Don G. Park

Waiting to Burn

Posted by Don Sun, 24 Aug 2008 04:33:00 GMT

Its sunday night. Im not entirely sure when Kris is coming. It could be anytime between Sunday morning and Monday morning. I've got my stuff packed into two boxes plus water jugs.

My bleached hair is my 'costume' this year. I figure the first year I can absorb more and produce less. I have a book checked out for the time I am hiding from the sun in my tent.

I'm bringing a little LED kit and batteries that will also occupy my time. I might be able to tape it to my arm or the bicycle for night-time uniqueness. Also, none of this may matter as I might be content hanging out with new people the whole week. I'm concerned about noise and being able to sleep. There is a walk-in camp area that i might use if necessary but I'd like to stay with Kris. Kris is a 'ranger' this year and may be wrapped up with other rangers the whole time.

So, lots of unknows and the draw of amazing sights and experiences.

Sunday update: Kris is coming at 1pm. We're going to caravan with 'bluefish' and try and stay at the ranger's camp. Woot. Here we go.

5 comments

Location Schedules

Posted by Don Mon, 18 Aug 2008 16:11:00 GMT

Brightkite and Shizzow have demonstrated that people are willing to transmit their location electronically to at least their friends, sometimes more, in exchange for being open to ad-hoc meetups .

What the leading services to date have focused on is where you are. This is not that useful because it says nothing about how long you'll be there. Whats more useful is where you will be.

To facilitate meetups, I want to see someone's location schedule for the day. That way I can plan my transportation and timing to align, like a Mars vehicle adjusting its trajectory to enter the atmosphere at just the right time.

Many people live by a very predictable schedule. Even for a cafe-person like me, I know my basic schedule for that day. I would be happy to enter that schedule in the morning.

Schedule for Don Park:

Once the schedule data is in, higher-order correlations can be mined. "When is a good time today to meet up with Bob Smith?" "There is a 30 minute overlap during lunch where you will be 0.5 miles from Bob at a time when he is interruptible". Another example is an automatic alert, such as a gathering of 3 or more friends at the same place. "Four friends are scheduled to be at the Green Dragon starting at 4pm"

If I wanted to meet Bob Smith, why not just call him up and schedule something? These meetups are less official than that. The use case is I have to work somewhere and I want to select the cafe that already has the greatest number of friends/coworkers scheduled to be there for these hours.

Instigating these meetups is difficult when you're the first one. The way to announce your intention is to state a time and place but what if you're only interested in that meeting and its existence depends on another agreeing to the same thing. Thats more like group scheduling and needs more thought.

I was focused on adding a schedule to a location service when I realized that calagator or upcoming are already what I'm describing. They understand schedules and locations. The table above could be put into calagator though it has no notion of a person. Upcoming could handle it. Events in upcoming can be made for friends-only. I would be doing this today but upcoming users are not expecting personal schedules like that. It would end up being spamy.

An open-source project like calagator could be extended or forked to understand the concept of user (which was explicitly avoided to date), and add the 'interruptible' or 'available for meetups' concept to the event.

There is still value to instantaneous location pulled from a GPS or the unique ID of a near-by wifi access point or cell tower. It adds or removes confidence to the schedule since it can say the person has been late/ontime for events recently past.

Tags tech | 1 comment

Hillary Clinton's Concession Speech

Posted by Don Fri, 15 Aug 2008 03:15:00 GMT

I love great oration. One example is the speech given by Hillary Clinton conceeding the democratic nomination of 2008 to Barack Obama.

I love great speech writing just as much. There are some fantastic lines in her speech.

(1:19) "to the moms and dads who came to our events. who lifted put their little girls and little boys on their shoulders and whispered in their ears 'see... you can be anything you want to be.'". This is a nod to the historical significance of the first campaign by a woman to be president of the united states. What a beautiful statement about the positive effects of the campaign even though it ended early.

