Pem’s Tech Blog

I’ll start with the good news.  I’ve consistently been doing elliptical jogs, not every day, but around 3 or 4 days a week.  And I’ve moved from (30 min workouts) to (30 min + break + 15 min) to (45 min workouts).  My 2011/10/25 workout was 30 min, 387 calories, 2.19 miles, 0 elevation.  My 2011/11/23 workout was 45 min, 612 calories, 3.08 miles, 1277 elevation.  The one I just finished (night of 11/24) was 45 min, 644 calories.  The rest of this post is more rambling about the details of the elliptical’s computer’s ability to save workout data to a USB drive.

The USB transfer only saves five workouts at a time, and it saves them backwards chronological order (as in five XML files: 05.wrk, 04.wrk, 03.wrk, 02.wrk, 01.wrk).  So I apparently skipped a set of 5 (11/12, 11/13, 11/13, 11/16, 11/16), so my XML record skips from 11/8 to 11/18.  Saving only five at a time is really sad, considering that they are just tiny XML text files, is only 1.61 KB per set of 5.  For a machine that costs $1300 (an MSRP of $2000), it would be very inexpensive to save 5 million, or at least 50,000, or at least 50.  Ignoring the missing 5 workouts, here’s my latest graph from livestrong.com:

The 6th from the left is because I did (30 min, then a short break, then 15 min).  The 4th from the left spike is because it only records the date and I usually exercise late at night.  It says 1046 calories, which is (11/17 started ~11:45pm 45 min 535 calories) plus (11/18 started ~10pm 45 min 511 calories).  So it records the date based on the end time, since 11:45pm 11/17 + 45 min must have ended ~12:30am 11/18.  The XML doesn’t store the time, which is very unfortunate, but I wrote the start times on a piece of paper taped on the wall next to the elliptical.

As mentioned in my previous post, there’s some minor issues that make the overall experience of using the USB save-workout feature a lot less complete (less polished) than it should be.  It doesn’t store even some of the easy-and-obvious data (it doesn’t store time, exercise name, exercise level).  And it should save-and-USB-transfer a lot more than just the five latest workouts.

It also has a weird design glitch where all three sets of controls for incline are on the left (and resistance on the right), but the display has resistance on the left (and incline on the right).  Another weird design glitch is that they use the term “level” for “resistance level” since it’s an overloaded name space with “workout level”.

Because of these minor issues (mainly the USB backup shortcomings, but also that design glitch is pretty sad), I feel like the overall implementation of the elliptical’s computer system and USB backup feature is unfinished, aka like a prototype or a beta.  This is entirely (or mostly?) a software logic issue.

Finally, that website graph also feels kind of incomplete… Like what is the point of saying “2011-11…” instead of “2011-11-23” (btw, that’s in FireFox, but it looks even worse in Internet Explorer).  But to be honest, that bothers me a lot less (than the USB shortcomings and that silly design glitch), as I could use something else (or write my own desktop app) if I want a better graph, since they do at least give nice simple human-readable XML files.

Of course the more important thing is that it’s a good machine and that I’m using it to improve my health… But for someone like me, if it weren’t for the USB feature and my watch-lectures-while-I-jog setup, I probably wouldn’t be using it regularly.

Anyway, it’s still been fun to use, and now that I know how it works, hopefully my next 20 workouts will have better XML data.  I taped paper to the wall next to the elliptical so I can record the missing pieces of data (start time, workout name and level).  And I guess I’ll just need to remember to transfer the XML to USB then to my computer every 5th workout.

Pem (Admin) :: 2011/11/25 (Friday, November 25, 2011) :: Health / Food, Other :: No Comments »

My primary interest in career focuses more on learning (advancing my skills, knowledge, engineering, Computer Science) and development (ie, creating software).  I don’t have any special background or goals in terms of business or finances, outside of getting opportunities to advance my learning and chances to develop projects in my preferred specialization area(s).  Of course there are indirect practical enablers like having money and time and a better environment.

However, my day job exists in a business environment, and I realize that business and the free market is a great pragmatic way (and liberty-centric way) to enable me to advance my knowledge and do software development by working on things that are hopefully of value (at least by some marketplace).  Of course it also creates an environment where I can work with (and learn from) other engineering teammates, and of course earn an honest income.

