Daily 5 Minute Journal - August 30, 2016

Today I had lunch at Eataly, where the spaghetti cost $15. The new building called the oculus is beautiful with lots of fancy shopping.

Had coffee with Bill and CJ.

Later I did a 10 minute meditation with Evan.  It felt really good.

I did some shopping at Trader Joe's

My first hack

In the early 80's I had an Atari 800XL computer which I bought from winnings at Black Jack in Atlantic City.

The computer came with Basic programming language.

One of the methods of copy protection was to put a bad sector on a floppy disk. This prevented the copying of disk because of the bad sector would cause the copy to fail.

I wrote a dissembler in Basic.  I ran the dissembler and found the assembler code that read the bad sector and exited if it didn't exist.  So I changed the code to not read the sector and just continue.

Once I made the change, I was able to copy the disk.

Of what I recall I used Data statements and Read data it would take the data read in and convert the byte into an assembler opcode. Then based on the op-code the address could be determined. The code was based on the 6502 chipset.

How to be more creative?

Is creativity innate or can you learn to be more creative. I believe the first step in trying to be more creative is to do it more and learn some creative techniques.

The first thing to do is notice when someone or something is creative and ask:

• What makes this creative?
• What formula underlies it?
• What similar ideas can come from it?
• How can you apply the formula to create something new?
• When are you most creative?
• Where do you get more creative?

So recently I said the expression "Wake up and smell the roses" to my phone but it recorded "Wake up and smell the rose" which is the wine from red and white grapes. So I thought what other phrases could I come up with using this base expression.  Here are some:

• Wake up and smell the motive
• Wake up before you take too many doses
• Wake up and smell the Moses 
• Wake up before it decomposes
• Wake up or we might transpose this
• Wake up before he outgrows this
• Wake up and get into ketosis - for a diet book
• Wake up and learn the poses - for a bodybuilding book
• Wake up and learn the closes - for a sales book
• Wake up and smell the ocean
• Wake up and smell the lotion
• Wake up and smell the robot

So next time you hear a popular saying see how you can change one or a few words.

I see a "Just Do It" shirt the other day and thought what ideas could I generate from it:

• Change one word (Just <verb> it)
• Just worn it
• Just want it
• Just decided it
• Just give it
• Just love it
• Just criticize it
• Just give it
• just love it
• Just smile at it
• Just killed it
• Just for it
• Just wow it
• Just smile at it
• Just killed it
• Just for it
• Just wow it
• Just copy it
• Just ship it
• Just shoot it
• Just f**K it
• Just hit it
• Just catch it
• Just slap it
• Just shut it
• Just save it
• Just finished it
• Just heard it
• Just took it
• Just walk it
• Just run it
• Just smell it
• Just make it 
• Just created it - Creativity
• Just want it - reaching goals
• Just imagine it
• Just see it - reaching goals
• Just lose it - Weight loss
• Just edit it - Writing
• Just did it
• Just get it
• Just find it
• Just like it
• Just do me
• Change 1 word to multiple words
• Just to-do list it
• Just focus on it
• Change two words
• Just kill me
• Add words
• Just do it new
• Just do it yesterday
• Just do it tomorrow - Procrastination
• Just never do it
• Just do do it
• Just can't do it
• Just do it now
• Similar sounding
• Just dude it
• Opposite
• Just don't it
• Don't do it
• Shuffle
• Do just it

My first job interview in 9 years

Today I had my interview and it went well. I didn't prepare as much as I wanted to but the preparation was totally unnecessary. The interviewer didn't ask me any questions and started the interview saying we like you to join our team.

All the stress I went through for the last few days for nothing. I guess I learned that it's important to prepare a little each day. Now this is what I call "buy low sell high."  A simple rule that's very hard to implement.

On the way to the interview I took the 2 train from Fulton Street to 42nd street. I missed the subway by about 2 seconds and had to wait for the next train for what seemed like an eternity with temperature reach 120 degrees. All the while worrying about how sweaty I'd be at the interview.

There's nothing like going on an interview and having the sweat gush from your brow.

Job Trial Idea

So after my mid-year review I decide to pursue a possible new job opportunity and another dept. in my current company.

