reserve and are charged an hourly rate for this.

It all seems like a great idea, but I'm just not there yet. Too many times it seems I will need to grab the car and get something at the last minute. This morning there was something wrong with the fish and I had to get to Petco asap for antibacterial. Or other times we will have everything we need for dinner but realize we have run out of one key ingredient. It's easy to say 'be better organized on your shopping trips' but that can be very difficult if we're talking one shopping trip per week for everything from vegetables and meat down to olive oil and stock cubes. I'm not going to say going carless will never happen, but for now the sound of keys jingling in my pocket is a comforting one.

Working With Your Hobby Or For It?

Kym and I just bought and aquarium and after cycling it for about a week we finally got to go fill it with fish. Although for basic aquarium supplies like water conditioner, gravel and hood we went to Petco/Petsmart and a modest local aquarium store, when it came time to buy the fish themselves, we both thought it was definitely worth the time, gas money and slight premium to go to a top-notch aquarium store out in Bethesda that has some rave reviews on Yelp, Congressional Aquarium.

The drive wasn't too bad fortunately as it was early Saturday evening (although you can never be sure on the Beltway out here). Soon after we got there we realized it was definitely worth the drive. Not only did the store have a huge selection of all different fishes, the staff were very knowledgeable and helpful. At first we were planning have a tank of South American Cichlids, and we were referred to a staff member who was their resident 'expert' on the fishes. Without hesitation he then went through all of the fish that would work well in the tank, asking us questions about our preferences and making recommendations from that. Clearly not the canned information you get at many of the larger stores these days. Unfortunately one of the bits of information he gave us is that with a 55-gallon tank, he only recommended we have 3-4 fish total in their since they can grow so large (certainly not aiming to make a large sale this guy!). So in the end we decided to go for a completely different type of tank set-up which didn't seem to phase him at all and he referred us to another employee who knew a lot about 'community fish' tank setups.

When we headed off with our bags of fish it struck me that all these workers were going to be there till late that Saturday night which made me thankful again that I am out of the whole working weekends, nights and holidays schedule that I was stuck in when younger. And yet, it seemed very apparent that these people were truly doing something loved. All the employees we talked to seem to own multiple large tanks and had the kind of knowledge on the subject that one only acquires through passion. This is of course not a rare question as most everyone encounters this as they attempt to balance the benefits of working in a field you have a passion for while not ending up in their mid-thirties struggling to make ends meet with their degree in Native American Art.

A Plug for Greasemonkey

Anyone not familiar with Greasemonkey should really get acquainted with this great addition to the browsing process. The basic premise for various reasons, there are features a website could offer that would enhance the browsing experience of its visitors, but which would likely affect its bottomline whether by hindering advertisers or perhaps enabling competitors. Or there is the issue that many websites have to be tailored to the lowest common denominator and/or first-time user resulting in a website that is intuitive to use but possibly not as efficient as it could be for an experienced user. Heck maybe there's just a website with a lot of great content but not the best design.

The first step of course is to install the extension for your browser. The preferred browser for Greasemonkey is Firefox, since IE, Opera, and Safari's versions won't necessarily be compatible with all of the Greasemonkey scripts (though most of them will work so still worth the download even if you set on using one of the latter three browsers).

For downloading Greasemonkey scripts, by far the best site I have found is Userscripts. From there, I'd suggest using the search box with your most visited sites and scroll through the results for anything that tickles your fancy. Sometimes it's even worth it to look for a site that has something specific about it that really irritates you. For instance, I like reading the articles off of ESPN.com but I detest the fact that a video immediately begins playing that I end up frantically trying to pause when I forget that I have my sound on loud while in a situation where the blaring noise is rather embarrassing and rude. Lo and behold I am certainly not the only one who feels this way and someone has written a script here that removes not only the video but most of the annoying ads.

A couple of my current favorites are:

IMDB - add Rottentomatoes info which adds Rotten Tomatoes professional film critic-based to the IMDb movie pages and their user-based ratings. It is obvious why IMDb might not want to (or even be allowed to under copyright?) include this in their page, yet I find this incredibly useful now that studios seem to be 'stuffing the ballot box' so to speak, on their when their big-budget films are first released. Meanwhile I like IMDb's features overall more than than Rotten Tomatoes, so this is a great best-of-both-worlds solution.

Google Images Auto AutoPager is both very creative and very useful. Not only does it change the link on images in Google's Image Search to go directly to the image rather than the original site which made you have to click an extra link for every image (never quite understood why they do that--something to do with copyright perhaps?) but it also turns the search results into a never ending page that automatically loads the next group of images as you approach the bottom of the page. If you've ever reached page 14 of a google image search looking for that perfect image you'll understand how incredibly useful this script is.

The iGeneration

Since my wife Kym began law school she's has been thrown full force into the world of Facebook. Facebook can be a great tool for keeping up with friends but her professors and advisers have repeatedly stressed that it is a double-edged sword to be wary of. Apparently, for highly important (and costly) positions such as lawyers, it has not just become possible that an employer will check their younger applicants' profiles on social sites such as Facebook, but it has almost become a virtual guarantee.

Oftentimes, when learning the world of applications and resumes writing we rely on older standard advice coming from books or long-standing career counselors. However, this "iGeneration" (as I was recently informed I am apart of) who has grown up with the internet both socially and professionally is encountering brand new issues as the barrier between social anonymity and professional careers breaks down. Other examples include having a different email for resumes than friends (probably not a great idea to but clubber_girl69@hotmail.com under the contact info) and googling your name to ensure it doesn't return results that might cast you in an unflattering light in addition to keeping an objective watch on your Facebook profile (again, probably not the best idea to list "porn" under your list of favorite movies as I have seen some profiles do).

Is There Such a Thing as Investing Too Early?

When should one start investing for retirement? I've heard once you hit the latter half of your twenties, once you graduate from college (assuming you go), and even once you move out of the house and get your first paycheck. I have even met some people who began investing while still in high school with their savings account.

Yet I do wonder how objective this advice is? Is it being given by people who have carefully analyzed the pro's and con's of saving from an early age or is it people who are more quickly approaching their retirement, wish they had more money in their account, and put numbers into a excel spreadsheet that tells them "Gosh if I had invested $500 per month starting when I was 14, I'd have a lot more money right now!". I've lost count of the amount of times people have shown the 'magic of compound investing' as if it were this amazing enlightenment. In reality however, I'd say it exaggerates its benefit since it isn't really factoring in the inflation that will have a severe impact on the savings and it underestimates the financial realities of trying to put a significant portion of your money away when you are still at the very beginnings of a career.

Personally I believe that one should really start investing when you have a real 'career' job. Putting away money while earning a few dollars above minimum wage will look pointless in a decades time when you're earning multiples of that income.