Since I was doing some posts relating to Election 2012, I decided to waste some time watching some government and politics stuff on youtube.com, including the White House’s youtube.com channel.  I ended up watching a 2+ hour video, which I guess called “President’s Management Advisory Board Session”, which I guess is supposed to advise the President on managing the government and its employees as a business.  I took some notes, which I’ll paste here.

The first section of notes was more interesting, since they talked about using IT (computers, software, etc) more effectively for the USA federal government.  However, for some reason, I have longer notes for the second, imho much less exciting topic, which was about employee management, employee performance reviews, making (and dealing with) changes in a company.  It’s interesting to compare a business-centric meeting like this to political debates and political ads and public speeches.

President’s Management Advisory Board Session I, talked about IT:
* many of the people there were executives from IT companies (like IBM, Motorolla, Sprint) and hired contracts from IT companies like Cisco and Symantec
* create a work culture that encourages employees to be less afraid to take risks, to encourage innovation
* improving IT to enable huge improvements in efficiency and replace legacy systems with more efficient systems (such as moving backlogged Veteran’s benefits from paper to an efficient digital / computer / IT system, moved from 21 email systems to 1) (want to think of IT as less of a service and more of a core enabler)

President’s Management Advisory Board Session II, talked about Senior Management:
* talked about new employee performance review system; executives were all rated too high, didn’t have much relative performance rating, higher exec asks each of his/her managers to privately confidentially rank their people with 1on1 discussion (no made-in-advance PowerPoint or paper slides, just focused discussion) (and they get a color: green, red, or black) (and an action: develop, promote, move, or exit); the Motorola guy’s visibility was top 100 executives
* every other week, 90 min mtg, discuss 6 categories: financials, customers, competition, people, issues, announcements/events (example, moving away from SAP to some other system; make it less about sequential/event-driven)
* Red Cross (she was also at Fidelity) used to have no centralization, each Red Cross reported to its local board (650 financial systems, 650 HR policies, 650 IT groups, 650 websites, 200 online stores, decentralized procurement, etc); needed to make huge efficiency changes, become more cost-conscious and better stewards of the donor’s dollars; so they consolidated all of IT, all of HR, one treasury account and financial system, one website, etc; most employees care about the mission rather than the details of business, which is impractical, but they cared a lot when shown how much more efficiently they could use donor’s dollars for the Red Cross mission; some performance appraisals had too much emphasis on are they nice good decent vs. are they getting results; a culture of humanitarian aid where everyone loves each other needed to change to allow more honest performance discussions and critical feedback for improvement; they did 10% layoffs and claim 92% of every dollar goes to aid (to the people the Red Cross serves)
* funny fidelity customer service metric: they had a metric to track how fast the phone was answered, so a phone rep would quickly go "fidelity investments, can I put you on hold" as quickly as possible; so the metric wasn’t really measuring how well or fast they were answering customer questions
* obstacles to letting go and moving on to a new way of doing things (such as not wanting to move to a new employee performance review system)
* talked about how to evaluate/discuss to share and move employees across groups
* three simple questions: what did the person do well, where can they improve, what’s their development opportunity; also, ask them what they think they can do better; results matter more than effort or personal traits
* good CEO will both (have had experience in multiple different areas relevant to the specific company’s leadership) and (of course be able to manage leaders of the less familiar areas too)
* good employee should especially take notice/notes on advice for areas for development
* to galvanize genuine enthusiasm about change, need to clearly communicate the case (reasons, goals) for the change

Pem (Admin) :: 2011/11/08 (Tuesday, November 8, 2011) :: Other, Philosophy / Opinions :: No Comments »

If you’re naive like me, and assume that candidates for the President of the United States must be really smart and educated and sane people, then some of the views of the actual candidates might, at a times, look like a bit of a circus!

Of the 10 Republican candidates listed on wikipedia, I’ve X’ed out 4 of them based simply on being Creationist whack jobs. By Creationist whack job, I don’t simply mean they believe in some form of Creationism or Intelligent Design or Evolution with some form of religion or god(s) or spirituality involved. I mean something that is anti-science, or at least borders on anti-science.

