LeeMobile

Fire Sale

Huge huge savings going on right now!  That’s right, you too can own a piece of corporate America at 20%, 30%, even 40% off the normal going price!

That’s right folks,  the economy is giving us amazing deals on stock prices right now, and the prices keep dropping!

How things have changed so quickly in such a short period of time.  I remember back in April and May picking up a bunch of stocks.  Things were cheap, and it looked like a great time to buy in.  In only two months time, things have slid far below what I imagined.

With the price of oil spiking up and reaching almost $150 per barrel, and the financial sector doing a nose dive, the American stock markets have been taking a severe beating.  I’m just glad that I didn’t get in earlier than I did, but I am starting to feel the pain.

It’s nothing that I’m awfully worried about though, as it’s just one of those cyclical things.  The markets will eventually come back and rebound, it’s just a matter of waiting out the storm.  Having said that, my stock picks are still holding out pretty well and I’m “beating the market” so to speak… even if that does mean that I’m now in the red.

I think I have the worst sense of timing though.  If I only would be patient and wait out the nastiness that was forecasted, I’d be making a killing on the current fire sale on the stock market.  Today, the S&P 500 is trading below what it was 2 years ago!

For anyone sitting on a pile of cash right now, the opportunity to buy ridiculously cheap stocks is coming soon.  Hell, you could buy a ton of random stocks today and look like an absolute genius in a year or two.

Buy low and sell high, that’s all there is to it.  Oh, that and not panicking :-).

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Moving On

Well, it’s been a good 13 month run with Waypoint (www.waypointinfo.com) but it’s about that time to move on to another job.

On Monday, I started my new job at Rove Mobile (www.rovemobile.com).  They’re situated right in the middle of the Byward Market, so it’ll be a fun environment to work in.  It’s a bit of a commute, but hopefully it’ll be worth it.  It is definitely a nice change from the isolation from my previous office.  I do believe that your environment can stimulate you in many ways.

A career in software development is unlike a lot of jobs.  It’s a career where you change jobs often.  Of course, there are a few exceptions such as running your own company, working in a very large corporation, or in the government.  Even then, there are always stories of Microsoft employees and Googlites switching jobs quickly too.  Yours truly left the federal government to enter the private sector.  I personally think moving around is healthy, albeit at the cost of job security and a fat pension.

I guess it comes down to the nature of work in software development. It’s a job where you do problem-solving on a daily basis. It requires that developers are always on their feet, ready to adapt and solve various problems that are thrown at them.  That’s why I’m in it, because I wanted a career where I wouldn’t have to continually “grind” over the same thing.  The unfortunate side effect is that when we’re not challenged, developers quickly become bored and leave.

–

Life at Waypoint had its ups and downs, like any company.  The people there were great, and the atmosphere was casual.  However, for a small startup I didn’t feel like I was part of a focused and cohesive team. I think that’s an essential ingredient for succes, because it’s too costly to be inefficient when you’re small.

Compensation was a sticking point too. Right now there are just way too many jobs and too few quality developers.  Hell, in this market you don’t need to be great to find work, just simply being decent will get you pretty far.  It’s the simple case of supply and demand, and the supply is really small and the demand keeps on growing.

Salaries are rising each year, and I was forgoing a bit in the hopes of getting into a company early on.  For me to stay any longer, I would’ve had needed to be convinced that there was a better chance for great success.  It couldn’t just be average success, or mediocre success, because that’s all too easy to find in a city like Ottawa.  It had to be worth the opportunity cost.

I learned a lot of things there at Waypoint, and met some really good people.  I’ve never felt as confident about my skills, and I attribute that to my experience with the company.  I wish I could have stayed longer, but it was about time I had to go.

–

Anyways, enough with the negative news.  The positive news is that three days in with Rove Mobile I’m pretty happy and assured that I made the right choice to switch.  I get a pretty good set of benefits and a pay bump.  More importantly, I’m part of a more energetic and vibrant work environment.  There is a greater sense of focus, and they seem to be much more agile and current in an industry that is always changing.  The people are pretty friendly, and though the commute is a little longer it’s nice to see crowds of miscellaneous people again.  I’m already holed up in Barhaven, so it’s nice to get out.

The working environment really helps too.  I get a pretty nice desk, dual screens, and the company has invested in a lot of Herman Miller Mirra office chairs.  If anyone remembers the dot com bubble, those $1000 chairs used to be the icon of startups.  I even got my own box of business cards!  I’ve never had business cards before.  I must be moving on up.