Granted, I could be falling prey to the same rationalizations that I accuse those investment advisers to exhibit, but I still feel confident in that assertion.

Buying the Euro with Jacko

Back in April I mad a post about an intriguing forex trading strategy where the basis was pretty straightforward: buying at each 100-pip level with a 50-pip trailing stop loss, but the key is only to buy in on direction. That post was made on April 21st back when the EURUSD was reaching an imposing resistance level of a 4 year-high meaning it was likely not going to be the best time to buy. However, even then, if you had employed this strategy according to its simple rules (making sure to also employ the strategy of not rebuying if price goes 50 pips past your stoploss until it returns to your last buystop), this strategy would have been very successful as we have seen the Euro make an all-time high of 1.4300 this week. How successful exactly you would have been exactly of course depends on how much of the account you were willing to risk each time the 50 pip trailing stoploss was set.

However, anyone who might think of employing this strategy immediately should be aware of some quite big new in the currency exchange market which is that China has just launched up a $200 billion foreign exchange investment fund. It is difficult to know (well, impossible really) what they are going to do exactly with this, but there is a great deal of speculation that since China has bought so much of the United States' debt (thank you Uncle Sam!) that they have an extremely vested interest in the strength of the dollar and as such, might attempt to manipulate the foreign exchange market by shorting the Euro and Pound. Again it is impossible to know for certain what they will do, but it is probably advisable to watch the price of the Euro from a distance in the near future as we already see the Euro beginning to retrace after its recent surging climb.

Missed Life Lessons

It's interesting how you can grow up and realize that there are certain things you just somehow never learned about. Even worse is if there isn't an easy place of reference to find out. An example of this for me is "dress codes". They never really came up in high school or with parents, so how exactly is this information disseminated. Well, no need to think about that too much anymore with the internet. There is a great little website someone cooked up here called the Dress Code Guide. All you have to do is enter in a few variables such as gender, time of day and the what the given dress code is and the website spits out concrete descriptions of what to wear. A great site to remember for clueless fashion people such as myself.

Idealism at Its Finest

There was an article yesterday that was trying to argue that instituting a four-day work week would solve a litany of the world's problem. When people try to argue something like this (at least in the manner he does), I just have to wonder have they ever read anything about economics? But then again, that doesn't even begin to cover the logical hypocrisies littered over this article.

First the author makes the argument that we would drive less. For some reason this is split into eight different reasons that basically just cover the sam negative aspects of driving. And yet, when I think of the absolute worst traffic and congestion of the year, I think of the first day of three-day weekends. Furthermore, the less commuters there are, the less incentive and money there is to fund the infrastructure of public transportation which is one of the only real solutions to traffic and its associated problems (money, pollution, congestion, time spent in traffic, etc.).

He then naively postulates that people would suddenly work harder and skip work less during a four-day week even though their would be absolutely no incentives in place to encourage such good behavior! The idea that people would suddenly start spending all free time cooking, gardening, playing with children and shopping at Whole Foods if they only had one more day off is ludicrous.

My favorite parts though are where he argues how much money we would save! There would be less road work (ignore the fact that a lower GDP would lead to less tax money for roads), less money spent on daycare (ignore the fact that the parent is not working that day at job which undoubtedly would pay more than the money a daycare costs per day) and of course less money spent on consumer goods at Walmart (since if only I had Fridays off, I would never have bought a toaster and plates to eat on from Walmart this month).

Furthermore, what about all of the people who work for the betterment of mankind? The nonprofit workers, the scientists working on renewable energy, the doctors and nurses caring for sick people, etc.?

I am not quite clear whether the author thinks all people with days off spend them sitting on their hands at home spending no money or if he imagines that employers will pay their employees the same for a four-day week as they would for a five. The bottom line is that anyone who thinks a drastic reduction in number of market transactions would increase market efficiency needs to go read some Adam Smith. I will agree with his final point: an extra day off feels great!

A lot of the time investing can seem like quite a boring process. Well if you're a soccer fan, the next time you have some spare investing money around here's an option for you: "My Football Club", currently sporting (har) 50,000 members who are pooling their money together to eventually launch a takeover bid for a club.

As a soccer fan, I have to say this looks like a very fun idea. In fact, given the success outside of this country of the video game Football Manager, where one controls nothing in-game, only managerial activity, I'm surprised this isn't even more popular. This is particularly true as many fans are becoming increasingly disenfranchised from the sport with rising ticket prices, ridiculous wages, and billionaire owners going into debt buying championships.

This seems like a great application of Web 2.0 as owners will even vote online for team selection and other such activities. The fact that Manchester United, one of the richest clubs in the world is only tenth place in the voting for which club to take over is a good sign that the members are at least somewhat grounded in realism. Hopefully if and when the takeover happens, they will keep the same open spirit that the group seems to have now.

Unfortunately I think I'll have a hard time convincing my wife to spend $70 to buy shares in a TBD sports team right now. Perhaps I should just focus on applying to business school.

One of the most difficult tasks in this life can be building good habits, particularly when it is done autonomously. It's now become the cliche that fitness centers around the country are jam-packed the 30 days following New Year's only to have the numbers severely taper down thereafter.

I watched a fascinating BBC documentary called The Human Mind a few years ago that followed an otherwise normal person with a severe case of road rage as he attempted to shed this habit through various psychological techniques over the course of some months. The end result was failure--inferring that, as much as we might like to believe otherwise, significant personality change is extremely rare.

Still we all know 'that guy', the person who dug deep and turned their academic career around, the person who went from addict to clean and sober, or the person who lost a lot of weight and has kept it off.

So we continue to try to build good habits in hope that we can be an exception. Fortunately there are many of these people on the internet and along with them, some great Web 2.0 methods for tracking and psychologically reinforcing these habits.

To start off with here is a great article at Lifehacker about a great tip Jerry Seinfeld once gave to the blog's author (a beginning stand-up actor at the time). Some who don't know Jerry Seinfeld well might see him as somewhat of a strange person to take productivity advice from, but in actuality he is known in the industry as one of the hardest working comics. If you like the idea, here is a convenient year-long calendar to print off and follow your progress.

Some more advanced methods for of tracking include:

Sciral Consistency - A desktop solution for tracking tasks that need to be done every certain number of days. While a great product in the making, It was a bit too confusing at first and after putting in the time to learn it, I realized it needed a few more key features to be developed before I would use it on a regular basis (specifically the ability to schedule tasks you do a certain number of times per week or month).

Loopdo - A method for keeping track of your longer-term goals.

Everyday Systems - Similar to the Seinfeld method, it keeps track of daily consistence in practicing a habit through a color coded system.

