Stuff Yaron Finds Interesting

11/04/2008 - Primary Election - Redmond, King County, Washington

Administrator — Sat, 25 Oct 2008 00:00:00 +0000

I guess I got lucky because all the folks I voted for made it to the general election so I don't have to go back and revisit those choices. The big choices then were President, which I covered in a separate article and the various initiatives which I cover below.

President/Vice President- Ralph Nader/Matt Gonzalez
United States Representative - Congressional District No. 1 - Jay Inslee
Governor - Christine Gregoire
Lieutenant Governor - Marcia McCraw
Secretary of State - Jason Osgood
State Treasurer - Allan Martin
State Auditor - Brian Sonntag
Attorney General - Rob McKenna
Commissioner of Public Lands - Peter J. Goldmark
Superintendent of Public Instruction - Randy Dorn
Insurance Commissioner - Mike Kreidler
State Representative - Legislative Dist No. 45 - Position 1 - Roger Goodman
State Representative - Legislative Dist No. 45 - Position 2 - Larry Springer
State Supreme Court - Justices of the Supreme Court - Position 3 - Mary Fairhurst
State Supreme Court - Justices of the Supreme Court - Position 4 - Charles W. Johnson
State Supreme Court - Justices of the Supreme Court - Position 7 - Debra L. Stephens
Court of Appeals, Division No. 1 - District No. 1 - Judge Position 5 - Lau, Linda
Court of Appeals, Division No. 1 - District No. 1 - Judge Position 6 - Ann Schindler
Superior Court - Judges of the Superior Court - Position 1 - Tim Bradshaw
Superior Court - Judges of the Superior Court - Position 22 - Julia Garratt
Superior Court - Judges of the Superior Court - Position 37 - Jean Rietschel
Initiative Measure No. 985 - No
Initiative Measure No. 1000 - Yes
Initiative Measure No. 1029 - No
King County Charter Amendment No.1 - No
King County Charter Amendment No. 2 - Yes
King County Charter Amendment No. 3 - Yes
King County Charter Amendment No. 4 - No
King County Charter Amendment No. 5 - Yes
King County Charter Amendment No. 6 - Yes
King County Charter Amendment No. 7 - No
King County Charter Amendment No. 8 - No
Sound Transit - Proposition No. 1 - No

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11/04/2008 - Primary Election - President of the United States of America - Ralph Nader

Administrator — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Those I have told my intention to vote for Mr. Nader have generally had one of two reactions. Either they said I was throwing away my vote or they said that I was helping McCain to win. My response to these accusations is that my vote is about indicating where I want this country to go and I don't want it to go to the same corporate owned, poll driven, pork barrel politics we have had to date. I am confident that neither Obama nor McCain will make any substantive changes to what ails this country so I feel duty bound to vote for someone who I think will make a real difference. Therefore I am voting for Ralph Nader.

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How much will it cost to send our daughter to college?

Administrator — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 08:00:00 +0000

The short answer is that we don't know. And before someone says "what about the 529 prepaid plans?!?!" (which I will discuss in a future article) please keep in mind that those plans only track in state tuition fees and are quite expensive. So bottom line is - we don't know, in fact, I would argue, we can't know. The guiding light of finance being "the future's not our's to see." So I'm going to guess. My guess, assuming our daughter goes out of state for college in 17 years and attends college for 4 years is that our total bill (tuition, fees, room, board, etc.) at the end of her undergraduate education will be $281,000 in 2008 dollars. Oy.

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Executing Our College Savings Plan

Administrator — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Now that we have decided to use CollegeSure CDs to save for our daughter's college the question is - how? The answer turns out to be non-trivial in that we need to figure out how many CDs of what duration at what cost to buy each year between now and when she finishes college. After some experimentation I came up with an approach that seems to provide a reasonable cost and purchase plan. Below I explain how the approach works and provide a calculator that creates a purchase plan using the approach. Please keep in mind however that I'm no financial expert, that the code hasn't been properly tested and that objects may be closer than they appear.

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8/19/2008 - Primary Election - Redmond, King County, Washington

Administrator — Sun, 17 Aug 2008 00:00:00 +0000

The denial of service attack continues. By putting such a large number of candidates on the ballot the only conceivable result is less effective representation. Unless one dedicates one's life to reviewing candidates (and how does on review judges anyway?) there is no way to give effective overview to so many candidates. The only practical result I can see from this deluge of candidates is less people voting and for those who do vote, less attention being paid to each candidate.