Anyways, things change and life goes on.  Things seem really good at my new job so far, I hope things stay that way.

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Guitarmania

I had the great pleasure to hear Andy Mckee and Don Ross perform on the weekend in Montreal at the Guitarmania guitar festival. It was part of the Montreal Jazz festival.

I’ve been waiting Andy Mckee especially to swing by the area to play, and this was one of the few dates he’s playing in Canada this year.

We arrived at the Place Des Arts, expecting to get really bad seats. Not being able to find the place in the dense Jazz festival crowd, we showed up at the door 5 minutes before the concert. Tickets were general admission, so I thought we were for surely doomed to some nose-bleed seats. “Ya, you see that little dot in the middle, that’s Andy Mckee!”.

Fortunately, the concert hall itself was small and intimate, with only a few hundred seats it was impossible to get a bad seat in the house. We found some seats just meters away from Mr. Mckee. His music is so amazing to hear, and to see him play it live was just a spectacular. The audience was just mesmerized by his beautiful music. It’s probably the best concert I’ve ever seen.

Then near the end of his set, he invites Don Ross onto the stage for some duet action. The concentration of talent on the stage was bewildering. They both just “jammed” and were so caught into just making music. It looked like they had a genuinely deep friendship together, and were just having fun on the stage. My emo self shed a tear!

The second concert was with Don Ross, who kicked off his set with a blisteringly fast and intense song, losing his thumbpick midway through, and trucking on. Don Ross was great to see too, and he has a very different style than Andy Mckee’s. More on the jazzy side, and definitely a lot more intense. He describes his style as “wood metal”. Don Ross’ charisma on stage gives him great stage presence, as he’s a pretty witty guy. He ended off his set calling out Andy Mckee for some more jamming duet action.

At the end of the night the two were out in the lobby signing autographs and cd’s. I got some pictures and got some CD’s signed as well as my concert ticket. Being the goof that I am, I was all shy and couldn’t muster up anything thoughtful to say other than that it was a really great concert. What do you say to those accoustic guitar gods anyways?!

It was a great night for me.

Here’s the two of them playing a song off of the new duet album:

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The Collapse of the Middle Class

Lately I’ve been keeping up with the news in the economy, as that kind of stuff is probably useful when investing.  Yes, I’ve become more “capitalists” in a sense because of it all, but it does not mean that I like the notion of Capitalism as a whole.  Really, a lot of what motivates me to invest into the markets is not pure greed, but a defense against the risings costs of living and inflation.

This week in particular has been quite newsworthy, and has put a lot of things into perspective for me that I hadn’t really fleshed out fully with hard data.  We all know that the rich get richer, and the poor get poorer.  The disparity between the wealthy and the have-nots have always increased over time.  But what has been quite surprising is that the middle-class is slipping too.  They aren’t growing richer, they’re actually growing poorer.   Despite what the McMansions of suburbia depict, with its perfectly manicured green lawns and guzzling SUVs, the middle class are worse off than the middle class of the last generation.

Some interesting bits of information I’ve come across recently:

• I read a pretty interesting article in the Globe and Mail about a Statistics Canada report on the differences in average incomes in 1980 compared to 2005.  In a span of 25 years, the average Canadian (adjusted in today’s dollars), makes only $53 more per year.  Depending on the province, that income may actually be lower.  Those who are wealthy have become even wealthier, and the poor 25 years ago made significantly more money than the poor today.And that’s based on average incomes.  That still does not factor in the fact that today’s housing prices have skyrocketed, that sales taxes have been introduced, which further reduce the spending power of the poor, and that education costs have gone up, which is terrible as education is the vehicle for social mobility.  I don’t think the situation will get any better as time goes on.
• There was a great lecture on YouTube given by an Economics professor at Harvard Law School.  I totally recommend watching it: http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2008/04/the-coming-coll.html Basically, the lecturer had researched changes in quality of life for the average American middle class family over the past 30 years.  In adjusted dollars, the average working male made just about the same amount as he did in the 70’s.  However, the boost in total family income came about because women now work to add to the family income.  What’s terrible though, is that despite the added second income, middle class families are actually worse off today than 30 years ago when only men worked.The cost of clothing, appliances, and food has gone down, but housing prices have soared outrageously.  Tuition costs are really high too.  And medical insurance costs have jumped incredibly, even while the quality of medical care itself has declined significantly (fortunately for us Canadians, we aren’t burdened by this).  Add to the mix the cost of child care (since Mom has to now work), a second vehicle so that Mom can also commute to work, and higher utility costs and you’ve got one lousy deal.

