Hedonistic Equanimity

Mortgage with Honors

noreply@blogger.com (Rob) — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 03:36:00 +0000

This post is all about the utter trouble it's become for poor people like me to get a mortgage these days. Economic stimulus be damned, the hoops required to jump through are staggering. However, even if you lost $30k in the stock market and have hardly any assets left, you can still get a loan fairly easily if you can provide documentation that you're stable and responsible. Caveat emptor, this post refers exclusively to Massachusetts as a first time home buyer'. I would imagine they do things similarly in other states, but I can't vouch for it.

The first step, in my opinion, is to pre-qualify for a certain amount. The best place to get started is right at the website called MassHousing.com. With a salary of about $60k you'll be able to secure a pre-approval for about $300k. There are income limitations for a MassHousing loan, but unless you're making like $90k per year you won't have to worry about that. Also, they won't offer any loans that qualify as "jumbo loans" so you should look elsewhere if you're expecting to purchase for more than $480k.

Once you know the loan you can get, you should think about what kind of downpayment you can afford. Figure your current assets minus $5k in closing costs plusIn my whatever your family can give you (as much as $10k). In my case, this number was actually pretty low but I negotiated the seller to pay the closing costs so I was able to get up to level of a 5% down payment. If you can swing that, it's good. Otherwise, you might still be in business if you qualify for the "public transportation program", if you're a veteran, or if you can take a first time home buyer class then you can qualify for a downpayment of either 0% (in rare cases) or 3%.

Once you've figured out these critical aspects of your finances, you can forge ahead to figuring out what house you want to buy and making offers on it. If your offer gets accepted, you put down a deposit, and sign the purchase & sale agreement, the hard work begins. The following basically chronicles the basic information that my loan officer needed from me to secure the MassHousing loan.

1. 2 recent paystub
2. W-2 08 & 07
3. Most recent copy of your bank statement
4. Signed P&S contract
5. Copy of canceled check put on deposit/contract

With this documentation, I was able to turn my pre-approval into a conditional approval... meaning that there was a laundry list of conditions that I had to provide additional information for.

1. Borrower must contribute at least $xxxx of his own saved funds to this transaction.
2. Borrower to explain why bank statements and checks have his address in NJ.
3. Borrower to provide 2008, 2007, and 2006 federal tax returns to evidence first time homebuyer status. Borrower to sign tax returns.
4. Credit documentation begins to expire 07/15/09. If loan does not close by this date, the loan will be subject to review with a re-underwriting with updated credit documentation.
5. Documentation to verify the source of the following large deposits to HSBC Bank: $xxxx deposit on 04/20/09, and the $xxxx deposit on 04/20/09.
6. Fully executed MHFA Borrowers Affidavit and Notice of Federal Subsidy Recapture. Form must be complete and signed by the borrower and MLO.
7. Fully executed Mortgage Insurance Disclosure.
8. Most recent monthly or quarterly 401k account statement to support assets of $14,000.
9. Master Hazard, Liability, and Fidelity Bond Insurance Policy for the subject project. Policy must include HO-6 "wall-in" coverage.
10. Gift Letter signed and dated by an acceptable source in the amount of $xxxx.
11. Satisfactory verification of gift funds in the amount of $xxxx have been transferred from the donor to the borrower(s).
12. Satisfactory verification the availability of $xxxx in the gift donor's asset account(s).

You can ask me to go into detail on any of these, but the troublesome ones were the combination of 5/10/11/12 and then conditions 6 and 8. For these, the condition 5+ there was a certain level of documentation that needed to be achieved for it be qualify as "satisfactory". They basically scrutinized all deposits into my bank account that were greater than $1000 for the statement I had given during the pre-approval phase. They wanted to see statements from the source accounts, which was kind of annoying considering how poorly they communicated that with me. For condition 6, they seriously dropped the ball. I should have been asked to arrange a face-to-face meeting with the loan officer in April to take care of signing this. Instead, they waited until the day before I was supposed to close to let me know that I needed to meet with the loan officer because original signatures were needed on this documentation and not merely faxed versions of the equivalent. For condition 8, at the last minute they asked for evidence that I could withdraw money from my retirement account, and I lucked out that I was able to get a Human Resources guy at Draper to produce a letter that said I had funds available despite the fact that the main portion of my retirement account is included in the vesting employer plan which can't be withdrawn against. Seriously, if I hadn't moved money from my 401(k) from my previous employer into the new one I'm not sure I would have gotten the final approval.

Anyway... the final obstacle for me was driving 150 miles to my bank the day before my closing to get a cashier's check to bring to the closing. It turns out that when you're getting a mortgage that it's best to fund it through a local bank. The extra legwork to get the cashier's check at the zero hour is a big hassle, even if you do get to see the brand new Performing Arts Center they built at your college since you've graduated.

And then you meet the lawyers at the closing, sign your name 25 times, and get the keys. After that the only remaining step is moving in, and except for any steps that I may have left out... that's all there is too it.

DARPA Mathematical Challenges

noreply@blogger.com (Rob) — Tue, 19 May 2009 01:51:00 +0000

I'm blatantly copying this from a solicitation from DARPA. See here for my original source of the material.

Mathematical Challenge One: The Mathematics of the Brain
Develop a mathematical theory to build a functional model of the brain that is mathematically consistent and predictive rather than merely biologically inspired.

