November 22nd, 2009
math
Posted by roy at 03:55 AM on November 22, 2009 in Loft, Ramblings.
One of my many weird quirks is spreadsheeting of my car's gas mileage. I track every gas fill-up: the date, the mileage, and the total spent. I started keeping this data with the intention of one day figuring out the long-term value of owning a Mazda 3 versus getting a hybrid (I almost bought a Prius three years ago).
Some numbers from owning the Mazda3 for three years:
- Total miles: 16,462
- Total gas consumption: 533 gallons
- Average MPG: 30.85
- Average price per gallon: $3.02
- Total spent on gas: $1,611.58
If I had gotten a Prius, assuming a 46 MPG, I would have spent $1,081 on gas. That's a difference of about $600 spread over three years. With a price differential of ~$8K at purchase time (even with the $3K tax credit), I managed to save significant amounts of money by getting the Mazda3.
And as a general three year review of the Mazda3? I love the thing. Getting it in Carolina blue was a mistake; if I could go back, I'd also get the hatchback. My one complaint about the car is that the angle of the back window causes it to catch a LOT of dust - it gets dirty incredibly easy.
But besides that - it's a fun car to drive (pretty responsive), perfect size for the city, well sized for passengers, low maintenance (no problems thus far), and has managed to be able to transfer almost all the furniture I've bought without a problem! (This streak was unfortunately broken today when I mistakenly assumed the Benchwright Coffee Table from Pottery Barn came in pieces - it comes in one big piece).
(And now I finally have a coffee table!)
November 21st, 2009
things nobody cares about...
Posted by roy at 04:22 PM on November 21, 2009 in Finances.
... but I find interesting. I've been watching the AGU-CF-TRA love triangle and things are starting to heat up.
AGU, which is trying to take over CF, seems to be gaining success with their bid, with 62% of shares voting for the takeover. Meanwhile, yesterday, CF got three of its nominees to the TRA board (ousting the chairman) - a pretty good indication of what TRA shareholders want.
So TRA shareholders want to be bought out by CF (while the TRA board of directors does not), while CF shareholders want to be bought out by AGU (while the CF board of directors does not).
Interesting. (I pretty much exited my long position from before, leaving just a small amount in place to catch any additional upside - I'll initiative a long in another one of the players next week)
November 20th, 2009
people love the cloud
Posted by roy at 03:46 AM on November 20, 2009 in MindTouch.
Here's some coverage on MindTouch Cloud:
Good stuff. I can't believe it's Thanksgiving next weekend! Time flies...
November 19th, 2009
project: launched
Posted by roy at 07:00 AM on November 19, 2009 in MindTouch.
MindTouch Cloud finally launched. It's the project that's responsible for my first all-nighter in eons. It's also why I worked off-site for close to a week. It's launched, but unfortunately that's only the beginning.
I can tell that I'm not as green anymore: the joy of launching this site lasted about 10 seconds before I started compiling the work items for the next version. This project is continuous. It's tough to think that all the work I put into this site will mostly be thrown away over the coming few weeks, but I'm used to it now. Evolve, baby, evolve! I've gotten the ball rolling, now let's hand it off to people so they can make it more excellent!
I was going to write a bit more, but now I'm tired. So this will have to be a placeholder entry.
November 18th, 2009
the price of gold, in gold
Posted by roy at 07:56 AM on November 18, 2009 in Finances.
If you're like me, you're getting tired of hearing about the run-up in gold prices (and the dollar taking a beating as well). Take comfort in the stability (and never-changing-ness) this graph (courtesy of pk):
The Price of Gold (denominated in gold):
this is your server on slashdot
Posted by roy at 05:06 AM on November 18, 2009 in Ramblings.
NeoPages.net, one of my old projects, was a community/free hosting site (I was one of the earliest sites to promote the "participate in the forums to get free hosting" concept). I created it back during the Geocities/Xoom days before (a) private hosting was pricey and (b) the free hosting sites SUCKED. I was fortunate enough to be able to pay for hosting, but I knew others (who were just as talented as I was) couldn't afford it (or they were overseas and couldn't use a CC to buy hosting).
Anyways, I love personal home pages that take me back to those days - you don't see too many of them lately (they're all WordPress/Drupal sites).
I still host one of these sites, Skytopia.com, on the same server as Tabulas. A recent article posted on that site recently got picked up by Digg and Slashdot: Mandelbulb, the 3-D Mandelbrot. The math and details are a little over my head, but the thing has some pretty awesome 3-D models. Check it out.
So how does this relate back to me? This is your server's bandwidth usage when the site gets passed to Digg/Slashdot/etc:
I'm surprised my server survived the Slashdotting - I had to boost some Apache config values (Helloooo MaxClients), but it (mostly) stayed up without problems (it was a bit sluggish for a while, though).
I remember when I used to think I was hot shit cause my server would transfer more than 500GB a month. Now I'm at risk of breaking the 2 terabyte limit.
I wonder when I'll think 2TB is nothing.
Posted by roy at 04:27 AM on November 18, 2009 in Personal.
Why is it that I can have so much confidence in one aspect of my life, but so little in the other? It's like I'm two completely different people. I don't understand it.
November 14th, 2009
a saturday
Posted by roy at 07:07 PM on November 14, 2009 in Personal, Ramblings, MindTouch.
I've thoroughly enjoyed the last few days. At work, I'm driving forward a new initiative/project that should launch next week. It's a project of pretty big strategic importance, and one being led forward with some level of strategy and understanding of its purpose (quite unlike the launch of our other similar project - edited for clarification).
This project has largely been built outside of the engineering team and has really been the first one where we, as a company, stop trying to do everything ourselves. With the help of Pete, I'm working with two separate companies to help launch this project: the hosted company we partner very closely with is managing the technical infrastructure while a local development firm is helping me build out the shopping cart.
To get this project in on time, I've been working on-site at the latter company (their offices are two blocks from my loft - right in the middle of the Gaslamp).
I have to say, I've loved working out of this office. It really brings me me back to the earlier days of MindTouch, when things seemed to get done faster (but with the downside of less quality) - I remember quite fondly working with Pete during the second launch of Wik.is - we had a huge whiteboard of tasks, and we just trucked through them for launch. I love that feeling. When I left their offices yesterday, I was in such a good mood - a feeling that's been missing lately. I felt SO good that I actually ended up going out last night ... quite a change from my normal Fridays, where I'm so burned out I usually just stay in and watch a DVD and sleep.
So I'm back here today, working with these guys on the launch (and I don't feel resentful of working on a Saturday, although these guys may disagree... hehe). It's a beautiful day outside - the window is open, and there's a faint smell of charred wood (smells wonderful!) - every once in a while, you'll hear a horde of Eagles fans start a rowdy cheer at one of the local open-air bars. The only thing that would make this more perfect would be if we were making faster progress so I could go sailing today...
What makes me additionally happy is the professional services team at MindTouch really seems to be hitting the ground running as a self-contained unit with relatively little oversight from me. They kicked off two large projects this past week while wrapping up a huge one (I'm still running two more on the side). With just a few phone calls from my side on Friday, things kept moving forward. The best feeling for me is building a self-contained team and watching it succeed.
After this project launches, I'll be heading up discussions on Phase 2 - if this launch takes off, it really gives the product team a more defined roadmap to focus on - right now we're just floating around in many different directions. My attempts at a roadmap a few weeks back simply defined the boundaries of the float - it didn't actually give us a great direction.
And of course, there's some soul searching afterwards. Why is it that I enjoyed working out of these offices so much the past few days? Is it me? What needs to change? I need to find out...