  The middle class is spending more hours away from home for work and the commute, earning roughly the same, and they face growing expenses and a decreased quality of life.

• The price of food, which has been quite cheap over the years, is now starting to inflate.  Due to anomalies in recent weather, there has been a shortage of food produced for such things as wheat, soy beans, and corn.  The hotter summers have produced drier conditions, which have yielded smaller crops.  The US government has also endorsed an initiative for producing ethanol from crops for fuel (which is neither green nor a solution for oil dependency), which has driven up demand for a limited supply.  Because of these factors, food prices have gone up greatly within recent months.  Egg prices have gone up 30% in 3 months, wheat has doubled in price in a month as well as soy beans.  Rice has nearly doubled as well.  These price increases may not affect the wealthy, but the poor and working class definitely are affected.
• It gets worse… much worse.  Suburbia has been carved out of a dependency on cheap oil.  And now, the middle class suburban life is threatened by the rising cost of oil because of increased demand and shortened supplies.  Suburbia needs all the cheap fuel it can get to fuel the trucks that haul all the goods to the mega grocery stores and the Wal Marts.  Fuel to get people to commute 25 to 40 km’s each way to get to work.  Fuel to keep the electricity running to power all the McMansions, the air conditioners in the summer, and to water all our precious green lawns.  And when that fuel starts to jump drastically in price, living in the ‘burbs starts to become less plausible.Over the past few months, we’ve seen oil hit all time highs almost every day.  Last January in 2007, oil was selling at $60/ barrel.  Come January in 2008 it was selling for $100 US per barrel.  And last week, almost ever day had set a record high for oil prices hitting $126/barrel.  This is an incredible spike in price considering it cost less than half that 18 months ago.

  Some analysts are even claiming it may hit $150 to $200 a barrel within the year, and other institutions are predicting it will stay near the $200 price mark by 2012.  This may mean $2.00/liter of gasoline, doubled costs for food prices, and a significant increase on the cost of cheap goods at Wal Mart due to increased shipping costs.

  There is also the theory of peak oil, which claims that since oil is in finite supply in the world, we will eventually hit a point where drilling for more oil will not be as cost effective anymore, and will require more work to get the oil out.  This makes sense, as oil is not in infinite supply, and the world is consuming roughly 100 million barrels of it a day.  With supply dropping, there is also an increase in demand as China, India, Brazil, and other emerging markets continue to grow oil will be in more demand around the world.

So from all this, we can stare into the crystal ball and make the prediction that the rising cost of living will cut into the quality of our lives, as wages and salaries will not grow with inflation as quickly.

If we are fortunate enough to save our money year to year, for retirement, a new home, or for our kids’ education fund, then we are actually losing a fair chunk of the money we save due to inflation.  Sure, we can put our money in a low yielding bond or GIC, or some kind of investment vehicle that tries to offset or counter-balance inflation, but the simple fact is that such vehicles which appear “safe” holds a lot of risk because of inflation.  You may not visibly see dollars being lost in those vehicles, because it is really hard to see inflation steal from you, but it does happen.  Not only that, but the yields that bonds and GICs provide are based on factors that not necessarily offset inflation.  The consumer price index that is produced by the government, is not wholly accurate for a lot of goods.  It may accurately describe increased costs of food and goods, but for such things as tuition and education (and health care for Americans), it is misleading.

There has always been inflation, and there have always been periods of rapidly growing inflation, and very slow periods of inflation.  But I believe because of the various factors happening today, inflation is accelerating.  At the same time, it can be argued that investing in the stock market is one of the best ways of safeguarding or at least offsetting inflation.

As oil companies, agriculture, and food companies post record profits from the spike in oil prices, etc… their share prices and dividends generally grow responsively as well.  Those share holders who own and are invested in such stocks, for better or worse, profit from inflation.  It’s a terrible game, as the poor and those who are not invested in the market get left out.  Their loss is the shareholder’s gain, and so those wealthy enough to hold large investments become ever more wealthy, while the poor and middle class get squeezed more each day.

