Justifying Social Networking

Tyler Cowan of George Mason University and author of "Create Your Own Economy"  has an interesting way to justify usage of FB, Twitter, blogger et al. Transcribed from his podcast at:http://www.econtalk.org/archives/2009/09/cowen_on_cultur.html.
"It is not a waste of time. We are learning from it, becoming more productive, entertaining ourselves, very often giving to the world -  people read you, listen to your podcast, giving and taking is extremely rewarding. Giving is the ultimate human activity which is not a waste of time. Social networking has enabled 100's and millions of people to become givers."
Next time when somebody says it is a waste of time, we all can use this tagline.

On governance in Java Organizations

There are many ways and many options to perform the same task in Java based organizations. This means that Java organizations have to invest more in standards, guidance, architecture, and software infrastructure. Also, the technical management in these organizations requires more experience and should have more control to be able to reign in any bad practices.

Kinds of Meeting

There are only three kinds of classic meetings:

Information. This is a meeting where attendees are informed about what is happening (with or without their blessing). While there may be a facade of conversation, it's primarily designed to inform.
 
Discussion. This is a meeting where the leader actually wants feedback or direction or connections. You can use this meeting to come up with an action plan, or develop a new idea, for example.

Permission. This is a meeting where the other side is supposed to say yes but has the power to say no.

Thread Safety defined

A class is thread-safe if it behaves correctly when accessed from multiple threads, regardless of the scheduling or interleaving of the execution of those threads by the runtime environment, and with no additional synchronization or other coordination on the part of the calling code.
Thread-safe classes encapsulate any needed synchronization so that clients need not provide their own.

Ways to Stay smart

1. Work and socialize with smart and talented people, particularly ones that are considered top people in your field, find a fantastic team and work with them, look for people whose careers rely on their sharp minds, people that are a bit older than you, and slightly different.

2. Become a better listener. Being able to clear your mind of extraneous thoughts will make you more open to developing the thinking you are looking for, it will bring you focus skills

3.Think about developing skills which can result in your making more valuable contributions to situations.Be curious about new things, hobbies, intellectual pursuits, also read incessantly, as over time you will accumulate much knowledge. Tell stories well and be funny and you'll find yourself invited to join companies and social groups that provide what you seek, as people will always be curious about what you have to say

Diversified portfolio allocation

Yale Endowments money manager David Swenson's diversified portfolio allocation, charted through Google charts API.
Link

The tickers are all sample Vanguard funds with the exception of EFA and EEM.

In 2006, he was interviewed on NPR
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6203264

What I like to see when banking online

Functionality such as personalization (like igoogle, myyahoo) and personal financial management tools like budgeting, bill payment, retirement planning, and goods purchase. How I compare to or measure up to my peers financially in the amount of debt I carry, amount I spend at restaurants, department stores, and gas stations etc. in a private and secure fashion. Kind of like financial social networking. Concept of buckets for savings accounts. For ex.

Goal Bucket 1 Future house equals 60 Percent
Goal Bucket 2 New car equals 20 Percent
Goal Bucket 3 Vacation to Hawaii equals 10 Percent
Goal Bucket 4 Various unexpected needs equals 10 Percent

Deposit of 500
Goal Bucket 1 Future house 300 Dollars
Goal Bucket 2 New car 100 Dollars
Goal Bucket 3 Vacation to Hawaii 50 Dollars
Goal Bucket 4 Various unexpected needs 50 Dollars

Mastered Java EE Programming Truly with Passion!

Completed the basic EE course. Mastered Java EE Programming Truly with Passion!
Link
Next up is the advanced course.

Fidelity Full View

I have been a fidelity customer for the past 15 years and counting and periodically ( about twice a month)  use the full view feature. The feature is essentially a on-line account aggregation tool and uses yodlee under the covers. But unfortunately once in a while the full view will not frequently update or is down or the portfolio analysis will not analyze on all accounts.  Most recently, a FAQ on their website mentioned that it possible to download the full view data into csv or excel but I couldn't find any option in that view. When I contacted customer service, the person gave an interesting tidbit. A new version of full view was supposed to released by February, but it has been postponed to September. Fidelity public website has managed to advertise these new features as available now without considering that it has not been released yet.  Appears like there is some mismanagement/ miscommunication/disconnect between various teams within fidelity. It is obvious that fidelity does not consider full view to be an important initiative. I would very much like to have a reliable, fast and efficient interface to all my accounts in one place. Full view could be it, but it is not.

Hike in South mountain state park

Had a fanatastic expereince hiking in South Mountains State park. Covered the Chestnut Knob Trail (2.1 mi) and the High Shoals Waterfall trail (2.7 mi). The waterfall trail had some great scenic water fall views.

Plans for the next two Saturdays

Hike to Morrow Mountain state park : 7/18.

Hike to South Mountain State park: 7/11.

Will upload pictures after hike.

4th hike to crowders

More crowders mountain photos. The rocktop trail (1.8 mi) is our favorite

Scalability

Scalability does not make sense without context.

When asked about the scalability of a system, the first thing that needs to be known is the ways in which its utilization is expected to grow. Will it be getting more users? Will the existing users be making heavier use of it? Will its feature set be growing? Will the mix of transactions that it's presently supporting change? Will the user experience need to change?

(OK, so the answer to all of those questions is usually "Yes"; then
prepend the word "How" to those questions.)

For example: a system currently supporting very few users, and whose user base is expected to grow
rapidly, has a serious scaling problem if the DBA has to spend two hours manually running queries from information picked out of email messages every time he has to set up a new account. That's not a problem that can be fixed by adding more resources, unless you're including DBAs in the list of resources you're going to add (and there
are a lot of reasons that's not going to scale well).

Or imagine a social-networking site that rolls out the exciting new feature that you can see if your friends are online and chat with them through a nice Ajax-y UI. Suddenly, with no increase in the user base, the number of HTTP requests your servers are handling per day jumps twenty-fold, and your worries about the scalability of your database
recede into the background. (Unless, of course, you've involved the database in your chat application. Good thinking!)

Sure, making your web apps stateless so that you can add web servers, making web pages idempotent so that you can add proxies, designing your application so that you can partition your database across servers, those are all going to make your application scalable in various dimensions. It's very much worth thinking about that stuff.

How to become a better developer

Kato Link

Euler link

Command Respect

Article on how to command respect. Link