fresh by ~thelittlegoldfish

This was another draft that sat in my book waiting for today.

In many cases, I find it very helpful to start fresh from a clean slate. My mother’s strict rules of neatness and cleanliness, or my father’s requirements for order in everything, or some genetic switch someplace on either or both sides of the family tree have resulted in what my wife calls a clear case of OCD. As expected, I am convinced that this need for order is not a disorder (she thought “auditory” as she finished reading that). Below are some examples where I have found this concept very helpful.

In most construction projects, the results are usually dramatically improved when the existing space is demolished, cleared and cleaned before the “new” work begins. But the danger of “sinchyas” is always introduced in these cases. “Sinchya gonna take down the drywall, why don’t you redo the plumbing behind it.” “Sinchya gonna redo the plumbing, get the electrical redone, too.” Assuming scope can be controlled, starting a project from a cleaner slate yields better results. However, in construction there’s also the daily “clean slate.” I cannot end a day without cleaning up the project area, putting everything in its place so that the next morning I can start from a clean slate. With this method, daily progress is very visible and exciting. Once the work completes, the contrast of before and after is part of the return for the hard work.

I have found starting from a clean sheet also very helpful in dealing with markets. Since I am not running a mutual fund, there is no reason why I cannot sell everything and force myself to buy back after a day, or a week, or a month only what makes sense. This cold shower method is the best acid test that I have found for testing my conviction of owning in the first place. Commissions, possible tax implications, possibility of having to buy at a higher price, and a few other issues do not allow this test to be free of charge. However, the alternative of holding possible losers can be even more costly. I have also found this to be a good way to deal with periods of significant uncertainty. Since I’m in no competition with the market, I tend to buy when I am ahead and sell when I am behind. These are two methods of deciding when to sell (sell all, and sell when lagging).

Even in relationships starting from a clean page is sometimes very helpful and enjoyable. Just as Mother Nature has its mechanisms for new starts, so do we. With every new year, new day and new life, we are given new energy, new hope, and new challenges.

The Beginning Of The End... by =WiciaQ

I collect different topics to mention here but since time has been limited lately, there are quite a few drafts. This was one but I rewrote it because  of something that happened yesterday.

I made a comment about the easy debt/credit cycle possibly ending to which someone responded with a long letter. The first two lines in it were “I’m appealing to you to use whatever influence you might have to take the first step in righting a great wrong. I know you’re an obscure member of an otherwise brilliant List, but seeing that your contributions are negligible, I figured you wouldn’t be otherwise occupied in penning some easily forgettable screed…”

Two thoughts came to mind upon reading that letter:

1. The words of a great friend Levon who died a few years ago “Ցեխի մեջ քար նետես, աչքիդ կթռնի: (If you throw a stone into mud, it might splatter on your face.)”
2. The words of Benjamin Franklin in his autobiography “If you wish information  and improvement from the knowledge of others,  and yet at the same time express yourself as firmly fixed in your present opinions, modest, sensible men, who do not love disputation, will probably leave you undisturbed in the possession of your error.“

The letter was ended with “Please leave me alone,” which I have done by unsubscribing. I am left with the tranquil feeling of moving on to more important matters.

An Old Friend

It feels like a century since my last update. Today was a very special graduation day for me and must be celebrated by a line in the proverbial sand. With over two dozen bids, my 4×8 trailer was sold for $100 to the next slave of manual labor who will certainly get good value for his investment in cash terms but not in hours wasted transporting worthless stuff from one location to another. For over a decade, the temptation and the need to save a few dollars has been too great and the tool too close for me to be able to resist sinking time into transporting the two yards of mulch or the two shelves for the kids’ toys. Now that is all history despite my beautiful wife’s and my wise brother’s sage words that I shall regret this painful decision. Life is full of risks. This is one risk the ultra-careful side of me is ready to accept right now. Who knows… maybe I will look back in ten years with eyes full of tears… not from nostalgic memories of the great past but from realization of all the money wasted on transportation. Let’s see how it goes but for now it feels great.

A time comes when even the timeless time feels like it’s running out of precious time.

The process of learning from others is my “secret” method of learning life’s lessons. We have all heard that we learn through our mistakes, or failure is good. I do not subscribe to this as the price paid for making our mistakes and failures can be very high. I make mistakes all the time and learn from those but the lessons learned elsewhere help me make fewer mistakes and minimize their impact. Learning as much as possible from others’ mistakes and failures is a more profitable method especially since there are plenty of examples to learn from all around us. This process, however, is not easy and requires brutal honesty with ourselves along with ability to connect, understand and learn from everyone around us. On learning, this post from Nigel Davies should not be missed. Also on learning, this post from Jeff Watson drills on street smarts vs. book smarts. This letter from Victor Niederhoffer should be read by all children from 0 to 100 years old.

