Thinking About Retirement, Part 2

There are three other retirement-related concepts I have been thinking about lately.  

One is how long people live, or in particular, how long I will live.  This is, of course, unknown.  So we look to historical statistics.  Mortality rates are dropping.  Life expectancy is increasing, at least in the US.  There's even a breakdown for Southeast Asian males, but the data is older.  Of course, these are statistics.  You'll often hear stories of people who drop dead two days after their retire.  Even in my own family, the men rarely live past 80.   This factors into when to claim Social Security.  Many articles and mathematical calculations explore break even points when claiming at 62, 67, or 70. One should also think about spousal benefits.  These decisions are extremely personal, hence "personal finance".

The second thing that is swirling around in my head is spending in retirement.  I could sum it up as being somewhere between "Die with Zero", a book by Bill Perkins, and leaving something for my heirs.  The 4% rule has been deemed as too safe, even by William Bengen, who introduced it in 1994.   You will spend less and less as you grow older, meaning you can withdraw more in your "go-go years".  Your withdrawal rate is also dictated by the sequence of returns during retirement.  I also believe in Warren Buffet's advice to "leave enough so that your heirs can do anything, but not too much that they do nothing."  How much is enough?  Again, that's personal.

The third is where to retire.  I love the San Francisco Bay Area.  Almost everything is here.  But it is very expensive.  It's great if one can afford it during retirement.  But for most people, including myself, moving away will make their retirement dollars go farther elsewhere.  Personal preferences - weather, proximity to retirement activities, family and community, even healthcare options - dictate your choices.  Again, it is extremely personal.

Thinking about Retirement, Part 1

I've heard the terms go-go years, slow-go years, and no-go years from podcasts.  And so with a little help from Google Gemini:

The terms

"go-go years," "slow-go years," and "no-go years" were coined by Michael Stein in his book The Prosperous Retirement. 

These terms are used in financial planning to describe the three distinct phases of retirement, characterized by different activity levels and spending patterns: 

• Go-Go Years: The early years of retirement (typically ages 65-75), when retirees are often active, healthy, and interested in travel, hobbies, and other activities. This phase generally involves higher discretionary spending.
• Slow-Go Years: The middle phase (typically ages 75-85), when health or energy levels might decrease, leading to a more relaxed pace of life, less travel, and a shift in spending priorities towards health care or home-related expenses.
• No-Go Years: The later phase (typically age 85 and older), where health and mobility challenges significantly limit activity, and expenses shift heavily toward long-term care and medical support.

I've also heard the terms: mobile, semi-mobile, and immobile, but the Gemini results were not as clear as the above.

Another term that has recently come up was "healthspan" as opposed to "lifespan".  Again, turning to Gemini for help:

Lifespan

is the total number of years a person lives, from birth until death, a measure of quantity. Healthspan, in contrast, refers to the number of years lived in good health, free from chronic diseases, disabilities, or significant illness. The goal of healthspan is to add "life to those years". 

Key Differences

Feature

	Lifespan	Healthspan
Definition	Total years an individual lives.	Years an individual lives in good health, without chronic conditions or disabilities.
Focus	Quantity of life (how long you live).	Quality of life (how well you live during those years).
Measurement	A clear, objective endpoint (age at death or life expectancy).	More complex, often measured by various health indicators like disease-free years, functional capacity, or biomarkers of aging.
The Gap	Lifespan typically exceeds healthspan, with the average global gap being around 9-10 years spent with disease or disability.	The goal of longevity research is to close the gap between healthspan and lifespan so that individuals remain healthy until near the very end of life.

In essence, while medical advancements have successfully increased the average lifespan, they have not proportionally increased the healthspan, resulting in more years lived with illness or a reduced quality of life. The focus on healthspan is a shift towards ensuring that extended years are vital, active, and independent.

And so, the goals of retirement should be to a) plan for the go-go years, slow-go years, and no-go years, and b) to extend the go-go years, and maybe the slow-go years, or "healthspan" as long as possible.

Why I’m Teaching My Kids to Drive a Stick Shift (Even If the World Has Moved On)

 

Let’s be honest—automatic transmissions today are really good. Gone are the clunky, gas-guzzling 3-speed slush boxes of yesteryear. Modern automatics are smooth, efficient, and packed with more acronyms than a government agency: CVTs, DCTs, DSGs, PDKs... you get the idea. They shift faster than any human ever could—even on a racetrack.

So with all this slick tech, why am I bothering to teach my kids to drive a manual?

