When we follow the history of how money came to exist it was simply a way to handle trade in a fair and honest manner. I grow corn, you grow beans but I don’t need beans so instead I give you this “money” that we all agree is valued at a certain amount of beans. Everybody wins, we all have the ability to trade even if we don’t need to barter. Yay!

However money has now become the defacto standard, it used to be a way to trade, now it is the ONLY way to trade.

Perhaps this is the kind of post that one only begins when they have been fortunate financially. Research has shown that money really does not make people happy unless it drastically changes your life. 10 dollars to you or me probably does not mean much, but give it to a bum living under a bridge and you’ve just made his week, he feels rich and can now eat! Take somebody who is struggling to pay rent and give them a raise of 15k a year and they are now more secure and more happy accordingly.

Take however somebody who has 30 million dollars (which is the number that defines super-wealthy). Is there anything that this person can’t do? Is there anything they can’t buy or any experience they can’t have? Yes there is the argument about love and I will bow to that argument, but there are very few experiences that one can not purchase with cold hard cash.

Take the average joe, or even a fairly well to do person and look at their lives and goals. For the most part everybody has something or some activity they are really wanting to do, something they are saving for (a new bigger house, a new better car, a trip to Bali, or just simply security and retirement.) People have goals and things they want for, and those wants give them things to talk about, dream about, hope about and an incentive to wake up and work every day.

So take this person with a stock pile of money, real estate, staff, cars, boats, planes… and ask them what interests them. Most of them will tell you that they are pretty bored. All the money in the world bought them one particular thing that they didn’t even intend to buy… a lack of wants.

Wants give us incentives. If you are lonely you want love. If you are poor you want wealth. If you are sick you want health. Some wealthy people find that they can create a game of wealth, they have 50 mil, they want 100mil so they can prove something.

Anyways, there isn’t a huge point to this post except that the truth is that money buys material things. Those things are nice, they are fun to play with for about 30 minutes, but when you turn around and realize you want for nothing I have to imagine that is a lonely and sad place to be.

The way it works is that you enter your account information and passwords to each of your bank web site’s and their system automatically logs in and downloads all of your spending activity. The analysis is really very accurate and it automatically begins creating budgets for you. As well you enter your assets such as homes, cars and jewlery. The home’s you enter are automatically pulled up by appraised value from a web site called cyberhomes, and I found the accuracy to be good but the database to be missing a lot of homes. One of our homes for example pulled up with a $0.00 suggested value.

I’ve in the past played around with Yodlee.com and Yodlee has even made big gains in getting acceptance from the banking community to the point that several large national banks actually integrate Yodlee into their customer web portals, but the Yodlee interface is a bit clunky and poorly designed.

Mint.com on the other hand is a pleasure to use, the interface is intuitive and unlike Yodlee who’s primary model seems to be licensing their technology to banks, Mint.com makes money by saving you money. If they find that you have a credit card with a high APR they will recommend another credit card that offers you a better interest rate. Really a win/win situation… you save money on fees, they make money on the referral.

The only suggestion I have for Mint is really that they should add a similar auto-valuation for vehicles using a service such as edmunds or kbb.

I highly recommend it, http://www.mint.com

iCall was approved as a Pre developer some time ago and without a hands-on experience with the device, we really couldn’t make an educated assessment about the platform.

As an iPhone developer, we have purchased something along the lines of 25 iPhones in the past two years to always make sure that every developer and tester has one of each physical revisions of the devices.

Blackberry has been seductive with their push e-mail and their plans for a killer-app store, so we now own a handful of blackberry bold’s as well.

All told I have something like 45 phone numbers not including my various office numbers, home numbers and iCall phone numbers.

So for three weeks I devoted myself to using only one device per week. Prior to using the device I spent a day or so acquainting myself with the features and setup of each device, so each week with one device was a fair full week of use of combined business and home use.

I thought that since I’ve never written a technology review but read them constantly and had a unique experience that it would be worth sharing.

The setup:

• 1 Blackberry Bold on AT&T
• 1 iPhone 3G on AT&T
• 1 Palm Pre on Sprint

Choosing to build ideas is hard work and it is not very rewarding most of the time. When people who are skeptical of ideas take every opportunity to put you down it can be harder to continue with a vision without questioning ones own sanity.

