Why Financial Planning is Important

In 1995, I was working at Pure Software when the company went public. One of the very early engineers said to me that day, "I've achieved the American Dream. Millionaire before 30." At that time, his net worth was easily into the mid single digit millions.

Fast forward a little more than a decade later, and I'm trying to recruit the same person to my company. We eat lunch, and we chat. I ask if he even needs to work anymore, given what I knew of his finances, and he said, "Actually, no, I do need to work." The house he lived in was paid off, but his finances weren't in as good condition as I had assumed.

Before you think, "What an idiot. This can't happen to me." Consider this:

• In 1995, financial information was hard to find. The list of good financial books worth reading for non-experts was down to Burton Malkiel's A Random Walk Down Wall Street, which while it is as good then as it is today, was a bit of a read. (My mom still doesn't understand the book)
  
• Vanguard did not have a web presence then. The web brokerages were dominated by folks like eTrade, which did terrible things in executing your trades that you wouldn't want.
  
• Financial advise on the web was limited to The Motley Fool, which back then touted Rule Breakers, Rule Makers, and a bunch of high risk strategies.
  
• John P. Greaney's fabulous Retire Early Home Page, which I recommend to anyone, did not exist until 1999.
  
• In person financial advisers were just as ignorant and sleazy as they are today. It is common, in my experience, for even sophisticated, intelligent people to fall prey to them.
  

I would like to think that I would have done better, the truth is, financial information is so much better and available today, and with a decade of experience, my financial life is better organized than it ever has been, despite still needing improvement. Nevertheless, I find it difficult to fault someone who might have fallen into the easy trap of "I'm wealthy. I can get better advice that less wealthy people get." The truth is, while being wealthy can open up opportunities that the less wealthy won't get (chiefest of which is access to Vanguard's Admiral Shares), it won't get you better advice, by and large, which means that you still cannot outsource your financial life.

I'll close with a reflection on John Greaney's page on retirement planing:

The time I spent ... learning about financial markets were undoubtably the most highly compensated hours of my career.

Not only does the learning help you avoid pitfalls that others fall into, the learning leverages all the money you'll make in your career, giving you a double whammy as your career grows. If you're Jack Welch, John Chambers, or similar CEO/entrepreneur material, you might not need such an education, but for the rest of us, learning this stuff isn't nearly as hard as programming in C++, and is easily as lucrative.

Highly Concentrated Portfolios: A Case Study

I know a lot of people with concentrated portfolios. Most of these people don't need my advice. The reason, as laid out in this excellent article by John P. Greaney, is that if you can live on less than 1.5% of your portfolio, your need for diversification is lower. (Note that it's not riskless --- for instance, if you had a concentrated porfolio in Enron stock, you would not be happy come 2002 if you had not diversified! Diversification is still advisable!)

Here's a case study of a purely hypothetical person who took a drastic step outlined in a previous article and moved to a tax haven for retirement. One of the things they don't always tell you about these moves is that some tax havens may not have well developed financial services, so you may be stuck with the limited investment choices provided by Vanguard Global Services.

Let's say this person divested partially out of his concentrated position by selling about half his concentrated portfolio. What should he do with the money, given the limited investment choices? I'm a big fan of simplicity, so I can see a few good choices:

• Global Stock Index Fund
  
• Emerging Market Fund
  
• Various bond funds
  

In general, when looking at Vanguard funds, anything managed by Gus Sauter is likely to have the superior transactional skill exhibited over the past 30 years or so.

So what is our hypothetical friend supposed to do with the cash portion of his portfolio? My general thinking would be: 40% developed world markets, 10% emerging markets, 40% bond funds and 10% cash. The reason is that this gives him an overall 75% equity and 25% fixed income (remember, half his assets is still in that highly concentrated portfolio!). If you want to get more sophisticated you can slice and dice and eliminate the US components of the index, since that's already taken care of by the concentrated position (though I don't generally think that's a good idea, since if you have all your US holdings in one stock, it's quite possible for that one stock to do badly while the rest of the US goes on merrily on its way).

