The Simple Life

Posted by on August 25, 2015 No comments

Today, I got thinking about a business model that just doesn’t seem to make any sense to me.  At my workplace, once a week, we have a food truck come by.  It’s not really a food truck, it’s a hot dog stand.  You can get a couple of hot dogs, chips, and drink for $5.  Not a bad deal, but I didn’t like the flavor of their hot dogs, so I go elsewhere.

Anyway, my mind is trying to figure out how these guys survive.  My office isn’t huge; it can’t have more than 100 people in it.  And I can’t imagine that many people eat hot dogs every week.  So assuming 30 people getting food, that’s $150 a day.  That’s gross income.  Take out daily expenses like: vehicle gas, cooking gas, cooler ice, food cost, taxes, and cleaning supplies; and less frequent expenses like: insurance (doubtful), advertising/marketing, and cooking equipment, and what would you be left with?  And there’s two guys running it, so divide whatever profit is left in half.

Now assuming that maybe they can get by on whatever they are bringing in.  What’s the end game?  They can only be at place at one time, so they can’t increase sales.  The only way to do that is to go to a place that has more customers.  There’s no decent economies of scale because a second location requires double of just about everything.  Bulk purchases of supplies wouldn’t help all that much.

As far as entrepreneurial businesses go, this one is definitely in the “I love what I do” category.

And So It Grows

Posted by on August 24, 2015 No comments

Lately, I’ve been looking and dreaming about getting a true stereo audio system like what I used to have.  A bit of research showed me that dedicated stereo systems aren’t dead, they’re just brands I am unfamiliar with.  So, I’ve been spending lots of time reading and thinking and drooling over the idea of having a listening space.

And my CD purchases keep going.  Completing my collection of the MCA Master Series wasn’t the end of my music collecting.  Even though I’m not into modern music, there still remains a wealth of older music available for me to purchase.  There are benefits to this.  First, the music is cheap, because it’s old and used.  Second, there is a chance of getting a collectable for cheap.  A collectable CD?  Worth more than a drink coaster?  You’d be surprised.  Especially in the era of music I purchase, there are a couple specific things to be on the watch for in order to get a CD that has collector value. 

The thing to know is that when CDs first came out, in the mid-1980’s, the primary goal was to get as many titles available for sale as possible.  In order to do that, record companies made glass masters of CDs straight from the master tapes used to create records of that time.  Later on, when there was more available time, the record companies would remaster those original master tapes.  The remastering process would include different EQ and effects, sometimes an improvement, sometimes not, but always different than the original.

Knowing that, when I say that there is an audience that insists on having the pure, original sound (defined as being the LP version), and that CDs that contain that sound are limited to early, early pressings, you can easily see the scarcity-to-value premise.  Yes, the original pressings of CDs are more prized by audiophiles.  That’s not to say they are always superior.  As engineers’ mastering and remastering skills became better, CDs got better sounding, with better stereo separation and more dynamic range, but the “purity” of the original sound is still prized.

There’s a couple of simple clues to finding a first-run CD, and naturally, there’s a ton of subtleties that I can’t get into.  But, if you want to get one of these CDs, you need to be looking for an album recorded pre-1990, and manufactured in either Japan or West Germany.  One sure clue that you are getting a first-run CD is that the case spine is frosted smooth, instead of ribbed.  Another sign, and one that raises the CD’s collectability, is if the CD is printed with a “target” design.  Search for Target CD if you want to know more about these.

Yesterday, The GF and I made an impromptu stop at a local CD store.  I was hoping to pick up an Ultradisc or two (Ultradiscs are gold-plattered CDs with highly-reputed remastering and are very desirable).  Not finding any, I bought a couple of CDs by The Cars.  $3 and $5 – not bad at all.

We stopped at Sonic and I took a closer look at my purchases.  One CD I was immediately disappointed in myself with.  It wasn’t a retail CD; it was a CD Club pressing.  These are easily identified and I should have passed on it.  Slightly depressed, I opened up the other CD and was shocked to see a target CD inside.  I quickly closed the case and checked the case edge.  It was frosted.  I just got a target CD for $5, which would be sold by a knowledgeable seller for $15-$20.  Mood immediately elevated.