1. Because I Love Driving

This one’s a bit selfish. I’m a driver—I love the act of driving. I love being connected to the car, feeling the gears engage, and choosing exactly when to shift. For me, that’s not just control—it’s joy. And while I know my kids might never become full-blown gearheads, I’m hoping at least one of them catches the bug, just a little.

2. Because Manual Forces Focus

No scientific studies here—just instinct and experience. When you're driving a manual, you can’t really zone out. You have to listen to the engine, time your shifts, and actually think about what you're doing. That means no mindless texting or spacing out at stoplights. Teaching them to drive stick is my way of building in a little extra awareness and safety.

3. Because It’s the Best Anti-Theft Device Out There

Here’s the practical reason. At some point, I’ll probably buy them cars. And let’s face it: someone’s going to try to borrow it. Or worse—steal it. But here’s the kicker: less than 5% of cars sold today have manual transmissions, and most people under 30 wouldn’t know a clutch pedal from a dead pedal. Driving stick is like having a built-in security system that also builds character.

Sure, the world has mostly moved on from manual transmissions. But for me—and maybe for my kids—it’s not just about nostalgia. It’s about connection, attention, and a little bit of security. Plus, when the zombie apocalypse hits and the only getaway car is a stick, they’ll thank me.

"You speak very good English."

This is something I have heard many times over the years, sometimes it varies, but always the same theme.  I invariably follow it up with, “Thank you.”  Sometimes, I add, “I learned it from Sesame Street.”  I’ve always taken it as a complement.

What follows is usually a discussion about where I’m from, where I went to school, or when I moved to the US.  And it is always a pleasant exchange.  I get to talk about myself, and I also learn something about the other person.

If the conversation goes further, I say that I credit my English teachers in elementary school, especially Mrs. Cynthia Nollido, who drilled us all on tongue twisters and proper grammar.  And then there’s television and movies.  I watched a lot of American TV shows and movies growing up.  If I watched British TV, I may have picked up that accent.

Back in the 2010s, some folks on the internet, or maybe it was a sensitivity training course, told us that this was a microaggression by white folks.  Honestly, I didn’t even know what that word was until then.

But is it really?

Back in 2011, I overheard a white guy speaking my native language, Tagalog.  Naturally curious, I asked him how he came to speak and write fluently.  It turns out, he spent five years as a missionary in the Philippines, and even more surprisingly, he stayed in a city very close to my hometown. 

And then you watch many videos of XiaomaNYC on YouTube – a white guy learning other languages and speaking in front of native speakers.  You will see a similar reaction from the people he speaks to: curiosity, surprise, but it was never discriminatory.  And this is the same whether they were Asians, Africans, Europeans, or Americans (and I’m talking about continents here).

I would postulate that most people are curious and want to know more.  Their surprise is a pleasant one. They are excited to hear a familiar language, especially if it’s coming from someone they weren’t expecting to speak it.  In the case of XiaomaNYC, most of them even praise him for trying, or for sounding so good, not unlike the comment, “You speak very good English.”  

And then there’s the occasional comment of, “your accent is very neutral.”  Again, I would take this as a complement, and nothing else.  The same teacher, Mrs. Nollido, stressed proper pronunciation, speaking clearly, so that we may be understood.  And so I hope I am making her proud when I speak clearly and pronounce words correctly.

With the dawn of Business Process Outsourcing in the Philippines, companies offered accent reduction classes.  People thought nothing of it.  Of course, you want to sound better on the phone, so that the person on the other end will understand you, especially if they are native English speakers.  People who take Mandarin classes are also taught proper pronunciation so that native Mandarin speakers can understand them.

Even Stanford Continuing Studies has a class called “Accent Reduction for Non-Native English Speakers”.  The goal of course, is to be able to convey your thoughts clearly, and be understood.

So is it really a microaggression to say, “your English is very good,” or “your accent is very natural”?

I took a class at Stanford Continuing Studies on Executive Presence, ran by Tracy Wilk and JeanAnn Nichols.  One of the concepts they talked about was, “assume good intent.”  It helps you think about how to react better to any situation, especially in business or personal interactions.  And I think people who say this genuinely have good intent.  They are curious.  They are paying you a complement.

And even if they have bad intent, the other lesson from stoicism is, “focus on what you can control.” You can’t control how other people act or feel, so focus on yourself, how would you react?  And I think taking these as complements would be better for you.

The Psychology of Numbers

Ever since stereo volume controls moved from potentiometers to digital buttons, I’ve always set my volume to either an even number, or a multiple of five.  While looking at memes on the Internet, I found some posts from other people basically sharing the same preference.