United States Representative - Congressional District No. 1 - Jay Inslee
Governor - Christine Gregoire
Lieutenant Governor - Marcia McCraw
Secretary of State - Jason Osgood
State Treasurer - Allan Martin
State Auditor - Brian Sonntag
Attorney General - Rob McKenna
Commissioner of Public Lands - Peter J. Goldmark
Superintendent of Public Instruction - Randy Dorn
Insurance Commissioner - Mike Kreidler
State Representative - Legislative Dist No. 45 - Position 1 - Roger Goodman
State Representative - Legislative Dist No. 45 - Position 2 - Larry Springer
State Supreme Court - Justices of the Supreme Court - Position 3 - Mary Fairhurst
State Supreme Court - Justices of the Supreme Court - Position 4 - Charles W. Johnson
State Supreme Court - Justices of the Supreme Court - Position 7 - Debra L. Stephens
Court of Appeals, Division No. 1 - District No. 1 - Judge Position 5 - Lau, Linda
Court of Appeals, Division No. 1 - District No. 1 - Judge Position 6 - Ann Schindler
Superior Court - Judges of the Superior Court - Position 1 - Tim Bradshaw
Superior Court - Judges of the Superior Court - Position 10 - Regina S. Cahan
Superior Court - Judges of the Superior Court - Position 22 - Julia Garratt
Superior Court - Judges of the Superior Court - Position 26 - Laura Gene Middaugh
Superior Court - Judges of the Superior Court - Position 37 - Jean Rietschel
Superior Court - Judges of the Superior Court - Position 53 - Mariane Spearman
King County Initiative 26 and Council Proposed Alternative - Question 1 & 2 - No/Council-Proposed Alternative

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What do program managers on the Cosmos team do anyway?

Administrator — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 00:00:00 +0000

In previous articles (here and here) I have talked about what software program managers do. And in another previous article I talked about Cosmos. In this article I bring the two topics together and talk about what Cosmos program managers actually do. (For those just joining us Cosmos is Microsoft's internal platform for reliably storing and processing petabytes of information such as all of Microsoft's log data from its various websites.) The issue of what PMs on the Cosmos team do is near and dear to my heart because I'm the lead program manager for Cosmos and we are hiring!

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What is Microsoft's Cosmos service?

Administrator — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Cosmos is Microsoft's internal data storage/query system for analyzing enormous amounts (as in petabytes) of data. As the lead Program Manager for Cosmos I can't say too much about it but what I can do is take a tour of the information that Microsoft has published about Cosmos. So read on if you are interested in the architecture Microsoft uses to store and query petabytes of data and what technical issues Microsoft's approach brings up.

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Tools of the Software Program Manager Trade

Administrator — Tue, 19 Feb 2008 00:00:00 +0000

In my previous article about what a PM does I talked about contracts. While I didn't mean contracts in the literal sense of a legally binding document the best PM groups I've worked with do produce a specific set of documents which serve to record what has been agreed to, track status and help to identify and resolve problems. Below I walk through those documents and what their purpose is.

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What does a software program manager do anyway?

Administrator — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Asking what a program manager (PM) does in the software industry is a bit of a trick question because so many different and only tangentially related positions are called PM. So I can't provide a universal answer but I can explain what the PM groups I have worked with over the years have done/do. The short answer is that we are the conduit between the core Development team (e.g. Development/Test/PM) and the rest of the known universe. Our job is to bring data from the outside world in, bring the core Development team's ideas out to the world, negotiate a "contract" between the two as to who is to do what/when and then be held personally responsible for making sure everyone honors the "contract".

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What to buy in our 529 Plan

Administrator — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 00:00:00 +0000

After looking at the various options available in 529 plans from stock mutual funds to bond mutual funds to age appropriate funds and so on the choice for us came down to TIPS mutual funds or CollegeSure CDs. We have decided to use CollegeSure CDs to save for our daughter's education. Yes, they have a horrible return and are quite possibly not FDIC insured (read the fine print) but of all the options this is the one that seems most reasonable.

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