I had discounted the thought of ever getting any rare CDs from my local CD shops, because I assumed these guys knew what they were selling.  They should have identified that disc just as I had and sold it on the Internet for 3x what they sold it to me.  But, since I had recently bought an Ultradisc for $22 (valued online at $45-$50) and now finding a target CD for $5, this gives me hope for finding other collector’s items.

A Comparison Of Credit Card Sites

Posted by on August 5, 2015 No comments

Recently, I got a call from Capital One’s Fraud Department, which I always take immediately.  They told me my card was compromised and they would be sending me a new one right away.  Then they asked a bunch of questions, and that was that.

First off, I stayed on guard the entire call.  You need to always be aware that someone could be spoofing your bank to get information from you.  However, the call was legit and the operator asked me for nothing suspicious and only asked me to confirm recent purchases.  So, I had to start using other credit cards while my primary card was being replaced.  Right now, I don’t think it was a fraud issue on my card.  I think it was an excuse for them to issue me a new card with the new embedded chip.

But anyway, the point of this post is that after using Capital One exclusively for so long, I had a chance to see how my other cards compared.  There’s nothing to the actual use of the card – they’re all the same.  The difference I was interested in was the web sites.  And there was a big difference.

I used three other cards in this time period.  The branding of the card is probably as significant as who it was issued by, since the web site contains that branding and could be completely different code bases.  So the cards I used were: Bank of America’s Elite Rewards VISA, Barclays’ Choice Privileges VISA, and Citibank’s Sears MasterCard.

The Sears MasterCard is my oldest card (from 2001) and actually was converted from my former Sears store card, which was actually my very first credit card.  It doesn’t get a whole lot of use, and they know it.  My credit line on that card has been chopped down to a pretty low limit. 

The site itself is managed by AccountOnline.com, and I have no idea how it is operated.  The transactions must be processed in batches because I checked yesterday and there was nothing.  I checked today and I have activity between 7/31/15 and 8/3/15.  There doesn’t appear to be a way to see pending transactions, which would make sense if the transactions were refreshed on a schedule.  They do provide a way to download transactions to common financial applications, but you can only download a full statement or the current activity – no date ranges.

The Sears card is a rewards card, and the site does allow you to view your rewards balance and provides a link to searschoicerewards.com where you can spend your points.  I had all of 150 points and the cheapest gift card I could get was $20 for 2,500 points.  I guess I won’t.

A good sign of a website’s age is their minimum system requirements.  In this case, you need at least IE 4.0, Firefox 1.0, Safari, the IE browser in AOL, and Chrome must fall under “Other”.  They use security questions and the password complexity is 6 chars min, including 2 numbers and 1 letter.  You can use spaces, but only one consecutively.  You can set alerts on balances and payments, but not on transactions.

The Elite Rewards VISA (since 2009) is a newer card, so it would make sense that it has a newer website.  It also has the same style of transaction downloading as Sears, where you can download current activity or a past statement’s worth.  BoA doesn’t support downloading in Money OFX format, so you have to use Quicken.  I don’t see any obvious display of pending transactions, but I think they do display them.  BoA has a nice clear link to notify them if you will be travelling with the card, to prevent declined transactions from suspected fraud.  Capital One has that as well, but it is tucked away off the main screen.

The site uses SiteKey, an image that supposedly ensures you are on the correct website.  They’re getting rid of that feature soon, they say.  I was never a believer in whatever security it provided; pretty sure it was just a cookie.  BoA has a two-factor authorization called SafePass for transfer transactions.  They also use security questions.  The site’s password (which they term “passcode”) has a complexity of 8-20 characters, 1 letter and 1 number, and allows some special characters.  You can set alerts on balances, payments, and transactions.  I set mine up to email me on any charges over $1.  That’s something I have set up on Capital One and one of the reasons I doubt there was fraud on my card, because I got no unexpected notifications.

Choice Privileges VISA (from 2013) is my newest card, so you’d expect it to have the newest website.  Well, as these cards get newer, the websites have more flashy features, and the Choice VISA is right there with them.  They allow downloads for Quicken and CSV only and download by date range.  Pending transactions are easily accessible on another tab in the list.

