Australia Log Part 3

[Posting for my brother, who's in Australia on vacation]

I woke up at 6:30am.....and had to debate whether getting up or not into what I imagined was a mosquito deathtrap outside to pee was worth it. :)

While I debated such great matters of life and death, I begun packing and repacking. Yup, forgot towel, forgot swim trunks, its official, I'm an idiot. :)

I saw derek had got up as well and went outside, so the urge not lessening, decided to join him.

Oh yes, I also noticed brinny's tent had disappeared and assumed she's tented elsewhere. Once outside the tent, I realized where she had gone.

Yup, about 30 meters from the main camp :)

I found a convenient bush, given that the outhouse wasn't usable.

Dez was also outside and already awake. We exchanged greetings and he told me he moved outside coz he snores.....and well I had to admit the same.

The morning light was gorgeous.

Back into the tent, we started on breakfast while the rest of the people started waking up.

Breakfast was a simple affair.....cereal, bread (toasted on special toasters over the open flame), juice, and coffee.

Nescafe, mmm, how I miss you not. :)

After that, a quick pack and we were out to the bathroom, I had to shower (as futile as I knew that was, but a habit is hard to break) and got myself a bigger bottle of water (4 dollars).

We then hopped on the jeep, and day two began! We saw two dingos, my first of the trip. :). It tickled my fancy particularly because one of my coworkers for.a year is called dingo. :)

The ride was short, about 20 minutes on a dirt path, but we first stopped for water and toilets. At the ranger station, we saw that jimjim was closed and we had to fly to see it if we wanted to see it.

The next thing was a short hike, less than 3km.....the company got into another good conversation mode and we talked about all things like German hikers, the heat, our sweatiness, and the other people's plans after this trip.

Sven was off to Africa after, jules goes back to work, derek was off to Cambodia, janna was off home to Germany, brinny will be in Darwin a few more days before making her way to cairns.....scott and marlon are also in Darwin before they're off to Victoria.

So our first walk ended in the most spectacular waterfall I've yet to see. It was about 30 feet high and ended into a deep deep plunge pool. The water was cool and refreshing and everyone had a great time swimming, diving, snacking, funning all around.

We spent about 2 hours here, snacking on a cantaloupe and strawberries cream cookie. We later hiked out, and spent five minutes on the road later to our lunch spot. Lunch was sandwiches and leftovers from the night before.

After an hour of eating, we hiked another 20 minutes to yet another watering spot. This one was special in that it was layered like many towers.....there was a lovely overhang over the bottom pool where we started. further up was another layer.....

A minor personal tragedy happened in that while I was carrying my camera up to the second layer, my camera fell into the pool. I was quick enough to recover it and take out the battery and SD card, but still.....I feared for the worst.

Putting it on a high rock to dry on the highest point, I left it to itself and went off exploring the highest pool level. Above loomed a peak and derek and sven went off clambering on it. Taking a few steps but fearing further disaster, I decided to follow the girls and went off to the massage falls. So named because the falls was the most like one :). The others were too hard or too cold or too weak.

After a few more minutes of enjoying the pools, we went back to the lowest pools where janna was waiting (she said her feet weren't really for rocks....neither are mine, hence I wear my sandals everywhere I can :), that's the other thing, I'm very heavy of foot and can barely go over rough terrain with any speed unprotected).

We spent another 20 minutes before we went off to our campsite. Before that though we stoppedto gather firewood.....much fun was had by all gathering, breaking, and storing of firewood on the truck. Then it was off to the camp. We stopped to pay another 10 dollars each and then hit up our bunks....oohhhh air conditioned!!!!

Me and jules decided to wait out our showers till the end of the evening and so helped out des with the chores.

Dinner was lamb chops, potatoes, broccoli, and stir fry. The potatoes were gonna be cooked in a coal oven though as were the brocoli for a portion.

So a fire was started and we fed the fire a bit trying to generate coals. The night was cool, so we started.a nice fire.

The rest of the evening was the same as before. Scott did the meat, the rest helped with the veggies and des directed.

Another kakdu dreams group came in the meantime and we felt very lucky because they were 15 in the group.

Nowhere as fun as our group I'd wager!

Space was an issue because there were only 15 bunks and 9 were already taken up by us. Much grumblings were heard by those in the other group. Poor planning perhaps?

We had a great dinner, this time supplanted with wine as we had a box of it from the general store on the campgrounds. It was a quick affair though as we had a chance to listen to two guides from another tour group....they were demonstrating both the digirubi with guitar accompaniment.......iit sounded great and the story goes as follows (insert story here)

Later on, marshmellows came out for the campfire and soggy as they were, was wonderful over the fire.

I went off for my shower and had a quick time of it as the camp had turned off the lights! Me being an idiot that I am, had also forgotten my flashlight (did not pack).. Fortunately derek was around and loaned me his and I finished my shower with some human decency :).

I then went back, checked my camera and then decided to let it dry a bit more. Derek had his laptop so we could see that my SD card was still alive. :). Happy about that at least!

The it was bid the rest goodnight and off to sleep hoping water would come out of my left ear......:)

This has been a great vacation thus far :)

Australia Log Part 2

[Posting for my brother, who is in Australia on vacation]

Hot.

Humid.

That's what 33c (101 f) feels like in 80 percent humidity.

Last night was a short night, got to the hostel at 1am, kakadu dreams picking us up at 7am....woke up at 6:30am.

So it was good I slept on the plane. Its been a while since I stayed at a hostel and it took a while to get used to it. I also realized I forgot my towel....and with all stores closed on good friday, I'm kinda screwed. Time to sacrifice myself a t-shirt :)

So the tour guide came to pick us up at 7am....brought us down the street and I signed for the tour which was paid for already. In the tour is 5 ladies and 4 dudes....marlon(female) from France, scott from ireland, derek from Taiwan, jules the lone local ozzie, brinna from Switzerland, sven from Germany, and yanna, from Germany.

The composition thusly was 3 German speakers, 3 Chinese speakers, and 1 French, two dedicated English speakers ( though jules spoke a bit of Mandarin and French and German :))

Most of them are here on a working holiday and their stories of grape picking and banana lifting and watermelon carrying both made me envious and glad I never had to do that for my holidays.

But then the 3 months of vacation.....sigh.

Our guide was des. A local ozzie who's been guiding for 12 years now, 4 with kakadu dreams.

Our first stop was at the jumping crocs store. we stopped at the center and then got to hang snakes of our bodies for a while before they whipped us all on the boat.

Not more than 5 minutes have passed before the first croc came by and the boaters got it to jump.

It was.....amazing!!! The crocs came all stealthily up against the hanging pieces of buffalo meat and then dove a little bit before it came lunging back up towards the meat.

Rather spectacular (look at pics)

Later on in the boat ride, after four or five crocs, the boaters started attracting birds and they looked like falcons....but probably not. I got some incredible shots :)

A wonderful start to my ozzie vacation thus far!

The rest of the day consisted of.a few hours drive interspersed with a short 6km hike (return) into and out of a swimming hole.

The hike was quite flat with some small pond crossings....the hike ended into a few waterfalls (very small)....unlike most waterfalls iin the sierras where the water is fresh icemelt, the water here is entirely from the rain. Hence the water is not cold....quite warm and nice, but given the 33c temp, we'd rather the water was a few c's cooler.

After our hike and swim, we came out to a resort camp where most of us went for another swim, this time in a 2 million dollar pool. We spent about 15 minutes before showering. I sacrificed my tank top. :)

Then dez (our guide whose real name is boughton) brought us to our sleeping spots....a big covered tent with the sign (safari outpost) posted outside it. Inside the big tent, there was 8 smaller tents, some one person tent, some two person tents.

We prepared dinner, some chopping, some peeling, some mincing......in the end, we had a veritable feast! Wallaby steak, pork sausage, mashed potatoes, coleslaw, stir fry veggies.....it was sublime.

The path into and out of the camp was only passable via a 4 wheel drive road with some small pond crossings... So bathroom break after the meal was necessary.

Also, sweating began soon after the shower. :)

I went to sleep after the bathroom break and apparently snored loud enough to drive brinna out of the main tent entirely. "I had to move camp twice, she told me in the morning.".

Tax Implications of Moving to Germany

A few notes from my consultations with various tax folks (this only applies to my situation, so consult your own people if you're ever in this situation):

• As U.S. citizen, you owe income tax on world wide income. Taxes you owe to a foreign government might grant you a tax credit.
  
• As someone working in Germany, you owe taxes on income you generate while in Germany. Furthermore, you owe taxes on income generate through exercise and selling of stock options that vested while in Germany. However, if you sold after leaving Germany you are not liable for German taxes on those options.
  