Look at the Google guys as an over-discussed example, nobody in their right mind thought in the beginning that they would be as powerful as they are now, did they have a vision of where they would be today? I don’t know but I have to believe they did not pursue their goal of organizing the world’s information just for the good times.

In my best budweiser commercial announcer voice “Here’s to you mister entrepreneur, visionary, idea creating, game changing business man”

Honestly I had given up hope that Apple would ever approve us.

Check it out at http://www.icall.com/iphone/

“Smart” is not a degree. It does not matter if you went to the finest ivy league school on the planet, they can not make you “smart”, they can only make you “learned”.

As I have gotten older (tomorrow is my birthday, happy birthday me) what I have discovered is that nobody knows the answers. People make their best guesses and “smart” people tend to be right.

Take for example the Bernard Madoff scandle… thousands of “learned” people lost their entire fortunes through him. Millions of people lost significant money through him because they invested in funds of funds of funds of funds that had holdings with Madoff. The “smart” people said “something is not right here” and refused to invest.

If you thought you were smart and you got bamoozled by Madoff… I’m sorry but you were not as smart as you think you are.

If you define “smart” by IQ points then you might find it fascinating to know that on average people believe their IQ is much higher than 100. Unfortunately 100 is by definition the average. Everybody wants to be smart, few people are smart, and those people who are “smart” know it.

So back to what I know.

The crooks are generally the smart ones. There is more money in stealing than in making an honest living and your chances of getting caught are surprisingly small. Rob a bank, the odds are actually good that you will not get caught. Rob a train.. the odds were largely in your favor in the old west.

The world’s economy is set up predominantly so that wealthy people have the advantage, the economic vacuum favors them, but only if you follow the rules and laws that they influence. Sure there are the Google’s of the world, but they are rare.

From the Kennedy’s to the DuPonts, those who refuse to follow the laws of the economy that they are in are the ones who build great wealth for their bloodline. I just love this quote:

“Behind every great fortune there is a crime.”
Honore de Balzac
French realist novelist (1799 – 1850)

G’night.

I re-read it again for the first time tonight to my 6 year old daughter and I forgot exactly how incredibly accurately real and inspirational it is.

If you like me are a person who has lived their life off the beaten path, a person who has zigged when everybody else thought they should zag, a person who said “i can do it” when the obstacle seemed insurmountable and the rewards seemed so distant, then this is for you too.

Some people wait in that “waiting place” waiting for life to happen to them… Personally I believe that there is no such thing as impossible and there is no such time as right now to achieve your dreams because you never know when that breath you just took might be your last, when that girl you wanted to kiss might go away, or when that idea you had will already be passé.

