Tool of the Year

If anyone had any hope that this award was unbiased, wake up! Check out this year's best website: http://www.michiganupdate.com. In a few days you will see a much nicer layout, but the content itself should give you hours of joy, if you are a Michigan fan.

About this website

In the twelfth year of Lloyd Carr's reign of Michigan Football, a few fans saw a flaw in the system. No, the flaw was not with Michigan football - the State of the Program was strong. Rather, the flaw was with the internet. With blogs, tubes, web 1.0 sites, and bulletin boards, there are now so much stuff about Michigan Football that trying to read up on the team effectively is more difficult than understanding Jim Herrmann's playbook.

To tackle this problem, MichganUpdate was born. Now, available at your fingertips, is an up-to-date selection of stories about Michigan sports around the internet. With a proprietary algorithm somewhere between the complexity of the BCS and PageRank, MichiganUpdate clips and sorts the information you want, so you can just kickback and relax.

REIT 1: AFR

Looking at AFR, an REIT, the first thing that caught my eyes was the 9.4% dividend. Then I looked at the 5-year graph, which looks rather predictable.



If I bought it in Jan 05 at $16, and sold it at $12 in Jan 06, the dividend had better be greater than 25%. I wonder what the deal is with this REIT.

My portfolio

Lately I've been thinking more about my investments. When I was an intern, I put some money away in money market accounts. After I got out of school, I started putting money into indexed funds. Since my investment and retirement accounts are spread out among a few institutions, I never quite knew how my portfolio was doing. A few days ago I collected data from my accounts, and plotted these two charts:





The legend is made up of [fund name, percent] pairs. Fund names are either sticker symbols, cash accounts (sbmm, emdir, fdrxx, boa, compa, nati), or funds restricted/chosen by 401K companies. I think it is pretty obvious that I should move some cash into better investment vehicles. Perhaps reit or house?

Bowling 2.0

Went bowling last week for the first time in many years. The game itself is still quite boring, although it was great meeting entrepreneur-type folks. I even made it to the video!

Free PC to anything calls

The sound quality on Skype seems a little bit better, but Gizmo is free*

Mac tricks

Here are some mac tricks i recently learned:

1. command-tab switches between applications, command-` switches between windows of the same application. ctrl-f4 does the same, but it's much quicker to hit command-`.

2. scrolling on firefox is better done with space, shift-space than page up (fn-up), page down (fn-down). it actually works on other major browser as well.

3. active four corners is fun. now that i just point my mouse around to use expose, i actually use it a lot.

4. setting the wallpaper to change every 5 seconds is nice, especially when an active corner is set to show desktop.

5. instead of ctrl-click, try "tap trackpad using two fingers for seconary click"

6. move applications folder to the dock, combined with trick 5 this makes for fast application starting. there is a similiar free keyboard tool as well.

7. when using garage band, window -> music typing lets you type to write music...

Tool of the Month

The award goes to...Stumble Upon. You could surf the web, search for goodies, or stumble upon sites. This is not new, but it's still good.

Runner up: Mashable. This is a good blog about new web tools. I like it.

2nd runner up: Free anagram server. I stumbled upon this old site.

Memorial Day Special - My violin teacher, Mr. L

[Yesterday was Memorial Day. To a lot of people, myself included, that might just as well be called Barbeque Day. Chatting at a barbeque yesterday, I somehow brought up my old violin teacher, Mr. L, whom I have not seen for over 10 years. It didn't cross my mind at the time, but it struck me later on, that Mr. L fought in the Vietnam war. In fact, he is the only veteran that I know personally. It is with fond memories that I write this.]

=====

Mr. L was an esteemed violinist. He was the First Assistant Concert Master for a cosmopolitan philhamonic orchestra. What that means is he plays violin for a living in a big band. He doesn't just play, he is the third in command. If the conductor and the concert master dies in a concert, he's the one resposible to lead them through the rest of the music. He would be the commander-in-chief. I don't think that has ever happened, just like there has never been a Speaker of the House that sat in as President. What did happen was when the concert master was out, Mr. L would lead the orchestra through rehearsals and concerts, and play solo.