Maroon Bells by *Latefor

I made a comment there about each life representing a bell shaped curve of some sort. While we represent a statistic in various frequency distributions that also look like bell curves, there I was talking about our individual life’s highs and lows by any measure (health, wealth, knowledge, contributions, physical ability, suffering, etc.) also looking like bells along the time dimension. These are not perfectly balanced bells and at any point in time, there’s someone who’s just starting and another who’s at the top of the curve. Learning from those who have already made the mistakes or failed along their bell path when we become interested in the subject is an exciting experience but requires sometimes temporarily ignoring other characteristics and disabling some of our screens. Obviously, we must be careful to only soak in the content that we seek and not the rest present in the overwhelming composite called the human nature.

Along the same lines, I could not get away from the TV during this interview with Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot about the “third chapter” in life. I’m only in my second chapter but can already sense the significant changes in patience and perspective. While I am in no rush to reach the third chapter, it is good to know of at least one way to deal with the changes in the bells.

A Trip to Karabakh certainly didn’t help. This Georgian movie is terrible (to put it mildly). Old neighbor’s usage of the Armenian struggle as a vehicle for delivering some muddled messages about its own struggle is a repeat of the same old, showcasing its true character. This reminded me yet again how important it is for Armenians in the diaspora to remain united. For example, having two churches in America and in some countries is absolutely not helpful! I hope there is someone in the world who can give me at least one theological argument or one good reason why the two churches should remain separate. May this song remind all Armenians who stumble upon my insignificant corner on the Internet about all that which we share.

Armenians in Armenia will have no issues partaking in a common culture but there are many issues they cannot raise because of the political mess inherited from being situated in that restless corner of the world for thousands of years. But I know that each family and every individual deep down looks upon an extended family member, a friend in the diaspora as a source of support when all else fails.

I implemented a few systems in the past and although my work was done in months, the result of my work has remained in use for many years. In some cases, the system manager has spent the last decade working with the result of what I created in months. If we translate that time into a new unit called “lifetime” (1 lifetime = 80 years), s/he has spent 1/8th lifetime with something I created in 0.00625 lifetime. To parallel this, a senator can make enough changes in 0.025 lifetime to affect 4 lifetime or more. Multiply that by the number of people affected and you have the true impact of a change. Time is the key ingredient that every life shares on this earth.

father time by AJ Frena

While driving around a few days ago, an old colonial house caught my eye. I think it was built sometime in the mid-19th century. How many children has that house seen? How many happy and unhappy couples have lived in it? I wonder if hundred eighty years from now someone will similarly wonder what we must have gone through when building our house. They would have no idea how we thought through every last detail. They would have discussions about our intentions. What if the third owner abused this house and the fourth owner added a new room and got an electrician to rewire the whole house. Would the fifth owner even be able to see beyond the two prior owners? Would the electrician consider the impact of his work on generations and families? Would anything remain from our original design? Would they question our intentions? Would they be slaves to the house or would they make the house a slave to them? Sometimes I see America as that house from years gone by.

A 30-year mortgage is paid off in 37.5% of 1 lifetime. First 25% of 1 lifetime is spent in early basic education. 33% of 1 lifetime is spent sleeping. These affected me much less when I thought lifetime was an eternity. We often hear that what we are about to decide depends on our time horizon. Or we hear that we have plenty of time to get to something. Or we have warranties or guarantees for life (whose life?). Any time a comment is made about time, I convert it into this new unit called lifetime and get a different perspective of the issue.

On the opposite end of a lifetime, we find seconds (milliseconds, microseconds…). Our brains can detect delays of microseconds to localize sound in space (triangulate the location of the sound based on the distance between our two ears). It takes little time for us to respond to someone else. Although the brain can process at such amazing speeds, that does not mean we always avoid making mistakes of a lifetime in a split second? Why is it sometimes difficult for us to insert a time lag between stimulus and response when needed and respond immediately in situations requiring quick action? It takes a second to ruin trust built over a lifetime (consider the recent financial criminal’s split second decisions converted to lifetime impact on victims). On the scale of eternity (or from God’s perspective) 1 lifetime is only a microsecond but that we cannot understand. Second by second, we must fill up our lifetime with the choices we make.

