Agave Mountain

George S. Clason's classic book entitled, The Richest Man in Babylon is one of the personal finance classics recommenced by many financial gurus.  Dave Ramsey regularly recommends the book on his radio show.

The book, originally written in the 1920's, is a collection of financial parables set in ancient Babylon.  Each of the seven short stories relates the adventures of the characters as they are taught how to amass wealth.

While the language is strange due to the author's attempt to make the stories seem like they came from ancient days, the stories repeatedly hammer home the basics of personal finance, although sometimes in an awkward and repetitious manner.

The two main tales that I like best are the "Seven Cures for a Lean Purse," and "The Five Laws of Gold."  The rest seem to repeat and reinforce the advice given throughout the book.

Seven Cures for a Lean Purse

The tale, "Seven Cures for a Lean Purse" follows the main character Arkad, who is requested by the king to teach a class to build wealth.  The class was seven days long, and each day a topic was taught.  They are (translated into modern English and summarized):

• Take one-tenth of what you bring in and save it for the future.  This was brought up again and again.  Save 10% of your income before you pay your debts or spend.  This was repeated throughout the book.
• Don't buy frivolous things even if you have the money to pay for them and live on less than you make (after saving 10%). 
• Once you save, invest to make "your gold multiply."  Conversely, if you don't invest you won't get wealthy.
• Don't invest foolishly; you should only invest in things where the principle is safe.
• Own your own home.
• Insure a future income for your family after you pass on.
• Increase you ability to earn by working hard, looking for opportunities, and educating yourself.

The Five Laws of Gold

• You should save at least 10% of your earning to create an estate for his family's future.
• If you invest well, you will make money.
• Be cautious in investing.
• Only invest in businesses or purposes that you know.  If you don't understand you could loose your money or get swindled.
• Avoid investments that promise absurdly high returns (if it is too good to be true, it probably is).

I thought the audio book was reasonably good and it would be perfect to use to teach children about financial topics. 

However, if you easily bored with stilted old English phrases or repetitive teaching methodologies, you might want to pick another book to read. 

Labels: Reviews

Posted by Joe Turner at 11:06 PM | Permalink | Comments

I am constantly scribbling notes on paper and post-it notes.  As I age and my memory grows shorter, it is the crutch that I a lean on most to keep my productivity up.  I still rely heavily on the my nearly unreadable scribbles to get me through the week.

As a result, it doesn't take much to convince me to purchase a new writing instrument; I'm always looking for a good one to add to my collection.  So when I saw the Levenger Graphiti Grip 2mm Mechanical Pencil on sale for half price ($14.95, discounted from $38.) I decided to take a risk.  I mean, how bad could it be? 

Pretty bad, I later found out.

As I opened the undamaged cardboard box, I immediately noticed the metallic silver zippered tin case had been crushed.  Because the shipping box was undamaged, I suspect it must have been damaged before it was shipped.  The pencil was undamaged, so I tossed the dented case aside. 

The pencil writes well and is evenly balanced.  The cherry wood barrel and matte chrome finish make it a beautiful pencil and the size of the pencil makes it comfortable to write with.

There is no sharpener included.  You will have to purchase a separate pencil sharpener that will sharpen the 2mm lead (or use a pocket knife).

The cap is cheap and often pops off with the slightest jar or friction.  If you drop the pencil, you will have to guess what random direction the end cap traveled.  Also, when advancing the graphite led, the wood barrel slowly works itself loose.  I found myself constantly having to re-tighten the barrel.  This appears to get worse over time.

Hands down, this was the worst mechanical pencil I have ever owned.

Labels: Reviews

Posted by Joe Turner at 10:29 PM | Permalink | Comments

Rich Dad Advisor's Series: Own Your Own Corporation: Why the Rich Own Their Own Companies and Everyone Else Works for Them (Rich Dad's Advisors) by Garrett Sutton, Robert T. Kiyosaki, Ann Blackman Read more about this book...

When you start a business you are faced with a flood of decisions, some of which will have long lasting ramifications.  Will your business be a sole proprietorship, partnership, corporation, or limited liability company?  Which one is best?  S Corp or C Corp? 