Mathematical Challenge Two: The Dynamics of Networks
Develop the high-dimensional mathematics needed to accurately model and predict behavior in large-scale distributed networks that evolve over time occurring in communication, biology and the social sciences.

Mathematical Challenge Three: Capture and Harness Stochasticity in Nature
Address Mumford’s call for new mathematics for the 21st century. Develop methods that capture persistence in stochastic environments.

Mathematical Challenge Four: 21st Century Fluids
Classical fluid dynamics and the Navier-Stokes Equation were extraordinarily successful in obtaining quantitative understanding of shock waves, turbulence and solitons, but new methods are needed to tackle complex fluids such as foams, suspensions, gels and liquid crystals.

Mathematical Challenge Five: Biological Quantum Field Theory
Quantum and statistical methods have had great success modeling virus evolution. Can such techniques be used to model more complex systems such as bacteria? Can these techniques be used to control pathogen evolution?

Mathematical Challenge Six: Computational Duality
Duality in mathematics has been a profound tool for theoretical understanding. Can it be extended to develop principled computational techniques where duality and geometry are the basis for novel algorithms?

Mathematical Challenge Seven: Occam’s Razor in Many Dimensions
As data collection increases can we “do more with less” by finding lower bounds for sensing complexity in systems? This is related to questions about entropy maximization algorithms.

Mathematical Challenge Eight: Beyond Convex Optimization
Can linear algebra be replaced by algebraic geometry in a systematic way?

Mathematical Challenge Nine: What are the Physical Consequences of Perelman’s Proof of Thurston’s Geometrization Theorem?
Can profound theoretical advances in understanding three dimensions be applied to construct and manipulate structures across scales to fabricate novel materials?

Mathematical Challenge Ten: Algorithmic Origami and Biology
Build a stronger mathematical theory for isometric and rigid embedding that can give insight into protein folding.

Mathematical Challenge Eleven: Optimal Nanostructures
Develop new mathematics for constructing optimal globally symmetric structures by following simple local rules via the process of nanoscale self-assembly.

Mathematical Challenge Twelve: The Mathematics of Quantum Computing, Algorithms, and Entanglement
In the last century we learned how quantum phenomena shape our world. In the coming century we need to develop the mathematics required to control the quantum world.

Mathematical Challenge Thirteen: Creating a Game Theory that Scales
What new scalable mathematics is needed to replace the traditional Partial Differential Equations (PDE) approach to differential games?

Mathematical Challenge Fourteen: An Information Theory for Virus Evolution
Can Shannon’s theory shed light on this fundamental area of biology?

Mathematical Challenge Fifteen: The Geometry of Genome Space
What notion of distance is needed to incorporate biological utility?

Mathematical Challenge Sixteen: What are the Symmetries and Action Principles for Biology?
Extend our understanding of symmetries and action principles in biology along the lines of classical thermodynamics, to include important biological concepts such as robustness, modularity, evolvability and variability.

Mathematical Challenge Seventeen: Geometric Langlands and Quantum Physics
How does the Langlands program, which originated in number theory and representation theory, explain the fundamental symmetries of physics? And vice versa?

Mathematical Challenge Eighteen: Arithmetic Langlands, Topology, and Geometry
What is the role of homotopy theory in the classical, geometric, and quantum Langlands programs?

Mathematical Challenge Nineteen: Settle the Riemann Hypothesis
The Holy Grail of number theory.

Mathematical Challenge Twenty: Computation at Scale
How can we develop asymptotics for a world with massively many degrees of freedom?

Mathematical Challenge Twenty-one: Settle the Hodge Conjecture
This conjecture in algebraic geometry is a metaphor for transforming transcendental computations into algebraic ones.

Mathematical Challenge Twenty-two: Settle the Smooth Poincare Conjecture in Dimension 4
What are the implications for space-time and cosmology? And might the answer unlock the secret of “dark energy”?

Mathematical Challenge Twenty-three: What are the Fundamental Laws of Biology?
This question will remain front and center for the next 100 years. DARPA places this challenge last as finding these laws will undoubtedly require the mathematics developed in answering several of the questions listed above.

Fair Projects

noreply@blogger.com (Rob) — Sun, 17 May 2009 18:54:00 +0000

Actually, the site is "FairSoftware.net" but the idea is to enable a project leader to seek out partners to implement their business visions. Superficially, it's a business site that's trying to connect business-people who need help getting their ideas off the ground. Though, it pretends to also be a business site and the services they have available include registering and administering an LLC (without filling out the state paperwork for you).

From my brief searches through the site, most of the listings appear to come from predatory businesses who are trying to establish their own mini blog advertising business. For this reason, I fully expect the site to fail or stagnate because only lowlifes want to be involved in stuff like that. There was one bright spot, though. I found a guy trying to make a movie. That sounds like an interesting way to get people trying to break into the business to work with each other. Perhaps one day I'll add Life's Experiences as a project to FairSoftware.net... but for now I am holding off. It seems too young and too immature at the moment.

Longball

noreply@blogger.com (Rob) — Mon, 04 May 2009 21:56:00 +0000

For those of you who have read my book you'll know I invented a sport called Longball.

