Impressed in that it has satisfied exactly what I expected it to be.  It is a very portable and capable laptop, which came in at a very cheap price point.

Asthetically, the laptop is well built and has that glossy white Ipod finish to it.  Under the hood, it has enough pep to do basically everything I need it to.  It can decode compressed divx video, run most all applications with a lot of snap, and can even handle 3D desktop effects quite well.

It has made my bus rides much more enjoyable, and time seems to fly while I use it.

I did however install the latest version of Ubuntu linux on it (8.10) and I suspect that has helped with it’s snappiness.  The 3D desktop effects that come with it run quite smoothly, and the boot-up time is very short (around 30 seconds).  The pre-loaded Windows XP was usable too, but was a touch slower.  The McAfee anti-virus program included really slowed it down however, and felt sluggish whenever it was on.

Am I saying that you need to run linux to make this netbook usable?  Not really… but it makes for a much better experience.  At least you can avoid viruses without running the resource pig that is McAfee.

A really nice benefit of using Ubuntu is that the multiple desktops really come in handy when using a smaller screen.  It at least allows switching between applications to be much easier when on the bus.  The little trackpad isn’t the greatest interface on a bumpy ride.

I guess what makes owning an Aspire One great is the that it seamlessly allows me to to access a computer anywhere I am.  It does everything that a laptop can do, with the added benefit of being ultra portable.  Or, it does much more than what my Blackberry can do yet it’s almost as portable.  Either way, it has enhanced my connectivity in a very intimate way.

Seeing as how she was going to be in town, I got a chance to pick up two tickets for the concert last weekend at the NAC.  It was kind of strange that she wasn’t playing at a smaller venue like the Bronson Center, but I guess she’s a lot more popular now that she’s won all those Juno awards.

So anyways, Renata and I went to see her on Saturday night at the NAC, and we were both surprisingly dissapointed.  She put on a great performance, and her music is even better live.  She’s got more energy and emotion when it’s live.

However, for whatever reason, she decided to add shadow puppets to her show.  I shit you not, boy-scout campfire style shadow puppets.

Each song would have its own shadow puppet theme, complete with props for the overhead projector.  And each shadow puppet show, was just as frustrating and distracting as the rest.  It was so in-your-face pretentious that it distracted from the music and Feist herself.

We came to listen to a concert, and were instead bludgeoned with an overly artsy light show.  Too bad.  If she simply didn’t have that part incorporated into her show it would’ve been an amazing concert.

I guess it’s out of pure utility that I am finally getting one.  The long bus rides to get to work are starting to wear me down.  It’s good reading time, but on some days I want to do something “productive” while commuting.

Back when I worked at Waypoint, the commute was only 8 minutes each way.  That left me with enough energy and time to squeeze in an hour or so of extra-curricular programming once I got home.  However, now that I spend almost 90 minutes everyday on the bus that’s no longer there.

So, my requirements for this laptop are pretty low.  I just need it to be small and light.  I’d like the battery to be decent enough.  And other than the standard stuff like ethernet/USB/sound ports, there’s not a whole lot more I need.  I don’t even need a DVD drive for this thing.  I just need to be able to pull it out while on the bus for a quick job (that sentence sounds so dirty!!).

Luckily for me, this year has been the year of the ultra-portable sub-compact notebooks.  The Asus EEE-PC, MSI Wind, and Acer Aspire One are just a few models that have come out.  They’re all small, light, and cheap! Especially since I’ll be loading them up with Xubuntu, the hardware should be more than powerful enough for my needs.  Cause really, all I need it to do is to load up my favorite text editor and I’ll be emacs’ing away.

So anyways, I ended up picking the Acer Aspire One in the end.  From a cost/feature perspective it seemed to be right in the sweet spot.  The Asus EEE-PC has too small of a keyboard to be usable, whereas the MSI Wind and Aspire One both have larger screen sizes and keyboards.