Joe's Goals - My personal favorite, it has a unique method of keeping track of how often you do a variety of tasks and lets you put down a point system for the different goals giving you a sum total at the end of the day. After long-term use, you can even view charts of your success in keeping habits. A bit geeky, but fun nonetheless. It has a very intuitive design as well. Brings out the competitive spirit in me a bit, which in this case can only be a good thing!

Just after announcing their new line-up of ipods, Steve Jobs also announced a $200 price cut on the iPhone, released just over two months ago. In an attempt to appease those early adopters who had just purchased the iPhone for $600, Jobs offered a $100 rebate. The catch? It is specifically a $100 rebate to the Apple store.

Apparently this is not sitting well with those $100 gift certificate holders who view it as money going right back into Steve's backpocket. Now while I can understand their frustration that they are looking a bit like suckers, at the end of the day, isn't that what happens to all early adopters? Early adopters reap the benefit of not having to wait a small time period after a new technology is released in exchange for certain consequences. One of those main consequences is that new technology inevitably has a price cut not too long after its initial release along with increased possibility of buggy software like we've seen in some parts of Windows Vista this year or defective hardware as was seen in the Xbox 360's recently released driving wheel accessory.

More than anything, the ridiculousness of the complaints is that they should be happy they were given anything at all (though having perused the Apple store before, I can't recall too many items <$100). After all, basic price theory dictates that these consumers deemed the iPhone (for some reason) worth the $599. In fact in all likelihood, they probably valued it as worth more than that as they were so eager to dispense with their cash, even waiting in line or buying off ebay and craigslist. This reminds me, hopefully some of those worthless people who buy up stock in iPhones just in order to then resell it on Craigslist had overbought their supply of iPhones and got a bit of comeuppance with this price cut.

Although some people (probably myself included) might say there is already an overabundance of internet travel sites, what with Expedia, Orbitz, Travelocity, Priceline, TripAdvisor, Kayak (my personal favorite) and others, I believe there is a new one that deserves mention: Yapta.com. The basic premise is that since the prices of flights tickets can fluctuate in a seemingly random pattern, instead of conducting the headache of constantly searching for prices to see if a good deal has come up, you give your criteria to Yapta.com along with the price you are looking for (non-binding unlike Priceline), and Yapta conducts this search daily until it finds a flight that meets your criteria and sends you an email alert.

For me this sounds perfect since I live 5+ hours of flying away from both my wife and my own families and of course am buying at least a couple of pairs of tickets per year. This will do a great job of taking the stress out of the process.

A good idea probably is to combine this service with Farecast, a new Seattle startup that focuses on airfare predictions along with buy/wait recommendations.

Definitely should be using this soon as the holiday season approaches (my goodness is it really?)

An interesting list I came across:

Top Paying Keywords on Adsense
austin dwi	$66.89
austin dwi attorney	$58.30
san diego dui attorney	$54.56
houston criminal attorney	$47.44
san diego dui	$42.83
dwi texas	$40.89
dui attorneys	$40.19
dwi attorney	$39.90
dui attorney	$39.11
dui attorney	$39.11
dui attorney	$39.11
dui lawyer	$38.49
lawyer dui	$38.49
dui lawyers	$37.57
federal criminal attorney	$35.80
car accident lawyer	$35.67
dwi attorneys	$35.32
criminal lawyers	$34.19
new york criminal attorney	$33.95
auto accident attorney	$33.19
auto accident lawyer	$33.13
dwi lawyer	$32.31
dwi lawyer	$32.31
texas dwi law	$31.02

I find this interesting not as a tool for earning money on a website, but rather as what companies value a single lead so much and are able to turn such a profit on a single lead that they are willing to pay such an extreme premium on it. I think its safe to say where the overwhelming money is: law. Really though this should come as no surprise since everyone knows the lucrative nature of the law. If we analyze what specific type of law, we see that it overwhelmingly DUI lawyers--a scenario where the client is fairly likely going to use a lawyer anyway so the likely scenario is that the advertising is so high because the competition among DUI lawyers is extremely fierce.

It seems to be a common statistic thrown around these days: CEO wages at big companies are increasing at a much faster rate than their workers. Personally, I have two minds about this. On the one hand there is the obvious shock at such statistics while one conjures images of greedy corporate bigwigs hoarding money and flying around in private jets while their Flynt, Michigan employees struggle without health insurance. While the coloring of this image might be a bit oversaturated, the reality of the gap in income is certainly there.

At the same time, I can't help but realize that we are in a free market. Assuming the company isn't some fraudulent natural resource monopoly a la Enron, the money it made was given willingly by customers, the CEO was hired freely by a board, stockholders or other authority group that deemed the person worth such a salary and the employees took jobs with full knowledge of what they would be paid.

Yet, do I really know what goes on behind the closed doors of executive and stockholder meetings? Is it safe to assume that it works like as an efficient market should, or is it really more of a good ol' boys network where jobs are passed around the elite as they scratch each others' backs? The more I read about George W. Bush's past and his current method for administration appointments (ex-roomates, family friends, etc.), the less confident I am that I do know what really goes on behind those doors.

Great news for me: I was able to find a job very quickly here in Washington D.C. (off of Craigslist of course). I am not quite sure why it seemed to be significantly easier to find a job here in D.C. than it was in San Diego. One reason could be simply the different job markets in the two areas. San Diego never seemed to be a great place to grow into a career. The job opportunities seemed to be very stratified into two groups: people finishing off their careers in high-level positions and unskilled workers (probably highly influenced by the large immigration numbers from Mexico). Of course, there were workers between these two groups, but that was always my impression; certainly it was no bell curve.

The other possible reason for this is that in San Diego I was dealing with the difficult dilemma most every recent graduate faces: getting experience without experience. Thus once I got my experience in San Diego, it was relatively easy to build on that experience in Washington D.C. Certainly my past experience fit in well with the job I have ended up at.

Finally, I have to admit, it could have simply been dumb luck. There are certain facets of this job that fit very extremely well with the experience that I was able to put on my resume so I have to accept the possibility that the occurrence of finding a job so quickly might have only been good fortune and I might very well not be so lucky next time.

Now that I am beginning to settle here in Washington D.C., it it time to come back to reality after some weeks of traveling and moving cities, and find a job. One thing I'm very thankful for is that in D.C., Craigslist charges $25 per job posting. This doesn't just pay for the running costs (and profit) of Craiglist, it discourages spammers and temp agency recruiters from posting a litany of fake jobs that get your hopes up before realizing the scam after a few emails and/or phone calls. Hopefully the $25 charge doesn't stop employers from posting jobs they otherwise might, but then again, the kind of employer for which $25 is is too much to pay for human resources, probably wouldn't be a great employer anyway.