The primary goal at the time had been to develop a game that's more of a war than anything that exists today. I don't mean this in a sense of killing and violence, but rather in a sense of strategy that's leaps and bounds more complex than baseball's "double switch" or the decision in football to execute an "onside kick". I wanted a game that was rich with content to the point where broadcasting all of it within a 90-inch by 50-inch screen wouldn't even begin to do it justice. I wanted a game where you could reasonably flank your opponent. A game where manager's couldn't simply manage from the sidelines by announcing what plays they wanted their teams to run, but rather a game where leaders on the field would direct traffic so their team could surge towards the goal.

The secondary goal was to create a game that could be played by literally hundreds of players. In the novel, when played at the "Professional" level it's written that each team is comprised of 2k players on the field with another 8k waiting on the bench. The playing area a "Professional" game was a field with a radius of about a mile. For lesser "Amateur" games the idea is to have far fewer players and saner field sizes. I imagine a standard Football field or soccer court would be large enough to support two teams with 3 dozen players each.

But I digress, because the size and scope are details that can be ironed out later. The meat of the game is a far more interesting topic of discussion. How is it possible to create a game as rich and complex as I talked about that could be accessible to so many different types of athletes? Well... let's reason out what makes baseball, soccer, volleyball, football, tennis, and anything else you can imagine so incredibly simple. Mind numbingly simple. Simple to the point where playing the sport take immense specialization. Where wins are measured by individual heroics and championships are attributed to the heroes. And the reason for this simplicity is that all these games have a single focus. Heck... all these games are named after the object which is that focus. It's this singularity that prevents games from reaching out beyond their extremely limited scopes of play.

So how does Longball eliminate the singularity? Well, it borrows elements from several other simple, but well known games and meshes them. With the pre-established rules associated with each of several different sports it would be easy to build complexity. As they same, the sum of the whole is greater than the value of the individual components. In a candid view, Longball (on the "Professional" level) blends 36 games of soccer, 36 games of rugby, and 36 games of Ultimate Frisbee and sets them up on the same field. Again, for "Amateur" play these numbers get scaled down to 3 or 4 of each game, but the inherent complexity that's intertwined within them will remain as an emergent property of the sport.

And it's this "Amateur" version that I'd be very, very interested in playing on a real field with 6 dozen of my closest friends. Who else would be interested?

The Editable Web

noreply@blogger.com (Rob) — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 03:59:00 +0000

The internet empowers all sorts of communication throughout the world, which creates the perfect landscape for collaboration.

A number of weeks ago, I posted about an idea I had to add Life's Experiences to WikiBooks. However, after reading their Terms of Service it seems that fiction is expressly forbidden unless it's very obviously meant to be educational. Thus, I've taken the world of collaborative development into my own hands in the form of Rob's Wiki.

It took a bunch of effort to get DokuWiki configured so that the ugly GoDaddy.com advertisements would be hidden, and I still haven't figured out how to finesse the output without having two PHP warnings on the top of the page. As they say... you get what you pay for and since I'm not paying anything I'm in no position to complain.

In the meantime, you're encouraged to go contribute to the "Work in process" script for Life's Experiences.

Life and Hacking

noreply@blogger.com (Rob) — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 00:48:00 +0000

I'm buying a condo in Watertown, MA. It's in a new development called Repton Place on Pleasant Street. I'll begin living there in the beginning of June. I've already put down a deposit and taken the steps to break my lease at the end of May. The goods: 2 BR, 2 BA, 2 Garage Parking Spots, in-unit stackable laundry, and a balcony. The bads: it doesn't come with a T-3000, though within a few months I'm sure to remedy that delinquency.

I recently had this session in a Bash shell on Ubuntu Hardy:

jennifer@lappie:~$ hack the gibson
The program 'hack' is currently not installed. Install it by typing:
sudo apt-get install bsdgames
bash: hack: command not found
jennifer@lappie:~$ sudo make me a sandwich
[sudo] password for jennifer:
make: *** No rule to make target `me'. Stop.
jennifer@lappie:~$

I thought it was funny when it told me to install "bsdgames" if I wanted to `hack the gibson`, but I laughed out loud when it got mouthy about a simple request for a sandwich. And in case you are wondering... yes, this is being posted from my girlfriend's laptop which is running Ubuntu (she's l33t).

Open Pricing

noreply@blogger.com (Rob) — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 16:19:00 +0000

There's an old adage that says, "If you have to ask, you can't afford it". To be honest, there are tons of specialist industries where price tags are hidden in the seller's head far from the buyer's ability to easily compare if it fits within their monthly budget. For some of these "specialists" the value they provide is created because their work is strongly desired by a small number of potential buyers, however there are many "specialists" who just act as middle-men with slightly more connections than the average buyer so that they're able to buy low from non-commodity suppliers and sell high to the people who have goals that are more important than an affordable price.

As a consumer who values price while making my purchasing decisions... the fastest way you can convince me that I don't need your product is by making me "Request a Quote" for your services. Just like the adage suggests, in most situations I'll be just fine without the stupid overpriced "specialist" product that you're trying to sell. In a few years or with a little more searching today, comparable products will be available at transparent prices from retail chains I can easily drive to or access via the internet, and at that time I can figure out if stuff will fit in my budget or not.

I'd like to take this time to talk about three examples where prices are hidden (or not), and give my thoughts on the industries who are hiding them.

