Picture from November

Well, in order to update my profile picture, I need to upload a new picture to my blog. Here is one from this fall of Alanna and I playing in the leaves. I'm going to get a newer one of all three of us and post it soon. Hope you are all doing well and enjoying the holidays.

Free Computer Software

In researching a company's financial statements, perhaps the most informative, but most difficult financial statement to produce (from an accounting perspective) is the statement of cash flows. The statement of cash flows is designed to show investors how well a company is doing based on their cash. It is the equivalent of looking at your own finances and making sure that your checking account has a positive balance and that you aren't using credit cards to make it have a positive balance. Interestingly enough, Microsoft Corp. paid out $36 million in dividends to their shareholders in 2005 and they bought back $8 million of their own stock (which is another way for the board of directors to increase their stock price without having really good financial results).

After all these activities, Microsoft actually lost cash of almost $10 million in 2005, but since 44 million of that was not used in operations, but rather to give their investors more cash, they really made a TON of cash in 2005.

Why do you think this is? Perhaps it's that they charge $900 per copy of Microsoft Project, or $350 per copy of Microsoft Office. Perhaps, it's that they charge $299 per copy of their operating systems (Windows XP, Windows NT ...). Don't get me wrong, I think a company is entitled to charge for their product, but everyone knows that Microsoft's prices are exorbitant. This could bring me into a discussion about anti-trust law and how it has changed since the days of the oil and steel monopolies of the early 20th century....But maybe some other time.

Today I wanted to list a couple of options for "free" software that are alternatives to popular software out there. Because they are free, they aren't going to be as nice or polished as the expensive versions, but they certainly will work on your Windows machine. There is a huge list of these "Open Source" options at www.osalt.com

• Microsoft Word
• AbiWord - http://www.abisource.com/
• Open Office Writer - http://www.openoffice.org/product/writer.html
• Microsoft Excel
• Open Office Calc - http://www.openoffice.org/product/calc.html
• Gnumeric - http://www.gnome.org/projects/gnumeric/
• Microsoft PowerPoint
• Open Office Impress - http://www.openoffice.org/product/impress.html
• Microsoft Project
• GanttProject - http://ganttproject.sourceforge.net/
• Open Workbench - http://www.openworkbench.org/
• Microsoft Access
• Open Office Base - http://www.openoffice.org/product/base.html
• Instant Messenger (these are free already, but this one lets you use multiple accounts (AIM/Yahoo/MSN etc...)
• GAIM - http://gaim.sourceforge.net/
• Windows!! (I don't suggest these to non-computer oriented people because they are more difficult to use than windows)
• Fedora (Linux) - http://fedora.redhat.com/
• Ubuntu (Linux) - http://www.ubuntu.com/
• Suse (Linux) - http://www.opensuse.org/

Well, there you have it Good Luck! - Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas

Hi everyone :) Merry Christmas! I know I haven't written anything here for a long time, but I just haven't had a whole lot to write about and figure not many people are reading it anyway. So here is my christmas post and I will do better next year.

New website

Hi everyone. I know I haven't posted in a while, but I now have a new look to my business website. Take a look. It's still got a long way to go, but I'll get there. www.smithstrategy.com
Let me know what you think :)

High end computers

My curiosity got the better of me today over lunch and I decided to do a couple experiments. First, I decided to price how much it would cost me to build a top of the line computer (o.k., almost top of the line).
I decided to price the costs of building the following. Don't worry if you don't understand all the stuff. This is just making a point.

Pentium Dual Core 3.4ghz computer with integrated fire-wire capability on the motherboard, 8GB of RAM, a Radeon X1900 512MB video card, two 500GB hard drives, one x16 DVD burner, a wireless keyboard & mouse, a 20inch LCD flat screen monitor and Windows XP Media Center edition.

My price = 2,275.06 I was actually quite suprised that it was this low.

