September 6th, 2007 Yvo
By no means am I financial analyst or economist, the only background I have is setting new records in fake stocks in my economics class when I was in high school (everyone started out with 75,000 in “fake money” and I ended the quarter with over 2 million in cash). I always find it funny when I see stories regarding the slight decline of Apple stock like this, this or this story. Yesterday Steve decided to cut $200 off of the 2 month old iPhone. Nothing very typical regarding cell phones (The Moto RAZR was introduced at $400, and you can now get buy one get one free offer on a much later and less buggier revision), Apple users got upset (ugh… some people just don’t understand that there is always this type of risk when you buy technology) and the stock dipped.
I’d rather own Apple stock then say… Dell stock… Here is a nice 5 yr comparison with Apple’s stock splitting once in Feb 05 and Dell’s stock being splitless the entire time:
I think yesterday’s dip and today’s dip can partially be explained by the iPhone cut but I also think its the rich people getting richer by selling at a high point and re-entering the market (buying back) at a lower point 24-48 hours later.
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July 31st, 2007 Yvo
I jumped on the iPhone band wagon thanks to Cam. Apple gave her a free iPhone and she gave it to me with the promise that I’ll cover some of her laptop that she is planning to buy in the next 6 months. I think thats a fair trade.
So now I’m looking forward (sarcasm) to two giant bills, one from Sprint for cancelling and another from Cing… err at&t for joining.
The phone itself is great, yet lacks a few features that I hope they will add over the next few months. I mean if they are trying to combine three devices into one, at least do a job… right? The phone app is remarkably stable, but Safari and the iPod app… they need some tweakin’.
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June 13th, 2007 Yvo
The last few weeks have really been, in the short and long term, life altering. A lot has happened in my personal life that it really makes you take a few steps back and reanalyze everything.
1. Last month I had chest pains for a good week. This resulted me into going to the doctor on a Friday who then had me see a cardiologist immediately. While they don’t know exactly what is going on, what I do know is that I have a good sized hole in my heart and that my right chamber (which is usually 20-30% smaller then your left chamber) is as large as my left chamber. I may have some permanent damage as stress at this point causes my pains to immediately return.
2. Cam and I broke up this past Saturday, we mutually parted ways. She packed some of her things that night, left the key she had on the kitchen counter and left. On Sunday I packed up all her things and a lot of things we purchased together. On Monday she text messaged me while I was at a restaurant with colleagues and we agreed that she would come on Thursday at 4pm to pick up the boxes and various items around the boxes. Apparently this wasn’t acceptable. I came home on Monday night around 10:30 to find my condo ransacked. She took almost every single item we purchased together with the exception of the bed, dinner table and bed; basically items too big to move. However she also took things that were mine. On top of that she conveniently stopped communicating. So I am now in the process of attempting to get my things back. Today I hired an attorney and things look like they might be okay in the long run.
3. Due to number 2, the trip to Holland has been altered a little. However I am still going next week Friday and I am coming back sometime in July. I’ll be sure to have plenty of fun.
What I did notice is that throughout all this I have had a wonderful support system. Not only have my parents and basically my immediate family been there but people from Cam’s work and my work have completely been there for me. It feels good to know that people are there for you when things like this happened. The general consensus is that what Cam did on Monday night is unacceptable. Hopefully she is smart enough to come around and avoid litigation but at this point it seems she wants exactly that.
So *thats* what has been going on lately. No fun and games at all.
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May 12th, 2007 Yvo
Yup! Starting Jan 08 talking on your cell without a hands free device becomes a big no no in WA and in July 08 texting joins the ban. Hopefully it’ll catch on as fast as click it or ticket, but I guess we will all have to wait and see.
Source: http://www.komotv.com/news/7470007.html
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April 30th, 2007 Yvo
On digg.com:
Business 2.0 Magazine identifies popular job categories in which wages are growing the fastest.
read more | digg story
Interesting, I have no idea where they got $49,100 for Technical Support Specialist (nice word for TSR, just like if you are unemployed you are an independent consultant). When I was going through the TSR circuit about a year ago since I graduated high school I didn’t even come close to that number (more like 30 - 40% below). We either have too many TSR positions in the area or there is a general practice of paying the manager 2-3x the wage of a TSR (not that they deserve it). You’d wonder if the turn around on that position would lower if they actually got paid $49,100.
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April 20th, 2007 Yvo
Using Zabbix now since beginning of October 2006 . I get quite a few hits from Google off of it including from places that raise my curiosity. In any case, I added 20 new machines and suddenly the machine got boggled down due to the amount of IO writes being made to the MySQL database. After the jump (Click on Continue Reading) are the settings that I came up with and now my loads are back to the 1.00 - 1.10 range and the queue is always empty.
Hopefully sometime in the future I’ll post some other tweaks I made, especially regarding the monitoring of processes. I don’t appreciate getting false positives thus I’ve tweaked a number of default settings in order to bring this number down to maybe a handful a month.
Read the rest of this entry »
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April 16th, 2007 Yvo
in Holland while I am there in June - July will be an Opel Astra. Kind of reminds me of the Honda Fit & Nissan Versa:
Just replace the german white plates with dutch yellow plates (plus different color) and thats the car I’ll be driving.
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April 13th, 2007 Yvo
I’m not the only that noticed, others at my work have noticed as well… traffic this week has been very decent. Ok so its not light like when you travel at 2am in the morning, however it feels like Sunday afternoon traffic. The roads are full but its moving at 50 - 60 mph. No need for shortcuts this week along Lake Washington Blvd nor the need to lose more hair over frustration. I think its because A. Half the schools are out at Spring Break and B. Because of A, soccer moms are sipping their tropical drinks along beaches in Mexico or Hawaii instead of driving like unaware fools in their giant cars.
Too bad it’ll all go back to normal on Monday April 16th. I know of at least 3 “soccer” moms coming back from Hawaii and I am sure others know some as well.
Yvo
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April 3rd, 2007 Yvo
Well what came as a shock to me yesterday, EMI (one of the big record labels) yesterday announced, with Apple’s CEO Steve Jobs, that Apple’s iTunes Store will be the first store in May of this year to sell songs and albums without DRM (thus allowing playback on MP3 player that can play an unsecured AAC file) and at double the quality (256kbps instead of 128kbps). All for 30 cents more. $0.99 for DRM, 128kbit music or $1.29 for DRM-less, 256kbps music. Oh and albums ($9.99) by EMI will remain the same price but will get these features as well. That is far cheaper then a CD purchased in the store. Lets not forget that a future upgrade to iTunes will allow those that have purchased EMI music in the past to upgrade their music for 30 cents a song.
I applaud EMI for taking this step. It definitely is a step in the right direction. Hopefully the consumer market will see this as well and soon another big player will take this step.
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March 27th, 2007 Yvo
Found on digg.com:
One of the largest and certainly most popular DSL providers in the United States has been acquired by Best Buy, according to the two companies. The plan is to run the company as a subsidiary, and promote its business services.
read more | digg story
Wow, what a scary thought. BB buys Speakeasy. I’m not terribly surprised. When I worked there about 2 years ago the business was suffering. They had just moved (consolidate properties), their wimax experiment was failing and their prices were stagnant. Sometimes premium isn’t better. I give it another 2 years before the tech supported will be outsourced to either Canada or India. Well there goes the neighborhood….
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