PASS: Jon Huntsman: call him crazy, but he’ll go with science instead of politics/religion on both Biology Evolution and Global Warming. Great answer.

PASS: Newt Gingrich: he says Evolution can be taught in science/biology class, while Intelligent Design can be discussed in philosophy class. In other words, we can all keep our religions and our faiths and our cultures or whatever, but we need to modernize it to be compatible with science and logic. Educated answer from a history professor.  Great answer.  By the way, I had an Intelligent Design special topics class as part of my Philosophy minor in college.

PASS: Mitt Romney: God designed the universe and the laws of physics etc, so he created humans through evolution. Similar to Gingrich’s answer, but sounds less educated. Good enough.

PASS: Gary Johnson: I didn’t see the quote, but apparently he is pro-Science, leans Libertarian (limited government, fiscally conservative, socially liberal)

FAIL: Rick Perry & Michele Bachmann: whack job creationist, social conservative extremists. Too uneducated, non-intellectual. Rick Santorum: Genesis 1:1 biblical literalist, 2005 said schools should only teach the [alleged] holes in evolution.

FAIL / GONE: “We’ve said in Minnesota, in my view, this is a local decision. Intelligent design is something that, in my view, is plausible and credible and something that I personally believe in but, more importantly, from an educational and scientific standpoint, it should be decided by local school boards at the local school district level.”.  Regardless of whether this is a bad enough answer, he withdrew from the race Aug 13th 2011, so I’ll X him out now.

NOT SURE: Herman Cain: Apparently he hasn’t commented. Clever.

NOT SURE: Ron Paul: One, doesn’t accept evolution, pretty logical, but no absolute proof yet. Two, a creator created us, but the precise manner isn’t important (implied => the manner could be evolution). Three, Ron Paul wants to fight for freedom, and although evolution is an interesting science philosophy religion discussion, he doesn’t think it’s an important Presidential issue. Technically he failed my litmus test, but at least he argued that my litmus test is bad. Also, he did used to be a doctor, well not a medical science researcher, and obviously he doesn’t have a deep and up-to-date background in biology. And I think he at least didn’t come off as a total moron, which I can’t say for Michelle Bachmann, Rick Perry, or Tim Pawlenty.

That’s four PASS, four FAIL, and two NOT SURE.  Since I’m not quite X’ing out the NOT SURE’s yet, this leaves six left.  If the Republican nominee is one of the FAIL’s, then I’ll be very worried, and probably have to hope for Obama’s success – even if it’s just as the lesser of two evils.

Pem (Admin) :: 2011/11/07 (Monday, November 7, 2011) :: Other, Philosophy / Opinions :: No Comments »

In my next post, I’m going to skim the internet to find out what the 10 Republican candidates listed on wikipedia say about science, such as the Evolution vs. Creationism in schools controversy. In case your reaction is "science is not an important Presidential issue"… Consider that we live in a society where science and technology are extremely (and increasingly) important and significant. We’re at a point where our entire population should have a much higher level of basic scientific literacy than they do.

It’s relevant to politics, because many social conservatives take anti-science stances based on politics and religion and emotions, rather than on science and logic – and this can lead to a lot of harm. One, it spreads ignorance and stupidity. Two, fundamental ignorance in a topic as important as science suggests lower education and intelligence, and we want smart educated people running the government.  Three, government makes policies in terms of how to regulate or prohibit or fund specific areas of science or issues that require science to accurately evaluate. A few recent examples include stem cell research, abortion, environment issues, global warming, homosexuality, military research, medical issues, technology issues, university funding, tax breaks, education, evolution in education. In fact, since science and scientific thinking is so far reaching, and our entire society relies so heavily on science, it’s reach is probably a lot further than the small list of obvious examples I just gave. It’s my opinion (well, to be honest, I don’t think it’s really "just an opinion") that the person we elect President should not be an idiot, should not be uneducated, and should have a reasonable level of basic scientific literacy. At least enough that he/she could appoint find advice from good science-technology advisors, and be able to evaluate the advice.

In other words, that person shouldn’t believe in obvious pseudoscience like astrology, homeopathy, faith healing, astrology, flat earth society, ghost hunting, psychics, magnet healing, crystal healing, and other obvious medical quackery or science quackery. The President should be able to figure it out by doing a little research, or at least find some good science advisors to help him/her figure it out.

