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Home Energy Usage

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I decided to look at my home energy usage. Below are notes on how I’m approaching it. I wish I could get insight from the MIOS graphing plugin, but it is pretty basic and can’t throw out outliers and has terrible zoom capability. I also never figured out how to set the y-axis. In order … Read more

OFX for USAA via Ruby

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My wife and I have been through roughly 10-15 different budget/financial tracking systems. We started with every penny in MS Money, used several different spreadsheets, spent several years in Mint and have pretty much dropped all of that for a top-down strategy that has us budgeting savings, non-discretionary spending, and a rainy day buffer and … Read more

MiCasa Verde (MiOS) DataMine Logging

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For my home automation goals, I chose MiCasaVerde VeraLite due to my friend’s recommendation. The VeraLite is a small linux controller that runs the MIDIbox Operating System MiOS and gives a homeowner the ability to easily control lights, security cameras, door locks, alarm systems, and even the thermostat, among many other home systems. For example, … Read more

Review: Lone Survivor Movie

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Today, I watched the Lone Survivor with two friends and was once again reminded of the brevity of life, the importance of principle and the value of friendship. I found the movie to be a masterful combination of plot, emphasis and character development. It is tough to capture the breadth emotions present in Marcus Luttrell’s detailed book in two hours, but the movie does capture the heartbreak, the passion, the sacrifice of modern warfare — all juxtaposed with the rapid transition from the safety, comfort and contentedness of modern forward bases. Further contrast comes from American optimism (“Good things happen to good people, right?”) with middle-eastern determinism, but nothing hits you harder than the fierce determination of the seals contrasted with our comfortable armchair warrior lives.

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WordPress Automatic Updates

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If you want to get WordPress to accept automatic updates and are running your own server, you want the flexibility to not go through these steps every time an update arrives. You also want good security. I had to do this recently on several sites and thought I would share my notes.

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TelexFree — A quick business case assessment

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Ever wonder why fund managers can’t beat the S&P 500? ‘Cause they’re sheep — and the sheep get slaughtered. I been in the business since ’69. Most of these high paid MBAs from Harvard never make it. You need a system, discipline, good people, no deal junkies, no toreadores, the deal flow burns most people out by 35. Give me PSHs — poor, smart and hungry. And no feelings. You don’t win ’em all, you don’t love ’em all, you keep on fighting . . . and if you need a friend, get a dog . . . it’s trench warfare out there sport and in here too. — Gordon Gecko

I built a much better model with more realistic constraints available here

Outside of generating new information or product, risk, diversity and time horizon are only variables I’m convinced an investor can control. This means invest broadly over long time horizons and keep taxes and expenses low. If you want outsized returns, you must take on more risk or make something people want to buy. Most wealth is created by businesses making real products, but wealth can still accumulate from appreciating assets (real estate, land, gold, internet domain names, etc). However, both these methods take a lot of time and effort. Can you make a lot more quickly through selling VOIP services, posting internet ads and joining a Brazilian-focused multi-level marketing (MLM) club called TelexFree?

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“I’m Busy”

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As we enter the Christmas/holiday season, I’m asking lots of friends how they are doing and how their year has been. Almost everyone says “it’s busy”. This takes many forms, from “crazy busy” to “absolutely busy” or “scary busy”. Since words often lose their meaning, I’ve thought about a scale we could use to better convey the level of busyness in our lives. I think the best way to delineate levels is by the loss of freedom that occurs at each inflection point.

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New Blog Title

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I’ve always been intrigued by the story of the Harvard applicant who penned a three word answer to an essay prompt of “what is courage?” The myth has that he was accepted. I like the story because it highlights the risk and reward trade that we calculate in all our decisions.

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