Finance is pretty fascinating to me, and the recent financial crisis is an incredible study into how financial systems blow up under stress (if only it were a purely academic study and not a disaster for hundreds of millions of people). Probably the best complete rundown of what happened, and what to do about it,… Continue reading Book Review: Too Big To Save?
Another smartphone convert
Despite working in tech, I am not a terribly techy person. I am not an early adopter. I don’t have a lot of gadgets. I may have three monitors on my desktop computer at home, but I’m not one of those people who constantly upgrades to get the most performance. I didn’t have my own… Continue reading Another smartphone convert
Book review: The Black Swan
I recently read The Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb. In a nutshell, it’s about how improbably events (“black swans”) can be completely unexpected by people who think that events follow typical probabilities, and the mess that results. I enjoyed it, although Taleb won’t be winning award for humility anytime soon.
Future reform
While some media conservatives were ranting about the end of American civilization after the health care vote last weekend, there were a few thinking ones who were addressing what the Obama health reforms meant for the country and for people going into the future. True, if you blinked you would have missed the intelligent commentary,… Continue reading Future reform
The battle is won, now the fight moves on…
I’d be lying if I didn’t admit to some pretty strong emotions when I watched those 216 votes come in last night on C-SPAN. As somebody who, perhaps foolishly, believes that the point of politics isn’t to merely score more points than the other people, but to enact real programs that lead to a better… Continue reading The battle is won, now the fight moves on…
Liar’s Poker
I recently read the book “Liar’s Poker” by Michael Lewis, about Wall Street in the 1980s. I’m not sure what prompted me to pick it up from the library: I’d heard of it several times before, and maybe the current financial mess made it apparent that revisiting some of the excess that got the ball… Continue reading Liar’s Poker
Moving from Ghost to Clonezilla
Update: In addition to this post, check out my guide on customizing custom-ocs. In a previous post, I talked about using disk imaging software for setting up Windows in a corporate environment. For years, I’ve used Symantec Ghost, specifically Ghost 8. I’d previously manually run Ghost from a network drive, booting from a custom floppy… Continue reading Moving from Ghost to Clonezilla
SD59 Convention Pictures
I’ve uploaded pictures from the DFL SD59 convention last Saturday here. Plenty of samples below the jump…
SD59 convention report
Today was the DFL Senate District 59 convention at Edison High School. Julia and I were elected as delegates at our precinct caucus a few weeks ago, so we got up early on a Saturday morning to attend. We were out of there by 2:30, which isn’t bad for a district convention. Sadly, we were… Continue reading SD59 convention report
No room for empathy
The statements from many Republicans these days about health care are unnerving. Governor Pawlenty says that maybe hospitals should be able to turn away indigent people who need treatment. Earlier, he vetoes a reasonable GAMC extension, and Republicans in the House vow to uphold his veto despite overwhelmingly voting for the extension in the first… Continue reading No room for empathy