The Aspire One model I ordered has a 160 Gig hard drive, 1 Gig ram, 1.6 Ghz processor, and a 6 cell battery.  I got it for about $400 from my favorite online PC store NCIX.  The MSI model has a larger screen by an inch, but with identical specs would’ve cost me $600 instead.  A 50% premium seems a tad too high.  They both come with a copy of Windows XP, but as I mentioned before I’ll be loading up Linux to keep the performance overhead down.  And really, unless you’re playing games (which sucks on a laptop anyways) there’s no real good reason to be running Windows!

So now I eagerly am await my new laptop!  I’ll probably post a little review of this little gem as soon as I get it.

He writes back that he’s happy I’m “not contemplating suicide LOL”.  Haha, yes, the joke is on me… and everyone else who has ever thought enough to invest their money for retirement.  I guess this is his way of saying “I told you so” without actually saying that, even though he never warned me of anything.  I’m only slightly bitter that a friend would write something so asshole-ish to me as I watch my hard earned savings evaporate in a matter of days.

But this post isn’t about why you shouldn’t kick your friend when he’s already down.  That e-mail made me question if investing in the stock market is the correct thing to do at all, and how badly will this economic crisis hurt me.

To answer this question, I first questioned my motives for investing and they’re quite simple:

1. I would like to eventually retire one day, and be comfortable financially in my retirement.
2. I can only do that if I save up money for this, but saving money is pointless if you’re not investing it to fight off inflation.
3. Therefore, I should use my retirement savings to invest in something which will hopefully snowball into something large enough for retirement.

So shoving my money under my mattress is a bad idea (or into a savings account etc…).  My options:

1. Invest in Real-Estate: The downside here is that it’s a risky business. Land value does not necessarily grow.  Home values are continuing to drop from the sub-prime mortgage crisis.  Also, you need a lot of money to buy real-estate.  You get taxed when you sell a second home. Getting a second mortgage to buy a home is silly too, as you’re just forking over money to the banks for interest.  Paying your second mortgage by renting isn’t feasible either because you get taxed on those earnings… and you now have a second job.
2. GICs, bonds, and High Interest Savings Accounts: They all just don’t provide enough returns to fight off inflation.  And if they do fight it off, it’s barely enough to have my money work for me to grow.  Again, my motivation is to retire comfortably.  I only save a fraction of my paycheck so that won’t be enough to live off of when I’m dependent on it.
3. Win the Lotto.
4. Start a Business and Become Wealthy: I actually really like this idea.  As Paul Graham points out, busting your ass off for a year and living like a poor student to create a start-up is a great thing to do.  However, this is hard to do if you don’t have some kind of capital.  It is also hard if you have dependents and can’t tolerate too much risk.  This option was tempting to me, but now that I’ll be a dad in a few months the opportunity is gone.
5. Invest in the Market: This is where the sweet spot is.  I can invest in something which can potentially provide me great enough returns that I can beat inflation and grow wealth over a long period of time.  There are risks, but historically the markets generally appreciate in value over long periods of time.  And since I’m investing to retire, I’ve got a pretty long time frame in mind.  With diversification, I can minimize the probability that all the companies I invest in will go bankrupt in time. I also don’t need a lot of capital/savings to profit from this.
6. Mutual Funds: Same as investing in the market, except you’re paying someone else to do it for you (and most mutual funds underperform). You’d save yourself a lot of money by doing it yourself.

I’ve concluded that yes, investing in the stock market is definitely the correct thing to do.  I say this even as my portfolio is currently worth significantly less than it was when I invested a few months ago.

I haven’t actually “realized” any losses.  I still own the same amount of stock as when I bought them.  It’s just that as of this moment, they are worth less than when I purchased them.  Will this state stay like this forever?  Of course not… one hopes the US economy will rebound. If for some reason the entire stock market collapses and stays that way, then I’d be more worried about stocking up on rations and shotgun shells.  If Armageddon happens money would be a little useless.

Should I do the foolish thing of panicking and selling off all my stock at a loss, and then immediately withdrawing all that money from my RRSP to spend it on hookers and blow?  Probably not.  Investing through your RRSP has the added benefit that you probably shouldn’t pull out that money until you retire… and between now and the time I retire I expect a moment where I make positive returns on my investments.