Well this past week has been pretty crazy. With my wife going to Georgetown next year, we have finally had the week that I had been dreading for a long time. After we had reviewed all of our options for moving such as u-haul trucks, trailers, alternative moving companies, paid movers, pods, media mail and freight shipping, we decided that the best idea was simply to sell all of our furniture and everything else we couldn't fit into the car on Craigslist and then drive on over cross-country. Although there are of course some things I have learned from the experience, overall the entire episode went pretty well. Most of our furniture only took a small loss versus what we had paid for it originally (fortunately we had bought it all off of Craigslist in the first place). The small stuff was probably where we learned our lesson--we probably should have started selling it earlier, since most of it ended up being donated to the local Baras thrift store on the last day. But then again the Baras foundation seems like a pretty worthy cause so I guess really everything worked out fine!

An interesting new entrepreneurial opportunity someone is attempting: The PhotoViolationMeter. The concept is to revolutionize the parking meter industry by allowing such things as payment with credit card, automatic incremental payment by credit card while you're away from the meter, payment by phone, automatic phone call when your time is running out, wirelessly informing an official of a violation.

However I do wonder if this is entrepreneurship will be successful for they might have been a bit too trusting in the city governments that would be purchasing this. First there will be a rather large expenditure to outfit all of the parking meters with such devices. Furthermore, there will be a direct link to reduced city income if they give out less parking tickets. From the perspective of the city employee's union, they will likely lose jobs as this technology makes some of the more manual labor jobs obsolete. Who exactly going to pull the trigger on such an program? This could be case of not knowing one's customers well enough, but time will tell.

Visiting Disneyland and California Adventure park this week has impressed upon me the importance of branding and marketing. Like the previous time I visited the parks, I am befuddled by Disneyland's continuing supremacy over California Adventure in terms of popularity. From my view (and everyone else in my party), California seems clearly superior: Newer, faster rides, cleverer design, better food, alcohol served in the park, prettier and of course, less crowded. Still Disneyland has much more people in it and I even overheard someone coming out of California Adventure park saying they 'hated it' because of it 'hardly has any rides' which I can only think is a lack of marketing on California Adventure's part, because I simply can't see how that's the case.

I suppose the other possibility is that California Adventure fills a different niche, specifically age groups. Admittedly, we didn't have any young children with us who might still be captured by the 'magic of Disney' and thus would prefer the shows and all the different animated characters of the movies whereas we were quite happy to jump on fast exciting roller coasters and relax on the pier with a Karl Strauss.

Well I've finally 'upgraded' my Verizon phone that was on its last legs with Verizon's 'new every two [years]' plan. I'm almost a bit surprised at myself that I went with Verizon again when I can see several things wrong with them.
1) They're just plain expensive compared to many other plans
2) They don't have the most exciting selection of phones (3 to be precise)
3) I won't get the special deals for new customers that I could with other carriers
4) If I ever win the lottery, an iPhone will not work for it
5) Most annoyingly I think is the crippling software Verizon phones come with whether it be for ringtones, photos, mp3s or whatever else.

However, there is one area in which Verizon (at least according to Consumer Reports surveys) reigns supreme and that is reception. And I remember one particular summer living in an apartment where I did not get service and that was just unbearable. Even standing on a hill outside my house was awful where conversation where constantly interrupted with static.

Also with a $5 usb cable off of ebay and BitPim software I am able to bypass some of the ridiculous restrictions Verizon put on it.

I came across a pretty shocking video today which demonstrates how companies are attempting to post advertisements for job openings in local papers in hopes that they will not receive applicants and therefore be allowed to hire a much less expensive foreign worker through an H-1B visa. In fact, they are not just hoping, they are actually hiring experienced lawyers to tailor job advertisements to succeed in that aim.

When you think about the economics of it all and the prevalence of unethical behavior in the business world, this shouldn't really come any great surprise, but it's still very interesting to see it right there on video. From a prospective employee's standpoint, it does leave one in quite a conundrum as to what field to enter. With outsourcing, at least you could try to enter a field where they need works in the flesh, but if they're importing foreign workers into the country without even looking at domestic applicants first, it doesn't seem to leave much hope for us American workers. I guess the answer is to rely on networking as much as possible, don't end up in the ocean of anonymous job applicants.

Although I have been sufficiently scared into most likely never entering the business world of food and beverage service, I think I have stumbled upon a niche in San Diego recently.

A friend has come to visit us who has a particular penchant for ice cream, and so we've been to Coldstone a couple of times the past week. I hadn't actually been there before but I knew it was similar to an old high school haunt of mine, Marbletop (now unfortunately named 'Mix' due to stupid copyright issues). However after visiting Coldstone a couple of times, I definitely noticed something was missing, and not just that I was no longer 16 and unable to go out to bars with friends. This place was corporate and I'm not one of those people that refuses to ever go to Starbucks based upon some sort of anti-large corporation principles; I mean that it has this feel of a fast food chain. The store had the stereotypical middle-aged manager serving you who was clearly unhappy to be working at a place like this at this stage in their life, all pre-made menu boards with names of sundaes right out of a brainstorming session of overpaid marketing managers and finally, uncomfortable space-saving plastic chairs all in the corporate red and white colors. I think San Diego could definitely use one of these create-your-own ice cream mix places but with some open dining space, comfortable chairs, nice music, soft lighting and a comfortable friendly atmosphere (one place near me that has this down very well is Claire De Lune, a local coffee shop).

Well if I ever do get an itch again to get into the restaurant industry, this is an idea that would probably let me lead a less crazy and stressful life than some others.

Last weeks at work are always a bit weird. You of course end up doing that “Keep in touch!” “Yeah, definitely!” thing with people who you’ve talked to for over three minutes maybe once or twice. As well you say how you’ll miss working here when in reality you’ve been counting the days down for a few weeks now (which has really made it drag out it seems, not sure if that was the best idea). It’s been a bit tough getting the constant question of ‘so what are you going to do? Do you have a job lined up?’ I can’t say I ever get this question from people my age. Without an extremely direct contact to someone actually in charge of hiring, these days you cannot possibly really have a job lined up for someone with skill level. Employers already prefer not to look at out-of-town candidates as it is because the unreliability of them is too often a waste of their time (canceled interviews, canceled job offers, etc.). When you’re looking for a job with a relatively low wage who will obviously not help with any moving expenses, trying to send in applications from here is as much a waste of my time as it is theirs.

I think its time to look for more education. I think its safe to say that an additional degree would have made the coming months much easier.

Although I still have trouble justifying spending the ever-increasing cost of purchasing movie tickets, sometimes it really is worth it. Most recently was the movie Hot Fuzz where the audience laughing hysterically together made it even more enjoyable. If its up to me, the only two movies I will justify spending that much money on are comedies and special effect bonanzas. Of course they also must be well reviewed at the same time. My current movie barometer of choice is IMDb, where I’d say <7.0=bad movie, 7.0-7.4=decent movie, probably a rental, 7.5-7.9=Definitely worth a look if the synopsis/cast fits my tastes and 8.0+=Should definitely consider seeing this movie even if it didn’t catch my eye from the synopsis/cast.