Some people are scared to play solo. I have never been scared of that. If you know what it means to be in crossfire, to face bullets and dodge land mines, you won't be afraid to play solo. What's the worst thing that can happen to you? You make a mistake, you miss a note, you miss a beat, you are still alive. When someone is trying to kill you, you make a mistake, you die.

Mr. L is a decorated veteran. He's got a bronze star and a purple heart. He always says he's not worthy of the medals. He says the people who are worthy are dead. One day in Vietnam, he left his unit to relieve himself. On his way back, he saw four communist soldiers close by. It was either them or him, someone had to die. Well, he didn't.

To this day I get nightmares about those four people. I know I had no choice. If I didn't kill them, they would have killed me. It's not like we could have sat down for a cup of coffee and then go our separate ways. But I still feel - I'm not sure what I feel - it just feels wrong to take someone else's life. I mean, these guys are people too. They have families just like us. They are husbands, fathers, sons, boyfriends. I never wanted to kill any one.

=====

I first started taking lessons from Mr. L in 3rd grade. I couldn't understand half of what he said, so for the first couple years, my dad would come with me and translate. Most of Mr. L's students called him by his firstname; my dad insisted on calling him Mr. L. So I also called him Mr. L. When I first started, my dad half-joked that we were getting a good deal - on top of a violin lesson, I was getting an English lesson for free.

When I was in 7th or 8th grade, Mr. L's wife divorced him. Not long afterwards he got into an accident - some people said he got drunk and fell down the stairs. In any case, he couldn't play the violin any more. His students left one after the other, and in the end, I was his only student. My violin-english lessons then became mostly English lessons. I would get about an hour's worth of violin lesson, mingled with a few hours of lecture on whatever happened to be on his mind. These ranged from music theory, economy, religion, to politics. I never could guess what he was going to talk about, but he could always relate these random thoughts back to the Brahms concerto that I was learning. And he would always mention something about Vietnam.

=====

Most music teachers don't like their students playing sports, especially high-risk sports like basketball and volleyball. In these games, fingers are routinely jammed, and months of musical training could all go down the drain. Mr. L was different. He couldn't care less.

Don't worry! Go play! Your fingers will be fine. Besides, at your age, the important thing is to find something that you love so much, that you are willing to die for it. Martin Luther King said that you have not truly lived if you do not have anything that you are willing to give up your life for. What kind of things are worth dying for? Probably not violin or volleyball; some people say Freedom, Justice, Faith. But that is something you have to find out for yourself.

=====

Mr. L is an American. Unlike other teachers, he was always positive and encouraging. I had a report card from the music school one year, and the examiner said my intonation was poor in one of the pieces. I showed Mr. L the report card and he just laughed.

I know this guy. Trust me, he doesn't know what he's talking about. Your intonation is fine. If anything, this guy is jealous of your vibrato. I told you you are gifted with the virbrato. Next time you play this piece, just remember to show off your vibrato.

I don't think I thought twice about that - but I am quite sure the examiner was not jealous. Even now, my intonation is not the best, and I could only imagine how bad it could be back then. Vibrato, by the way, is the best cover up on the violin if you missed a note.

Not all teachers are like that. After my wining performance in a solo competition, another teacher with Soviet Union and Chinese backgrounds came up to me and said, "Your slow movement was too slow, too dragging."

The Chinese has a saying that "the deeper you love, the harder you criticize". If Mr. L were Chinese, he didn't like me at all.

=====

In my 8 years with Mr. L, his life changed a lot. His wife left, he lost his livelihood, and all his students left him. Yet despite all these horrible things, I have never seen him angry at anyone. The only time I thought he was angry was when Clinton became President.

I don't understand how anyone could vote for Clinton. The man is a coward. I don't think he should even be called a man. You have respnsibilities as a citizen; if you don't get them done, you are not fit to become President. When you country needs you to go to war, you don't run away, and come back to become commander-in-chief. If you are too chicken to be shot at, you can't decide if anything is worth sending someone else's kid to get shot at. If you don't understand the consequences of war, you can't make the decision to go to war.

