Personal Website of Yakov Shafranovich

A Tale of Two Upgrades: Ubuntu 11.10 vs. CyanogenMod 7.1 Alpha on HP TouchPad

In the last week or so I ended up upgrading my main PC from Ubuntu 11.04 to 11.10 and hacking 32GB HP TouchPad with the newly released CyanogenMod 7.1 Alpha (aka Android 2.3). I must say that the Alpha, unsupported, potentially lethal, etc. CM7 hack for the TouchPad runs smoother than my PC. Either this is great work on the CM team’s part or really bad and shoddy work on Canonical/Ubuntu team.

Some notes on CM7:

• CM7 installation instructions fail to mention that a separate file containing Google’s stock apps such as gMail, Market, etc. is available.
• I followed the instructions provided and it took about 5 mins for the whole process to run.
• Other than an occasional Market crash, I haven’t see any problems. It runs faster and better than the WebOS software. I also like the dual boot functionality.

Posted in Website | No Comments »

How Small Retailers Survive by Offering Better Service

One of the recurring themes that often comes up in debates about sales tax on Internet sales is how big impersonal companies like Amazon tend to kill small local retailers on price alone. However, I recently had two experiences with local small businesses which leads me to believe that a lot of the small retailers are learning to differentiate themselves by providing personalized and just better service.

Some time ago we were out of town and forgot a certain medication. To refill this prescription in a pharmacy that is out of town and to get insurance to pay for it required a complicated dance of phone calls between the doctor’s office, the out of town pharmacy and the insurance company. Nevertheless, this small, locally owned pharmacy really went past the call of duty and were able to manage this with a smile. One other thing I noticed while I was waiting for them to figure things out on the phone with the insurance company is something I had not seen often – a customer called in but the call got dropped somehow. They cared enough to call them back.

A second somewhat related story took place recently. We had recently switched to use a locally owned pharmacy near our house from a somewhat larger chain pharmacy. A prescription that was filled for someone at this pharmacy arrived at our house and when the patient opened it, they remarked on how thoughtful the pharmacist was to include a special measuring utensil for the medicine. We have gotten measuring droppers before, but this one was pretty nifty and much better quality than the usual fare.

I would certainly consider using a local retailer that I know provides better service even if they are slightly more expensive. Perhaps, that is the future of local commerce.

Posted in Personal Finance | No Comments »

Laziness, not Mediocrity is Enemy of Greatness

“If he was not the laziest, he would have became the greatest” – Sergey Lukanenko, False MIrrors

There is a quote that often gets thrown around about mediocrity being the enemy of greatness but it is not mediocrity itself but the laziness and complacency that it causes. When we settle for mediocre and regular in our lives, we lose our inherent drive towards personal greatness.

Posted in Personal | No Comments »

Lawsuit against Adam Meister to be Dismissed

I blogged before about a Baltimore City councilwoman, Belinda Conaway, suing a local blogger for defamation and libel because he accused her of living outside the city and posted real estate documents she herself signed to prove it. Now comes word that her lawyer will be filing for dismissal. The lawyer is claiming that the dismissal comes so late because they did not have access to the document. Of course, the document is available online through a Maryland state system operated by the clerks of court – which just happens to include the councilwoman’s father who is the clerk of court for Baltimore City Circuit Court. It just does not make any sense – driving to Towson to get the document is not that hard, or calling up the clerk in Baltimore County. Furthermore, she has earned herself an enemy since Adam Meister is now campaigning for her challenger in this year’s election. And as Adam Meister mentioned it, because she filed the lawsuit and brought these facts to the public’s attention, she now stands a really good chance of losing her council seat this year.

It sounds like the lawsuit was a classic SLAPP suit – preventing Adam Meister from publishing about her or talking until the election was over. It is a good thing that it was not successful.

Posted in Politics | No Comments »

How Writing Things Down Declutters Your Brain

I ran across recently a blog post which references an interesting lifehack concept called morning pages. According to Julia Cameron who mentions this concept in her book, morning pages is a habit of writing out three pages of prose every morning about anything currently on your mind. What is interesting about her concept is that you do not need to keep them around – you can destroy them after they are written. It serves as a brain dump for your thoughts – a way to dump those pesky thoughts in your head into a concrete form on paper so they don’t continue to jostle in your head.

Interestingly enough David Allen of the Getting Things Done (GTD) fame, has a similar concept in his book. He discusses how your brain tries to remember all the various things you need to do and that causes stress. If you have a system that captures those reminders, then you can “dump” them out into that system like paper or a PDA/smartphone/webapp, and they do not stress you out anymore.