• For 2008, Germany has no capital gains tax. Germany, however, has realized that this is a problem and from 2009 onwards there will be a capital gains tax.
  
• The U.S. taxes dividends at a preferential 15% tax rate. In Germany, they are taxed at your highest marginal tax rate (as high as 42%).
  
• Many companies have a Tax-Equalization policy for expatriates. What this means in theory is that the company tries to equalize your taxes in such a way that you have no tax incentive to take or not take a foreign assignment. In practice, however, if there are limitations in the tax equalization clause, this could lead to a heads the company wins, tails you lose situation, as the company could capture all the tax benefits of you working in a foreign country (if there were any), while you reap all the penalties of working in a foreign country (if there were any) that are excluded from such tax equalization policies. If you work for such a company, read the policy with care!
  

Tax Time

A couple of folks asked me to help with their taxes and/or investments recently. As I helped them, I noticed a few items that came up that are worth mentioning:

• If you're a fresh graduate funding an IRA (maximum $4000 contribution for 2007), do the no-brainer thing and just buy one of the Vanguard Target Retirement funds. Your portfolio isn't large enough to justify an inordinate amount of time tweaking them. Conversely, if your portfolio is large enough, the Vanguard Target Retirement funds are still OK, but you might get a bit more by breaking out the bits. More on that later.
  
• I like to abuse the table fromearly retirement page on safe withdrawal ratesand use that to decide on a broad asset allocation. I realize that the table isn't meant for that purpose, but it's close enough for what I tend to do.
  
• It is not generally a good idea to mix the Target Retirement Funds or the Life Strategy Funds with a general asset allocation strategy. Those funds are intended to be one-stop shops for investing with minimal fuss, and owning them will complicate your asset allocation strategy otherwise.
  
• If you are holding a taxable account, rather than owning the Total International Stock Index, consider owning the individual components of it, since that will give you foreign tax credits, which will help reduce your taxes. (Taxes swamp even investment expenses in overall costs, so keeping an eye on your taxes is important)
  
• Conversely, it is more tax efficient to own the Total Stock Market Index than its components, because as companies grow from Small-Cap to Mid-Cap, you end up buying that company in the larger index and selling it in the smaller index, causing churn which raises your taxes. Note that this argument doesn't apply to the International Fund because companies don't shift from country to country (or region to region) in the case of these index funds. If you wish to tilt towards value or small caps, buy those funds separately as an addendum to your holdings of the Total index.
  
• The Tax-Managed funds might not be more tax-efficient than the Total Stock Market Index fund, especially for the U.S. By owning the entire market, you're already reducing portfolio churn. It's hard to do better than that!
  
• There's some evidence out there that purely splitting the market down the middle on Growth versus Value might not enable you to capture the value premium. I'm not sure how much of this is DFA marketing literature, but to a large degree, unless you have a large enough portfolio (quarter million or more), it is probably not worth the effort to buy into DFA's expensive funds.
  

As usual, all the disclaimers apply: I am not a financial adviser (heck, I have a liberal arts degree), and you need to do your own math and numbers before coming up with a strategy that's right for you. I recommended two completely different strategies (maybe even contradictory) for two different people because they were in completely different life situations. There is no one-size-fits-all solution when it comes to financial planning.

Review: Planet Bike Super Flash

I installed the Planet Bike Super Flash on my commuter bike late last year, intending to review it fully after a full battery cycle. Despite nearly daily use in rain, cold, and dry, the light has stubbornly refused to drain its battery. So at this point, it's been more than 1/3rd of a year, and I have plenty of experience with the light, except for battery changes.

The light is bright. It's not as bright as the Dinotte, which could paint the road red, but so bright that a driver would have to be certifiably blind to not see you on the road. (I estimate that it's half the brightness). To make up for its slightly reduced illumination, the light is less than 1/6th the retail cost of the Dinotte, without me having to negotiate for a lower price, and, it comes with a mount that enables either seat stay mounting or seat post mounting.

The light has two modes, flashing or steady. Both modes are very bright, and I tend to use the flashing mode in the early evenings, and the steady mode after 8pm. I read somewhere (and I don't remember where) that flashing lights attract drunk drivers so I'm very happy to see that despite using the steady light more than 50% of the time, I am no where close to draining the AAA batteries on the light.

At this point, unless battery changes are impossibly difficult (which I doubt), I can recommend this tail-light without reservation. In fact, it's so highly recommended that I bought several more, to install on my family's bikes. It is rare that I come across a cycling products with so few caveats. This is as perfect as a tail light can get.

Australia log part 1

[Posted for my brother, who's currently in Australia]
Story thus far. Spent 4 days in Sydney and now I regret giving up the chance I had to move here....that was 10 years ago, or close to it.

Its one of the best cities I've been to. Its probably because its one of those (trap the tourist) weeks where the weather is spectacular and everything just goes right.

To recap, I'm here for work from the 17th of Mar to the 20th. I finished my work on the 17th though and as there was no issues from then on, I had the time to explore aside from the times I had to work.

We stayed at the sheraton on the park and it was a great hotel. For 350 a night, I shouldn't expect anything less. Walk in closet, big bathroom, nice bed. Enough talk of the hotel though.

The city of sydney is beautiful. Not classic beautiful like some would liken to european cities, but its very charming much in its own way. The weather is far preferrable to san francisco's for its warmth and nice wind and the only detractable point is that its far more humid than I could really say I like.

Like I said, I was in sydney probably during its best weather period, the temperature rarely peaking above 25c and the wind always providing a nice pleasant breeze. I never needed a jacket at night, and never needed more than shorts in the day.

The sights.....let's start with where our office was, on beautiful darling harbour. The chinese name for it translates to lover's harbour which is close enough I guess. And quite accurate to boot. Its a lovely walkway with gorgeous views on one side and excellent eating on the other. Some tourists attractions such as the wild life park where one could see kangaroos and koalas as well as a smallish but well equipped aquarium rounds up darling harbour.

Then we have the thematic sydney attraction, harbour bridge and the sydney opera house. Its lovely in the day, and even lovelier at night, the two providing close to unlimited amounts of photo oppurtinities, and even more on a moonlit night with an actual darling of yours.


Finally, the city itself. Vibrant, alive, and positively....happening. The downtown area is very busy without being threatening, full of attractions in and of itself, such as the sydney tower, as well as hotels and shopping. Chinatown is quite close and you can get every type of cuisine you desire within a 5 minutes walk. Sydney is fairly incredible in that everything is quite....integrated. You never felt the segregation that one gets in say, SF's chinatown....where its a distinct world from the italian populace in North Beach. Here in Sydney, it all blends and flows and just feels more like a melting pot than anyplace else I've experienced with a big caucasian, asian, and middle eastern populace.

The only downside? Price. Food is expensive with meals for one starting at 6 dollars with that being the cheapest streetside options. We had an ordinary chinese meal for 5 which cost us 150 AUD and would have cost us no more than 50 or 60 in the US!

Smaller portions to boot, but that's a given. But the price just kills.

That's all I have so far for sydney....stay tuned for the rest of Oz. Pictures when I get back.

Pigeon Point LIghthouse Tour 2008

Pigeon Point Lighthouse 2008

The forecast was for 70% chance of rain, but since this was my last chance to test my new bike with a fully loaded setup, I decided to go ahead and brave it anyway. In addition, my doctor had given me a new portable CPAP machine to test, and I wanted to see how much carrying that extra 1.75 pounds would slow me down. Mike Samuel, Stephan Ellner were committed to coming along, and Li Moore joined us as a last minute addition. Li's girlfriend, Catherine, would drive over with his stuff later that afternoon. After mounting fenders, computers, and navigation units, we immediately set out towards Moody road. The bike felt heavy, and I didn't quite have the gearing for Moody road, however, so elected to go up Taeffe and Altamont, meeting up with Page Mill road. The weather was overcast but quite sunny in the valley, and there was very little wind. In my 34x34, I had to stand up frequently on the climb, but it felt fine.

Our climbing went quite well, and at the top of West Alpine road, we took a break to eat and put on clothing. This was the test --- with a fully loaded setup, how would this technical descent feel? The answer came quickly --- the bike handled very well indeed! There was not a hint of shimmy whatsoever, and the long reach caliper brakes felt very capable of stopping the bike. At the bottom of West Alpine road we finally saw some wet pavement, and we were chilled, but with sunlight filtering through the Redwood Forest, it was too beautiful for words and we were glad to have agreed to the ride, no matter the weather further ahead.

