The Peter Ong Project

Ping Pong: A New Preoccupation

2012-02-20T15:26:00.000-08:00

I barely played ping pong all weekend; what a waste. I have a barely controllable offensive racket that is itching to smack balls until they are square, but I have no one to play with and nowhere to play. I played with the robot this weekend to try to sharpen my forehand skills, but alas I remain a long ways away from having even a decent forehand loop -- I may need professional help. We'll see.

I did get to play a guy from New Jersey at the table tennis club near my house. He said he was the king of ping pong there. He didn't know who he was dealing with, the Ping Pong Super Freak! I kicked his ass and then sent him back to New Jersey.

All weekend I have been engrossed in my Youtube training. And I have been watching championship matches every chance I get.

There is a racket that I want to get but is too expensive... the Butterfly Amultart ZL Carbon. This baby is purported to be able to impart gamma radiation onto balls such that they destroy the receiving racket through sheer power generated by my biceps of fury and vaporize any trace of opposition at all. Einstein was wrong... this racket can make balls travel faster than the speed of light.

Anyway, I'm pathetically bored to death. I want to go to the table tennis club, but I don't want to pay the entrance fee, and I certainly don't want to go alone. I've already done that twice.

Status Report: January 2012

2012-01-28T18:06:00.000-08:00

Before the new year began, I had sketched out some potential 2012 New Year's resolutions. With February just around the corner I feel it is a good time for a status report.

Reach 170 pounds with less than 20% body fat. This is tough so I have to plan how I am going to do this. I was 163 pounds this morning at 23% body fat.

This resolution is not doing well. I weighed 163 pounds before the year started. The last couple of weeks, I was 158 pounds. A friend of mine said I'm the envy of the world, but I disagree. Being skinny has been the bane of my existence. I am done with being skinny. When I was 163, I went to the gym daily and was the strongest I had ever been. My personal best was 110 pound dumbbells on incline dumbbell press (that means 220) 10-reps. I did 1,125 pounds (10 reps) on the leg press before I injured my knee. And free barbell squats were at 315 pounds. It was the exercise that injured my left knee. A word of advice, don't do heavy barbell squats with your feet and toes parallel pointing forward. They need to be pointed out maybe 45 degrees. Furthermore, use a plate to elevate your heels, otherwise, you risk injury. And knees, once they're hurt, do not heal back the same.

Save at a minimum 3-months' worth of expenses; ideally 6-months' worth. This is for a rainy day. We are very close to the 3 month mark, but a 6 months' safety net would be much better.

We're on track with this resolution. We have been disciplined for some time about saving, so we have practice on our side, and I think this might be a cheat. I think we already had this much saved even before making the resolution. You see, we save money in places I can't see or at best I obscure their totals so I always think I'm broke. Well, Leah and I recently totalled our disparate caches and it was pleasant to see. So many Americans live paycheck to paycheck, that includes us, and on top of that live with credit card debt, we were once in that boat. I hated it, I felt like I could never fully relax. Well, I think we are a little closer.

Shave everyday. Well, not everyday because my skin won't tolerate that abuse, but often enough such that I never have facial hair.

This started out good, but waned in the last week. I need to keep this up. The problem is shaving takes up so much time. To keep cleanly shaved, it turns out, I have to do it every other day, something like Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.

Read one book every month. I am a member of Amazon Prime, and therein I can borrow one book per month for as long as I remain a member. This is probably going to be the toughest one; I may need to scratch this so I don't set up myself for failure.

This one is being scratched. There just isn't enough time to make this happen. At the moment, I am reading Christopher Hitchen's The Portable Atheist. I'm at Lucretius, haha.

Start my Ruby on Rails project. I have this idea that I can most likely monetize. I just need to get started and at least achieve one milestone in that project, which I still have to set.

I have sort of started this. In order to do decent Rails, you have to know some Ruby. While I know some Ruby, I don't know nearly enough to get this project off the ground. So I spend my spare time rewriting my bash tools into ruby as practice.