Unfortunately, this method of gauging movies is beginning to fall apart. Whereas a year or two ago, this was pretty dang accurate from the get go, lately movies can start out high and then slowly descend as 2nd and 3rd waves of people see and vote on it. An especially good example of this was the recent Spiderman 3 which began at +8.0 after a couple premieres and even into the first weekend, but then afterwards began a steady descent to where it now sits at 6.8 (which is a much more accurate rating in my opinion).

I can see two reasons for this decline: the paranoid cynic in me says that when millions and millions of dollars are on the line and more and more people use IMDb, studios would be stupid NOT to hire people to beef up those numbers in the beginning before they get pushed down by the floods of real voters with more accurate ratings. The less conspiratorial reason might be that the people seeing the movie opening weekend are the more rabid ‘fanboys’ who have such high expectations and love the story/actors/director/writers from the outset that they will end up loving and defending it to the bitter end.

If this current trend continues, I need to either abandon IMDb altogether as a rating system and use something like Rotten Tomatoes or else filter the movies I’m willing to see either making sure it was released at least 2 weeks ago or else be a movie not prone to these ‘fanboys’ by its nature (like comic book derived movies, sequels, or worst of all both). The problem is that for comedies, it is essential to see it while the audiences are still pretty big, though I suppose if you go on a Friday or Saturday night, you’ll still get that a couple of weeks later.

Instead of going to work this past Monday, the division I’m in was fortunate enough to go to a retreat instead. Apparently the previous year’s ‘retreat’ was sitting in a conference room for several hours listening to boring seminars. As a result, people upset by this decided to organize this year’s retreat in a much more enjoyable fashion.

The goal of the seminar was to improve our ‘communication’ skills which sounded very worrisome on the outset, but in actuality the talk was reminiscent of Psych 101 lectures i.e. pop psychology, which I at least always find entertaining. The topic was Multiple Intelligences. Basically, the idea is that there are different kinds of intelligences such as logic, musical, interpersonal, etc. and people have strengths and weaknesses (or ‘emptys’ as the politically-correct speaker asked us to term it) in each of the nine types. The justification for this lecture was that by keeping in mind how co-workers’ intelligences differed from our own, we could better communicate with them e.g. write an email to a verbal person, go on a walk with a kinesthetic person, do a powerpoint presentation for visual people, etc.

I was pretty sure where I would stand from hearing the descriptions of the intelligences before doing a self-evaluation of which type I was. Strongest in logic, weakest in linguistic (apologies to my readers) and the rest was all around the same, fairly high (though this is all self-evaluation so as long as you think highly of yourself…).

The most interesting part was watching my co-workers, particularly one who I have problems communicating with. Sure enough we had very different intelligences (her weakest was my strongest, logic), which probably explains some of the difficulty we have. Definitely something to keep eye out for when future difficult with co-workers inevitably arise in my career.

I feel like I’ve come across another one of those market niches where I can’t find much of any competitors and as a result, am likely being ripped off. Reminds me of wedding planning actually (not that I paid for much of that). The industry: pet shipping. By that I mean we are going to Washington D.C., want to keep our car (at least for the beginning), but do not want to subject our two (awesome) cats to a cross-country trip in a cramped car.

I guess it makes sense that there is not going to be to many competitors--I mean how many times in your life do you really come into this sort of situation? The market must be low and you have to have people in all destinations in all parts of the country. Still, it looks as if I’ll end up paying as much as I would for a regular plane ticket for a human in order for my 15 pound cat to catch a ride on the same plane in the freight section (at least I assume this is how it all works).

The price is so extravagant we’re starting to reconsider the cats-in-the-car approach, but we’ve heard some bad stories about this choice. There’s the potential for meowing/crying, cats crawling on the driver when you feel guilty about keeping them in the crate and of course, no litter tray. For the time being, I’ll continue to sell the solution of ‘cat stew’ to my wife. I mean seriously, $350+? What have they done to earn their keep? Cows and chickens would at least give us milk and eggs in the morning.

I swear at times it really does seem to be true that when one thing breaks, everything breaks. A couple of weeks ago I somehow managed to lose my phone, presumably slipping out of my coat pocket at a movie theater (that’ll teach me to shut it off rather than turn it to vibrate). Within a week, while I’m continuing some hope of finding it, my wife’s phone does not slip out of her coat pocket while she gets into the car and the shuts the car door onto her pocket, phone nestled snuggly inside. Suddenly her phone’s display is completely out and it holds a charge for one, maybe two minutes at a time.

In normal circumstances we would just take out losses and buy some used unlocked phones off of Craigslist or Ebay and pay the $20 per phone activation fee to Verizon. However, just as we’ve done this, we are now sitting a mere 4 weeks away from the end of our 2 year contracts. You would think that surely Verizon would have some sort of method of pro-rating if something like this happens so that you get, say 23/24ths of a discount off a phone, alas, this is not the case. Instead we are caught between a rock and a hard place and living in the stone age of *gasp* no cell phones! How ever will we cope?

My good friend is leaving her job soon and recently discovered that the job is being offered for significantly more than she is getting paid (roughly a 20% increase). Perhaps this might be expected if they were looking to hire someone more qualified/educated or if a number of years had passed and they needed to keep up with living expenses, however in this case she has transformed the job to include a multitude of different responsibilities since taking it on—so much so that the position is now going to have assistants (paid as much as she is currently)—a mere 1.5 years ago. In fact, the replacement will not even be given as many of the responsibilities as she is currently, instead giving some of the responsibilities to the new assistants.

This brings up the question—is this fair? Does the employer have a responsibility to increase an employee’s salary according to their worth? From a strictly capitalist standpoint, that is of course not true. Employer’s pay as little to their employees as they can get away with and employees attempt to negotiate a wage as high as they can get away with. However, the not-for-profit world is a curious one which has many unwritten rules, such as: often working unpaid overtime to keep everything running in the understaffed office, buying small supplies needed out of one’s own pocket, and of course there is an understanding that you will not be paid as much as you would for the same amount of responsibilities in the private for-profit world.

The more cynical part of me understands that this underpayment is probably due in large part to her giving notice that she would leave for grad school within 1.5 years almost immediately upon hiring. Normally an employer would have incentive to give raises to a promising employee in order to avoid losing him or her to another company. However, given the short timeframe and inevitability of her departure, that incentive was pretty much non-existent for her employer.

At the same time, knowing what I know about the non-profit world, I think this was probably also a bit of poor management. Keeping an employee happy is not just about preventing her leaving, but also because happy employees are simply better employees. Even if it’s just a sign of appreciation and encouragement, a raise after a 6 months to a year was in order. Perhaps the problem was the her boss just knew her too well—that no matter what she was going to work her tail off until the end.