This should grant reasonable protection against a crash in equity markets or rampant inflation. Given that such a person is already able to live off of less than 1% of his assets, this makes his already relatively safe position even safer. Comments on this analysis is welcome.

John Doerr Visits Google

I had the pleasure on Thursday of listening to John Doerr talk about global warming when he visited Google. This was a rehash of his TED talk linked to in the title of this post. He goes through many of the things we already know: getting the consumer to do the right thing without price signals is next to impossible (hence the need for a carbon tax), how Brazil transitioned to a largely fossil-fuel free transportation system, and what the upcoming technologies are.

Just as John Lovelock was, John Doerr is pessimistic. This is important, because by nature, venture capitalists are pretty much the most optimistic people on the planet. They have to be --- at least 50% of the companies they fund are outright failures. So if he's pessimistic, then I think Lovelock is right: the chances of Earth having an environment that human beings will find pleasant in 2050 is less than 50%.

Nevertheless, I had a few questions in my head as I left the talk:

• When the partners at KPCB flew around the world to observe the effects of climate change first hand, did they fly coach? Or did they fly in their private jets, adding to the problem?
  
• Did Mr. Doerr change his lifestyle when he learned of the problem? Or does he still drive a big fast car to work?
  

(These aren't my only questions, but my other questions are not appropriate on a public blog)

If someone as aware of the problem as Mr. Doerr is can't change his lifestyle despite knowing of the problems, what hope do we have of convincing the world that we have to do something about this?

Tax planning II

Hoisted from the comments, Brad Delong style:
i was just thinking about your "tail wagging the dog" thing and wondering if that is true, why does it makes sense to put money in tax-exempt funds?

I have been slashing my savings in CA tax-exempt MMF but I am confused if that is the right thing to do. Any suggestions?

Thank you for your question.

There's a difference between tax aware investing and "tax tail wagging the investment dog" thinking.

Here's a good example of tax aware stock selling. The author clearly has thought through the issues and understands the risk of selling late. An example I can think of is the "tax tail wagging the investment dog" thinking is that of a conversation I had recently with someone who had a majority of her wealth tied up in her company stock options, which had hit a record high. Despite her awareness of that, her reason for not selling was: "I don't want to pay the capital gains tax." Given that a majority of her assets were in the form of NSOs, she would have to pay those taxes sooner or later, while the consequences of a 50% drop in a high flying stock on her wealth would be substantial.

Back to the your question. Putting money into a CA tax-exempt fund makes sense when your marginal tax rate is high enough that the reduced yield of the CA tax exempt fund after taxes is higher than that of the best non-tax exempt fund you can find.

To do this, first find your marginal tax rate, then visit the Vanguard after-tax equivalent yield calculator. You probably already know your marginal tax rate for your state (CA), but in case you don't, here's the table.

Here now is a puzzler for you financial gurus: A person I know just quit his job to move to another (income-tax free) state. His reasoning: "I have enough money in my stock stash to retire (barely), but my margin of safety goes up by about 9.3% if I move to a state with no income tax when I sell. So I'll change residency and do my selling then." Note that again, his portfolio is highly concentrated in one stock. Would this be considered tax-aware stock selling? I have my opinion, but I'm interested in what others might think.

Farseer Trilogy

Over the years, these books' have been staring in my face, daring me to actually read them and me always putting them off because well, they looked utterly boring. Oh boy, yet another fantasy trilogy about assassins...big whoop.

I think I must have read one of them a few chapters and got utterly bored. Because I think the second book have sat on my bookshelf for at least 3 years or so.

Well, I was out of reading material and decided to try it again. And well...2 weeks and close to 1,200 pages later, I'm done with the Trilogy.

There are two things that I'm particularly concerned about when I read any fantasy novels, and that's basically writing style, and story pace. Story content is a given, but I'm far more forgiving of a story content that's been retold multiple times but in a different manner than say, of weak writing or weak pacing. I won't bother with story content because you can get the summary from Amazon.com, and frankly, its not particularly original nor unique.

