Hokie Dave Speaks Out

Switching from Vonage to Ooma

2010-04-25T16:37:00.000-07:00

I've been using Vonage for several years and have been happy, but the monthly price has been creeping up to around $33/month so I've decided to give Ooma a try. Ooma's model is a bit different. They sell the hardware for $250 (but you can get it at Amazon for $200) and promise free service for life. Now there are caveats of course. They pass the monthly government fees on to you, which is about $3.50/month, and they push hard to get you to sign up for their premier service at $10/month. At $13.50/month, the Ooma pays for itself in 10 months so I decided to leap.

During my research, I found the reviews for Ooma were very good. The exceptions are those that had to use support, and those that bought the optional handset. More on that later. So far, I've found that call quality is on par with Vonage. Its better than a mobile phone, but not as good as a landline -- that's acceptable in my book.

I decided to order the Ooma Telo (VOIP router) and handset from Costco for $230 combined. You get 60 days of premier service for free, but some of the more interesting features require the handset so I went for the package. Its $40 to do a number transfer, but if you sign up for a year of premier, they'll do the number transfer for free or send you a handset for free.

I'm pretty sure they don't make money unless you do the premier service. I think they also count on the fact that people use fewer minutes on their landline as they use their mobile phones more. One big question is whether these guys will be in business for long. I think they will.

You start by requesting a phone number and entering the Telo's activation code online. I was able to swap my Vonage router with the Telo device with no other changes. The Telo connected to the mothership and downloaded its updates. It took about 10 mins during which time my internet was down. The Telo device has buttons on it so it acts like a traditional answering machine. It has a built-in speaker for listening to voicemails, and you can hit play, rewind, delete, etc.

If you're looking for basic service, Ooma does the job well at $3.50/month. If you want extras, consider the handset ($50) and premier plan. That combination gives you caller-ID (not just the number), call screening (listen to people leaving voicemails), and an instant second line. If someone else is using the phone, you can get a second line on the handset (requires the handset) and dial out. Pretty important if you've got kids. These features work fine, but the handset has a hum, doesn't fit snuggly in the recharging cradle, and the display is difficult to read. If possible, I recommend waiting for version 2 of the handset, whenever that comes.

Other cool features include the ability to enter your contact list online (or import from Outlook) and sync to the handset. Names can have multiple phone numbers assigned, like home, work, and mobile. If the calling number is in your contact list, the name will appear (regardless of caller-ID). You can configure a blacklist to send certain numbers straight to voicemail. You can retrieve voicemails from the Telo, the handset, or online. Premier is required to have them emailed to you.

I'm still in the 60-day window for free premier, so I've not yet decided whether its worth the $10/month. I'll have to post an update when I make a decision. In the meantime, I have my Vonage number forwarded to my Ooma number as I continue to test.

Dude Ranches in Bandera

2009-06-06T06:16:00.000-07:00

We live about 2.5 hours aways from the self-proclaimed cowboy capital of the world. So we make a yearly trek to Bandera Texas for a weekend at a dude ranch, usually in spring. The lure of a dude ranch is getting away from the hustle and bustle of everyday life. On the ranch the air is clean, the food is filling, and horses are tame.

A typical day on the dude ranch starts with a big breakfast, single-file horse ride, swimming, lunch, afternoon horse ride, fishing, dinner, and evening entertainment. The same entertainers circulate amoungst the ranches. There's cowboy singers, animal shows, ropers, etc. By 9pm the whole family is beat and ready to turn in.

We've been to three different dude ranches over the last three years, and each has its own pros and cons.

Dixie Dude Ranch has about 20 cabins are various sizes, most of which are quite rustic. Accomodations for us were a bit tight but bearable. Food is served in a dining room with four large picnic tables. The horses are pretty old but the guides are fun and interesting. This is the only ranch we've found that allows kids under 6 to ride with a parent.

The Flying L is a time-share community, so we go to visit this ranch basically for free in exchange to listening to their sales pitch. It has a mix of 1950s cabins and brand new condos. As part of the free deal, we were only allowed one horse ride, but it was a good one. The trails here were more interesting and you had to actually steer the horse. The best part about the Flying L was the waterpark and its lazy river. It also has a golf course and lots of activities. This is very commercialized, so you don't really feel you're on a ranch.

This year we just returned from the Mayan Ranch. This all-inclusive ranch serves beer and sodas all day, plus has a nice bar for the evenings. There are around 50 cabins as well as bunk houses yet the landscape still resembles a ranch. There's a hayride each morning taking visitors to a fantastic cowboy breakfast. Herds of deer have been trained to follow the hayriders, some getting within 10 yards. The horse rides are a bit boring (straight and flat), but you get two per day. Swimming in the pool and the Medina river is fun for the kids as was the nightly entertainment.

Traditional vs Roth 401K

2009-04-30T19:12:00.000-07:00

My company just started offering a Roth 401k in addition to the traditional 401k. They allow any combination of the two up to the $16,500 annual contribution limit. (Matching always occurs in the pre-tax account.) So, which is better?

The conventional wisdom is that in most cases the Roth is better because the account can grow faster with after-tax dollars, especially if you are far from retirement. (Plus the Roth doesn't require minimum distributions, is easier on beneficiaries, and can be withdrawn early under certain circumstances.) If you invest the same amount in both accounts, the traditional 401K will be taxed on withdrawal so it will be smaller.

However, to be fair the money saved by using pre-tax dollars should be invested in a side account. If that tax savings (for example $16,500 x 25% = $4,125) is invested in a Roth IRA (so you don't have to pay taxes on the growth) and your marginal tax rate doesn't change between now and retirement, then they are equal.

Assuming you can afford to maximize your contributions, the ideal situation is to max out the Roth 401k ($16,500) and a Roth IRA ($6,000, or $12,000 for you and your spouse). Of course you're not elegible to contribute the maximum to a Roth IRA unless your AGI is less than $156,000. (Partial contributions are allowed up to $166,000.) Here's where things can get interesting.

Let's say your AGI is $156,500. If you choose the Roth 401k, then you are not eligible for a full Roth IRA contribution (because your AGI is over $156,000). However, if you split your retirement contribution into $500 for the traditional 401K and $16,000 for the Roth 401k, then your AGI is decreased by the amount of the traditional 401K such that now you can contribute the maximum to the Roth IRA.

So, the objective here is to use the traditional 401k to keep your AGI under $156,000 so you can maximize your contribution to the Roth IRA. If you do this right, you could potentially sock away up to $28,500 a year.

The best calculator I could find for comparisons is Bloomberg's. Note that the calculator offers to reinvest tax savings in a taxable account, not a Roth IRA. Play with the numbers and see what's best for your situation.

Dillo Race

2009-03-28T08:00:00.000-07:00

This morning Zach ran the annual Dillo race for kids. He ran a mile in 9 minutes and 52 seconds. We had planned to train over the preceeding weeks, but there's been so much rain it was impossible. Nevertheless, it was a fun experience and I hope he'll do it again next year.

I took this picture with my iPhone at about the 3/4 mile point. It was lucky that the shot has the rising sun in the background so that the shadow clearly shows him floating above the ground in stride.

Where is David?

2009-01-25T07:05:00.000-08:00

Notice the "Where is David" section on the left? That's a blog badge provided by TripIt, a pretty cool travel organizer. After looking at two other sites, I decided I liked TripIt because it was so easy to use. I just forward my e-mail travel confirmations and it keeps track of all my past and future travel. Then it will alert me before trips, offer weather reports, driving directions, etc. But for me the bigger attraction was the badge and the ability for my friends and family to know my plans. We're working on a page at work that tracks the team's whereabouts.

TripIt works with Linkedin, but it doesn't work with Facebook yet. Which brings me to two other tools I've been using recently.

At home I run Vista, so I've standardized on the Vista Gadgets. The library of gadgets is lacking today, but I expect it to get better in the future when Windows 7 removes the sidebar requirement. Regardless, I've been using the Vista Facebook gadget so I can see if I have pending email or noticiations on Facebook. Its using Facebook's Connect feature, which I'm seeing more of lately.

At work I've been trying to find good Adobe AIR widgets. I found one called AlertThingy2 that consolidates alerts from different services like Facebook and Twitter, along with RSS feeds. It gives me a realtime list of things going on across the Web.

And of course, all this software is free.

Backing up DVDs

2009-01-18T14:57:00.000-08:00

My kids don't treat DVDs too well, so it pays to make backups. I'd never done it before so I set out to find free options. There's three steps in the process. First you need to copy the DVD, which may involve decrypting the copy protection. Second, you need to shrink the DVD content to fit back on a standard DVD. Third, you need to burn the new DVD.

Copy & Decrypt
For step one I found DVD43, but it doesn't work for Vista-64. (If you run XP it should work fine.) Instead I ended up using DVDFab. For a few bucks it automates the whole process, but I was looking for a free option. It will decrypt and copy the contents of a DVD to the harddrive for free, but everything else requires a paid upgrade. It even allows me to copy just the main movie, without all the commentary, camera angles, and extras. The output is a VIDEO_TS folder on your harddrive, which takes about 15 mins.

Shrink
I found that the VOBs that were copied were larger than the capacity of a standard DVD, so I found a program called DVDShrink. It takes the VIDEO_TS folder from the previous step, shrinks the content to fit on a standard DVD, and creates a new VIDEO_TS folder, all in about 15 mins.

Burn
The final step is to burn the VIDEO_TS folder and its contents to a DVD. For that I used CDBurnerXP but there are lots of other options out there as well. Again, it took about 15 mins recording at 12x.

Nothing fancy, but a good way to create a DVD backup in about an hour.

An Honest Restaurant

2009-01-16T16:40:00.000-08:00

Check out the Heart Attack Grill. At least you know what you're getting.

Watch CBS Videos Online

Creative Minds

2009-01-09T09:30:00.000-08:00

I'm not a creative person by any stretch, but I have friends that are. These days the TV doesn't keep my attention, so I'm usually surfing while watching TV (while also talking to Wendy). While on Facebook I came across two old friends that I was happy to find. Looking at their information led me to their websites where I saw just how uncreative I am in comparison.

Pete's site features the photo below in the "About Pete" section. Yeah, I could never think of something that orginal.

I knew Pete from my days at Schlumberger working on Parking systems and smart card readers. My best memory of Pete was when he took Wendy and I in his sail plane. You can't imagine just how quiet it is that high with no engine.

The second friend I stumbled upon was Bill, also known as Chumley. Bill and I worked at Tidewater Consultants, a small software company that did lots of work for the Navy and transit authorities (I know, strange combination). I was pleased to see that Bill continues to stay active and is now a pilot.

Over at Chumley's World, you can can help Bill's "mini-me" see the world. Bill provides friends with a cut-out picture of himself that is photographed in places all over. The one below is from Oktoberfest in Germany.

Well, I guess in 2009 I'm going to have to start thinking out of the box a little more.

MagicJack Review

2009-01-07T13:57:00.001-08:00

I ordered my MagicJack on 12/31 and received on 1/6 via regular mail. What came was the USB dongle and an optional USB extension that's a couple inches long. There are no instructions -- you just plug it in and the software is installed. Then you configured a few things and start making calls.

Step 1 - software installs.

Spybot detected MagicJack added itself to the startup. The entry was for C:\Users\xxxx\AppData\Roaming\mjusbsp\cdloader2.exe MAGICJACK.

Windows firewall needed to create and exception for magicjack.exe.

Step 2 - the softphone is displayed, along with a registration window that asks to create an account, which I had previously done when I ordered the MagicJack. It found my existing account and used that.

Step 3 - choose state, area code, and prefix. It has a checkbox for "I elect to accept free outgoing service (recommended)" but I wasn't sure what that was exactly.

Step 4 - confirm and activate.