So my whole venture into investments is not just a vehicle for the dreams of becoming incredibly wealthy and retiring early in life (though I would love to be just that).  But it is more importantly a defensive mechanism to maintain a standard of living and fighting off inflation.  If you don’t play the game, then you’ll get left behind.

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Boo on Mutual Funds

So in my quest to grow wealth through investments, I’ve had a lot of friends tell me that I should stick to Mutual Funds or GICs, as they have much “lower risk” and because I have no idea what I’m doing.

I must hand it to them, they are spot on in that I really have no clue as an investor as I’ve only been in the “game” for really a few months.  And mutual funds generally carry much less risk than direct investing since they’re super diversified and managed by professionals.  GICs are obviously gauranteed to make you returns, hence the “Gauranteed” in GIC.

Despite all this, I would still rather do my homework and invest directly into the markets.  At the LEAST, I should invest my money into an index through an ETF (exchange traded fund).  There’re plenty of reasons to completely skip passed mutual funds entirely (GICs too for that matter).

It is the simple matter that mutual funds underperform the markets as a whole.  The S&P 500, which is regarded as the benchmark to beat, will beat 80% of mutual funds out there.  So really, you have a much greater chance of earning more money if you simply just invested your money into an index fund (the market as a whole).  The S&P 500, over the last 30 year period, performs roughly at a 10% annual yield.  How many mutual funds can claim that?  Strike one.

Not only do mutual funds under-perform in general, but they carry high fees and commissions.  Sure, that 2% fee doesn’t sound like much to you, but 2% compounded over many years until your retirement do add up to quite a lot.  So not only do your hard earned savings yield you less, but you end up paying for someone to poorly manage your own money! Strike two.

Now the big kicker that most people aren’t aware of with mutual funds is something called “Survivorship Bias”.  Ever notice how some banks have stellar funds that yield 10, 15, even 20 percent?!  Or even how bank XYZ claims to have a variety of funds that average a strong performance of X%? Well, the banks are rigging the numbers in their favor to win you over.  Many banks will carry a variety of funds which cater to various aspects of your investments.  However, not all of their products will succeed and many will fail altogether.  The funds that perform terribly get removed from their line of products, so only the “surviving” funds are left over… with those funds obviously yielding a higher average now that the losers have been cut out.  So not only do mutual funds underperform and have high commissions, but they generally provide misleading information on performance. Strike three!

Alright alright, so mutual funds won’t give me tons of money, but at least they are yielding me some kind of return and I don’t have to monitor the markets, that’s at least worth the price right?  Absolutely not!  For one thing, a mutual fund has no gaurantees of yielding you any returns.  You may actually lose money in your mutual fund, because it really is an investment in the stock markets (albeit, a greatly diversified and “managed” investment). When the markets dip, your fund may dip as well.

Secondly, you can invest in the stock market without having to manage all your investments.  You can invest in an index directly through an ETF.  ETFs are just like mutual “index” funds in that they mirror the movements of the markets, with the exception that you can purchase ETFs much like any other stock.  That means you can buy/sell an ETF whenever the markets are open, and you gain dividends too like any other stock.  The beauty of ETFs is that there is very little commission involved in owning an ETF.  The company managing it takes a very small cut, something like 0.1%, which is a fraction of what the mutuals are charging.  At the same time, since ETFs mirror market indices, it will beat a majority of mutual funds in terms of performance and provide you with a great deal of diversification.  No need to manage your ETFs… you can buy into them and forget about them just like your mutuals.

So really, is there any reason not to buy into an ETF instead of a mutual fund?  It has all the advantages of a mutual fund (and then some), without all the disadvantages of poor performance and heavy commissions.

Of course, you could also invest directly into the markets.  It’s not as demanding as one would think.  Many great investors have built their wealth on researching a company, buying its stock, and holding it for years to allow it to grow in value.  The richest man in the world, Warren Buffet, built his wealth this way.  He wasn’t a day trader who stared at the stock ticker every 5 minutes.  Instead, he sought companies that he saw had a lot of value and invested into them, holding on those stocks for years.  That style of investing doesn’t require constant managing and monitoring either, and it can reap huge rewards.

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Fund Performance

The main downside of investing in the market is that I now find myself constantly staring at the stock ticker. I guess the big part of it is the gambler’s high I get when I see how well things are doing. It’s the same feeling I got back during my poker playing days, when I’d pull in a big pot and make some money. However, in this case, the stakes are way higher. So I thought I’d provide an update on how well things are doing. It’s been roughly thirty days since our initial investment in Google and Visa, and we’ve bought a few more stocks.