So at least in the two categories I care about, the Farseer trilogy is pretty good.

The writing style of Robin Hobbs is a little peculiar, if a bit verbose. She tends to love describing things, going on and on about the lushness of a particular forest, or the fragrance of a particular dish. She doesn't have any pet remarks like Robert Jordan did (tug braids, smooth skirts...), but all the same, you do start glossing over her verbosity when it comes to descriptions after the first 200 pages or so. Some editing would probably have helped as the first book weighs in around 300 pages, the second at 500 pages, and the last close to 600 I believe.

The entirety of the trilogy is also written in the first person, from the point of view of the protagonist. As it is, it serves quite well for the high fantasy world she's put the protagonist in . The reader finds out information at pretty much the same time as the protagonist. Hence you get to see that the world building is quite well done, and the magic system reasonably believable.

The pacing of the story is quite intense. I found myself flipping the pages as there's rarely a dull moment unless she got into the mood to start discourse on the lushness of a certain area.

The one major gripe I have about the series is that characters do fairly retarded things. Trusting characters are often potrayed as little more than idiots when it comes to trusting the wrong people...Clearly, her characters never learned the proverb "once bitten twice shy"

All in all, a trilogy that I found worth reading...it didn't radically change the landscape of high fantasy, but its still a good series in its own rights and i don't regret at all the time I spent on it.

Berkeley Hills Ride

Joining Matt Blain and I at the start was David Reiss and Greg Merritt. Matt went to use the restroom, and we got started because I wanted to go use a porta-portee instead. Matt and Sandor met us at the park with the porta-portees and we rode up together to Tunnel road.

Sandor set a blistering pace up Tunnel road and soon we had dropped David and Matt. The weather was clear and beautiful, but the haze (probably from the SD fires) restricted visibility. Nevertheless, it was a big improvement from the fog that greeted us on this ride.

At the intersection with Alhambra Valley Road, we opted for the longer ride, and Greg pulled us for a bit before taking off to do some shopping with his daughter. We then made our way over to Pinole and Richmond, riding by the ugly refineries before coming over along the Carquinez Straits to climb McEwen road.

It had been 2 years since I last climbed McEwen Road, and I'd forgotten how pleasantly shaded it was, and we made our way over to Franklin Canyon road. Franklin Canyon road is rough enough to provide a gratituous butt massage, and then we ended up rejoining the "C" route on Reliez Valley road. By this time I was feeling the effort or the ride, and had slowed considerably. Fortunately, Sandor was happy to slow for me.

At Moraga Center, I knew I was in trouble when after sitting down for 3 minutes I tried to get up again and saw stars instead. Fortunately, a bit of food and water and all the endurolytes I could eat cleared my vision. Nevertheless, the climb up Pinehurst was slow, and the climb along Skyline to Tunnel road took all that I had left. The descent down Tunnel road, however, with the gorgeous bay views and the
easy riding re-energized me, and we made it down to the car at 4:30pm. Matt had been waiting for a couple of hours and told me that the "easy 35 miler" had turned out to be closer to 45. Since Matt's the first person to have ever completed that ride, I'll have to fix the route sheet for next time. David had gotten onto the BART at Lafayette after just 24 miles. Of course, those 24 miles had probably clocked in at 4500' of climbing.

Is it too late to join this hot startup?

I occasionally get questions like: "Is it too late to make a lot of money by joining company X?" This is very silly, because if you've already interviewed with the company, you'll know the situation better than I would, and therefore, you'll know better than I would.

Having said that, there's a very old adage, which is that it's better to have a small piece of a big pie than a big piece of a small pie. Too many people forget that, thinking that they'd rather join a smaller startup (or one that has a smaller valuation) than to join one that's already rather established. Believe it or not, even in early 2004 pre-IPO, I had a hard time persuading engineers that no, it wasn't too late to join Google and still make a lot of money.