And so I dug deeper into it.  And as it turns out, Dan King of the University of Singapore and Chris A Janiszewski of the University of Florida have done the research on this.  This article from Wired Magazine, we assign personalities to numbers based on their arithmetical properties, triggering an emotional response.

And so odd numbers are more memorable, hence my preference for summarizing things in three or five items.  Even numbers are easier to process because they appear more frequently in multiplication tables.

But why do I like 14, but not 26, nor 34.  This piece from The Guardian explains why people like the number seven, and so 14 is fine as a volume setting, but not 7.  But 26 only has two other factors besides one and itself, and one of them is 13.  Similarly, 34 only has 17 and 2 besides 1 and itself.

But why are multiples of five acceptable?  Every other one is odd.  Most likely, it’s because we have five fingers on one hand, and it’s easy to accept five, or any of their multiples.  But then, how did we get to a clock with 12 numbers, and each number represents five minutes?  That’s yet another rabbit hole I’ll have to dig into in another time.

Salesforce Inline Editing: Hype vs. Reality

Salesforce has been lagging in inline-editing capabilities for a while.  When Clari burst onto the scene, that was one of the earlier features that sellers loved - the ability to edit records without having to open them one by one.  Even a free version of Scratchpad had better inline-editing abilities.

Salesforce enabled inline-editing in list views, but it is limited to a single record type.  That means either an admin created list views for users, or a trainer taught them how to create list views that had a record type filter.  Both are not scalable, and the latter is a bit more complicated for a user whose primary job is to sell, not to be Salesforce experts.

Beyond the single record type limitation, not all fields are supported.  This Salesforce help page details them out.  The standard Next Step would've been supported, except many companies feel 255 characters are not enough, so they have a custom "Next Steps" field that is a long text area.  Long text areas are not supported.  Sales Stage would've been supported, but most companies create a dependent "Reason" field when something is lost or won, and fields with dependent picklists are also not supported.

Salesforce has since released inline-editing capabilities in reports.  Since the Summer '21 release, they have been making improvements to the capability.  Unfortunately, apart from the record type and the dependent picklist limitations, the others still exist.  You still can't edit Probability directly, nor can you edit long text areas.

And this is causing frustration from the users.  Now, should you try to move to the standard Next Step with 255 characters and argue that Next Step should be short and sweet?  Probably.  But what about other things like Customer Success Notes?

It's a step in the right direction but it's not a full-fledged feature that will make your users jump up and down and be happy about Salesforce Lightning unfortunately.  It is a journey, and we're all in it.

Am I asking too much?

 I am writing this as an Apple shareholder and customer.

Much has been said about planned obsolescence, how we no longer build things to last, how the manufacture and disposal of electronics and appliances are harmful to the environment.  I came from the generation where refrigerators last 20+ years and computers that doubled in speed every 18 months until having multiple cores became more mainstream.  So I have seen both sides.

And so to some extent, I expect computers to last longer than five years.  I've had a 2009 Macbook which I kept until 2018.  Granted, it was relegated to light duties like surfing the web or playing music for my then 4 year old.

I have a 2011 Macbook Pro, which works to this day, except for the battery that doesn't hold a charge (I accept the lifespan of NiMH batteries) and consequently, a mouse pad that doesn't work because the battery has expanded and is pushing the trackpad mechanism.  But the camera works flawlessly.

Which brings me to my 2016 Macbook Pro.  The camera has stopped working, and after my own troubleshooting, two trips to the Apple Store for various resets, OS reinstall, as well as reseating the cables that presumably connect the display to the main board, the geniuses at Apple have deemed my laptop broken.  

The option given to me was to buy a new display for $478 plus tax.  Why a new display, and not just the camera?  I presume these are integrated units, or built as a single replaceable part, which brings us back to the e-waste problem.  The display is working, so why replace the whole thing for just the camera?

What's frustrating is that the software-based diagnostic test revealed that the camera is perfectly fine.  So I thought it was just a software issue.  But if it was, an OS reinstall would've fixed it.  And if the cable was loose, why can the diagnostics software detect the camera?

My wife uses this 2016 Macbook Pro.  It works fine otherwise, except for the camera, which she needs to occasionally join a video call.  It's just not worth spending $478 for it.  It certainly isn't worth getting a new one, since I am typing this on a 2020 Macbook Pro.  These aren't business laptops that are on a three year refresh cycle.  

For a thousand dollar laptop, is it too much to ask for the camera to last more than 5 years?

Trust

"I am not my father" is a familiar TV/movie trope, and people love a good redemption story.  And then there's that phrase: "The apple does not fall far from the tree."  If we forget for a moment that he is his father's son, how can we evaluate his character?  After all, isn't that the only way we should select our political leaders?  