Actually, right now is a great time to buy stocks.  Think of it is a mega-blowout sale that is only offered every few years.  Buy now or else miss on the great deals.  Warren Buffett would agree, as he’s going on a spending spree right now.  The strategy of buying undervalued stock is exactly how Warren Buffett became the wealthiest man in the world.

So, my friend, I am not contemplating suicide.  In fact, I still sleep as soundly as I did before the market crisis ever happened.  I even managed to capitalize on the volatility and made some profit here and there.

It’s hard to imagine all that’s happened in such a short few months, but this summer for me has been as action packed as all the others.

My new job at Rove has worked out pretty good so far. I’ve made some good friends through it (actual not-just-co-worker friends) and its pretty nice. Most of my close buddies are back in Edmonton. So as my friendships back home fade I’m finding “replacements” so to speak.

Renata took a few weeks of vacation, so it gave me a chane to live the single male lifestyle for a short bit. You know, the one devoid of chores, a regular sleeping pattern, and whole meals. Binging on video games and take out was great again, but for my own sake it’s good that it only lasted as long as it did.

With that, I’d like to share the news that I’ll be a dad come January if all goes well as planned. Renata’s trip without me was something she needed to ease her pregnancy. Seeing as I’ll need to save mu vacation time for when the little one arrives, it didn’t make sense for me to go with her. Not everyone gets excessive vacation days like civil servants. Yes, I am jealous.

Things this summer have been different with this news. Instead of wandering in some remote trails in the rockies, we decided to play it safe and stay home. It’s not like we’ve had a choice; Renata’s pregnancy has been pretty rough. Her hyper-nausea had her throwing up 5 to 6 times a day. Now in her second trimester she seems to be doing better, and hopefully it continues to ease off.

As un-adventurous as this summer has been, it’s been pretty enjoyable still. At least I know that by the next one, a whole different adventure of sorts should unfold.

I wouldn’t be disappointed if I felt that I had my ass handed to me, but I slipped up on fairly rookie and stupid mistakes.

In all fairness though,  I was beat squarely in my inability to recognize where I went wrong within the two hour time limit.  Given that I had two chances to redeem myself (you’re allowed to compete twice out of the three time slots), I should have made it passed this round.

At any rate, I learned a lot of lessons which will be hard to forget for next time :-).  I still enjoyed the experience, and I’ll probably sign up for Top Coder, a programming competition league which holds frequent competitions.  I could see myself doing this every few months or so just for shits and giggles.

For those interested, here are the questions I attempted to solve, and where I went wrong:

The format is that you are presented with 3 questions.  To solve the question, you write a program which takes in the input data set, and you submit the output for verification.   There are two input data sets, a small one and a large one, with the large one worth more points.  Each question is worth different points (depending on level of difficulty), and those with the most points advance.  If there’s a tie in points, then those who submit earliest advance.

Had I solved any one of these problems I would have advanced to the next round.

The three questions I attempted to solve in both slots this round were:

First attempt:

Question 1:

Problem

You are given two vectors v₁=(x₁,x₂,…,x_n) and v₂=(y₁,y₂,…,y_n). The scalar product of these vectors is a single number, calculated as x₁y₁+x₂y₂+…+x_ny_n.

Suppose you are allowed to permute the coordinates of each vector as you wish. Choose two permutations such that the scalar product of your two new vectors is the smallest possible, and output that minimum scalar product.

I chose this question because it was obviously easy.  You just have to sort one vector from largest to smallest, and the other vector oppositely.  Fast and easy problem to code, so I submitted a solution pretty quickly and was already ahead of the pack. Someone was able to read the problem, solve it, code a solution, download the data set, and submit the data set in 3 minutes time… now that is FAST.  I wasn’t that fast, but I was quite ahead.

The large data sets are verified after the competition is over, so you have no way of knowing if it’s valid until the end.  You also get only one shot at it too. In all my hubris, I ran the large data set and submitted.

