Joined iPhone Nation

This week, I got an iPhone 3Gs.  I actually got it through work, they replaced my Blackjack.  Although I have never felt compelled to get an Iphone, I was still interested in what all the hype was.   The people I know who have one swear by them.  My wife always jokes how I'm addicted to the internet and so the thought of having a device like the iPhone at my fingertips was appealing to me.  It probably was not as appealing to my wife.

A few days in and I have to say that I have mixed feelings.  It definitely is a great device.  It is easy to use and extremely useful.  the App Store is fantastic and you really can find an App that does pretty much whatever you want.   I've mostly used it to keep up to date on my e-mail and to do things like check the traffic or sports scores.  I could do the same thing with the Blackjack but it is easier to do with the iPhone as there are built in apps to go and get that data.

But I'm struggling with the iPhone on several fronts.  The  biggest problems I have come across

• The battery life is just poor.  If I don't charge it overnight, the thing will be dead by the next morning


• The network is slow.  Probably more a problem with AT&T but it is still kind of annoying


• I hate that it doesn't multi-task.


• Typing things in is a pain in the ass.  I am constantly typing things wrong.  This thing needs a real keyboard.


• I can't tether it to my laptop without jumping through some hoops


• The e-mail client my work uses is actually better on the Blackjack.  On the iPhone it doesn't automatically download new messages.

I think Apple hit their target market.  It is a great consumer device.  It is just a bad device for work.  I'm probably happier with this device than the Blackjack but only because it makes my personal life a little better.  Ironically, my wife, who probably won't like me being glued to it while we are out, is now hooked on one of the iPhone games.  She is literally playing it right now and completely ignoring me.

On a similar note, is it just me or is the iPad kind of a disappointment?  Seriously, what problem is this trying to solve?

Charles Schwab Review

I decided to open up an account with Charles Schwab.  After getting married, my wife and I needed to setup a joint account.  We have split our finances for a while now, and marriage has not changed that, but we wanted the convenience of having one joint account.

Setting up the account has not been the best experience.  For whatever reason, Schwab seems to not have come into the 21st century.  It was possible to setup a brokerage account online but it was not possible to set up a checking account online.  This required that I physically print out an application.  I thought I would be able to walk it into a Schwab branch and open an account right away.  There was a branch just down the street so this is what I decided to do.  However, all that did for me was save me some postage.  I guess the branch couldn't setup the bank account either, so they mailed my application to some central location.   They told me they would call me that day to tell me the brokerage account was opened.

No call came that day.  They cashed the check that I used to fund the account and yet still no call.  I called to check what had happened and was told that the account was opened and someone must have just forgotten to call.  OK, no problem.  The next step was to wait for the information on my bank account.  I waited and waited.  I waited two and a half weeks and heard nothing.  So I called again.  It turns out that the person who entered the information failed to enter the apartment number.  So my checks and my bank card seemed to be lost in the mail.  I was told to wait a few more days and it should show up.  The checks did eventually make their way to me, but no card.  I had no means to use an ATM and withdraw any money.

After a few more days, my wife called in.  The first person I spoke to did not seem to fix the missing apartment information.  Customer Support said they fixed the information and the cards would be coming.  A few days passed and my wife's new card did indeed come.  My card did not.  So she called again.  It turns out that for whatever reason, my information was not updated until later and a new card was not sent out at the same time.

So here I am.  It is the end of January and it has been over one month since I started this process.  I still have no bank card from Schwab.  On the plus side, the customer support, in terms of wait time, has been pretty good.  Each time I call, I get connected to a human right away.  But I am disappointed by the fact that I have had to call so many times to find out how good the response time is.  I have not used their services too much as of yet, I've bought no stock through the brokerage account as of yet, because I don't want to move money into the account until I have full access to it, so I can't say too much about the other features of the account.

One last annoying thing.  Setting up money transfers is a real pain in the ass.  Once again, Schwab has not come into the 21st century.  The only way I've been able to fund the account is to "push" the money there.  That is, i go to my other online accounts and setup a transfer from them to Schwab.  Schwab makes it VERY difficult to "pull" money from other institutions.  It is impossible to do this online.

So given all my problems, I can't strongly recommend Schwab.  I really like their customer service but that's about it.  I don't think any of this will cause me to close my account, but I'm somewhat disappointed that things just haven't been smoother.

