This past weekend, that all changed. I am now (half) living in Portland again. Thus far, it rocks. My commute this morning as a three mile bike ride down hill into the city. Not a bad way to start summer.

My goal for the weekend was to move my day-to-day things, making sure I could begin living at the new place by the end of the weekend. Strong friends were busy this weekend, so, at times, that seemed like a challenge. After seven car loads and no truck, we got it. I am now living at the new place minus my bed, couch, dining table, and desk.

Planning a move around a holiday is less than ideal. Tomorrow I leave for Wisconsin.

I had just a moment a couple weeks back. This time a song caused it. When it came on my Pandora station, I literally stopped working and could not focus again for about a half hour. Since this day, I have had the song on repeat.

The song: Where have I been all my Life from George Strait.

You can listen below:

God bless.

If you are uneducated in this realm of spirituallity, they sell Dutch Tacos. Imagine all your breakfast rolled up in a waffle taco.

Today, I had the ham & cheese. Ham, cheese, and, well, waffle.

If that is not Heavenly, there is no hope for you.

Perusing the Internets, I found a couple opinions of its definition. Generally, they fall into one of two categories:

• Of or relating to the software created for an enterprise. Otherwise known as, an organization’s software.
• Bloated, excessive, unnecessary – in all meaning of the words.

The former is basically saying enterprise software is just software. The latter is just annoying.

Unless you are lazy, you would probably not find these definitions representative of your career.

Without getting into too much flowery marketing mumbo jumbo, there needs to be another answer. Here is mine:

Software architected to support the breath and depth of its users needs while producing a minimalistic footprint on its own and neighboring systems. This system should not only be easily created but, more importantly, well maintained.

Well that is the definition I have come up with today. This might change over time but will a good start.

I am curious what you all think.

I have not found a good way to copy and paste on this phone, so you will need to do your own searching today.

WebSockets are a new-ish way for web clients and servers to communicate. This is bi-directional though. Unlike the typical AJAX (client to server) method used today.

PJUG was your typical nerd-alert affair but free pizza and knowledge of new techologies for people more smarter than I was worth it.

This phone warms the hands nicely!

Although I find finance fascinating, I am no expert. I do know there is some ambiguity between how GAAP applies to derivatives. This miscommunication causes investors and the public to be unaware of the true state of a company’s assets and debts. AIG is a good example of this. At its peak, it was 11 times leverages. That means $11 of debt for every $1 of assets. I personally do not feel all debt is bad. There becomes a point where my investment becomes hindered.

Chris Dodd thinks would we should publicly trade derivatives. Rather I would vote we get them completely on balance sheets. This get the numbers in the hands of investors quarterly. Public traded assets get forgot; quarterly reminders puts pressure of executives.

This domain actually uses it for its email purposes. Although, I would be reluctant to use it for business use.

Yale, yes that Yale, recently decided not us switch to Google Apps. The reasoning, lack of control particularly when data crosses political boarders, is one of my major dislikes of these type of services.

I did not understand how the author of this article thought flying in another country’s airspace was still governed under US law. Silly.

Yet another reason why we need an OpenData standard.

Fast Company is asking if Amazon’s iPad app is a Kindle killer.

My short answer is no. The Kindle was a Kindle killer. Two reasons:

• The medium to large sized consumer electronics users are not going to want to carry a device that does a single task, forcing them to have an additional device. Although it might do that task very well, in the long-term it was be absorbed into other products in its category. As screen technology gets better, devices will produce a black and grey retro ‘reader’ viewing mode.
• Amazon is not a consumer electronics company. It is retailer. It sells other people’s stuff. Its core business will eventually suffer if it distracts itself.

Amazon’s iPad app is a very smart move. Their goal should be to get people to buy and read more books. Producing various mediums for folks to achieve this goal will benefit their company’s foundation.

Going into the day, I was still leaning toward actually attending the auction. Yes, yes, I know I said I would not buy a house this year. Looking at the possible purchase prices of some of these units, I was curious enough to get more information.

The building was open to the public, so we went through about a dozen units. I found two units I was really, really, really interested in 1618 and 2018. Both are the same floor plan – one bed, bath, and study – facing Southwest.

I spoke with two realtors while traversing the building. One basically told me I would be an idiot to not – at my age – buy one of the units. The other thought anybody who bought was an idiot since purchase prices were expected to be 60% of the minimum auction price. This person also told me unit 1218 – same floor plan as I liked – was a short sale she was trying to sell. The most recent offer on that until was $215k, putting it at ~40% increase.

Those purchase prices plus huge taxes and larger HOA convinced me to not buy – again. Although it is a lovely place in an area of town that is most likely going to boom, I still should not buy.

After taking this test (hoping I passed), I had a question. Why is this process manual? In today’s world of data aggregation, we still manually obtain Census data. Really? I would imagine there are data feeds out there to get the ball rolling in the automation realm of this process.

Private industry should be conducting the Census and selling it to the Department of Commerce with wicked audits. In its ten-year Census off season, it could, for example, generate much of the data for the Department of Labor and Statistics.

Anybody out there agree? Disagree?