Of these resolutions the most important to me is the gym. It is especially tough because there is no real gym near my office, and my daily commutes are literally mini road trips each way. So logistically, it's a very tight fit. I don't know how I am going to do it. For a couple of times, I have told myself I'd get up at 05:00 and hit the gym by 06:00 near my place, and then drive on over to the 'bu, but I have failed.

Thinking Out Loud: Migrating from Mac to Linux

2012-01-24T05:36:00.000-08:00

I feel that the Macbook Pro is hampering my effectiveness and productivity at work. I cannot tell exactly whether it is the lack of home/end keys or the inability to highlight words using the arrow keys or maybe the screen resolution is too low or most likely the combination of all of these and other little gripes. I feel I have to keep lifting my arm to move the mouse in order to switch windows.

At home, my entire infrastructure is powered by Linux. That includes my primary desktop OS. My qualms with it never included discomfort with the command line. In fact, I believe its command line environment is bar none the best -- that means it's better than even that of the Mac's.

I need to be able to work on the keyboard and use the mouse only marginally. But with the Mac, I have to keep using it. And, it's not just any mouse. It is the cool-before-usability Apple Magic Mouse. With respect to Steve Jobs, may he rest in peace, maybe that Apple Distortion Field is wearing off. Although, I still love my iPad and certainly my iPhone 3GS even going into its third year of service. Don't get me wrong, I would still buy a Macbook Pro if I can afford it.

Maybe I will install linux on the Macbook Pro (laughing inside). I have installed in my Lenovo T500 (Fedora 15) my OpenVPN certs and my SSH keys. I am able to connect without problems to all of our resources. Of the places I have worked, this one is the most progressive and most neatly put together architecture. Although, I still have reservations about the whole JBoss/Tomcat/Java thing. I think that is its weakest link. But to be honest, my sentiments on JBoss/Tomcat/Java is borne of ignorance. I just feel that it is 2012, and robust applications have been built and proven on languages that require no compiling (wink, wink RoR). This place is also a PHP shop which I like, but I feel that's so two-thousand-late.

So here is the good stuff. This place has embraced the cloud. Although MS Office is installed in our Macs, we hardly use it. We trade documents using Google Docs. In the MS Office Suite, I live in Outlook which is okay because that service is available in OWA. Our ticketing system, Jira is also a web app. So far, I have found only relief switching to my Linux desktop. But maybe it is too early to tell; maybe I will hate Linux too.

My biggest problem with Linux as a desktop was that everything is so big. The letters, the spaces between letters, the lines that delineate parts and sections of the windows, the shell, et cetera are so thick, they waste valuable screen space. While many will argue this is customizable, maybe I am stupid, but every time I try to change something with the user interface, it ends up looking ugly, out of proportion, either stretched tall or sideways, or the letters become illegible. Whatever it is, I should not have to put in work to get my user-interface to conserve screen real-estate. I made customizations anyway; just the easy ones. Lastly, the bugs! There is not enough roach killer spray to kill all the bugs. The good thing is Fedora 15's most obvious bugs don't bother me. In fact, I upgraded to Fedora 16 last night without problems.

The things I like about Windows are its established-ness, everything works with it; there is plenty of support for different devices. The things I dislike about it is its fundamental difference from Linux. And the fact that it will scar my bank account if I wanted one. If I install cygwin in Windows, it's close to being good. If I install the Redhat flavored cygwin, it is better with stability, but there are much less packages available to it than its plain old cygwin sibling.

What I like about the Mac is its beautiful cohesive interface. It is closer to being Linux than Windows is, but it still is not. It is easy to forget that even though you are working in bash, your binutils are not GNU, so many of the command-line switches I take for granted in Linux do not work. The things I dislike about the Mac are its poor usability features, features that Windows has had for years and even Linux has. I think the Mac concentrated so much on the look, that the actual usability of the system suffered.