First up, there's an article on CNN today that talks about retail chain medical services. This is the answer to the question about whether you should get some prescription drug to fight your ear-infection. It turns out that retailers are more convenient and more transparent with their pricing than doctor's running offices from rented space in the ramshackle buildings that are frequently located far off the beaten trail of your typical commute. They're attracting customers who have common, non-life threatening conditions. Considering Pareto's Rule of 80/20... I'd predict that in 10 years retailers will be handling 80% of the medical industry, forcing tens-of-thousands of doctors to either get jobs at major hospitals or to find other lines of work. Gone will be the days of the "private medical office". And I say good riddance. The world doesn't need these self-inflated doctor's who charge $10k for a day of surgery and have better tans than the Hawaiian Tropic girls (little known fact: Hawaiian Tropic is owned by Playtex - the company whose primary product is insertable menstruation tubes).

Second up... mortgage brokers. Any company that requires me to provide my personal information to get a price quote is no good. Understanding that not all homebuyers are created equally and in light of the recent industry meltdown, I'm willing to acknowledge that it's impossible for them to tell me exactly what I'd be able to pay without a formal qualification. However, a smart industry would do more than providing meaningless lists of 5 "example" loans based on no other information other than the base price of the mortgage and the number of "points" that I want to buy. It'd be nice if these companies published the variables that they use to discriminate against customers. You only give out loans to customers with credit scores of 700 or above? You only give out loans to customers who can make a 20% down payment? Okay, great. Now go pound sand because you just eliminated me from your potential customer-base. But the fact is that they don't want to filter out this customer base because the jokers who shouldn't actually be buying from them are their bread and butter. "Yeah, we can give you a loan at no money down, but in 7 years you'll owe $40k in interest payments per year. You'll probably be able to sell for a huge profit before that ever happens, though, so don't worry about." No... actually they don't even bother telling you that last part. They just let you sign on the dotted line so they can collect their commission and meet their monthly sales numbers.

Last, I'm going to gripe about the cost of fixing capital goods. What is a "capital good", you ask? It's something sufficiently expensive that (a) can't be easily replaced, (b) you can't live without, and (c) maintenance cost becomes a larger and larger the longer you have it. The specific example I want to talk about is my car. Lately it's been making a rubbing noise whenever I've turned my steering wheel. My girlfriend diagnosed this as a power-steering fluid problem, but a trip to the dealership resulted in a recommendation to replace the Power Steering rack (approximately $1400). For the time being, they topped off my power steering fluid (which was apparently leaking a bit) and since then it has been running like new. My feeling is that the work they recommended is "going overboard" and that a respectable mechanic would be more up front with me instead of saying "Give us lots of money to fix this problem". Respectable mechanics will *begin* the discussion by talking about when they think something should be fixed and what the repercussions of not fixing them are. Anything that might cause my engine to seize up would get a higher preference than something that would make my air-conditioner ineffectual. There is a hierarchy of importance... and my feeling is that by skipping this discussion the dealership saleman was admitting that his recommendation would fit into the lower end of that hierarchy. However, now I am in the position where I have to do research about power steering racks (on the 2004 model Nissan Sentra) to determine what to do. Unfortunately, I doubt I'll find convenient prices for this service without also finding a mechanic who's too busy to actually fix the problem (the one thing honest mechanics don't have is time to fix your issue... because they're too busy working on all the other jobs in their shop).

Open Company

noreply@blogger.com (Rob) — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 20:50:00 +0000

What if I told you that there's an organization who promises to give their employees, "The freedom to decide for yourself what to work on". To make the offer a little more enticing, what if I said that this organization doesn't have any formal hiring process and all you need to do in order to work from them is start cranking out software. Would that be something you'd be interested in?

Personally, I think it's a good idea but I don't think the product is marketable enough for the business to really take off. For crying out loud, they're a text editor company who nobody's heard of. We all picked our favorite text editors by now (for me it's either TextPad from Helios Software or VIM from the large world of F/OSS) and new comers to the game don't really have a prayer.

But, I think the *idea* is fabulous. The author does a grand job articulating what he wants to offer his "virtual employees" so that he can be better equipped to meet his customers needs. The business model outlined in the link above has the potential to be hugely successful. The whole idea of "virtual employees" brings to mind the concept of driven and devoted stay-at-home dads who hack together some code while their 2-year-old sleeps in the other room. And the promise of being financially compensated for that work is an extremely enticing proposition.

And thus, I'd like to close the post with a question. What's a product that can be built with a distributed workforce that will be marketable so that it generates vast amounts of money to make it's contributors rich?

Short Quips

noreply@blogger.com (Rob) — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 18:55:00 +0000

As a complete accident, I created the word "studebt" earlier today while writing about student loans.

Earth is filled with billions of beautiful and awe-inspiring vistas if you view it from the right perspectives.

I ran a 5k in two-thousand and seventy seconds yesterday.

There's a POD (printing on demand) Shop called BookSurge that I'm considering using for 2076. For a mere $299 (plus $199 for hardcover) they'll print and distribute copies of my book through Amazon after I submit PDFs that conform to their various submission guidelines. I'd get paid 35% of the MSRP listed here for each book they print.