Sorry Gone So Long

I've been quiet over the last several weeks.  I've been wanting to blog but with the holidays I have found it difficult to sit down and focus on what to write.  I really haven't had anything meaningful to say either.

The holiday's came and went.  It was a rather quiet holiday.  I did not have to do too much shopping and work was rather subdued since most of the staff was out.  I try to make some headway with my reviews but somehow found a way to not get very far on those.

That is my challenge for the upcoming week.  I have to get through my employees reviews.  I once again find myself doing way more reviews than I want.  I think it is important to do a good job with them, so I'll get them done right, but I often just wish I could wave a wand and have them done.  The tool my work is using even has something similar to this but I feel it is a cheap way out so I refuse to use it.

I have been EXTREMELY quiet when it comes to my trading activity.  I really just don't know where this rally came from and now have no desire to get in at these levels.  I've waited for the pull back that never came and it looks like i missed out on some really great gains.  Lesson learned but no need to compound my mistake by doing something foolish now.  I'm looking carefully where to invest.  I recently opened up a new brokerage account, separate than my other one, so that my wife and I could invest together.  I opened it up at Schwab, so now I have accounts at most of the major brokerage houses.  I'll give a review of them shortly.

So I'm back.  Hopefully I won't take a hiatus as long as this one again.

Don't Mistake Activity for Achievement

One of my favorite quotes is from John Wooden, the greatest college basketball coach of all time.  He said, "Don't mistake activity for achievement".  I think about this quote a lot when I evaluate myself and my employees.

Just the other day, I had to give some rather harsh feedback to one of my employees which led to that employee getting less responsibilities at work.  The employee was not too happy with this (although for many employees it would be great news since all it did was give this employee less work) but I knew it was the right thing to do.  The difficult part was that this employee works extremely hard.  If extra hours are needed, this employee puts them in.  So how do you tell someone who worked hard that their work just wasn't good enough?

It was something I learned a long time ago in my own basketball experience.  Growing up, I spent hours practicing.  I would go to the local park and work on my jump shot until they turned off the lights.  But in the end, I just wasn't as good as the other guys on the team.  While they didn't practice as hard, they had more talent than I did.  The facts were that they didn't need to work as hard as I did because their talent and natural gifts naturally made up for it.

Sure it wasn't "fair" but when is life ever fair?  While I empathized with this employee, I have an entire organization to think about.  There was no way I could look past the fact that despite all the long hours and hard work this employee put in, they had not actually achieved the goals I had laid out for them.  I could not mistake their hard work for any actual accomplishment.

Have you ever been in this situation? One where you worked harder than anybody else but yet you couldn't accomplish what you set out to do?  How did you handle it when you came up short?

Never Drink Around Coworkers

My company's holiday part was this weekend.  It was a fun event, I had a pretty good time.  There was food, entertainment, a lovely venue, and of course an open bar.  However, I myself did not take advantage of the latter because I have a hard rule which I always follow.  I NEVER drink around coworkers.

Now I'm not a heavy drinker anyway but I do enjoy having a few drinks occasionally as much as the next guy.  But if I am in a work setting where the majority of the people are my coworkers, I do not have a single drink.  Not one.  While it may sound uptight, I am following very logical reasoning.  There is absolutely no upside to drinking with coworkers yet there is huge downside.

Nobody thinks it is odd when I do not drink.  I usually just tell people I am driving so I don't want to have anything.  This is true anyway so nobody thinks it is too odd.   But there is more to the story than just this.  I am making a very conscience choice not to drink so that I am viewed as someone who is always in complete control of myself.  To rise to the top, which is one of my goals, you have to be viewed as a leader.  Leaders are always in control.  Therefore you should not drink around those who make decisions about your career growth.

Now, I'm not saying that if you drink you can't rise to the top.  That would be silly as I'm sure plenty of America's CEO's drink when around coworkers.  But I highly doubt anybody made it there because they drank and I bet more than one person has had his career derailed because of some foolish drunken mishaps at a work function.

I watched as a coworker and a friend of mine who had a little too much to drink made several off color remarks in front of the entire executive and management team.  Everybody was laughing, and I'm sure nothing bad will come from this.   He will not get reprimanded or anything even close, and he really should not be.  But will anything good come from this?  Do you think that when it comes time for promotions people won't remember these types of situations and think someone less "colorful" would not make a better choice?

Moving to California - Two Years Later

I recently got a message from this blog asking me if, two years later, I thought it was worth it to move back to California.