When evaluating public companies and their leadership, we look at their accomplishments, their public actions, their behavior during earnings calls, or any public forum.  We are not there day to day to observe their decision-making process, and so we have to trust that the leaders will do the right thing for the company whose shares we own.

It is the same for political leaders.

So, let's forget for a moment that he is his father's son.  What has he accomplished?  What is his observable behavior that will help build that trust?

He was educated in England and in the US.  He lied about getting a political science degree.  He lied about it when he was younger, before the Internet made it easy to email someone at Oxford and simply ask for the truth.

Looking at his website, and not having the easy access to the body of the house bills, the headlines of the house bills he has authored are mostly construction projects in his district.  While I applaud him for trying to improve his district, everybody does that.  There is nothing special there. And we know those projects are rife with corruption and kickbacks.

The only notable house resolution is the one relating to the Kalayaan Island Group.  Oh, and he wants his father's remains to return and lie in state in Malacañang.

As governor of Ilocos Norte, all I can see are certificates of merit that are meaningless to me.  They lack substance.

There is a section for speeches on his website, the latest one is dated 2016 as of this writing.  There are a few YouTube videos out there, and in the one I watched, he still referenced his father.

My remaining question, forgetting again that he is his father's son, is what is his character?  Because that is the only way to determine whether he is trustworthy enough to hold the highest office.  We will disagree on some issues, but like an employee trusts their CEO to do the right thing, we must be able to trust political leaders to do the right thing.

And nothing tells me that he will do the right thing.

Hashtag: I Choose Love

 
I’ve written previously about my general distrust of the media – partly fueled by growing up in the Philippines under a dictatorship.  And partly, of course, is the fact that the media is controlled by people who are looking to sell more ads.  And sensational stories sell.
 
When I first read and heard about violence against Asian Americans in the news, my first reaction even as a first-generation Filipino immigrant is that the ratio against the raw number of crimes is miniscule.  After all, the national media is not covering as much about Uighurs in China, probably because it happens on foreign soil, and does not get the same clicks or views as pitting Asian Americans against Whites.  And then it becomes an us-vs-them which fuels further division.  Clearly that is not what America stands for.
 
There was also the feeling of insulation because we live in a fairly diverse part of the US.  The San Francisco Bay Area is home to many Asian American immigrants.  These things happen in other parts of the country.  And then it happened.  San Francisco has seen a spate of attacks on elderly Chinese.  A Filipino American woman was attacked in San Jose.  The data does not lie.  There has been an increase of reports of attacks on Asian Americans, at least according to a study by the  folks at CSU San Bernardino.
 
My first reaction is anger.  These criminals must be beaten and given a taste of their own medicine.  But then I always go back to the old advice that there are few things you can control.  But what you can control is how you react.  Anger is not the answer.  I’m not condoning their actions.  It’s just that there are laws on the books that outline the punishment that fits their crime.  And we live in a country with due process, and I believe in that process.
 
And then there’s the campaign to #StopAsianHate.  But what does it achieve?  What about just stopping hate all together?  What about stopping any crime, whether it’s against Asians, blacks, whites, women, or men?  What about choosing love?  I choose love.  Mother Teresa once said, “I will never attend an anti-war rally; if you have a peace rally, invite me.”
 
It is true that all humans are biased.  Our brains are wired that way.  Thousands of years of evolution have not removed it, because up until a few thousand years ago, we would have had to assess predator or prey, or friend or foe in seconds, to trigger our fight or flight response.  Imagine having to sort through all the characteristics every time you encounter another person or animal.  You’d be dead before you make a decision.  I have to admit there have been times I judged a person based on what I initially see – the way they looked, the way they dressed, and I have reacted accordingly.   And it's because they're different from what I have established in my mind as "friend". I have to be better.
 
We are no longer in that sort of danger that our ancestors had to contend with.  We are, in many ways, a civilized society.  So, in choosing love, I choose to look at people as individuals, as unique human beings with fears and motivations.  I will strive to treat each person individually, react based on their behavior, to take the time, and not make generalizations based on their skin color, hair style, eye shape, fashion choices, or gender, or religion.  In the words sung by Michael Jackson, with lyrics by Siedah Garrett and Glen Ballard, "I'm starting with the man in the mirror."
 
I may not be able to change the world.  But I can change myself. #IChooseLove
 
 
 
 
 

This sounds really familiar...