Then I went to DELL.com. I couldn't quite get the 3.4ghz, so I chose the 3.2ghz. Firewire? I can't tell, I think yes. I couldn't go up to 8GB of RAM, so I chose 4GB. The Radeon X1900 wasn't an available choice, they actually didn't give me a choice, so instead of a 512MB card, I chose a 128MB one (much slower). The rest of it was the same.

Dell's price = 2,465. So I beat dell by $200 and I got a faster processor, double the amount of RAM, and a video card that plays varsity instead of JV.

I also wrote down all the costs of these components and in 6 months, I will post again with my price and Dell's price. I'm curious to see how much prices go down in 6 months. We'll see.

What makes "news" news?

As I read the headlines of the past few months it's rather interesting to note that there is no "news" per se.

Is the fact that there is fighting in the middle east really breaking news? As a matter of fact the biggest headline in the news would really be "For the first time in 4,760 years, not a knife was drawn and not a shot was fired in the middle east." That would be news worth reading.

Is a professional athlete's use of performance enhancing drugs really news?

Is a celebrity doing something stupid news to anyone?

As I ponder these questions I wonder, what is "news". The Jason Smith dictionary defines "news" as a group or collection of "new". It also defines new as something never seen before. So based on the most accurate definition in the world (that would be the one above). Here is today's news.







And there you have it. All the new (yes, the space above was intentionally left blank).

Looking into buying a new car?? Try converting one.

It's a fact that electric cars exist. With the Hybrid car market booming, I wonder, why are we settling for 60mpg? Why don't we just ditch the whole gasolene thing?

Well, maybe electric cars have heavy batteries, can only drive for 100 or less miles, and accelerate from 0 to 60 in 20 seconds. Of course, we've all heard about the nuisance of plugging your car in at night, and that "you won't really save that much money because your electric bill will go up." I've decided to research these reasons and let you know what I find.

1) Electric cars have heavy batteries - Yes, this is true, right now. Just do a google search on lightweight batteries though and you'll see some amazing breakthroughs that we know little about. Just consider if we put $1 for every gallon of gas that the US consumes toward lightweight battery research, in one year, we might have some pretty darn lightweight and powerful batteries

2) Can only drive for 100 miles or less - this is true too, mostly, but somehow if you're willing to spend enough $$ you can get one that goes further. You could actually get a really nice one called the "Tesla" next year for only $100,000 (www.teslamotors.com/). This one can drive about 250 miles on a single charge. It's pretty nice looking too. Interesting that we can buy a sports car for $100,000, but we can't get a regular one that will go as far on a single charge. Hmmmm.

3) You won't really save that much money because your electric bill will go up. Well, yes, your electric bill will go up slightly, but there are several factors involved. First is gas price. Right now at roughly $3 per gallon, your price per mile on a 25mpg car is 12 cents per mile. If you have a hybrid that gets *60 mpg (I put the * there because that's under premium driving conditions, they usually only get 45 or 50) you would pay about 5 cents per mile. The charge for an electric car at night would be about 1 cent per mile. Now for those of you out there with SUVs that get 15mpg, you pay about 2o cents per mile. After 50,000 miles, you've paid $10,000 in gas, whereas the rich sportscar guy paid only $500. He still has another 200,000 miles to drive in order to save enough money to justify the original cost, but you see my point.

Enough of my rant. By the way, you can convert an old car to electric for $4,000 to $8,000 (http://www.evworld.com/).

The e-book – for those of us who like to pay full price for all our books.

This weekend, as I was sitting down reading my Popular Science magazine, I read about a fancy new gadget that Sony is introducing called the Sony Reader. It's a really neat device that uses charged particles that they dub "E-ink". This "e-ink" is a great power saver becuase it only requires power to create the words on the page. After the words are electronically "written" on the screen, no power is necessary to maintain them. They will stay there without needing any battery power. It's a very ingeious device and a versitile new technology, but there are some drawbacks and I promised Kristen and Amanda that I would write about them.

The first of which is the cost. One of these babies costs as much as roughly 45 paperback books. But you don't get the books with it. You have to pay approx. $7 for each e-book that you want to read on it. In addition to that, I'm the kind of guy who likes buying used 50 cent books at yard sales. You can't do that with e-books. You have to pay full price for every book you read.

