How to Snap Out of a Major Rut

For the past week I've been coasting by, completing just the bare minimum amount of work I could get away with. That leaves me today with a mountain of tasks that seems impossible to finish by their deadlines. All of my usual techniques have failed me, I've been avoiding my calendar that lists the dates I would like to have each task completed by, my laziness has led to many failed attempts to work from home instead of trying to get things done in the lab, and of course the huge mistake of telling my future self that I can just do it tomorrow. I could go on and on with the excuses, but if I'm going to get through this without getting fired, or failing a class, I need to get back to the basics fast. So what am I going to do?

Set Goals! - The first thing I should start with is writing down my goals. As stated in Trent's book, “The Simple Dollar,” - “Simply writing down the goals resulted in a 42% increase in achieved goals, and written progress reports resulted in a 78% increase in achieved goals.” But writing down what I need to get done isn't enough. I need to break down each task into smaller specific tasks that I can start on right now. “finish my masters project by monday” is not a good goal. It is too vague, and will just lead to me getting frustrated and overwhelmed as soon as I sit down and think about everything involved in completing that project. “customize view templates for 2 hours” is much better. I know exactly what to get started on when I sit down, and I know I can complete this task today. I am going to write down the top 3 tasks I want to complete today, ordered by priority, and then get started.

Eliminate Distractions! – My biggest weakness is that I'm easily distracted. A single call from a friend can lead to hours of time spent chatting on the phone, checking my email leads to clicking through to my Hulu, or YouTube subscriptions wasting an entire day. My favorite place to buckle down and get work done is the Engineering lab on my school's campus. They have tons of other students there doing homework and setting a good example for me, the computers have all the tools I need to get my work done, without any of the junk that can easily get me off track, and I can easily step outside for a quick break. No Television, no bed, no guitar, no junk food to lure me away from getting back to work. I can just take a little walk around, stretch out my legs, get a little sun, and my mind is clear and ready for the next task.

Make it a Habit – During the school year, I have a great routine and can usually stick to it. The summer however, is a different story. I've been slowly falling off track, almost without even knowing it, until I've lost almost every good work habit that carried me through the school year. I need to transform myself back into the well oiled task completing machine of Fall and Spring semester. I'm a strong believer that the best way to do this is to ease back into it. If I make too many drastic changes at once, I'll quickly burn out and take another step backwards. The key is to focus on one or two small changes I can make today, repeat it until it becomes the norm, and then go on to the next change. So I am going to focus on setting my 3 goals everyday, and going to the lab to eliminate distractions and complete them. If I can string a few weeks of doing this everyday and make it a habit, I can focus on my next step towards a more productive day.

Computer Science Job Search Tips

I currently have a little over a month left of school before I graduate, and move to Washington. Although my job search is in full motion, I've had little luck. I feel that I'm a decent candidate for any entry level position in my field (computer science), so I recently paid a visit to the School of Engineering and Computer Science director of recruitment to see if she had any insight to why this may be. I came away with a lot of little pointers I thought might be helpful for other students out there in my position so I will pass them on to you here:

Where to look – I've been using popular job search sites like monster.com or careerbuilder.com, but I've found that these sites don't have a lot of entry level listings. Other sites you may want to try out are indeed.com or cybercoders.com. Both are aimed more towards the tech industry with a bit more entry level positions. Another good place to start are large companies like Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Yahoo, Intel, or many others. These companies usually have a specific place for new graduates to apply to, and may be a better bet for someone like me with little real world experience.

Get your resume seen – It is important to include the job title and ID number in the objective statement of your resume. The common hiring process includes large bulletin boards for each open position at a company. The hiring committee will post resumes on the board with the matching job title and ID. For a company that receives hundreds of resumes for each position, your resume may not even make it to the board if they can't quickly identify which opening you're applying to. Don't forget to bold applicable skills and languages so they are easily spotted when hiring teams are glancing over their boards.

Applying through official channels gives you a 20 percent chance of getting hired. This number jumps to 40 percent when you can find a way to get your resume in the direct hands of the hiring manager, and jumps to over 50 percent when you can get it to him from someone he knows. use your family, friends, professors, and career resource center to get your resume in the right hands through both official and unofficial paths.