First of all, this book validates the old adage that you just can't judge a book by its cover for two reasons: 1) it doesn't only just cover corporations and 2) it is a book with Kiyosaki's name branded on the cover that actually contains good solid advice inside.  I'm serious-- this is the only Kiyosaki book that I would actually recommend (but only to a very small audience). 

This book is a perfect primer on legal entities for entrepreneurs. 

Once you disregard Kiyosaki's ramblings about childish fantasies, treasure hunting and ships, you get a book written primarily by Garrett Sutton, wherein he carefully presents a high level overview of the various legal entities, and their pros and cons.  Sutton carefully steps through the intricacies of each of the legal entities (S and C Corp, LLC, Limited Partnership, General Partnership, sole proprietorship, and more).  Salted in the chapters are fictional examples that illustrate the disastrous consequences of choosing poorly (or acting on bad advice) and common problems.

Perhaps most surprisingly, is that this book even touches on some tax issues like what happens when consultants opt for C corporations (hint: they become deemed Personal Service Corporation and you get slammed with a 35% tax rate).  Personal Holding Corporations (PHC) are also touched on and perhaps most surprisingly of all, Sutton delves in to the legalities and hurdles with offering securities, SEC registration, angel investors, and more. 

My distaste for Kiyosaki's writing aside, I'm happy to recommend this book, because I rarely come across a book on the nuts and bolts of business entities that is readable. 

Labels: Business, Personal Finance, Reviews, Startup

Posted by Joe Turner at 10:34 PM | Permalink | Comments

Writing Solid Code: Microsoft's Techniques for Developing Bug-Free C Programs (Microsoft Programming Series) by Steve Maguire Read more about this book...

I finally got around to reading Steve Maguire's Writing Solid Code: Microsoft's Techniques for Developing Bug-Free C Programs, thanks primarily to a coworker who lent it to me to read over the weekend. 

Written in a personal, easy flowing style, it contains many suggestions for improving your coding process, when developing in C.  It is a fast read, and I liked the book even though I felt that much of it was somewhat outdated.

Steve Maguire wrote this book in a different time, a time before OOAD, C++, Java, RUN, XP, Agile, XP, and TDD.  The book grew out of his experiences at Microsoft and contains practical advice and lessons learned about software construction and projects.

He even starts by asking two questions about bugs found in code: 1) How could I have automatically detected this bug? and 2) How could I have prevented this bug?  Therein, he starts to build the process and techniques for eliminating bugs.

The generalized advice is certainly still valid:

• enable compiler warnings and investigate each one; 
• use assertions;
• fix bugs now (don't wait until "feature complete" to go back and fix them);
• don't quietly ignore error conditions;
• don't write multi-purpose functions, focus on very specific functions that can be checked;
• write code for the average programmer (make it readable);
• don't wait until a bug to step through the code;
• developers are responsible for finding bugs;
• porting code is new development and should be tested as such;
• carefully bound check arguments

Conclusion

The book is an interesting snapshot in time, and contains a lot of good advice.  However, the book is just simply too dated to be recommended.  What was once a ground-breaking collection of cutting edge advice now should be common sense for most experienced developers.

It was recommended as a must read "classic."  It isn't.

Labels: C++, Reviews

Posted by Joe Turner at 12:40 AM | Permalink | Comments

This week I finally decided to end the love-hate relationship I had with my T-Mobile DASH and purchase a new phone.  Being that my experience with the Dash was so underwhelming and disappointing for the year that I used it, I considered forgoing a PDA/smartphone altogether.

I was misled by the reviews online by CNET and PCWorld, so much so that I almost didn't get the BlackBerry. It wasn't until after I purchased the Curve that I realized that both the CNET video review as well as the PCWorld reviews were factually incorrect and biased (both claimed that the Curve doesn't have Wifi; it does).   The PCWorld video says that the BlackBerry doesn't have GPS, but neither does the Dash (which wasn't mentioned).

I'm glad I ignored the professional reviews and purchased the Curve, as I can honestly say that the BlackBerry is much better than the T-Mobile Dash/HTC Excalibur in almost every category.

Errant and Biased CNET video

Dash (HTC S620) Deficiencies I Experienced:

Before I get into a comparison of the two devices, let me just list out a few of the complaints I have about the T-Mobile Dash:

Cracked LCD.  Within six months my LCD screen cracked.  This is a common complaint among Dash users, and guess what -- it isn't covered by the warranty.  You can order the replacement LCD on EBay, purchase a T9 Torx driver, and fix it yourself.  The cost will be approximately $80 in parts, plus your time.  Click HERE for a youtube video on how to replace the LCD.