In fact, it seems the e-book and mp3s have many things in common. They are about the only two technologies that have no notion of what "used" means. It's no wonder music and e-book piracy is through the roof, the publishers and music producers are trying to eliminate "used" music and "used" books. They can charge full price for all their products indefinitely. Don't tell me that the music industry is loosing money because of the i-pod. And what about an e-book library? Can you go to the e-library and get e-books?

The technology is great for both e-books and MP3s, but someone needs to give us back our ability to re-sell something that we bought.

If nothing is done about it, here is my tip for you. Invest in music and publishing companies, their income will be through the roof in 20 years or so.

New Stuff Added

I've added some buttons to the bottom of the list on the right of this page. There's now a button to add to your yahoo page. Another one if you want to be e-mailed every time I update this page. And another one if you don't use yahoo as your homepage. Enjoy :) I'll post something soon.

Crickets -- Nature's Thermometers

Interesting fact of today.

50 + ((# of Cricket chirps in 60 seconds - 50) / 4) = Degrees Farenheit

Pretty cool! Try it out it.

About us

Hello again everyone. Most of you who have been reading this blog know about Maria. Kristen, Alanna and I are doing very well. There are several times during each day where we look back and wish to have her back or times when we are reminded by something we see and we think back to our time in the hospital with her and our parents. But we want you all to know that God is in control. God did not bring death into the world. And God did not take her from us, he gave her a soul and an eternity in heaven. Not a bad deal. If you want to be angry at anyone, be angry at Satan and us. He is the "Great Tempter" and we are the ones who sin and bring death. Jesus Christ brings life and healing.

In many ways I am jealous of our 6 day old daughter because she has an everlasting soul, just like we all do, but she gets heaven without having to face all the hurts and pains that the rest of us do. I have 50 to 70 more years here on earth if I'm lucky. One million years from now, when we are all in heaven with each other and Maria (if we accept the gift of life that Jesus so freely gives to us) these few years on earth will seem a distant memory.

I am sad that she isn't with us now, but I rejoice that God gave us the opportunity to add another soul to His kingdom. One with whom we will share only good times and memories for millions of years.

My readers, know this. The Bible says that we mourn, but not as those who have no hope. Until this ordeal I had no idea what "hope" meant in that passage. Now I have experienced hope. Hope is not a wish, it is confidence. I don't "hope" that Maria is in heaven. I know she is and I know I will see her again. We can't convince or talk ourselves into having this type of confidence, it is a gift from God at the same time as our salvation. If you don't feel this true hope, but you know you have accepted God's gift of heaven through Jesus Christ, you don't have to feel it. It's there, and it will come out when you need it, as it has with me.

I hope this finds you all well.

Jay

Expounding upon nothing

Let's see how long I can keep you until you get bored.
Today, I took apart a clothes pin to put on my finger to replace the medical splint that the doctor had given to me. I'd actually like to see how much they charged my insurance company for the two splints that I got. I'm sure it was much more expensive than the cost of a clothes pin. Probably more than a bag of clothes pins. Actually probably more than the entire stock of bags of clothes pins at Target tonight. Well, in order to lengthen my story, let me start from the beginning.

Three years ago we moved from Denver to Massachusetts. I got a job here, got Fallon insurance, and had to choose a "Primary care physician." I chose one half way between my home and work so that if I got sick in either place and needed to go to the doctor's I could easily go from either place.

Since then, I have been to my doctor about 9 times. Twice for an annual physical, three times for sprained ankles, once for a pain in my wrist, once for back pain, once for an injury from a 200 mile bike ride, and once for a "jammed finger."

So, how has my doctor helped?
Physical - You're doing great, keep it up (How much did that cost? I'm glad my insurance paid for it)

Sprained ankles - take some Advil and call me in he morning. Yes, I ignored his advice considering that my medical file says that I'm allergic to Ibuprophin.