In the year 2011, Evolution (the scientific theory and scientific fact) has proven to be extremely valuable and productive in science, and the mountains of evidence (of proof) continue to pile. It’s a basic tenant of modern biology, and has very useful applications such as agriculture and medicine. Biology’s importance and ability to radically improve our future will only continue to increase.

Zero genuine serious biologists are studying Creationism as an alternative theory/law to Evolution. Because frankly, Creationism today in the USA is a religious and political movement – not an alternative scientific hypothesis. The only people pushing Creationism are social conservative politicians, sleazy scam artists, and backwards religious leaders.  And most of them just want your money (or your votes), and are glad to sell you their slogans (God, Patriotism, Family Values, the usual amorphous glib slogans and vacuous nonsense), and to profit off the confusion and emotions of their victims, even if it means harming science and reducing scientific literacy in America.

Of course some (or a lot of?) Republicans want to increase the privatization of American schools, and that might be one form of an answer to the Creationism in schools movement.  If schools were more privatized, at least the more educated parents would have more power to push for better schools that teach science (rather than pseudoscience).  Of course it might also be argued that less educated parents might have more power to push for schools to replace science with fundamentalist brain washing.  Of course I’m skeptical that a high percentage of parents would actually rather send their kids to a religion brain washing school than to an actual school, at least for Monday to Friday.  Then again, I’m also under the impression that science literacy is a lot lower than it should be among American adults.

Pem (Admin) :: 2011/11/07 (Monday, November 7, 2011) :: Other, Philosophy / Opinions :: No Comments »

Here’s the second paragraph from the 2011/11/06 wikipedia entry for social conservatism:

> The accepted goals and ideologies related to preserving traditions and/or morality often differs from group to group within social conservatism. Thus, there are really no policies or positions that could be considered universal among social conservatives. There are, however, a number of principles to which at least a majority of social conservatives adhere. The general ideas and philosophies social conservatives support are the nuclear family model as society’s foundational unit, public morality and what they call traditional family values, and they oppose secularism and militant atheism. As an application of these general principles, social conservatives in many countries generally: favor the pro-life position in opposing abortion, embryonic stem cell research, and euthanasia; oppose both eugenics (inheritable genetic modification) and human enhancement (transhumanism) while supporting bioconservatism;[3] support defining marriage as the union of one man and one woman, thus opposing same-sex marriage; support the continued prohibition of recreational or medically non-beneficial drugs; oppose prostitution, premarital sex, and non-marital sex; and object to pornography and what they consider to be obscenity or indecency.

And here’s a bullet list version of some common social conservative positions:
* pro-life for abortion
* ban embryonic stem cell research
* ban eugenics (genetic modifications) and human enhancement (transhumanism)
* bioconservatism (hesitant about any technology that might be perceived as a threat to the current social order)
* believes in creationism, teach creationism in science class
* opposes environmental issues (global warming, energy crisis) or other science issues, based on politics rather than on science
* nuclear family unit is society’s foundational unit
* legally define marriage as one male one female
* oppose civil marriage and child adoption rights to same-sex couples
* promote public morality, traditional family values, patriotism, the current social order
* support the continued prohibition of illicit and/or medically non-beneficial drugs (marijuana, alcohol)
* oppose prostitution, premarital sex, non-marital sex and euthanasia; likes abstinence only education
* support the censorship of pornography and what they consider to be obscenity or indecency, or other censorship (in places like China the censorship goes further)
* oppose secularism, wants to mix religion with government (corrupting both) and schools, and use the government to push Christianity; likes to discriminate based on religion (such as atheism, Muslims, Hindus, opposing Christian sects); the extreme is theocracy
* likes the death penalty (capital punishment), or even corporal punishment, or even torture, likes revenge and punishment (sometimes even if we assume it’s not a deterrent) (often at the expense of more than positive pragmatic goals like restraint and rehabilitation); likes war a little too much
* ban all forms of euthanasia (ie, the right for a terminally ill patient with no mental disability to choose to die to end the suffering faster)
* second amendment is awesome – everyone should have guns!
* America is better than everyone else; racial minorities, religious minorities, women, children, foreigners, inmates – they are all inferior and evil and inhuman! (note, this sort of stance is much less common today)
* public morality to replace logic with a monoculture; another excuse for oppression and persecution; specific examples of course varies widely per culture / place / time, a common problem with social conservative views since they follow the offense principal rather than the harm principal
* there’s probably others, but this is just for fun, and I have to limit how much time I spend on these rambling blog posts