The site uses a SiteImage and security phrase like BoA.  Password complexity is 8-30 characters, must have 3 of: uppercase, lowercase, numbers, or special characters.  The last 5 passwords can’t be reused.  Security questions are also used.  BoA and Choice won’t show you what the current security questions are, which I guess is a good thing.  You can set alerts on balances, payments, and transactions.  Again, I set my transaction notifications here as well.

So in summary, my newer cards are just as good as my Capital One services.  But to Capital One’s credit, their card is my second-oldest card (2003) and yet they have continued updating their website to be just as secure and functional as my newest card, unlike my Sears Citibank card.  After the big meltdown in 2008 where card companies were closing accounts left and right, I lost a few accounts.  One was another Citi card and I seem to remember the website was more fully featured than my Sears card is.

I’m With The Band

Posted by on July 31, 2015 No comments

Today is the one-week mark of my usage of the Microsoft Band.  It has been on my wanted list for quite some time, and with the recent price drop, I made my move.  This coincides with my recent reawakening in exercise from my trip out west, climbing mountains and whatnot.  I regret I didn’t have the Band then, but you have to start somewhere.

At this point, I’ve used the majority of the Band’s features, including Sleep Tracking, Running (hiking and walking in my case), Workouts, and Guided Workouts.  Next month, I plan to buy a bike trainer stand so I can ride my bike indoors and I’ll make use of the Bike feature then.  I’m not sure if I’ll ever use the Golf feature.

To get grievances out of the way first, there’s a lot of reviews out there that say the Band is big and uncomfortable.  The biggest part for the reviewers is that it’s unfashionable.  I will agree.  However, I think the utility of the device outweighs its appearance.  As far as uncomfortable, that’s a personal thing.  To me, it’s noticeable, but the strap is quickly adjustable for any wrist swells throughout the day.  It’s not a deal breaker.

Does it work?  Yes, and very well.  If the question is does it work for tracking activity?  Yes.  Does it work as a motivation tool? Yes, again.  Does it work as a smartwatch?  That’s difficult to answer because everyone has a different idea of what a smartwatch should do.  The Band is a capable notification center on your wrist and if using a Windows Phone, a simple response device.

The data collection abilities of the Band are impressive, but it would be all for nothing if the software displaying and analyzing the data was poor.  Fortunately, the Band’s mobile application and corresponding website are extremely impressive as well.  I hope Microsoft works with FitBit to allow their devices to log activity into the Microsoft Health dashboard because I believe the insights are great.  And, it would allow me to consider a FitBit Charge HR as a next device.  I’ll have to wait until the Band 2 comes out to see.

After only a week, I have become more aware of my activity.  The argument that the Band is noticeable on your wrist actually works in its favor here.  I am consistent in my walking on work breaks.  I’ve been very annoyed that the constant rain showers here are keeping me from the trails.  I started a Guided Workout using weights that will hopefully improve my chest definition and found the experience to be superior to any prior exercise attempts.  Having someone (or something) say, “Now do this.”  “Rest now.”  “Now do this.” is so much better than having a piece of paper and saying to yourself, “What do I do next?”  It seems like a small difference, but it isn’t.  Self-guided workouts leave you unaccountable; you can stop anytime.  Even having a device guide you is more motivating.  Obviously a personal trainer would be the epitome, but the band is less than $200.

I feel the Band purchase was money well spent.  To be honest, I was kind of at a do-or-die point in my life and I guess I decided to give it one more try to reverse the decline I’ve been in for the last couple of years.

Windows 10 Install Party

Posted by on July 31, 2015 No comments

Party of one, your laptop is ready…  So, another Windows milestone, and I have to see how this new version is going to work out.  First up is upgrading the laptop from Win 8.1 to 10. 

First thing I notice: the upgrade install takes a long time.  Over 2 hours in my case.  Once completed, I ran through a few apps to see how they performed.  I initially had a problem with Faststone Image Viewer where the windows taskbar would still be displayed when viewing pictures in full-screen mode.  That problem went away after my AMD graphics driver applied its proper settings.

