Thoughts »

16 Feb 2009 | 3 Comments
Money And The Game

After years of focusing on nano-economics (too small to call it micro) of my little family, I went on a pleasant trip down the macro-economics lane today. At the end of it I realized that I must have slept through the undergraduate class on Federal Reserve monetizing the nation’s debt because I was “surprised” to see almost a trillion dollars of Treasury obligations on the asset side of the Fed’s balance sheet…

Lessons »

13 Feb 2009 | 4 Comments
The Objective Of The Game

“Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts.” ~ Albert Einstein

If you have something important to convey, just say Einstein said it or it’s one of Franklin’s quotes. I don’t know for sure who said the above but it made sense to me especially given this little experience yesterday.

My six-year-old knows how to play chess and recently has started making me think harder…

Words »

12 Feb 2009 | 5 Comments
The House I Bought

I bought a house for $150,000 eight years ago and had a loan of $120,000. The value of my house increased to $350,000. I took advantage of the situation and refinanced, being a conservative person, only borrowing $280,000 at a favorable 5.5% rate fixed for 30 years paying $1,600 per month for the mortgage and another $400 per month for real estate taxes and insurance…

Observations »

11 Feb 2009 | Please Comment
First Do No Harm

U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner yesterday unveiled thoughts to improve the US economic situation. The market gave its mark to his appearances but I wanted to share a couple of my thoughts from software development perspective.

No significant software is ever created overnight. The first release takes an enormous amount of effort….

Thoughts »

7 Feb 2009 | 10 Comments
Complex And Inefficient Systems

In discussion with a colleague, I mentioned that Wordpress.org was able to provide very nice functionality with excellent usability through php, mySQL, and Apache. She said these were simpler technologies not particularly suitable for today’s complex corporate environment where more complete frameworks are required to satisfy all of the business requirements. I challenged her by saying that some of the blogs get millions of daily hits with this simple architecture while some corporate systems stall after a few hundred users. She told me that the data model in a blog is much simpler than in any corporate system. I know…