Step 5 - email arrives with phone number in around 10 mins.

Step 6 - use the softphone or a real phone plugged into the MagicJack.

Incoming and outgoing calls are displayed on the softphone. It also shows a call log and voicemails. Calls sound normal to me, but I haven't used it very much yet.

Things I don't like so far:

1. Requires the PC to be on all the time. That was a given, and something you have to trade for the low cost.

2. Can't close the softphone. You can, however, minimize it to the tray.

3. While it shows the phone# of the incoming call on the softphone, it does not show the CID. It doesn't appear to show the CID on my regular phone either, just the phone#.

4. You must always use the area code to dial. But people calling you don't have that requirement.

5. Advertisements are displayed on the softphone and, I've read, they monitor your calls so that the advertising can be made more specific. But that's why the cost is slow low.

6. There is no uninstaller. But there are instructions elsewhere on the web.

Once you have an account, you can visit my.magicjack.com where you can check your license term, forward your number, set your 911 address, and change your phone# (once for free).

Can't complain at this price.

Time to Drop Vonage?

2008-12-31T07:07:00.000-08:00

In my quest to try new technology and save money, I switched to Vonage long ago. I invested in their IPO as well, but that's another story. The setup and phone number transfer went very smoothly, but I did have some issues with quality early on. They turned out to be related to bad cable modems, so once I got a good working modem everything was fine.

The cable modem is connected to the Vonage-supplied router where my phone plugs in. I use a cordless phone system, so the base plugs into the router and all other phones in the house work normally. Then I have a wireless router plugged into the Vonage router as well. The Vonage-router (which happens to be from Linksys) acts as the DHCP server, and the wireless router acts as just a hub. It all works great for about $30/month.

I recently added an 800 number so that familiy in other states don't have to worry about toll calls. My mother seems to be in and out of hospitals and phyical therapy clinics, so the 800 number is convienent for her.

But I just recently read about Magic-Jack and am impressed. For $20/year, you get unlimited phone calls nationally, and you can use your existing phones. The only downside seems to be that you must leave your PC on, and you must dial area codes. From the reports I've read, the quality is good. There a good comparison here. One of the nice things about the Vonage router is that it handles quality-of-service (QoS). That means that if I'm downloading large files over the internet, it gives priority to the phone call. With Magic-Jack, I'm not sure that's the case. But for $20/year, who cares. I just may have to buy one for fun.

HTPC Hardware

2008-12-04T19:56:00.001-08:00

After careful research, these are the parts I chose to create a mid-range HTPC. I have not yet purchased these parts, but they should all work together nicely.

We'll start with the case. They can range from $99-$999 depending on how picky you are about looks. When you buy a HTPC case, there are a few extras that may or may not be included. They are a 2 line display, built-in IR for the remote, volume knob, and power supply. The larger cases take an ATX mother board, and the smaller ones take a Micro ATX board. There are other board sizes, but they are not as popular as those two. I recommend the Micro ATX since we won't need much expansion. I chose the nMEDIAPC Black Aluminum panel & Steel HTPC 1000B Micro ATX Media Center which is on sale for $99. Its fairly basic, so it has none of those extras, although you can add a 2x20 LCD display as an option.

Next is the motherboard. It's at this point we need to decide two things. Do we want an AMD processor or one from Intel, and do we want integrated graphics or a separate card. Since we're not going to use this HTPC for gaming, I'm going the cheap route. There are a few boards with integrated graphics capable of driving a 1080p display. The ASUS M3A78-EM AM2+/AM2 AMD 780G HDMI Micro ATX AMD Motherboard, at $79, is one of those capable boards. It takes an AMD CPU (Phenom FX / Phenom / Athlon 64 FX / Athlon 64 X2) and has ATI Radeon HD 3200 graphics on the board. That should be sufficient for our purposes. We can always add a discrete graphics card down the road if we want to go the gaming route.

For an HTPC, the graphics card and TV tuner will be doing most of the work so its not necessary to buy a top-of-the-line CPU. The mid-range AMD Athlon X2 4850e 2.5GHz 2 x 512KB L2 Cache Socket AM2 45W Dual-Core Processor should be sufficient. You can blow your moo-la on a quad-core if you really want, but its overkill. There's a good review at Hot Hardware of this chipset and CPU combination.

So far its just a PC with a fancy case; that is until we add the Hauppauge WinTV-HVR 1800 MCE Kit 1128 PCI-Express x1 Interface for $65 after rebate. The key here is to get a tuner card that has onboard decoding chips, so the CPU doesn't have to do much work. You can get cards with mulitple tuners, or you can have multiple cards. This card has a NTSC tuner for cable, and a ATSC tuner for over the air HD. It also handles clear QAM, which is the free HD provided by cable. It also comes with a Microsoft certified remote control, which will help run the software we choose from the distant sofa. I don't use a cable box, so I don't need any fancy IR repeaters.

Of course we'll also want to watch Blu-ray and DVD discs, so I've included the LG Black 6X Blu-ray DVD-ROM 16X DVD-ROM 40X CD-ROM SATA Internal Combo LG Blu-ray/HD DVD-ROM & 16X DVD±R DVD Burner Model GGC-H20LK which can play either format and record DVDs. It costs only $99.

Next comes the power supply, since its not included with this case. I chose the SeaSonic SS-300ES 300W ATX12V Ver.2.2 80 PLUS Certified Active PFC Power Supply for $38, which is a little high, but we're looking for quality here. 300W should be sufficient to drive the 45W CPU and the other parts. If you choose a bigger CPU, you may want to increase the power supply watts.

To round things out, we'll need memory and a harddrive. For these I chose OCZ SLI-Ready Edition 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 1066 (PC2 8500) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory for $16 after rebate, and HITACHI Deskstar 7K1000 HDS721010KLA330 (0A35155) 1TB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive for $90 after rebate. Both of these choices were based on price.

A key to a good HTPC is to minimize heat since it will likely be located in your stereo or TV rack/cabinet. We may choose to purchase an after-market CPU cooler or additional fans, but for now I think the parts we've chosen will be fine. The case comes with 3 fans, and the CPU comes with its own heatsink/fan combination. The fans are supposed to be quiet as well.

So the price from Newegg on 12/4 is $635 minus $90 in rebates for a total of $545 + shipping. You might be able to shave a few bucks off by shopping around, but I really like the service at Newegg.

In my next post, I'll talk about software choices.

Home Theater Consolidation

2008-12-03T16:52:00.001-08:00

My wife recently said the only technology that I've purchased that she can't live without is our ReplayTV (a former competitor to Tivo). She and the kids use it every day and can't imagine watching TV without it. I'm not an video- or audiofile, but I do like watching TV on my terms. Prices for Blu-ray players have come down, so I started thinking about replacing my Oppo DVD player. But then I thought about a better approach.

I would love to consolidate my DVR, DVD player, and Roku Netflix streaming box into a single device. It would have to do the following things:

1. Play Blu-ray and DVD discs
2. Record and playback HD TV (timeshifting)
3. Stream TV over the internet like a Slingbox (placeshifting)
4. Stream TV/Movies from Netflix (and other sites like CBS)
5. Write shows to a DVD for playback in the minivan
6. Play music from my iTunes
7. Stream internet radio

The answer, of course, is a Home Theater PC (HTPC). I don't know of any off-the-shelf HTPCs that can do all these things, but its easy enough to build one if you've ever assembled a PC. An HTPC differs from a normal PC in these ways:

1. Home Theater case, so it looks like just another stereo component
2. Graphics card that can drive a 1080p HDTV
3. TV Tuner card (with onboard decoding)
4. A remote control

Then of course it needs the right software to provide all the functionality. In my next post, I'll visit my favorite PC site, Newegg, and pick some parts. It should cost around $600 for the hardware.

The Hokies Have Luck on Their Side

2008-12-01T17:21:00.000-08:00

In order for the Hokies to become Coastal champions in the ACC they needed Miami and Georgia Tech to loose -- both did. Then they needed to beat UVa -- and they did. The Hokies controlled the ball for most of the game, yet were only able to post 17 points, just three more than the Cavaliers. That's a pretty anemic offense, but its understandable given this is Frank Beamer's youngest team. So off to Tampa Bay we go to face BC for the forth time in two years. I'm hoping this will be a repeat of last year's scenario where we let BC win the regular season game, then beat them for the championship.

Both teams are young (both lost 12 starters this year), so it could go either way. I'll go ahead and predict VT wins by 3, then faces Cincinnati in the Orange Bowl. If we loose, it won't kill me since we should not have made it this far anyway.

At Rivals.com I found this interesting commentary by Olin Buchanan:

The ACC, which has been ripped weekly for its mediocre play, isn't so bad after
all. Some have suggested the ACC doesn't deserve its automatic BCS bid. But Clemson, Georgia Tech and Wake Forest closed the season with victories over South
Carolina, Georgia and Vanderbilt of the SEC. Critics can't even say the ACC teams benefited from playing weak competition. All three of those SEC teams are bowl eligible.

Even so, the games I've seen looked more like high school than college. We'll call this a rebuilding year from top to bottom, and look forward to next year's talent.

Tut was a Bust

2008-11-29T19:20:00.000-08:00

For the Thanksgiving Weekend, we decided to take an overnight trip to Dallas to see the King Tut exhibit and to visit the American Doll store. On Friday we visited the Dallas Museum of Art to see Tut, which will also be visiting Atlanta and Indianapolis. I think the tickets were around $26 for adults and $13 for kids including the American Airlines discount but not including the peverse Ticketmaster fees and $15 parking. Pretty expensive, but how often do you get to see a boy king?

Tickets have an entrance date and time in order to control the crowds. The place was packed, but well organized. They let about 50 people into the exhibit about every 10 minutes. The exhibit consisted of about 10 rooms, each with a dozen glass-encased artifacts. Most were small statues or jewlery, with a few larger statues. King Tut's body was not there, nor was his coffin. Instead, there were photographs. Not very interesting for kids at all.

For what we paid, it was a huge let-down. Once in the exhibit, there were too many people crowded around each item so the kids could not see. There was very little gold, and of course without a mummy, what kid wouldn't be let down. Boring.

Fortunately, my daughter's trip to the American Doll store and bistro on Saturday morning for brunch was much better. I took the boys to see the movie Bolt (not bad) while my wife took my daughter to Amercian Doll. She was excited beforehand and was not dissapointed. The service in the bistro was below average, but the service in the store (and hair salon) was great. Any eight year old girl would love place, so we highly recommend it.

A Kid's Stock Portfolio

2008-11-08T21:13:00.000-08:00

My 10 year old son recently read a book in which the main character bought stock that eventually made him rich. So my son asked me if he could invest his $10 in stock so he too could someday be rich. I explained that it wasn't that easy, but if he really wanted to buy stock we could use the money he'd been saving at the bank. He agreed.

Our elementary school PTA used to run a program with Washington Mutual where kids would bring in loose changes every Tuesday morning to deposit in their own bank accounts. Washington Mutual would waive any account fees and provide prizes (e.g. pencils, whistles, frisbees) for those that made deposits. Over the course of four years, my son had saved $230.44. This year the PTA stopped the program and Washington Mutual was bought by another bank, so it seemed like a good time to cash out.

So I made a list of 12 stocks that kids his age would recognize. They all had positive earnings per share except Wendy's and eight of the twelve have a dividend. I explained what EPS and Yield were and let him pick his stocks. He decided to buy one share of five different stocks and save the rest of his money for a future stock purchase.

Now if I were to open a brokerage account I doubt $230 would meet the minimums. And even so, with stock purchases being $10-15 it would have taken a big bite out of his returns. So I decided to not actually purchase the stock but instead cover any gains and dividends myself.