I don't know what Mr. L has to say about the war on terror; he never said whether he thought Vietnam was justified as something worth dying for. I also wonder, if he were to meet with the current commander-in-chief today, what he would have to say.

Buy groceries online!

Do you know that Amazon started selling groceries online? Well, now you know. And not just any groceries, organic groceries.

Search for "Gatorade", and you can find some pretty sweet deals. Don't say I didn't tell you.

Firefox keyboard shortcut

I'm a big fan of keyboard shortcuts, vi, gmail, alias...Now thanks to a friend at work, I am more efficient at browsing as well. Especially when combined with search strings, these firefox shortcuts are great.

This is all you have to do:
1. copy/change the html below into a file ending in .html
2. select Bookmarks > Manage Bookmarks in Firefox
3. select File > Import... in the bookmark manager
4. select "From File"
5. find your file and continue

After you are done, you can type "s love" on your browser address bar to find love.

<dt><a href="http://a9.com/%s" shortcuturl="s">A9.com >Search
</a></dt><dt><a href="http://www.google.com/search?q=%s" shortcuturl="g">www.google.com > Search</a>
</dt><dt><a href="http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=%s" shortcuturl="d">www.dictionary.com</a>
</dt><dt><a href="https://mail.google.com/mail" shortcuturl="m">mail.google.com/mail</a>
</dt><dt><a href="http://bloglines.com/myblogs" shortcuturl="b">bloglines.com/myblogs</a></dt>

Bay to Breakers

The results of this year's bay to breakers is out. Given I barely prepared for this, my time wasn't too bad. I finished the 12K (7.46 miles) race in 1:13:57, which put me at 2860 out of more than 60,000 people. (I ran under a friend's name, so you would have to use bib number 8338 to get my time.)

Apple Cube Store on 5th Ave

Check out pictures of the new apple store on flickr. Nice.

boarderchic.com

For all you lady boarders out there, check out this site: boarderchic.com

I met the owners from volleyball, and they tell me everything in the store is made in the USA.

Adam Smith and N. T. Wright

N.T. Wright, Bishop of Durham, gave a sermon at Menlo Park last sunday. I am glad I got to hear him speak. Like the music of Bach, I found N.T. Wright to be wonderful in many levels. He comes across immediately as a deep thinker and a serious scholar, but at the same time, he was very approachable and had a great sense of humor. He talked about three current issues that the Western world faces: Gnoticism, Imperialism, and Post-modernism. Then he talked about how his new book: Simply Christian was relevant in these days. The sermon should be available online soon on the church website. Once I verified my notes I may blog about this more.

I started reading his new book - it seems very well written and Bach-like - but before I send you all to Amazon.com, let me say that there is one minor point I do not agree with him. His book starts out talking about justice, how everyone has an inner desire for fairness. That is all very good. But one of the examples he gave was that of the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer.

First of all, I don't believe the poor is getting poorer in abosolute terms. My gut feeling is that the lifestyle of the poorest 10% of the world has been improving year to year. Secondly, global commerce is not social injustice. As long as people volunteerly work at so-called "sweat shops", there must be something more fair and just about working there, than at other local businesses. (One may argue that global corporations have so much economy of scale that local businesses cannot compete; but I have yet to hear of an area where the only employer is a global evil empire.)

While it is good to try to improve working environments around the world, one must take into account the different standards of living. A dollar in the U.S. cannot buy you a cup of coffee, but can get you a decent meal in Tibet. The poor in America is definitely well off compared to the poor in China or India. Which brings me to the other Englishman in the title of this blog: Adam Smith. I am reading his classic "The Wealth of Nations", which by the way, somehow got used at work. In the first chapter, he talks about the creation and distribution of wealth. If I understood correctly, it is the uneven distribution of wealth that Bishop Wright finds offensive.

Smith has something to say about that:

Compared, indeed, with the more extravagant luxury of the great, his [the poor's] accommodation must no doubt appear extremely simple and easy; and yet it may be true, perhaps, that the accommodation of an European prince does not always so much exceed that of an industrious and frugal peasant, as the accommodation of the latter exceeds that of many an African king, the absolute master of the lives and liberties of ten thousand naked savage.