Posted in Personal | No Comments »

Simplify Your Keys and Your Life

I have been reading Zen Habits recently when I ran across his post about simplicity hacks. One of the recurring themes in personal development and personal finance blogs is the concept of simplicity – simplifying your personal life and possessions, by getting rid of things you don’t need.

I was reminded of this concept recently when a relative asked me why I have so many keys on my keychain making it weigh close to a half of pound. I have never actually thought about that, and I did recently take the time to go through my keychain and get rid of keys I don’t need. There were plenty of keys I no longer needed, and in at least one case a key that I have been carrying around for over 15 years which opened a door I no longer had access to as an employee. Once I cleaned up the keychain, it weighed very little reminding me of importance of simplicity every time I pick it up.

Posted in Personal | No Comments »

First Harvest from Our Garden

Earlier today I pulled out the first vegetable that was ready from our garden. It is a small turnip, about 6″ long and 1.5″ wide, but it is perfectly sized for our chicken soup. There are 7 more out there which I will be pulling out very soon and putting into storage in the basement. Now the question is what to plant there instead.

I must also say that the Square Foot Gardening method that I tried out this year has worked phenomenally well and much better than all of our previous years. When I get enough time, I plan to post detailed notes and pictures from the garden.

UPDATE: I ended up digging out the rest of them which may not have been wise. A picture appears below. I did learn two things:

1. They need to be planted much deeper so they don’t stick out of the soil.

2. I need to wait to harvest them a little longer.

And here is the picture of the turnip:

Here is a picture of all of them:

Posted in Gardening, Personal | No Comments »

The End of an Era

The NY Times is reporting that Borders is liquidating itself, closing 399 stores and firing over 10,000 people. This is a second largest brick and mortar book chain in the US, with the biggest (Barnes and Noble) not doing too well either. Reports are trickling in that publishers are getting ready to fire people as well since Borders accounted for a large percentage of paperback sales. This may very well be the end of conventional book stores as we know them. With the news that Amazon is the largest book seller in the US plus the fact that their Kindle e-books outsell all of their physical book sales, ebooks maybe the only thing that may save the physical brick and mortar book store. Or they may transition to sort of a hip indy-style local cafe/bookstore/conversation spot.

Or not.

Time will tell.

Posted in Website | 3 Comments »

Review of Paypal’s Mobile Check Capture Service

Being that none of the banks I currently use support remote deposit  (taking photos of checks and uploading them instead of bringing the physical checks in), I was very interested to hear that PayPal finally added check deposit ability to their Android app. This post covers my experiences with that service.

First of all, the actual check deposit feature is hard to find, it is not under “Add Money”, rather it is under tools. Second, the Paypal Android app itself seems to be someone unstable since it keeps on occasionally crashes or failing to login. Regardless, once you locate the feature, the actual process seems to be straight forward – sign the check, take a picture of the front and back, and send it in. PayPal recommends that you hold on to the check for 15 days. I do like the fact that no fees are being assessed by PayPal for the service, but time will tell if it will stay that way. Once the check is processed, you receive it as a payment to your PayPal account, and you can then either use it or withdraw it into your bank account. Combined with the PayPal credit card that feeds from your balance, it can actually allow someone to bank completely without having a bank – something that many companies like WalMart, GreenDot and of course your neighborhood check cashing places do. I can easily see blue collar workers that are young and mobile savvy use this feature to deposit checks and then transfer money to relatives overseas instead of the regular check cashing/Western Union route.

I had two problems with the process:

1. There is no indication on the regular Desktop site what is going on with the checks. When the checks are actually processed, they appear in your account as a payment from a merchant called “PayPal Check Capture”, and the only way to figure out what check goes with which payment, or to check on the status of the process is to go into the mobile app on your phone.

2. My biggest problem is time – it took almost 10 days to process a single small amount check while  for example, Bank of America deposits checks same day via their ATM if they are put in before 8 PM. That is an absurd amount of time for a check, but perhaps the anti-fraud mechanism is what slows it down.

Overall I am satisfied with the service but everyone should be well aware that this deposit method takes time. It would be interesting to see if combining PayPal Check Deposit and Square for credit processing with a small business would actually eliminate the need for a gateway and a bank account.

Posted in Technology | 2 Comments »

Rapidly Depreciating Values of Computer Books

While housecleaning recently, I went through a shelf full of my old computers books. After price checking them against several online services, as well as seeing as what they were selling for, I ended up with .., nothing. This shelf-ful of books, worth at list price over $500, which I paid at least $200 for is now worth absolutely nothing in several short years. Makes you thing twice about buying computer books.

P.S. And of course they are all available on the Kindle.

Posted in Personal | No Comments »