Before I get into this, I have to say it did not really occur to me that I have been back in California for two years until I got this e-mail.  I knew the two year anniversary of my job was coming up but it did not really sink in how long it has been until I got the message.  The past two years have been such a blur and it seems hard to believe I have been at this job longer than I was at Microsoft.  Maybe that says more about the job I have now compared to the one I had before.

Now on to the question.  Was it worth it to move back to California from Washington?  Ironically I answer this question the same day that it was pouring rain in Los Angeles.  But this makes my answer to this all the more certain.  Yes, it was absolutely to move back to California from Washington.

I was thinking about this as I rode the elevator to work.  I am in a very high skyscraper and the elevator has a television in it that I find myself catching news clips as I enter and leave the building.  On the ride down today, the news had "Storm Watch" flashing on the screen.  Now, after living in Washington for two years, I can tell you.  The rain wasn't all that severe.  It came down hard, but it would be a pretty normal day in Seattle.  The reason this made me think of how good I have it is because weather like this is so unusual we make a big deal about it here.  This is the first time it has rained in the last several months.  Think about that for a second.  It is December and it probably hasn't rained of any significance in several months.   I actually can't even remember the last time it rained. You can't buy weather like that.

Of course, that is not the only reason I am glad to move back to California (but it is a big part).  I'm happier with my job and I am glad to be around family and friends.  My wife is happier (weather affects her more than it does me) so that makes my life better.  So if I had to do it all over again, I would do it in a heartbeat.

But I caution anybody from taking my experience and translating it to your own.  My situation is unique in many ways.  First off, I grew up here.  The culture and lifestyle just really work for me since I grew up here.  Moreover, I have a base of friends and family here.  Moving out here, not knowing anyone, can be really difficult. I find it easy to make and meet new friends but this is not true for everyone and California can be a lonely place if you don't have any friends or family.  But perhaps the biggest deterrent to moving out here has to be the money.  Can you make it work?  Moving to California with no money is not an easy tasks.  It is not easy even if you have money.  Housing is expensive and taxes will take whatever you have left.

My situation is likely not the same as yours.  I make very good money and I live very frugally.  While I certainly "miss" the money that California extracts from me, I probably will not miss it as much as those who live paycheck to paycheck.   The cost of living does not affect me nearly as much as it would other people.  And make no mistake about it, California has a high cost of living.  You combine that with our high unemployment rate and (still) high housing prices, and it can be a daunting financial burden.  This has gotten so bad, I have written how I think the California Dream is vanishing for many, even myself.

So while I have no regrets about moving back here this is not to say I won't once again leave.  High taxes and high housing is driving me away, I'm sure it will drive others as well.  In fact, I had such a conversation with someone about this on Saturday.  But I'll write about that in my next blog.

How Technology will Save Marriages

I was reading a book today that was talking about the keys to marriage success. One of the main pieces of advice was to communicate with your partner on a daily basis for several minutes on topics not including work, family, or household chores. According to this book, the couples who are the most successful are those that know each other intimately and this requires good communication on a constant basis.

This got me thinking about my own marriage. I tend to think I know my wife pretty well. We constantly talk about things and almost never talk about work, family, or chores (although she does nag me quite a bit J) But we don’t really “talk” in the traditional sense. During the week, I’m pretty busy at work. I’m running around to meetings all the time and would never have the time to call my wife in the middle of the day to talk. But the one thing that is contant throughout the day is that I’m tethered to my laptop. It goes with me everywhere except the bathroom.

This means my wife can get a hold of me pretty much at any time through Instant Messaging. I may not answer her right away but I do eventually get back to her. We normally don’t chat for very long, and the topics can be pretty random, but I get a pretty constant play by play of her day. If, for whatever reason, we are not chatting on IM I can probably she how her day is going via her status on facebook. While I don’t use facebook all that much, it is a constant stream for many people meaning your significant other can stay pretty connected to you throughout the day.

Technology is allowing people to stay connected in so many different ways and in time frames that are suitable in a variety of circumstances. While it is by no means a silver bullet for marriage, especially in an age where divorce is rampant, it can definitely help those who know how to use it and take advantage of its convenience. It has gotten to the point where I actually miss the communication I have with my wife throughout the day if for whatever reason we can’t chat.

How about you? Have you found your relationship strengthened with your significant other because of technology? If yes, how so?