Our biggest gain so far, which thankfully is the largest chunk of portfolio, is with Google. We’ve gained almost 25% from our initial investment in it. We also gained 23% in a company called DryShips, which ships dry goods such as coal.

Visa has been kind to us and has increased about 20% since we bought it, and we have strengthened our position on it (bought more stock) yesterday before the earnings report. It was a gamble in that the stock price could fluctuate wildly depending on the news. Looking at its past reports, I had predicted a strong report that would beat a lot of estimates. I guess we’re trying to recapture the magic when our Google stock had jumped when it released its earnings report. Anyways, the Visa report came out yesterday at 5 pm showing stellar gains. Not only did they increase their earnings, reduce their operating costs, and boost their market share, but they beat analyst estimates by a fair amount. Something strange happened which I didn’t quite understand, its share price actually dropped close to 6% on this news during after-hours trading. I’m not worried though, as the stock has rebounded back to its closing price before the news. I’m still investigating the cause for such a drastic drop.

We also picked up some other stocks too, some which have been doing really well, and others that aren’t doing so great. Due to the economic decline in the financial sectors recently, it looks like there are some really juicy stocks that are selling at bargain prices. We picked up Citigroup (The US’s largest bank, and the world’s largest corporation) last week, and it’s been up more than 7% since then. Citigroup happens to also have quite the juicy dividend (profits returned to shareholders) at 5%. We also bought some shares of TD Bank, which has grown 2% since we picked it up about 2 weeks ago.

Of course, not all of it can be roses as we have some stocks that have been losing value. We bought some Transocean, an offshore drilling company, that has declined about 1%. Cal-Maine foods, the US’s largest supplier of eggs, also dropped about 3% since we bought it. Though I’m not too worried, as both those companies will probably grow quite well in the long run. What’s nice about the egg producer is that it provides a whopping dividend of 10%.

So all in all, our portfolio is up about 11%. Which is a damn good gain in a span of 30 days if I do say so myself. Who knows how things will play out on the long term though.

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The Wire Ruined TV

There are some things that you experience in life that set the bar so high, that is so enjoyable, that you know that it has ruined you for the rest of your life.

It’s like the time in your life when you first enjoyed a beautiful cut of perfectly cooked steak after living a lifetime eating only hamburger.  Hamburger will never taste and look the same ever again.  Mangled random bits of beef no more, you now demand some sweet filet mignon.  The bar is raised, now that you know how good charred beef can be.

Well, that very experience is happening to me right now.

Lately I haven’t been watching as much TV as I used to.  Mostly due to the fact that a lot of the shows out there are complete trash.  Of course there are a few shows that I find really great, like Breaking Bad, Dexter, and I must give a nod to Battlestar Galactica (but on a lesser extent).  At least those are a few gems in the rough that keep me entertained when I’m hankering for some TV time.

But I’ve stumbled onto a cop show called “The Wire”.  It’s kinda old in that it’s been out for 5 seasons now (with the 5th being the last).  I can’t believe that I haven’t come across it before, but being that it’s on HBO it’s a little obscure.  Also, the fact that it’s another “cop” show might turn most people off.

Cop show - been there, done that.  With the flurry of cop shows out there, it’s easy for something like the Wire to get lost in the sludge of mediocre.  With more CSI and Law & Order spinoffs than you can actually watch, it just seems like one cop show is just like the next, but with slightly different formulas.

But the Wire is different.  It doesn’t follow a formula for every show.  Instead, it’s like a mini-series stretched out over 5 seasons full of gritty realism, superb acting, dark humor, social satire, and elements of the human condition.  It’s hard to describe because there’s no show quite like it.  It’s sort of like The Sopranos in that it shows a world of crime that most of us aren’t involved in.  It’s only “sort of” like the Sopranos though, because the Wire outclasses it in every way.

Anyways, the Wire to me is the best TV series … ever.  Not this year, or last year, or in the decades of TV that I haven’t seen before I was born.  I will boldly say that there is probably no show that has ever existed that is better than The Wire.  With the way that TV is going right now, I’m pretty confident that there will never be a show that will be better.

For that reason, for better or worse, television will never be as enjoyable as it was before I watched this show.  Everything else pales in comparison, and it’s a comparison I can’t not make when I watch TV.  Regular TV tastes like a cheap McDonald’s cheeseburger after dining on this fine cut of beef.