So the stocks he purchased at the close of November 6th were:

Disney............22.81
Mattel............14.52
McDonald's...54.17
Microsoft......20.88
Oracle...........16.85
Cash............101.21

It was fortunate for him that the market was down about 10% over Wednesday and Thursday, so I knew there'd be a bounce on Friday. And sure enough his portfolio is up $3.52 or 2.72%. He tracks it on his MyYahoo page. Its a great start.

ACC Mess

2008-11-07T16:55:00.000-08:00

If Virginia Tech can play its remaining games like they played against #23 Maryland, they should have a chance to play in the conference championship. But they have to win all three remaining games, because North Carolina won't likely loose theirs. Should UNC loose to Georgia Tech, then their records will be switched, but that won't make a difference for Virginia Tech since VT has already beaten both in dual 20-17 victories.

Here's how I see the rest of the season playing out. Key games are in red.

Remaining Coastal Games Remaining Atantic Games

GT at UNC------------>UNC....... UNC at Maryland------->UNC
Miami at GT---------->GT........ FSU at Maryland------->FSU
VT at Miami---------->VT........ Maryland at BC-------->BC
Miami at NC State---->Miami..... UVA at WF------------->WF
VT at Duke----------->VT........ WF at NC State-------->WF
VT at UVA------------>VT........ BC at WF-------------->BC
UVA at WF------------>WF........ Clemson at FSU-------->FSU
Clemson at UVA------->UVA....... BC at FSU------------->FSU
UNC at Maryland------>UNC....... Miami at NC State----->Miami
NC State at UNC------>UNC....... Duke at Clemson------->Clemson
UNC at Duke---------->UNC....... Clemson at UVA-------->UVA
Duke at Clemson------>Clemson... WF at UNC------------->UNC

GT... 4-2 5-3................... Maryland 3-2 3-5
Miami 3-2 4-4................... WF...... 3-2 5-3
VT... 3-2 6-2................... FSU..... 3-2 6-2
UVA.. 3-2 4-4................... Clemson. 2-3 3-5
UNC.. 2-2 6-2................... BC...... 2-3 4-4
Duke. 1-3 1-7................... NC State 0-4 0-8

Since VT beat UNC, that makes VT the Costal champion. FSU will win the Atlantic.

Steve Jobs

2008-11-02T12:48:00.001-08:00

I like to read non-fiction, and I'm especially intrigued by sillicon valley biographies. Three books I've read about Apple are:

Apple: The Inside Story of Intrigue, Egomania, and Business Blunders
iWoz: Computer Geek to Cult Icon
iCon: Steve Jobs, The Greatest Second Act in the History of Business

I found iCon to be the most balanced and insightful. It tells the story of Steve Jobs and his major accomplisments, but also shines a light on his immaturity, tremendous ego, and lack of loyalty. An eye-opener for me was to see that Steve never actually invented anything at all.

The Apple computer was created almost single-handily by Steve Wozniak; the Macintosh was created by Jef Raskin; iTunes came from SoundJam, an application created by Jeff Robbin; the iPod was principly designed by Jonathan Ive; and Steve Jobs was the owner of Pixar, but really didn't get involved in the company until it was clear that Toy Story would be a success.

However, some of those products would not have seen the light of day without Jobs. He was able to drive the teams to think creatively and hold them to higher craftsmanship standards. He was also a master of marketing, and recognizing which ideas had merit. Its funny that Microsoft gets criticized for taking good ideas and incorporating them into their software. Nothing was ever invented at Microsoft; the innovation stems from packaging great ideas together.

Of course Jobs made some interesting mistakes along the way, too. He thought Apple was all about hardware, so that was his focus for NeXT and Pixar, the companies he owned after leaving Apple. Neither flourished until the brink of failure when he realized that NeXT had a great operating system (which was evenutally sold to Apple), and Pixar was capable of creating computer animated movies (with help from Disney, which went on to buy Pixar). He rebuffed IBM's interest in NeXT, and he killed the Newton just when it was about to be profitable.

Those mistakes are easy to see in hindsight, and for every mistake he probably made many good decisions. But its the mistakes involving morality and ethics that bothered me the most. He tricked Woz into doing work for Atari which he took credit for and kept most of the bonus money. He refused to admit he was the father of his girlfriends baby and provided only minimal support during the early years. He would not give stock options to many deserving Apple employees, so Woz used his own stock to spread the wealth. He stabbed his friend Gil Amelio in the back by replacing him as CEO, then claimed he turned Apple around when Gil had done most of the work.

I guess when you're an artist, your actions can swing from one extreme to the other. Luckily, over the years Jobs has learned from his mistakes and, according to the book, is a better person and business man today.

Texas Longhorns #1, but for how long?

2008-10-13T12:06:00.000-07:00

Wow, after an impressive victory against the Sooners the Longhorns are ranked #1 for the first time in 24 years. At this point in the season, they certainly deserve it. But it will be very tough to hold that ranking over the long haul. Looking back at their schedule, Oklahoma was really their first test. The schedule had a weak first half, but now Texas must play Missouri, Oklahoma State, Texas Tech, and Kansas. I think it will be virtually impossible to win all those games. That's life in the Big 12.

Texas Tech and Oklahoma State are good, but not as good as Texas or Oklahoma. Its likely that at the end of the season, both Texas and Oklahoma will have one loss, and Texas will win the division. Either one will beat who ever they play from the North Division. Texas wins the Big-12 and Oklahoma gets an at-large BCS bid.

Looking at other top 10 teams, Penn State is unproven. Their upcoming game against Ohio State will determine whether they deserve the Big 10 spot. My guess is that Ohio State will win that game and the Big-10. Michigan is now a joke.

USC demonstrated their power over Ohio State already, but they have no big challenges remaining in their schedule. So they should win the PAC-10 with no more losses.

Alabama and Florida look strong this year, but evey game in the SEC is tough. LSU will test Alabama, and Georgia will test Florida, but the Red Tide and Gators should survive. The two are evenly matched for the SEC championship game, so I'll go with the experience of Florida.

My Hokies should be able to hold onto the Coastal division and play either Wake Forest or Boston College for the ACC championship. Nobody looks very strong in the ACC this year.

For the Big East, its a "who cares" year. I'll go with Pittsburg for no other reason than I like Wannstedt.

For the at-large bids, I think BYU will remain undefeated and get a spot. The other spots will go to Alabama, Oklahoma, and another Big-12 team, possibly Texas Tech.

So the BCS teams will be:
Big-12: Texas PAC-10: USC
Big-10: Ohio State SEC: Florida
ACC: Va Tech Big East: Pittsburg
At-large: BYU At-large: Oklahoma
At-large: Alabama At-large: Texas Tech

Of course the last few years have shown that upsets are inevitable, which is what make college football so great.

What a Difference 12mos Makes!

2008-10-10T14:40:00.000-07:00

According to an AP news article, a year ago on Oct. 9, 2007, the Dow and the S&P hit their record highs. Since then, the Dow has lost 5,713 points, or 40.3 percent, since closing at 14,164.53. The S&P 500, meanwhile, is off 666 points, or 42.5 percent, from its peak of 1,565.15.

Every time the market goes down, I think we've reached bottom. On the upswings I've been selling, and on the downswings I've made a few purchases. All in all, EVERYTHING in my portfolio is down. I've not touched my 401k at all, since that's for the long haul.

Most selling that I've done has been in my taxable account for the writeoff. I had to ditch long time favorites like CarMax and QQQQ (Nasdaq ETF). For some of my larger positions, I sold half during the upswings using limit orders. Now I've got 28% of my investments in cash, waiting for the right time to start buying.

What more can I do? I don't want to be the guy selling at the bottom, but I don't want to ride this thing into oblivion either. My approach is to reduce exposure but still hold stocks for when the upturn arrives.

I did pick up some distressed financial stocks, but they've been heading downward ever since. Probably not the best move. Better to grab low-priced tech stocks, which is what I'll be doing in November.

On the bright side, the DOW Dogs have 4.5%-9% yields these days because their stock prices are so low. When things settle a bit, a low-risk approach might be to pick these up knowing that there's a cushion from the dividends. But avoid the banks as their dividends will probably be lowered.

All those funds that have been selling won't be content with their money on the sidelines. When they start buying, the market will move up quickly. Its not necessary to pick the bottom, but its advisable to have some stocks in play and cash at the ready.

Financial Meltdown in Layman's Terms

2008-10-05T12:48:00.000-07:00

This month's stock market downturn (I'm avoiding the word "crash" here) stems from a complicated web of events. I'm not a financial expert, but I wanted to better understand how this happened, and possibly who to blame. Here is what I found, in layman's terms.

After the great depression, it was difficult for people to get a loan from their local bank to purchase a home. To increase home ownership, the government decided to create a market for mortgages, allowing them to be bought and sold. This was the creation of Fannie Mae, which was eventually spun into a private (sort-of) company during the Johnson administration. During the 1980s the government created Freddie Mac to compete with Fannie Mae. These two institution then bought and sold mortgages on the open market.

To empower the underprivileged, the government started pushing banks to loan money to people that didn't quite meet their standards (i.e. "sub-prime"). In some cases, rather than be accused of racism, banks made loans that might not of otherwise been made. On a limited scale, it was a good deal for America. The poor got to be homeowners, and because homeowners tended to be better citizens, it was good for the communities.

Then in the final years of Clinton, the government started pushing the "sub-prime" programs further by telling Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to increase the number of sub-prime mortgages they owned. Banks and mortgage companies got lots of fees for creating the loans knowing they could easily sell them to Fannie and Freddie. But now the sub-prime loans not only went to the underprivileged, but also to speculators who loved using someone else's money as leverage.

This is where we see some blame from the government. Instead of treating Fannie and Freddie as true private companies, they forced those companies to take unreasonable risks for political gain. The idea of helping people own homes was good, but using that influence on the market was bad.

To help people qualify, down payments were foregone and low teaser rates offered. Then the sub-prime mortgages were packaged with prime mortgages into a security that could be sold to investment banks and insurance companies. To cover their risk, investors bought insurance, like credit default swaps, that would supposedly cover defaults. See where this is going?

All those new borrowers along with low interest rates, and a market for mortgage backed securities caused home values to inflate. This in turn caused home builders and speculators to leverage themselves even more. It seemed if you weren't in the real estate market, you were missing the boat.

In 2001-2002 people began to see the issues with Fannie and Freddie, but no one wanted to stop the unnatural assent of the real estate market since the stock market was still recovering from 9/11. In 2003 the Bush administration tried to better regulate Fannie and Freddie, but were blocked by Congress' love of affordable housing.

In 2004 accounting scandals at Fannie and Freddie were uncovered, and should have been a warning of things to come. But instead of taking corrective action, Congress decided to look the other way and allow the real estate party to continue. In 2005 and 2006 attempts were made to add regulation to Fannie and Freddie to stop them from buying so many sub-prime loans. But in both cases, the Democrats stopped the legislation and the Republicans gave up too easily.

It was just a matter of time before the real estate bubble popped. Maybe it was high oil prices or just a slowing economy, but suddenly borrowers stopped paying their mortgages. It wasn't a gigantic number, but it was significant enough to get the market's attention. If a borrower bought a house for $300k with no money down at 3% interest, and the interest suddenly went up to 6% and the value of the home dropped to $250k, would you keep making payments? It was easier to walk away.

It was now difficult to value those mortgage-backed securities because it wasn't clear how many defaults were occurring. By law, companies must reassess the value of their assets based on fair-market value. Nevermind that the majority of homeowners would continue to pay, and most mortgages were for a term of 30 years. The fact was, investors didn't want to own them anymore so the values plummeted. Then suddenly the balance sheets of major investment and retail banks that held the securities didn't look so good causing their stock prices to fall.