One huge red flag I want to watch out for in any politician is extremist social conservatism. I don’t like it when people want to use the government in the name of culture or morality or tradition, to initiate violence and bring persecution and harm to innocent people, to impede progress in science, to arbitrarily restrict liberty, or to justify discrimination and bigotry. The role of government should be to protect individual rights – not to infringe them. The government’s goal should be to improve the economy (or stay out of the way if that improves it) and science-technology and education and human progress and human happiness and human civilization. The government’s goal should not be oppression or persecution of innocent individuals based on some arbitrary social norm, or to get revenge for the sake of revenge, or to prevent progress in the name of some vacuous amorphous ideal (society, family values, tradition, patriotism, etc).

According to the Libertarian Nolan Chart, Libertarians like freedom – both personal freedom and economic freedom; Left-wingers (Democrats) like to restrict economic freedom, and Right-wingers (Republicans) like to restrict personal freedoms. I imagine this is overly simplistic, but recall that I’m just a programmer. So this is part of my general basis for thinking that Republican candidates are a high risk for social conservatism.

So for my future posts, I’m planning to read some info about the GOP candidates in regards to social conservatism. Of course this is probably not the only important issue, and maybe I should be more worried about other issues, such as the economy and the debt. However, I chose to start with this issue for these posts, because for me it’s pretty black and white.

While an issue like economics can be complicated and might involve ideology and opinions, I think a lot of social conservatism is just anti-logic and anti-science, or falls into the category of let’s do something that causes harm for the sake of some vacuous amorphous ideal (society, family values, tradition, patriotism, etc) – rather than focus on things that actually matter, like liberty, science, progress, education, business, health, happiness, and other practical productive pragmatic goals.

And the other reason I’m focusing on GOP candidates is because the obvious Democrat candidate is Barack Obama (okay apparently there technically are others – Darcy G Richardson, Randal Terry).

Pem (Admin) :: 2011/11/07 (Monday, November 7, 2011) :: Other, Philosophy / Opinions :: No Comments »

With the 2012 presidential race coming soon, I’ve decided to finally do some posts in the politics (or political philosophy) category. Since this blog (or lack thereof?) is totally public, and politics is one of those sensitive emotionally-charged controversial topics, and there’s a risk that someone might read it and be offended by some difference of opinion… And that a reader might even be a perspective employer or coworker etc… I should start with a few cautionary comments.

I’m a software developer / programmer. My primary interests are in Computer Science and programming, and certain concentration areas, such as Graphics (and Games), GPU Hardware, C++ and other languages, algorithms. I also like all academics to some extent, especially STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) related and philosophy (especially logic and the historical roots of STEM) related.  Reading (or thinking or writing) about a topic like politics is only a break from my primary focus – ie, Programming and Computer Science.

So I’m not a politician or political pundit, and the daily activities of my job in my career so far has had pretty much nothing to do with politics – unless you mean in some indirect way relating to research funding or business/economy. There tends to be more than enough interesting work-related programming stuff to talk about with teammates, so I don’t typically talk much about things like politics in a work environment (as of 2011/11 anyway). That said, I think it’s responsible for educated people, including programmers, to pay attention to other issues, such as politics and voting, at least when they’re not writing code. In fact, there are some political issues that are specifically relevant to programming and to specific industries where programming is done (such as medical, military, games, research).

I try to take an educated science and logic view on everything, including political issues. If someone disagrees with something specific that I post, I apologize if I offended someone. If I say something in error, then please feel free to comment to explain your concerns, and to share any information or evidence or references. It’s entirely possible that I say or think something based on ignorance, and if/when that is the case, I’d love to learn more and understand the issue better and become more educated. As Carl Sagan said in Cosmos – whatever is inconsistent with the facts, no matter how fond of it we are, must be discarded or revised.