And of course, if you do really well at Google, the founder's awards, bonuses, and so on will make you wealthy, so if you're really really smart, joining a big company like Google even at a very late stage makes a lot of sense. You'll work hard and climb the ladder, and Google has the resources to reward you at levels most startups can only dream of.

I joined Google in 2003. When I joined, I was told the company was valued at $X. I called up one of my VC friends and asked if he thought Google was worth that much. He said, "No matter how much the valuation, trust me, it is far below what the market will actually pay." That VC friend, by the way, is now at a certain hot Silicon Valley startup with what many would consider insane valuations. And that's typical of most Silicon Valley startups. So no, if the company you're talking about is a pre-IPO company, no matter how lofty the valuation you might have been told or talked about, if the company is successful, it is not too late. The key, of course, is whether the company will be successful (which is in the long term more important than anything else). And if I could predict that, I probably would have had a career doing things other than writing software.

There is another secret about startup stock options that not many know, and I won't say much about it because then it'll become common knowledge, but suffice to say, it's one of the few games where the game is actually rigged in your favor, if only you had the courage to take advantage of it.

Review: Acacia Book One: The War Against the Mein

I was first turned onto Acacia through John Scalzi's blog. In it, he mentioned he had an interview with David Anthony Durham in which the following caught my eye:
...I’m quite confident that if readers think about it for a while – or remember to think about it as they read in the future – it won’t be long before they’ll come across numerous examples of white-only fantasy worlds, or white-mainly future worlds, or note current prejudices appearing in different guises…

Consider if that would ever happen in the work of a black writer. The prejudice part might, but the one race only world likely wouldn’t. As a person of color he/she would have spent a lifetime being aware of race on a day by day, hour by hour basis. If this black writer did create an all-black future or fantasy world white readers (if there were any) would likely find it improbable, limited, some sort of minority wish-fulfillment, or think it suggestive of some deep-seated racial animus – perhaps called racism...

And gosh darn it he is absolutely absolutely right. Lord of The Rings was 100% lily-white in its heroes, down to the Elves and Dwarves, as is a lot of even pretty modern fantasy. So I put Acacia down on my to-read list, to see if a black author would do better.

Acacia starts with an perhaps archetypal plot: the old King is assassinated, the foreigners have invaded the land, and the children have been scattered to the winds, only to return later to take revenge for their now dead parent. The twists, however, are very very entertaining. First, Durham makes the villains of the tales white people with fair skins, blond hair, and blue eyes. It's one thing to think about it in abstract, but the first time you realize it you're thrown a bit for a loop, because it is so infrequently done in fantasy literature.

Then, as the plot unfolds, the barbarians at the gate turn out to have an old score to settle for themselves. The children do turn out as you might expect, each of them developing into very strong adults and characters, with Alivier, the oldest of them all becoming as much a prophet as he is a warrior, seeking to not only return his family to power, but to rebuild the empire to redeem the ills of Acacia's past: an empire support by drugs, slavery, and not a little bit of oppression. The ending of the book is also altogether unexpected, and one should not expect the typical hero's quest.

All this would be for naught if Durham was not a writer of exceptional skill. His prose is a dream to read. Here's an action sequence:

Thasren drew his dagger from hiding. He sliced it diagonally away from his body, a movement so fast it drew many eyes. The blade reflected shards of lamplight, a sharp thing in a hand that should bear no sharp thing. He dashed the last few steps forward. The king's eyes turned towards him, puzzled, mouth puckered as if about to pronounce the ambassador's name.

This rhythm and the clarity of phrasing runs throughout the entire novel. It is a very seductive voice, and it carries you in, page after page.

The world building is also excellent, with a creation myth that echoes of Ursula Le Guin's Earthsea quartet. And of course, there's a lot of diversity in the characters. Brown people, olive people, black people are all there in the book, something not often seen in fantasy literature. Whatever else you can say, Durham has definitely achieved his goals.