Instead of lobbying to tax the ultra-wealthy, who earned the wealth in one way or another, perhaps those industrious and frugal peasants, who feel the pain of the savages, should simply do what they can with their own money to help. Instead of boycotting Nike or Starbucks, perhaps we should be reminded that even if a worker at a "sweat shop" only gets a dollar a day, that is a dollar more than they would have gotten if no one buys Nikes. When people groups join the global economy, they gain from the efficiencies in division of labor. This in turns results in better productivity, and eventually, better standards of living. To artificially inflate the cost of labor in a country where labor is cheap, and thereby distributing wealth to the factory workers in those countries, does not seem to me to be the optimal way of distributing wealth.

Of course Tom Wright did not get to the details on how to alleviate social injustice in the sermon. Perhaps he has some wonderful ideas as well.

Tool of the Month (April)

Here's the long-awaited tool of the month - zillow.com! How on earth did I pick zillow over google calendar? I'm the decider, stop asking questions.

Zillow is a fun little tool, you can check out how much your friend/boss/enemy's house is worth.

Enjoy.

Return on Investment

In the last month or so, this blog has brought in a grand total of $12. My little experiment on ShareBuilder, over $200. My day job...phew, I'm glad I have my day job :-)

Free stuff

Some freebies that maybe of interest:

Free access to wall street journal online
Free access to napster songs (up to 5 times per song)
Free investment money $25 from sharebuilder if you open a new account by referral (from me, for example)

South Bay/Silicon Valley

As part of my attempt to help doug move, I will now write up some of my first impressions about the San Francisco bay area, in particular the south bay area where I live and work in.

I have lived here for a little over 3 months now, and I like it. The Bay Area is quite spread out, so when I say bay area, I really mean Sunnyvale and Palo Alto. Palo Alto has a great downtown area - lots of nice restaurants, coffee shops and random boutiques. It reminds me of Ann Arbor, minus the snow, and a much nicer campus in Stanford. Besides the stunning campus, Stanford appears to be quite friendly to (nerdy) visitors, with a good number of free-for-all academic gatherings. I must say the speakers I've heard at Stanford are on average more famous, if not better, than the ones in Ann Arbor. Also, like Ann Arbor, Stanford brings in a good collection of classical musicians. I went to an Organ concert a few weeks ago, and it sounded amazing.

Sunnyvale is not quite as plush as Palo Alto, but that makes rent way cheaper. If you are willing to commute, you can find decent rent in the bay area. In fact, I'm only paying $30 more per month than when I lived in Austin. Granted, I lived in a 1-1 in northwest Austin, but my 3-3 townhouse now has everything I want. I usually take the caltrain to work, and it's working out very well. Even on days that I drive, it only takes about half an hour.

There are many fun things to do in the bay area: beautiful hiking trails, great snow in Tahoe, surfing, wake boarding, sand volleyball, etc. Two negatives about the bay area: potential earthquakes, and very very expensive housing.

Sports

People are sometimes crazy about their sports teams. This blogger, for example, writes up a play-by-play after every Michigan football game. Another blogger refused to talk to any one for a whole week after Duke lost. I myself have spent countless hours cheering for the Michigan football team. But when it comes to my favorite sporting event, it's not the rose bowl or the super bowl or the NBA finals or the AVP, it's hands down, the Inter-School Athletics Championship in Hong Kong. One of these days I will plan my vacation around this and go see my favorite team beat up on some lesser schools.

Here's a recent news clip on how DBS came first in all three age groups this year. Just like any year, DBS also dominated in many other sporting events, as well as in speech and music competitions.

About Austin TX

[In order to help Doug move I decided to write up some thoughts on Austin. I have lived there on and off for about 30 months.]

What I like about Austin:

1. Great BBQ
- Ribs that melt in your mouth are hard to find outside of Texas.

2. Awesome community
- Most of my friends there were from the Austin Chinese Church. They are some of the most friendly and easy-going people. On any given week there are lots of fun activities.

3. Affordable housing
- Unlike the bay area, you can actually buy a decent house in Austin. A nice starter house around 2000 sq. ft. would cost about 150K. If you rent out a room or two, with the relatively low morgage rates, a house can easily pay for itself. If you need a realtor, I know a few!