But while thinking about it I've become worried about making a mistake. What if I take the job and don't like it. I'd have Buyers Remorse. This could happen for any of a number of reasons:

• Noisy environment
• Unfriendly people
• Office politics
• Lots of overtime
• bathrooms
• temperature
• elevators
• long work hours

Also, I could pass on the new job and have remorse that I didn't take the new job. This could happen after getting overlooked for an award (this happened to me), getting laid off because current project has no budget, boss being annoying, he can do this.

There is also another possibility that the I don't get the new job, due to salary, age or some other reason.

So I think why not have a job trial. I work at the new department for a week or a few days and then after this time I can decide and my new boss and team can decide whether to make this a permanent change.

What are your thoughts.

Analysis of The Fall of Rome; Modern Parallels by Stefan Molyneux

Why did Rome fall?

Overview



Political Correctness is an attack on any knowledge that would serve to curb state power

State power grows and grows

Rome didn't sucumb to war or ....


Pressure from North from Barbarians.

The barbarians kept their tribal allegiances

When money ran out

Multiculturalism

Roman currency

Latin

1 Legal system

Good builders
Pure water through aqueducts
Peace
Roads
Legal system
Courts

Worked only 2 days per year to pay taxes

Historian -

Freedom (17:14)
1. National - free from foreign domination
2. Political - Freedom to vote to choose your magistrates
3. Individual - Do what you will though you harm no others. No force or fraud against others.

These values must be taught from birth.

Different from others thought. Greeks, Africans, Germans, Egyptians.

Here are your papers. Now you're just like us

When you move a hamster from a cage to an aquarium it doesn't become a fish.

Roman culture was foundation of Rome's success

Culture is learned like learning a language.

Culture is transferred by citizenship

American Identity

America runs out of $

117 AD 5 Million KM**2

Roman women had 6 - 9 children. Hi infant mortalitiy

Population growth of 0.1%. It went up 4x. Life expectency 25 years. If you survive childhood your life expectancy was 60 yrs old.

How did people die?

Today it's chronic end of life diseases

You didn't die of old age, you died of germs,infections ex. TB.

Why didn't Rome have an Industrial Revolution?

Ancient rome knew about steam engine

Early mortality caused problems.

Health Adjusted Life Expectancy (HALE) - # of years you live in good health. Now, 8% of your life is not in good health. Back then 17%. This is not good for economic growth.

Slave Trade

• Were almost all European 

13.6 people vs 254 (UK)  pop/ km**2

Sanitation

People replacement rates were low enough that you had to have constant immigration.

Population decline

• Change gov't policies that produce the decline
• Politicians bring in people from questionably compatible cultures

Empires in General (29:00)

• China - Han
• India - Mauryan
• Persia (Iran) - Parthian
• Rome

Created by force, but institutions allow you to conquer and move on.

Space alien example.  (31:20)

• End war
• Reduce taxes by 90%
• Double your life span

What Rome did

• cleaned out the pirates
• Merchants loved the Romans
• Dug canals
• Maintained Roads and bridges
• Built things to last
• Good at organizing but bad at creating
• Army in Combat only 10% of time, most of time used to built infrastructure
• Well developed written laws
• Uniformed currency
• Weights and measures
• Army building/maintaining stuff
• Protection from savages (Hadrian's wall)
• Religious toleration

System of Succession

• Roman's not able to create stable system
• Power disruptions

Barbarians (37:00)

• Bigger you get the vulnerable you are to attack
• Regular clashes with Northern Barbarians
• Invited in, never became true Romans, no integration retained original culture
• Some people felt the Barbarians were better than the Romans at the end

When things are good everyone gets along, this can work but things go bad, resources run out, watch 

out

• in-group preferences
• fractures

Goths (39:29)

• Germanic
• Wanted to join empire
• trade opportunities
• peace in Rome
• Fleeing the Huns

Lack of assimilation caused a huge number of problems.

People joined for $ not the values that create the $.