(2:80) "to all those women in their 80s and 90s, born before women could vote... who cast their votes for our campaign." How far we've come.

"my commitment to you in the progress we seek is unyielding" good from a campaign perspective, she's out of the presidential race but she's still a senator. still a politician working for you, as it were.

(6:30)"The way to continue our fight now... is to take our energy...do all we can to help elect Barack Obama the next president of the united states." The crowd goes wild. To hear Hillary say those words is very meaningful when they've been at each other through 16 months and 22 debates. Its is the obvious path when she has lost to someone of her own party. I still consider it noble. she did it without hesitation and with her full support. Its nice to see happen in real life and a great metaphor for one's own arguments, that they come to an end eventually and reconciliation is possible.

"it is a fight i will continue until every single american is insured(health). no exception and no excuses" The issue she has been most committed to through her campaign. This adds brownie points for her post-campaign days back in congress.

(11:50)"Out country has voted 10 times for president. Democrats have won only three of those times and the man who has won two of those elections is with us today. (cameras pan to Bill Clinton)" This was a funny and sweet sentiment to point out her husband in a public and loving way.

(13:55)"Yes we can!" also funny to hear her say the catch-phrase of the Obama campain. especially when her campaign came up with "thats not change you can believe in, thats change you can xerox."

(19:45) "You can be so pround that from now on it will be unremarkable for a woman to win primary state victories. Unremarkable to have a women in a close race to be out nominee. Unremarkable to think that a woman can be the president of the united states." This is the end of a section about equal rights for women. Its a nice bit and rings true.

around 23:00 starts an awesome section about activism and struggle, starting with the abolition of slavery, women's right to vote, and the end of segregation in public schools.

Tags politics | no comments

watch network connections with dbus and ruby

Posted by Don Tue, 12 Aug 2008 18:12:00 GMT

require 'dbus'
bus = DBus::SystemBus.instance

# register for signals
#
mr = DBus::MatchRule.new
mr.type = "signal"
mr.interface = "org.freedesktop.NetworkManager"
mr.path = "/org/freedesktop/NetworkManager"
bus.add_match(mr) do |msg, first_param|
  puts msg.params.inspect
end

# Main loop
main = DBus::Main.new
main << bus
main.run

["/org/freedesktop/NetworkManager/Devices/wlan0", 100] (using the applet, re-associate now)
["/org/freedesktop/NetworkManager/Devices/wlan0", 89]
["/org/freedesktop/NetworkManager/Devices/wlan0", 4]
["/org/freedesktop/NetworkManager/Devices/wlan0", 99]
["/org/freedesktop/NetworkManager/Devices/wlan0", 100]
["/org/freedesktop/NetworkManager/Devices/wlan0", 5]
["/org/freedesktop/NetworkManager/Devices/wlan0", 6]
["/org/freedesktop/NetworkManager/Devices/wlan0", 7]
[3] (use this for network association hook?)
["/org/freedesktop/NetworkManager/Devices/wlan0", "www.personaltelco.net"]
["/org/freedesktop/NetworkManager/Devices/wlan0", "/org/freedesktop/NetworkManager/Devices/wlan0/Networks/www_2e_personaltelco_2e_net", 77]

Tags ruby, tech | 2 comments

time is forever

Posted by Don Wed, 30 Jul 2008 18:09:00 GMT

one of my favorite and most helpful beliefs about the nature of reality is my consciousness lasts forever. add to that the idea that everything changes with time. everything. therefore patience is a highly useful skill. in fact, its kind of an all-powerful skill.

• I exist forever
• Time changes all things

1 comment

12 tomatoes

Posted by Don Tue, 29 Jul 2008 04:01:00 GMT

i enjoy gardening. sometimes though i wonder if its worth it. this year is my first real vegetable garden. once thing i learned is that a garden is more like a pet than a hobby. it needs daily attention.

after 6 weeks or so of watering most every night, the tomatoe plants have about 12 tomatoes on them.

is it really worth it to spend how many gallons of processed city water on 12 tomatoes? a grey water collection system would make more sense. i ate carrots from the garden last night. the first edible thing the garden produced. they were delicious.

as i walked back to the house, without any warning what so ever, the blackberry bushes had their first ripe blackberries. they are also delicious.