If you have kids of a certain age and watch Disney, you will have seen Frozen II at least once.  And if you are of a certain age, Generation X and listened to Western pop music, you would have noticed that the song "Lost in the Woods" sounds eerily familiar.  It sounds like songs by Chicago, or REO Speedwagon, and for good reason.  As detailed in this blog post, the composers were inspired or at least big fans, of these 80's power ballads.  It reminds me of "Will You Still Love Me?". There's another 80's song that has a very similar lick, but I can't recall the rest of the song to find the title.

On the one hand, I can lament that nobody comes up with truly original songs anymore.  Everybody is singing some variation of I-V-viii-IV these days.  And the chord cycle is not new.  You can watch this clip to understand what I'm talking about.  And while reusing chord cycles are excusable, (after all, how many combinations can you make from seven chords in four bars, or twelve bars?), sounding almost exactly like another song is not.  The courts found Robin Thicke and Pharell to have ripped off Marvin Gaye, as detailed in this Rolling Stone article.  I personally didn't find that too close, but some of you may remember the Led Zeppelin vs. Spirit, "Stairway to Heaven" vs. "Taurus".

On the other hand, hearing familiar sounds soothes our brains.  When "Hey Ya" by Outkast was introduced, radio stations had to sandwich it between familiar songs, because "Hey Ya" was so different.  (Read this for more detail.)

What is the point of all this?  And how do we bring this back to business?  My point is, while companies are different, at a certain level, they are all the same.  They have the same challenges and business problems they are trying to solve.  Each company may just be at different stages of their journey.  If they were all different, then business applications like CRM and ERP will not find much success.  Everyone would be building custom apps for their own businesses.

And so while the song sounds new, it still sounds familiar.  The things you learned - skills, business processes, solutions - from previous companies are portable.  (Unless it's like "Hey Ya" - a highly specialized type of skill or knowledge that has narrow applications, like video compression codecs.)   

Customer Master and data cleansing is a common problem.  And it's not new.  Before web domains were commonplace, you would define an account as their headquarter location - a name and address.  Preventing duplicates is a challenge.  In the B2C world, (I worked for an insurance company), before email addresses, and without requiring people to give social security numbers, we relied on a name, a birthday, and an address.  And that's not perfect either.  I could have two policies, and on one, I gave my middle initial, and on the other, I did not.  Or I may have since moved.  How do we have one record for one person so we can treat them as one person?

And guess what's like a subscription business?  Insurance!  You want people to pay yearly, or quarterly, or monthly - whatever payment term they agreed to.  And you have to keep engaging with your customers, not just come around when the premium is due.  Otherwise, they could cancel, or just choose not to pay the renewal.  You also want to up-sell or cross-sell, or "land and expand" as they call it these days, as their financial needs evolve, you start offering other financial products.    

So, whether it's B2C, B2B, insurance, financial services, software, hardware, subscription, XaaS, pay-as-you-grow, consumption, everything is familiar!

What are you packing?

 

The edge of the area covered by the evacuation order is a quarter mile from our house.  If it does expand beyond that, we’ll have to evacuate.

 

Some evacuation orders are sudden.  You may be asked to leave immediately because you are in imminent danger.  And there are plenty of resources online on how to prepare, and what to bring if you only had 15 minutes tops.  Ready.gov is a good starting point.

 

But for us, we have some time to pack.  And what did we pack?

 

Besides the usual stuff that you find online – passports, social security cards, a change of clothes, personal items, we had time to consider other things.  Apart from practical considerations – what will fit in the car, for example – we asked ourselves two things.  And it gave us a chance to evaluate what's really important.

 

First: what things are irreplaceable?  I’m not here to argue that we should not be collecting things, but rather, experiences.  It is inevitable that those experiences have things associated with them.  We definitely packed photographs.  We are from the generation that still had printed photos and negatives.  While some have been digitized, many have not.  The hard drives with the digital photos were packed as well.  On the other hand, we have souvenirs from our travels that we did not pack.

 

The second, more difficult question is: what things are harder to replace?  Harder is a personal threshold.  It could be purely financial, or time-based, or both.  Clothes can be replaced.  You can walk into a Target or a Gap, or buy clothes online.  But what about that wedding dress?  We didn’t have a wedding dress, but I did have the Barong Tagalog (a traditional Filipino formal wear for men) that I wore at my wedding.  I ultimately decided not to pack it.  I haven’t read the book, but Marie Kondo’s question, “What sparks joy?” is appropriate here.

 

What if you had a growing collection of items that took you years to collect, but not valuable enough to insure?  You could have a sneaker collection, or a stamp collection, or some other collection that has more sentimental than monetary value.  I happen to have a collection of knives.  I packed them. 