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Finances

“If you’re not a socialist when you’re young, you don’t have a heart. If you’re not a conservative when you’re old, you don’t have a brain.”

I’m not sure where that quote comes from, but it stuck with me for a long time. I guess I do have a heart, as a younger Lee was quite the bleeding heart socialist at one point. Hell, I am still a lefty in a lot of ways. But lately, I’ve been dabbling on the financial side of things, reading up on stocks and bonds and things to do with money. Now that I’m out of school, I actually have a bit of money that can sit to the side. Yes, I feel like a scum sucking capitalist pig … but maybe I’m starting to see things differently.

Finances is something I never really took the time to learn while going through school. I had always felt that it was pointless, since I had no money to invest in. Sure I had a part time student job and went through internship and such, but why should I go through all the hassle to shove my paltry savings into an institution to only earn 1 or 2% in return over a year! Two percent on a thousand bucks isn’t worth all that hassle.

So I bought some books on it to get myself educated in the world of greed. I bought myself “Investing For Canadians For Dummies” and Jim Cramer’s latest book. I finally got plain English explanations of what a stock is, a mutual fund, a GIC, and what the hell the stock market is and how investors make money. Cutting through all the jargon, the rules of the game are pretty straightforward. Buying that For Dummies book will probably be my best investment ever.

Reading those books allowed me to see work and my career in a completely different light. Making money and being wealthy can be achieved not in some big bang, like winning the lottery. But for most people, becoming financially secure enough to retire early is a long drawn out process that starts out when you’re young, not when you’re old. And the sooner you plan for it, the bigger the reward at the end. By the simple power of compound interest, someone in their 20’s like me can input $1 and pull out $32 by the time I’m in my fifties, and that’s if you play the game conservatively.

However, it’s not just about becoming wealthier either. It’s also about protecting whatever savings you have from inflation. That 2-5% annual inflation also compounds over time too. So no matter how much you save, if you don’t invest it somewhere, you’ll be losing whatever money you save. If you’re not protecting your money somehow, then its better to just go out and blow your money right now… at least you’ll get more value out of it.

–

So anyways, Renata and I have started investing directly into some stocks. Being totally new to this, I find it hard to judge the value of a company. So I stuck with some companies that I fundamentally know will be solid winners. The two big stock purchases for us have been Visa and Google.

Visa for the simple fact that it just went public, and is an absolute no-brainer. It basically dominates the credit card market. And everyone already knows how mighty Google is. Some people say Google is too bloated and overpriced, but recently it dropped 40% from its all time high.

Google dominates online advertising, and their search engine is still the best out there. They’ve got a ton of cool web-applications, and though it hasn’t made them a ton of money yet, it just shows that they’re always innovating and pushing out interesting things. The fact that they hire the best and the brightest and have a wicked corporate culture that drives innovation will keep them in the top spot for a long time. Google is here to stay, and I think we’re really just starting to see the beginnings of what it can do.

So anyways, we bought quite a fair chunk of Google stocks within the past few weeks, seeing as how their price is low. Amidst all the rumors and negative speculation of its performance these past few weeks (which thankfully drove down its stock price), Google’s stock price jumped 20% within a few minutes after it announced its earnings for the quarter.

So far, our little venture has netted us some positive gains. Visa has performed pretty nicely since we bought it, up almost 5% in a little under 3 weeks. We also bought shares of DryShips, which gained 6% after we bought it that very day two days ago.

Hopefully things will continue the way they go

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Pixelicious

I just bought a second LCD monitor for my home computer.

It quickly dawned on me that I didn’t necessarily need another monitor, but in this scenario, more is always more.  Once you’ve gone dual screen, it’s hard to go back.

My older monitor, a 22 inch Dell, seemed to display colours quite nicely, and appeared to be a pretty wicked monitor.  But now, beside my brand new 24 inch Samsung, it’s definitely showing its age.  I guess it’s been a year or two since I’ve noticed the new slew of monitors out, but they’re way brighter and the colour is much more vibrant and accurate.

Anyhow, to answer my first nagging question of necessity.  No, I could live without a second screen… but productivity is increased with more pixel real estate.  Especially as a programmer, it really helps to minimize repetitive tasks like switching between windows.  Now with two screens, I can have my editor up on one screen, and some reference material on another.  Ah… it makes coding less painful.