Well after putting it off for quite some time, we finally got a laptop yesterday. This is also my first interaction with Windows Vista. Most of the press I’ve read has been largely negative e.g. it is overpriced, it is buggy, it is slow, it is not enough of an improvement.

Personally, I don’t think the overpriced thing is very warranted. Sure if you compare it to Linux it’s very expensive, but the hassle of finding compatible software for Linux is the same reason why I was so eagerly looking forward to switching from a Mac to a PC when I left high school. Since laptops have to come with an OS I had to buy something whether that be Windows XP or Vista Basic and the $40 upgrade to Vista Premium doesn’t seem that crazy for the additional tweaks it provides to the operating system. I imagine the people complaining about the price are the same people with BitTorrent running 24/7 on their computers.

I’d like to tell you whether it is buggy or slow, but right now I cannot give the opinion at all. This is because Dell has flooded my computer with a monumental slew of adware, spyware and demo programs!! Perhaps if I was more computer savvy I would know exactly which programs were necessary (such as those that need to run in the background for the soundcard, video card, modem, etc.) and which ones are completely superfluous, but I think that might take some time, unfortunately.

The final criticism is that Vista is not enough of an improvement over XP. From a first impression, I’m inclined to agree with this. When you look at past jumps from Windows 95 to Windows 98 to Windows XP, it just seemed like there was more there in the progressions. That said, there are definitely some aspects I do appreciate, such as improving on the nested menus from the start menu which I never liked dealing with before, the instant search function right on the start menu, the ability to click on a specific section of a file path in the explorer window to go to that folder, and finally, yeah, the (admittedly-gimmicky) way of scrolling through windows with Windows+tab keys is pretty neat.

I was intrigued when it was first released that Microsoft was about to unveil a ‘top secret’ product. I have to say though, it was a bit of a let down (as these revealings often are) when the Microsoft Surface was unveiled. First there is the problem with the orientation. Perhaps I am a bit biased due to suffering from whiplash this year, but there is a reason why computer monitors, television sets, chalkboards, mirrors and other objects you need stare at are parallel with your eyes. Who in their right mind would want to awkwardly bend over a table for an extended period of time. In what has become a very rare occurrence lately Tom Cruise had the right idea:

I mean, I know standing up is a passing fad these days, but is it really worth this hunching over?

In one of the main promo photos, they even have one of the models kneeling on the floor to avoid the hunched-over look:

But perhaps most importantly of all, what is the point? Since when did sorting through photos with a mouse (or alt-tab or arrow keys) become so cumbersome that I need to buy what surely must be a table costing thousands of dollars? Sure the technology looked pretty, but at the end of the day, all it seemed like was using your fingers as a cursor to select different windows and expand or reduce them and the part where you place something on the table and it connects is not much of an upgrade from current Bluetooth (or other) wireless technology.

It’s possible that maybe I’m looking at this too much from a home consumer perspective rather than a business perspective, but until I see some concrete actual examples of why this would at all practical, I’ll stick with my now horribly outdated flat-screen high-contrast high-resolution monitor, thanks.

Continuing on from my previous post of packing and moving is a resource I should really come back to in a couple of months at wikiHow: How to clean an apartment before moving out. I’ve definitely had some very interesting experiences in that awful situation that is retrieving your damage deposit. My first experience with this was with 4 college football-playing roommates who, in an alcohol-infused haze, decided to commemorate their victory over a division rival by writing the score on the wall in permanent marker and then signing their names underneath. Unfortunately for me, in another alcohol-infused haze they also got themselves kicked out of the dorm, leaving me to do all of the cleaning at the end of the year, including painting over their chef d’oeuvre.

My next house had a pretty hilarious situation where my roommate's fiancée, who had lived there rent-free for the past few months, put herself in charge of divvying up the cleaning responsibilities. Her solution? One person clean one bathroom, one person clean the other bathroom, one person vacuum the stairs, one person clean the living room and one person clean the kitchen. Anyone who thinks that sounds like a fair distribution clearly has never done the latter before leaving an apartment (think fridge, stovetop, oven, cupboards that had hardly been cleaned in 2 years, all with everyone's stuff still in them).

After that delightful situation was a summer apartment where I somehow managed to forget to clean the oven (though I thoroughly cleaned everything else). My landlord’s response? She kept the entire damage deposit, claiming she had to pay over $150 for someone (read: her friend) to clean the oven and the rest of the deposit she kept in order to replace the garbage disposal that I had requested over a month ago for her to repair! It was at that point that I decided to really do some digging into how Tenant Law worked and found, to my pleasant surprise, that at least in Seattle, they are written rather largely in favor of Tenants. So, with the law on my side, I waited 14 days for the legally-mandated itemized checklist from her, received nothing and wrote a letter informing her of this requirement she had not met. In less than a week I received 90% of my damage deposit back in a mailed check with no note attached.

My last painful clean-up job was with roommates who were an unfortunate combination of lazy, dirty and conniving (they were in charge of divvying the remaining deposit money and I still suspect they received a larger deposit back than they claimed before giving me my 'share').

Thankfully, now I live with my lovely wife and the only damage deposit I foresee myself losing will be due to a pair of mischievous cats who insist on breaking every blind they can get their paws onto!

Well, while I am still carefully considering which direction to take my career, whether that be business school or whatever else, my wife has decided to attend law school in Washington D.C. starting this August. This is great step for her, but the first step, moving cross-country, will be quite a difficult one. Our first reaction was to look into the classic U-haul approach. However, once we started to add up the costs of such a rental considering the enormous mileage we would need to pay for as well as the trailer we would need to tow our car with (my wife doesn’t drive unfortunately), we started to really contemplate just how much of what we have is actually worth. This of course doesn’t even cover some of the horror stories I’ve heard from sources regarding the reliability of these moving trucks and the nightmare that would be breaking down on a 100+ degree day in the middle of Kansas.

In retrospect, it was a very good idea from a financial standpoint for us to buy most all of our furniture used from Craigslist since now we don’t even need to consider the enormous cost of moving furniture across country. Now however, we have a very finite limit of what we can take (what we can fit into the car without putting too much of a load on the poor vehicle) and it is always amazing to see how many possessions one accumulates in such a relatively short time. Furniture is not the only item we will need to sell or give away through Craigslist. There are paint supplies, kitchen appliances, weight sets, camping equipment and host of other items that start to really add up. We would consider sending some possessions through slow shipping media mail or freight shipping if we had an address to send it to.

Another possibility to consider are these containers like Pods and Upack, but for now we’re just going to focus on achieving a Zen-like detachment from our possessions and toss them into the vortex that is Craigslist.org.

An old adage is that the best way to effect change is with your wallet. It's nice to see consumers of XM satellite radio following this often unheeded advice.

