Just Joshing

Hi, everyone! I’ve decided to try out going back to the technology scene and so got a new job. As is usual, please be advised that All opinions expressed are mine and not those of my employer. Or, since I’m rejoining the tech industry #include <std_disclaimer.h> I really enjoyed working in litigation consulting, and maybe I’ll do something like that again someday. However, my new role lets me work on two really cool things: building distributed systems and keeping computer systems in line with the real world of physical objects. [Read More]

One thing I’ve been wondering lately is, do I need to actually run a server to maintain this, admittedly barebones, blog and, more importantly, my email? Right now, I do maintain a server. The server is pretty small, and it lives in the “cloud,” which is nice compared to having to keep the power on at home all the time and fight with my ISP to hold a static IP address. [Read More]

I want to talk a little about savings bonds, since they seem like a comparatively good deal right now. Series EE savings bonds pay a fixed rate of interest, and Series I bonds pay a spread over inflation, as measured by the CPI. Of course, both of these rates are practically non-existent right now. The thing about them that’s interesting to me is some of the other provisions associated with them. [Read More]

I’ve moved to a new website generator, called Hugo. Quite simply, while I’m a huge fan of Pandoc, it seems to have lost the static blog generation competition. That’s because the other Markdown formats are getting better, or at least more flexible, while I thought I would have occasion to use things like Pandoc’s support for bibliographies and in-line citations.1 The other killer feature Pandoc had, besides footnotes, was math support, but that seems to not be an issue for other Markdown-based site generators anymore. [Read More]

I managed to get the e-mail server working again. There were a huge number of changes related to new init scripts in the new version. I probably should have done a clean install instead of trying an upgrade.

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As you probably haven’t been wondering, I’ve graduated from the Tuck School of Business and started a new gig. Since last month, I’ve been working as an economic and litigation consultant. Which is both cool and difficult to explain at cocktail parties.

The latter is unfortunate, but I’m sure I’ll get better at it with time.

Lately, I’ve been thinking a little about robo-advisors. Really, these are just like those target date retirement funds that have been around for the last few years, except there are even fewer people working there. Or, they’re like a fund of funds. They take your money, invest it in the assets they pick, and use computer systems to monitor them, to make sure that asset allocations are within the bounds set by the firm (and for other features we’ll talk about later. [Read More]

Lately, I’ve been using a new method for writing up my homework and other memorandum- or paper-like things I need to write. I’m not claiming I’m particularly good at writing, since I’m not, but this particular collection of tools seems to be helping me focus more on actual writing and less on formatting. It’s also helped me be a little more productive, since I can now work on things both with my desktop and my laptop. [Read More]

A few months ago, I bought an Alfa AWUS036ac USB wireless adapter, since my desktop is no longer near an ethernet port. Some work is needed to help the thing be recognized as a wlan device on Ubuntu. Recent changes to GCC and libc, though, have made it a little more complicated than just following the instructions provided with the Linux driver. In the hope that someone might be helped a little bit by this, here’s what I did to get the AWUS036ac working on Ubuntu 15. [Read More]

This is mostly just a first post to see if the whole system is working or if it isn’t. I don’t think there will be a comment system, since I’d much rather get comments by e-mail and actually engage in a discussion. I’d also rather that the inevitable spam bothers my mail servers / me and not you, dear reader. I’m also not sure how much I’ll write here, and what that will be. [Read More]