It also makes sense that the more real estate you have, the more efficient you’ll work for most computer related tasks.  There’s less time spent managing windows and finding what you want.  A recent study from the University of Utah drew the conclusion that productivity could be increased by up to 50% with the right screen real estate.  After a certain threshold, productivity actually drops (most likely due to the fact that with too much space you end up spending time seeking to find what you want).

The two monitors for some reason make it feel really good to work on the computer.  I’ve been nagging my boss at work to get me a second one, and I think I’ll get one soon

–

Speaking of efficiencies.  I should mention some really handy tools that have made me more efficient.  They’re not programming tools, but just general tools that everyone should give a try:

•  Slickrun: Slickrun is a little tool that allows you to open up programs by typing in a custom word.  That way you can map your commonly used programs to words that you know, so that you don’t have to hunt around the start menu or the desktop to launch a program.

  For example, I have the word “mp3″ mapped to Winamp, my mp3 player.  I just have to hit Alt-Q, type in mp3, and then hit enter and bam!  Winamp is launched.  Launching programs this way is way faster and more intuitive.  Rather than remembering where the icon is on my desktop/start menu, grabbing the mouse, and hunting around, I can just punch it into my keyboard without having to lift my hands.

• Virtual Dimensions: It’s a multiple desktop tool for windows.  Basically, it allows you to swap between “desktops”.  Most Linux desktops have this feature, but Windows is severly lacking in this department.  Virtual Dimensions is the best multi-desktop app for Windows that I’ve tried, and I’ve tried quite a few of them.  Again, the efficiency in it is that I rely more on the keyboard to swap between desktops instead of hunting windows with the mouse.  I usually stick my internet browsers on one desktop, an editor on another, and my music app on a third… all while switching between them with hotkeys.
• Finally, I recommend Winsplit Revolution for those with fairly large screens.  I noticed with my new 24 inch monitor that a lot of space is wasted when surfing or editing text.  The monitor is so wide that I could in fact open up two browsers side-by-side, and the browsers could still be usable.  With Winsplit, you can resize and move windows to fit exactly one half (or quarter, or third) of the screen.

Check them out!  You’ll thank me later if you do.

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“Home”, 1 Year Later

So I just got back from a week-long trip back to Alberta two days ago

The main reason for my leaving was that my grandmother from Vietnam had flown into Edmonton to visit my family.  She’s over 80, and for a Vietnamese person that’s considered to be really old.  Lack of proper health care and nutrition often means you don’t live as long as most westerners do.

So I flew back to visit her, as the only time I have ever been with her was 6 years ago when I was in Vietnam.  And, who knows when I’ll ever see her again.

She’s doing well and she seems very strong still, and definitely still sharp mentally. I was really glad to have flown back to see her, and we took her to see the Rockies.  How could you visit Canada and not visit the mountains!

Well, the trip was good mostly for eating, sleeping, and lounging around.  It was a little boring to be honest, as I’m so used to doing some kind of activity while there.  Just doing absolutely nothing grew tiresome pretty quickly.  But still, it was a good reunion of sorts as I haven’t been to the Rockies with my whole family since I was little.

Other than that I caught up with a few of my friends. It was great to see them again.  What was really common between us all, was that we missed school in some way.  Mylore and I even spent an hour walking around campus, through the halls of ye-old-faithful Comp Sci building, and through all the major student hubs.  The faces around seemed younger than I remembered, but school still felt like home.  It was refreshing to be back on campus.

Being back home in Edmonton was a little strange at first.  Strange in that it felt as though nothing had changed there, but that I myself have changed.  I guess I’ve resolved that Ottawa is now “home”, and that my suburban-office-working lifestyle is my new life.  A part of me still resides in Edmonton though, a more rambunctious and raw form of me.  If my Ottawa friends think I’m an asshole, they haven’t seen me in my truest form.  I miss it.

There’s another part that lives there too; a bit that’s more spiritual, contemplative, and introspective.  Those qualities seem to serve a lesser purpose out East while I live in the plastic world of cookie-cutter homes, dinner parties, and white collared conservatives.  Suburbia is not as bad as I make it out to be, and I don’t really dislike it all that much.  It’s really really comfortable after all.  It just feels, well… a little shallow.

In the end of it all, it felt nice to be back in my home in Ottawa.  Definitely an enjoyable trip out West, but I really feel like my life in Ottawa is now really where I belong.  Selling out?  Maybe I’m just growing up.

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