 

Say you did have insurance.  It only pays you the monetary equivalent.  If Bill Gates lost his Porsche 959 to a fire, the insurance company could pay him a million dollars for the loss.  But I doubt anybody else who has a 959 is willing to part with his.  That means even if Bill Gates was made whole by his insurance company, he will most likely not have another 959, not that reacquiring a 959 is top priority for him.  I have an older 911 which is insured for an agreed value.  That model is certainly not as rare as a 959.  We’re leaving the 911 if we were asked to evacuate.  While it does spark joy, it’s not top priority.  If I had a third driver in the household, then I would drive the 911 out of there.

 

So, what are you packing?

 

 

 

 

Comcast Gigabit Internet Delivers

A few years ago, I talked about some issues with my WiFi and AT&T.  For about three years now, Comcast has been my service provider.  I started with their 250Mbps plan, then 400Mbps, and now 1000Mbps.

 

I'm happy to report that, at least when wired directly to the modem via Ethernet, I am able to reach 942Mbps download speeds.

 

Now, four feet from the router provided by Comcast and only on WiFi, it drops down to 541Mbps.  I haven't tried turning off WPA2 but I bet that has something to do with the huge drop.

 

Stepping further away, one floor down, it goes down to the 400Mbps range - which is not bad.  But there are still a few things I would like to try in order to reach the maximum speeds. 

One of them is adding a mesh WiFi system.  I don't really need one because I have a small house, but maybe having one will help keep the speed above 500Mbps even in the garage.

The other more drastic measure is to hard-wire the access points.  I would also like to activate the Ethernet ports in the various rooms so that other people in my household can connect via Ethernet.

 

With everybody working from home and schooling from home, I need all the bandwidth I can get.

 

A Sad Day

On September 21st, 1972, then-president Ferdinand Marcos declared Martial Law in the Philippines.  Letter of Instruction No. 1 immediately followed - directing the armed forces to seize control of all media.

Admittedly, this was before my time. But by 1984, when former Senator Ninoy Aquino was assassinated, and culminating in the so-called People Power in 1986, I became aware of the government’s control of the newspapers and the nightly news.  And thus began my general distrust of the media. Don’t believe everything you read or see on TV. And that extends to the Internet today.

In 1987, the new Philippine Constitution enshrined the freedom of speech and freedom of the press in Article III, Section 4.  Almost word for word, the First Amendment to the US Constitution was clearly the model for this section.

And while I still distrust the media, (they are after all, business entities that need to make money through advertising, and they are run by people with biases, organizations with a political agenda, and sometimes led by moguls who have less than stellar records), I still am thankful that, in principle, they can report freely without fear of government repercussions, providing that they are factual and accurate. After all, freedom comes with responsibility.

With all this in the background, I am saddened by the news that today, ABS-CBN, a local TV network that was once shuttered in 1972 precisely because of Letter of Instruction No. 1, has been ordered to cease operations, no doubt because they have been critical of the current Duterte administration.  Apparently, Congress has the power to grant, or in this case, extend a broadcast network’s franchise license. And the current Philippine Congress is filled with the president’s allies.

While I may not always agree with what the media chooses to report, I choose to defend their right to do so.

 

Blind Spot Monitoring v2.0

While we wait for Level 4 or Level 5 autonomy, we need version 2.0 of blind spot monitoring. 

Without blind spot monitoring, you can adjust your mirrors so that you do not have blind spots, as recommended by the SAE, and detailed in this Car and Driver article.  Most new vehicles have some blind spot monitor, whether it's a sensor, a camera, coupled with an audio or visual cue.

This is all well and good when you are going straight.  The challenge is that in the few seconds between checking your mirrors, and then attempting to change lanes, another car may also be headed to the same lane you intended to go.  And then you narrowly miss the other car, or you go back to your original lane - either one would piss off drivers behind you.  Or worse, you cause an accident.

Or, you may be going straight and a car just starts moving towards you.  While according to this Wikipedia article, Nissan has some proactive capability, it's not widespread.

So, Blind Spot Monitoring 2.0 should have these features: As soon as you switch your turn signals on, and you are over a certain speed (meaning you are changing lanes), a better visual prompt, maybe a heads-up display or even just on the dashboard or the screen, that lets you know if it is clear.  

When you are in fact turning vs. changing lanes, it should be looking for pedestrians or bikers, and their velocity, and alert you if they are going towards you.

Finally, the sensors should be able to detect whether another car is moving towards you or going straight in its own lane and alert you to execute a safety maneuver.  I've seen a few accidents where two cars wanted to move to the same space in the middle lane, and neither seeing each other.

 

3 Lessons from 3 CEOs

Good things come in threes, they say.  So here are three lessons from three CEOs that I chose to take away.