I found out that my large set was incorrect, and I quickly realized the costly mistake.  The large data set contains values in the vector that are between -1000000 and 1000000.  And in my solution I used a 32 bit integer to calculate the values, which would lead to an overflow since it can’t represent a number like 1000000 x 1000000 (those tricky bastards at Google!).  Had I simply just used a 64 bit integer it would’ve worked out, and I would’ve scored enough points to advance.

Lesson learned… read the bounds more carefully.

Question 2:

 Problem

In this problem, you have to find the last three digits before the decimal point for the number (3 + √5)ⁿ.

For example, when n = 5, (3 + √5)⁵ = 3935.73982… The answer is 935.

For n = 2, (3 + √5)² = 27.4164079… The answer is 027.

This question was weighted heavily enough that if I got just the small data set to work correctly, I would have had enough to pass.  But no, I didn’t solve it correctly either.

My naive solution, because my math skills suck, was to just compute the value and parse the value for the answer.  For the small dataset, the maximum bound on n is 30… so computation should be enough for a correct answer.  There was no way that I would attempt the large, as n had a max of 2000000000 (that’s a shitload of zeroes).  Sounds simple enough, but how do you compute such a huge number with enough precision.  Precision is at the heart of the problem.  So I used Java’s BigDecimal data type, which is really accurate.

However, to get the square root of 5, I initially calculated it using the Math.sqrt() Java function before wrapping it in BigDecimal…. and there was my big mistake.  Math.sqrt returns a double precision float… and when n starts to get large that’s simply not precise enough.

What I should’ve done was use the Newton-Raphson method to calculate the square root of 5 with enough precision to solve the question.  Just solving the small data set alone would’ve been enough to push me through.

My mistake again was another data type error.  That and not remembering a few years back into my numerical methods class about the Newton-Raphson method…. because every person should know it off by heart.  How could you not?!

I won’t bore you with more details about the third problem which I failed at… but it was one where I screwed up by not reading thoroughly enough (I missed a vital constraint).  *Had I* solved it, it would’ve pushed me into the top 100 and I would’ve made it to Round 2 (sigh).

–

So all in all I felt like a newb this weekend.  Shitty in that I could have moved on if I just paid a little more attention to detail and read the questions more thoroughly.  I also felt really rushed and under the gun, so that really clouded my judgment.  All I had to do was take a deep breath and chill out… the answers would have come right to me.

I learned a few lessons though.  Mainly that my math skills suck and that I should maybe re-read some of my old numerical methods and calculus text books.  Also, I should just pay more attention to details. I think that’s more important than anything.

Oh well, there’s always next year.

The Code Jam is an annual programming competition where the top contestants win cash prizes and a free trip to the Google headquarters in California.  The first place prize is $10000 and 10 free lunches at Google, although the true prize is a job offer from Google.  If anything, it’s a great way for Google to hire the best and the brightest.

I’m taking part in it not necessarily for the job, as I don’t have any plans on leaving Ottawa anytime soon.  But I’m jumping myself here, as the probability of me getting far in this contest is pretty remote.  For one thing, I haven’t trained or practiced for this competition, and I haven’t really competed all that often.

This will be my second ever programming competition.  I did participate in one back in third year University.  I was actually happy on how well I did that time, as my partner and I were short a team member (we didn’t know you could have 3 members per team) and we were also short reference material (you were allowed to bring your textbooks).  We ended up placing 6th in Alberta, and like 16th in the national pool.  It sounds bad, but that beat my expectations as we were up against Masters and 4th year students.  We also didn’t know what to expect and hadn’t prepared at all.

That’s the thing about programming contests.  It’s that they ask a specific type of question which does require some preparation and training for to do well.  Most of the time the types of problems presented are heavy on the algorithms and math side, the kind of problem solving that take up only 5% of your time in real world everyday programming situations.  However, it’s the most critical and interesting (to me anyways) part of programming.  Much like having a broad chess opening repertoire, it’s also good to have a broad understanding of various algorithms.  And much like chess, it’s something that you don’t achieve simply through practice.

So, my whole point is that having not prepared for the Google Code Jam, I totally have low expectations of how well I do.  I actually don’t even think I’ll make it past the first round.  The qualifiers were pretty easy and a basic screen for competency.  I really don’t expect to make it past the first round.

