Money

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First off, I went to the dentist’s today. After my cleaning, I was waiting for the real dentist to come in and make sure the hygienist had cleaned my teeth properly, and it was taking a while. She offered me a magazine, and I told her I’d pass. A couple more minutes went by, so I went up and looked through the magazine rack.

It only occurred to me afterwards that it probably says something about me that I moved Sports Illustrated out of the way to reveal Worth magazine, and that I found the article inside about family businesses increasingly being taken over in the rush of private-equity M&As to be fascinating reading. I was disappointed when the dentist came in before I got to the other article I wanted to read, about how Native Americans are investing profits from casinos into a suddenly-very-diverse range of businesses. (It seems like there’s some racist assumption underlying that? I’d have been able to tell you if there was one in the article, if only Dr. Las [not her real name, but all she was identified to me as] hadn’t been so speedy with whatever it was that was keeping her from seeing me.)

Later on (post-dentist), I was counting a bunch of money. We had a new ‘pack’ of 100 $1 bills, but I needed a couple, so I had to remove the band from them. If you’ve never seen a stack of new bills, it’s really something you should do. (Maybe drop by your bank and ask to withdraw $100 in new 1’s. It’ll be worth it.) First of all, they don’t feel normal. We’ve all gotten a nice crisp $20 from the bank, but pulling money out of a bank-packed stack [not meant to rhyme] is entirely unlike that. It’s even nicer. You hold it in your hand, it the feel is just… strange. It’s almost powdery, and pretty rough. As you try to take one bill out of the pile, you’ll realize that it’s very hard to take just one. Unlike potato chips, it’s not because they’re so good, but because they’re practically cohesive. (When counting new 1’s, I basically ‘grind’ it between my fingers because, more often than not, I’ve picked up two or more without meaning to.)

So at the end of the night, I had to count some unknown quantity of 1’s. I had 11 ‘old’ $1 bills that I had taken in, and some unknown quantity of new bills. I bemoaned the fact that I was about to have to count what was probably $75+ of them, which would be incredibly tedious. But then I remembered the other neat quality of brand-new bills: they’re sequentially numbered.

So I looked at the last three digits on the top bill, subtracted it from the last three digits of the top bill, added one*, and knew how many there were.

I wonder if I can start requesting that the bank give me only new, sequentially-numbered bills. But bank tellers, like chefs, are probably people you don’t want on your bad side. Especially the passive-aggressive ones.

  • Because 700-699 = 1, but you have two: 699 and 700.

Writing Code

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A few things I’ve learned in writing code:

  • $huge_array is a perfectly valid name for a large array… Until you realize that you were actually trying to create a hash, which is apparently not a PHP feature at all, in which case you suddenly realize that you’re going to need like six $huge_array’s… In which case I broke down and gave them decent names.
  • To determine if something is sound programming practice, try it and see if the program crashes, or, in my case, if PHP throws errors. If not, you’re golden.
  • The PHP.net manual is amazing. I just learned how to use foreach() tonight.
  • Coding is like swimming: even if you’ve gone years without exercising the skill, you can pick it up in no time. And also like swimming, if you’ve sucked at it all your life, you’ll still suck at it just as much later on.
  • When you can’t think of a good way to code in a feature, just put in a comment indicating what it should do. (So far, though, the PHP compiler hasn’t done a very good job with filling in code based on my comments…)

Tests

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So I’ve got this enormous set of questionnaires on management styles, and it’s one of those things, “Rank from highest to lowest the following.” And I’m left wondering a few things:

  • Do many people try to ‘psychoanalyze’ the test? I almost always know what each question is trying to judge. (And if I don’t, I skip it and go over the others, look at the end, and figure out what it’s asking.)
  • Do many people get hung up on technicalities? On a question that was judging me on six different ‘qualities,’ including practical, economic, religious, and artistic, I ranked Mother Teresa highly as one of the most interesting people to meet. This raised my score in the “spiritual” category. I just think it’d be neat to meet her, religious or not.
  • Does anyone else almost always have their answers, on large numerical scales, gravitate towards the middle?
    • Does anyone ever think that, on a scale of 1-4, they’re really a 2.5? A 2 is too extreme one way, and a 3 is too extreme the other way.
  • Are people really so oblivious that they don’t realize that all 20 questions on these types of things are getting at the same thing, just paraphrased?
    • What I find most interesting is that the test just goes for the total… It should really look at the anomalies. I scored very low on the ‘spiritual’ category, except for the Mother Teresa question. Someone who actually cared about the results might wonder about this and wonder about it. But nope, it just means that I’m three points more spiritual.
  • Who writes these things? The questions are always so vague. For example:
    • Faced with a problem to solve, rank, highest to lowest, the following ‘methods’ of solving the problem:
      • Accomplish goals
      • Develop thoughts
      • Weigh evidence
      • Follow instincts
    • Shouldn’t you do all of them? The, err, goal, is to accomplish the goal. In doing that, you must weigh the evidence and develop thoughts, and let your instincts weigh in too. How is this any different from asking:
      • You’re driving along and a car runs a stop sign and pulls out right in front of you. Which of the following do you do?
        • Hit the brakes.
        • Swerve away from them.
        • Beep your horn.
        • Try to avoid crashing.
        The question makes no sense! You’d probably do all four. And the last one is a summary of them all.
  • The questions make no sense!
    • What ranking do I assign to “Developing thoughts.” I’m always developing thoughts, whether I try to or not. Cogito ergo sum.
    • In solving a problem, how important is “performing deeds?” What is that even supposed to mean?
    • “Being aware”–again, cogito ergo sum.

I want to write these things. I could have a field day.

Rank, from highest to lowest, which skills you used while reading this blog post:

  • Reading
  • Converting written words into mental images and ideas
  • Digesting lunch
  • Being aware
  • Performing deeds
  • Breathing
  • Blinking
  • Developing thoughts
  • Reading this post

Should I?

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I’m often the one to close up at work. We share a long ‘driveway’ with another business, which is now out of business. From time to time–maybe about two times a month–there’ll be a car sitting, facing us, in the parking lot of the neighboring business. They’re far enough away that I’m not too concerned for my safety: if they were to come after me, I could get into my car long before they got to me/it.

Being the paranoid person I am, though, I always worry that they’re waiting until I leave to rob the place. So I’ll typically drive away and then come back a couple minutes later, although I don’t drive up the access road/driveway, I just carry on the main road as if I weren’t snooping on them. They’re often there for 10-15 minutes, and, when they’re gone, I’ll drive back up to make sure they’re not somewhere on our property. Tonight I was able to jot down their license plate, although I worry they may have noticed that I drove by at like 2 MPH and noticed me noticing them. This time, as I drove by after leaving, I noticed another car pulling in. I drove by a bit, turned around, and went by again, as the two cars were leaving.

It’s not always the same car(s), but it is always the same spot. They’re clearly not (thus far) looking to rob me / my business, nor are they doing anything else obviously nefarious. However, it still seems incredibly suspicious to be waiting in your car in the parking lot of a deserted business at 1am.

So here’s my question: what do I do? I’ve been tempted to call the police and report it as a suspicious car, but I can never decide if I should.

  • They may well be doing nothing wrong. The police would be obligated to check it out, in which case I’m sicking the police on people who are doing nothing wrong.
  • They may well be doing something wrong. It’s not breaking into my business, and it’s not mugging me, but it’s really pretty suspicious. (Selling drugs seems the most likely explanation, although all the evidence I have of that is that they’re sitting in an abandoned parking lot and meeting someone at 1am… Hardly proof.)
    • The police would be obliged to investigate and would probably catch wind of what was going on. A vote for calling them in.
    • It’s not like the suspicious cars don’t know where I work and what type of car I drive… Even though I always park right in front of one of the security cameras, I’d still hate to come out of work a few days later and find my tires slashed and my car egged.

So do I call the cops next time or not?

Computer Liquidation

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I’m not positive I’m going to go through with this, but I thought I’d see if anyone was interested first… I’m eager to clear some stuff out and buy a new machine:

  • Dual 19″ flat CRTs (Samsung 955DF), great shape. Shipping is maybe not such a hot idea, as they’re big.
  • Two 17″ LCDs, one a Samsung, one a lesser-known brand (MAG?)
  • My old desktop: dual 1.4 GHz Athlons, 512 MB RAM, 200+40+60 GB (I think) hard drives, DVD burner. Currently set up as a MythTV box under Ubuntu, with the TV tuner and remote control maybe included. (Depending on interest.)
  • My old laptop: Compaq Presario 900, big 15″ LCD, a 1.53 (?) GHz AMD processor, 512 MB RAM, and a 40 GB disk. No built-in wireless, but I’ll include a PCMCIA card. Windows XP Home Edition. In fairly good shape, although the screen hinges have some ‘give’ so it wiggles a bit, and I think there’s a crack in the frame. (Doesn’t impair anything.) Battery doesn’t seem to hold a great charge.