 

Satya Nadella, CEO, Microsoft

 

As of this writing, Microsoft’s market cap is 1.19 trillion dollars.  It is the largest company listed on the US stock market.  Its growth over the past few years is thanks in no small part to its CEO, who took the reins in 2014. 

 

Nadella trusts his people, and relies on them in their areas of expertise.  In a Fortune Magazine article profiling Nadella, he credits success to the CFO, Kathleen Hood, and their head of HR, Kathleen Hogan.  He doesn’t hog the limelight, but allows others to shine in their roles.  And that is something I strive to do within my team and across the organization.

 

David M. Solomon, CEO, Goldman Sachs

 

Goldman Sachs has had its share of controversy, especially during the Great Recession of 2009.  But David M. Solomon has been transforming Goldman Sachs even before he became CEO.

 

More importantly, David M. Solomon is a DJ, known as DJ D-SOL, who performs at clubs all over.  He is not defined by his job as a banker.  He makes time to his passion. 

 

I play the piano, maybe not at the level that people will pay to see me perform, but I enjoy playing in church.  I also love to drive, so I drive as much as I can and enjoy the journey as much as the destination.

 

John Addison, former CEO, Primerica

 

John Addison currently sits on the board of Primerica.  He started there as a business systems analyst.  I picked up John Addison’s book, “Real Leadership”, a year ago. 

 

The biggest lesson I learned is in the first chapter: Decide who you are.  In the exercise at the end of that chapter, he advises: “List the top two or three people whom you most admire, along with what it is about them specifically that you seek to emulate in your own life.”  And I think I did just that right now.

 

 

Reminder that Roads Have Magnetic Sensors

The entry ramp from Mathilda onto 101 Southbound is under construction.  Only one lane is open.  This week, the old carpool lane is open, but the metering lights on the regular lane is still on during rush hour. 

The problem is that drivers are stopping at the carpool lane light, but waiting for the metering lights on the other lane to turn green.  It will never turn green because it doesn't detect cars waiting.

This is a gentle reminder that our roads have magnetic sensors.  In this case, the sensors are at the end of the line, depicted by the red rectangle below.  This means that each lane has its own sensor.  And so even if the metering lights are red on the right hand side, they will never turn green because the cars are on the left hand side.

I unfortunately did not find any traffic rules on how to handle this, but according to this article, California drivers must treat them the same as broken traffic lights - stop then proceed with caution.

Musings on LEDs for Cars

One of the front turn signal bulbs went out in my car.  I went to the local auto parts store to find a replacement.  These days, there are LED alternatives.  And since I’ve read and heard about the benefits of LEDs – longer lasting, lower power requirements for the same brightness, etc. – I decided to buy a pair of turn signal LEDs.  And this is where the trouble began.

It turns out, the packaging of LEDs for cars are marked with “For off-road use only.”  I find this surprising.  Cities have been racing to replace their street lights with LEDs.  The regional power company has been encouraging households to replace their bulbs with LEDs.  But without delving much into the why, I bet that legislation or rules set forth by the NHTSA disallows such replacements.  This is unfortunate.

The second problem is that because of the low power draw, the light still flashes quickly as if the bulb is out, because the relay is not built to handle LEDs.  This means I have to replace the flasher relay as well to one that can handle both LEDs and incandescent bulbs.  And this brings us to the final problem.

A pair of LEDs was $20, and the flasher relay was another $20.  Regular bulbs were $8 for a pair.  To replace the flasher relay, I had to remove the bottom panel of the dash to reach it.  Even then, the relay and the wiring harness wasn’t exactly easy to reach.  Moreover, I replaced a reliable Denso part with something of dubious quality.  (Denso has been supplying Toyota for a very long time, and is partially owned by Toyota.)  Did I now increase the risk of an electrical fire in a car that my wife drives more often and my kids ride regularly?

While the end result of getting it to work was satisfying, I’m not sure it was worth the cost and the trouble.

Prepping For The Rest Of Us

In 2012, National Geographic first aired the show "Doomsday Preppers".  It introduced "prepping" to the national consciousness, and opened up an entire subculture of extreme disaster preparation.  Online, one can find a myriad of sites and discussion forums about such preparations, where acronyms like SHTF (sh*t hits the fan) and TEOTWAWKI (the end of the world as we know it) are commonplace.  "Preppers" or "Survivalists" prepare for anything from the collapse of government to the zombie apocalypse.