At the junction with Pescadero Road we paused once more to adjust my front fender --- this was becoming quite irritating, and I was reminded once again why I didn't usually tour with fenders. The climb up Pescadero Road past Sam McDonald County Park was easy, and the descent was just brilliant. Carving corners quickly with a load is what this bike was designed for, and it did it so very well. As we neared the coast, it became quite overcast, but though it threatened rain, we never felt a drop. Li wanted to pet the goat at the goat farm on North Road, so we took that detour for the petting. Stephan bought a souvenir, and we went on to Pescadero where Norm's market provided sustenance in the form of artichoke garlic bread, meat, cheese, as well as supplies for the night's dinner and the morrow's breakfast.

While having lunch, a Western Wheeler rode up. This was Vicki Pelton, whom I knew quite well. We told her we had reservations for Pigeon Point and were intending to show up as early as possible so we could get the hot tub. When she found out that a few of our compatriots had bailed and we had room for her tonight, she accepted the last bunk in the hostel.

Loading up our saddlebags, we rode on up Bean Hollow Road, a lovely twisty little country lane which gave us views of the coast, juxtaposed with a field of flowers. With the wind behind us, we arrived at the hostel at 3:00pm, in time to get us the sunset position in the hot tub!

The next day, after Stephan's excellent dinner the night before (fortified by a second loaf of that artichoke garlic bread) and a quick pancake breakfast, we gave Catherine most of our baggage and proceeded to start riding South. We were quite capable of climbing with our lugguage, but Stephan had an urgent appointment at 3:00pm and we wanted to move light and fast, having already proved that our bikes were more than up to the task of another tour in the mountains. With a 15-20mph wind behind us, we made Santa Cruz in record time, getting there at 10:30 --- too early for lunch, but not too early to get bagels at the Santa Cruz Coffee Roasting company. Then it was up Highway 9, with uncharacteristically light traffic, but also with a tail wind, pedaling up the mountain road lightly with not a care in the world. At Felton we turned off and found East Zyante road, a stair step climb up into the Santa Cruz mountains with fairly steep sections.

Once at the junction with summit road, we decided that a quick descent into Los Gatos would save us time. Bear Creek road was a fast descent as usual, and we lucked out on the traffic again, having only one platoon of cars pass us the way only Italian and American drivers would do. On Alma Bridge road, however, we found that the Los Gatos Creek trail was closed, forcing us to find an alternate dirt road which required about 10m of walking. Once into Los Gatos, all we had to do was to fight the headwind home on my usual roads.

We had no mechanicals, and the weather was amazing. The trip was about 172km and about 2300m of climbing (not accurate because changing weather made my barometric altimeter read numbers I don't believe).

Lessons learned: I'm going to have to put a triple on this bike before I go to Europe. Yes, I can carry a CPAP even on tour, but not without help. The GPS 76CSx can only handle routes with 50 waypoints or less, so when constructing routes, I have to be careful how many times I click. When the forecast says rain, be brave and go riding anyway. The ride is worth the effort!

Diver Dan's Beginning Open Water

I just recently finished my first beginning open water class this past weekend. I decided to get certified to dive the moment I was notified that I was going to Australia for business (and thus could take 2 weeks off to explore the great down under and dive the Great Barrier Reef...).

Due to short notice, I had very few choices of classes, but decided to pick one that was certified by PADI and had the 5 star rating.

So I picked Diver Dan's dive shop to go get certified. I also decided to pick the weeknight format as it meant giving up less weekends (ski season beckons!). So instead of two weekends in a row, I got to go to 3 weeks of 2 weeknights each (3 class room sessions, 3 pool sessions, each 3 hours long), and the standard 2 weekend dives (2 dives a day).

It was probably great luck that we ended up with an absolutely great instructor. In our very first class, Todd basically told us that he runs his scuba class very different from other instructors. True to his word, he doesn't.

His methods of classroom instruction is probably one of the best I've seen for subjects involving mostly hands-on learning. Instead of going over the book during the class, he would just give us a ton of anecdotes (he has over 3000 dives under his belt), and each of his anecdotes would relate to the topic that we were supposed to cover in class. As an example, the first class we were in supposedly talks about equipment. Masks, fins, Buoyancy Control Devices (BCDs), etc. He went through most of the non-important equipment...masks, gloves, wetsuits....and then when he got to the BCD, would go off on stories about why most BCDs suck, and why we should get backplates with bladders if we decided to get serious into diving. It was both funny and informative as he would go into quite a number of details about the failures of BCDs and that their one advantage is that they're cheap. And how all divers pay for that cheapness.

His pool sessions were equally as informative as he told us very early on the basics of diving and that he would spend most of our time in the pool teaching us the basics, and making sure we were as fundamentally sound as he could make us in the very short time he had with us. Basically in diving, there's only 3 things that matter, buoyancy control, trim, and kick. He informed us that the only thing we really had time for, and probably the most important to us, was buoyancy. Instead of overweighting us in the pool (and thus making our decents easier, but making us pay to stay buoyant by kicking to maintain some semblance of neutral buoyancy. kicking to stay buoyant is bad, wastes air), he would make sure we were properly weighted and thus have to learn to stay buoyant using breath control. We must have spent about 4 of the 9 hours in the pool doing nothing but breath control to gain control of our buoyancy. The other times were spent doing proper ascent and descents.

Oh we spent some time blazing through the other skills as well, partial flood clear, full mask clear, manual inflation, but as we did each skill, he would tell us the practicality of each (buddy sharing a regulator usually ends up with two dead buddies is one of his favourite stories), and go over them very very quickly, occasionally stopping to tell us why we were blazing through some of the lessons.

His ocean dives was also quite excellent...instead of starting us off at an easy dive spot, he gave us a pretty brutal location....having to haul 40 extra lbs of gear down 20 or so steps of stairs into rocky terrain and then into heavy surf is probably not most people's idea of an easy dive spot.

I've heard many times that learning to dive in Monterey is one of the best places to learn to dive, not only because Monterey is a fairly decent dive spot, but because the cold water trains you to be a better diver (less margin of error, the cold makes your brain work slower, forcing you to think faster), and I can say its pretty true. Even though my first few dives were quite good (water was 52 degrees, quite warm for Monterey!), the last two dives were absolutely frigid (water was probably 42 to 48 degrees), even with 8 millimeter wetsuits, you were never really warm, and having to do the same skills in frigid water is kind of the ultimate final exam. =)

In the end, when Todd handed us our PADI certifications, I really did feel a sense of accomplishment and felt that I could dive confidently AND enjoy my dives (less fear, less brain-dead moments like "uh what do i do now.."). I have to say that Todd has a lot to do with it as SCUBA is pretty much a hands-on skill, and his ability to relate his stories with the class room material was incredibly useful in showing the class how the class room material isn't just mostly fluff.

One thing I have to recommend to people is that if you're not in a huge rush, take the weeknight classes. You have less people (I had 5 in the class, typical weekend class is 8), which means once you're out in the ocean, you get a lot more instructor time...and try to get into a class with Todd. I guarantee you won't regret it. =)



Next up for me! Great Barrier Reef Diving!

On interviewing

I intended to write a blog entry about interviewing at Google at one point, but Steve Yegge and Paul Tyma beat me to it, and did it better than I ever could. If you're going to interview at Google (or any top tier company), you could do worse than to read both their blog posts and listen to their advice.

There are a few things I have to add, but they are relatively minor:

• Apply test taking techniques: in particular, if you suspect that your answer is too complex to fit into the white board, chances are, your entire approach is wrong. It'll take a very cruel interviewer to ask a coding question that cannot be solved in the space provided. And as Steve says, come prepared to write code! If you were hiring a juggler, you would expect a demonstration of his juggling. No excuses!
  
• Do not panic if you bomb one interview. I've seen folks do badly on one interview and then fall apart completely when if they pulled themselves together and stayed calm they could have done much better. Panic doesn't help you solve problems.
  
• There are really only a limited number of data structures in widespread use: hash-tables, linked lists, binary trees (and balanced versions of such, including skip lists and treaps), heaps, on-disk data structures such as B-trees, and arrays. Learn them all, and learn to apply all of them. If one data structure doesn't fit, try another one. An interesting phenomenon I've seen is that a lot of candidates spontaneously invent tries in an interview, but few even know what it's called. In practice, tries are rarely used.
  
• Be honest. If you don't know something, say so. Pretending you know something is a good way to ensure that you get dinged for it! One of my Google interviewers asked me to write some SQL, and I replied that I didn't know any. It didn't hurt me, as she switched to a different question altogether. Any attempt by me to brazen it through, however, would have been cause for concern.
  