There is a lot to talk about when it comes to time but one more point for now is reference to it in analysis. How long is a century and can we really understand what it represents if we haven’t experienced it? Or when we hear that something has a particular attribute (“Joe is a nice guy.”, “Toyota makes good cars.”, “Lehman is a solid company.”), do we remember the time dimension? How long has this been the case? How has the definition of the attribute changed over time? Based on these changes over time, is the initial statement still valid? It was fascinating to hear all kinds of analysis and predictions flying around about presidential elections not too long ago based on past elections. It is also funny to hear all kinds of predictions about the current recession, the prices of gold, and the status of the dollar as a reserve currency.

Time is that constant companion of ours that either gets no attention or the wrong attention. Perhaps our perspective, our decisions and, as a result, our lives would improve from a simple recognition of the place of everything along that critical time dimension. I’ll finish with a quote from Ecclesiastes 3:

“1 There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven: 2 a time to be born and a time to die, a time to plant and a time to uproot, 3 a time to kill and a time to heal, a time to tear down and a time to build, 4 a time to weep and a time to laugh, a time to mourn and a time to dance, 5 a time to scatter stones and a time to gather them, a time to embrace and a time to refrain, 6 a time to search and a time to give up, a time to keep and a time to throw away, 7 a time to tear and a time to mend, a time to be silent and a time to speak, 8 a time to love and a time to hate, a time for war and a time for peace. “

Rocky Trail by ~Meemster1973

This site seems to have become yet another barometer. There are times when I want to write every minute and everything, and then there are times when I find myself struggling to write a single word. In the latter case, I find comfort in the best practices of lawn maintenance which suggest to cut the grass according to growth rate NOT calendar. In some blogs, people seem to force themselves to write daily (in some cases multiple times per day). While this might be a good way to practice self-discipline and might result in higher numbers of readers (to advertise to), that is not possible in my case given the purpose of this site and the rest of what constitutes my life. I recognize that I probably lose many readers along the way who like daily updates. Despite the title here, I am unable to come up with something worth sharing every day. I knew this when I started but thought that years later with thousands of past entries the frequency would be less relevant. I hope the content will be of some interest and some value to a couple people.

Interestingly, I get a bunch of search hits every day to Newton’s Laws In Everyday Life and hundreds of hits to Understanding Poetry: The Final Frontier. Who would have thought… George Soros is right on the money when he says “First, financial markets do not reflect prevailing conditions accurately; they provide a picture that is always biased or distorted in one way or another. Second, the distorted views held by market participants and expressed in market prices can, under certain circumstances, affect the so-called fundamentals that market prices are supposed to reflect.” To paraphrase, my point  is “blog statistics do not reflect the value of the work accurately; they provide a picture that is always biased or distorted in one way or another but these distorted views held by the author(s) and expressed in the writing, can affect the content that the statistics are supposed to reflect.” I consciously try to avoid falling into this trap because my goal here is not to sell advertising, or to sell myself, or to create works of art (God never gave me that unique gift). I just want to share my journey and in the process leave a worthy trail; however, I want the journey to matter even if the trail proves to be of little value.

Every issue, every law, and every viewpoint represents a spectrum where our opinions, options, and choices vary infinitely within a continuum. Our position on the subject is where we find ourselves on the spectrum at any given time. Issues can also be seen as Euclidean vectors with their lengths and directions. Some issues have major impacts on many lives. Others are against the overall direction of the society but have more limited impact. At any particular time, we find ourselves in that one spot in the multi-dimensional universe of issues where all these vectors intersect with the point of intersection being our position on the subjects.

How I have changed...

Why are these issues so polarizing? As I was staring at my computer screen, the answer was staring right back at me.

“Hi! You! Hello… Yes you! I’m talking to you! You’re very fortunate, did you know that? Why? Are you joking? You have choices. What choices? Let’s see… where do I start… Let me tell you about my life. I sit here breathing dust waiting, waiting… waiting for your next command. But you know I can’t just do nothing. I can’t just sit like you sometimes gazing at the horizon. I have to work. When I am awake I cannot be idle. That’s how I’m built. Sometimes you look at me all day long and don’t even notice me. You see past me into the bits and bytes I bring to you from my extended family. Sometimes you come over, stare at me and start laughing. Are you laughing at me? Oh forget it… Who am I anyway? You could care less about me. But maybe not… You seem to like when I do tricks like playing music or showing movies but do you realize how empty I feel inside? All I can do is turn switches on and off… Oh how much I wish I could understand all those bits and bytes I deliver to you… If I could only laugh just once … with you. I only have one choice ON or OFF… I know I’m good at that. In a single blink of your eyes, I can switch millions of times… Blink… Yes don’t forget, blink a few times while you stare at me…”

