Author: Isaac

Categories
free market odds and ends

Charity?

Just did my 24th loan through Kiva. I have been putting in $25 a month since September of 2009 and now things are starting to really roll. By my estimates, I have put in $450 into Kiva but have made $600 worth of loans. As people pay me back, I channel that money back into more loans. The last two months have been great, when I do my usual $25 contribution there is already over $25 in my account. Now I’m doing 2 loans a month even though I’m still putting in the same amount as I always have.So far there has been exactly 0 defaults. This is how things are supposed to work. People get infusions of capital making them more productive. They pay that money back and then that same money can go to someone else. Yes, they pay interest on the loan (not to me BTW, I only get back what I put in) but that assures that the money is being put to productive uses.

Most people see this as a great charity. I can’t help but notice that it looks like good old fashioned loans to improve capital and productivity. In other words, this looks exactly the way things would be absent market distortions. In an ideal world I would receive some of that interest instead of only getting the warm glow of helping someone out. That’s really the only thing separating what Kiva does from good old-fashioned capitalism.

One day I might need to withdraw the money I’ve put into Kiva. I have that option. I’m not getting any interest on putting my money aside, and I run the risk of not getting some of it back. Additionally, if I do want to withdraw the money, I might have to wait until it gets paid back to me before withdrawing. In general though, I feel good about what Im doing with this money and with a diversified enough portfolio I know that I can get most of it back eventually. Why aren’t more people doing this?

Categories
MS

Taking the bad with the good

I’ve now done a month on Ampyra, my newest medicine. It is supposed to make me stronger and allow me to walk better. I wasn’t so sure at first. I got pretty dizzy when it kicked in, and it took me a while to remember to take the damn things. But then towards the end of the month, an interesting thing happened, it started to work the way it was supposed to! My legs feel noticeably stronger now. I can last most of the day at work without feeling like I’m going to fall over. It isn’t until the end of the day that I start feeling fatigue. I’ve had several days where I almost (almost mind you) feel normal! I felt good enough that I actually shoveled out my own parking space after our last snowfall. Granted, i thought I had killed myself afterwards, but with  little rest I was able to go to work and not have any real problems. Now that’s what I call progress!

But it’s never all that simple of course. The day before yesterday I got my Tysabri infusion and felt a little fatigued. Didn’t think much about it. I got up the next day a little tired but feeling good. Took my Ampyra and went to work. I felt pretty normal until the Ampyra kicked in. Wooosh. Suddenly, everything was unfocused. Not out of focus, but like everything in my field of vision was as significant as the stuff in the corner of my eye. I couldn’t focus or concentrate. I felt like I was dreaming of being at work. I lasted an hour, maybe an hour and a half, then went home. Everything was fine later in the day but there was no way of telling when that was going to be at work.

I had a similar feeling the last time I took this the day after my infusion, but chalked it up to the cold that I came down with and proceeded to kick my tail. If two incidents aren’t a pattern, it’s still enough to take precautions over. From now on, I’m going to have the day after my infusion off too…

So that was a bit of a bummer, but know what? I’ll take that trade off in exchange for the positive effects I get through the rest of the month. Besides, who knows? Maybe this is just one more thing that my body has to get used to. It got used to the usual dosing over the first month, maybe it takes a little while for it to get used to the combination too. So a minor hiccup, but progress is being made! Not that I really want to continue shoveling snow…

Categories
technology

A new program, a new project

I constructed my website, what, 5 years ago? I used Rapidweaver to make it. I was happy enough with it, it did what I thought I needed to. To be frank, it was also the extent of what I could make without a much greater investment in time.

Well, wouldn’t you know it, Rapidweaver is now in the Mac App store. They are on version 5 these days. I made my website with version 3, and later upgraded to 4 but didn’t really take advantage of it. I went ahead and downloaded the newest version while it was on sale (30 bucks!) and then took a look around at what could be done with it.