• If you're sick, reschedule for your interview, and reschedule it far enough later that you will be well by the time you show up. An interview that you care about should not be done with your brain at 50% or even 75% capacity. I know any number of people who tried to tough through their interviews sick, and it showed in their performance.
  

I will note that it did take me two interviews at Google (separated by about a year) before I got hired. The first interview was for a different job though, and some day I'll write about the circumstances behind that. However, I will say that having interviewed at Microsoft, Yahoo, and any number of Silicon Valley startups, I do not consider Google's technical interviews any harder than that of a top tier Silicon Valley startup. Now the process behind the interviews are much different than any other company's, which means that Google is much less likely to compromise on the results of those interviews (not having hiring managers running the interviews means that the hiring committees are never desperate to just get a warm body), so I think that's really what accounts for the reputation Google has for being tough.

I will close with an amusing interview story: When I applied for a job with Pure Software as a fresh graduate, my interview went like this: the CEO, Reed Hastings (they had only about 10 employees at the time) asked me to meet him at the Software Development Conference. When I arrived there, however, I discovered that contrary to what he had told me, there was no badge to get into the conference for me waiting at the registration. So I hustled a bit and talked the conference registration desk into letting me in as a Pure Software Employee. When I got to Pure's booth, I found Reed and his first interview question was: "How much money would you like to get paid?" It turned out that he had deliberately not provided a badge for me, and had decided that if I could sneak my way into the conference, I was a worthy hire.

FrankenBike is done!

Two weekends ago, my brother, me, and Pardo got together and built up my "light" bike. Its a bike hobbled together from various parts lying around, and some pieces that I had to buy brand new. As my brother upgraded to a Custom Ti bike, he had his old Fuji Team SL stripped and then gave me the frame.

The parts on this bike:

Frame: Fuji Team SL
Cranks: FSA Carbon Pro Elite Compact Road Crank (50/34)
Pedals: Shimano SPDs
Front Dérailleur: Shimano 105
Rear Dérailleur: Shimano Ultegra
Freewheel: Shimano 5sp freewheel 14/17/20/24/28
Handle Bars: FSA Wing Pro
Seatpost: Thomson Elite Setback Seat Post
Saddle: Selle Italia Flite
Shifters: Rivendell Silver Shifters Bar end

All in all, its a bit of a confused bike. On the one hand its an aluminum frame with carbon forks, and carbon cranks, then you have the FSA wing pro handlebar that's capped by bar end shifters instead of brifters. Then you have the 5 speed freewheel at the rear, coupled with the Shimano 105 front dérailleur...

All in all, the bike cost about 600 bucks (frame not withstanding) to put together, and it weighs in at 20 lbs. About 20 lbs lighter than my commuting bike. I've already put 60 miles on it, and my commute to work was about 10 minutes faster than on my regular commuter bike. This isn't particularly news to me though, as I always noticed my brother on the same frame was 3 miles per hour faster than on his heavy heron.

Its a fast fast sexy bike. =) Just a bit confused though.

And of course, some pictures.

Analysis: Long Leaf Partners

In Unconventional Success, David Swensen wrote a long tirade against what he saw as the corrupt mutual fund industry. However, in that book, he also pointed to an extremely well-managed actively managed mutual fund company, SouthEastern Asset Management's Longleaf Partners Fund. He pointed to several factors that contribute to their success:

• A clear strategy followed with discipline: Longleaf stayed out of the dot com "boom", even when many investors questioned this strategy and pulled their money out as a result. They therefore had outstanding performance in the bust, when everyone else was crashing.
• Tax-Managed Approach: The company does not churn stocks.
• Concentrated Portfolio: Their top-ten holdings constitute more than 50% of the entire portfolio. They have confidence in their bets, and they bet only on their best ideas.
• Low fees: They don't impose loads or 12b-1 charges, and over the last 15 years, their fees have gone down from 1.5% to 0.89%. Obviously, these fees are still higher than Vanguard's or DFA's, but this is for an actively managed fund, so their expenses are expected to be higher.
• Substantial Co-Investment: As of 2003, Longleaf trustees, employees, and family owned more than $400 million of Longleaf fund shares (4% of fund assets). Their code of ethics prohibit owning employee investments outside of the firm's mutual funds. This is not common industry practice and sets them apart.
• Willingness to close funds to new investors: a major problem with active investment is that having too large a portfolio increases the likelihood of under-performance. It's very difficult to figure out what to do with new money constantly, and if you have a great idea but can't deploy a substantial amount of your cash on it because you would otherwise move the stock, then you end up with half-implemented strategies.

In fact, at the beginning of last year when I first read the book, I looked at Longleaf's web-site, and indeed all three of their funds were closed to new investors. So I put them aside for future consideration if the funds were to open again. Last week, I saw a notice in the Wall Street Journal that they were now opening to new investments:

Mason Hawkins and Staley Cates were looking ahead -- and finding numerous stocks fitting their investment criteria. In November, Longleaf appealed to its existing shareholders to send money; in December, it opened Partners to investors in other Longleaf funds. Their cash covered new Partners stakes in UBS AG and Walgreen Co., and boosted an existing stake in Symantec Corp.

It wasn't enough. Partners opened to new accounts in January -- "temporarily," the managers emphasized.

(WSJ Feb 26, 2008)

Thus I examined whether Swensen's evaluation of them was true. First, they do seem to invest in stocks I wouldn't consider: Dell, Level 3, Symantec, and Walgreen. I'm not sure I like those stocks, but that's less important than the fact that they have a strategy. Their fees are definitely lower than other actively managed funds, and the co-investment policy is exciting. The fact that they are likely to close to new investors in short order (as soon as they get enough funds to execute on all their ideas) means that the idea of placing a minimum $10k with them to have a shot at adding to it is appealing.

I wanted to compare them to an indexing approach, however, so I visited Google Finance and plotted out their performance against the Vanguard 500 Index fund and the DFA Tax Managed Market Wide Value U.S. Porfolio (DTMMX). The result was that yes, Longleaf did outperform the S&P 500, but only matched the DFA fund (the DFA fund beat it by less than 1%, which could easily be eaten up by the financial adviser that you have to pay to get access to the DFA fund. The Longleaf International fund did worse --- while it beat the Vanguard International Fund by a good 13% over the last 7 years or so, the DFA equivalent, the DFA Tax Managed International Value Portfolio(DTMIX) trounces it by almost 20%.

It certainly shocked me at first that in international markets, which are notoriously inefficient, that the indexed approach produced by DFA beat a well-regarded active manager. Then I noticed that Longleaf did beat the benchmark Vanguard funds by substantial amounts, despite higher expenses. As such, while the results of my quick analysis confirmed my earlier decision to buy (and stick with) DFA's value funds, this limited window of opportunity (while they are open to new investors) might be a good time to take a look at Longleaf's interesting offerings (which are more interesting to those who do not have access to DFA's funds). If their past actions are any indication, these funds will not stay open for long.

Review: In Defense of Food

When Michael Pollan visited Google to give his talk, he explained the motivation behind this book: folks would come up to him and say, "I read half of The Omnivore's Dilemma and then stopped." When questioned as to why, the answer that came back was: "Every time I read a chapter, I found another thing I couldn't eat. I was afraid that when I was done I'd die of starvation."

In Defense of Food then, was Pollan's attempt to resolve this problem. Well, to begin with, the book is definitely much shorter and faster paced, to match American's lifestyle. Pollan himself sums it up in 7 words: "Eat food, not too much, mostly plants." There's a hidden subtext though, which is: "Spend more time and money on your food."

The book is divided into 3 parts. The first part is an explanation of what he calls nutritionism, the modern tendency to reduce food to its nutrients and try to construct a diet in that fashion. He argues that we know too little about food to try to do this, though he grudgingly admits that this form of research (reductionism) is truly the only hope we have in the future of truly understanding how our bodies work and interact with the food we eat. The second part of the book is a tirade about how the modern Western diet is really responsible for most of the chronic diseases we see today. The last part of the book is prescriptive, where he elaborates on the 7 words presented and explains how to achieve your goal of eating healthy.

Those who know me also know that I'm an unabashed foodie. I love eating, I love food, and I enjoy all of it. I exclude very little from my diet, and will visit multiple cafes to eat what I like. Yet I am skeptical of this book. First of all, to extract the food and diet from a culture without regards to its origins and the environment that culture it came from reeks to me of the same kind of reductionist mistakes that Pollan criticizes in his tirade against the food industry and nutrition science. For instance, he spends a page or two praising the small Parisian portions --- yet when I visited France, that was not where I found the best food --- the best food was to be found outside the big cities, where French farmers will feed you like a farmer, and if you're a hungry cyclist you will be more than satisfied. It seems to me that to extract food as the only source of chronic disease out of a lifestyle is also reductionist, and food can't be the only answer when the real problem is that Americans sit in their cars to go places, refuse to walk or bicycle, and think that the Wii is the solution to exercise. His approach to solving the problem also leaves those of us who aren't great cooks (I'm a reasonably good one, but I would never call myself great) stuck.