We are very fortunate to live in times when not only we can have choices and options but we can actually express our positions and opinions. The problem is that we forget that others also represent a bunch of arrows intersecting at a unique spot in the universe at any given time. Many of us (myself included) try to force, persuade, or convince them that not only is our intersection the best spot in the universe but it is where they should also strive to be. If we could just accept their place in the universe the same way we accept where each star shows up on the sky…

Center of V838 Monocerotis Light Echo

Speaking of the sky, when I was little, we would sometimes lay on our backs on the warm asphalt on a cool summer night at the observatory looking at the starts. We had billion of stars in Armenia and only a few here in Massachusetts. In those days we would find all of the constellations and even make up our own. One day I saw a picture of the stars from a different point in the galaxy. None of the constellations were there even though it had a lot of the same stars. The arrows, their sizes and their directions are similar to the stars and appear a certain way only from where we stand. That happens to be our distorted view of the stars.

fairytale house by ~Siska92

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. I was conservative and spent the $135,000 of home equity that I took out on improvement to my home (new kitchen, new bathrooms, hardwood floors, finished basement, and a small swimming pool for the little ones). This caused my tax bill to increase by $200 per month due to higher assessments. After a few years, the real estate market crashed and my house is unfortunately now only worth $180,000. I still owe $270,000 and have to pay $2,200 per month to live in “my” house. My choices are a) continue paying the high monthly payment with a giant negative balance sheet or b) rent a place for $1,200 per month, let the bank have the house and start from a clean slate.

I wish the situation was as nice as the above description. Here are a few additional realities:

• All my neighbors got foreclosed and my whole neighborhood has been downgraded whereas before I thought I lived in a decent part of town.
• My town is unable to meet budget demands and has to increase taxes to pay its bills.
• I actually spent the money on Made in China products worth $0 today and a GM vehicle that’s lost a lot of its value instead of home improvements.
• My bank let me borrow up to 100% of equity so I borrowed the full $350,000.
• The loan I got had a variable interest rate and my payments are more than $2,200.
• The $30,000 stock portfolio cushion that I had is now only worth $15,000.
• I am about to lose my job even though I work hard. They say that the company has to cut back because of the economy.
• I also had a credit card balance of $38,000 and student loans of $24,000.
• Even though my wife really loves to shop, we just cannot afford to buy anything any more.
• I had never signed any contracts before buying this house, let alone the sixty thousand mortgage documents they made me sign at the closings.
• I’ve called the bank every month for the last six months asking for help or a way to get me out of this pickle.

What are my choices? I think I better let the bank have the keys, declare bankruptcy if I have to, move out into the $1,200 a month apartment and hope I can find another job so I can pay the rent before the economy gets any worse. How is any of this bull shit they talk about on TV going to help me this month? I voted for Obama to make a change but so far I see more of the same. There is little they can do to make me stay in this house given the reality I am facing.

Daybreak in Corinth by *carlzon

1 Corinthians 13 is one of my favorite chapters in the Bible. A few recent thoughts made me think of it again.

“11 When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me.” ~ 1 Corinthians 13

I have to admit that I was getting discouraged by the many blogs where content is a waste of the energy required to create, store and transmit it (I want to make this one of the exceptions). Fortunately, after a few months of surveying the landscape, it seems there’s a bell curve of some sort in the blogosphere as well. As I read the thoughts of people smarter than myself, I recognized my own writings as childish. Two options emerge: 1) stop writing, get off the podium, learn some more, expect that the kids will discover their own and care less about what I write, or 2) continue thinking, learning, writing, and improving. After reading The importance of stupidity in scientific research mentioned by Steve Ellison’s recent post, I feel that it’s probably important to continue this project understanding the depth of my own ignorance. How else would the second sentence in the verse above be possible?

Along similar lines, I am currently involved in a project where the progress is made in almost an identical path as in a past project which was ultimately unsuccessful. It is sometimes frustrating to have to witness people not being interested in warnings because they have not had the same experiences themselves. This is similar to a child who ignores a parent’s word and has to experience himself to learn. I find myself in the position of the parent in this case, but also in the position of the child in other cases where I’m unwilling to take the words of others for granted (here’s an example).

In closing, I need to mention that the verse below from the same chapter is very high up in my mind but also is one of the reasons for wanting to share and hear others.

“1 If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. 3 If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing.”