Throughout my many hours of watching Vimeo, I’ve garnered a collection of videos about the west coast forests. It’s amazing to see 200-year-old redwoods with their tops shrouded in fog, seals swimming through the rivers, and just the rich ecosystem in general.

General Guidelines

• don’t listen to Mr. Market
• no one’s tombstone reads “He Beat the Market”
• Risk depends not on age but on individual circumstances
• Keep stock:bonds ratio to ~25:75
• Max 10% speculation in sep acct
• If investing in gold, buy a maximum of 2% in a well-diversified mutual fund specializing in stocks of precious metals ETF charging less than 1% in annual expenses
• Protect against inflation with REITS & TIPS for long-run
  • TIPS best for tax-deferred retirement acct
  • For retirement funds that would be held as cash 10%

I found these while cleaning through old drafts of blog posts. I’ll put them here before they become lost in the shuffle.

100 yard freestyle personal best: 54.30 sec

100 yard breaststroke personal best: 1:12.34 min

You want to have your own personal website, but you don’t know where to begin. All this Internet stuff just seems like a black box to you. You don’t want to bother with complicated technical stuff. You just want your website to work. Is this that much to ask?

No.

This tutorial¹ will get your own website up and running from scratch in under 1.5 hours. At the end you’ll be able to type “myownwebsite.com” into your browser to see a website you own and receive e-mail at “firstname@myownwebsite.com”. You’ll learn how the Internet works on a basic level, what domain name servers (DNS) are, and how to link your website to Google’s free apps.

1. Read my explanation of how the Internet’s Domain Name System works

2. Register an available URL (or multiple ones) from a domain registrar like name.com².

3. Create a Tumblr blog.

4. Setup DNS records with this Tumblr guide.

5. Setup free Google Apps to use Gmail, calendar, docs, etc with your new domain.

What’s the probability that in a room of n people, at least two have the same birthday? It’s higher than you think.

Let $$p(n)$$ be the probability of at least two people having the same birthday. We’ll find $$\overline{p}(n)$$, the probability that no two people share the same birthday. $$p(n) = 1 - \overline{p}(n)$$.

Check out the new Spotify Top Tracks Widget I made for Spotify.

The most difficult subjects can be explained to the slow-witted man if he has not formed any idea of them already; but the simplest thing cannot be made clear to the most intelligent man if he is firmly persuaded that he knows already without a shadow of a doubt, what is laid before him.

In early February of this year, my roommate Ben recommended I read The Big Short by Michael Lewis. This book tells the story of individuals who foresaw the impending 2008 financial crisis and made off like gangbusters by betting against the housing market.

I enjoy watching good comedians perform because they often address an underlying, serious issue and introduce me to different perspectives.

Dave Chappelle said he always enjoys scatological humor, but he also said, “I pride myself on saying real shit that people don’t even realize I’m saying.” Chappelle’s parents were professors, and he joked once during Inside the Actor’s Studio that he was “the first person in [his] family not to go to college who had not been a slave.” He moved at the age of 10 from the outskirts of Washington DC to live with his father in Yellow Springs, Ohio. While he was gone the American crack epidemic struck the city and transformed it into “murder capital.” Chappelle said it was as if a “crack bomb” had exploded causing almost everyone he knew to get involved in the drug trade.

For one job during his high school years, he wore a cookie costume with a big chocolate chip on his head and handed out flyers to earn $3.50 an hour while other black youth were making far more money dealing crack. Years later Chappelle filmed the HBO special “Killin’ Them Softly” in which he joked about being chauffered in a limousine by a driver who wanted to make a detour in the ghetto.

(starts at 1:36)

New Yorkers don’t drink enough. Sure, the weekend begins Thursday night when people get hammered and stumble hungover into work on Friday and just phone it in until 5pm. But there’s not enough celebrations like SantaCon and Saint Patrick’s Day to excuse dawn-to-dusk pub crawls, revealing outfits, and public urination on Christmas trees. Therefore, I propose the addition of the following new -cons. It’ll be tough to initiate, but I know New Yorkers can do it.

• ConCon – wear orange jumpsuits and commit felonies
• LeperCon – dress up as lepers
• KongCon – dress up in gorilla suits and grab girls while climbing the Empire State Building
• CongaCon – the city becomes one big Conga line
• EasterCon – celebrate the end of Lent and Jesus’ resurrection by getting shitfaced at 11am