So read this book if you must, though I don't think it's nearly as good as The Omnivore's Dilemma. But in the grand scheme of things, I don't believe it provides any more of a solution than its predecessor.

Why reinvestments mess up your taxes

A couple of folks have asked me questions about my earlier post this week about dividends screwing up your taxes when you sell. Reinvesting your dividends accounts for 20 to 60 percent of the return on investments in the stock market, so one would think that you would want to turn it on, right?

It turns out that this is only true for tax-sheltered accounts such as a 401(k) or IRA. In taxable accounts, first of all, you are liable for taxes on the dividends --- so if you turn on dividend reinvestment, the taxes to pay those dividends have to come from somewhere. Even worse, however, is that dividends appear at quarterly or annual intervals not under your control! So when it comes time to sell the stock or fund, you'll end up digging through your records to see when all the reinvestments happen, how much you paid per share, and whether it's a long or short term capital gains tax. If you do this over a long enough period of time (such as 10 years), your brokerage might not have kept track of the reinvestments over that period, and now you're really stuck.

In fact, a friend of mine (a well known economist who occasionally writes for a national newspaper) once admitted that it was so complicated for him that rather than do the computation, he decided to just donate the stock to charity and wash his hands of the whole mess. If only we were all so wealthy that we could give away our capital gains like that!

Furthermore, what you really want to do with dividends is to stash them in some safe security, and use them to help re-balance your portfolio by buying more of the assets that are down. If you're in retirement, you probably want to spend your dividends first (or use some of them to pay taxes!), before selling any equity. So think twice before turning on reinvestment plans for your taxable accounts!

Review: Turbo Tax Premier Federal + State 2007

Before anyone else jumps in with the comment, let me say that I know that Turbo Tax Premier is not necessary if all you have is simple stock sales and so forth. So you can save a few bucks there by buying Turbo Tax Deluxe instead.

I do taxes for myself, my mom, and Lisa. This year, my mom ended up running a home business, and that was too much pain for me to deal with, so I outsourced that to my aunt and Turbo Tax Business.

At this point, I'm quite a bit of a Turbo Tax power user. I no longer use step by step interviews, but for each form, simply jump directly to the section of turbo tax, fill out the form, and get it done. Unlike previous years, this year's turbo tax actually has useful download features --- downloading the W2 has always been painful, but 1099-DIVs and 1099-INTs were always fraught with danger. This year, the 1099-DIVs and 1099-INTs downloaded without a hitch (I checked them manually). 1099-Bs, however are still broken --- too often, the long names get truncated, and you're stuck scratching your head wondering what the heck it is that supposedly got bought and sold.

This year, I decided to try the TaxResources Inc. professional review. I've always bought tax audit protection, mostly so I could sleep easy knowing that I had someone to back me up with regards with IRS dealings. Having had exceptionally good experience with TaxResources through that service, I decided to try their professional review. Note that this review only reviews the resulting 1040 et al, but since I had 2210 filing this year, I decided to have them take a look as well. Note that this review will not catch any of the following:

• Transcription errors (it does not solve the garbage-in, garbage-out problem)
  
• Errors of omission (if you leave out an entire 1099, for instance, they're not going to tell you you forgot it)
  
• State taxes. They only do federal taxes.
  

I submitted my tax forms for a review on Sunday night, and got the review back on Monday afternoon. The review is simply a PDF document, telling you what they've assessed as to your problems are. One thing they caught was that I had taken a short cut while inputting the cost basis for one of my mutual funds, and had forgotten to go back and correct it --- that saved me about $100 in both state and federal taxes, so from that point of view, the professional review paid for itself. (I probably would have caught it anyway eventually, but the reminder was good) In any case, I learned once again that reinvesting dividends is an extremely bad idea, and the increased complexity in accounting and hunting down every reinvestment outweighs any benefits you might gain from keeping your money invested all the time.

Beyond that, it gave me a list of things to watch out for (like a paid off house has property taxes, but no mortgage interest --- that's apparently a flag for auditors, since apparently Americans never pay off their homes). The review reminded me of several things, such as potentially trying to take advantage of the rollover IRA rule in 2010, and so forth. All stuff I knew, but useful if you don't spend as much time dealing with taxes as I do. For $40, it's certainly not going to break the bank, but then again, I got my copy of Turbo Tax through an Intuit employee, so you might feel different if you've already paid full price for your copy of Turbo Tax. What annoys me is that if you want another review after you've made your corrections, you have to pay $40 again. One would think that since the review looks like a generated form, they'd at least give you one revision's worth of checking.

The big bug I found this year so far in Turbo Tax is in the state portion for California, where 1099-B sales were incorrectly imported from the federal return. For some reason one of my 1099-Bs got duplicated, and I had to fix that by hand. This is unusually bad, but fortunately, I have plenty of time to run more updates before I file. This is actually one of the reasons to wait a bit before filing, especially if you owe. Fortunately, I caught this bug, but I wonder how many others are lurking.

All in all, I'm glad I'm not doing this by hand, but I'm disappointed by the bugs I've found so far this year. As for the professional review, I feel that it didn't add anything I didn't already know, but the fact that they caught something that saved me more than the $40 I paid does indicate that it's a useful service. Recommended, but watch out for the bugs, and update your copy or Turbo Tax frequently!

Retire Early on DFA Advisors

The excellent Retire Early Home Page has a great analysis of various DFA advisors, their minimums, and their effect on your portfolio outcome. There's also a link on that page to a paper by Duke University Professor Ed Tower on the issue of DFA versus Vanguard. I came across that paper last year by asking Prof. Tower for it, and it was the primary study that convinced me that DFA funds had certain advantages that Vanguard did not have. (I did not post the paper at that time because it was in draft stage, but now it has apparently been published)

When it came to implementation, however, it turned out to be hard to get access to relatively cheap DFA advisers, despite William Bernstein's statement that I could do it if I asked around. When I started doing my research last year, I talked to one of them, Epiphany Investment. The result was as awful as you might imagine --- they constantly tried to up sell me to their percentage-based business, tried to tell me that I didn't know what I was doing, and came across as being so sleazy that I wanted to go take a shower after talking to them. I almost gave up on getting cheap access to DFA funds after that.

Then someone at work told me that he too, was fed up with his existing DFA advisor, Evanson Asset Management, and had switched to Cardiff Park Advisors and was happy. I shot them an e-mail explaining my needs and by the end of the year in 2007 I had an account, and now own substantial DFA funds. (I am mainly using them for access assets that Vanguard does not provide) I'm not, however using any of Cardiff Park's advise (I'm cheap profits to them, I guess), since I am mostly using DFA just to get a value tilt to my portfolio. People often ask me about financial advisers, but I find it tedious and boring to interview people for that job (especially given the number of sleaze balls in the industry), and so far no one has offered to compensate me for that task. I still firmly believe that by the time you learn enough to interview a financial adviser, you won't need one.

In any case, my research into DFA funds has yielded something I am relatively pleased with, and I intend to continue putting assets into them.

Review: Inside Intuit

I know it's hard to believe, but before the era of widespread internet use (which I peg at around 1995 or so, though 1993 first saw widespread web pages at university), there was the era of the desktop software revolution. Prior to that, most software was custom written for big corporations to fulfill their needs, and standard software was priced beyond the reach of a mere consumer.

The desktop revolution was amazing. First, you could buy Turbo Pascal for $50, an IDE that ran circles around the professional compilers. Spreadsheets became the killer app that businesses would buy PCs for. And then there was Intuit.

I ignored Quicken from the moment of its inception until 1992, when I first bounced a check. That one experience taught me that I couldn't just trust myself to manage my money just based on my memory alone --- I needed help. Quicken is a funny piece of software. Even at the time this book was written, it only has 15 million users. In a country with a population of 300 million people that's 5% market penetration. Then you realize that the top 10% of the population controls about 50% of the country's assets, and you realize that Quicken probably has a fairly sizable share of those.

This book covers most of the history of Quicken, from its origins as an idea, to a partnership between Stanford Engineer Tom Proulx and Scott Cook to found th company. The partnership between businessman and engineer is typical --- it didn't take too long for the businessman to try to screw the engineer. But of course, Proulx quit and retired from Intuit, so the authors only tell Cook's side of the story. And what a story it is. Quicken is not a very engineering intensive product --- while getting the UI and the user model right was correctly identified by Cook as the challenge, I bet that Quicken could be effectively assigned as an undergraduate homework assignment today, and modern tools would render most of its functionality easy to implement.