Without further ado, let the political ranting begin!  Warning, it may or may not begin soon, in fact this may or may not be my last post for Pem Tech Blog – I guess we’ll wait and see

Pem (Admin) :: 2011/11/06 (Sunday, November 6, 2011) :: Other, Philosophy / Opinions :: No Comments »

USB

I doubt I’ll consistently do 30 min every single day, but in the last 5 days I’ve done a 30 min workout each day with calorie burn counts of 387, 355, 364, 402, and 398 (warning, I think the numbers are backwards, since they all said 2010/01/01, since I did these before I set the machine’s clock).  1906 calories of exercise in 5 days is pretty impressive compared to my previous week’s workout which mostly just consisted of just walking up a few flights of stairs, instead of the elevator, from the parking garage to my office cube.

I did a few uses of the elliptical before these 5, but I didn’t record it. The USB thing only lets you copy 5 workouts at a time, which is kind of ridiculous for a $1300 machine, when you consider how cheap 100 MB or 1 GB of memory would be.

The USB thing is a really cool idea for someone like me. But the details of the current version are somewhat disappointing. I tried updating the firmware, but it didn’t work. The directions were very simple, see here. But somehow the elliptical doesn’t find the ROM.bin, and says NO SOFTWARE ON USB. It’s a very simple process – but it just didn’t work.

XML

I was also kind of disappointed with how little info the workout XML file saves. I’m very happy that it’s a simple human readable XML file, which is what things like this should be – I’m a huge fan of simple data formats like this. However, I was hoping for more data. Like a snapshot of the current (resistance, incline, wattage, calories per sec, etc) at a time delta, such as every minute or every 5 seconds even. Of course that would probably be overkill.

But one obvious simple thing the XML file is missing is just the name and level of the workout program. It has different workout programs that automatically vary the resistance and incline over time (such as weight loss level 1 to 10, or muscle toner level 1 to 10, manual, or custom workout program uploaded from USB, etc). Also, the XML file has the date, but it’s missing the time of day, which I find very annoying.

That said, overall, I think it’s pretty cool that it auto-records the basic info – date, average pace, calories, distance, total time. For up to 5 workouts, then you copy to the USB stick, and to your computer. I just wish it did a little more beyond that – it could at least add the workout program’s name and the time of day.  Anyway, here’s the XML file it generated for my workout 01.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<workout>
<userid>USER1</userid>
<model>LS13_0E</model>
<summary>
<Year>2011</Year>
<Month>10</Month>
<Date>25</Date>
<Avgpace>13.42</Avgpace>
<Calories>387</Calories>
<Distances>2.19</Distances>
<Totalelev>0</Totalelev>
<TotalTime>1800</TotalTime>
</summary>
</workout>

Website Graphs

And here’s the nifty graphs it gave me on livestrong.com, for those five once-per-day 30 min workouts. The graphs are kind of cool, but they are also kind of bare bones. For one thing there’s no way to delete an incorrect entry – hence that empty 2010/01/01 entry. This is part of MyPlate, and I didn’t even mess with the food tracking (calorie counter) part of the website – I just wanted to try out the workout graphs.

In any event, relative to improved graphs, I’d be much more excited about a firmware update process that actually works, and saves more data to the XML files – again, even just the workout’s start time and the workout’s program name would be a great addition.

3 Digit Display

My friend decided to test what happens when the 3 digit display for calories-per-workout goes over 999, by seeing if he could get it over 999 calories in a 60 min workout.  The answer?  The display stops at 999, but the machine’s computer keeps counting.  It also doesn’t let you enter a weight below 50 pounds or above 350 pounds.  He said he’s going to test the distance counter next, since the display only has space for up to 9.99 miles.  Warning, 2010/01/01 is wrong – it defaulted to that because the workout was before I set the clock.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<workout>
    <userid>USER2</userid>
    <model>LS13_0E</model>
    <summary>
        <Year>2010</Year>
        <Month>1</Month>
        <Date>1</Date>
        <Avgpace>8.31</Avgpace>
        <Calories>1103</Calories>
        <Distances>7.05</Distances>
        <Totalelev>4730</Totalelev>
        <TotalTime>3600</TotalTime>
    </summary>
</workout>

Close

Obviously things like the quality of the machine in terms of doing exercise and durability and the physical engineering, are probably more important than the USB toys.  However, as a passionate software engineer and computer science graduate, it makes sense for my blog post to be about the workout machine’s computer toys.