(look ma, a blog post with photos)

Tags garden | 7 comments

omnibus bills

Posted by Don Sun, 27 Jul 2008 17:51:00 GMT

support 'downsize dc' and their Read the Bills act. here is one reason why:

a friend pointed out a new york times story on two of the details of the 636 page Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008.

a multi-billion dollar piece of legislation has notes about specific properties in san francisco. how could one weigh the pros and cons of section 8 coverage for a building in san francisco in the face of the multi-billion dollar issues? its impossible. that means whoever can attach this wording to a bill that is known to have popular support, can write laws like a dictator - with no vote at all. as long as the change is small enough to go unnoticed. a multi-billion-dollar package is pretty good cover to have what might be a million dollar benefit for one person.

such a relatively small matter should be legislated at an appropriate level, such as the state or county level. if congressional approval is required, have a bill just to cover section 8 grantings. the current system needs to be changed.

Also, the housing bill raises the national debt ceiling from $9.8 trillion to $10.6 trillion. The entire federal income for 2007 was $2.4 trillion dollars. The government is in debt for 4 years worth of its income. $800 billion dollars has not been taken from some giant savings account or from bars of gold in fort knox. It was taken from the money you already have by diluting its value. It was 'printed' by the federal reserve. Let me demonstrate with the keypad on my keyboard: "FEDERAL RESERVE TERMINAL: Enter amount of money to loan to top-tier banks: $800,000,000". There. I just created 800 billion that will end up in loans and printed notes.

A law or constitutional amendment that congress can only spend the money it takes in would be helpful. it seems simple but like an american consumer with a new credit card, they're spending like there is no tomorrow. If an average american income is $40,000 a year. the federal government would have $160,000 in credit card debt.

i just came across this site:http://www.federalbudget.com/
"In Fiscal Year 2006, the U. S. Government spent $406 Billion of your money on interest payments* to the holders of the National Debt. Compare that to NASA at $15 Billion, Education at $61 Billion, and Department of Transportation at $56 Billion."
"Each year since 1969, Congress has spent more money than its income."

Tags finance, government | no comments

Fidelity retirement

Posted by Don Sun, 20 Jul 2008 04:47:00 GMT

Fidelity has different retirement funds based on the expected retirement year. Each fund invests in four areas: US Stocks, Foreign, Bonds, Junk Bonds, and Money Market. Looking at 11 funds between the year 2000 and 2050, the percentage of investment in US Stocks climbs steadily from 25% in 2000 to 68% in 2050. The Bond percentage drops steadily from 30% in 2000 to 9.9% in 2050. The Foreign category is interesting - 0.5% in 2000 to 21% in 2050, with 2030 being the crossover where the percentage of investment in foreign funds exceeds that of us bonds. High-Yield bonds (which im calling Junk Bonds) are not a big player and 37% went to a money market for the 2000 fund before being eclipsed by bonds.

I think Fidelity is saying the world will look very different by 2030. The US will no longer be a superpower. That title may go to China or maybe noone will stand out as before and we'll be more like countries in the EU. I turn 65 in 2035 (a few years before 2038, the unix epoch).

Tags finance | 1 comment

Bush Co's Legacy

Posted by Don Fri, 18 Jul 2008 04:43:00 GMT

My niece turned one and I want to be one of those uncles that gives a US savings bond as a birthday gift. For me its a meaningful gesture having been raised in a family that put no particular emphasis on money management. I signed up at treasury direct, figuring out how a gift would work. I veered over into the national debt and had to write again about money. (Info from the U.S. Treasury):

Clinton took the office in January 1993. For eight years the economy grew. The dot-com bubble inflated and popped. Still, the national debt grew by $1.2 trillion dollars over those eight years.