Cook and company forged the customer-orientation into a competitive weapon, working hard to make sure even the most non-technical of users could use every feature of the product. As the company grew, though, you could see the lack of engineering process or vision showing through --- the company did not successfully build a portability layer for its software. (Not a surprise, given that Quicken was UI heavy and there's not much you can do there for portability if you want the app to look native) Even today, Quicken for the Mac and Quicken for Windows aren't compatible, and Intuit is about to throw out the Mac version of Quicken and rewrite it. It's quite clear that engineering at Intuit was never taken as seriously as the marketing or customer service.

Yet the company thrived, and did something few other software companies did --- which was to beat Microsoft at the shrink-wrap software game. First, it priced the product correctly, so Microsoft couldn't immediately enter the market at a much lower price point. Secondly, it acquired TurboTax, which with its annual schedule of required updates, never fit in with Microsoft's culture of massive projects and massive integrations. But most impressively, by listening very closely to their customers, QuickBooks (the extremely profitable small business accounting application) ran circles around Microsoft's Great Plains acquisition. This relentless approach served Intuit well until the dawn of the age of the internet.

The authors write a lot about how Intuit survived the age of the internet through innovation, but I don't see it. Certainly, downloaded updates have made Intuit's job easier by allowing frequent patches to the software. But true migration of the tools of financial planning that Intuit's products manage requires serious engineering, and startups like Mint.com or even Financial Engines. Intuit's lack of emphasis on engineering and computer science has hurt them here, and will continue to hurt them. Already, users have a hard time staying on the Quicken upgrade treadmill, for instance, and the lack of trust between banks and Intuit will not enable them to get at the data they really need to be able to provide their customers with real help.

Ultimately, the authors fall under Scott Cook's spell, and refrain from criticizing the company, even on such moves as their successful effort to lobby against the IRS for its proposed program to send out pre-filled 1040EZs to eligible taxpayers. For me, anyway, that was the moment Intuit lost my trust, but Taylor and Schroeder were so enamored of the company by that point they could not bring themselves to criticize the company whose leaders they had fallen in love with.

All in all, I don't think the time I spent reading this book was wasted, but it is important to read this book with a critical eye. Otherwise, you'll be hoodwinked into thinking that Intuit is some kind of technology company. It's not, and from the moment of its conception, it never was.

Cycle Touring and the Spriit of Adventure

Over and over again, whenever I tour by bicycle, I run into people who tell me, "You're supposed to have a SAG wagon follow you so you don't have to carry your own luggage." In fact, there was a time in Colorado when touring by ourselves when we ran into cyclists who couldn't get their heads around the fact that we weren't touring with a car! This is my attempt to explain what we do and why.

Fully loaded touring	Credit card tour

The two have very little to do with each other, even if you call it all "loaded touring." One is not harder than the other (in fact, the credit card tours are frequently much tougher, because having a reduced load lets you do unpaved roads, hiking trails and carry your bike over electrified fences because you can:

I think the biggest difference isn't with how you carry your luggage, but with the spirit that accompanies the trip. When Lisa & I announced that we were going to do a tour of the South Africa, my friends responded with: "Cool! Wish I could go with you." Her friends responded with: "You're going to be eaten by lions and tigers!" The difference between the two attitudes is key --- folks who express the latter sentiment will be extremely unhappy on one of our trips, and folks who express the former sentiment will be frustrated at being given a schedule and told what to do, because we remember that from being in school and didn't enjoy it. We weren't carrying camping gear on that trip, and stayed mostly on paved roads. At one point, however, to avoid a known nasty section of road, we rode into the middle of town to hire and hitch a ride on a so-called "black taxi." When we were dropped off at the destination, it was 5pm on a Sunday and we rode a block towards the tourist information center before we got a flat. While I fixed the flat, an old gentlement wearing a "Viagra Test Subject" T-shirt came up to us and asked us where we were going. We were wary at first, but he proved to be friendly and helpful, showing us a local B&B since the local tourist information was closed. It was a wonderful experience and Lisa enjoyed every moment of it, including the wonderment of our hosts when we told them we had arrived via a "black taxi", which they wouldn't have dared to take.

That trip clinched Lisa's attitude towards cycle touring --- we would ride into a farm where we were staying, and dogs, the hostess, her sons would dash out to greet us, having never seen a tandem before. We would stop at a gas station to buy ice cream, and the local kids would run up to the back of our bike, count the gears, and run away, screaming: "9! 9!" They had never seen a 9-speed before. At no point were we in danger of being eaten by lions and tigers, and at every point our choices were entirely ours to make --- to stay at this lovely place a second day, or to push forward to the next delight. Sure, there were a few hard days, but no worse than what we found on any other tours.

A few years later, we did our first fully-SAGed tour, the Bicycle Tour of Colorado. It's a very well-organized tour and the route was enjoyable, going over Trail Ridge road and visiting several high passes. The support was great --- in Colorado, there are lots of places where you have 50 miles or so between water, and we brought along our four-person luxury tent for the two of us. But a couple of incidences highlighted that the SAG was not without cost. First, there was a day when I woke up with a stiff neck from sleeping wrong the night before. On a self-supported tour, we would have either elected to wait out the stiff neck, or do only a short ride that day. Being a fully scheduled tour, the BTC had scheduled that day for 100 miles of riding. So I ended up riding 100 miles without the ability to really turn my head. (The alternative was to ride the SAG, which wouldn't have been as pretty) Then, there was a day when we climbed trail ridge road without proper acclimation, because with 2000 people on the tour or so, there were only certain days available for riding the road. By ourselves, we would have been able to ride the road whenever we wanted to.

At the end of the BTC, it was with relief, not with a sense of burden, when we put panniers on our bike and headed off for another week of touring around Colorado. Lisa was much happier with this trip, because now we were setting our own schedule, choosing where to stay, and while our tent was comfy, staying at hotels didn't cost any more than the BTC was costing us, but gave us plenty of choices as to where to go.

One more example: in 2005, Mike and I rode over Col D'Izoard into a tiny village called Le Rauffes. There, we found the most delightful country Gite you could imagine. At 5:30pm, I asked the owner, Thierry, when dinner was served. He said: "I closed the restaurant 6 months ago. You'd have to go down to Embrun to eat." Embrun was down the mountain, 1000' down, and the prospect of climbing after dinner didn't appeal to me, so I asked him if there were other places to eat. Thierry looked at me, and said, "Oh, you arrive by bicycles. I make something for you." And he proceeded to make us the best meal of the trip (and I have high standards for food). If we had showed up as part of a supported/SAG'd group, he'd have told us to go down the mountain. There are lots of other examples like this throughout my trip reports, and in Gary Erickson's book.

Yes, there is a cost: you must carry your own stuff (but it doesn't have to be very much stuff --- less is more, and Gary Erickson's book tells you how). You can't be cocooned and speak only English --- but the point of traveling is to meet new people and be part of the local culture. You might have to backtrack a town on occasion to find a place to sleep. But the rewards are amazing --- folks like Jobst Brandt (who's over 70) have done it for over 40 years and go back over and over --- and believe me, having stayed at the hotels he's stayed at, and eaten at some of the restaurants he's recommended --- it's not "roughing it" in any way, shape or form, despite the extremely low cost, compared to the fully supported tours. Galen Rowell wrote a column in Outdoor Photographer called The Hello Factor. In which, he explained how you knew you were on an adventure: if people you ran into who were doing the same thing said "hello," you were having an adventure. In that respect, every self-supported cycle tour is an adventure.

Review: Creative DECT Skype Phone

In anticipation of our move to Munich, we are switching over to Skype as our land-line provider. Buying Skype service for a year (including Skype Pro and SkypeIn) costs about $60. Yes, I know that Skype is fairly evil as far as taking over your machine while it is running (one way Skype reduces costs is to turn each of its clients' hosts into a router), but the prevalence of hardware support is quite important.

My cousin, Tom, told me that Fry's on-line had the Creative Cordless phone for a paltry $17.99 + tax and shipping. This made it a screaming deal, so I bought it despite already having purchased a Philips USB Skype handset, which will get relegated to travel service.

The Creative phone comes with a single piece of paper for a manual, a disk, a USB dongle that serves as the base station for the phone, a handset, a charger, and 2 NiMH 750mAH AAA batteries. Since we already had 2 NiMH batteries fully charged at home, I just popped those in and avoided the 14 hour wait and put the batteries into our fast charger. This use of standard components is a plus, since it means that if you lose the charger or the batteries wear out, you can just get more NiMH batteries and pop them in.