So, a few defaults cause security values to fall, which lower the assets of a company. Since those assets were used as collateral for other investments, companies suddenly didn't have enough capital and their stocks dropped. Since it was difficult to assess the wealth of a company, no one wanted to make loans. This snowball gained so much momentum that even the credit insurance, offered by companies like AIG, failed. (Imagine three hurricanes hitting the US at the same time.)

Failures Timeline
2008-01-11 Bank of America buys Countrywide Financial
2008-05-30 JPMorgan buys Bear Sterns with government assistance
2008-07-11 IndyMac seized by FDIC
2008-09-07 Fannie & Freddie are taken over by the government
2008-09-14 Merrill Lynch sold to Bank of America
2008-09-15 Lehman Bros files for bankruptsy
2008-09-16 AIG saved by emergency loan from government
2008-09-22 JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs become bank holding companies
2008-09-25 JPMorgan buys failed Washington Mutual

That brings us to the $700B bailout, which will cost on average $6,000 per taxpayer. In my next post, I'll consider where the blame should fall.

What's worse than "financial weapons of mass destruction?"

2008-09-29T15:57:00.000-07:00

In 2003 Warren Buffett described derivatives as "financial weapons of mass destruction." Clearly that weapon has detonated, with several investment and retail banks as casualties. What's made things worse is that this mess occurred just a few weeks before elections. A real nuke could not have been timed better. So as the politicians continue to posture for power, the market continues to drop.

The economy doesn't function well without credit, but who wants to lend money when major companies are going bust? So when companies that need money can't get credit, they crash causing more lenders to sit on their money. This vicious cycle has to be stopped or we'll experience a long bear market like the Japanese did in the 1990s.

If we do a bailout, it has to be big. Japan was late to the rescue, and their efforts started small. We can't repeat the same mistake. The only way to release credit is to purge the bad debt from the system and restore confidence. The deals that Warren Buffett and Citi have made for JPMorgan loans and the Washington Mutual buy-out should be the template. The government kicks in money and takes all the risk, but in return there has to be some equity for the taxpayer. There has to at least be a chance the government could make money over the long haul. Risk always merits a return.

As I mentioned in a previous post, the bloodletting won't be over until November so don't go bargin hunting just yet. On September 22, I decided to start liquidating several positions since the market was up. Since then the market has been heading downward. (Wish I had sold more.) I picked up RIMM this morning because its decline really has nothing to do with the overall market, and because I believe the Blackberry is better than the iPhone. I'll continue to look for other bargins along the way, but not be fully invested until November.

Time to Buy Stocks?

2008-09-18T11:40:00.000-07:00

This week's stock market drop was particularly scary due to the long list of big-name investment firms that are feeling the pain. A few small bank failures are one thing, but when the likes of Bear Sterns, Merrill Lynch, and AIG run into trouble, I get nervous. To top it off, the run on money market funds had me checking to make sure my account was safe. I have a friend that has money at Lehman, which is now frozen. I'm sure he'll get most of it back...eventually. In the meantime, it will be stuck as the bankruptcy and acquisition play out.

So is it time to bargain hunt? Not yet. Each time the government steps in to "fix" the situation, the market goes up but the sustainability of that gain gets shorter and shorter with each intervention. We're to the point now where the market just shrugs its shoulders at the billions of liquidity being injected.

I thought we'd be done with this bear by the summer, and so I did some buys then. I picked up Capital One, HDFC (India bank), and Wells Fargo. Those are financials that I thought were unfairly beaten down.

BUY NOW
COF 50 50.30
HDB 90 81.28
WFC 30 35.79

HDB is quite volatile, so I'm not too worried about it being down today. I could just as easily be up tomorrow. Those are long-term bets.

To be sure there are good companies at great prices out there, but until the market settles down, I'm staying on the sidelines. This whole situation started last October, and I think we'll reach bottom in October as well. Recall October also marked the 1929 and 1987 declines. Even though over the long-term October is a good month for the S&P, it just feels like a jinxed month to me. So I'll be waiting until November to consider any moves.

Streaming Hokies

2008-09-13T12:48:00.000-07:00

I live in Texas where the good people of ABC/ESPN decided not to show the Va Tech vs Ga Tech football game. In the past I would pay the $20 to stream the game from ESPN Game Plan, but I found a new free way to accomplish the same.

ustream.tv allows users to broadcast streaming video, often live, and others across the internet to watch. I took a shot and used the search feature. Someone was nice enough to broadcast the game, so about 70 people logged in and watched the game, including some military people overseas. You can chat while watching the game as well.

The quality wasn't fantastic. The video was fine in a small window, but became a bit grainy when viewed full screen on my 22" monitor. The audio had a horrible echo but I could understand it well enough. Just glad I got to watch the game.

VT Looses to ECU

2008-08-30T18:42:00.001-07:00

I toyed with using the alternate title "ECU Defeats VT," but I don't think ECU played that well. In this game VT beat themselves with numerous mistakes. I figured the offense would be anemic (no surprise there), but I was let down by the defense. Yes, Bud Foster's D scored a touchdown, but they didn't stop the run when it counted.

As an aside, I get really annoyed when announcers refer to the Tech defense as "Beamer Ball." Beamer Ball is all about turning games around with special teams. The defense is completely controlled by 22-year assistant coach Bud Foster, so if anything, the defense is "Bud Ball."

Speaking of special teams, I think we had a mix of greatness and complete failures. On the greatness side, the run-backs were strong, the blocked PAT was great, and bouncy kickoff was perfectly executed. The failures were the missed FG and the blocked punt. They played either fantasic or horribly with no room for in-between.

I will accept a mediocre season in exchange for a run at the championship next year. So I'd prefer to keep Glennon in with the relatively young offense and save Tyrod for next year when everyone has more experience. Glennon is a streaky player. He will make several mistakes in a row, then he'll do well for a while. Once you know that, you just have to hope the defense and special teams keep you in the game until he gets on a roll. Today, the defense could not stop ECU in the 4th quarter when our running game turned weak.

I think Beamer made two bad calls. Not sure why he would go for the first down instead of taking the field goal in the first quarter. The score was 0-0 and it was important to take the easy points and get on the board first. When ECU stopped VT, it energized them. The second bad call was the missed FG. I would gone for it since we had the momentum and our kicker was unproven. But alas its easy to coach from the couch.

On the bright side Stephan Virgil and Kenny Lewis looked promising, and once Macho gets back we should do better on both sides of the ball. Its good the next two games are at home, where the Hokies are very tough.

VT Season Prediction

2008-08-30T06:18:00.000-07:00

East Carolina is not a gimme for the hokies. ECU has played Tech well in the past, loosing 17-7 in Blacksburg last year. This year the game is being played at a neutral site, Carolina Panthers stadium, on ESPN (aka the Hokie network). I think VT will pull this game out thanks to Bud Foster's defense, but it will be a nail-biter.

The Hokies will not trip-up against Furman, Western Kentucky, and Duke. Those should be blow-outs as one might expect.

GT, UNC, Maryland, and Virginia will be tough games with VT loosing one of them, but I'm not sure which. I think Glennon will have a bad game against UNC, and Beamer will have to reconsider his QB selection (which for the record, I agree that Glennon should start).

The Nebraska crowd will overwhelm the Hokies and VT will loose. If that's two losses in a row, Glennon's job might be in jeapordy.

I hate BC, and without last year's QB (who now throws for the Falcons), they will be no match. This grudge match will end with VT dancing in the endzone.

Even though FSU doesn't have a stellar team, it doesn't matter. They are well coached and always find a way to surprise their critics. If the Hokies played them earlier in the season, I'd pick VT. But this late date will allow FSU to play well.

Miami and UVa used to be THE games for VT, but they have taken a backseat recently. As rivalries they will always be close games, but I think VT will prevail in both. BTW, Maryland and Miami are Thursday night games, and the Hokies don't loose those.

My predictions for the season:

W at East Carolina
W Furman
W Georgia Tech
L at North Carolina
L at Nebraska
W Western Kentucky
W at Boston College
L at Florida State
W Maryland
W at Miami
W Duke
W Virginia

I hope 9 wins are enough to make it to the ACC championship.

Social Networking

2008-08-27T18:43:00.000-07:00

I've used Linkedin for a long time as a great way to track my professional network. Recently I've been using Facebook, which a bunch of people at work use. I even loaded the free Facebook application on my iPhone so I can post daily updates from anywhere. They serve their general purposes.

My brother recently pointed me to social network dedicated to my high school. It was fun to post old pictures and hear from people I haven't thought about in a long time. Turns out the site was built using Ning.

Ning allows its users to create their own social networking site, complete with accounts, groups, videos, pictures, and comments. I suppose its similar to Facebook groups, but Ning allows more focus. Its free to use, and the creators derive their income from google ads. Wish I had thought of that.

Dexter

2008-08-18T05:34:00.000-07:00

I finished watching the first season of Dexter via Netflix last night. It was especially nice since Dexter is available for streaming via the Roku. You can't get much more convenient than that.

Dexter is a series originally aired by Showtime. Its based on the book Darkly Dreaming Dexter by Jeff Lindsey and is about a forensic scientist that, because of early childhood trauma, has no emotions. So his adoptive father teaches him to fake it in order to survive in society. He and his sister work at the Miami police department solving murders. Oh yeah, he's also a serial killer.

Dexter gets five stars because the story is interesting, original, and compelling.

Notes on the iPhone

2008-08-17T18:59:00.000-07:00

When I used my Blackberry, I kept several notes on it: information on my kids, employee information, frequent flyer account numbers, etc. As things came up that I needed to remember, I could just add a new note.

The iPhone has notes as well, so I planned to email the notes to my iPhone, then cut & paste into the notes. Of course there's no cut & paste on the iPhone. I found an iPhone application called Evernote (with an elephant as the icon) that allows notes to be entered on your mobile device and the web. Then it keeps them in sync. It support pictures and video as well, but that's overkill for me.

It seems to have good tagging and search abilities, but I didn't see anything to mass import existing notes. Fortunately, I don't have that many so I just did a simple cut & paste on the web for each one.

Wizard101 Event

2008-08-17T14:03:00.000-07:00

I took my kids to the Wizard101 event at Dragon's Lair in Austin, TX today. There were lots of employees to talk to, and a dueling room where the kids could fight each other in the Wizard101 environment. My youngest, Jon, won his battle.

From what I heard, the beta is almost over at which time the beta characters will be reset (again) and it will cost $10/mo to play the final game. They also said they are working on a family plan, something like $10 + $5 per extra kid.

Wizard101 is a big hit with my kids and the neighbors (ages 6-9). Its a safe, non-violent version of World of Warcraft. The graphics are terrific, especially compared to Wizardry, the turn-based role-playing game I used to play on my Apple II when I was a kid.

iPhone Wallpaper

2008-08-10T18:53:00.001-07:00

They're not the best quality, but they will have to do for now. Below are two wallpapers for the iPhone. One with a VT schedule, and one with a Texas Longhorns schedule. Enjoy.

The Wii Fit

2008-08-02T19:37:00.000-07:00

It took me quite a while to break down and get a Wii. It lived up to my high expectations, so when the Wii Fit was released I started looking right away. Unfortunately I was not lucky enough to find one, so I ended paying a premium on e-bay. Well, the extra $30 was well spent.

You start by entering your height and age, then standing on the balance board while your posture, balance, and weight are calculated. Based on these measures your BMI is calculated and the Wii determines if you are overweight. It also calculates your "Wii Age" which is its interpretation of how old you act in terms of being in shape.

The Wii Fit offers several ways to decrease your BMI to your target. It offers traditional yoga and strengthening exercises as well as aerobic and fun games. This includes ski jump, ski slalom, soccer goalie, hula-hoop, and others. One of the more interesting exercises is jogging in place. This does not involve the balance board, instead the Wii-mote is placed in your pocket. It measures your up-and-down movements and simulates a jogger running through a park.