Bush took office Jan 2001. "Recession, Repression, War" is a bumper sticker i thought was accurate in the 2004 election. An increase of $3.2 trillion dollars is what Barak Obama and Congress will inherit.

What makes the debt somewhat comical is there is a law limiting the total national debt. Every year congress simply rewrites the law to increase the limit. Just like an American consumer on a path to insolvency.

Why does every government venture have fiscal limits except war? A war in self-defense makes sense to 'throw every thing we have at them' or perish, but the Iraq war is a far cry from self defense. Its empire building. Making the nation safe for democracy through weaponry.

A democratically controlled congress made no noticeable difference in the course of the war or the national debt. Perhaps there is an overriding feeling in congress of history and reverence for the office of the president and the system of law making which is even stronger than a disastrous, expensive, and unpopular war.

In the 60s, it was important to 'contain' communism. The US could not let the governmental system of communism spread to any more countries. The idea of philosophical control on the other side of the globe was so important that congress spent american lives like money for a philosophical battle. "Almost 3 million Americans served in Vietnam. Between 1965 and 1973, the United States spent $120 billion on the war ($700 billion in 2007 dollars). This resulted in a large federal budget deficit. The war demonstrated that no power, not even a superpower, has unlimited strength and resources." 58,217 americans killed. 153,452 americans wounded. a possible 1,200,000 dead vietnamese. wikipedia

What was the benefit of all the suffering, expense, and death? "By the end of April (1975), the Army of the Republic of South Vietnam had collapsed on all fronts. Thousand of refugees streamed southward, ahead of the main communist onslaught. On April 27, 100,000 North Vietnamese troops encircled Saigon." wikipedia My generation, Generation X, was born after the Vietnam War. Though we should not, we can forget what happened. Its an intellectual endeavor. Those who lost loved ones or limbs of their bodies or their healthly state of mind in the vietnam war cannot forget.

The same damage is being done to a new generation of 18 year olds, for an ideological pursuit half a world away. 29,000 wounded and 4,000 dead so far. Support the troops - bring them home, Barack Obama!

Tags finance, government | 3 comments

fannie mae and freddie mac

Posted by Don Mon, 14 Jul 2008 05:40:00 GMT

A bank loans $200,000 and makes 1/12 of 8% of that amount, or $1333 every month. For every loan made, the bank's income goes up by $1333. hypothetically and simplistically speaking. One would think that would be enough. Its a money making machine with almost no risk for the bank since it owns the house as collateral. I imagine that a defaulted home loan has some expense for the bank because regulations prevent an immediate eviction and there is cost to find another borrower.

if i start a bank with a million dollars, lets do it on the internet and pretend there are no startup costs, i can make five house loans and make $6665/month. the start up money is not available for other investments any more.

At some point, the banks didn't like their startup money tied up in mortgages. Who could buy these mortgages? Bigger banks. What if you are already at the top of the bank ladder? In 1938, the US government created an organization called Fannie MAE to buy home mortgages from US banks. The government says this frees up the bank's money to make more loans and allow for more Americans to own homes. What I wonder is, how is selling the mortgage a good idea for the bank? Yes they get their money back but loose their revenue stream. Sallie MAE is buying at a profit i imagine but how big of a profit? Sounds like our tax dollars are being spent to enrich banks in the name of a societal good.

In 1968 Fannie MAE became a publicly-owned company with common stock. (news,chart). Freddie Mac was started in 1970.

Over the last week, Fannie MAE lost half its stock value. July 7th 2008: MAE 19.46. July 11th 2008 MAE 10.25. Freddie MAC is a similar story. Is this an overreaction? Could these be rock-bottom prices and a unique time to buy in?

Tags finance, government | 1 comment