Pain in my wrist - gave me a brace and told me to wear it, but I don't think he told me how long, so I just didn't except at night.

Back pain - this is one of the times when you wish you didn't have a primary care doctor because you wouldn't have to go "get permission" to go to a chiropractor. I'm sure he still charged the normal office visit fee for the 2 minutes he spent with me.

Injury from bike ride - "overuse" - again... Take some Advil. Again I didn't take his advise.
Jammed finger - he sent me to a orthopedic surgeon. I went and guess what the surgeon's advise was ... Yes! Take some Advil and wear this brace ... or this one ... or this one.

Well, I've been wearing this brace for over 6 weeks and the swelling from January still hasn't gone down. But to be fair, it's probably because I haven't been taking my Advil. Kristen also says that I didn't go to the doctor's when I should have (i.e. I waited about 6 weeks). I figure that if I hadn't waited he wouldn't have sent me to a specialist.

For those of you who are still reading...

Take some Advil call me in the morning.

National Administrative Professionals day

Apparently yesterday was Administrative Professionals day. It made me think, who actually determines national days? Do our federal taxes actually pay a salary to someone out there who has the job of declaring April 27th "National Ant Rights awareness day?" We ask that young boys refrain from torching ants with their magnifying glasses on this day. Instead, present them with a small gift in appreciation for all their comrads who have fallen to the heat of that bright light in the past.

So, I've done my research. Administrative Professionals day is the Wednesday of Administrative Professionals week. The entire week (originally called National Secretaries week) was declared in 1952 by the US secretary of commerce Charles Sawyer.

Actually, there is no such thing as a "National Holiday." All holidays are determined by each state. For example, Patriot's Day (Boston Marathon day), in Massachusetts is not observed by other states. Most states observe the national holidays anyway though.

Only the President and Congress can legally designate a federal holiday for federal employees, then the states have the option of whether or not to adopt that holiday for their state employees.

So there's the story about national holidays. I'm going now so that I can write congress and petition for "National $2,000 hammer day." The holiday where we all go out and buy a $2,000 hammer from a company that we own in order to fund projects that we aren't really supposed to be funding.

Excel Vlookup function

Since I use this function every single day at work I thought it would be useful to post here, so that as my memory declines with age, I will always have a good reference for myself.

The vlookup function is used to find a value from the left hand column of a list and return a value from that column or any column to the right of it.

Simple Example (obviously I would do this easy thing without a formula, but I usually deal with 5,000 or more rows and you can see how difficult it would be if the list were longer than 9 rows):
Let's say I have this table and I am looking for the third column given the number 7. I can look in the table and see that that would be the letter "p". The vlookup formula is basically that. Here's how it looks in english: "=vlookup(what you are looking for, where you are looking, what column you want to see, the number zero (don't ask why, just put it there)". In this example the formula would look like this: "=vlookup(7,[the list reference],3,0)". This formula would give me the value "p". If I want the value "g" instead, I just change the ",3," to ",2,". If I want "k", I would change the "(7," to "(2,"

1	a	j
2	b	k
3	c	l
4	d	m
5	e	n
6	f	o
7	g	p
8	h	q
9	i	r

So now you know. Have fun. I'll post something good for the non-technical folks tomorrow.

Excel Pivot Tables

This weekend, my dad was talking about trying to learn how to use pivot tables, so here you go dad. This one's for you.

A pivot table is a fancy excel name for a list summary. For example, let's say I have an excel list. Columns A and B are last and first name respectively. Column C is age. Column D is Amount. So to create a summary of this data:

• Start on an empty worksheet
• Select: Tools --> Pivot Table & Pivot Chart report
• Choose Microsoft Excel list and Pivot table and click next
• Go to your list and select columns A - D
• Click next
• Click Finish

If you get an error that says "Pivot table field name is not valid", you probably are missing a column heading. Excel won't create a pivot table unless every column has a heading.