Well that’s enough rambling. In the 30+ min it took me to write this, I probably could’ve been doing another 30 min workout . I hope this inspires someone out there on the internet to work on better health

Pem (Admin) :: 2011/10/30 (Sunday, October 30, 2011) :: Health / Food, Other :: No Comments »

I need more exercise and better health

Over the past almost 6 years since graduating from college in Computer Science, and starting my first and only fulltime job (other than a brief part-time pizza kitchen job, and 1 year 5 months of Coops during college), I’ve gone from 6 foot tall and 180 pounds, to around 235 pounds.  And from a Medium T-Shirt that I recently found in my closet, to an XL2 t-shirt being kind of tight.  This probably relates to my daily routine of a sedentary lifestyle, which involves a lot of sitting in front of a computer (or papers/books), at my cube office desk and/or home office desk.

I’m just a nerdy programmer guy who lives in the cloud aka Plato’s World of Forms as an aspiring ivory tower intellectual / brain-in-a-vat / mind-body-dualist (exaggerated, but not hugely).  Trying to impress anyone with my physique or athletic prowess or physical abilities was never very high on my list.  I guess ceteris paribus it’s preferred, but it’s just hasn’t been a very high priority for me.

However, regardless of one’s personality, we all exist in a physical reality.  And given current technology, we all have a lot of biological evolutionary baggage and imperfections that we have to live with.  Health is very important, even if it’s just for the potential benefits – to extend one’s lifespan, increase one’s energy level, and improve one’s emotional health.  One obvious way to improve health is to do is some routine exercise.

LiveStrong LS13.0E

One day I will setup a treadmill desk.  But for now, I’m starting with an elliptical and a media player.  With my new LiveStrong LS13.0E elliptical, I can now watch a programming lecture.  Such as Harvard’s intro to computer graphics from iTunes U.  Or Stanford’s intro to Computer Science from iTunes U.  Or Khan Academy’s math classes.

The table is for extra space for the media center remote, the TV volume remote, the fan remote, a glass or bottle of water, tissues, and even paper and pencil notes.  Yes I have actually tried to take notes while watching a class lecture and jogging on the elliptical.  It sort of worked, but will probably do better with some other setup, possibly typing with a keyboard or thumb keyboard.

I’ll post more later

Pem (Admin) :: 2011/10/30 (Sunday, October 30, 2011) :: Health / Food, Other :: 2 Comments »

I noticed this on TurboTax 2010’s web site:

[BEGIN QUOTE]
Completing your return
* Online – Step-by-step Interview questions make tax preparation simple.
* Desktop – Step-by-step Interview questions and the ability to view and complete tax forms just as they appear on paper.
http://turbotax.intuit.com/support/iq/TurboTax/Buyer-s-Guide—Should-I-use-TurboTax-Online-or-Desktop-/GEN12410.html
[END QUOTE]

In other words, the desktop version is more full-featured and lets you interact more with the actual tax forms.  I think this would make it a lot easier to understand what’s going on, such as to google IRS info (or read info at irs.gov).  Or, to do comparisons if you have different options (such as standard deduction vs. itemized, or married filing jointly vs. filing separate).

If the desktop version has more functionality, then this is really not surprising, because with the online version, they let you answer their tax questions before you pay.  So if they showed you the 1040 etc docs that it creates before you paid, then it would be very convenient to use the software without paying for it.

Also, as a general rule, web apps are inherently limited compared to native apps.  Web apps run on a generic platform that works inside a web browser.  Native apps are integrated into the OS and the OS GUI.  This is basically the same argument that Apple uses for not allowing Adobe Flash on iOS – because they want to encourage the development of more native apps.  Even if an app uses the cloud, a native app typically has more potential for power, higher performance, OS integration (including OS GUI integration).

Of course the downside is that you don’t get automatic cloud storage and convenient access from anywhere.  This is why many cloud services offer both.  For example, access to email (or cloud services, such as EverNote) via web pages, desktop apps, and mobile apps.  Maybe TurboTax 2010 should offer this.  Then, again, it’s just a *.tax2010 file that you could backup however you want.