4. Live music
- As the live music capital of the world, Austin has all kinds of bands playing all the time. If you like jazz, I recommend the Elephant Room and the Continental Club.

5. Outdoor sports (Sand volleyball, wake boarding)
- I spent so much time playing sand volleyball, my sand game is finally respectable. At a double B men's tournament at Auzzie's, Andy and I came third out of twelve teams. Matt and I also had a winning streak of 15 matches straight. We got fed up with the lack of competition at the Riata, and drove down to Zilker park one Saturday. Even there, we dominated.

What I don't like about Austin:
1. HOT HOT HOT summers
- The 100+ degree summers are hot, but I'd take that over Michigan winters any time.

2. Houses that don't appreciate
- With so much land, depending on where you buy, your house may not appreciate much in a five year span.

3. Mediocre Chinese food
- While much better than Michigan, Chinese restaurants there still has a lot of room for improvement. If Houston were a bit closer, all the Austin Chinese restaurants would shut down. One exception is Din Ho, which, despite its numerous health citations, is quite ok.

4. Too far from skiing

5. No professional sports team

Help Doug move

My college housemate, Doug, has been out in Macedonia with the Peace Corps. After a little over a year of setting up water treatment plants and teaching English, he is now starting to look for jobs back in the States. Doug spent most of his life in Michigan, and is curious what other places have to offer. This is what he says:

"I want to know what you feel about where you live and your community. What do you get out of where you live? I'm not going to use this info to pick a best place to live but get an idea of what it means to you all and to help me figure out where I'd like to end up"

Doug is one of the nicest people on earth, so of course I'll tell him what I think about the places I've lived in (e.g. Austin and the San Francisco Bay Area). If you have any place you like or don't like, please contribute by adding comments to this post, or emailing me your thoughts, or link to your post. I will forward them along to Doug at the end of April. Doug has a Masters in Chemical Engineering (from the University of Michigan), with a focus on environmental issues. He enjoys the great outdoors and is an all-around great guy. And, Ladies, last I heard he's single!

Tool of the Month

Once in a while I would come across great tools - slick and pretty tools that work well. In March, I started using bloglines, and have found myself using it every day. It is basically a web-based RSS reader that has been around for quite some time. If you don't already have a nice RSS reader, try bloglines, I think you will like it too.

[Honorable mention: riya.com - an awesome tool that does face recognition and more]

[On a side note, what's up with xanga not allowing public rss feeds? In this web2.0 day and age, unless I'm missing something, that is just backwards]

Do I hear racism?

A coworker showed me something interesting today: the latest beta from Google, Google Finance, appears to have a slight problem.

In the management section about Symantec from Google Finance, towards the bottom right of the page, the CEO is apparently caucasian.



However, according to Symantec the CEO looks a little darker. In fact, according to my coworker, Mr. Thompson was one of the first black CEOs in the tech industry.


Record linking is hard, but can we tell the difference between 'W' and 'M'?

[To be fair, Google may have inherited this apparently racist behavior from Reuters, which is also confused as to what Mr. Thompson's middle initial is. Or perhaps, Google is suggesting that Mr. Thompson pull a Michael Jackson]

About DTAM

A wise person once said, “Bad habits are picked up at work.” For most people, blogging is a bad habit - it takes up a sizable amount of time and energy, while contributing little to life, liberty or the pursuit of happiness.

So I started reading blogs at my last job. The more blogs I read, the more I am convinced that blogging is a powerful way of communication. Often times invaluable information is distributed via blogging; and the amount of useful feedback one may get is simply mind boggling. Even when there is nothing important to say, blogging is an ok way to keep up with friends. Compared with telephone or email, blogging has the advantage of being less personal, more easily misread, and if done properly, bring in cash. Once I understood the third unique property of blogging, I started on DTAM - dtam talks about m.

Why M? I haven’t done the math yet, but I believe the letter ‘M’ is statistically significant in my life, at least if you only count the last 6.521 years: school (UM), work (IBM), friends (MML, SM, ML, MR) etc…If I were a gambling man, I would put money on M.

Besides, DTAM is recursive.