The software installed just fine on both my Mac Mini and my EEE PC, both of which were running Windows XP Professional. Plugging in the dongle and getting it to recognize it was easy in both cases, and the sound quality to my ear was quite good.

The user interface on the handset leaves much to be desired, however --- I actually had to read the manual to learn how to dial out: you have to push the call button, dial 00 + country code + phone #. (US phone numbers meant: 001 + area code + phone #) Fortunately, this is mitigated by the fact that you can use the Skype contacts list on your PC. Incoming calls ring the phone just fine (you have a choice of four different ring tones), and there's a button on the dongle that you can push so you can find the handset if you were to misplace it. The handset also allows you to set up a conference call (with 3 way calling, etc), but good luck remembering how to use it --- you are probably better off doing sophisticated duties like that from your computer.

For the price ($25 shipped in California), this is a great deal and comes highly recommended. Lisa's been using this every day, and she's satisfied with both the sound quality and the service. We will cut off our land-line at our next bill. As everyone knows, you can't rely on Skype or other internet phones in an emergency, and in the case of an earthquake, cell towers might also be down, so only do this if you're willing to bear the risks involved.

Review: Fatal Revenant

Warning: Spoilers Below

The Runes of the Earth ended with Thomas Covenant and Linden Avery's adapted son, Jeremiah coming back from the dead and in corporeal form. Fatal Revenant can be divided into two parts, first, Avery's translation back in time to the time of Berek Halfhand with Covenant and Jeremiah, and secondly, her quest to reach Andelain, to achieve her purpose.

The first half of the book is interesting, filled with continuity adjustments that Donaldson puts in. A lot of the history of the Land is covered in first hand which has always been put away in mist, including the introduction to the words of power that were used frequently in the first and second chronicles. (Though one of the words is also used as the name of a place, which I think is unfortunate --- that would be sort of like naming your sailboat Mayday and then trying to hail it)

Donaldson does not fall into the George Lucas trap of trying to explain everything, thereby removing the mystery behind the power and magic of the land, but in many ways, by giving Linden Avery power and magic, he eliminates a lot of the mood of despair that pervades prior novels and replaces it with a sense of frustration with the protagonist. In the second half of the book that frustration is at least dissipated as he provides challenges for Avery's newfound power, and also reintroduces some former races to the land.

Donaldson's writing style is still unfortunately repetitive, and if I never see the words puissance and theurgy on the printed page again it would be fine with me. The ending is a genuine surprise and I did enjoy it, but that is not (yet) enough to redeem the book in my eyes. Since there are two more books to come, I will reserve judgment until they are all over. One would think that after having to wait years for George R. R. Martin's series to end would teach me a lesson about starting series that are not over...

Review: SKS Race Blades

I've always used full fenders, because my bike had plenty of tire clearance. But the Ti bike, because of a geometry that was designed to maximize handling feel rather than fender clearance or toe clip overlap, could not take a full fender without interference with the downtube, so I ordered a set of Race Blades XLs from BikeTiresDirect, which ironically doesn't actually sell tires I like.

Since my rear could handle a full fender, I only tried the front. The mounting scheme is very easy, with rubber grommets that wrap around your fork. The fenders stays are designed to be bent, and the instructions say to bend them gently, but it turns out that you can't bend them gently and expect them to stay --- you have to bend them pretty hard! When I was finished, I had just a little bit of clearance for my down tube mounted pump, and quite a bit of a gap between the fender and the fork. This made me quite skeptical of how effective they would be, since I use a rain cape, and spray thrown up from the wheels would be like spraying water from under a tent.

These work surprisingly well, however --- I commuted in the rain all this week, and while my feet got wet (easily solved by a mud flap), my knees stayed dry, indicating that the gap is not an issue at all. I did notice quite a bit of dirt and other gunk sprayed onto the crown and fork below headset, so one of the big benefits of a fender (protecting the bearings from the elements) isn't a feature, but on the other hand, that's why I run Chris King stuff (and to be honest, in all my years of touring, I've never had a headset failure --- they're one of those perpetually working items on the bike, like caliper brakes).

Since I usually tour without fenders anyway (fenders are no good if you do even a little bit of off-roading, and I've had a number of fender failures over the years just from commuting), these are a good compromise, and the easy-on/easy-off nature makes them quite practical as my primary ride. Recommended with the above caveats.

My first carbon failure

I've heard of a lot of carbon fork failures, mostly because the people to whom it happens end up in a hospital, so when my Fuji approached its third year, I ended up with a custom Ti frame and a custom Ti fork.

However, unknown to me, I had already broken a carbon component, which was the seat post that came with the Fuji. Note that as Pardo mentions in his entry, this seat post lived as pampered a life as I could make it, no loaded touring, no rough man-handling, and throughout its life I was a svelte 145 pounds. I'm replacing it with a Thomson aluminum post, which I love and would want to rave about one of these days.

In any case, people occasionally ask why I wanted to go Ti, and for me anyway, all it takes is one bad carbon failure in the fork or frame and I might never be able to ride again. I don't treat my bikes kindly, and I don't see myself being any nicer to my bikes in the near future.

Review: Declare

I reported that I was disappointed with Tim Power's latest book, Three Days to Never, but when Charlie Stross recommended Declare at the back of The Atrocity Archives, I had to place a hold at the library.

Once again, Tim Powers chooses to base a novel on a historical figure, this time super-spy and Russian mole, Kim Philby. The approach, however, is more indirect than most of his other novels, perhaps in deference to traditional approaches towards Spy Fiction, such as John le Carre's. We start off with a description of Andrew Hale, a former British intelligence agent who had been groomed since the age of 7 to participate in project Declare.

Before we even meet Kim Philby (though there are plenty of references to Kipling's Kim, which apparently Philby was named after, we get an exploration of Hale's motivations, his past, his experience during World War II infiltrating the Russian spy network in Paris, and the great love of his life, a spy named Elena who swore allegiance to communism. We then get introduced to the conflicts between Philby and Hale, as well as the grand story behind the novel: the supernatural and occult reasons behind Russia's success. Rest assured there is plenty here to satisfy the fantasist, yet when reading up on Philby after finishing the novel, I found that the historical details were exceedingly accurate --- clearly, Tim Powers did his homework here.

The plot is well put together, and Powers succeeds to a large extent in impersonating le Carre. Even the most supernatural action sequences that could have been dressed up were written in a quiet, under-stated fashion. I did find the ending a little predictable, but perhaps the protagonist does deserve a little happiness after his years of service.

This novel is dense, and took me many more days to read than the usual stories. It is recommended for an intriguing view of World War II and its aftermath, an intelligent speculation, excellent characters and characterization, great writing, and for me at least, an excellent re-entry into the genre of spy fiction. Yet you need not be familiar with Kim Philby's life to be able to read it. It is not a page turner in the traditional means, but some novels deserve to be savored, with each chapter contemplated and with the reader putting together pieces of the puzzle as it is revealed to him, and this is one novel deserving of such treatment. I would not be surprised if at the end of this year, I would nominate this the best fiction I've read this year.

First impressions: Strong Frame

Today was the first long ride on the custom bike, so I can write an extensive first impressions review.

During the week, I had the bike configured as a commuter. I had my light wheels on the back, but my Brooks saddle, generator wheel, and lights mounted. In that configuration the bike handles very nicely, though it isn't fast by any means, especially with a load in the saddlebag. One problem I found was that I couldn't mount a full fender in front, because it would interfere with the cable runs on the down-tube. That's unfortunate, but I ordered a set of SKS Race Blades and hopefully those will work out.

This morning, I mounted my Thomson seat post, my Flite saddle, and my lightweight front wheel, and got a slightly lighter bike, but not by a whole lot. The front fork is scheduled to be replaced this week with the Ti fork, so the bike will get lighter but not a whole lot lighter --- the Ti bike is definitely a heavier than the Fuji, and my guess is it will end up being about 19 pounds in light bike configuration and 22 pounds in touring configuration, which is still miles lighter than my Heron Touring bike.

The handling remains the same on the flats and even on climbs. At low speeds, the low trail bike wobbles a bit more than the Fuji did, but I attribute that to the fit not being exactly dialed in yet. I expect that to go away once I get out a tape measure and actually try to replicate my touring position. I was, however, completely unprepared for the bike's handling on descents: this bike descends as though it was on rails, much more stably than the Heron or the Fuji. This behavior surprised me until I reflected on the bike's geometry. I had specified longer chainstays than the Fuji (43cm), which increased the stability, and a lower bottom bracket, which lowered the center of gravity. The two combined together gave me increased confidence on descents, to the point where my cornering speed is determined solely by my willingness to go fast with respect to prevailing traffic. The combination does affect climbing, however --- the bike does not appear to respond as quickly to standing hard on the pedals as the Fuji does, though it isn't anywhere as sluggish (or slow) as the Heron is.