Then I tried the Edge browser.  Nothing would connect.  Odd, because Skype worked, and I could ping Yahoo, I just couldn’t browse anywhere.  I disabled my HOSTS file and rebooted.  No luck.  I had Firefox installed, so I tried that.  Websites load fine in Firefox.  So what did I have different in Edge.  It seems to be a DNS issue.

To get right to the solution, it was my fault.  At some point long since forgotten, I disabled the DNS Client service on the laptop.  This service caches DNS entries so applications don’t have to call to remote servers over and over to get IP addresses.  It’s never been required before.  Until now.  The Edge browser apparently uses the DNS Client service exclusively.  Maybe Cortana does as well.

So, that’s resolved.  All my other important applications worked as well: KeePass, Veracrypt, Zune.  I tried out the Groove Music application, since it’s the successor to Windows Media Player.  It’s not bad.  It’s close to Zune, if it only had a better Now Playing view.

Interesting quirk with Groove Music.  When I was testing Windows 10 out in beta, I wanted to see how OneDrive-integrated music would work.  So I uploaded a few albums to OneDrive and did some testing on my phone.  It didn’t seem to do what I expected, so I deleted all but one of the albums.  On my fresh install of Windows 10, some songs from a couple of those albums appeared in my library.  I couldn’t play them, couldn’t download them, and they had the message “To play, purchase a Groove Music Pass.”  I guess Groove Music has its own library that syncs?  Oh well.

Journalism Is Dead

Posted by on July 28, 2015 No comments

Every day, I read a lot of articles.  And every day, I get more and more saddened by the decline in journalistic standards.  It’s near impossible to find an article that does not clearly express the author’s biases and preferences.

The promotion or derision of any product, service, or company is done both by what is said and what is not said.  An author may compare only features or facts that are superior to competitors, or vice versa if that’s the author’s goal.  An author will state opinions as facts. as in, “no one likes or will use this feature.”  Even if an author tries to defend his or her bias with “everyone I asked agrees that…”, it is still a flawed sample, since like-minded people tend to attract each other.  This is the echo chamber where clusters of people come to believe something as truth when it is simply an exaggerated – or even made-up – opinion.

Spelling and grammar are obsolete.  The argument, “you still understood what I meant,” seems to have grown beyond common comments into the articles themselves.  Editors are either non-existent, with many articles being published by a person whose title is “Editor”, or if they are, they are ineffective.  I just finished reading an article in the Wall Street Journal (now corrected) where the editor’s review comment was left in the article body.  This is what passes for quality?

And it’s not just print media that has died.  I don’t watch TV anymore, so when I do by happenstance, I am astounded at the behavior of news anchors.  The tone and inflection in their delivery takes ordinary news to tabloid levels.  You would never see an exclamation point in a real news story, but these talking heads are trying their hardest to indicate what emotion you need to be feeling about the story at hand.

The emotional aspect comes back to the print media as well, where “news” is essentially an opinion piece with a few facts mixed in.  Product reviews are not objective, but instead are a litany of praise or condemnation as to how the product suited the reviewer’s needs.  And this is pretty much standard now.  The best way to get a review is to find a reviewer who has the same wants and needs as you do.  Reviewers don’t simply explain features, they explain how you should feel about features.  For example, “the product has a hinge that allows it to open up 45 degrees” versus “the product has a hinge that allows it to only open to 45 degrees, limiting its usefulness.”

And a rant on article comments should be forthcoming…

Storage Plans

Posted by on July 24, 2015 No comments

Today I started doing some housekeeping on my computer in regard to storage.  Storage is a thing that has become somewhat of an afterthought nowadays, because it’s so damn cheap.  You can easily pick up 3 terabytes of storage for under $100. So why not have everything on your hard drive?  Or why not add additional drives and put everything and then some on there?

Me, I’ve gone back and forth on these concepts and this go-around, it’s time to set some rules and stick to them.  I don’t pretend to believe that my rules would work for anyone else, but consider doing the mental exercise to determine what works for you and what you really want from your computer.

First consideration is storage availability.  When I first installed Windows, I moved all my data files off the C: drive and put them on a separate, larger hard drive.  Then I changed the mapping of Documents/ Music/ Pictures/ Videos to the folders on the new drive.  This gave me the room to expand if I ever needed to.