The balance board is very sensitive, so its able to measure how well you can control your muscles in different poses. It gives you good feedback so you can work on improving your control and thus muscle tone. My kids, and the rest of the kids in the neighborhood line up for their turn, wanting to set records and see how many minutes of exercise they can rack up.

My wife likes yoga and plans to use the Wii Fit on a regular basis, so we'll see how effective it is in helping her get into better shape. And I'll see what I can do as well.

Where's the Bottom?

2008-07-27T20:17:00.000-07:00

I enjoy investing money. I guess its my version of gambling. I'd like to think its less risky than gambling, but that's probably a stretch. I think its very hard to outwit the market, but the overall market has barely stayed in front of inflation, so index investing isn't going to cut it, even over the long haul.

For my 401k, I have the funds split evenly into two mutual funds: a US small company fund, and an international fund. I just let it ride, without even rebalancing. I try not to even look at it.

I have a brokerage account that has an IRA and Roth for myself, and an IRA and Roth for my wife. The IRAs are old 401Ks that were rolled-over. For those accounts, I invest in US and foreign stocks for the long-haul. I have a core of ETFs from Vanguard (they usually have the lowest costs), and the rest in individual stocks. I have a taxable account as well, which I try not to actively trade much so as to avoid tax consequences.

My brokerage account is 63% US stocks, 29% international, and 8% cash. The ETFs that make up the core are as follows:

QQQQ NASDAQ 100
VHT World Healthcare
VNQ REIT
VV Large Cap
VGK European
VPL Pacific
VWO Emerging Markets

From January 1 to July 27 the S&P500 returned -14% while my portfolio returned around -16%. If I went back to October at the high point, my losses would be much higher, possibly up to 30% primarily because I had some big bets in stocks like Capital One (COF), Washington Mutual (WM), and Whole Foods (WFMI). At the time, I thought I would protect my portfolio by buying low-risk, dividend paying stocks. Haha.

I feel confident I pick good stocks, but I have trouble deciding when to sell. I often see big gains only to watch them dissapate because I held too long. I once read the secret to successful investing is to not loose money. Sounds obvious, but if I were better about cutting my loosers and letting my winners run, I'd have done much better. But when a stock drops 10-20%, my instinct is to back the truck up and dollar cost average. If it was a buy at $50, then $40 is a super bargin!

Back toward the end of 2007, I sold off some stocks and increased my cash position, so when the summer hit I bought some "bargins." But the market has continued to decline. I figured we would have hit bottom by now, but that doesn't seem to be the case. I'm trying hard not to sell and ride this bear out, but in the future I think I'm going to create a stop-loss for every purchase.

Blackberry or iPhone

2008-07-26T15:56:00.000-07:00

I'm a long-time Blackberry user. Its an invaluable business tool. I travel often, and many times I never need to fire up email on my laptop because I can keep up using the blackberry. When the iPhone first came out, I was in no hurry to switch. Responding to emails via the virtual keyboard was laughable.

Well my 8700 finally died, so I had a choice. Get the Curve, get the iPhone 3G, or wait for the Bold. My friends convinced me to try the iPhone, which is much better now (with v2.0 OS) because of the vast number of third-party applications. So here are my initial thoughts:

First off, the setup was a breeze. No issues there. It took a minute to figure out the touch-screen interface, but when I got stuck I just did whatever was natural and it seemed to pay off. The built-in applications are great, but its the third-party apps that set it apart. The Poker game is much better than what I had on the blackberry, and the applications that use GPS (maps, social apps) or the tilting motion (games) of the iPhone are quite unique. Very fun indeed.

So if the iPhone excels in these areas, where does it fall down? The shape just doesn't sit in my hand as well as a blackberry. And using my finger for everything, while very intuitive, is just not as fast. Typing is horrible, but my friends say I'll get faster. And lastly, battery life is not quite as good as I expected, especially when 3G is active.

Sorry, but so far the blackberry wins. But I'll continue to use the iPhone and see if things get better.

The End of DVDs

2008-07-23T19:37:00.000-07:00

I think its clear that DVDs will fade out much like VHS, audit cassettes, and wax records before that. Like everyone else, I've got a DVD player (or two) in the house. The interesting thing is that its not Blue Ray that will supplant DVDs.

I've read that the best Blue Ray player is the PS3, and at only $400 its competitive with devices that only play Blue Ray discs. But Blue Ray is just a stopping point on the way to on-demand streaming video. Cable companies have been offering this service for a while, but the library of content is quite limited. Streaming over the internet has always been the goal, but until recently bandwidth, compression, and DRM were issues.

But movies on the PC just won't work for the majority of people since they want to watch content on the big TV in the den. There are three ways in which this has been solved.

First came Disney's MovieBeam, a set-top box that used unused over-the-air channels to download movies. For whatever reason, this device never went mainstream.

Hauppauge and others vendors provide devices that use a LAN or wireless LAN to stream from the PC to the TV. Because of DRM, these devices are limited to certain formats, and of course they are dependent on the PC.

The ZvBox takes a stream from the PC and rebroadcasts it on an unused channel over your homes existing cable. This allows the TV to tune to the channel without any special hardware (beyond the ZvBox on the PC). Using existing coax allows for more bandwidth than existing 802.11g wireless networks.

Devices like AppleTV, Vudu, and the Netflix Roku are simple devices that connect TVs directly to the internet for streaming content, but again, they can only decode the streams who's compression and DRM they understand.

Netflix's strategy of licensing their content distribution format to device makers, like Roku and XBox360, plus allowing unlimited streaming for their customers is a great strategy to get market penetration. The company that gets the largest number of subscribes will own the streaming business. I'd place my bets on Netflix.

Person to Person Lending

2008-07-20T09:04:00.000-07:00

P2P Lending seems to be getting a lot of attention, so I decided to research it a bit and see if its a worthy investment.

In a nutshell, P2P Lending sites match lenders to borrowers using a dutch auction format, then play the middleman moving the intial loan amount to the borrower, and moving monthly payments to the lenders. Lenders get a better rate of return than a bank account, typically in the 7% area. Borrowers also get a better rate, in the 10-15% range depending on their credit rating. Remember, these are unsecured loans so the risk is higher. I believe the default rate is around 2-20%. Reward comes with risk.

Prosper was started by former E-Loan executives in 2006. They are the largest and have been around longest, so I started my research there. Both lenders and borrowers go through several steps to verify their identity. I signed up as a lender and am pretty confident that the questions asked could only be answered by me. Borrowers are rated for credit worthiness based on information from a credit report as well as information volunteered, and they submit their "story" for why they need the money. Reasons vary from credit card debt consolidation, to starting a small business, to paying for college books.

Strategy
The basic strategy is to spread your risk over many borrowers, so instead of fully funding a $5000 loan, you offer $50 to 100 different borrowers. There's ample information on each borrower to help you assess the risk, but not all of the information is verified by a third-party. Remember you're bidding to fund the loan, so as more lenders bid, the actual rate goes down until the time period is up. Then the lenders with the winning bids get to fund the loan at the average rate. Of course you set a minimum rate you'll accept so you don't get stuck.

Loans at Prosper always have a 3-year term, but it varies at other sites. So over the course of 3 years, every month Prosper deposits the proceeds from your loans into your account, minus their fee. A few might go into default, but that's factored into your total expected return.

Combing through 100s of loan requests can be tedious, so there are portfolio plans that will automatically place bids based on your criteria. This allows you to mix high, medium, and low credit rating loans together to create a mixed portfolio that balances risk and reward.

From what I can tell, there are generally three variations or types of lending sites.

Traditional
As I described above, the traditional P2P Lenders are sites like Prosper, Lending Club, Loanio, and Fynanz. Fynanz is interesting because it focuses on making student loans, which include options for deferral and longer terms.

Do Gooders
Kiva makes its loans in the developing nations. This approach is more focused on helping others rather than making money. It can be fullfilling to select someone from a poor nation, make them a modest loan (aka micro-credit), then watch their quality of life improve. Unfortunately, this approach doesn't scale well, so you're helping individuals, not nations.

Hybrid
Zopa is interesting because they partner with credit unions to issue CDs to the lenders with a fixed return rate. Lenders can then give up some of that rate in order to help borrowers lower their rates. So the risk is lower, the return is lower, and you get to help needy people.

After looking at these approaches, reading several interesting blogs, and reviewing a few mainstream articles, I've concluded that P2P Lending is not a compelling investment yet. I'd still prefer to stick with equities, bonds, REITs, and my money market fund.

An Inexpensive Vacation

2008-07-19T06:52:00.001-07:00

I travel a lot, so I saved my points to take my wife to Cancun. We'd never been to Mexico, so that seemed like a good place since we both love the beach.

Airfare
I fly American whenever I can, so I have no shortage of frequent flyer points. For coach tickets, its 25K plus $10 each. I figure the tickets are worth around $600 each, so that's a great deal. Didn't have to pay for checked baggage since our tickets were grandfathered (although it doesn't really matter since I'm Platinum.) I've heard that frequent flyer tickets are going to cost $100 in the near future. So much for free.

Hotel
I stay at Hiltons when I can, but it takes a while to accumulate points. They have a special deal for 6-14 nights in category 4-6 properties. The Hilton Cancun Golf & Spa Resort is a category 6 hotel (the best), so for 6 nights it was 175K points (using code GLONP2). Ordinarily, that would cost about $150/night for a total of $900. The problem with booking hotel rooms using points is you always get the cheapest room (which in this case was oceanview but no balcony). BTW, the Hilton is way south of the main area, which means the beach isn't great for swimming because of the rocks. But the pools were amazing, and the service impectable.

Food
The hotel has five restaurants so we ate there most of the time. Between meals, beachside drinks, and tips we spent $523. Prices in Cancun aren't much different than those in Texas. The breakfast was awesome, but the other meals were pretty average.

Tours/Other
We visited Chichen Itza and Isle Mujeras, both of which were pretty cool. For travel around the hotel, we used the bus which is only $.60 each way. (We came across an air conditioned "tourist" bus that was $1 each way too.) So we spent around $350 on tours and other incidentals.

So our total for 6 nights in Cancun was $893 instead of $3000, which would be the typical price. I suppose if we had hunted for deals we might have come closer, but all in all this worked well.

Roku Works Well

2008-07-11T19:10:00.000-07:00

I streamed a History Channel show from Netflix over my new Roku today and it worked great! The user interface is dirt simple, so its easy to review the instant queue, although that's all that is available. You need to populate your queue using the PC, which is reasonable. The purpose of the Roku is to play video, not search libraries. The remote is responsive and intuitive.

Once I selected the show to stream, it paused for about 10 seconds, then it buffered the show for another 20 seconds. It showed a "quality" rating of 2/4, but I'm not sure what that means. I'm guessing that means 480p and has nothing to do with bandwidth.

The 45 minute show streamed perfectly with no hiccups at all. I could not tell the difference between streaming and normal TV. During the ending credits I tested pausing, fast forward, and reverse. The interface is different than a VCR or DVD, but still works well. Resuming play requires the 20 second buffering again, so its not as responsive as a DVD player.

According to Speakeasy, my download speed over my 802.11g network is 6796 kbps. The Netflix site reports my "video quality is high" which is 1600 to 2000 kbps. The recommended speed is 3000 kbps for instant viewing.

Next hurdle is programming my OneForAll remote to emulate the Roku remote.

My Netflix Roku Arrived

2008-07-10T19:50:00.000-07:00

I ordered the Roku the other day, and it just arrived. Its a small box that attaches to your TV and streams from Netflix via your local network. Its the first step in making streaming content easy and accessible.

The Roku handles either wired or wireless (802.11g with WEP or WPA) network conections. As part of the setup, it found my wireless network and after entering my WEP key, it was connected.