Congratulations!
Today is your day.
You’re off to Great Places!
You’re off and away!
You have brains in your head.
You have feet in your shoes
You can steer yourself
any direction you choose.
You’re on your own. And you know what you know.
And YOU are the guy who’ll decide where to go.
You’ll look up and down streets. Look ‘em over with care.
About some you will say, “I don’t choose to go there.”
With your head full of brains and your shoes full of feet,
you’re too smart to go down any not-so-good street.
And you may not find any
you’ll want to go down.
In that case, of course,
you’ll head straight out of town.
It’s opener there
in the wide open air.
Out there things can happen
and frequently do
to people as brainy
and footsy as you.
And when things start to happen,
don’t worry. Don’t stew.
Just go right along.
You’ll start happening too.
OH!
THE PLACES YOU’LL GO!
You’ll be on your way up!
You’ll be seeing great sights!
You’ll join the high fliers
who soar to high heights.
You won’t lag behind, because you’ll have the speed.
You’ll pass the whole gang and you’ll soon take the lead.
Wherever you fly, you’ll be the best of the best.
Wherever you go, you will top all the rest.
Except when you don’t
Because, sometimes, you won’t.
I’m sorry to say so
but, sadly, it’s true
and hang-ups
can happen to you.
You can get all hung up
in a prickle-ly perch.
And your gang will fly on.
You’ll be left in a Lurch.
You’ll come down from the Lurch
with an unpleasant bump.
And the chances are, then,
that you’ll be in a Slump.
And when you’re in a Slump,
you’re not in for much fun.
Un-slumping yourself
is not easily done.
You will come to a place where the streets are not marked.
Some windows are lighted. But mostly they’re darked.
A place you could sprain both you elbow and chin!
Do you dare to stay out? Do you dare to go in?
How much can you lose? How much can you win?
And IF you go in, should you turn left or right…
or right-and-three-quarters? Or, maybe, not quite?
Or go around back and sneak in from behind?
Simple it’s not, I’m afraid you will find,
for a mind-maker-upper to make up his mind.
You can get so confused
that you’ll start in to race
down long wiggled roads at a break-necking pace
and grind on for miles across weirdish wild space,
headed, I fear, toward a most useless place.
The Waiting Place…
…for people just waiting.
Waiting for a train to go
or a bus to come, or a plane to go
or the mail to come, or the rain to go
or the phone to ring, or the snow to snow
or waiting around for a Yes or a No
or waiting for their hair to grow.
Everyone is just waiting.
Waiting for the fish to bite
or waiting for wind to fly a kite
or waiting around for Friday night
or waiting, perhaps, for their Uncle Jake
or a pot to boil, or a Better Break
or a sting of pearls, or a pair of pants
or a wig with curls, or Another Chance.
Everyone is just waiting.
NO!
That’s not for you!
Somehow you’ll escape
all that waiting and staying.
You’ll find the bright places
where Boom Bands are playing.
With banner flip-flapping,
once more you’ll ride high!
Ready for anything under the sky.
Ready because you’re that kind of a guy!
Oh, the places you’ll go! There is fun to be done!
There are points to be scored. There are games to be won.
And the magical things you can do with that ball
will make you the winning-est winner of all.
Fame! You’ll be famous as famous can be,
with the whole wide world watching you win on TV.
Except when they don’t.
Because, sometimes, they won’t.
I’m afraid that some times
you’ll play lonely games too.
Games you can’t win
’cause you’ll play against you.
All Alone!
Whether you like it or not,
Alone will be something
you’ll be quite a lot.
And when you’re alone, there’s a very good chance
you’ll meet things that scare you right out of your pants.
There are some, down the road between hither and yon,
that can scare you so much you won’t want to go on.
But on you will go
though the weather be foul
On you will go
though your enemies prowl
On you will go
though the Hakken-Kraks howl
Onward up many
a frightening creek,
though your arms may get sore
and your sneakers may leak.
On and on you will hike
and I know you’ll hike far
and face up to your problems
whatever they are.
You’ll get mixed up, of course,
as you already know.
You’ll get mixed up
with many strange birds as you go.
So be sure when you step.
Step with care and great tact
and remember that Life’s
a Great Balancing Act.
Just never forget to be dexterous and deft.
And never mix up your right foot with your left.
And will you succeed?
Yes! You will, indeed!
(98 and 3/4 percent guaranteed.)
KID, YOU’LL MOVE MOUNTAINS!
So…
be your name Buxbaum or Bixby or Bray
or Mordecai Ali Van Allen O’Shea,
you’re off to Great Places!
Today is your day!
Your mountain is waiting.
So…get on your way!

-Dr. Seuss, Oh The Places You’ll Go

He was a stubborn, loving man who lived his life the way he saw fit for better or for worse.

While I was not very close to him and only met him a handful of times, I can’t help but feel sad inside, not because he died, but sadness for the people who he left behind.

I’m sure my thoughts are not unique, but I feel that death is a natural part of the cycle of life. I will die. You will die. We all will die. It is the only guarantee in life, that it will end. So when a person dies I don’t feel terribly bad for them, but for the ones they left behind I feel terrible.

Ellis (my wife’s grandfather) had a wife of 50+ years. They spent most of their waking moments together after he retired, traveling in the RV, they watched television together, she made his meals, he took care of “manly” work… but they built an entire routine around eachother. From wake til sleep they were eachother’s most important person. They were partners in life.

The sadness I feel is for his wife Kay. She is now faced with one of the hardest parts of life (I imagine as an outside observer) which is finding a reason to live and finding a way to move on when the person closest to you disappears. I can only imagine her waking up in the morning and thinking “what do I do? he doesn’t need breakfast!” and I imagine a moment where she giggles at a late night talk show host, only to realize that she is alone in the room.

