We live in hotels most of the year. Last year we “lived” in our house for less than 30 days if you don’t count our frequent reminiscing via home security cameras. I would consider myself a bit of a connoisseur in such matters of the rating and luxury of such establishments. With that said there are a few things that will QUICKLY force your hotel onto my shit list. For those starting new places I recommend you follow the list below. ...
Contents 0.1 News 0.2 Music 0.3 Moving Images 0.4 Tech News 0.5 Dumbest Things of the Year 0.6 Extra Sauce: <li> <a href="#Share_this"><span class="toc_number toc_depth_1">1</span> Share this:</a> </li> I skipped 2012 for some reason. I think I was just super busy, but then again I am more busy now. No standout moments in 2012 so nothing lost. Events ...
My requirements for the next laptop were pretty simple: 3rd Generation i7 or better 16GiB of RAM Light and thin (jealous of the wife’s Macbook Air) Fingerprint Scanner Pointer thingie Run Linux Additionally I had hoped for a Nvidia GPU, but realized the Intel GPUs have gotten to the point they can play Civilization which suffices for me. Unfortunately the trend appears to be less is more for the ultra-portables out there. The toughest of the above requirements was the 16GiB of RAM. Most of the machines are maxing out now at 8GiB which is not enough for honest VM work. The HP zBook that was released was a good choice, but the ATI graphics and stupid pricing pushed me away. ...
I like to look back at the year and see how good (or bad) my investments were in stocks for the year. As the rest of the year is going to be crazy busy I wanted to type this while I couldn’t sleep last night. I doubt there will be any huge swings from now till 31 Dec. I buy and hold-on to stocks vs. quick trades so my goal is not to make a quick buck on a flip. There were a few interesting surprises and fails this year. I am leaving my overall investment dollars out so you just get percentage gained. Overall my portfolio is up 21% which isn’t my best showing, but better than zero. If anything this reaffirms that I should stick to ETF and Mutual Funds for 2014 :) ...
I started my day with a run and was lost in the writings of Norman Angell. A month or so ago I read his book, Great Illusion, and was awe-struck on how much pre-WWI Europe mirrors our own world today. He makes the case that globalization in those times would prohibit the tinderbox from catching fire due to the inter-dependencies. I see those same arguments today (article from The Telegraph) and feel a sense of misery from past mistakes being forgotten. ...