Got an interview? Study! Study! Study! - your grades, diplomas, awards, and certificates don't mean much in the interview. They will find out if you know your stuff. Use a book like, “Programming Interviews Exposed,” to aid in studying for the technical portion of the interview. You won't be able to memorize solutions to the hundreds of different exercise problems, but the important lesson is to build a good process for breaking problems down, solving them, and explaining them in a clear way. You can search for company specific questions on a site like glassdoor.com. These types of sites are in message board form with users posting questions and topics they covered categorized by company and job listing. Sometimes users will post there solutions, just be aware that you can probably come up with a more efficient one yourself if you put in the time.

Are extended warranties / insurance worth the price?

Deciding whether or not I should recommend purchasing an extended warranty on a new tech toy is something I've struggled with in the past. I've never payed for one myself, but my reason for doing so is less of a concrete logical reason, and more of a vague belief that I'll be able to handle whatever disaster comes my way for the best price possible.

In his book, “The 1-2-3 Money Plan,” Gregory Karp transforms my cloudy thoughts on this subject into a clear road to reason. “Keep things simple and don’t outsmart yourself. There’s a lot of junk insurance out there that is way too expensive for the risk it covers. Does anybody really think a $40 extended warranty on a $200 camera is a good deal?”

“but it paid off for Bob when his camera broke!” - Sure, there are many examples of the extra protection paying off. There are also plenty of examples of people winning the lottery, or hitting it big in Vegas. These examples are just not as common as you would think, and there are far better ways to spend your hard earned money.

“what should I do instead?” - Self insure! Take that money you would have spent on the extended warranty, and put it away in a savings account. You'll find this savings account quickly outgrowing the cost of any repairs you might need in the long run, and soon able to pay for a complete replacement item.

“don't forget common sense” - This is less of a hard and fast rule, and more of a rule of thumb. It's a good starting point if you're unsure, and works for most products, but don't blindly follow this advice. Make sure you do your research, take care of your new products, and don't forget to use common sense!

Book Review: The Simple Dollar: How One Man Wiped Out His Debts and Achieved the Life of His Dreams

"The Simple Dollar: How One Man Wiped Out His Debts and Achieved the Life of His Dreams" was written by one of my favorite bloggers, Trent Hamn from The Simple Dollar. I really like this book because it explains how each concept fits into the grand scheme of living a happy life. In addition to explaining why each concept is important, He gives you specific actions to effectively complete each step of the book.

Chapter 1: Prison Made of Plastic – The opening chapter starts the book off by addressing some key points when beginning to plan your escape from debt. This includes explaining why it isn't a good idea to borrow money from friends and family, even to pay off high interest debt. “Do you love the businesses you owe money to? Do you enjoy the bills they send you, requesting money? Is that a dynamic you want to add to your relationship with your friend or loved one?”

Chapter 2: Whats Missing? - Happiness does not revolve around financial success. One way to start figuring out what really makes you happy is by starting a happiness journal. Keep a notebook with you and jot down any moments throughout the day where you feel truly happy. After a few weeks, you'll begin to piece together what really matters to you, the first step towards the overall goal of this book. Creating a way for you to live your ideal lifestyle.

Chapter 3: A Visit From the Black Swan – It's surprising how much of an impact building an emergency fund can have on non financial aspects of your life. Having enough savings allows you to be more confident and adventurous in the workplace without the fear of losing your job. This same emergency fund takes all the risk out of any opportunities that may come your way, until you eventually find yourself doing exactly what you want in life.

Chapter 4: The Power of Goals in a Random World – A study by Dr. Gail Mathews compared the goal completion rate of people who write down goals to people who don't. He found that simply writing down your goals leads to an increase of 42% in achieved goals compared to people who don't. This number jumps to 72% when written progress reports are used on a regular basis.

Chapter 5: Running to Stand Still – A common problem people have is running in place. For all the effort you might put in everyday, you aren't making any progress towards the life we really want. You get a second job for your children, but aren't there to spend time with them. You'll work overtime to afford a spacious house, but aren't home to enjoy it. These are all more reasons it's so important to spend on what you really appreciate, skip on the rest to build that emergency fund, and take advantage of that dream opportunity when it comes along.

Chapter 6: With or Without You – Staying involved and creating long lasting relationships is one of the most effective uses of your time. The community you build around yourself will return far more that the amount of effort you put in. The important thing to remember here is that you need to help others as much as you can, and connect people with others who can help them, rather than trying to keep them to yourself.

Chapter 7: Minding the Gap – The gap is just the difference between your income and amount needed for necessities such as housing, transportation, and food. Minding the gap just means that this gap is your key to reaching your core values and goals you've found back in chapter 3. So use it as a path to the things on the top of your happiness list, rather than things that didn't even make the cut.

