Jon Smock

Today is a good day!  Yes, it’s a Friday, but it’s also the day we paid off the smaller of my two student loans!

This is especially satisfying for me, because of what the loan represents.  When I was in college, I spent a little too much time with friends and playing madden and not enough time doing homework.  Graduation time rolled around, and I just didn’t have enough credits.  Luckily I have a great Dad who coached me through it, and we took out a $6,000 loan to cover the Summer courses.

I’m not particularly proud of this story, but it has taught me a lot about working hard, not thinking smarts = success, and about finishing what you started.  Now, I can officially say my debt is paid off (sorry, pun!).

This frees up $100 per month, which we already have plans for.  First, we’ve been very convicted that we don’t already support Compassion.  We’re looking to change that by sponsering at least one child.  The rest will go towards bigger and better loans.

I found Focus’ Top Entrepreneurs of the Last 100 Years via Hacker News today.  The way these people have seen past their products to what customers want inspires me.  Ralph Lauren put it best:  “I don’t design clothes, I design dreams.”  Ok, that’s a little over the top, but that common thread ties each person on the list.

Another trend I noticed through some of their successes is how many entrepreneurs brought luxury items to the masses.  This will never stop being a viable business strategy. As we become more globally connected, I hope we will see more philanthropic efforts distributing the basic necessities, luxuries to many, to every person in the world.  7 billion (6.7) is a very small number nowadays.

Side note:  Oprah Winfrey has a net worth of $2.7 billion.

You and I need Jesus.  I can’t begin to tell you what He’s done in my life, but I confess I forget it sometimes - forgive me.

This sermon really hit me today (starts at about 28:00).

Although it may not always be mathematically the best move, I’m all about knocking out debt.  It’s freeing as you watch those loans balances wind down, and once you can actually knock one or two loans out entirely, you can snowball those payments onto other loan principals or into savings.

Joe Sangl is the man when it comes to this, and I’ve been reading his blog for two years or so.  I really like is his pay-off/savings spectaculars (towards the bottom of the page).

And, so, with the purchase of our new house, I’ve made a Smock House Spectacular!

Pay off that house!

I realize now that I actually mislabeled this, because it is a pay-off spectacular, but I’m sure Joe won’t fault me for it.  I also thought about applying the loan pay-off game logic to this, but I’m not sure we have the room in the budget just yet.

If you haven’t heard, Google is releasing Chrome OS sometime late next year.  They say that users of this operating system will not need to worry about viruses or malware.

Bruce Schneier, a (the?) expert on technology security, said this could not be done, and he further clarified that a completely virus-free OS is impossible, though Google may produce a considerably more resistent OS.

From what I’ve read Google assumes any system running Chrome OS will have constant internet-connectivity, a safe assumption considering the trends.  Combined with Google’s ability to compute and aggregate vast amounts of information in the cloud, they have an opportunity to implement the ultimate virus-fighting strategy.

When is the last time you received a spam email in your Gmail or surfed to a truly spamy website using Google search?  Yeah, perhaps once or twice this year?  Considering the internet is more than 99% spam (I cannot find references for this, however we could easily assume 95%), that is incredibly impressive.  How does it work?

Paul Graham illustrates how email spam is combatted easily using statistical analysis.  Basically you start with a body of good email and a body of spam email.  After analyzing the probably of words and phrases being contained in good or spammy email, you can do a remarkable job of sorting email.  Google can do this even better with millions of people pointing out new spam cases for them in Gmail.

Google Search uses links and trust (along with other things) to determine a web page’s trustworthiness.  Basically content creators tell Google something is not spam by linking to it.

Chrome OS could combine these two techniques to seriously counteract viruses.  First, Chrome could identify common chunks of code or binary data on your system and use that like the words or phrases in spam email.  On top of that, it could follow pieces of code/data across the net of Chrome users, watching for actively spreading programs or viruses.  If users could identify malware on their machines, Google could then share that information across all the systems running Chrome OS.  Yes, this is what things like Akismet and virus protection using a dictionary does already, but it could be dramatically improved by Google’s cloud services.

Connectivity is clearly the future, and Google is getting its foot in the door.  Networks create a natural monopoly, and by starting now, Google is poising itself to be that leader.

I noticed this above my inbox one day…

Bing ad in Google Adsense

Kiva.org has created an innovative and effective way to alleviate poverty and promote entrepeneurship in third-world countries.  Entrepeneurs in these countries have little access to capital, so Kiva makes it possible for ordinary people in wealthier countries to lend money overseas.  Recently Kiva decided to open lending to entrepeneurs in the US, and there has been quite a backlash.