Living Spaces

noreply@blogger.com (Rob) — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 17:44:00 +0000

I'm going to try to articulate the qualities that I think a "home" should have. This is both toe organize my thoughts and because I am coming to the understanding that the small apartment I have in Cambridge is no longer adequate.
In order of importance, these are the things that I'd look for in my next place of residence:

A Laundry Room
Off-street Parking
A reasonable commute to Cambridge
Proximity to where friends live
Spacious Bedroom with Two Closets
A Kitchen with 10 Cabinets
At least 2 Square Meters of Kitchen Counterspace
Living and Dining Room to Entertain at least 12 Guests
A second bedroom
Less than $2500 per month
A Dishwasher
Central Air/Heat (no A/C units or Baseboard Heating)
A third Bedroom / Officespace
A Foosball Table

Granted, these are all desires and they don't necessarily match up with reality. However, as general guidelines I think this list serves to itemize what I think is important.

A New Artistic Goal

noreply@blogger.com (Rob) — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 06:01:00 +0000

I want to try a new goal with my webpage. In the spirit of online comics that are beloved by all, I'd like to begin posting a panel comic every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday on the mainpage.

Here's the catch... instead of doing any drawings, I'll stick to empty panels that just have the filled in talk bubbles. I'll invite you, the reader, to breath life into my words. It'll be fun to develop an online community around this concept where anybody is free to edit the pictures and then I'll post the results each week, giving proper credit to the artists who get involved.

Maybe I'll pitch this to art teacher's at local schools to offer their students extra credit to get involved. Maybe I'll eventually package a book of artwork like the people from Post Secret or Exploding Dog, which both rely on readers for their content.

I fully don't expect this to succeed, but I'm curious how many weeks I can keep up my end of the bargain by systematically adding the artwork with the text bubbles.

MSFT vs TomTom

noreply@blogger.com (Rob) — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 03:55:00 +0000

The gauntlet has been dropped. Apollo Creed is challenging Tiny Tim to the cage match of the century. Tiny Tim, supposedly, stolen eight of Apollo's patented attacks. Here's the details:

So, is this a fair fight? Does the champion have a legitimate chance against the challenger or are will we see an upset during this fight? Film at 11.

Nd Image Gallery: The Photo Web

noreply@blogger.com (Rob) — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 04:21:00 +0000

I'm going to put this out there. I think it's a simple innovation that would improve the state of the art of viewing photo galleries. But really... there's no complexity in this idea, and if I cared personally, I could code it in a day or two. It's just that *I* think it would be an improvement to tweak the way you can browse photos online.

Basically... here's the gist of it. In addition to the "Previous" and "Next" buttons on the left and right side of images that are in online photo albums, also include "Back" and "Forward" buttons above and below with a dropdownmenu available from the metadata in a photo to control a secondary sorting filter.

What this would accomplish is (a) when I'm viewing "John's Birthday Album", I could easily ignore all the images that don't have John in them, or (b) when I'm viewing all pictures with the "John" tag, I could easily filter so that I only look at pictures that were uploaded from between Feb 15 and Feb 24. Or maybe I want to filter all images that are (a) icon size, (b) webpage size, (c) desktop size, or (d) print shop size.

The guy who implements this could even add a checkbox button that sets the dropdownbox axis to the main axis so I can dynamically jump from album to album stalking^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H looking at the different groups of people who attended John's Birthday (assuming their privacy settings allow it, that is).

The point is... by adding a dropdownlist that's keyed on metadata associated with online photos, it'd be pretty nice to view the "photo webs" that are accumulating on social networking sites like Facebook and Picasa.

Microwaves

noreply@blogger.com (Rob) — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 21:23:00 +0000

When did microwaves become so complicated? I recall a day when the microwave had 16 buttons on it. Ten for the numbers 0 through 9, plus cook, defrost, time, power, start, and stop/clear. Somehow, somebody decided that this wasn't good enough. For some god-awful reason we've come to the point in society where *some* microwaves are equipped with ultra cool "Reheat" buttons and a special button that just says "Popcorn". Mind you, when you buy bags of microwave popcorn their instructions clearly state, "Do not use the Popcorn button on your microwave".

Anyway, what's this rant about, you ask? I was heating up frozen edamame for lunch time using the "Express Defrost" button (the preparation instruction on the beans say to microwave of defrost for 2 minutes to make them ready to eat). What the "Express Defrost" feature does is load a 2 minute timer onto the microwave screen and then just begins without requiring any additional input. I figured the button was a good match for the edamame. Well, 90 seconds into the timer I started to smell smoke and noticed that my microwave was attempting to catch my edamame on fire. I opened the door (a handy alternative to the "Stop" button if you're in a pinch) and things cleared up pretty quickly. There were char marks on one of the edamame pods.

Anyway, all I am asking is for future generations of microwaves to return to their roots and *not* attempt to outsmart me. Or at the very least, add a feature that senses smoke and dehumanizes me in advance of setting a fire and prints a message "You've attempted to do something stupid". This would be fine. I can handle being called a moron by my food preparation equipment. But what I can't handle is smelling smoke coming from them, because I've been made very sensitive to fires over the past year. I can also handle knowing the microwave is stupid and learning how it ticks for each different thing I need it for. Because I'd be fine with some combination of the following button presses: Defrost-2-Cook-2-0-0-Start. But what I don't want is a one-stop-shop button that DOES THE WRONG THING. This, in my option, is blasphemy and it's designer should be punished with a fate worse than death: listening to Michael Bay pitch movie ideas for 24 hours straight.