Highly recommended, and worth buying at full price if your local library does not carry this book.

Interview with Paul Krugman

This is a great interview with Paul Krugman. I think he is one of the best thinkers/political columnists of our generation. He has been right about so many things --- inequality, George Bush, the Iraq war, and now his latest book, about the recent success of the Republicans (mainly due to racism) will probably be vindicated in a few years. It must have been tough being the only guy in popular media to be constantly writing about what a shambles Bush's policies were back in 2001 at the height of Bush's popularity, but once again, being right trumps everything else.

James Lovelock thinks global warming is irreversible

Lovelock's pessimism mirrors my own. Again and again, we see humans take the easy, convenient solution over the tougher ones. It's easier to drive the car than to walk or ride your bike. It's easier to drive your kids to school than to teach them to walk to school. Lovelock might be right, but it's not going to stop me from doing what I can, and ultimately, what else can we do?

Articles like this remind me why I decided years ago that the proper recipient of any charitable donations from me should to environmentalism rather than humanitarian aid. Without an environment that can support human life, no amount of developmental aid will help the human condition. Environmentalism isn't about saving the planet --- it's about saving the human race, which I think is the ultimate humanitarian aid.

Lovelock knows that predicting the end of civilization is not an exact science. "I could be wrong about all this," he admits as we stroll around the park in Norway. "The trouble is, all those well-intentioned scientists who are arguing that we're not in any imminent danger are basing their arguments on computer models. I'm basing mine on what’s actually happening."

Sailing on the Bay (again)

An absolutely gorgeous day on the bay yesterday. Stunning visibility. Not too much wind at first, but it picked up at the end. What a lovely weekend it's been! So warm and lovely.

Fall Ride

Pardo, Brian Wickman, Zoran and I met at 9:15 at my place, and rode up McClellan, Stevens Canyon, and then Redwood Gulch. Fall was in full swing as trees were shedding leaves all around us. A gentle wind would swirl them around us as we climbed the slightly damp pavement. Highway 9 was a cinch after that, and we started down the cold side of Saratoga gap. I was quickly passed by both Brian and Zoran, both spinning hard to stay warm, but soon enough, we started climbing Hwy 236. It was cool enough that I kept my shell and knee warmers on for the climb, and soon we were in Big Basin where after a brief discussion we decided to eat lunch in Boulder Creek. The climb out of Big Basin was lovely as usual, with the smell of redwoods in the air, and a few open camp fires granting us that rustic feel. The drop into Boulder Creek was fast and fun, and there we bought lunch and ate at the usual city park around the corner.

Bear Creek road had unusually light traffic during the initial bumps and swoops before crossing over the bridge for the start of the real climb. Past the first winery, however, the road levels out and you start getting clear glimpses of the coast. On Saturday, the visibility was so high that we could see all the way to Monterey Bay and Big Sur from the summit of Bear Creek road. At the junction of Skyline we made a left and went up the rolling climb to Black Road, where we eschewed
the descent to the Los Gatos Creek trail and kept going back towards Saratoga Gap, stopping only at the view point for another inspection of Monterey Bay from a distance. We then descended to Saratoga Gap where Brian left us to descend Page Mill and the rest of us descended Highway 9, Pierce, and back to my place. Zoran had a flat just 2 miles from the end, but it was fixed and we had Mexican dinner at the
Burrito factory.

70 miles, approximately 7000' of climb.

How to be lucky

This is a great article, and I think it really demystifies the connection between luck, success, and ability. I'll provide a few anecdotes:

• When I first joined Google, I spoke to many people about the smartest thing they could have done right away when they joined: exercise their stock options. Many folks, despite my explanation of why it made sense, chose not to do so. They just couldn't grasp the idea that they could be financially sophisticated and be successful.
  
• I will discuss my trips with some people. Many of them would tell me, "What a wonderful trip!" Yet the next time I invited them along on a trip, they would say, "No. Too busy."
  