I guess the only purpose of this post was to put down “on paper” that I feel badly for people who lose somebody because change is hard, big change is really hard, and the older you get, the more change stinks.

Here’s to you Kay… and as Ellis would say “Man Alive!”

It is important to note that this particular configuration switch skip-grant-tables completely disables all authentication that MySQL does so you should ONLY run this if your database is local and skip-networking is also included in the config, and this is not being implemented in a multi-user environment. If you implement this in a multi-user environment you will be allowing all users of the system to have full administrative control of MySQL, if you use it in a networked environment you will be allowing everybody who can access the MySQL port to administer the MySQL server.

The tremendous upside of this option is that when you disable grant tables, you effectively eliminate several queries that run before EVERY SINGLE connection you make, it’s not that it makes the server faster, it just stops MySQL from using it’s own internal myisam queries… I would have assumed that MySQL had been coded to keep the grant data in some sort of linked list, in fact when I tested this it was purely accidental because I was performance tuning a new box and had a little time on my hands to disable and enable every single option in our my.cnf file just to discover how each option impacted the benchmark tool I was playing with.

The only performance caveat I will add, is that this really will only improve performance in environments where you are handling many quick "connect/query/disconnect" scenarios, meaning that if you are running something like wordpress where every page load connects, does 300 queries, and then disconnects, the performance gain would be negligible.

With those warnings/thoughts, here are my performance tests… reads and writes both performed approximately the same:

WIth standard grant tables in place and only one user (root) in the grant tables:

mysqlslap –user=root –auto-generate-sql –iterations=3 -S /var/lib/mysql/mysql.sock –auto-generate-sql-load-type=read -e myisam –concurrency=3000

Benchmark

        Running for engine myisam

        Average number of seconds to run all queries: 1.224 seconds

        Minimum number of seconds to run all queries: 1.168 seconds

        Maximum number of seconds to run all queries: 1.286 seconds

        Number of clients running queries: 3000

With skip-grant-tables enabled in my.cnf:

mysqlslap –user=root –auto-generate-sql –iterations=3 -S /var/lib/mysql/mysql.sock –auto-generate-sql-load-type=read -e myisam –concurrency=3000

Benchmark

        Running for engine myisam

        Average number of seconds to run all queries: 0.682 seconds

        Minimum number of seconds to run all queries: 0.668 seconds

        Maximum number of seconds to run all queries: 0.703 seconds

        Number of clients running queries: 3000

A bone to the dog is not charity. Charity is the bone shared with the dog, when you are just as hungry as the dog. 

-Jack London

Recently I have been engaged in working with a charitable organization… this organization provides a superior education to our children at a very reasonable cost but convincing people to give money has been an arduous task.

I think that many people feel that Charity is giving a few dollars to make themselves feel good, but real charity in my opinion is giving so much that you have to either sacrifice something or you have to worry and hope that more money will come your way in the future.

I’m often skeptical of the word “karma” but sometimes, just sometimes things come back on you two-fold and make you say “whoa”.

In the past 6 months the following events surrounding charity have happened to me:

1. I donated a sizable amount of money to a charity, put in time and served on a few comittees. At the same time I was purchasing a new house. The new house was substantially more expensive and left me carrying two mortgages… two VERY BIG mortgages.Literally the day that we closed on our new home purchase, a random family out of the blue contacted us about our existing house (our existing house was not on the market). They had been looking for a home for over a year, drove by our house, fell in love with it and absolutely “had to have it”.

   We paid no brokers and walked away from what could have been a burdensome financial obligation. An amazingly random turn of events. 3 weeks later we closed on our old home at 10% over what we had paid for it only a year prior. In this market, many people would call that a f**king miracle!
    

2. I agreed to donate $200,000  to the same charity… the following morning an extremely wealthy individual whom I had never met or corresponded with contacted me and offered me $300,000 for something that had cost me only a few dollars (a domain name) several years ago.Not only is the donation tax deductible, but the profits on the name are long term capital gains on intangible property which means we get to take advantage of the 15% tax rate on those profits.

   I am not foolish and have received many offers on this particular domain, so I took it. Truly an unbelievable turn of events.

I’ve learned that money is a lousy way of keeping score. 

-Anonymous

Til later…
-Arlo