Without a doubt, poverty is a relative term, and the poor in the US are quite wealthy next to the poor overseas.  The US gives everyone free education, laws and courts that protect them, and access to some medical care.  Consider the luxuries such as electricity, clean water, and food you take forgranted everyday.  Certainly, the majority of lendees in the US wouldn’t be considered poor even by our standards, but this decision raises lots of tough questions.

Do we neglect the poor at home?  How do you determine where to give?  Should we always look at “ROI” on our giving, or is the spirit of giving completely divorced from the potential result?

First, I hope you are giving.  We’re so blessed in the US, and we can easily do without much of what we have.  Ask anyone who’s moving to a new house or apartment how much “useless” stuff they have.  If you didn’t have it, would you even notice?  That says something.

Second, I do think that the spirit of giving should be separate from the potential return (for either yourself or the receiver).  Generousity only sees need, not greater or lesser need.  Can you give without thinking thoughts like, “I wish they hadn’t done ___ with it” or “they really made my gift worth it.”

Finally, whether or not you believe in God really affects the answer to this question.  If you do not believe in God, there are probably other questions that need to be answered first, like how morals are determined, what “just” means, and if it is ok to be greedy.  I’d argue that if you feel compassion for anyone other than yourself, you’re basically proving there is something higher than normal interaction (morals).  Check out C.S. Lewis’ Mere Christianity for a great discussion on morals and the existence of a higher power.

If you do believe in God, whether or not you can communicate with that God also plays a role in this.  We often say “God has a plan”.  If we can communicate with God, we should really be asking Him what His intentions are.  He may instruct you to give overseas or to give to a local cause.

I know it’s taboo to bring God into the mix, but that’s the way I see it.  Ultimately, if I had to boil it all down, I’d say giving is giving (basically what I said in point two).  I can understand the backlash against Kiva, and I probably agree that it deters from its core mission, but I can’t fault them either.  The TechCrunch writer does a great job of illustrating some non-trivial benefits of this decision, such as a boosted economic climate and a new market of lenders that could possibly also give overseas.

Damien Katz is the creator of CouchDB, a document-based database engine.  CouchDB is  something that really fascinates me, because it is designed to be distributed.

But what is more fascinating still is Damien’s story (30-min video).  He set out on his own, lived off of savings, and did something amazing.  I’m really glad it worked out for him.

You can read his entire story here, and it is definitely worth it (it is lengthy):

The engine needed to be rewritten from the ground up, it needed to be made maintainable, it needed to be faster, and it needed to be completely backwards compatible.

We’ve all been there, Damien.  I salute you:

The philosophy was that if I did those things [(submitting design documents and getting them approved)], everyone would meddle with the design and nothing would get done. It’s truly easier to ask forgiveness than to ask permission, not to mention things get done a lot faster if you just do them. It sounds weird, but that was big part of the culture at Iris. Just get it done and do it right, do whatever it takes. So that’s the way I worked, I was just going to go headfirst into it, damn the torpedoes.

Ok, ok, just one more:

More often than not, the old engine had it wrong, it had some indefensible behavior that was clearly not what was intended and often the formulas that relied on these behaviors did so unintentionally. It’s like two wrongs making a right, but regardless if the old engine was wrong or right, the new had to have the same broken behavior. In software we call that being “bugward compatible”. It sucks, and I absolutely hated that I had to go in and purposely mess up my carefully crafted, elegant code but that’s what I had to do. That’s necessary for a truly stable and backwards compatible product.

I would have loved to be a carpenter. I’ve watched more DIY shows than I could possibly count, and as we’re getting ready to buy a house, I’m really looking forward to building some sweat equity (kitchen, here I come!). This same desire draws me to technology. Watching cool things scale captures my imagination, and I’m completely enamored with the open source mentality. And, the cool part of building things yourself is that you can do it yourself.  Just a couple things that I thought were cool:

This guy turned a chest freezer into a refrigerator, cutting his energy consumption to .1kWH per day.

Yehuda Katz started making all his own food and has gotten healthier for it. His rule: “Only purchase items with a single ingredient in their ingredient list.” Pretty sweet.

This guy gets me. Wow, everything on that list is a daily frustration for me.

For those who deal with IT people everyday, we really appreciate when you give us any details you can (#3), because most of the problems we deal with are subtle.