• I called a friend of mine several years ago hoping to recruit him for Google. His first words were, "Darn it! I should have called you once I decided to start interviewing. I've already accepted an offer at Amazon."
  
• A few years ago, I started up a D&D game and met a bunch of folks at random to play. Three of them turned out to work at Google, and after a year or so of gaming with these folks, I ended up working there as well.
  

My social network of friends and people I know have been priceless to me over the last years. Opening yourself up to these opportunities and leaving your comfort zone is essential to both becoming lucky and successful. Even Scott Adams agrees, so it must be true.

Review: Take a Nap! Change your life.

Sleep is critically important, and Americans are frequently sleep deprived. I know this not just from the scientific studies that are frequently published, but from personal experience --- I started college as a "normally smart" student, but at the end of four years, I was doing far better than I expected --- most of my cohorts regularly pulled all nighters to study for exams while I got myself a good night's sleep and ended up doing better (there's an argument that maybe they were all drunk on alcohol, but since I was studying computer science the number of party animals I could compare myself with was limited). My long term memory was better, and hence I did better.

Sara Mednick's thesis in this book is that humans naturally have bi-phasic sleep. In other words, left to ourselves, we'll get in two sleep cycles in a day, one long one at night, and one shorter one at mid-day. The evidence she marshals to convince us that napping is natural and good for us is considerable: the studies basically show that the increased alertness, memory, and learning are considerable after the nap, quite possibly more than making up for the lost time spent napping. These studies are convincing, but in her presentation at Google, she reminded us that sleep is a very young science --- there is also some evidence that exercise can also result in the same increase in productivity, so we don't know if it's the state change in your head that causes the increase in mental alertness, or whether sleep itself does something.

There are a few gimmicks in this book, one of which is the sleep wheel on the cover. You turn it to when you woke up this morning, and it tells you when to sleep for an optimum mix of stage 1 sleep, stage 2, sleep, and deep, slow wave sleep, with a reminer of what each stage does. Scattered throughout the book are also a bunch of case studies of how people use napping (and what kind of napping is used) to change their lives for the better.

I did ask a question when Sara visited, which was whether napping was recommended for people with sleep apnea. Apparently, no studies of napping for people with apnea have been done, so it might even be dangerous for people with apneas. Such a young science that even I can ask unanswered questions! Clearly, more funding is needed for this.

Obviously, the ultimate test of this book is whether or not it works. And unfortunately, I can't tell you. I work in a fantastic environment by most standards, but privacy and enough time to sleep is definitely not one of them. This would be a worthwhile experiment for those who are self-employed, or who have offices with doors they can close. Hm... Maybe Microsoft engineers can make this experiment. But seriously though, for athletes, the benefits of napping are not in doubt whatsoever.

Recommended with the above caveats.

Tax Planning and other financial matters

I do occasionally help people out with financial planning. A surprising number of folks at work seem to already have one (I can't imagine justifying the expenditure on one, given that by the time you're knowledgeable enough to interview one you know enough to do it yourself), and I only do it for friends (liability reasons), but once in a while a topic will come out that I think is worth repeating.

The most important principle is that the tax tail should not wag the income dog. There is no such thing as a 100% tax rate in industrial world, so you'll always keep quite a bit of what you make. The best advise I was given by a tax accountant was: "Sell high. No matter what you do with your taxes, you can never beat selling high." I paid the guy $250 in 1995 to explain the AMT, and capital gains taxes to me and it's been worth every penny and saved me and some of my friends gobs of money. In fact, one day I ran into Niniane and one of her beaus and she introduced me as "the guy who saved her lots of money in taxes."

That said, it's surprisingly how little you can actually do to save on taxes:

• Join a pre-IPO company and exercise all your stock options. This usually involves substantial risk --- I've written off thousands of dollars in bad stock. But a college professor in Computer Science and I were comparing compensation and it turned out that he got paid about the same as I did, and the big difference was that I was able to convert most of my income into capital gains through this maneuver while he couldn't do so through his consulting business.
  