It comes with a composite video cable, but is also capable of connecting to your TV via component, S-video, and HDMI. It also has a connection for optical audio. I'm using the composite until I have time to buy another HDMI. Its connected to my 50" Pannasonic Plasma.

Setup took about 5 mins, most of which was spent entering the WEP key via the simple remote. After activating the device via my Netflix account, it showed my by Instant Streaming Queue, and I'm ready to run a test. Results coming in my next entry.

Wizard101

2008-06-22T05:41:00.000-07:00

My kids have discovered an online multiplayer game made just for kids. Its called Wizard101 and it was created by KingsIsle Entertainment in Austin, TX. Its in beta testing today, but should be released to the public very soon.

Kids get to create a character then complete quests earning them experience points, gold, and magical items. These quests require kids to read, so this game probably isn't appropriate for kids under the age of 7. There's turn-based battles using a card-based system that is similar to Pokemon. There's no blood, nor do characters die. They simply run out of hitpoints and must leave the battle until they are healed.

The environment feels like a Harry Potter scene with rich colors in a 3-D, first person perspective. The game's client is downloaded via the web, so there's no DVD or CD required. Once a map is completely explored, new worlds are loaded to keep things interesting.

Much effort has been invested in making the game safe for kids. Parents must give permission to play (via email) and there are limits around what can be said in chat. So far my kids love the game, and so do their friends.

Uploading to ReplayTV

2008-05-31T09:05:00.001-07:00

Now that I have all the season 2 Heroes episodes downloaded as MPEG-2, I'm free to watch them on my PC, iPod, PSP, etc. But I really want to watch them on my TV, so the easiest way is to leverage my ReplayTV.

I use DVArchive as a ReplayTV emulator on my PC. It allows me to download shows from my ReplayTV across my 802.11g wireless network. ReplayTV will also stream shows from other ReplayTVs, or in this case DVArchive. So I just need to get the episodes imported into DVArchive, then I can use ReplayTV to view them on the big TV.

To get this to work, I downloaded RTVTools to get rtvconvert.exe, a command-line program that preps videos for import into DVArchive. After running that utility, I simply choose Files | Import Show(s) from the DVArchive menu, then navigate to the .mpg files and import the shows.

To make all this easier, I created a simple batch script that runs FFMpeg and rtvconvert for me. Here's what it looks like:

@echo off
REM -- Convert from FLV to MPEG-2
ffmpeg -i "%~1".flv -target ntsc-svcd -acodec mp2 -ar 48000 -ab 192 -ac 2 "%~1".mpeg

REM -- Convert from MPEG-2 to Replay-MPG
rtvconvert "%~1".mpeg %~1".mpg

It doesn't get much simplier than that. To use this, FFMpeg.exe and rtvconvert.exe as well as the .flv files must be in the same directory. For example, if the batch file is named "doit.bat" this is how it should be invoked:

doit HeroesS1E2

This will convert HeroesS1E2.flv to HeroesS1E2.mpeg and then to HeroesS1E2.mpg.

Snagging Streaming Video

2008-05-31T07:28:00.001-07:00

My wife and I just finished watching the first season of Heroes on DVD from Netflix. (By the way, it was excellent!) We're now ready to watch season 2 but its not on DVD yet. NBC streams all the episodes from their website, but we don't really want to watch TV on the PC, so I did some research.

There's a very useful, free download manager called Orbit Downloader that in addition to accelerating and managing normal downloads, will also capture streaming audio and video from the likes of YouTube and NBC.com. It was an easy install and simple to use.

So now I just go to the NBC website, select an episode to stream, and tell Orbit to download it, in this case as a .flv file (Flash Video). There are video players that will play .flv files, but I wanted a format a little more portable so other devices could play it, or I could burn a DVD.

Then I came across FFMpeg, a nice little command-line utility that converts between video formats. From all appearances, it seems to convert anything to anything, with lots of parameters providing control.

Now I can watch Heroes, and other content from the web, on my own terms.

Vista 64 Part 2

2008-04-07T04:55:00.001-07:00

Once I got past the issue I mentioned in my previous post, everything was smooth sailing. It took a while to download all the patches, including SP1 but there were no issues. Even all the drivers, such as my HP 2110 printer, onboard audio, and my NVidia 8600GT card, worked just fine.

I loaded Office 2003, Quicken 2008, Windows Live Mail, AVG, iTunes, and Java5 without problems. I didn't bother loading Yahoo Widgets and instead are using the Windows gagets -- they are pretty much the same thing. At idle the machine is using 1GB of RAM. Next I'll load Crysis and try out DirectX 10.

Vista 64

2008-04-04T19:37:00.000-07:00

I've been hearing that Vista is fairly stable, so I decided to take the plunge. But since I'm upgrading, I figured 64-bit was the way to go. There's a slight degrading of performance, but all the 4GB is accessible (which is not the case with 32-bit Windows). I installed a brand new 750GB SATA drive, and started the installation.

After the first reboot, I got the BSOD just before the installation was complete. I disconnect all USB peripherals, reformated, stood on my head, but I could never get past the BSOD. So I did a quick search and found that other people have experienced the same issue, which can be solved by dropping down to 2GB during the installation, then patching.

We'll see if I get all the drivers working and get all my apps working.

Personality

2008-04-01T13:06:00.001-07:00

I've taken personality tests before, but can never remember my classification. So I took another one and found that I'm a ISTJ, which I think means Introvert, Sensing, Thinking, Judging. Another website told me that equates to "Inspector Guardian, " and a similar personality is Warren Buffet. Am I destined for riches?

I found another interesting site that determines your VisualDNA. See mine below...

Read my VisualDNA™ Get your own VisualDNA™

Diets

2008-02-13T13:14:00.000-08:00

Getting older stinks. While I've never been accused of being fat, at least not to my face, I am definitely heavier than I was 10 years ago. My metabolism has slowed, my activity has decreased, yet my love of food knows no bounds. It's an unintended side-effect of aging I guess. Weight-gain sneaks up on you until you can't deny it anymore and you decide to go on a diet. I was inspired by Hackers Diet, written by the founder of AutoDesk. It breaks down weight-gain into math and science, targeting engineers. My 2007 New Year's resolution was to try the Southbeach Diet, which helped me loose 15lbs over 12 weeks. (I've slowly gained back about 7lbs, mostly due to beer.)

For me, the key to loosing weight is understanding what you eat. If you know how many calories you require each day, and you know the caloric value of the food you're eating, its just a math problem. I used My-Calorie-Counter to keep a journal. Once you see which foods account for all calories, you gravitate to the better foods.

Wood Spider Video

2008-02-07T17:23:00.000-08:00

The Wood Spider is capable of creating very complex webs, so you'll definately want to check this 2 minute video out.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-xxyewW6EoM

Let me know what you think.

Maximize Retirement Savings

2008-02-04T07:24:00.000-08:00

The government tries to encourage saving for retirement, so why not take maximum advantage of their incentives? Popular advice says to max-out your retirement savings in this order:

401K or other employer sponsored savings
Deductible traditional IRA
Roth IRA

However, the rules may limit your ability to make contributions to a deductible IRA or Roth IRA as your income grows. You can always contribute after-tax dollars to a traditional IRA, but that's not much different than just saving in a regular account. But the laws will change in 2010, removing the $100,000 AGI cap for converting a traditional IRA to a Roth IRA. So here's what you can do now.

Set-up a separate Traditional IRA and fund it with $4,000 for 2007 and $5,000 for 2008. If you're married you can do this for your spouse as well (in their own account) for a grand total of $18,000. Add another $5,000 per account in 2009, then in 2010 you can convert the account(s) to Roth IRAs by paying tax on only the earnings. Thereafter, your accounts will grow and can be tapped at retirement time without paying taxes. And of course the great things about the Roth IRA is that you're not forced to make withdrawals at all.

So why is this so important? Let's say your 2007/2008 contribution of $18,000 makes 8% by investing in conservatives funds. Then in 2010 you'll have $21,000, so you'll pay tax on those earnings when converted to a Roth IRA which will leave approximately $20,400. If you leave that money alone for 20 years continuing to earn 8%, you'll end up with $95,000 tax free.

Compare that leaving the $18,000 in a non-retirement account getting 8% over 22 years. In 2030 you'll have just $70,000 after taxes. So this example shows 30% more money using the IRA. Not bad.

Bargins or Sucker's Bet?

2008-02-01T05:09:00.000-08:00

The turmoil in the stock market can present some interesting buying opportunities. There many stocks that are priced very low, either because of market overreaction, or because they deserve it. Pick the right ones and you could benefit from hefty gains. A few I've been watching...

Yahoo! (YHOO) disappointed analysts yet again, so they dropped to $19 which is a five year low. Just after writing this I realized that Microsoft has offerred $31 share (cash and stock). I believe their brand is still strong, and Microsoft may end up paying more than $31. So I grabbed some at $28 and we'll see what happens.

Netsuite (N) is a software-as-a-service outfit that recently IPO'ed at $26, went up to $40, and has now settled around $27. They host business software for medium and small businesses which more cost-effective than hosting it themselves. If they go below $20 I may grab some.

Netezza (NZ) is a data warehouse appliance company that is quieting stealing market share from Oracle and IBM. They have combined hardware and database functionality into a single very fast solution that is used for business intelligence. Their IPO during the summer was at $12 then they quickly rose to $17. They have been as low as $7 and are now sitting at $10. The big boys aren't going to sit still for long, so 2008 will make or break this company.

Washington Mutual (WM) had been in my portfolio for several years until recently. They used to hover around $45 and paid a good dividend, that is until the mortgage crisis. They cut their dividend, wrote off lots of losses, and their stock dropped to $11. It seems to be heading up again, recently at $22. If you believe the worst is over, this might be a bargin. They are also a potential acquisition target.

Happy hunting.

Netflix + GamezNFlix

2008-01-30T14:14:00.000-08:00

I love Netflix and their 3-out program, which costs $17/mo. That's $5.67 per month per title. So you'd think if I upgraded to the 6-out program it would cost $34/mo but the price is actually $36/mo, so its not linear. I've also heard that frequent renters are sometimes "throttled" so they receive less service. So instead of upgrading my Netflix subscription, I decided to look at other alternatives and see if I couldn't also get games for my new Wii as well.

Gamefly rents console games, but not movies. Their 2-out plan is $23/mo which seems a little high.
Blockbuster doesn't rent games via mail, but does allow in-store rentals. Their website in on par with Netflix as is their price.
Intelliflix rents DVD and adult movies but no games. 3-out is $20/mo.
Redbox does DVD rentals my mail and by kiosks.

Then I came across GamezNFlix, which like its name, rents both console games and DVDs. You can get their background from Wikipedia. Their reviews on the web were not particularly good, but I did find a coupon that got me 3-out for $12.75/mo so I signed up.

A couple of things I've learned since then. Their website is pretty clunky, and don't bother using Firefox. They allow you to queue both games and DVDs, and so far have been pulling from the top. But then again I am not renting anything recent -- mostly older games and DVDs.

They have nine distribution centers including one near Dallas, so I figured the postal time would be minimal. During the month of January, I rented 6 movies and 1 game. Although I haven't kept close track, it feels like it takes about 3 days for the DVD to arrive, and 3 days for the DVD to get checked back in for a total of 6 days round-trip. Netflix is much better at around 4 days round-trip.

Also note that the two week free trial limits your selections. The optimist would say this reserves the most popular titles for paying customers. The pessimist would say this allows them to exceed your expectations during the trail so you'll sign-up.

I've decided to keep Netflix but augment with GamezNFlix. Its only been a month, but so far so good.