But I’m not doing it to win prize money or get a job offer.  I think I’m taking part in it because I enjoy the challenge, and the pressure it puts on me to be on my toes.  It’s also a good way to keep sharp and use my critical thinking skills.  It’s easy to solve problems at work when there’s no hard time constraint, but in thick of competition against the clock and other competitors, it really demands you to be sharper.

I’ve actually found this whole experience to be even more enjoyable now that I’ve convinced a few of my programming friends to take part too.  My geek friend Pat, who I’ve enjoyed many geeky programming language debates with, has made it past the qualifiers too.  The competition itself is performed on an individual basis, but it’s somehow re-assuring to know that I’ve got a friend who’s feeling the pain and pleasure of competing.

Hopefully I’ll do better than expected for round one this coming weekend.

Now that I’m all out of school I can actually for once afford my own set of wheels.  It’s exciting!

Anyways, Renata and I went out car shopping and I had my heart set on getting a Toyota Camry.  There’s just something so roomy and comfortable about Camry’s, and with my first test drive I fell in love with it.  I know it’s odd… you’d think I’d get something sportier and such.

In the winters Renata’s folks hibernate in Arizona, so I get to use her Mom’s Civic SI.  It’s sporty, can accelerate pretty hard (198 horses for a such a small car), and you can feel every bump and knick on the road.  But, I think I’ve opted for the calming and smooth effect rather than the speedy sportster.  Yes, I’m getting old and more boring.

As I was saying, we were out car shopping and I learned a few things.  For one, I should just shut up and let Renata do all the bargaining.  I’m a terrible haggler, and Renata is a born salesperson.  So she knows all their tricks, and knows how to play the game herself.

The whole process took 6 hours, as we hit up 3 different Toyota Dealerships that day.  We met a variety of sales people, with different bargaining strategies and sales pitches.  Some were more pleasant to deal with than others, and all reacted differently to our bargaining.

The first dealership, Tony Graham Toyota, had really nice sales-people.  But they were shielded from bargaining with a sales process where they had to ask their manager for every bargain.  I’m not sure if it was a sales “ploy” where they made us stew while they asked their managers for a price, but it got annoying pretty fast.  They gave us a decent discount, $2700 off of the MSRP, but we wanted to at least shop around some more to see who can offer us better deals.

We swung by Mendes Toyota, and I kid you not I’ve been to hole-in-the-wall pho shops that have a larger room.  Their show room fit like 3 cars, and with 4 or 5 other customers there it felt like a packed house.  Anyways, a sleazy car salesman handled us and didn’t even budge.  Basically, he offered us the retail price, and that was it.  Of course, it got escalated to his manager, and we dealt with him in his rickety old office.  After a lot of hemming and hawing and talking, we got an improved deal.  He showed us his “books”, and the cost of each car and his profit margins.  $3000 off he offered.  Not bad… but the place felt pretty sleazy.

Apparently Toyota’s have very narrow margins (of course, it’s their services that pull in the majority of their profit for dealerships), so we couldn’t get it much lower than that.  At least we knew what the costs of each car was.  He could’ve fabricated the numbers, but they seemed about right from all our haggling.

Finally, we showed up at Bel-Air Toyota at a 4 PM on a Saturday… last day of their work week, and it looked like they were having a slow day.  Bingo!  The sales guy was pretty nice, and he wanted to push a car out as seamlessly as possible.  We settled on the $3k discount, plus some packages and so on.  We got what we wanted, a Toyota Camry that came to $20400.  Apparently Toyota lowered Camry costs down about $4k from the 2008 models, so we got a really good deal.

At the end of the day, I felt like a sleazy car dealer from all the bargaining.  I am not a good bargainer, but at least now I’ve learned how to play a little hard ball.  It makes me think twice every time I buy something, that you can usually get things a little less than the listed price.  I know… I’m so naive.

So, I’m now the happy owner of a brand new ‘09 Camry.  That new smell always gives me a tingly sensation.  Perhaps it’s the formaldehyde in the new upholstery, but I’m pretty happy with my purchase

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 :-).

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.