Crash

noreply@blogger.com (Rob) — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 17:55:00 +0000

Food for thought: About a month ago, a commercial airplane crash landed and nobody died.

All the attention has gone towards the pilot and crew for being heroes, but what about the engineers who designed the Airbus 320's in the 1980s? Certainly the plane that ended up in the Hudson River had gotten updated and upgraded since the original design, but a successful glided water landing is certainly an impressive thing to pull off. Kudos to good aircraft design!

Co*cast

noreply@blogger.com (Rob) — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 16:57:00 +0000

Suffice it to say, I've finally given into the will of the people and the monopoly that's held in my area by the local internet supply overlords. The conventional wisdom is that the asterisk in the title of this post should be an "M", but for intents and purposes I am going to officially proclaim is should be spelled with a "C" and a "K" instead. It makes me feel better about giving them my business if I can cling to my sense of disdain towards their business practices.

The "installation man" (whatever that means) is coming tomorrow to twiddle his bits. I'm already anticipating problems because the cable interface in my apartment is in the wrong room and lord knows I'm not going to let him run wires all over my living room to make his job easier. Also, based on past experience with ISP-leased equipment (and they want to charge me $3 a month to "rent" a cable modem) I got my own Cisco equipment so that (a) I can expect it to work, and (b) I can save money in the long run.

Hooray!

The "New" Rights

noreply@blogger.com (Rob) — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 15:46:00 +0000

Humanity is driven by the selfishness of few and the collaboration of many. Certainly everybody should know George Bernard Shaw's famous quotation, "All progress depends on the unreasonable man. The reasonable man adapts himself to the world. The unreasonable man persists in trying to adapt the world to himself." For anything besides this to be the case, the comforts that are coveted by the selfish would be easily accessible by the lesser collaborators, for it's the nature of the reasonable man (or woman) to share. However, it's reasonable for the larger class of collaborators to be contented with their inequitably small piece of the pie as long as they have earned enough to meet their minimal requirements of comfort (food, shelter, leisure, etc).

However, there's a breaking point when the progress made by unreasonable men (and women) is so great that reasonable men are no longer needed to sustain it. This is, in fact, the goal of economy. Vis-a-vis: To make scarcity scarce. To live in a world where anybody can get whatever they'd want provided it doesn't sacrifice somebody else's natural rights (which are defined every once in a while by various organizations in order to assure the collaborator a minimum level of security that they can expect from the selfish). And while it might be a little confusing to consider, it's very easy to replace the collaborators (who require a percentage of the resources that need sharing) with machines (which only need to be manufactured once and maintained periodically). Suffice it to say, the collaborators end up going down the shit creek without a paddle.

But certainly that isn't going to happen because the collaborators are reasonable men and they REQUIRE reasonable outcomes. Also, the simple solution to the social contract between the reasonable and unreasonable man is packaged right there in the preceding paragraph: make Amendments to the natural rights of man. And this is the call for those Amendments... certainly in an age of telecommunications, space exploration, industrialization, and global warming there can be compromises struck between the selfish and the collaborators to balance the grand social order.

So before we go any further, I'd put it out there that everybody has a natural right to food and shelter in the modern world. Nobody should end up like this. Does anybody else have thoughts? Leave a comment.

Quote the New President

noreply@blogger.com (Rob) — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 21:09:00 +0000

This just in:

The success of our economy has always depended not just on the size of our gross domestic product, but on the reach of our prosperity; on our ability to extend opportunity to every willing heart -- not out of charity, but because it is the surest route to our common good.
-- Barack Obama, 01/20/09

If you're not contributing towards national prosperity, you're contributing towards the recession (like I said in my post a couple weeks ago).

So go forth and contribute towards prosperity! And if you don't know how to contribute, ask somebody to give you an opportunity. Because there will always be new opportunities... it's just a matter of gathering the resources necessary to execute on them.

Charity

noreply@blogger.com (Rob) — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 22:45:00 +0000

Coral convinced me to do a bike ride with him and Ravi for charity (Basking Ridge, NJ - June 6, 2009). The benefactor is diabetes and our team is called Riding for a Reason. Personally, I think the whole thing is hogwash. I think the idea behind "helping" the sick by walking, running, or biking "for their cause" is just clever marketing. Plus, I'm not really interested in being required to "raise" money to cure people when the drug (or treatment methodology) that gets developed is going to end up being sold for Billions of dollars of profit for the drug company who gets it first. Charity drive? More like Venture Capital for drug companies. Having said all that, I want to ask you to please, please step up big time and donate $5 to the American Diabetes Association on my behalf.