The next thing to do, obviously, is to put a saddlebag and load it up and then descend a major hill to watch for obvious problems such as a high speed shimmy. My thinking is that a high speed shimmy is unlikely with this bike given how stable it is, but one never knows. For now, however, this ride is incredible!

Lumotec Light Problems and Diagnosis

I've been using the Lumotec N and Lumotec Schmidt Switch headlights for the last 3 years, but have had really poor reliability with them (so did my brother). In the cases of most of the failure, it seemed as though all that was needed to destroy the lights was a sharp knock. Late last year, my 18-month new Lumotec N failed again. But a sharp jiggle to the wire brought it back, so I thought nothing of it. But when I moved the light over to the new bike, the light once again failed.

So this morning, I rode over to Pardo's house and we took the light apart and tried to fix it. The first observation Pardo made was that there was no strain relief at all on any of the wires. This made the prime suspect a broken wire. We fiddled about, but the light appeared to work once the casing was off. So we decided to call it a day and reinstalled the light. I then took the bulb out to clean it before riding off and it immediately failed. On examination, the bulb is held against a negative contact spring by the holder, and the positive contact is a spring. The positive contact is fine, but the negative contact had become corroded. A cleaning, however, did not solve the problem, so I suggested using tweezers to pull the contact out towards the bulb. That solved the problem, and the light is now reliable.

My conclusion is that the Lumotecs are not very well-engineered. According to Pardo, adding strain relief (which is routinely done, for instance, for objects such as cell phone chargers) adds a few cents at most. The contact spring should be stronger so that a year of jiggling and rain riding does not destroy it or cause intermittent failure. But my guess is the majority of these lights outlast the year warranty, so the manufacturers have no incentive to fix these problems.

Review: Halting State

I seem to have become a bit of a Charlie Stross junkie lately, but I think I've finally caught up to his latest output.

Halting State takes an interesting look at the MMORPG and the upcoming link to reality TV shows. What if a massively multi-player role-playing game intruded into your reality? Better yet, what if the usual alphabet soup of government agencies decided to use a massively multi-player role playing game as a recruiting tool for its purposes? What are its implications, and what might one look like?

The plot revolves around two main characters, Jack and Elaine. Jack is a game programmer who was recently laid off, and Elaine is a forensic account with an insurance firm. When a group of Orcs decide to perform a cyberheist involving the central bank of a company hosting such a gaming service, Elaine is asked to lead the investigation, and she asks for a programmer/consultant to guide her through the audit. Both Jack and Elaine are avid consumers of role playing games, historic re-enactment societies and the such, and their combination of skills enable them to dig into the investigation in a way that quickly becomes a matter of life and death for them.

The plot is entertaining, and very plausible. I enjoyed the description of the graphical role playing games and it is quite clear that Stross did his homework. References to griefing and non-PvP zones are made throughout without explanation, and the reader is never talked-down to. The characters themselves, however, are not that interesting, and perhaps behave a little bit too much like wooden stick figures made to fit the plot. Nevertheless, it works.

Perhaps the weakest part of the novel is that it is written entirely in the second person. The use of the second person is something entirely germane to the role playing game genre, of course, starting from the Choose Your Own Adventure books. But in this particular context, it feels wooden and contrived. Perhaps because as a PC, you would never so stupid as to fall into the kind of traps or emotional pitfalls that the characters would. As an artifice, this usage cheapens what is otherwise a very entertaining book.

The book starts off slowly, and it jars a bit as it switches viewpoints between the primary and secondary characters. After the first third, however, it steps into high gear and becomes an obsessive page turner, making this an ideal airplane novel, though it comes nowhere close to matching Stross' best work. Nevertheless, not a waste of time at all, especially if you're a gamer.

The Ti bike is ready

It was a massive ordeal, but I finally have a bike I can ride without worrying about broken this and that. I actually received the frame 2 Fridays ago, but an early build showed that the brake bridge was at 52mm, rather than 57mm, so I sent the frame back to Carl Strong. He graciously agreed to redo the entire thing and shipped it back to me next day air, so I got it back again on Friday. All day yesterday, Pardo, Mike Samuel and I moved the parts over from the Fuji. The Ti fork is still in transit, but Mike fortunately had an IRD steel fork that he could lend me. The IRD by the way has lawyer's lips and is only really about 52mm reach as well, so if you're looking for a fork that will clear 32mm tires this is not it.

Notes from the build: first of all, the spoke holder doesn't quite work. The holes aren't big enough for me to thread spokes through properly, and looking at it now, I don't see how it can be convenient to use on the road. It only holds two spokes anyway, while I normally need four on tour. My guess is, I'll go back to electrical tape and carry it the way I normally do: taped to the seat tube. 57mm reach is a bit too much for the brakes. Pardo had to file down the brake slots to get the brake shoots to hit the brake track squarely. Not a major problem, but my guess is 55mm is really the limit of the tolerance, if you don't want to have to do what we did.

I haven't taken it for a long ride yet, but as far as short first impression rides go --- it rides like my beloved Bridgestone RB-1 or my Fuji, which is what I wanted all along, so that part of the bike is straight on! It's been a long wait, and our work is not quite done. I'll need the new fork, which I hope wasn't built to 52mm, and also a new seat post so I can transfer the Fuji's seat over for weekend riding. I've ordered a new handlebar so I can put on my favored carbon brake levers and bar-end shifters for touring. And of course, lights and fenders need to be tested (and mounting systems deviced as necessary). I need to consider a triple. But as of right now, the Fuji is sitting in my brother's garage, and that Heron already has a buyer. I will soon be down to one "do-everything" bike, a condition that I haven't been in since 1992. And just in time for the Munich move!

Review: The Runes of the Earth

I first read The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant way back in high school, right after The Lord of the Rings. The two trilogies are of course very different. First of all, I think Stephen R. Donaldson burnt out his thesaurus a long time ago. He is verbose, prone to using words and colors that you can guess at but would really need a dictionary handy to look up, and overly dramatic.

But this first set of books caught my attention because of its characters. The lead character is as anti-hero as they come (he rapes a girl in an early section of Lord Foul's Bane, which alienates many women readers I know --- and since women read more than men, that's not something that you really want to do if you want to achieve bestseller status). Abusive and rough, Thomas Covenant runs rough-shot over a vibrant fantasy world in such a way that you can't quite believe that he is supposed to be the savior. Yet the internal narrative of Covenant is such that at least, for a teenager going through the tumult of alienation, loneliness and despair, was very appealing. In fact, at the end of the first trilogy, his redemption and healing was very moving, and something I took quite to heart.

The second chronicles weren't as compelling for me, introducing a character, Linden Avery, who was abused in her own way as a child, but ultimately was too passive for me to want to pay a lot of attention to her. In fact, I was very surprised that I remembered almost none of the plot summarized in the leading section of The Runes of the Earth.

Has 20 years improved Donaldson's writing style? In many ways, it has. First of all, he seems much less dependent on a thesaurus this time, and his style seems much more stripped down, less extravagant and flowery, but more conducive to story telling. His character, Linden Avery, is still not as interesting a character to me as Thomas Covenant, but this time I'm much more interested in her (perhaps that reflects the changes in me, rather than the changes in Donaldson's approach). She's now the director of a hospital specializing in mentally injured patients, and has adopted a son who is autistic. One of her patients is Joan Covenant, Thomas Covenant's wife, who was difficult to manage, but when Covenant's son shows up to claim her and is denied, things start moving quickly, and quite soon, Avery is translated back to the Land, along with her son Jeremiah and Joan, and Avery starts a quest to rescue her son and redeem the land in the process.

Avery as a character is insecure, but much less in denial of her reality. As a result, she's much more willing to wield the power of the ring (there's much less of the impotence theme her in this book), and willing to take on more risks. She encounters many of the previous cultures in prior novels such as the Haruchai, the Ranhyn, and Ur-viles. Continuity and previously known facts are conveniently side-stepped through the common science fiction device known as time travel. If you suspend your disbelief, all this works, but perhaps one thing that escapes me at this point is why? I guess I should suspend judgment until I've read the remaining pieces of the series, but for now, if the first chronicles is about redemption and the second chronicles is about healing, perhaps the third chronicles is about taking risks. I will keep reading to figure it out, but cannot provide a recommendation until the story is complete.