8/22    I encourage you to switch at least half your 401(k) exposure to
        Treasury money markets at a local peak for at least a few years.
        Don't say you never heard this advice.  If you don't reallocate,
        at least do the proper research.
        http://market-ticker.denninger.net
        \_ have fun losing on inflation and taxes
           \_ ok dude.  good luck.
              btw, i am paying 15% of my salary into 401(k) (T money mkts),
              and am still building my down payment for a house
              \_ "downsides are already priced in"
        \_ I always take investment advice from half-baked libertarian
           syadmins. If this guy is so smart, he should be running his own
           hedge fund.

8/22    If I join a startup as employee #100, what percentage of shares
        would I expect to get? Guy Kawasaki says it's better to be employee
        #10 than #100, but how much smaller share would I expect?
        \_ now there's a controversial statement
           \_ Guy Kawasaki is controversial.
        \_ I once joined a startup as employee #4 as a senior engineer, and I
           got 1%.  Later I joined another startup as employee #45 as a senior
           engineer, and I got 0.25%.  Of course, whatever percentage of
           shares you get will most likely be diluted before the company is
           acquired or goes IPO, if it ever does.
           \_ Is acquisition deal worse than IPO?
        \_ I joined one startup as employee number #72 and got about 0.2%
           (over four years) and another that was more mature and got about
           half that. This was as a sysadmin. Start-up #1 quadrupled my
           grant after I got promoted to Director (this was after they
           went public and weren't doing so well).

8/22    More birth certificate wackiness!  Just after http://factcheck.org finally
        nailed the Obama birth certificate conspiracy shut:
        http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/born_in_the_usa.html
        Pro-Hillary lawer opens case claiming Obama is ineligible to be POTUS
        http://www.americasright.com/2008/08/obama-sued-in-philadelphia-federal\
.html
        \_ Bwahahahaha, Berg cites differences in the English and Italian
           versions of Wikipedia as proof of discrepancies in Obama's birth
           records; this is the work of a kook.

8/22    Non-MSM article on the conflict in Georgia.  Other than Bush
        ordering the invasion of Somalia (what?) -- I found it interesting:
        http://tinyurl.com/5ag5jn
        \_ Bush did order the invasion of Somalia - the first Bush:
           http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Restore_Hope
        \_ I didn't get very far because it starts off with a couple of
           baseless assumptions.  Whenever one of the US allies does something
           stupid, I always hear how the US govt. "had to have known."  BS.
           They're our allies, not our territories.  It's just like the
           accusation that the Carter administration "had to have known" about
           Chun Doo-hyun's plans about the Gwangju Massacre.
           http://csua.org/u/m5s Sorry no, histroical documnents show
           pretty conclusively he didn't have a dang clue, and I doubt Bush
           did either. People can do stupid things just fine w/o Bush.
           \_ Condoleezza Rice was in Georgia 3 weeks before everything started!
              You think that's a coincidence?
           \_ Condoleezza Rice was in Georgia 3 weeks before everything
              started! You think that's a coincidence?
              \_ The Georgie Russia war + Rice thing is hilarious since Rice
                 has a PHD in international relations, specifically former
                 USSR + foreign relations.  Maybe Stanford could give her a
                 slight tuition refund since she obvs didnt learn a
                 goddamn thing
              \_ Dan Rather was in Dallas when JFK was shot, obviously Dan
                 Rather shot JFK!
                 \_ Dan Rather isn't the secretary of state -- mega duhs
                    \_ Correlation is not causation -- giga duhs
                    \_ Let me check if the Sec. of state was in Dallas...
              \_ Also, it doesn't have to be a coincidence for her to be
                 ignorant.  Hawks in Georgia may have argued something like:
                 "Rice was just here!  We can't tell them, but obviously the
                  US will back us up if things go south!"
              \_ Dan Rather was in Washington when Watergate happened. Dan
                 Rather was in Vietnam when we lost the war. I am starting
                 to see a pattern here...