In other news, during the holiday season I helped pool together money to buy toys and games for hospitals that take care of children who have chronic diseases and major trauma. This is charity that I believe in called Child's Play and the Christmas 2008 drive is summarized here. My contributions were made together with Jen, Ida, Matt, and Shu-Yee. Here's what we'd gotten:

Scooby-Doo's Original Mysteries
DVD; $9.99
Coby Electronics TF-DVD7107 7-Inch Portable DVD Player
Electronics; $79.47
Thomas & Friends: Thomas and the Toy Workshop (Full)
Thomas the Tank Engine; DVD; $6.99
Surf's Up (Full Screen Special Edition)
DVD; $14.99
Dora The Explorer - Undercover Dora
DVD; $13.49
Madden NFL 09
Video Game; $29.99
Mario Kart DS
Video Game; $34.99
Philips PM3S 3-Device Big Button Universal Remote Control
Electronics; $8.99

Good times. :)

Creed & Contributing

noreply@blogger.com (Rob) — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 04:34:00 +0000

Part I: Creed

I framed a photograph of this passage in the past week:

place where one can still be an
unworried and unregimented individual
and sit on a log and get his sanity back
and wear any old clothes

--Lover's Leap Trail
Custer State Park, SD

I may be slightly misquoting the passage because I'm not looking at it this exact moment, but that's the gist of it. And it you ever get the good fortune of seeing the sign, the real sights are only about 10 meters more of a climb up the rocks on your right. Mucho pretty. It'll make the sorts of things that most people marvel at seem shrug-worthy.

Part II: Contributing

I helped a friend of Jen's move into a new apartment yesterday. She moved into the Park Lane Seaport buildings near the New England convention center in Boston (you know, the swatch of land that opened up when the city buried its biggest road). During the afternoon Jen and I built a number of furniture units for her. It was reminiscent of when I threw my own "putting together Ikea furniture" party, except without the beer. It was very much a "Pay It Forward" type event and I felt good afterward.

And in the vein of contribution, I'd like to pose a question: How much good does your primary occupation do for the world? Does the product of you work create shelter, comfort, or a feeling of safety? Does it entertain? Does your hard work help to feed, cloth, or nurture people or animals in the world? Consider the inputs (resources needed plus the blood/sweat/tears extended in order to acquire them) and the outputs (what your occupation physically produces). If you decide that the value of what you produce is less than the value of the resources plus the amount you've been pay for your work, then congrats - you're contributing to the national recession!

Don't be afraid if you categorize yourself in this boat, you're in good company (though to be fair, both the men linked here have basically stepped down from their official duties in the last year allowing for their productivity to drop off big time). My theory is that an overwhelming percentage of middle and upper class individuals get the classification of "contributors" while lower class individuals are less likely to get pegged into this undesirable category.

Wonderful Wiki Writer

noreply@blogger.com (Rob) — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 22:25:00 +0000

I'm toying with the idea of putting the work described here up on Wikibooks. It would go here (so if I actually do it, that last link will take you to the Table of Contents of the script).

The idea is to just "put it out there" and see if anything happens. Since everything on Wiki* gets the GNU Free Documentation License I think it would accomplish my original goals of getting the story out there. Also, this potentially fulfills an idea that I've been toying with for online collaboratively developed fiction. In essence, as long as it's work that I don't care to profit from, it's fine to be freely published. Additionally, the potential community benefit of dedicated man-hours to a project which I've decided that I have no time for anyway is a boon.

On the other hand, who the hell is going to care? And what if I *do* want to profit from it someday? Ho hum...

Numerical Progressions

noreply@blogger.com (Rob) — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 20:23:00 +0000

What's the significance of the following set?

n = {NULL, NULL, 0.5, 2.6, 4.4, 6.0, 7.5, 8.9, 10.3, 11.6, 12.9, 14.2}

Well, these are APR values that can be fed into the following equation for calculating the monthly payments of a fixed 30-year mortgage.

p = ( c / 100,000 ) * ( x * 100 )

where:
p = monthly payment
c = cost of the mortgage
x = the position within array n[] that matches
the available APR when x = 3 for n[x] = 0.5

For example, the difference between the monthly payment for a $300,000 mortgage at 4.4% versus 6.0% is:

p(4.4) = 3 * (5 * 100) = $1500
p(6.0) = 3 * (6 * 100) = $2000

Or, more precisely:

It costs $500 for every $100k of mortgage when the APR is 4.4% and $600 for every $100k of mortgage when the APR is 6.0%.

Why does this matter? Simple. It means that as APR's decrease, buying power increases. A mortgage of $500k where x=3 (APR of 0.5%) costs the same as a mortgage of $250k where x=6 (APR of 6.0%) which cost the same as a mortgage of $125k where x=12 (APR of 14.2%). And that cost is $1500 per month.

The math lesson is that every time x is cut in half, the market determines that the cost (c) doubles because inflation dictates that payment (p) will approximately stay the same.

The economic lesson is that if you get a mortgage for x=5 (APR of 4.4% (which is realistic in today's economy - because (a) the Federal Reserve is contemplating lowering their lending rate to 0.25% and (b) banks are happy to lend at that rate plus inflation (which is ~4% per year))), you can expect to sell into a market with a higher APR. Thus, when you go to sell, you can expect the value of your house to be worth whatever appreciation can be attributed to inflation times 5/x(future).

Similarly, if you have a mortgage for x=9 (APR of 10.3%) then you can currently sell for the appreciation that can be attributed to inflation since the time of your purchase multiplied by 9/5 (or 1.8). Thus, if you bought 18 years ago for $100k, appreciation dictates that the value would have doubled to $200k and the APR dictates a NPV of $360k. Meanwhile, if you got an ARM loan a few years ago and the prime rate increases to x=9, you just got royally messed up because you won't be able to sell into the market without losing money (because your buyers won't be able to afford a purchase price higher than what you paid).