What would the perfect operating system look like? It would have the usability and support that Windows enjoys and can boast about and the beautiful interface and artful movements of the Mac's interface. It would have beautiful, but simple and conducive to productivity effects and keyboard shortcuts, but underneath it all, it will be Linux. Why? Because Linux will talk to a toaster if I wanted it to.

Car Maintenance is Expensive

2012-01-07T18:59:00.000-08:00

My 2004 SLK is at the dealership being serviced. I brought it there today for the following list of things:

The right tail light was not working, for which I received a fix-it ticket.
The transmission needed maintenance done to it.
An oil change

I expected the transmission maintenance would be $275, the tail light required some work $300, and the oil change $100.

The transmission I have been told is the weak link. The engine will go on forever, but the transmission needs tender loving care. I have not done it since I bought the car so we are getting it done today.

I tried to diagnose the tail light and was convinced it was a bigger problem than simply replacing the bulb. There is a socket that connects to the housing but I could not determine whether the problem was the housing, that socket, or something else so I mentally prepared myself to pay the highest cost it could reasonably be which was to replace the tail light housing which I have been quoted to be approximately $300 with labor. And of course, every 10,000 miles the car requires an oil change. A few hours passed and the Mercedes dealership called me. They told me the following:

There is a warning light about the coolant sensor -- needs a replacement $120
The windshield washer tank has a hole -- needs a replacement $300
The water pump is dying -- needs a replacement $620

Regarding the things I brought it in for:

The tail light was working. The headlight bulb instead needed to be replaced. $10
The oil change is complete. $99
The transmission maintenance is complete. $275

This is my running total:

Replacement coolant sensor $120
Replacement windshield washer tank $300
Replacement water pump $620
Oil change $99
Transmission maintenance $275

I owe Mercedes Benz $1,414; I think they are going to let me slide on the light bulb -- they are so nice. If my car did not need these repairs what would $1,414 afford me?

A brand new iPhone 4S 64G for myself and my wife with accessories.
A brand new Apple 13" Macbook Pro.
Either one fully loaded iPad 2 or two less loaded iPad 2's; for me and my wife.
Savings in cash $1,414 (in fact, that's where the money is coming from)
A nice 55" flat screen TV

I hate using savings. When money goes into savings, I try to never touch it, but when something like this happens I have no choice. Saving money is difficult and time consuming but spending money is easy and takes no time at all. I feel an intense pain inside, where exactly is impossible to point at, but it is there and it is real and it is intense.

I can buy a new car, but that would mean incurring debt. Buying a newer car means spending more than $1,414. I do not want to get into car payments again so I am avoiding it as much as I am able to and I already dislike doling out $1,414, much less spending more than that on a newer car. As much as it hurts, this is really the least of all evils.

Credit Cards, Money and an American Express Bill for $19.47

2011-12-30T21:13:00.000-08:00

Leah and I have been arguably debt free for years, I just cannot remember how long. I say arguably because all we have left to pay off is the house and her school loans. A few years ago, a good friend introduced me to Dave Ramsey's Total Money Makeover. When he told me about this, I reacted exactly as the book said I would; I thought I knew everything. Well, I am glad he convinced me to read the book anyway. After having read the book and Leah too eventually, we embarked on our journey to becoming debt-free. All in all, Dave's advice works. He keeps it simple, and tells you it won't be easy, but when you're done, you'll be glad you did.

We started with a 5-figure debt enough to buy a new car with between our auto loans and about a dozen credit cards. We got inspired, or gazelle intense as Dave would put it, and in about eighteen months we paid them off. We put a budget together and stuck to it. We leveraged technology, we put our bills in an online calendar, had excel show us pie charts of our finances and we made sure we spent less than we made. As the finances permitted, we were able to afford iPhones that allowed us to have the calendar always synchronized and at our fingertips. So, here we are now.