• Move to a low state tax. For me to give up California weather, that would be silly. I have friends who have done so, but if I wouldn't consider myself wealthy if I couldn't live some place with good weather. The folks I know who've done this don't consider an outdoor life important to them. If you're not a US citizen you can even move somewhere with zero capital gains taxes (like Singapore) and pay no capital gains on US stock. Pretty nice, huh? Except I've lived in Singapore and I moved away for very good reasons that are still valid.
  
• Use tax managed funds and indexed funds whenever possible for your taxable portfolio when investing
  
• Max out your 401(k) plans
  
• Buy a house (but not too much house that it destroys your finances). But frankly, buying a house is a consumption decision, not a tax decision. Do not let people talk you into owning a house because of tax savings! Someone I know had this happen to her and deeply regrets it. Fortunately, she won't be affected financially by this, if at all, but many others will not be as lucky!
  

And that's it! There are a few other minor things you can do (such as playing around with when you pay state taxes if you have a year that's going to be huge on AMT due to one time gains), but those are very minor and don't actually save that much money compared to the above.

You cannot outsource financial work

One of my favorite financial bloggers, PFBlog writes about spending 10 hours a year on his taxes despite his employer, Microsoft, paying for KPMG to file his taxes for him (what a great perk!). I have lots of friends who pay accountants despite not having taxes as complicated as his.

Like him, I always do my taxes (I also do a few other people's), and I find that it is essential in order to understand the overall picture behind taxes, how they work, and what changes year after year. On top of that, by doing taxes yourself in TurboTax, you also gain access to the wonderful tax audit protection service provided by Tax Resources, Inc at an amazing price.

My aunt is an accountant, and despite her years spent preparing taxes for corporations, TurboTax outperforms her in terms of getting money back. Outsourcing your taxes is a lot like outsourcing your financial planning: without a clear understanding of what you are doing, you will not get satisfactory results.

US Productivity Slowing

People like Paul Graham are big fans of inequality. Reading his essays, one feels like if we could only return to the levels of inequality found in the gilded age (or in India or Argentina or Brazil of today), productivity would improve dramatically and we'll generate more wealth than ever before.

Modern economics research, however, gives the lie to this sort of right wing propaganda. (Modern happiness studies too, show that countries where the Gini coefficient is low are happier societies)

Even worse: The productivity numbers are likely even worse than they look. The most important reason is that the official productivity figures don't handle the rapid depreciation of new technology very well.

As Paul Krugman writes in his latest blog entry, you have to squint to spot the so-called lagging of the European socialist economies with respect to U.S. productivity.

Review: Order of the Stick Print Comics

D&D players have always been insecure. My favorite example is that over in the Enworld Forums, every so often there'll be a thread about how D&D or Role Playing Games (RPGs) are losing players and becoming an extinct species.

The evidence, however, is that D&D is going strong, and the number one exhibit for that case has to be the Order of the Stick web-comics, which make so many D&D references (right down to edition changes) that most geeks wouldn't even bother reading it unless they were D&D players.

The Order of the Stick has become so popular that it has spawned two print-only books:

• On the Origin of the PCs
  
• Start of Darkness
  

On the Origin of the PCs introduces the player characters, or rather, the protagonists. In black and white (to lower costs, and to reflect the flash-back nature of the story), it provides the back story behind each of the protagonists and their coming together. Along the way, it makes fun of the usual D&D tropes (dark strangers in taverns anyone?), as well as the usual jabs at the D&D rules. While I think it falls short of being as funny as the web-comic, it is still very funny.

Start of Darkness details the villains, and surprisingly enough, was more interesting than the protagonists. Though as any DM who has spent gobs of time detailing the backstory of his villains who rarely survive more than one encounter with the PCs will tell you, this is all too common. In particular, the goblin known as "Redcloak" has a tragic story and this makes the web comic even more entertaining.

