mililani

Whenever I hear about young people asking for advice, it invariably turns into a conversation about regret, etc... And, in hindsight, yes, I wish there were LOTS of things I knew when I was 25. However, I wouldn't have learned any of those things unless I went through the process. At nearly 40 y.o. and back in school, I shoulda, coulda, woulda many times over. But, I also have, done, and did lots of things that I also regretted or turned out to be disappointments. I followed my childhood dreams, in fact, and that turned out to be a nightmare. I also saw this happen to a few friends who pined to work in the video game industry since their youth only to be so severely burnt out several years later to vow off programming forever.

So, all I can at this point it, you won't know what you want to know until you go through those experiences. And, stop listening to everyone else. We're all different and have different values and beliefs. What works for me probably won't work for you. I can say follow your passion, and that may just completely backfire like it did me. I can say save all of your money and be frugal, look at what's happening to most Americans! But, you could end up with cancer and die in your 30's without having truly lived. I guess what I'm saying is, 15 years from now, when you look back at your life, and you think, "Man, I shoulda, coulda, woulda..." Realize, your decisions are half chanced. Just like everybody else's...

When Google Voice and free calls stop being free, I'm completely jumping off Google's bandwagon: gmail, google voice, google search, etc...

If you guys think this is a travesty, look up felony murder. I think it's unconstitutional, and people have been sentenced to life because of it.

Well, don't they say that the litmus test for romantic relationships is travel? Man, they learned how to swim in the deep end.

I concur. I went to both countries, and I'm a damn foodie. I remember my cousin coming back from NZ 10 years ago saying it was awesome but the food sucked. I went there, and I was like, WHAT THE HELL WAS HE EVEN TALKING ABOUT?!?!

New Zealand has some of the BEST food I've ever had. It was way better than Australia. And, yeah, this is anecdotal and definitely subjective, but once you've tried something like Ferg Burger in Queenstown, you may have to rethink NZ on the culinary map.

Wow, so 2GB of data for just $15 a month? How do I get that as a pre-paid plan?

I currently spend $30 a month for 5GB of 4G data. I rarely even go above 1GB. I would kill to have just 1GB of data for only $10 a month.

Haha, wow.

I took orgo as an undergrad from a brutal professor. His name is Marcus Tius, and he is legendary at UH Manoa for being hard. He got his Ph.D. in organic chemistry at Harvard from EJ Corey. Most people on here probably don't know who EJ Corey is, but he's widely considered to be the greatest chemist alive. And Corey's lab is insanely intense. A few of his grad students committed suicide in recent years from the pressure. Supposedly, I don't know if this is urban legend, but EJ Corey told several others that Tius was his best student ever at the time.

Anyways, I just wanted to share a few of my orgo stories. Our first exam mean scores were in the 20%'s. Only 10 of us got above 70%. There is NO curve in his class. He talked about this after the first exam, and he said, "Many of you are asking me if there's a curve. I wouldn't hesitate to call 90% and above an A." The first test was so brutal, that after he called the 15 minute left mark, a whole sea of "HOly shit! WTF?!" spread throughout the lecture hall. It was shortly after that, one of the students was escorted out by a grad student proctor because he peed his pants. I was already light headed from the intensity of the exam, but seeing a guy literally pee in his pants almost made me pass out.

In retrospect, orgo isn't that bad. If I had taken it the previous year with another professor who was using the McMurry textbook, I would have even said it was pretty easy. But, no. I was stuck with Tius, and I was stuck with an entry level graduate textbook on organic chemistry--this part is no joke. However, in retrospect, I also realized Tius wasn't bad either. I realized that if I just worked on his assigned problem sets and studied those for the exams, I would have done fine. The exam mostly consisted of the problem set. So, he was very fair. However, all of the urban legend stories made me so scared, I was doing all the problems in the chapter which often took 50-60 hrs a week to complete.

For anyone thinking about taking orgo, it's really not that bad. However, like any other course, the professor and books can make it incredibly hard. Just be wary of that.

BTW, I did get an A in both orgo courses. I majored in math and chemistry, and I have to say, that class with Tius was by FAR the hardest shit I ever had to go through. And that includes a general chemistry course with another brutally hard chem professor in which I stood up three nights in a row to study for the third exam because I was so behind. I got an A in that class too.