Next consideration is storage reliability.  This was accomplished by mirroring my data drive.  This is easily done right in Windows.  I’ve tried RAID controllers and NAS units, but the built-in functionality works just as well, I’ve found.  Along with that level of reliability is file backup, for which I use Window’s File History, writing to an external USB drive.  So: redundant hard drives and an external backup.

Then, to the details.  I gave some consideration to the data I was keeping.  I classified it according to access frequency.  I had files I accessed or needed to reference daily or frequently, files that I may need to refer to but aren’t currently active, and files that I probably won’t look at again but can’t delete.  While I was making these determinations, I also made the decision that any video files that I also had on DVD would be removed.  Video isn’t something I play frequently, so the time spent getting the physical disc isn’t a huge inconvenience.

I partitioned my data disk into two hard drives, Data and Archive.  On the archive drive, I enabled Windows file compression, to make the most of the available space.  Normally, I wouldn’t do that on a data drive, but in this case it’s most appropriate because the drive contains files I won’t be accessing frequently.  Then, I planned a third level, which would be external hard drives detached from the system.  Those would hold files that won’t be used much anymore.  Consider it post-Archive.

So the lifecycle of data on my computer would start on my Data drive, move to the compressed Archive drive, then get mothballed onto an external drive.  In this way, I shouldn’t need to keep up with the Jones’ in the drive storage arms race.  My current working set of data isn’t going to grow exponentially, my archive isn’t going to grow forever, and my drawer full of hard drives holding ancient files is not really a concern.  I think it’s a workable system.

As Windows 10 nears, I’m going to make another attempt at using an SSD as my boot drive.  I recently had my work laptop converted to SSD and the speed is addicting.  I didn’t have such good luck with my Windows 8 install on SSD, so here’s hoping for the best. 

Getting Your Due

Posted by on July 22, 2015 No comments

I mentioned in a previous post about a blogger who had posted something that didn’t really sit right with me.  When I went to confirm some details in that prior post, I saw that I used this post’s title in that post.  So, I guess I still have the same issues.

In the previous post, I was saying how the entrepreneurial lifestyle isn’t for everyone, and certainly not me.  Aside from the level of effort it takes to start it up and keep it going, I also have significant issues with a practice I have been seeing more frequently.  That practice is the monetization of information.  One blog that I follow has reviews on random products that are interesting.  Recently, that blogger started linking to those products using affiliate links so they get a slight reimbursement for their referrals.  That was never the case before.  And this other blogger recently made a post expressing the same thing, that he needs to start using affiliate links whenever he is giving advice or recommendations.

This bothers me for so many reasons.  First and foremost is the WIIFM aspect (What’s In It For Me?).  WIIFM isn’t always bad, but when the only thing you are interested in is money, I think it is.  Why should someone promote another’s website/product/service?  Well, you could because you want to see the company succeed or because you want your readers to benefit from a great product/service.  Or, somewhat selfishly, you want the company to stay in business because you use that company too and you need them to stick around.  Or, as I see these affiliate links, you don’t particularly care about the company or your readers and just want some money. 

Affiliate links are a scourge on the Internet.  Once you start down that path, it’s a very short walk until you get to entire websites that trick people who have misspelled a domain name.  What “entrepreneur” had the idea of “Oh you misspelled macys.com as macies.com.  Here’s a link to the real site you were looking for.  By the way, anything you purchase after clicking on that link will give me a small payout.  It won’t affect anything you do, but it’s just a way for you to pay me back for this helpful site I created to correct your misspelling.  You’re welcome.”

Along with the WIIFM issue is the viewpoint that information is not free.  Something like “I could tell you what you want to know, but I need a small payment first.”  Some people could argue that it’s a fair exchange.  The information is there for free if you can find it, but if you want a shortcut over the bridge, you need to pay the toll operator.  It sounds like a “victim of success” complaint.  You want to be an authority, but once you are an authority, you’re in too much demand and so you have to employ discouragements.