Last week, radio shock jocks Opie & Anthony were 'suspended' for 30 days (and according to some rumors, possibly even fired) after a guest on their show made what XM deemed 'inappropriate' comments on the satellite radio channel that has until now prided itself on its lack of censorship. While it is possible that this was just a reaction to the recent uproar and eventual firing of Don Imus due to inappropriate over-the-air radio comments, speculation is abound that it was in fact due to the possible impending merger between satellite radio companies XM and Sirius which would need approval from government regulators who might not take kindly to the obscene comments made that detailed fantasies of sexual violence towards government officials.

While recently sponsors withdrew following the comments of a shock jock (Imus), in an ironic twist now sponsors and consumers alike are withdrawing following a parent company’s disciplinary response to a shock jock's comments. It is impossible to be completely sure of what caused this situation to be reacted to in a completely opposite manner than the Imus situation. Perhaps it was Imus' declining popularity, a different attitude of his audience, or even the specific subject of his comments (does our society have a higher tolerance for misogyny and violence than racism?). However the consensus seems to be that Sirius and XM's appeal has not just been its lack of commercial breaks or original programming that it also has proudly advertised, but perhaps most of all, its role of serving as a safe haven from the ever-reaching arm of censors.

According to recent data, sales of the Hummer H2 fell 27% last year which was preceded by a 22% drop the previous year. Is this it? Are consumers finally turning green? After its original monstrosity, Hummer came out with a reduced-sized model, AKA the H2. That still wasn’t enough and more recently there has even been the yet smaller H3. Is the impending discontinuation of these models a sign that consumers are beginning to be environmentally conscious? Honestly, I extremely doubt it. Just like recent radio actions, the only motivation that consistently moves people is money. I complain about $50 fillups at the pump, but that’s is a bargain compared to what these guys are paying each week.

So why am I so skeptical about people’s motivation? For the same reason Fox News is so popular or why some watch the Daily Show every night but no other news program or paper, or why the people in my office who watched An Inconvenient Truth in the break room during the lunch hour were people who already whole-heartedly accepted the theory of Climate Change while one of my co-workers, who was immediately disdainful of the movie because of it being with that “Gore” guy and believed Climate Change was really ‘more of a religious question’ sat at her desk.

My point is, people in this day and age only expose themselves to a specific segment of media with a truncated range of ideas. As such, only in extreme cases do people have a large shift in their beliefs and priorities. The people buying hybrids are coming from Civics, not Hummers. The people coming from Hummers are probably limiting themselves to bastions of efficiency like the Navigator or Explorer. Environmentalism (with the exception of protectionism) only really began in the last 30-40 years. Its going to take much longer than that before a real paradigm shift occurs.

I have to put the word out about a GREAT movie I saw last night that just came out: Hot Fuzz. I hadn't really hear anything about it until we decided to go see a movie and saw it was playing at the local theater. It had very good ratings from IMDB and Rotten Tomatoes so we took a chance and it certainly paid off! A lot of it is a satire of cop movies from the 80's and 90's, but it's much more than just that. I can't remember the last time I laughed so hard throughout an entire movie (though Borat certainly had its moments). I forget sometimes that although the price of movie tickets can be so expensive nowadays, the audience factor can be so great on a movie when an entire crowd of people is laughing together (the laughtrack effect--though I hate canned laughter on TV shows). So go see this movie in a theater while you still can!

So who else tried to make that argument in math class "How is this practical? When am I ever going to use this?" I know that I did and had fellow classmates who wholeheartedly agreed. Unfortunately for future defenders of this point of view, there is a clear cut example of just what math can do.

James Simons, a math professor and now head of a leading fund manager earned $1.7 BILLION last year. And this is not one of those cases of a CEO rolling in bonuses while the company flounders. His fund has earned upwards of 34% annual returns.

This scenario begs the moral question of whether these hedge funds (and other technical analysis traders) are contributing anything to the market which they profit from. They might argue that they are filling gaps created by market inefficiency while increasing the liquidity of financial markets, both of which can positive benefits. Federal Reserve chieftains of past and present have referred to it as 'greasing the wheels of capitalism'.

Others argue that it is manipulating wealth in a secretive manner to create more wealth while providing no good or service. It can't be said there is no argument in in this viewpoint---the methods are secretive and it is a process which leaves no tangible byproduct. It is interesting to note that the fund managers featured in the Alpha magazine report refused comment to the New York Times which might be an indication of their belief in how much water their defense holds...

When did we seem to just stop paying attention to these gas price increases? It somewhat reminds me of the casualty numbers in Iraq which were reported on a daily basis at first but then gradually slipped outside of the media's blinders. I know that some SUV or other large car owners probably won't be sympathetic, but my sedan was $1 short of 50 yesterday! We went out for dinner and a movie and the gas was more than both of those put together (even with these ridiculous $10 movie tickets nowadays)! I just looked around and apparently there are reports now that gas will soon be hitting $4 a gallon. Is there any end in sight? At least I can take solace when observing my English in-laws, some of whom pay upwards of $150 at the pump!

One of my current interests in my spare time is currency trading. I find the whole field of technical analysis of markets quite fascinating. One of the major characteristics of Forex (foreign currency exchange) is that the huge volume of the market creates extreme liquidity where one can buy and sell millions of dollars worth of currency in a matter of minutes. This 24 hour market holds many traders who make their living holding positions for just 3-5 minutes at a time, shooting for a small gain combined with the large leverage many brokers offer nowadays. This is why one trader who makes posts on some currency exchange message boards is beginning to stand out. "Jacko" as he is called, uses the single-minded strategy of only trading his favorite currency pair (the Euro/US Dollar), only in one direction and only at round numbers (1.3100, 1.3200, etc.) as well as the occasional buy on dips in the trend and 50% retracements.

Now some might be skeptical at first, saying that this is really just due to the bullish run of the Euro in recent years, but he is certainly no Monday morning quarterback, as you can see in a post he made last year predicting the huge run we've seen for over the past year.

He is a breath of fresh air among the day trading scalpers who make thousands of trades every year.

Having somewhat 'grown up' with the rise of the internet (I can remember computer labs devoted to teaching my classmates and I how to use it back in 1994), I can remember when it had an extreme biased towards younger people. As a result, your online persona never would really interact with the older generation. When Myspace, Friendster and Facebook initially came out, this seemed to be the case as well. However, as my generation has grown up and the internet expands to a larger and larger cross-section of society, this is certainly no longer the case.

Increasingly prospective employers are looking up their candidates online to gather more information on them which might not be known. This New York Times article from last year gives an example of a recent graduate who had been hearing no responses from job applications until he removed a satirical essay he had written online under his real name.