Not nearly as much as before. I think for the most part, most equities are fairly valued and even over priced. Although, I still do like some BAC warrants. Some of the insurers and reinsurers look undervalued (most are trading at 75% of book value), but the insurance markets have been in a soft market (pricing power) for a while now, and there is no idea when markets will start to "harden". It will take a major catastrophe for that to happen. Some of the better managed ones, like Fairfax Financial, are fairly priced.

So, to answer, no, not really. I'm actually mostly in cash now.

Yeah, I've suspected this for a long time. I'm 40 years old now, and my cousins and I used to collect comics when we were in elementary school all the way to high school. We sometimes would buy collector's items off the top walls in comic book stores (comic fans know what this is about) that were higher priced and more valuable. But, mostly, we would find a comic series we really like, follow it, and then when we knew a good story or "episode" was coming out, we would buy several of those comics. Some that I can remember from memory are:

1) Super Spiderman vs Hulk penned by Mcfarlane 2) Punisher vs Wolvering series 3) Xmen mutant massacre cross over series

These comics of my youth are still tucked away at my parent's house with acid free backing and plastic for the past 20+ years. Anyways, sometimes I will go into comic book stores to peruse, and I'm often happy to discover that many of the comics my cousins and I thought would make the big time wall are now there. However, the big shock is, the prices they command are far below what we thought they would be. Some are $5-10. A few maybe $15. I mean, for the price we paid, I think it was $1.25 or 1.50, that may sound pretty decent. But, that's only half the story. Most comic book shops will only pay 50% of the market value of any collectables. So, that $10 comic will only probably net $5. After 20 years, it's not really worth it.

But, there is one happy outcome of all this. My love of finding good stories that I think one day will become worth something has led me to stocks and investing. I think my comic book collector mentality translated well to stock picking and investing. I love finding a good business story and investing in it. That's how I found Netflix, Google, and Tesla. These companies made me FAR more money than any comic book has or probably ever will.

California? What about Hawaii? They are by far the lowest in almost every single category.

Thanks for the response! Yeah, after doing more research, I realized that the Synergy plane would guzzle way more gas than your plane. However, I think it's a dual seater vs. the Sky Craft plane. I would need a dual seater to haul me and my wife across the country.

That's awesome. I was thinking about buying a personal plane to fly back and forth from Canada to California. I came across this, though:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcDIXDRBJis

It's called the Synergy plane, and I think it will supposedly the most fuel efficient personal plane. Thoughts?

It's like being forced to live in a small town. Some people (actually, I'm betting a lot) can't deal with it.

The entire process is tough. Once you leave tenure at one university for another, you must go through that entire process again. And if ONE faculty member does not like you for some bizarre reason or another, you will not gain tenure. That's why most professors, or any sane person, wouldn't opt to do it all over again unless they are highly sought after.

For example, I'm pretty sure Terry Tao, math professor extraordinaire, would have NO problems moving around to any university and gaining tenure. However, the average Joe schmoe Ph.D. may not have the desired qualities to do that so easily.

I know what you're saying, but I also feel that one needs to consider the perspectives. Like they say, grass is greener. He was just not into Hawaii, and I don't think there is anything wrong with that. Personally, I hated living in the SF Bay Area. It was just not for me either. I know, I know. People think I'm nuts. But, after 10 years of living there, I finally understood my math professor. I was like, "Wow, I can't imagine professor Lady going through something like what I'm going through for over 30 years!" I really felt for him. By the time I finally left the Bay Area, I was utterly burnt out by big city, fast paced life. It made me the person who I am today: one foot out the door at all times. My wife and I moved around several times in the years since, and now that we're back in California living in a smaller coastal city, I realized what I hated about being in the Bay Area: it's just too big, too much of a rat race. Although I love living where we're at now, I can eventually see myself growing tired of it.

And, that's the perspective, I think, you're missing out on. You are seeing things from your own perspective. I know that perspective well, too. I lived it for 10 years. I was a techie; I was always wary of being laid off; I had crap for vacations; I was ALWAYS learning new stuff; and as techies, we're always crapped on. I had business envy and thought of going to business school. So, I see your perspective. But, I also see his.