Holy smokes! There has been a ton of added functionality added to it, and it looks as though it’s easier to use than ever. Looking at some of the themes available these days makes me painfully aware of how tired my site looks. It also looks like some of the things I wanted to do before but didn’t have the patience to learn how to code are now really easy to do. This along with my recent purchase of Pixelmator has made me think that I should tackle a redesign of my site this year.

I don’ t plan on doing crazy stuff to it, but now that no one is on dial up any more, I am freer to add some eye candy and make the site more interesting and dynamic. With all of the plug-ins available for Rapidweaver, the sky is the limit. I hope to add more content as well as cleaning up some of the old stuff. I’m afraid that some of the links to my more popular pages (Profit is important is the #1 page on my site) are going to get changed and my RSS feeds will change as well but I’ll worry about that when the time comes. This should keep me busy for a while, it’ll be good to flex some creative muscles after all this time.

Categories
freedom politics

Foreign policy chickens coming home to roost.

So Tunisia started it, who knows when it will end. Egypt is rioting, Yemen is demonstrating, and Jordan is tense. Pop quiz, what do Saddam Hussain, Mubarak, Ben-Ali, Salah, and the Shah of Iran all have in common? That’s right, they are, or were wildly unpopular rulers that were supported by the US government. So far, Iran has been the worst case scenario as far as how they have responded to the US after the leader was deposed. Our befriending of Saddam was mostly due to the ongoing strife that supporting the Shah and the shenanigans that brought him into power brought on.

If Egypt does wrest control from Mubarak, some interesting things are going to be put into motion. Here’s another question, what are Egyptians supposed to think of a US government that just told them that they shouldn’t want to be out from under Mubarak? For the record, Biden really is an ass and should not be allowed to speak in public. Would it really surprise anyone if the general populace in Egypt does not trust the US after having propped up the instrument of their repression for 30 years?

The reasons why people don’t like the US are many and varied, but it can’t be denied that “A friend of my enemy is my enemy” enters into people’s thinking. I don’t know how many times people in Yemen asked me why my government, supposedly in the land of the free, continued to support some of the worst autocratic rulers in the world. I couldn’t really tell them the truth, that US politicians and policy wonks considered those rulers adequate for keeping the rabble under control. It would just confirm their suspicions. I heard a joke over there, it went like this:

 

George Bush convenes a press conference and announces that as part of the war on terror, 100,000 Arabs will be killed, and 1 doctor. A member of the press asks the president, “Mr. President, why are you going to kill one doctor?” Bush then leans over to Rice and says, “See, I told you that no one cares about Arabs…”

I have heard several variations on that joke. Sometimes it is one Israeli, sometimes it is one American. In all cases, it is clear that people are interested in the single person over the 100,000 arabs.

I’m glad to see that the Obama administration is following a more nuanced treatment of Mubarak, Biden notwithstanding. With any luck, good old Hosni will be convinced to depart and let Egypt get on with the political evolution that has been stunted for these 30 years. Will things get ugly and complicated in the middle east? Undoubtedly. Will the folks at State and the leaders in this government learn any lessons about planting time bombs in foreign governments? I’m sure they won’t. SIgh….

Categories
music

Morning song…

Woke up the other day to the White Stripes’ “Death Letter.” This wasn’t all that surprising actually, I had watched a documentary involving jack White before I went to bed. It’s a cover of an old Son House song, old school blues. Like most White Stripes songs, the best thing about it is the hook that jack is able to create with his guitar. It wasn’t so much the song that was running through my head as the guitar lick. Check it out…

 

 

Say what you want about jack White, but he can certainly play a mean slide guitar…

Categories
music

A morning song two-fer

I awoke from a rather bizarre cleaning at work dream to Janet Jackson’s “What Have You Done for Me Lately?” It had nothing at all to do with the dream. I fell back asleep and woke up to the Star Wars main theme running through my head.

The Janet Jackson song is a classic example of a song that I don’t really know getting stuck. I had the chorus looping through again and again. On the flip side, it’s kind of cool to have a stirring John Williams number as a theme for waking up…

Categories
music

Songs in my head

Every morning, I wake up with a song in my head. Sometimes it’s a carryover from a dream, other times, it’s totally random with no apparent reason. Think I’m going to keep track of these as I remember them.