It doesn't just stop at jobs either. My wife, who recently has applied to law school, is part of an online community of fellow prospective students. Even at such a relatively small online community (at least when compared to mega sites such as Myspace), many suspect admissions committee members browse the site, connecting members accounts with their application, sometimes to adverse results if they speak ill of the institution or anything else inappropriate they might have said while under the mistaken assumption of anonymity.

Some tips when using an online persona:

1) Google your own name--make sure nothing that comes up (that you can have an effect on) puts you in a bad light professionally.

2) Keep online personas anonymous whenever possible. If you feel the need to put your last name there so that people can find you, look into making most of your info available only when someone has been confirmed as a 'friend' through the site (an option most social networking sites have).

3) If the above two options are not heeded, at least BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU SAY ON THE INTERNET

Sincerely,
Anonymous

Obviously an important question to ask myself when pondering attending business school is what job I want out of it? What type of job that an MBA will help me get is desirable. I found an interesting sample of some of these jobs that are recommended for twenty-somethings looking to begin their career. In other words, me. For if I don't find something in a listing of "Top 20 Jobs" that I would like, I should really reconsider what I'm heading towards.

Thankfully there definitely are some jobs in there that look interesting. The first one listed in fact, Product Manager, sounds great to me. Although it sounds like one of those jobs with a crazy amount of work, it looks like a job where I could be able to use my creativity, problem-solving and general business skills (which I assume will have been augmented after going through an MBA program.

Of course, all this is easier said than done. I imagine a job with that level of responsibility is rarely simply handed over to fresh grads...

As I pay my taxes this weekend, numerous complaints about our insane taxation policies come to mine, but the following just seems like there could be no earthly reason to justify: why can we no longer file taxes online for free?? Starting this year if your household adjusted gross income for a joint filing is a hair over $52,000, you are no longer allowed to use a free filing service. So let's get this straight. I have to PAY, in order to GIVE MONEY to the IRS in a method that makes it EASIER for them!? By submitting my taxes digitally, the IRS gets to: handle less papers that take up physical space, they can easily crunch numbers for statistics, they can easily crunch numbers to determine whether an audit might be advisable and most importantly of all, it would cut down on errors on both sides since numbers are automatically calculated for taxpayers and automatically transcribed for the IRS!! I can only come up with two possible reasons why this policy is in effect:

1) Tax preparation companies such as H&R Block and Jackson Hewitt have spent a great deal of money and effort lobbying the Ways and Means committee and others.

or

2) The IRS is a bureaucracy like any other, i.e. they have an inherent bias to either grow or at least maintain the status quo. After all, it would be very likely that an increase in efficiency for them would mean a reduction in employees and budget.

Meanwhile, it seems all I can really do is cling to my pipe dream of the Fair Tax where this annual headache and waste of time would be abolished.

The now-infamous Aqua Teen Hunger Force bomb scare in Boston has brought to light the recent increase in guerilla and viral marketing techniques from companies. The move makes sense really when you look back at the evolution of advertisements. It began with the simple testimonial approach at the beginning with '9/10 doctors agreeing', celebrities telling you their product of choice, or fellow 'housewives' telling the audience what products work from them. Then around the 80/90s there seemed to be a move towards simply placing products next to sexy images (to the point where advertisers such as Budweiser were satirical of themselves in years to come). It makes sense that this gradual move towards subtlety would eventually result a new emphasis on Word-of-Mouth Marketing (WOM). I can't help but feel this really caught on with Ronco infomercials and his "if you promise to tell just 3 people..." sales pitches.

It's even got to the point where entire companies are devoted to increasing this WOM advertising, such as BzzAgent where consumers are paid to conduct WOM advertising among friends. Does this bring up an ethical question? Companies like BzzAgent claim that there is no condition that forces the product 'ambassadors' to give positive reviews--but is it not somewhat implied? When someone cooks me a free dinner, I don't give them an objective critique of their product. Heck, even at the grocery store where they are giving out free samples, I feel it impolite to say anything negative about the free food I was just given (as if the employee heating the product up in the microwave cares!).

At the end of the day though, as long as people are not being seduced into pyramid-scheme rip-offs or products dangerous to their health, does it really matter? If my friend subconsciously influences me to buy a diet Pepsi instead of Coke next time I'm at the vending machine, does it hurt anyone? (well besides Coca-Cola that is!). Perhaps the best argument against it is that we may be at beginning of a dangerous downhill slope?

Reading about successful business entrepreneurs, the lesson that seems to come through the strongest is that contrary to some public perception, having a successful business is not a easy path to riches, but one of tireless work, long hours, concentration, patience, and absolute commitment to success. Attempting to start one's own business with anything less than 100% commitment to the endeavor is the surest and quickest route to losing one's business, savings and mind. This is nothing new of course in the arena of entrepreneurship as we see in this old photo of an inventor selling his new "bulletproof" vest to the police department.

An interesting article in the BBC news today how a simple foreign accent can impart so much meaning to someone’s perception of a person, particularly in America. I was lucky enough to do a bit of traveling after high school and it was very interesting at the hostels how the Americans seemed enamored by British/Australian/New Zealand accents while the reverse didn’t seem to be true much at all. My theory is that its due to the overwhelming exportation of the American entertainment industry where other English-speaking countries are inundated with American accents to the point where it’s commonplace. Conversely, in America we only come into contact with the occasional accent in the media and it’s often used purposefully to add something to personality/character, whether the stuck-up Brit Simon Cowell, the friendly Australian Claire (Lost), the English gentleman Jude Law or the posh Robin Leach on Lifestyle of the Rich and Famous. This is where the article is particularly interesting when they interviewed a former real estate agent who used it to market a product to appear upscale which is not a rare occurrence when you think of everything from Lexus car commercials to even Sheba cat food!

I don’t like to mix politics into this blog too much but I feel like this is something any American should be educated about. Whether for or against the current action in Iraq, it is surprising how many of us (government officials included) know so little about the differences between Sunnis and Shiites (or ‘Shias’). This is a great summary of some of the primary differences between the two groups of people who we are fighting and/or helping over there. Surely a better education on this can only help general understanding of the issues often being discussed such as federalism, multiculturalism, secession, civil war, etc.

Time management has always been something that has plagued me, particularly when I was a student. Most time management advice I have read or heard has been mainly fluffy and vague. Recently, however, I came across David Allen and his Getting Things Done (GTD) approach. I’ve had a chance to read some of the stuff in his ‘free’ section (great that he gives away a fair amount of free advice instead of just teasers for his books and seminars) and in contrast to most of what I’ve read before, he has some great concrete advice such as exactly how he sets up and uses his PDA as well as specific categories he uses for organizing incoming work. Its some great stuff that I hope to learn better and try to incorporate into my day to day life. Certainly something that will come in useful should I go into business school and especially in a career in business afterwards.