Digmann.com

I went to ’short’ film last night at school. The first thing you are probably thinking is ‘Nooooo. What were you thinking?’ First of all, I was thinking I didn’t have anything else to do. Secondly, Jason was an extra in it. You can see him, from behind, for about umm 100 nanoseconds. (Hint: That’s not a very long time.) The thing is the film was an hour of hilarity (yes that is a word - strangely). I absolutely loved it. In fact, I did not stop laughing for the entire hour. On an odd note, Jason told me, as we were sitting down, he was in the sex scene but luckily that was not the case - there was no sex scene folks.

Well the trailer is on YouTube, so I thought I would share it with you. I need to chime in here though and say this trailer does not do the actual film justice. There is a ton left out… and not just because it is a trailer and trailers are always shorter than the real movie. Enjoy.

According to Google Reader, I am subscribing to 64 RSS Feeds, including mine: Digmann.com RSS. One of my favorites has nothing to do with my work, new gadgets, or the news. In fact, it is teaching me how to invest.

Investopedia is the encyclopedia of investment knowledge, which also includes news about earnings reports and the such. What they are all about is not why I am posting today though.

The reason I am here is they published a 15 chapter review for the Chartered Financial Analyst Level I exam. You can read about the CFA and the exam. The thing is that I wanted to ‘bookmark’ the series but could not find a general series outline page (well that might have changed since noon today but darn it, I stopped looking). To counter their offer I wanted to be able to reference the chapters as well as give any of you the chance to read them too. Just to warn you, they are long. One of the 21 sections in the Microecon chapter alone is 1500 words. So here they are already - chapter 1 and 2 were not in the RSS, so you don’t get them either:

• Chapter 3 - Microeconomics
• Chapter 4 - Macroeconomics
• Chapter 5 - Global Economy
• Chapter 6 - Financial Statements
• Chapter 7 - Financial Ratios
• Chapter 8 - Assets
• Chapter 9 - Liabilities
• Chapter 10 - Red Flags
• Chapter 11 - Corporate Finance
• Chapter 12 - Security Markets
• Chapter 13 - Equity Investments
• Chapter 14 - Fixed Income
• Chapter 15 - Derivatives
• Chapter 16 - Alternative Investments
• Chapter 17 - Portfolio Management

It might take me a while to read all this, but hey I love finance and economics (yes another one of my hidden secrets). It should be dry, boring, but interest at the same time.

Full Title: To Engineer is Human: the Role of Failure is Successful Design by Henry Petrosky
ISBN: 0-679-73416-3
Get it cheap.

Summary: The theme of this book is: why do engineers and their work fail? You might be wondering why the Shuttle crashed in the 80s. Well some would say it was that bloody O-ring that could not go from negative 400 degrees to positive 400 degrees in half a second. Others might say NASA never gets anything right. Although the former may be correct, you might wonder why does NASA fail. Well engineers, just like the rest of us, are human, and, just like the rest of us, they just plain make mistakes sometimes. The thing is when they fail, everybody knows about it because more often than not, people die. Sadly it is true, but every 10 years or so, there is an engineering project which ends up kills those who are using it.

To Engineer is Human argues that although, they may be failing, each time they come out ahead. For example, in the 40s the Tacoma Narrows Bridge fell down. At the time there were only a handful of bridge of this size in the world, so nobody really knew how to build one at all. After it fell, standards, checks and balances were established to prevent it from happening again. Engineers, again like the rest of, learn from their mistakes.

What I thought: This book was quite interesting. Having a degree in engineering myself, the humor and passive phrasing was right up my alley. During most books, I end up getting bored toward the end as the author is running out of things to talk about. This book was different. There was content until the end.

It might seem that any logical engineer would study fail practices in order to not make the same mistakes. Petroski shows how they are required to know the information and how failures change curriculum for students. Our failures bring us stronger, better, bigger projects to meet our growing need in the world.

I would suggest all past, present, and future engineers to read this book or anybody who just might think it was interesting.

For the last six months or so, I have had ample amounts of spare time on my hands. There are two major reasons for this: 1) I finished school and no long spend my evenings working on school work and 2) I moved out of the good o’ fashioned college house to live by myself. This latter means there are no random beer runs or movie times with the guys.

Among other thing, I have been filling some of that time catching up on some ‘person’ reading which has been neglected while I was in college. For those of you who do not know, I absolutely love to read. I also love to learn anything about everything. Although the latter is my greater love, they more often than not combine their powers to form, what else, Captain Planet of Learning. So Captain Planet is here to explain to you I will be mentioning some of the publications I read on this site to not only tell you what I am up to and interested in but also to spark your own interest to experience the world as Captain Planet does.

This means you might see a few review posts in the next few days to let me catch up. There is no special schedule for these, so they may be mixed into the rest of the excitement which is my life.

Finally, I thought I would describe my reading pattern. To bring a variety to my life, I like to mix up the type or category which any given book falls into. There are three main categories which quite often are flexible and overlap: personal, learning, and work related.

Personal - Typically your regular novel. I particularly like classics or historical narratives, so you may see these come through.

Learning - Something to learn about, plain and simple. Categories may include financial, political, philosophy, science, or history to name a few.

Work Related - I get $200 a year to purchase books from Formos and plan on using it. I do not think these are overly interesting to some (or most) of you who are reading this site, so they may not get posted and come less frequently. You’re welcome.

I like to rotate between these three types, but never have the attention span to stay with one book at a time. In fact, I am ready three books (basically daily) right now.

I would love to hear what books you suggest too. What are your favorites?

Last night I had my first poker night here at my place. It ended up being Brandon, Matt, James, Jason, and myself. Jeff was invited too, but his excuse for not being able to come (other than being a bad friend) was that he had to fix his computer. On a Friday night. What a lamer.

There were a few mistakes for the first time around. For example, apparently chips with values divisible by three are hard to calculate for these guys. I think five will be better next time.

I personally ended up getting second to Matt. I was the Short Stack coming into the head-to-head and was able to catch up to being ahead with some all-in moves. Then came the pair of Queens, pair of Sixes hand. I had Ace/Four which means if Matt did not have the other Queen or Six to finish the Full House, I was in. He had the bloody Six. That brought me down to about 100 chips to his 700. From there I battled but could not make any progress. Then I went all in on a Straight Draw but did not get the card, and Matt had a Face Card Pair.

The whole game only took three hours for five people starting with about 180 chips.

I was using this game as a trial run to see what I could learn. and that was quite a bit. I think I am going to make this event a monthly thing on the third Friday of the month. That makes the next one on May 18th. I also think the buy ins are going to go up to $15 or $20.

If you and any of your friends would like to come, send me a line, and I will put you on the list.