Being in Hawaii, or any other small town/city, can get very old and tiresome. Several of the Hawaii math professors eventually gave up tenure and moved away to do other things. It makes one wonder about why these guys would be willing to give up a highly sought after thing in academia, tenure, to move away and start a new life. I think my old professor provides a good explanation, at least for some people, about why that happens. At least, it did for me.

Yes, that was definitely the original intent of tenure. However, times have changed. I believe most professors just want good pay and benefits. I'm sure most would be willing to exchange tenure protections for this along with better job mobility and latitude. However, that's just conjecture.

Ah, good ole web archive! Forgot about that. So, I went digging through, and I made a mistake. It's not on his ramblings site. More of it is located here:

http://web.archive.org/web/20120201172033/http://www.math.ha...

But, he rambles a lot on there and weighs the pros and cons of being a professor in Hawaii. Basically, though, his final sentence says it all: "I've got to get out of this place."

Some more about his salary he keeps talking about, " Unfortunately, though, the one thing at the University of Hawaii that was not under my control, nor under the Math Department's either, whether by ``shibai'' or otherwise, was my salary. I had known when I accepted the position here that I was being offered a salary that was too low, but what I had not realized was that, unlike Kansas, faculty salaries at the University of Hawaii are controlled by a rigid civil-service structure, so that the salary one is hired at determines one's salary for the rest of one's life. But added to that, the nation soon entered an extremely drastic phase of Reaganomics inflation, and the State of Hawaii responded by giving only minimal salary raises (0% one year and 2% the following), and the entire faculty here at UH was becoming financially desperate.

One of the reasons I dropped out of active mathematical research was a realization (even before Reagan came into office in 1981) that it would soon no longer be financially feasible for me to continue working here. And as I stopped letting my life be taken over by doing research, and after being promoted to full professor had finally jumped through all the hoops that young academics (although I was no longer exactly young) are require to jump through, more and more I was asking myself exactly what it was that I want out of life, and to what extent my career as a mathematician was providing it. "

He also mentioned before about thinking about becoming an actuary; and, how another math professor started taking electrical engineering courses at the university and later left for California to become an engineer in the aerospace industry (which turned out to be poor timing since the aerospace industry went under major turmoil in California during the late 80's).

Then he talks about how he has a strong distaste for living in Hawaii here:

http://web.archive.org/web/20120218124307/http://www2.hawaii...

It gives a very intimate perspective from a man who has lived the life of being an academic, and what that entails. I don't recommend reading his entire web site, since he writes quite a lot. But, for anyone interested in academia, I think a perusal is in order. He does talk a lot about what life being an "institutionalized" academic is like. It's pretty sad, and it made me realized I would never want to get into that field.

My wife is in academia. Although, not in the ivory towers. She's at a community college in California, and she's both on the tenured faculty track and administration as a program director. So, her experiences may not speak entirely to this article.

There are lots of problems inherent with academia that most people thinking about this field are not really thinking about. The biggest problem, I think, is that for most 99% of all professors, once they are tenured, they are LOCKED down geographically. And, that sucks. My wife and I have one foot out the door all the time. We go where the jobs are. But, now that she's on the tenure track, we wonder if this is where we'll lay down and die. It's pretty sad, when I think about it. You hear about it time and time again from so much of these guys. One of my old math professors had a page devoted to this. He complained a lot about living in Hawaii and how his wife divorced him because of it. He had a page up here:

http://www.math.hawaii.edu/~lee/

But, apparently, after some time he decided to take down the more controversial stuff. The index.html page to his ramblings are down. Anyways, that's a huge problem for academics. And, I thought about it, and I think the biggest problem is the whole tenure thing. I think it should be abolished. Professors should be able to move to new institutions without worrying about that entire process, and they should be paid a better wage because of it. It should be like any other free market enterprise we have nowadays. And, Universities should also be able to get rid of dead weight. I've had some professors in the past who just gave up on research and life. For example, said professor mentioned above. He gave up on math research because the University kept screwing them over on pay. He retired with only 17 publications under his name. My other friend who is now a tenured math professor at a 4 year college has 17 publications at just 37 years of age. My other friend who has been teaching for about 10 years now has only 2 publications: his math Ph.D. dissertation, and a one page paper that probably isn't worth the paper it's printed on. Anyways, I think it's high time tenure is made obsolete. It gives professors more latitude to move, probably better pay, and more incentive to do research or teach better. It also gives schools and students the opportunity to get better teachers and lose the dead weight.