Fall of Rome - Tribal Origins (43:06)

• 3 tribes
• society mirrors tribal structure
• Tribal structures are stable, self-regulating via ostracism
• Among Greeks "liberty" meant self-govt not permissiveness
• Tribal traditions passed to succeeding generations
• King Servius replaced geographical divisions from tribal divisions
• West did the same in the middle east
• Same happened in partition of India and Pakistan
• Czechoslovakia had problems in 1930s
• Balkans
• Aneus attributed Romes success to 3 things
• Divine favor = Demographics and ethics
• Discipline 
• Moral character
• First domino
• Freedom of Speed vs. FOS is Blasphemy
• Reason and evidence doesn't change minds
• Culture patterns create Rome
• New citizens doesn't have these patterns

Pre-Rome (49:15)

• Greek and Egypt abandoned free market principles
• Socialist
• Central planning
• command and control
• dick?? tax
• price controls
• Egypt was main supplier of grain to Rome
• 58 BC Rome had welfare state of grain
• Grain handed out to Roman citizens
• see https://fee.org/articles/poor-relief-in-ancient-rome/
• The political lesson was plain. Mass relief, once granted, created a political pressure group that no­body dared to oppose. The long-run tendency of relief was to grow and grow. The historian Rostov­tzeff explains how the process worked 
• Slaves create unemployment
• Welfare aka Dole destroys Rome
• The growing burden of the dole was obviously responsible for a great part of this chain of evils, and at least two lessons can be drawn. The first, which we meet again and again in history, is that once the dole or similar relief pro­grams are introduced, they seem almost inevitably—unless sur­rounded by the most rigid restric­tions—to get out of hand. The sec­ond lesson is that once this hap­pens, the poor become more num­erous and worse off than they were before, not only because they have lost self-reliance, but because the sources of wealth and production on which they depended for either doles or jobs are diminished or destroyed.
• Free market creates wealth
• Private property
• Private enterprise
• Free trade
• Predictibility = expansion of trade
• 
  

Slavery (54:51)

• Expanded to take slaves (3rd - 2nd Century BC)
• H1B Visas, immigrants, outsourcing
• Importing people that local people can't compete with (very hard)
• This makes Trump interesting
• 1 MM inhabitants in Rome, 33% are slaves
• Can't compete with free
• In America there are people where 2 - 3 generations where no one has a job. The following get lost and is hard to resurect
• Human capital
• Discipline
• Knowledge
• How to make $
• How to deal with conflicts
• How to work with your boss
• How to please customers
• A lot of unemployed people in the city = social unrest
• Rome gives them bread and circuses
• No industrial revolution because of slavery. Why invent devices? Value of slaves goes down.
• Last 400 years of empire they didn't create much
• Couldn't produce enough goods and food for growing population due curse of slave labor
• Knew about water wheel and other tech but relied on slave labor
• Farms went from middle class small family biz to large slave run plantations
• Couldn't compete so they move to city for welfare
• Similar to Outsourcing
• People will reduce their wages to point of welfare

Monetary Policy (1:02:36)

My mid-year job review

Mid-year Employment Review

A week and few days ago, I had my mid-year employment review. It went okay. My boss rated me as Meets Expectations.

There are 3 possible ratings Below Expectations, Meets Expectations and Exceeds Expectations.  My understanding of the way it works is that 20% of the team gets Below Expectations, 20% gets Exceeds Expectation and the remaining 60% gets Meets Expectations.  The Exceeds Expectation grade means you get bigger raises, higher salary and less likely to get laid off or downsized. Now this system is so ridiculous. It gives incentives to not help others on your team. Every time I help someone on my team it reduces my OOEE. (Odds of Exceeds Expectation).

Part of the review process is to do a self review, meaning you rate yourself and write something about what you did. After you submit this to your boss you meet in person. Near the end of my review iew my boss tells me that another group at my company has an open position, would I be interested in it?  I said sure. Recently, I started running a weekly company meeting on Tuesday's. He said that they would get someone else to run the meetings.

So now I'm wondering why would my boss want me to work somewhere else?

Our department isn't doing that well as we don't have a budget. A couple of senior managers have been moved out of the department.

My boss went on vacation the following week so I could think about it.  I spent a lot of time figuring ways to get an Exceeds Expectations which I'll list later in this post.

When he came back he sent me a job description for the job. I did an analysis for the job and the result came up to not pursue it. I used a spreadsheet and rated a number of items.

I usually say that it always pays to go on interviews to improve your interviewing skills. So I decide to proceed.  Now while I'm proceeding I realize that I should be also looking for a new job to get more leverage and see if there's something better than this one. So at first I'm having a little stress from this process. But now I'm getting excited about doing something new, making more money and having more excitement on the job.

What have your experienced been with employment reviews? Please let me know in the comments below.