You will now have a template on the left and a "Pivot Table Field List" on the right. Now you can start dragging and dropping your fields from the field list into the four separate areas in your pivot table. The four areas are: Page fields, Row Fields, Column Fields, and Data fields. As you drag and drop fields into the pivot table, your field names will appear as gray boxes. You can drag these gray boxes around as much as you like until you get your table to look the way you want.

So, in my example above, if you just want to add up the amount. Drag amount to the data field.... Hey!! Now there's one of my real annoyances with excel pivot tables. It thinks I want to count amount instead of add it up. Well, we can fix that. Right click on the data or the gray box and select field settings from the dropdown box. Here I can tell the pivot table that I want a sum (or average if I had chosen the age field) and pretty much anything else.

Annoyance #2 - Pivot tables always think you want your data in rows if you have two or more things that you've dragged into the "data" section. I like my data in columns so drag the gray box from the top left corner of the table into the "column" area.

There you go. Play around with it for 15 to 20 minutes and you'll be a pivot table pro.

Tomorrow -- the VLOOKUP function

Why is the sky blue?

After two months of inactivity here, I figured it's high time to pick up this blog again. I actually started to write several blogs in the past few months but figured that nobody would be interested in what I have to say. Now that I've gotten over that and I realize that no one is interested in these random things, I've decided to write them anyway.

About a month ago I purchased a book from Barnes & Noble called "The Science Answer Book." Now during conversation I can impress my friends with my random knowledge of all things science. For instance, the next total solar eclipse visible in the US will occur in 2017 in a 200 mile line from Oregon to South Carolina. It was meant as a coffee table book. I'm probably one of the few that reads it before I go to bed at night.

Anyway, last night I was reading and refreshed my memory on a question that I'm sure I will get in the next 1 to 3 years. Why is the sky blue?

Interestingly enough, this question also lends itself to the question, why is the sun yellow? Well, here's the basic answer to both questions as well as why the colors change at sunset.

All the colors of the light spectrum have different wavelengths, red has the longest wavelength, blue has the shortest. When all the colors of light combine they produce white light. Since blue has the shortest wavelength it has the most opportunity to collide with the particles in our atmosphere on it's journey from the sun to our eyes. It does collide with the particles of our atmosphere, so the blue light rays from the sun bounce around in the atmosphere and end up coming at us from other areas of the sky, rather than straight from the sun. Since the blue light rays are dispersed, the only light rays left are red and green, which combine to make yellow light (hence the sun looks yellow). As the sun nears the horizon, the light has more atmosphere to travel through to reach us. More atmosphere means more light colliding with particles, both blue and green light are dispersed, leaving the sun looking red and the sky looking pale blue. When the sun reaches the horizon, the atmosphere is so thick that even some of the red light collides with the atmosphere and creates beautiful shades of purple.

Well, that's my random fact of the day. I'll try to keep up on posting here.

Father daughter weekend

This weekend was the first weekend (and overnight) without mommy. Mommy went on a trip to Denver last weekend to visit friends. I know this ,first because I missed here tremendously. Secondly, the internal clock of a 23 month old seems to run 4 times faster than adults and she had this as her hourly chime (which is 15 minutes to us).

Alanna: Mommy?
Me: ....
Alanna: Mommy?
Me: Mommy's on a trip remember?
Alanna: Mommy's on trip.
Me: yup
Alanna: Visit friends
Me: yup
Me: ooo! look at the pretty snow!

And so, by way of distraction, I successfully averted an all out strike of the "want mommy's" from Thursday until this morning.

I would attribute it to my entertaining personality and my adeptness at being a good Dad, but alas, I think it is more that Alanna decided that she can survive without mommy for a few hours.

It appears that she decided that on Thursday night. We had a very fun weekend going to the zoo, buying new fish, playing in the snow (well ... I was shoveling, but Alanna thought that was playing), and waiting till our cheeks were nice an rosy before rushing inside to sip hot chocolate and watch the muppet show.

Overall it was a nice fun weekend. Mommy would have made it almost perfect.

We missed you Kristen, we're glad you're back :)

Alanna in her scottish outfit :)