October 2008 - Page 2 of 2

My Yearly Rate of Return

I just checked my 401(k) statement and it tells me that my yearly rate of return for the year to date is…

-22% (!)

It almost makes me wish I’d blown it all on household electronics.

All those forecasts – “We’ll use the conservative model of 7% growth per year” – aren’t looking all that promising at this point.

I’m taking the advice being sent to me by all those incredibly wealthy folks who run the various brokerages and I’m “staying the course”.

Am I just being foolish? Should I just stop investing in my future and join the majority?

Sometimes I wonder…

Your Cisco VPN drops and you can’t reconnect

I’m running Vista Enterprise on a T60 laptop and connect to my office using Cisco’s VPN client version 5.x .

Lately I’ve been having problems with my DSL where it drops for about 15 seconds and then springs back to life (they’re sending me yet another modem to address the issue…). This is, of course, enough of an outage to cause the VPN client to drop its connection like a hot potato.

Continue reading Your Cisco VPN drops and you can’t reconnect

Kill A Watt EZ P4460 – Main Computer Results

I had the computer set up and it was showing fairly steady power consumption of around 220 watts. Again a little less than I expected. Turning off my smaller monitor drops the consumption by 19 Watts (s/b 34 Watts), the larger monitor by about 26 Watts (s/b 55 Watts).

I’m going to disengage the power meter now since I want to reconfigure things a bit as I swap in my new modem/router combo from AT&T. I’m going to hook it up to some known consumer (a light bulb) to verify if the consumption readings are accurate.

Assuming accuracy, my main computer’s consumption after 273 hours (a little over 11 days) is 51 kilowatts or $5.42. The average cost is about 47 cents per day or $3.33 per week. The predicted annual cost is about $173 per year. A bit of an eye opener really. Little things have so much power to add up when paired with the inexorable march of time.

Register to vote, and then go do it.

This is a pretty good idea. The stars just bring up the issues and aren’t pushing their personal agendas beyond actually getting you off your sorry behind and getting you out to vote.

I don’t usually put much stock in what actors have to say on the issues as they’re often not terribly broadly educated and the ones with the clout to get heard seem to be rather cloistered and somewhat detached from the world that most of us live in. But this campaign hits the nail on the head.

Be sure to educate yourself on the issues that are important to you. Your individual vote may seem meaningless. But if you throw away this opportunity to express yourself, then you are just one more drone in a sea of drones who are willing to accept whatever government is thrust upon them. And there is simply too much of that going on.

Check out this video:

Then head over to this site here and register yourself to vote if you are not already registered.

For my county the deadline is by October 6 so there are still 2 more days left. Hopefully it’s not too late for you.

Gravatars

In case you’re wondering what all those little silhouette icons are about, they are placeholders for folks with no avatar.

An avatar is a graphical representation you provide to give others some kind of insight into who you are. In this largely anonymous “interworld” it can provide a way to let folks know that you’re not (or maybe you are) overly serious. Or maybe you’re a cat lover… whatever you want to express.

This site supports a particular type of avatar called a gravatar. A gravatar is a globally recognized avatar. You can go to their site and register one or a few of your email addresses (they don’t have to be your primary address, just one that you’d provide to blogs and forums you frequent) and then put up your avatar image there.

Any blog or forum that supports gravatars, once you’ve provided one of your email addresses, will then show the relevant avatar sourced from the gravatar site.

You can even specify “G” through “X” so that you can have different images on differently oriented sites. My site supports up to an “R” rating.

iGolf neo – My latest gadget for Golf

In a word – Great!

The iGolf neo is a compact GPS unit you can use while golfing to let you know how far away you are from the front, back and center of the green. The maps are downloaded from their website to which you subscribe for a modest fee. Once you’ve downloaded a map it’s yours, so if you don’t get around much you may not need to renew your subscription.

You can also map your own courses if you choose.

This is an image showing all the stuff that comes out of the box when you purchase an iGolf neo.

The little booklet is actually pretty useful. It answered nearly every question I had about the gadget as I was walking myself through its features.

I already had some experience with this little gadget, my friend David D. picked one up earlier this year and was finding it very useful. The accuracy of my unit matched his in being within about a yard or two of the markers in the tee box.

I don’t have too much trouble judging distance when I’m playing the short part of my game, maybe within about 90 yards. But that oddball area between about 120 to 160 yards I seem to have trouble gauging and find the neo a valuable aid. I’m pretty consistent with which clubs hit which distances. It’s guessing the distance that was somewhat of an achilles heel.

Also handy is the neo’s shot ability. When at the tee I just click the “Shot” button twice and, when I am at the ball for my next hit I can see how many yards I was actually able to achieve. Great for refining my opinion of how far I hit which club.

It’s supposed to last about 16 hours on a charge and uses the same technology as my bluetooth puck GPS which seems to never run out of steam so I anticipate never running out of power as long as I charge it at least once every couple of games.

Woken Furies by Richard K. Morgan

I originally heard about “Woken Furies” on a “Tech Nation” podcast interview with author Richard K. Morgan. The universe he described sounded intriguing so I picked up the book last December and have been slowly reading it ever since. I don’t tend to rush through books I’m enjoying as I like them to last as long as possible.

I originally did not realize that this was the third in a series or I probably would have gone and picked the others up first so that I could grow with the story. As it turned out the book does a very good job of standing on its own.

I won’t bother to summarize the plot here, others have done a much more thorough job on Amazon and elsewhere than I could hope to, what I am expressing rather are my impressions of the book.

It’s relatively and graphically violent in portions, which is fitting given the history of the pro-(an?)tagonist. In real life he would not really be someone you’d want to meet… ever. But it is interesting to spend the book inside his head as he recalls past experiences that involve quelling far-flung planetary uprisings with a ruthlessness reserved for those who are trained to kill and are very good at it.

Of greatest interest to me is the culture of a civilization where death is a rarity. By choice or by accident you can “resleeve” and have a brand new body to use to carry on your existence and that body can be tailored to your personal or business needs. Starting with that premise, how do casual folks deal with relationships and their attitudes toward the everyday travails of life?
Mutually agreeable divorce or separation is much more to be expected as it is possible for centuries to pass across which your growth as a person may be expected to diverge from that significant other with whom you shared so much so long ago.

I found this a satisfying read and have added the preceding books to my Amazon wish list and anticipate that they will be equally satisfying.