C’mon, you know you want them.

Computer Pricing

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Back maybe in early high school, I decided to build a new desktop system, and scrapped together enough money to do so. I built what was then a monster of a system: dual 1.4 GHz Athlons, a gig of RAM, and a 40 GB hard drive.

Today, my laptop is faster: Core2Duo 1.833 GHz, 2 GB RAM, and a 60 GB disk at 7200 RPM.

But what interests me most is how cheap things are these days. Looking through this weekend’s CompUSA circular, I’ll point out a few interesting ones:

  • $400 (after a big rebate) buys a laptop with 15.4″ LCD, dual-core Pentium processor, 512 MB RAM (bah), an 80 GB disk, and Vista Home Basic. It’d be a bit of a downgrade for me, but to those who don’t have a relatively new, tricked-out machine, all that, in a laptop, for $400? It’d make a pretty good computer (juts upgrade that RAM!), and it’s only $400. That’s what I’d expect to spend on a peripheral or two.
  • $600 gets you a 17″ notebook, dual cores, 160 GB drive, Vista Home Premium, and a gig of RAM. Now you’ve got a nice machine. For $600.
  • I’m desperately trying to justify to myself a new desktop system: $1,000 buys a quad-core 2.4 GHz processor, 2 GB RAM, a 500 GB disk, a 22″ widescreen monitor, and Vista Home Premium. (With a 500 GB disk, I could say I had Vista and yet really run Linux. *grin*) If you asked me, without having looked at the circular, I’d have told you that such a machine would probably run $3,000 or more. (A printer is apparently also included, although since they scarcely mention it, I don’t have high hopes for it.)

Anyone in the market for a dual 1.4 GHz AthlonMP system, 512 MB RAM, 120+60+40 GB drives, and a pair of 17″ LCDs? 😉

PicLens

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Firefox plugin of the day: PicLens will let you launch a nice full-screen gallery of images from within Firefox, from many common sites. It seems to preload them, too, so moving between them is nice and fast.

The Real World

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Kyle responded to one of my e-mails the other day, at about 5:30 am. (Kyle has a ‘real’ job this summer.) We concluded that that is what the real world is like: waking up at times that are a couple hours after we’d normally be going to bed.

I don’t think I like the real world.

Also, it turns out that jobs in the real world apparently don’t have a summer break that lasts several months.

Maybe I should go to grad school?

Body for Life

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Are any of you guys familiar with Body for Life? It’s kind of like Getting Things Done in that it has a slightly creepy cult-like following. It also seems almost too good to be true. But I’ve read so many positive reviews that I picked up a copy. Currently I’m just reading it, not doing anything in it. (But I’m only like 30 pages into it, too.)

I’m worried in trying to describe it, because I don’t want to shower it with so much praise that people are repulsed. Cynicism is always appropriate, IMHO. But there are a lot of reviews from people who talk about how it not only helped them get into good shape, but it also ended up giving them so much more energy and so much more self-confidence. While I’m not in nearly as bad shape as some of the people who have gained from it, I still think I could get a lot out of it.

As I said, I’m currently just reading it, but I’m thinking that I’d like to begin following it. But I think it would make the most sense to do it in a place where I can walk to the gym, where I don’t have exhausting labor to do, and where I have friends who can help keep me motivated. (The more people I know who are involved, I think, the harder it is to drop out of.) So I have it in the back of my head that it’s something I should take up when I get back to school.

BTW, I think fair use allows me to quote a paragraph, so I want to quote something in it that blows me away. He talks about how, before beginning, you should set some specific goals and review them every day. And then:

Back in 1953, a Harvard University study showed that three percent of the students graduating that year actually wrote down their specific career goals. Twenty years later, a team of researchers interviewed the class of ’53 and found that the three percent who had written down their goals were worth more financially than the other 97 percent combined.

Anyone else want to browse through a copy and consider doing it at the start of next semester? (Before you buy the book, I have a copy you can borrow.)