I has been recommended that you file a complaint with the FCC if you LCD cracks.  T-Mobile may replace your defective Dash with another phone. 

Further, the Dash LCD screen is dim and difficult to read in direct sunlight, much like my older RAZR.

Internet Explorer.  Although I didn't purchase the phone so I could surf the web, I did find that the browser would hang occasionally, requiring me to kill the browser and start again.  Several times I had to pull the battery to restart the phone after the browser hung.

Also, I found it ironic that CNN Mobile is automatically added to your T-Mobile bookmarks, but you will receive a your browser is not supported message when you go to the CNN Mobile site.

Intermittent Freezing.  Although rare, several times I experienced a complete system hangs.  I'd have to pull the battery for that.  

Terrible Call Quality.  The Dash had terrible call quality, especially in even mildly windy conditions.  I would often find myself shielding the phone and contorting to try to hear the caller when I was outside in a light wind. 

Additionally, when paired with my Bluetooth headset, the calls would be glitchy.  After my second Bluetooth headset (which I used with other phones without any problems) I identified this as a Dash issue.

Broken Jogger/Volume Slider. This was the most annoying thing about the Dash -- the "jogger".  There are two touch sensitive areas on the right side of the phone which were intended to be used for volume control and as a scroll wheel.  It would have been nice, except it didn't work and it was disabled (there is now a registry hack to enable it).  The "jogger" was only enabled to control the volume while you were on a call.

However, many times I would be talking to someone and spontaneously hear the jogger triggered "doop...doop.." sound telling me that the volume was being raised or lowered.   It was so unreliable I disabled it through the registry until I upgraded to Windows Mobile 6 (which lovingly overwrote my registry setting).

Alarms of the Undead. Dash alarm had a bug, confirmed by many users (including me). If you set more than one alarm, the Dash only lets you edit the last one in memory, causing the alarms you set earlier to go off even if you turn off the alarm feature completely.  You could never clear, disable, or kill the first alarm. 

Although they eventually fixed that issue, I still see at least one alarm related issue -- that when I power up the device the "deleted" alarm is still active until the "fix" clears it.  As a result, in the time between power up and a fully operational phone, my phone will start loudly blaring away each undead alarm, before the phone is initialized enough to allow you to disarm them or it clears the alarm queue on it's own. 

It is very embarrassing when you power up your device after a weekend in a meeting and for fifteen to thirty seconds your phone is loudly blaring out alarm tones.

Broken IMAP E-Mail.  Now that Google has rolled out IMAP, I have migrated all of my email domains to Google Apps.  I no longer have multiple copies of emails-- I have multiple views of the same synchronized mailbox from the web, outlook and on my smartphone.  At least if it worked. It was also reported that the Dash won't communicate with some mail relays.

It doesn't.  The Dash will download all of the headers, but won't download the bodies of the emails about half the time (more reports here).  This was essentially the last straw that made me start looking for a better phone.

No Bluetooth DUN Profile.  T-Mobile removed the DUN profile, which means you can't tether the Dash as a modem over Bluetooth (yes, the HTC FAQ says you can, but that was before T-Mobile removed the feature from their ROMs).  If you are adventurous, you can enable a DUN profile with a little hackery (article here). 

Alternatively, you can use the Bluetooth PAN (Personal Area Network) profile with Internet sharing instead.  You have to run the Internet sharing app on the Dash, and connect your computer to the Dash via a Bluetooth PAN.

An Honest Features Comparison

Here is a quick look at the differences between the two phones:

Conclusion

The Dash is a terrible smart phone. 

As far as capabilities, the only thing that the Dash can do that the Curve won't is record live video.  In every other category the BlackBerry is at or above the Dash in features, robustness, and ease of use.

Consequently, I find myself wondering two things: 1) how much crack can a CNET Senior Editor regularly smoke during the course of a regular business day, and 2) how much advertising can revenue can purchase a good review at PCWorld? 

Labels: Reviews

Posted by Joe Turner at 12:33 AM | Permalink | Comments