The main thing I dislike about the book is how Ramsey tries to insert religiosity into all the financial advice as if were it not for his biblical revelations he would not have come up with these ideas.

Dave Ramsey takes a hard stance against credit cards, and I believe he is correct when he admonishes its use. But maybe not. For a long time, I reserved using the credit card only for recurring bills that changed, for example the cellphone and cable. The credit card was billed automatically by these places and all I had to do was pay the credit card. This worked well for us because when you are doing math down to the penny and reconciling your checkbook daily, those minute changes become overdraft fees if you make a mistake. In short, the credit card gave us wiggle room.

But I started using it for gas and then gradually for more things, but in doing so I always paid it off right away. The end result is every line item on the card was paid for through my iPhone often times at the same moment the charge was being made -- yes, I never used the credit card unless I knew the checking account had the money for it; it was essentially my ATM card. Over time, this became a habit of mine that ensured the credit card never carried a balance. But when a traumatic experience happened to me this month, I have been remiss about paying right away. Now I owe American Express $19.47. I can probably figure out where this came from, but I will just pay it.

I no longer believe that credit cards are evil as Dave Ramsey would have you believe. But this much is true, credit cards are designed to separate you from your money. Credit card companies spend a lot of money, several times more money in a month than we make in a year coming up with creative ways to entice you. This is their full-time job. Unless you work for these credit cards, my guess is the crux of your job is not to come up with strategies to negate their efforts. In short, by being lax and or remaining ignorant about these, you hardly stand a chance. If you know this, you are that much better off from becoming yet another one of their prey. The only way to remove the risk completely is to cease using them altogether. But for me, I take that risk because I appreciate its conveniences and other benefits. Although, I think there is still wisdom there that I do not fully understand yet; maybe Dave Ramsey is right, I should have my final plastectomy.

I use the American Express because I like earning the points. I got a nice new wireless keyboard and mouse and an iPod for paying for the things I was going to buy anyway. Leah, on the other hand, has stopped using credit cards completely even with her moving bills. So she is proof that Dave Ramsey is right. If I did what my wife is doing, I wouldn't have a $19.47 bill from American Express.

That said, I am making a new year's resolution to ensure that at the end of each billing cycle the balance is zero dollars or less. Less because on every paycheck, I know what needs to get paid until the following check. So on every payday, I pay all the bills ahead of time thereby making my balance negative; yes, until the cable bill or cellphone bill comes through, American Express owes me. So, I can tell you now what January 2012's American Express balance will be. Not a positive number.

New Year's Resolution 2012

2011-12-25T20:12:00.000-08:00

Christmas is technically over at midnight, but it's been over since about 13:00 for me, maybe even earlier. Next up, New Year's Eve and New Year's Day. Personally, those are more exciting to me.

So looking forward into 2012, I want to have some goals. Yep, that's right the oft-failed New Year's Resolution. These have a deadline of New Year's Eve 2013. Let's begin:

Reach 170 pounds with less than 20% body fat. This is tough so I have to plan how I am going to do this. I was 163 pounds this morning at 23% body fat.
Save at a minimum 3-months' worth of expenses; ideally 6-months' worth. This is for a rainy day. We are very close to the 3 month mark, but a 6 months' safety net would be much better.
Shave everyday. Well, not everyday because my skin won't tolerate that abuse, but often enough such that I never have facial hair.
Read one book every month. I am a member of Amazon Prime, and therein I can borrow one book per month for as long as I remain a member. This is probably going to be the toughest one; I may need to scratch this so I don't set up myself for failure.
Start my Ruby on Rails project. I have this idea that I can most likely monetize. I just need to get started and at least achieve one milestone in that project, which I still have to set.

This is a good start. Much more than this and I will likely fail. These are reasonable goals for me, and I believe I can accomplish them.

The Peter Ong Project Lives

2011-12-25T17:06:00.000-08:00

The Peter Ong Project lives.