Best TV on DVD Part 2

2008-01-28T10:43:00.000-08:00

In addition to traditional TV shows, we've also found some excellent mini-series that are especially good when you view episodes without commercials.

6. Band of Brothers is a 10 episode series (10 hours total) from HBO about the 101st Airbone Division during WWII. Its very similar to Saving Private Ryan, but since its eight hours longer its much more in-depth. Some of the scenery is amazing.

7. Taken is a 10 episode series (15 hours total) from the Sci-Fi channel chronicling the involvement of a man and his family over several decades starting with the UFO crash at Roswell. There are some slow spots in the first half, but once Allie (a little girl) appears its very engaging. Don't give up on the series too early.

Best TV on DVD

2008-01-27T10:00:00.000-08:00

My wife and I rarely watch live TV anymore because we prefer the ReplayTV or Netflix for all the obvious reasons. We've found a few TV series that are really great, especially when you watch them back-to-back on DVD. Here are my favorites.

1. 24 epitimizes the cliff-hanger drama. Each season consists of 24 one-hour episodes that represent an action packed day. The plots are complex with lots of unexpected twists, so you must watch them in order without missing any episodes. As of this writing, there are 6 seasons so that's a total of 144 Jack Bauer-filled shows.

2. Lost is tough to explain, but its totally addictive. At the end of each episode you'll be hard pressed to not start the next. Each episode focuses on developing one of the characters stranded on an island through a series of flashbacks, while the present-day plot continues with the strange happenings on the island.

3. The Shield takes a look at the seedier side of police corruption. The writing has the viewer torn between wanting the bad cops to get caught and wanting them to continue their deeds. But they never quite do what the audience wants or expects. Nothing ever goes smoothly, so if feels real.

4. Alias is a spy thriller where each episode stands alone but there's a larger plot in the background. Its best to watch each episode in order, but you won't get too lost if you miss an occassional one. The character development is pretty good and the writing is excellent if you can get past the fact that Sydney Bristow is all but indestructible.

5. The 4400 answers the question, "what would happen if all the people abducted by aliens were suddenly returned to earth?" The show starts off delivering independent episodes similar to X-Files, but later begins to develop the bigger plot.

Next post will recommend some mini-series.

Firefox vs IE

2008-01-26T07:05:00.000-08:00

I've been exploring an excellent Windows site called Optimize Guides, and came across the Firefox Myths page. I've been a long-time user of both Firefox and IE, so I found the information interesting. I use Firefox at work, which accounts for the majority of my browsing. I use IE at home, where I like to keep things simple for the family. I like using both so that I am comfortable with either. Both handle popups, allow tabbed browsing, remember my passwords, and feel responsive.

I like the way downloads are handled in Firefox 3 better than in previous versions. I also like the "remember password" bar better than popping up a window. It allows me to first see if my password was correct before I tell Firefox to remember it. I haven't done much with the smart bookmarks yet.

I was recently browsing Gameznflix with Firefox and had all sorts of issues, which I blamed on the site. Turns out that when I switched to IE7 the issues went away. I tried the Acid2 Browser Test and found that IE7 failed. Firefox2 didn't fare any better, but Firefox3 (Beta 2) looked fine. It looks like the team working on IE8 has got the test working as well.

The Firefox Myths page makes the case that IE is, on the whole, slightly better than Firefox. In my experience, I tend to agree although the differences aren't significant. Regardless, I'll continue to use both.

For a less scientific comparison, refer to Brian Briggs' Browser Showdown.

Economic Stimulus

2008-01-24T18:46:00.000-08:00

Today congress agreed to a tax stimulus that will put money in everyone's pocket, including those that don't even pay taxes. Sounds like redistribution of wealth -- isn't that socialism? I can deal with "safety net" programs like welfare, unemployment insurance, and medicare but to just take hard-earned money from one person and give it directly to someone that's not earning anything doesn't seem fair. And the chances of that recipient spending the money in a meaningful way is unlikely.

Even if we ensured that only those that paid taxes got a rebate, I still don't like the idea of spending money the government doesn't have. This feels like a program that helps a little in the short-run, but hurts a lot in the long-run. I suppose this approach is faster than spending on public works or defense, but there's no gurantee the money will actually be spent. There are always those that would prefer to save the money (as I probably will). Better to subsisize purchases through tax-free weekends or tax-rebate weekends. Then at least we know that people will be incented to spend.

Watching the Stock Market

2008-01-23T07:06:00.000-08:00

When a stock goes down by 10% or more, there are two paths to take. You can cut your losses and dump the stock, or you can double-down. To me, doing nothing doesn't make sense. If you want to increase your position, you should always remember that every time you buy a stock, someone is selling it. For every good reason you have to buy, they've got a good reason to sell. So who is right?

I think we're in a recession, but I believe it will be short-lived. I sold my dogs and am keeping some cash so I'm ready to pounce on bargains when the market picks up. I think things will be too risky until the summer. But I still have 60% of my money in stocks for the long haul.

Keep in mind that the biggest profits are made when the fed is cutting rates. Historically, the market loves it when rates are heading south, so that's the time to be invested. When rates are going up, its time to take some profits and think more conservatively. The 3/4 point cut is a good sign, but let's not rush in too quickly.

Lots of Passwords

2008-01-21T14:08:00.000-08:00

If you're like me, you have lots of online accounts with varying account names and passwords. In some cases my browser remembers them for me, but not all sites will allow that. Plus I tend to access accounts from various machines, so I can't rely on the browser alone. To help me remember all these accounts, I use a free application called PINS. Its a rather simple program that helps me organize all my passwords, then save them securely using 448-bit encryption. The program is so small that it and the data file can be easily stored on a USB stick and stuck in my safe with the other important papers.

I categorized the accounts as follows:

Financial - banks, credit cards, mortgages, brokers
Benefits - health, dental, vision, life insurance, 401K
Shopping - Amazon, Buy.com, Google, eBay
Other - email, bills, portals

PINs hasn't been updated since 2003, but it does what its supposed to, so there's no need to add more bells and whistles that no one will use and will only lead to bloat. Using PINs will also make it easier for my heirs; should something happen to me, they will have easy access to all my accounts.

So if you're looking for a simple, functional application to manage all your passwords, I recommend PINs without reservation.

Happy Birthday, Mike!

2008-01-21T07:00:00.000-08:00

Today, January 21st, is my brother's birthday. He is one year, one month, and one day younger than me. His birthday present was the NY Giants victory over the Packers, which was in doubt for a while -- close game. If you know Mike, be sure to send him a beer.

Favorite Freeware

2008-01-20T10:54:00.000-08:00

I came across a great site, called XP Freeware, that lists the best freeware for XP. I thought I'd list a few of my favorites.

To protect my PC, I use AVG which is a traditional anti-virus program that also monitors email. I also use Threat Fire which uses a different approach to protecting computers. It tries to detect malicious behavior heuristically without fingerprints. To round things out, I use ZoneAlarm as my firewall.

For instant messaging, I've been using Trillian for a long time. It handles Yahoo!IM, AIM, and GoogleTalk (as well as others). I have occassional problems connecting to AIM, but for the most part it works well. I don't think Pidgin, formerly known as Gaim, measures up.

I often deal with PDFs, so I recommend PrimoPDF for creating PDF documents via the printer and the Foxit Reader is a much faster reader than the original Adobe Acrobat.

My favorite free tool these days is RocketDock, an application launcher with a really slick user interface. It gives your PC a "Mac" feeling.

ProcessExplorer is great for understanding where your computer's resources are being used, and killing the occasional errant process.

Yahoo Portal

2008-01-19T19:17:00.001-08:00

I've been using Yahoo's portal as my home page practically since I started using the internet. Yahoo has always been about helping people use the web more efficiently, and search has only been a small part of that. Yahoo has traditionally outsourced their search until relatively recently. Its funny to think the boys at Google asked Yahoo to acquire them, but Yahoo didn't think the Google technology would scale, so they passed. Oops.

I just upgraded my portal page to Yahoo's "new look", and it has good and bad points. I like the graphics, the easy customization, and some of the new content. For instance, I like being able to easily see my Netflix Queue, my Yahoo!IM, and local weather. I also played around with Yahoo Pipes as a way to consolidated RSS feeds easily. And being able to start with pre-populated pages is nice as well.

The big advertising space is a downer, and I liked being able to easily see which of my stocks is above and below a set price, which I don't get with the replaced portlet. I'll stick with them for a while longer, but there's good competition out there from iGoogle, PageFlakes, and NetVibes.

I can't imagine FaceBook or MySpace being my homepage, but with tabbed browsing I guess I don't have to settle for just one.

Hokie Football Pre-Pre-Season

2008-01-19T18:16:00.000-08:00

Well, my Hokies lost the Orange Bowl to Kansas, an up-and-coming Big-12 team. Enough time has passed so I can write about them without significantly raising my blood pressure. We've been to 15 bowls in a row dating back to 1993, which is pretty impressive. But looking at our bowl history, one can see we seem to get to the bowls but can't win the big ones. Over this 15 year period, our record is 6-9 overall and 1-4 in BCS games.

1995 Sugar Bowl, win vs Texas
1996 Orange Bowl, loss to Nebraska
2000 Sugar Bowl, loss to Florida State
2005 Sugar Bowl, loss to Auburn
2008 Orange Bowl, loss to Kansas

I can deal with loosing to Kansas; I'm just happy that we won the ACC. What really killed me was the loss to BC, especially since it was on a Thursday night. Va Tech is 14-4 on Thursday nights with one of those losses coming from the Orange Bowl. I believe the other 3 are all from BC.

Our traditional rival, UVa, just hasn't been much of team lately (although 2007 was pretty good); Miami has gone down the tubes, and we're not playing West Virginia anymore. That pretty much leaves BC as our hated rival. That should hold for 2008 as well.

The Hokies are ranked #13 in the Rivals Pre-Season Rankings, #11 in the ESPN Pre-Season Rankings, and #17 in the CFN Pre-Season Rankings. BC and Clemson will be our big competition in the ACC, with Miami and UVa being wildcards.

If you're interested in more information, see the Virginia Tech Football History Database and the Wikipedia entry.

Memory Woes

2008-01-17T14:20:00.000-08:00

My PC is running 2 x 1GB Patriot 800Mhz DDR2 RAM under Windows XP. I paid $111 - $40 rebate a few months ago, so when I saw I could get the same memory for $33 after rebate, I figured it was time to upgrade. I verified my mobo had 4 slots and that Windows XP can support 4GB, so I placed my order.

Then I dug a little deeper.

In a nutshell, Windows XP is a 32-bit OS and as such can only address 4GB of physical memory total. It turns out that "total" includes the address ranges necessary for all the peripherals including my video card. So when it comes down to it, Windows XP will only use around 3GB of RAM -- the rest goes unused.

The boot.ini options /3GB and /PAE won't help either. The only chance I have to use all 4GB is to upgrade to a 64-bit OS. Of course that requires 64-bit drivers, which at the moment are not as stable.

There's an excellent explanation at Dan's Data if you're interested.

Travel Loyalty Programs

2008-01-17T09:56:00.000-08:00

I fly about 80,000 miles a year, mostly domestic. Here are a few suggestions for anyone that travels.

If you're going to be away from home you might as well partake in all the benefits. That means joining all the airline, major hotel, and major rental car loyalty programs. Then to make the most of your points, focus on the one or two that you use most. My "big-three" are American Airlines, Hilton Hotels, and Avis car rental. As you get more points, you'll get more perks.

For American Airlines (AA), you need 25,000 miles to be Gold at which point you can board early. At 50,000 points you are Platinum which means you can occassionally upgrade to first-class for free. At 100,000 points you get Executive Platinum in which case you almost always fly first-class at no additional cost. This higher your "status" the more additional points you accure for free flights. I usually get 5 or 6 roundtrip tickets per year.