Chapter 8: Frugality as a Framework – Cheap people focus on retaining as much money for themselves as possible. Frugal people are happy to spend money on something that is inline with their core values, but try to minimize spending on anything else. “Frugality is an exchange: You’re trading the things you don’t value for things that you do value.”

Chapter 9: Cultivating People and Opportunities – Do your friends put down others and feel better about themselves when others fail, or do they encourage others, and improve the people around them. You'll want to minimize negative relationships in your life, and increase the amount of positive ones.

Chapter 10: The New Career Rules – In previous generations, your loyalty stood with the company you worked for. With Today's economic trouble and quick employee turnover, it is much more beneficial to build trust and loyalty with your peers. Participate in forums where you can share ideas and opportunities, advise new co-workers on how to fit in and get ahead, and help your peers to reach their goals. Thanks to your participation, this community will be there for you when you need it most.

Chapter 11: Life Design, Building Something New - “buying an expensive home that pushes what you can afford, constantly striving to keep up with the affluence of others, working a job that you can’t even consider leaving because the pay is just too good.” Use goals to pull yourself out of this broken cycle.

Chapter 12: Managing the Gap – Use your gap to build up a savings that can eventually fund your dream job. These savings should be enough to pay the difference between what you can make following your passion, and your living expenses.

Chapter 13: The Personal, Financial Boundary – Prevent financial mistakes from hurting your personal relationships. If someone you care about owes you money, forgive this debt right now before it can do any more damage, If you want to help a friend by lending them money, make it a one time gift, have no expectation of being paid back. Never borrow from friends or family yourself. These are good tips from keeping that lender-borrower relationship, along with all the negativity that goes with it, out of your personal life.

Chapter 14: Recasting Retirement – Retirement no longer means sitting at home with nothing to do. People nearing retirement age have a lot of experience and skills built up over the years that they can offer. Use your retirement savings as a vehicle to do something that is personally fulfilling, but may not be financially lucrative.

Chapter 15: The New Path to Adulthood – The traditional path to a good career involved excellent grades in high school with loads of AP courses and extra curricular activities. Then a great SAT score to get into a great University leading up to a great job. Today however, the world requires a much wider skill set than can be found in a classroom setting alone.

Chapter 16: The Power of Giving - “You can start by simply encouraging others. Give positive feedback when people contribute to the community. Speak up when a positive voice is really needed. Act energetic and enthusiastic about the things you care about. Your positive attitude can spur others on to actions beyond what you could ever provide to the community, and that is a truly powerful gift, indeed.”

Chapter 17: Holding You Back – Stop making grand pronouncements about all the great things you are going to accomplish, only to find yourself overwhelmed and defeated before you even start. Instead, focus on small behaviors you can change today. Chain together enough days of doing this and it becomes normal. You'll have accomplished your goal piece by piece without all the grand fuss and hoopla.

Chapter 18: Original of the Species - “Money is nothing more than a tool with which you can create the life you truly want.” The hard part is identifying what you truly want, and making the change to get there. You won't get different results from repeating the same experiment, and you can't get any closer to your dream life if you're too scared to to make a change.

Chapter 19: 11 O'Clock Tick Tock – Review: The most important thing about personal finance is knowing yourself, the second most important thing is setting concrete goals, the world is a random place, the most valuable thing in the world is time, the more supportive people you have in your life, the better, the fewer unsupportive people in your life, the better, blaming others for your problems is a dead end, improve and educate yourself, karma always comes around, there are very few aspects of your life that can't be changed.  

New to The Thrifty Techie?

The Thrifty Techie is a place for me to share my thoughts on topics too geeky to discuss in my day to day life.  As a result, the random content I do share on this blog covers such a wide range of topics that it can be hard for new visitors to pinpoint exactly what they can expect to find here in the future.  I'm not 100% sure of what to expect either, but I created this little guide for newcomers to help users ease into the current direction of the blog.  Even if you're a regular reader, it may be worth a quick check as I'll try to update it with links to my favorite posts as often as I can.

I've also made couple other small changes you may not have noticed.  I have a link to the RSS feed you can use to subscribe to this blog at the bottom of the page.  And I've also started tagging my posts by category such as tutorial, book review, or editorial.  You can view and sort posts by these tags by using the labels on the right hand side of this page.  That's it for all the new changes. Hope you enjoy!