So what does all this mean? It means respect the 30% rule and don't overextend yourself while purchasing real estate because it's no longer an investment like it was when I was born in 1982. It's just a shelter and a tax shelter. And unless cost (c) actually drops by another 20% renting is probably a better value. This is because the magical "8-12% average rate of return" for real estate since 1983 has been largely attributed to the decreases in APRs. Feel free to check out the historical data and run a few calculations of your own. And considering that the "rate of doubling" for inflation at 4% is 18 years, it's easy to see that the $100k => 360k example is real. Similarly it's easy to see that $400k => 444k after 18 years if the APR jumps from x=5 to x=9. Yikes! 11% over 18 years (not including inflation, the expected inflationary value would be $800k) is a really bad way to spend $2000 a month when you can rent a similar place for $1200 and invest the rest of the money (minus the $600 tax shelter) in something more valuable. Of course, maybe x won't decrease below 5 in 20 years. Maybe it'll stay the same. Bottom line -- it's complicated.

Three-Pronged Attack

noreply@blogger.com (Rob) — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 02:49:00 +0000

In wartime, a popular strategy is the use of a "Three Pronged Attack". What this essentially means is that the attackers will use three different forces to attempt to achieve some goal.

For my personal life, I've mentally adapted this concept to apply to the goal of raising enough finances for retirement. The different prongs are (1) traditional methods, (2) entrepreneurial methods, and (3) investment methods. Basically, I figure that "diversifying myself" is the best plan towards financial security.

The three methods elementarily break down thusly: (1) work for somebody else, (2) work for yourself, and (3) have somebody else work for you. There's nothing novel about these three individually, but I think combining them as a semi-formalized diversification strategy is somewhat novel. So it goes, three-prongs for me.

A Review!

noreply@blogger.com (Rob) — Fri, 28 Nov 2008 01:52:00 +0000

I found a review of my work over on one of the wordpress blogs. I think it's a good and honest tribute of my work, though the author points out, "There are a few more obvious errors". I assume this refers to type-o's and other grammar errors, and this isn't something that I would argue with... as I've been following up on my own private revision of the story for some time.

I also found that I'm cataloged over at The Assayer (which provides book reviews and discussion for the free-information renaissance).

And I'm going to announce April 15, 2009 for the release date of the revised version of 2076. As of this writing, it's noted on the book's website that it's an "Unpublished Novel" which was my way of saying "I know it needs work prior to publication". Officially, I had uploaded that version to the Internet on July 4, 2007 and then let it stew (both on the site and in my head). By now, the April 15, 2009 version is expected to be the "Published Novel" version of the story. Maybe I'll schedule a Publication Party (won't that be fun!). There'll definitely be a cake.

There will additionally be an Audiobook, which is already a work in progress (although I'll probably redo what I've done so far). As it stands, when I listened to the recording of myself reading my book, I physically yelled at the speakers during parts where words need to be removed, added, rearranged, or modified (this was during a car ride from NJ to Boston earlier this month). My current plan is to listen to it while I've got my laptop in front of me and work out those kinks and re-record... and then call it "Publishable". I should apply for a patent for that... "a method to accomplish Copy Editing through the process of revising the work as the recording plays back". But yeah... that's the basic plan. Mark your calendars for the Party.

New Homepage

noreply@blogger.com (Rob) — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 14:20:00 +0000

This post is to announce the introduction of the site www.robertvandyk.com. During a trip to NJ two weekends ago, it occurred to me to check for the availability of this domain and I was pleasantly surprised to be able to pick it up. Unfortunately, godaddy.com's "Free Hosting" means that they corrupt all my pages with an advertisement banner... so I'm eventually going to have to upgrade to a paid hosting provider.

The future goal of this domain is to showcase various artistic accomplishments that I produce over the years, including but not limited to (a) writing, (b) videography, (c) photography, (d) painting, (e) music, and (f) culinary arts.

In the meantime, I also secured a couple of domains for possible business ventures. Did you know it costs $500 in "administrative fees" to process the forms to establish a Limited Liability Corporation in the state of Massachusetts? This is the page that has all the information on that. The only prerequisite that I saw was (a) you need a Massachusetts address where company papers are stored, and (b) you need a Federal EIN (which is free). Also, you're required to produce an "Annual Report" that they charge you an addition $500 for every year. All else being equal, though, if you're running a business and not generating at least $500 in revenues each year you probably shouldn't be running that business.

The first possible venture is the discussion item number four from Evolutionary Thought. The goal of that would be to become a city sanctioned (or not) advisory institution who offers guidance towards individuals who don't know much about large and complicated purchases that they're not sure they can afford. Things like college, homeownership, and automobiles all fall under the category of "expensive" and there are a wide range of possibilities that can quickly fall into the "over-budget" category of financing. It's my theory that this sort of agency could have prevented the economic crash because it doesn't take a finance student to realize that you can't afford a $600k mortgage on $50k per year. Thus, this venture will protect people and banks from themselves.

The second possibility, although the one I feel more strongly about, is incorporating my own publishing company. One target would be to produce and sell my own novel, but I would quickly branch out to publishing work from others, as capital began to flow in.

Hopefully there will be updates on one or both of these ventures periodically in the future. Though, rest assured that as time passes you'll begin to see robertvandyk.com built-up.