The other thing about TurboTax 2010 desktop is that it’s priced differently.  For the online version they sell you the efile.  For the desktop version, they sell you the software (with up to 5 free files).  If you’re only doing one efile, then it costs more:

TurboTax 2010 desktop editions pricing: 1040EZ is free.  Deluxe says "own a home, made donations or have medical expenses" and costs $60.  Premier says "own stocks, bonds, mutual funds or rental properties" and costs $90.  officemax.com currently sells them in a box on CD for $10 off.

I just installed TurboTax 2010 on a Windows 7 (AMD64 / x64) computer, and here’s my first impressions.  The first thing that killed me is that you can’t press Alt+F to go to the file menu (or Alt+E for Edit, etc).  This is a very basic violation of Windows HIG (btw, it’s called mnemonics).  This is a very minor thing, but I’m kind a nut about standardized shortcuts and good HIG-based OS GUI integration, so a detail like this does really bothers me.  It would be such a tiny GUI code fix.  I had a similar reaction when I first tried p4v.exe (Perfoce’s GUI) on Win7, and noticed that it didn’t use the taskbar jump lists (instead, I wrote cmd.exe batch files, and put those on a jump list, which is kludge).

On the other hand, I was at least glad to see the box that toggles between Step-by-Step and Forms view.  Unfortunately, it takes a few seconds to switch between them, which really doesn’t make sense, but I guess that’s not a big deal.  And I guess a performance bug in the GUI is not a big deal as long as all the actual functionality (ie, does taxes) is good.

Other than those comments, my overall initial impression is very positive.  But keep in mind, I’m writing this post before I’ve actually started using it.

I’ll close with a brief (and btw, uneducated) initial impression of H&R Block vs. TurboTax.  Intuit is a financial and tax software company (products include TurboTax, Quicken / Mint.com, QuickBooks, Billing Manager, Intuit Eclipse), so you might expect their software to be good.  H&R Block is a tax preparation company, so you might expect them to know about taxes.  Of course there are some others, such as TaxACT, which sounds similar but costs less.

Update 2011/02/12: A link from Bank of America also gives you a 35% discount, such as TurboTax 2010 Deluxe desktop edition discounted from $59.95 to $44.96.

Pem (Admin) :: 2011/02/11 (Friday, February 11, 2011) :: Financial :: No Comments »

There’s a 40 min video of Jeff Bezos (amazon.com CEO / founder) with Charlie Rose (talk show) talking about the release of the Kindle 3.  I found the last 10 min (the part which isn’t about the Kindle 3) especially interesting:

1) Quote: We make it easy to try stuff on.  How do you make it easy to try stuff on?  By making it easy to return.  Oh, I see, yea.  And we try to make people not feel guilty about it.  You know, buy 3 pairs of jeans, and return 2 of them – it’s ok, don’t worry about it.  It’s okay with you?  Yea, it’s okay with us.  Keep the one that fits. End Quote.  So, there it is, from the horse’s mouth…  They want you to order 3 pairs of clothes, keep the one that fits, and mail the other 2 back.  Hmm, guess that attitude will keep both (mail package delivery) and (returns processing) busy <:-p

2) Talks about Bill Gates’s business vs. philanthropy theories (the basic idea is that business tends to be more productive, but philanthropy can address specific areas that the free market neglects) (and by people with excess savings).  Mentions experiment where they gave a random population of poor fruit farmers in India “the equivalent of winning the lottery” (uh, I guess $500 must have been worth a lot more in that specific part of India?), and it didn’t significantly affect their likelihood of getting out of poverty.

3) Often, people in our society love to argue about things before there is any data, or where they might be basing their ideas more on some arbitrary morality than on actual data and specific well-defined goals.

4) The internet and mass communication is shifting the amount of money that business spends to be a higher ratio of (actual value creation) vs. (excessive marketing fluff).

http://www.charlierose.com/guest/view/2618
-> It’s the 40 min video dated 2010 Jul 28

Pem (Admin) :: 2010/12/10 (Friday, December 10, 2010) :: Philosophy / Opinions :: No Comments »