P2P Redesign

I've already written about P2P.org as one of my favorite places for free classes earlier this year, but a major site re-design along with some new features deserves a second mention here.

As you can see, the new home page makes it much easier to get started and start signing up for classes. Navigation throughout the site is just as simple and intuitive as the homepage.

In addition to the new layout, there are two major changes you'll see right away. The first tweak you'll notice is how much more social P2P feels. As a signed in user you are taken to your profile page where you can post comments that all of your followers can see. You can also find and follow and friends, regardless of whether they are in the same class as you or not. Another feature I really like is that you can follow a class without being an active participant. This is useful if you want to check out what a class is like before taking the plunge.

The second thing I noticed was that classes are now organized as groups. Groups are a place where group members cooperate to create tasks. Each task is like a new wiki page where any member can contribute to the page. The purpose of these pages look pretty open ended. I've seen it used as a place to post homework, describe course objectives, or hold an online discussions.

That's it for the major changes. They have a bunch of new classes open for registration. Obviously a lot of it is going to be tech related, but they also have a School of Social Innovation, and a School of the Mathematical Future. I'm keeping my eye on a beginners blogging course myself.

Here is the full listing of all available courses.

What is Cloud Computing

I hear the term, "cloud computing" used in a lot of different ways. I think at this point, cloud computing is just a broad marketing term or buzz word that different tech services can throw around to mean whatever they want. It's really similar to how the term 4G doesn't have to follow any technical specification anymore. AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile can create whatever technology they want and brand it as 4G. Just like any company can create any service and call it cloud computing.  I don't have any problem with these terms being thrown around like this except that it can sometimes be confusing. Check out these Windows 7 commercials to see what I mean:

Family Photo To The Cloud - Windows 7

Airport To The Cloud - Windows 7

Boxmas To The Cloud - Windows 7

To me, commercials like these talk about these neat features while saying the word, “cloud,” but don't really pinpoint the connection between the feature, and what cloud computing is. So here is my attempt at a basic definition.

Cloud computing can be categorized into three basic functions. It can probably be further split into more specialized uses but I don't think the differences beyond these categories are important.

Infrastucture as a Service (IaaS) – The first category is IaaS. In the Academic world, many professions need the power of massive super computers to analyze large sets of data, or run complex simulations. In the past, this meant that every researcher had to solve this problem individually.

For example, say I had a company that was interested in researching tornado path prediction methods. One of my employees wants to look at every single recorded tornado in the U.S. And check if there are any correlations between tornado path, temperature, ground slope, wind speeds, humidity, and hundreds of other variables. The only way I can run through the millions of possibilities and check for patterns is with the help of a super computer.

In the past, a company like this may not have the money to purchase expensive super computers, and hire technical staff to maintain and troubleshoot any problems that occur. However IaaS means that a cloud provider already has this equipment and wants to rent it out as a service to people like me. IaaS is renting computing time on high quality hardware so you don't have to buy and maintain it yourself. One such service is Amazon's EC2 service allowing you to rent its computing power by clock speed, bandwith, or time. This means I no longer need to worry about purchasing, installing and maintaining new equipment, or sinking money into something I may not need a month from now. All I have to do is pass the simulation and data to my new army of rented super computers and wait for the results.

Platform as a Service (PaaS) – Platform as a Service is a way of giving the developer somewhere to host his software. Time for another example. Lets say I'm starting a new online gaming company. I'll have to buy some servers and networking equipment to host my software on the internet where customers can find and play the games I create.

The problem I've encountered is I have no way of knowing how much traffic I'm going to receive, which in turn gives me no clue as to how much servers I'll need to start off with. Overestimating my traffic could leave my company in debt with no way to pay off the huge server farm I just built. Underestimating the amount of traffic would be even worse. My games wouldn't be able to reach anyone at all if my equipment is overwhelmed. Even if I somehow do manage to guess the correct amount of equipment to buy at first, I'll need to throw it out and move to larger and more powerful equipment once my company starts to grow. PaaS allows me to just give my software to a provider, and pay for the actual traffic I receive with no guesswork or upgrading involved. Just pay as you go.

Software as a Service (SaaS) – This one is the category that most consumers are concerned with. All this means is that someone somewhere has built a service and can offer you any amount of features through some type of data connection. For example, dropbox gives me access to my files anywhere I have a data connection, the Amazon music locker gives me access to my music from any internet connected device, or I can collaborate on a document from remote locations on something like google wave.