8/22    College ranking again: http://www.csua.org/u/m5o
        Stanfraud: #4
        Cal:       #21
        \_ What. The. Fuck. They told me Cal is as good as Furd. They lied.
        \_ Proof that privatized education >>> Public education.
           Jackie Johnson is hot.
        \_ UCLA #25. Uh...
        \_ The US News rankings double- and triple-count advantages for
           private universities; they count endowments, and then lots of
           things that endowments buy you.  -tom
           \_ An interesting thing was to look at the rank as given by
              guidance counselors. While not infallible, it's a different
              viewpoint:
              http://tinyurl.com/5hk8sw
              Of course, Forbes did their own ranking this year and put
              Stanford at #23 and Cal at #73 (!).
              \_ URL? Forbes did a "how much do graduates make at mid-career"
                 ranking and Cal was something like 20th.
                 \_ http://tinyurl.com/6qwr9z
                    Where's the URL you saw?
                    \_ http://preview.tinyurl.com/65r7a3
                       Cal is #1 for public universities
                       \_ And #12 overall
              \_ Forbes has no public universities in the top 60, and has
                 such luminaries as Kalamazoo College higher than any
                 public university.  Their rankins are bunk.  -tom
                 \_ UVA is #43
                    \_ Ah, missed that.  So it's only Cooper Union, Kenyon
                       College, and Franklin and Marshall that are better
                       than any public university.  And of course Swarthmore
                       and Williams are better than Yale, MIT, and Columbia.
                       And something called "Centre College" in Kentucky is
                       better than MIT, University of Chicago, Stanford,
                       and all public universities.  Bunk.  If you invent
                       a metric, you have to see if it passes the smell test
                       before you make a fool of yourself by publishing it.
                         -tom
             \_ "Of course, no ranking system is perfect, but for Forbes to
                publish and promote a list of rankings that are based 50
                percent on "Who's Who..." (a for-profit corporation that
                makes its money getting its "invitees" to pay a fee to have
                their names published in its vanity publication) and "Rate
                My Professors" (a self-selected website that represents, at
                most, 1-to-2 percent of any given college's student population)
                is beyond incomprehensible. It is inexcusable. Forbes owes
                everyone in this country an apology and explanation, as do
                the so-called "academic statisticians" who lent their
                "credibility" to this publication."
                \_ URL?

8/22    Cindy McCain - The only way to get around Arizona is a private plane!
        http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/07/14/cindy-mccain-in-arizona-t_n_112695.html
        \_ She must have gotten that advice from Al Gore.
        \_ What is the carbon footprint of owning 7 homes? Lawn,
           heat, AC, maintenance, wash, etc etc?
        \_ Pretty impressive that she managed to spend 50-100 hours getting
           training without him noticing.

8/22    I'd like to rent out my condo. What's a good place besides
        craigslist to post my listing? I don't want to go through craigslist
        anymore after a bunch of bozos didn't show up, or were people
        with bad credit rating, etc. I don't mind paying a little (5%)
        for listing, credit check, etc. Thanks.
        \_ You can hire a property management firm to do all the dirty work
           for you. I think they charge one months rent/year plus something
           like a half month rent everytime it turns over. YMMV.
           \_ Seconded -- I have a property manager for my townhouse, she's
              great, found me a perfect tenant in under a month, and only
              charged me $800 up front plus $75/mo for a place that rents for
              $2200.  I don't deal with anything, except ok on things like
              approving the replacement of a major appliance.
              \_ How did you find her? More info please? Thanks!
                 \_ It was a referral from my ex-neighbor who is a realtor.
                    That might be the place to check -- realtors.
                    \_ In CA professional property managers *must* be licensed
                       real estate brokers with a couple of exceptions.
                       \_  I thought you just needed to work under a broker.  I
                           know someone who is just starting out (read: cheap)
                           that I can refer you to in the east bay. -scottyg
                           \_ There are a lot of things a person working
                              under a broker can do (e.g. collect rent)
                              but they can't do everything. They are just
                              working as an assistant to the broker.

8/22    Google for John McCain, then click on the ads. Congratulations,
        you've wasted McCain 0.0000001% of his money. Keep it up guys!