As you might have guessed, you can read most of these on-line, but you're not going to enjoy these comics unless you like D&D, and if you are not a current player, you will miss many jokes and references. But yes, Scarlet, I expect you are current enough to get most of the jokes.

1:57:26 for 13.1 miles

Wow. Its been one year since I started on this journey of "lets see how many events I can do in a year" spree, and this is pretty much the last event I wanted to do. It started from last year's Rock n Roll San Jose and ended with this year's Rock n Roll San Jose. In between, I did a full marathon, a Europe bike trip, and was supposed to do a tri, but got sick the weekend of, so I skipped that.

But still, 3 events, and 1 long bike ride later, I can say I'm quite satisfied with my physical achievements this year. I believe I ran a slightly faster time last year, but this time I had a running partner, and that made a huge difference in the amount of fun I had.

This year's event was quite packed, and it'll be interesting to see exactly how many registered runners there are...I estimate around 12,000, but could be slightly more.

We started with the 2:00 pace group, who did not start at a 2:00 pace, I believe they were going at a closer to 1:50 pace, but around mile 6 or so, they slowed down while we sped up. Had a gel at the mile 6 water station and felt buzzed enough that mile 7 through 10 felt like a breeze. Mile 10 through 13 was a bit more painful and I started to feel a slight pain in my left feet while my partner's calves were starting to lock up a little.

In the end, we finished within 20 seconds of one another! And for her very first 1/2 marathon its an incredible achivement! Props to her!

Next up....I don't know whats next up, but I plan to keep on running 1/2s for a while to come.....Fulls, not so much. They're not as fun, and although more than twice the achivement, I think I might just be satisified with running a single full in this lifetime. =)

Until I convince myself otherwise of course. =)

The contrast between this year and last years is mostly in the matter of training. Last year I overtrained, and this year, I trained just right. Last year at the end, I felt like I could run another 6 miles, this year, around mile 13, I was very glad I only had one tenth of a mile to go...

I'm not sure if its a great thing or not, but I'm very very happy I finished under 2:00 still....

Feeling wealthy

I've never felt wealthy. Not when I paid cash for my first car back in 1999 (near the height of the internet bubble). The benefit of that was that when the bubble burst in 2001, I didn't feel poor either.

I didn't feel wealthy when I wrote Google a check to exercise my stock options, a month after I started at the company, wiping out a couple of years worth of savings. (Yes, some loved ones did raise an eyebrow, but it was a safe investment, as safe as any such investment can be)

I didn't feel wealthy at Google's IPO. I did write a check to pay off my mom's mortgage, which was a rather smart move I was making the monthly payments anyway, and the mortgage was at 8% or so and refinancing was impossible since nobody wanted to refinance for so little money.

I didn't even feel wealthy when I started shopping for a custom frame. For someone who rides much more than he drives, even a new custom bike every year doesn't come close to the cost of a car.

But a few weeks ago Lisa and I decided to engage a cleaning service --- we were just overwhelmed by all the housework that we had to do that we just didn't enjoy doing. We weren't good at it, and we weren't good about it. And I looked at my assets and thought: "Ok, let's find out how much a cleaning service is, and throw money at the problem to make it go away." We asked the concierge at work for a recommendation, called him up, and he showed up to give us a quote last week, and they came by today and cleaned up the house.

Lisa's reaction at the results when she came home was one of amazement. She got on the phone with the housecleaning service and raved at the owner with praise for a good 20 minutes. I was pretty impressed. It felt like coming to a B&B, everything all laid out, the sinks polished, etc. So for the first time in our lives, at least, we felt wealthy.

The thing is, we live in a small Silicon Valley apartment. The quote for the service was embarrassingly small. We could have afforded it ages ago, but it always felt like a luxury, and indeed it is one. This little luxury, more than any object we've ever purchased, wasn't just an object, it was time away from doing things we didn't enjoy doing, yet done with amazing professionalism. So if you want to feel wealthy, treat yourself to a really good cleaning service.