I also suggest getting a credit card that awards points for one of your loyalty programs. I have an AA Mastercard which helps build up the points. Each flight has a limited number of award ticket seats, so you'll need to book six months in advance, which can be done online.

When I book a seat on AA, I always try to get an exit seat for the extra legroom. Information on the best seats can be found at Seat Guru. These are typically only available to frequent fliers. If I can't get one, I occasionally check the available seats online to see if one has opened. About 48hrs before the flight leaves, Executive Platinums get moved into first class, so they often free the exit row seats.

Also, the better your status (i.e. Gold, Platinum, Exec Platinum), the higher you'll be on the stand-by list. This comes in handy if your itinerary changes and you want to get on an earlier/later flight. I recall landing way late, standing behind a guy who was told he'd have to find a hotel room, then handed a boarding pass for the next flight. Obviously he had no status.

I chose Hilton over Marriott because they allow more flexibillity in getting points. You can get all Hilton points, all airline points, or a combination. As you move from silver to gold to platinum, you get room upgrades, free internet access, happy hours, etc. depending on the particular hotel. Almost all cities have multiple Hiltons and Marriotts and both own several brands.

Joining an airline club, like AA's Admirals Club, is very convienent. Not only is it a quiet place to work, but they also can help change flights and get better seats. There have been several times when an early-morning flight was canceled or delayed, and the Club has called me to tell me they moved me to another flight.

If your travel plans are bunched together over a short period, you should consider taking the AA Challenge, a little known program meant to accelerate attaining status. Basically instead of waiting to get 50,000 miles over the course of a year, you can get 15,000 over 3 months.

If you've got status on one airline but need to fly another, you can call the second airline and ask for them to match your current status. I did this with Northwest. They made me the equivalent of Platinum on their airline for one year. They require you to fax your most recent statement showing your status, and the deal is only good for one year. But for that year, I was flying first class on Northwest.

Memory Lane

2008-01-16T15:05:00.000-08:00

I came across this Wizardy site that got me thinking about the cool games in the early 1980s I played on the Apple II+. The Wizardry trilogy by SirTech was one of my favorites, and I'm sure I spent 100 hours or more playing. The site provides instructions for downloading an Apple II emulator so that you can play the original game on your PC. I followed the instructions, but just to see if it actually worked. Playing a mostly text game doesn't have the same pull it once did.

Other great games I recall were Choplifter, Castle Wolfenstein, Ultima, Zork, and Ali Baba. In 1983 there was Lode Runner which was really cool because you could play the different levels, but then also construct your own. I sort of lost interest in games after that and got into programming, then I went off to college where I had a Macintosh Plus and then a Macintosh II running A/UX.

I didn't pick up computer games again until Doom. After that I played all the Doom clones then started getting into RTS with the original Warcraft. My sons and I still play Age Of Empires II on occasion. Now I'm playing Crysis and they play Titan Quest.

While we curb the kids' time on the PC somewhat, I firmly believe these games teach them to think and are educationally valuable. My oldest is intrigued by Greek and Roman history now thanks to Titan Quest, and my youngest is anxious to read so he can play Warcraft III.

Windows Live Mail

2008-01-15T13:41:00.000-08:00

In my career, I've used Pegaus Mail, Outlook, Lotus Notes, and Outlook Express as well as some of the web-based clients. When I loaded Vista, I was surprised to find a rather lacking Windows Mail client. With a little research I found that Microsoft intended it to be a stop-gap between Outlook Express and the upcoming Windows Live Mail.

My machine dual boots XP and Vista, so I really wanted a single mail application that could run on both operating systems and share the same datastore. Luckily, Windows Live Mail runs on both XP and Vista -- problem solved! Well, not exactly.

It seems what when they share the datastore, they corrupt the mail files. It runs great under XP and just fine under Vista, but don't try to switch back-and-forth. I submitted a gripe during the beta, but Support was absolutely no help. They replied with the usual, "try reinstalling." Because of that, I've given up on Vista and am back to just XP.

I will say that Windows Live Mail is a good mail application. It can handle multiple accounts, handles spam pretty well, maintains a good contact list, and has a bunch of other features that I don't leverage.

Vista itself really doesn't offer me anything I don't already have with XP anyway. I don't see any noticable different between DX9 and DX10 for games, and I find all the security settings annoying. I guess the only substaintial difference is the beautiful user interface. So I ended up loading Vista Inspirat, an application that changes XP to look more like Vista. It works pretty well. And it also led me to a gem...

I love Rocket Dock, the little application launcher modeled after Apple's OS X. I use it at work on my XP machine as well. Its a great application.

Favorite Desktop Widgets

2008-01-15T12:12:00.000-08:00

I'm a big fan of Konfabulator, which has been rebranded Yahoo! Widgets. I find them very useful. These are the ones I have running on my home PC:

Yahoo! Weather shows the current weather for my city along with a five-day forecast. My wife checks it every morning so she know's how to dress the kids.

Picture Frame displays random pictures from My Pictures. Its fun seeing old pictures of the kids pop up.

Sys Monitor shows me almost everything I need to know about my computer in near real-time. It shows CPU usage (supports multiple cores), memory, harddrives, and NICs. It also keeps track of how the PCs uptime. There are several widgets that do this, but this one does it in a nice, compact format. The only thing missing is temperature.

Vonageer is a must-have for Vonage users. It lists my voice mails and allow them to be played and erased. I can also quickly view the call logs and even place return calls just by clicking on a phone number (then my phone rings with the other party on the line).

There are other ones for monitoring email, playing music, and even a Dharma Initiative simulator for those Lost fans. There's over 4,000 available but you have to wade through the junk to find the diamonds.

My Current PC Build

2008-01-15T08:24:00.000-08:00

I built my first PC a few years back, but it was getting tired so I decided it was time to build a new one. I visited my favorite build sites like Tom's Hardware and Maximum PC then went to the online shopping mecca for PCs: Newegg.

While I can afford a pretty good rig, I consider it a challenge the assemble the most cost-effective PC. This is what I bought on August 28, 2007.

1. Motherboard
Foxconn C51XEM2AA- 8EKRS2H AM2 NVIDIA nForce 590 SLI MCP ATX AMD Motherboard - Retail $164.99

2. Processor
AMD Athlon 64 X2 6000+ Windsor 3.0GHz Socket AM2 125W Dual-Core Processor Model ADX6000CZBOX - Retail $169.99

3. Memory
Patriot Extreme Performance 2GB (2 x 1GB) 240-Pin DDR2 SDRAM DDR2 800 (PC2 6400) Dual Channel Kit Desktop Memory Model PDC22G6400LLK - Retail $110.99

4. Video Card
XFX PVT84JUDD3 GeForce 8600GT XXX 256MB 128-bit GDDR3 PCI Express x16 SLI Supported Video Card - Retail $139.99

5. Harddrive
Western Digital Caviar SE16 WD5000AAKS 500GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - OEM $109.99

6. Case
Rosewill R5717 SL 120mm Fan ATX Mid Tower Computer Case 450W Power Supply with Tool-Free kits - Retail $49.99

I had a keyboard, mouse, speakers, DVD drive, and LCD monitor (22" ViewSonic) already, so no need for those. The total was $746 + $21 for shipping. With combo discounts and three rebates (it took 4 months to get my last rebate check), the grand total was $617, which I think is pretty good. Of course prices on all those components has dropped considerably since then.

I was happy with everything except perhaps my choice for video card. I'm a Nvidia fan, so I knew I would be getting an 8 series card. I figured I would buy an 8600GT now then add a second one (using SLI) once prices came down. In hindsight, I think it would have been better to get the 8600GTS or even move up to an 8800. I've seen my 8600 card for as low as $80 with rebate, but I'm nervous about the additional power requirements and heat.

I suppose I could have gotten a similar machine from Dell, but I really like building my own and understanding all the components. For example, my kids have a Dimension 3000 running a P4 3Ghz. Its not a bad machine, but the integrated graphics won't run their "game of the week." When I went to upgrade it, I found they only have PCI slots -- no AGP or PCIe! I don't think any PCI-based video card will help, so they can't play that game on that machine. On the other hand, the custom-build machine I passed down to them is easily upgradable.

Inagural Entry - DVR Setup

2008-01-15T06:52:00.000-08:00

I've been blogging internally at Oracle Retail, where I work, but have decided to try this outside the firewall. I hope this gives me some additional freedom on topics. To start off, I'd like to discuss my DVR setup, which allows me to record TV shows then watch them on planes while I travel.

I used to work in the IT department of Circuit City where I was able to get a good deal on a ReplayTV DVR (obviously this is a few years back). I have a 5000 series (which I think you can still find on ebay). There are two things I really liked about ReplayTV at the time: they had an ethernet connection and they used a standard mpeg format. Two things that Tivo did not have at the time.

For those that don't know, ReplayTV was the first commerical DVR on the market, beating Tivo by about a month. But it didn't do well against Tivo's powerful marketing, so it was sold a few times, never making a profit. As of this writing, I believe they are now owned by DirecTV, but they no longer produce hardware. They have decided to write DVR software for PCs, but since DirecTV bought them for their patents, I don't know what will become of their products. Anyway, their "TV schedule" service is still going fine.

I've got my ReplayTV on my home network, so when I record shows they can be downloaded to my library and then eventually put on my notebook PC for watching while I travel. The setup works quite well. The keystone is an opensource application called DVArchive.

DVArchive is a Java program that emulates a ReplayTV on your PC. Since ReplayTV was designed to be on a network talking to other ReplayTVs, DVArchive is able to easily move shows around. Download it, unzip it into a directory, then create a .bat program to start it up. This is my dvarchive.bat:

set JAVA_HOME=c:\program files\java\jre1.6.0_02
start DVArchive.jar

Easy enough. Now create a shortcut and add an icon file and you're ready to go. Recently I've had trouble getting DVArchive to recognize my DVR on its own, so I often have to explicity open my DVR using its IP address. It remembers the IP address so its no big deal. I bought an external 500GB harddrive which I use for storage of movies. There are lots of advanced features in DVArchive that I don't yet use. Its a very impressive program.

Now its as easy as drag-and-drop to move movies from my DVR to my PC, and then copy them to my notebook PC for later viewing. You can also burn CDs/DVDs but I don't bother. I used Nero to burn a couple DVDs for the kids, but that's it.

If you want to get a little advanced, you can create a scheduled task in DVArchive. I configured it to download all shows in the "Keepers" category. Then I use the Windows scheduler to run DVArchive every night. So if I want to keep a show, I just change the category to "Keeper" on my DVR and it will be on my PC the next morning.

BTW, when I moved to my current house it was not convinent to connect my DVR via hardwire, so I use an ethernet bridge for wireless. I use the Netgear Wireless Game Adapter WGE111, which works fine. You can use 802.11b for downloads, but if you want to stream video you'll want 802.11g or better. Setting up the wireless network is fairly easy until you enable WEP, but that's a different topic.

Next I wanted access to my library from the upstairs bedroom, so I considered buying another ReplayTV, which by now was out of production and a little hard to find. Instead, I bought a tiny Linux box call MediaMVP for about $99. It allows you to stream video and audio from a PC to a TV. On the PC you run a background task that is the server. When the MediaMVP starts, it does a network boot and downloads the application, then it can stream any media it finds on your PC. It comes with a remote that makes it very easy to use. So I just point it to my external harddrive folder, and I can watch all my movies upstairs.

But wait, there's more. I found a great opensource project called MVPMC that's a media center for the MediaMVP. It has custom software that emulates a diskless ReplayTV (as well as several other DVRs). So not only can I now access movies on my library stored on my PC, but I can also stream shows directly off my ReplayTV downstairs.

Other interesting sites:
Planet Replay
AVS Forum
ReplayTV Upgrades