Man, this question makes me feel old as hell--I'm 40, btw. It reminds me of the time when my friend's daughter asked what the car window handle was for. I was like, it rolls the windows up and down. She thought it was a new thing. Wow.

I am currently going to school to study occupational therapy--which is predominately a female dominated profession. Why did I do it? Frankly, I was getting burned out on tech, and I've always wanted to try health care out without having to over commit in terms of time and money. My program is about 3+ years including the pre-reqs, and the total cost will be only about $25000. I also didn't want to do anything really stressful like nursing. But, now that I'm actually surrounded by women, I am starting to pine for my old tech days of having guy co-workers, which often led to guy friends, talking about guy stuff.

Women are weird. They're exceptionally passive aggressive, and they love gossiping like there was a fire sale on it. It doesn't help that the few female OT's that I've had to shadow were not my cup of tea. I didn't think they were nice at all, and I could see them being overtly political or passive aggressive. Also, as others have mentioned in this thread, there is a very real bias I may have to contend with as a male in a female dominated profession.

Currently, I want to work in pediatrics. I like the idea of working in the schools and with kids. However, I DO see that others, especially women, may view that with a wary eye. It sucks.

There is a bright side though. If you're a single guy, damn, the women... Lots of pretty women. That's something that I don't miss about tech.

Yeah, that's damn cheap and a good value.

Ignore the Vitamin D supplements that the other guys are suggesting and just go into the sun for 10 to 15 minutes a day.

Ugh. I know Fairfax VERY well. Prem Watsa is often called Warren Buffett of the North, and he may very well be. He's a great investor, and has done VERY well in investing the float of their insurance business. But, BUT, I think he's way in over his head here. Buffett himself will not touch technology companies, or businesses he doesn't understand. He has also said the technology world is way too competitive, and that there is hardly a "moat" that can protect a business from competition, etc... I don't understand why Prem is going after Blackberry. It is clearly in one of the most competitive spaces in technology, and there is no good crystal ball to see what the future holds. I mean, for every Apple, there are lots of companies like US Robotics.

It is why I shy away from technology companies with my investments.

Oh wow, thank for reminding me to switch my default search engine back to Duck Duck Go.

I set my salary at 1 MILLION dollars.

Well, to be fair, this guy we're referring to DID come to IBM from the CrossWorlds acquisition. Which, at the time, was a start up. So, I really don't know.

This is why I'm leaving the field for healthcare at the age of 39. I saw the writing on the wall when I worked in SV for over 10 years. I saw how young most of the employees were at most of the start ups and smaller companies. I saw that the older folks worked at tired corporate cogs such as IBM--nothing wrong with that, just not for me. I also saw that these older folks were just not capable of keeping up with the rapidly changing field. In fact, I worked with one guy in his late 50's or early 60's who had a Ph.D. from CalTech in EE, and he either would keep forgetting, or not understanding, what Telnetting or SSH'ing into another machine was about. I remember working with the guy and setting up a distributed monitoring system, and we were SSH'ed into several different machines on his laptop. The way he kept stumbling through the installation and configuration of each machine was pretty disheartening to see. That wasn't the only older person I've worked with who had trouble keeping up. It was ALL of them. Mind you this was at IBM, so I don't know if it was the corporate culture that eventually did these guys in or their age. I will never know. What I did eventually realize is that I needed to find a different career. So, here I am, 39 and starting a graduate program in health care.

Those demoscene guys are probably some of the most impressive programmers I've ever seen. It's amazing the kind of visual displays they can produce with just 4kb or 64kb of code.

I'm 39 and dealing with my own cancer struggles. It's tough. Reading about someone else around my age deal with it helps, though.