The basic premise is sound.  Even ready.gov urges everyone to have some sort of emergency plan and basic emergency supplies.  While preparing for the zombie apocalypse may be a bit extreme for the rest of us, being prepared for disasters that are more likely to happen is simply common sense.  Even having a fire extinguisher is one step towards being prepared.  You're not expecting a fire, but if there is one...

In Project Management, teams list all the possible risks, and ranks them in both impact (high, medium, low) and probability (high, medium, low).  Because there could be a large number of risks, typically, those that are high impact and high probability, or high impact and medium probability are discussed and planned for mitigation.

Similarly, a person or a family can realistically look at all risks and rank them in both impact and probability.  For example, in certain parts of California, there is a risk of wildfire or earthquake.  In the home, there is also a risk of fire.  A person may have a higher risk of injury because of his or her age or medical condition.  This evaluation is personal and subjective.  It is up to the person or family which risks they are willing to accept and prepare for.

The next step would be to plan for such risks.  In case of fire for example, where will you go?  Where will your family meet?  Who will you call? What will you save (if at all possible)?  Apart from an immediate evacuation scenario, you may want to plan for a "shelter-in-place", or an emergency evacuation that allows for some time to grab a few things.

Finally, in an emergency, one must take care of the basic needs: air, water, food, clothing, shelter, and safety.  If you can address all of these in your readiness plan, you are well on your way to "prepping".

Can you really control your online presence?

Anyone can Google anyone by name and find information about that person, or at least, people who have some online presence.  Unfortunately, as I painfully found out, you can't always control those results.

Searching by my nickname and last name, "Cliff Cada", returns the results I want.  The top result is my LinkedIn profile.  The second is my Salesforce Trailblazer profile.  The problem with the second result is that is my work profile.  I have a separate Trailblazer profile that doesn't even come up.

If the searcher is more savvy, that person can search specific sites like Facebook or YouTube.   If I search for my name with quotes in Google, which tells Google to find the entire string together, I stumble upon this YouTube page with my name on it.  This isn't my page.  I attempted to contact YouTube, provided them my information, even a copy of my passport.  And they said that wasn't enough for them to shut down that account.  If that other person posts offensive videos or negative videos, that may affect my future employment prospects, or even put my current employment in jeopardy.

I suppose if you are famous or rich or both, you can employ a PR team and a legal team to control your brand both online and off.  But for regular folks like me, I can only do so much before hitting a wall like what I assume to be a YouTube bot that automatically rejected my request.

It is always a good idea to periodically Google yourself, and ensure the top results are reflective of the online presence you want to project.

Where to put an Emergency Fund

Most financial planning advice will tell you to have three to six months of living expenses in cash or some other liquid asset.  The last 9 years, interest rates were so low that parking your cash in a savings account yielded next to nothing.

The recent interest rate increases allowed some banks and financial institutions to offer Money Market accounts with 10 to 15 times higher interest rate than a regular savings account.  CDs of course offer a bit higher interest rates, but then you will tie up your money for 11 or 12 months at a minimum, which defeats the purpose of an emergency fund.  You need it to be relatively liquid.

As noted in many websites such as NerdWallet and The Ascent, Money Market accounts have limits on the number of withdrawals per month.  But hopefully, you only need to withdraw money in emergencies - A/C needs replacing, major car repair, roof replacement, job loss, and such.  This is not for frivolous purchases, or even running out of grocery money for the month.

Anyway, a quick Google search returns the top two as of this writing are Marcus by Goldman Sachs and CapitalOne 360 Money Market.  They are able to give high interest rates because these are online only offerings.  I hesitated at first, because I wondered how I would withdraw the money.  It turns out, you can transfer it to your existing checking account, even if it was at another bank.  I'm pretty sure there is some delay here, like two business days, so I would not recommend to put everything in such an account.

Sold on the idea of higher interest rates, I decided to give both a try.  While both are relatively easy to set up, I would recommend Marcus for ease of setup.  Marcus allowed me to add a joint account holder right in the application process, while CapitalOne required that I go to Account Management AFTER the account was set up.  Also, CapitalOne threw a few errors saying that "details cannot be displayed" or "cannot perform action at this time", something about the account being new.  With Marcus, I was able to change the account nickname for example.  Both took less than 10 minutes, as long as you have all the information you need, like SSN.

CapitalOne has a lower interest rate, but has a bonus if you maintain a specific balance in the first 90 days.  So if that's what you're after, go for CapitalOne.

You will also find that in the fine print, the APR rate quoted is only for $10,000 and above.  Anything below would drop the APR down to something like 0.87%.  So keep that in mind.

All in all, I would still go with Marcus just for the ease of use.  Note that interest rates are variable, so it is worth checking every six months whether you can get a better rate elsewhere.