Before I make this too long of a rant, here’s an example of linking to something just because you want to:

This Kickstarter is a book of comics.  It’s organized by Matt Bors, who is a comic writer I’ve followed for quite a while.  He went to a paid website and let his personal website die, and I didn’t follow him to his new home.  However, I try to support him when I can, and this is one of those times.  If you like to get world perspectives through visual media, like comics and illustrations, this book would suit you well.

Circling The Drain

Posted by on July 14, 2015 No comments

Tagged as “fashion”, but not, but kinda.  It’s technological fashion.  What is the big obsession with circles now?  I’m seeing all these pictures becoming iconified as a circle, which doesn’t work half the time when you have a landscape photo or when you have content that fills the image.  Or both.  I’ve seen it in Facebook, Ello (FB’s antithesis), Flickr, Apple Music, Pinterest, and now prominently in Windows 10.  It’s as ridiculous a concept as Instagram filters, but there you go – hive mind.

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What You Know, In Your Favor

Posted by on July 10, 2015 No comments

Last night, actually early this morning, like 3 in the morning, I was driving home after returning from vacation.  It was late and dark, and I was tired.  Surprisingly, I was not the only person on the road at that hour, even though I was driving secondary highways.  Usually, it was nice to have another car on the road to keep my focus and pace, but sometimes it wasn’t, with people racing up behind me or pulling me faster than I was comfortable.  In those instances, I had the usual thoughts of “idiot” and “moron”, but I got to thinking about why people drive like they do.

Usually, you can attribute slow drivers behavior to a unhurried lifestyle.  Where I live, there’s no shortage of old people to drive 10-15 under the speed limit because they have nowhere to go.  What else?  Tourists, we have plenty of those, too.  People that are looking for something in particular among the clusters of business along the road.  Those are both understandable cases.  What about the cautious and the reckless, though?  That’s the situation I was in.  I was being cautious and I felt others were being reckless.  And my mind wandered to the concept of wisdom, earned by experience.

The conclusion I came to is that living life is a perpetual game of risk management.  Let’s put this in a totally different perspective.  If presented with an opportunity to walk a tightrope between two buildings, most normal people would do a risk assessment.  “I have never walked on a tightrope before, so my experience in this endeavor is zero.  Let’s then say that makes my chances of success, zero.”  A moderately skilled tightrope walker would do different evaluations.  “I’ve walked that distance before. The winds would be stronger than what I’ve experienced, and the height might cause some extra distraction.  I have a decent chance of success.”  A skilled walker would only have to do a quick evaluation.  “I can do that.  Distance and height aren’t an issue.  What’s the weather going to be like?”

I consider myself an experienced driver, so my evaluation of driving conditions is pretty quick.  However, experience has taught me that there are many variables that need to be considered.  Road debris and wildlife are chief among those concerns.  Driving late at night in the woods doesn’t give you much reaction time.  Yet, some people drive like it’s broad daylight. 

I assume these drivers just don’t have the experience I have.  And you don’t even have to experience something personally to gain from it.  Have you ever had a moment of thought like, “If I’d left a little bit earlier, that could have been me.”  Or maybe “If I’d left a little bit later, that could have been me.”  After enough of these moments, the wisdom comes.  “It doesn’t matter when I leave, it can be me.”  And so you have to be aware of what could happen at any time.  Maybe these drivers haven’t seen enough yet.  “I’ve never seen a cop on this road” is popular.  Replace that with “never seen a tree down”, “never seen a deer”, “never blown a tire”,”never slid on a turn” or any number of other things that I’ve seen or done in my years.

But experience brings wisdom.  I was once in their shoes.  As a reckless youth many years ago, I was driving on a slushy highway up north.  Inexplicably, I had the cruise control on.  Even more incredibly, when I caught up to a car, I simply moved into the passing lane – up a hill, on a turn, with the cruise control on – and promptly lost all traction.  My car spun 360 degrees around, and the other car slowed down to give me room to do my thing.  Now in front of the other car, I spun another 180 degrees, slid off the road backwards and slammed into the mountainside.  The other car slowed down enough to make sure I was ok when I got out of my car, then promptly left me there to die.  Middle of winter, probably 20 miles from anything and long before cell phones existed.  It’s a really good thing people were more helpful back then.

Since then, I’ve grown up a lot and put a lot of experience into my mental file as to what could happen when you do the wrong things.