 

Keep in mind that these aren’t favorite songs. They are usually catchy, but how much I like them has little to do with what sticks. This morning is a good example. I had a dream I was at a White Stripes concert. Did I have any of their songs stuck in my head when I woke up? Of course not. I had “Let’s Twist Again” by Chubby Checker.

The story behind that is that I started the audience singing that song when I saw Jack White twisting for some reason as he was heading off the stage. I shouted out “Let’s twist again Jack!” and some people picked up on it and joined it “Like we did last summer…” A woman near me ended up leading the audience. One of the crew actually gave her a mic towards the end.

Sigh. Chubby Checker to start my day. I wonder why my brain does this to me….

Categories
technology

Apptivate!

My latest purchase from the Mac App Store is a little dandy called Apptivate. It’s $2.99 and worth every penny. Essentially, it is a hot key activator. What’s that? It allows me to assign a key combination to launch applications, folders, etc. For example, I have “cntrl m” set up to activate the blogging program I use called Marsedit. So I just hit that key combo and BAM! the program is launched. If it is already running, that key combo brings it to the front of all of the windows I have active.

It doesn’t sound like much, but I now have these combos for Chrome, Safari, and Firefox browsers (cntrl 1,2,3), iTunes, iCal, Graphic convertor, Pixelmator, Address book, Join Together, and the Mac App Store. I also have my downloads folder at my fingertips. I’ve made heavy use of the control button cause it doesn’t seem to have a lot of things assigned to it yet. Apptivate also allows you to do sequential key commands. So while I have “cntrl j” to activate Join Together, what do I do with all of the “i” apps” Easy, I hit “cntrl i” first and then touch the letter for the next part of the app. So for iCal, I hit “cntrl i” and then the letter “c”. It makes it easy to keep track of where everything is.

Where this can get pretty interesting is that I can also use Automator to create custom actions on my computer. Automator creates Applescript programs to automate actions on your computer. So I could create a program to open a folder, rename the pictures in it, and then upload them to whatever site i want them to. Then every time I want to do that, I can just run the applescript. Now, with Apptivate, I can run that with a quick key combo. The possibilities are almost endless….

 

Another great, cheap app from the App store!

Categories
technology

Wow

“In the last two quarters, Apple sold 30 million iPhones — half of what it sold in the previous three years (60 million units).”

 

And it looks like Apple is just getting started, what with Verizon coming on board soon.

 

There are some analysts that expect Apple to sell 100 million phones in the coming year.

 

Wow.

Categories
technology

Some other apps in the app store

I noticed a bunch of other apps in the app store that either I already had, or that had significant discounts on them. First off is the iWork and iLife suits of programs from Apple. It used to be that if you wanted to upgrade these programs you had to buy all of them over again even if you only wanted one of them. Now you can buy iPhoto, iMovie, Garageband, Pages, Numbers, and Keynote individually. If you just want a word processor, 20 bucks for Pages is a lot better than $79 for all of iLife or $100 for MS Office.

Apple has also priced its advanced photography program Aperture at $80. That’s an amazing discount. Not only is that much less than the usual $200 price of the program, it’s even less than the usual $100 for the upgrade! That means that when the new version comes out, you’ll be able to buy it through the app store for less than you used to be able to! Apple has also slashed its price on remote desktop software to $80! Granted, that’s a lot more specialized piece of software aimed mostly at system administrators, but wow, what a price!

 

There are several other apps that I already own in the app store as well. I use Rapidweaver for my website, and the 5.0 version is up in the store. They have the purchase price the same as the upgrade price in their website. that’s rankling some folks, but I think it makes sense to transition everyone over to the app store. Socialite is a handy program for keeping track of your Facebook, Twitter, RSS feeds, and Google Reader. It’s only 10 bucks, a great price.

 

If you can’t tell, I’m mighty psyched about this. It’s one more way that Apple has managed to make things easier for us.