Blogging, cardio fun, and Phylo

There was a recent spike in traffic to my blog, so I decided to start paying more attention to it. The items getting the most clicks are technical. I generally forget that it's useful to others when I post odd technical tricks I learn, so others may stumble upon them. I did absolutely nothing technical today. I played drop-in hockey for the most fun possible morning cardio. I had a cheese omelet with chili on it for brunch. I relaxed and read email. Ooh, and I played some Phylo. Phylo is a pattern matching game, but the patterns are actually genome fragments of different mammal species. I'll tell ya, you have more in common with a bat than you do a horse or a dog. I would rather look for similarities among humans and mice than horses and dogs. http://phylo.cs.mcgill.ca/

Striking timelapse of Earth from orbit.

There are absolutely amazing views of our planet in this video. I am awestruck. http://vimeo.com/michaelkoenig/earth-timelapse-iss

Earth | Time Lapse View from Space | Fly Over | Nasa, ISS from Michael König on Vimeo.

Share button fail!

I guess I should take a lesson from this and never use a share button to post directly to my blog.

Update . . and a favor to ask.

It’s always a wake-up call when Christmas decorations start showing up in department stores, but it happening. . . already. It makes me start thinking about the end of the year.

So, 2011 is wrapping up and it’s time to gear up for 2012. As you know I’ve been a network engineer for 17 years, and have been happily working at Tetra Pak for the past two years doing global network operations. Also, for about 10 years, I have been getting experience as a real estate investor, renting homes in Kansas City. I invested near the top of the market, had some good years, and then rode it all the way down. Now the banks are holding the bag and now that the time is right to invest at the bottom, I can lend some valuable knowledge. I’ve made some career moves, eliminated all of my debt, and now I live in the Dallas market and I’m shifting my real estate strategy to something more lucrative that anyone with investment money languishing in stocks, or a 401k that’s barely treading water can participate in.

A lot of people find that interesting with all the doom and gloom that the media and talking heads portray in the real estate, mortgage, and stock markets. Surprisingly, there is no better time than RIGHT NOW to be buying real estate and taking advantage of the huge discounts and sales that you can find, especially here in the major markets, including Dallas/Fort Worth.
I just wanted to drop you a quick line to inform you that I am looking to buy somewhere in between 1-4 homes per month here locally. I am coming across so many deals direct from banks that are so discounted, allowing me to buy them with steep discounts of 40-50% off of CURRENT MARKET VALUES! I've got the deals, but I could use your help! Do you know of anyone who is unhappy with how poorly their CD, Savings, or 401k (or now a 101k?  ) is non-performing. I'm looking to add on a select few private lenders who would be interested in making an above average rate of return on their money for a short period of time (12-36 months) or working with me to cash in on the next 24-36 months or while we are still in this phenomenal buyers market.
All of my deals (like the house below) are secured with:

Title Insurance
Home Owners Insurance
1st Lien
Deed of Trust
Low LTV (70% or less)

I close all of my transactions with my title company or attorney's office so that everything is recorded properly. I have found several deals on homes that I am currently looking for funding on (like the house below). IF you know of ANYONE who MIGHT be interested, I would appreciate the referral! Please have them either email me with questions or call me directly at 972-827-7693.

Check out the rate of return of the current deal I’m working on here: http://bit.ly/gptxnote

Like I said, now is a phenomenal time to be buying real estate! THANKS FOR YOUR HELP OR REFERRAL!

RSS addiction is bad for your blog.

I clicked on the "Trends" section in Google Reader and found out how much blog material I read, and it's somewhat significant.

"From your 150 subscriptions, over the last 30 days you read 1,407 items, clicked 84 items, starred 2 items, shared 7 items, and emailed 0 items.
Since April 19, 2007 you have read a total of 21,935 items."

I have added and removed RSS feeds for various reasons and come up with a mix of daily reading that I'm absolutely addicted to. I realize now that having a Google Reader (and Google Listen) app on my phone has changed when/where/how I get my news. Since I switched from Outlook to Google Reader as my RSS feed aggregator, I have racked up some crazy stats. I used to write a lot, now I mostly read. My eyes are drawn to text because I'm wired that way.

A few of my favorites are Wikinews, Xenophilia, Whiteout Press News Feed, Stephen Kruiser, The New Editor, WizBang, Pat Dollard, Cato Institute, Reason Magazine, etc.

I have some favorite audio blogs, too. Between The Adam Corolla Show, Mike Church, Packet Pushers Podcast, and Downtown Soulville, I'm getting more audio than I can consume on my commutes.

And I've found myself (and much of the public debate) ignorant about economics in the past few years, so it's become an avidity of mine. My RSS feed reflects it: Professor Mark J. Perry's Blog for Economics and Finance, Cafe Hayek, Shadow Government Statistics - Commentary, Official Gerald Celente Blog, Mises Institute Daily, The Future of Capitalism, etc.

It's hard to wade through the boring, basic, or politically hyperbolic items to find the really interesting bits. Nothing beats a good beat down in the letters to the editor which economist Don Boudreaux posts, whether the editors receiving them print them or not. He wars against stupidity and avoids boring, basic, or politically hyperbolic, although he uses some hyperbole for humor's sake.

I get my tech news via RSS too.
TheInquirer.net Home, Hack A Day, CNet News, Schneier on Security, TechDirt.

If I want to just ogle the newest electronics, I have a folder full of RSS feeds just for that. Engadget, Gizmodo, Gajitz, The Gadgeteer, TechTree.com, etc.

The rest of the feeds are terribly specific to my job. StaticNAT, Cisco Security Advisories, Cisco IOS Hints and Tricks, AirWise Community Blog... you get the point.

Andy Masters & Ryan D Howard " Bye Bye Blackbird "

I miss the Saturday night jazz jam at the Mutual Musicians Foundation in Kansas City. That place has a way of just melting the stress out of my body.

I know selfishness when I see it, but who am I to judge? The balance of give and take has to be a win-win, or someone's going to be accused of being the selfish one.

"Selfishness is the ultimate strawman, since it is by definition impossible to act in any way that is not selfish. If you value an end goal, whatever that goal happens to be, it is selfish because YOU value it. To value altruism is no more or less selfish than to value wealth. Selfishness is not and cannot be the problem (or complaint), rather it is a disagreement on what SHOULD BE valued. The charge that selfishness is evil is more correctly phrased; what you value is evil while what I value is good. The charge of selfishness always comes from someone who believes they know how to run YOUR life." - gleaned from Frank33328 comment on the Cafe Hayek blog.

I just found it thought provoking lunch hour reading, particularly the Don Boudreaux posts. I had a great macroeconomics teacher in college, but Mr. Boudreaux has a way of boiling things down to the essential and explaining complex economic interactions for mass understanding.