Making Sense of the Madoff Scandal

James B. Stewart had a good article about making sense of the Madoff scandal. Probably the most useful, practical advice I have seen in all the articles I have read. Bottom line, double check the accountants at any investment are reputable (neglect Enron) and diversify, even if you are getting great returns.

How to Create Extra Leg Room in Coach

I recently flew from Washington DC to Boston. The flight is short, a little less than an hour. I am about 5'10'' (used to be average) and my legs are long enough that my knees touch the seat in front of me. This happens in almost all cases except for when my bottom is completely against the back of the seat. 

I often put my news paper in the seat pocket in front of me. This takes up even more precious leg room. Since I am too cheap to upgrade to the exit row, even short flights tend to be annoying. Last flight I had an ah-ha moment. I took the magazines out of the seat back pocket in front of me, and threw them in the over head compartment. Just like that I got an extra 1/2 of leg room. I am sure it is against the rules to toss the emergency instructions as well, so I left those in the pocket. I don't know why this did not occur to me before. Ryanair does not even have those stupid pockets any more. More often than not, they hold old tissues, and spent wrappers. In fact, on Ryanair, the saftey instructions are printed on the plastic seatback in front of you. I am not sure why the American carriers have not moved to this yet. I hope they get that but don't decrease the leg room to the same as Ryanair. It has to be the least in the Western world.

Getting Going Away

My favorite columnist from the WSJ, Johnathan Clements, wrote his last column yesterday. It is, was called Getting Going, and apparently he wrote over 1,000 columns on personal finance. I have only started to pay attention to him in the last five years when I started reading the Journal regularly.

If you have access to the archives of the WSJ, you should browse his archive. If not you should at least check out the last three columns he wrote. Online there is a column where he picks some of his favorites. There is advice in there about portfolio balancing and home purchases, all of which are pet topics for me.

His new position will be helping to advise ordinary investors. Hopefully, we will still be able to get his thoughts at the same price as the newspaper subscription.

Beta and COGS

I had a problem with my Google Calendar this morning that raised an interesting question for me. Google makes its money as an advertising company, offers numerous "free" software services to push ads competing with Microsoft, Adobe, and Yahoo. GOOG often competes with telecom providers like Comcast, AT&T, and Verizon. The interesting thing is they don't provide the same customer support that all of those companies do at the same level and instead rely on customers to self-support. There was no one to send an email to or ask a question or log a ticket. While they are not normally helpful, Google's competitors do offer these outlets for exception handling like my issue.

Some people would say that this self-support model is emblematic of Web 2.0. That may be true but I like to think I am a little more swift with technology things than most people. I checked the users blogs, faqs, online help, some guy had the same or similar question about 1 month ago and there was no answer either. Otherwise there was no help. Most people would probably breakdown if this happened to them. Or call AT&T like me. At 10 cents a message for most people, there can be a tangible impact those these issues besides lost productivity.

If I had some time I would like to look at the service COGS (cost of goods sold) for each of these companies. Normally, companies like AT&T don't put services costs in the income statement but sometimes companies due place it in their supplementary filings. It would be interesting to see how Google's competitors expense this versus Google. Since so many of Google's consumer services are "beta" they probably get away with very little, for now. Of note, Google Mail is in beta after nearly four years in operation. Brilliant! I am sure their competitors are questioning their extensive CS organizations.

As for the interesting problem this morning, I started getting text messages from Google Calendar for a monthly finance reminder that I have set up. Normally the calendar sends only one message reminder. This morning it send one and continued to do so every 5-6 minutes. I erased the series of events from the calendar in Google and my Blackberry. I deleted my phone number from the mobile setup portion of Google Calendar. I still continued to receive the message every 10 minutes or so from Google. I called AT&T to see if they could block the sender. Apparently you have to buy a "stalker package" from AT&T to block certain for $4.95 per month. It does not pay to be popular sometimes!




Eventually I had to reply to the text message with a "stop" response. The first time I tried it I got a response that my number was not registered. I went back, replace my telephone number, reregistered, than sent the "stop" response again. That seems to have fixed it. All that and it took me about 45 minutes all together. I am sure that helped Google's bottom line.

Bookshelves Made of Glass

There is a great, fun article in the newspaper today that talks about dating and books. I recently had the comment that “I am surprised by the lack of books you have on your shelf.” To be sure, I don’t have any Pushkin’s or Dostoyevsky’s on my shelf. I have also had chills when I looked at online profiles and seen “Eat, Pray, Love” as the “best book ever!”

Years ago, I had someone close to me that worked at Barnes and Noble. She would constantly bring home books, not to mention, I would spend a lot of time in the store reading books. In one of my many moves, I packed up so many boxes of books, that it was ridiculous. Then my dutch Uncle Bob told me that he reduced his inventory to keep only books that really affected him. His advice: let the library keep all the rest for you. I decided to do the same. I tossed hundreds of books.

Instead, on my shelf you will find Sedaris’ (I enjoyed seeing my friend heave with laughter as we flew to Istanbul and some very serious women in veils looked on) and Sartre. Actually, I keep the Sartre’s to impress ladies..

Hello World!

Let me try this for a season and see if I enjoy it.