© jonfleck88 for JonFleck.com, 2009. | Permalink | No comments | Add to del.icio.us
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© jonfleck88 for JonFleck.com, 2009. | Permalink | No comments | Add to del.icio.us
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The Disciplined Investor

The Disciplined Investor offers a unbiased look at investing. The show’s host, Andrew Horowitz, has a great variety of interesting guests and covers a wide variety of topics. My favorite aspect of the show is Andrew’s non bias towards being a bull or a bear. He simply talks about opportunities to make money. By the way, in 2008 his fund finished a couple of percent up. I don’t know about you, but I think he knows what he’s talking about.

This Week in Tech

This Week in Tech is the best show for tech news and some random talks about technology. The shows host, Leo Laporte, has an awesome variety of guests and covers all of the best tech stories. While many people complain about the excessive rambling in the show, I find that the rambling is usually interesting and entertaining.

NPR: It’s All Politics

In It’s All Politics, NPR’s Ken Rudin and Ron Elving get together once a week and cover the week’s top political stories. Ron and Ken are both incredibly knowledgeable when it comes to politics, but manage to keep everything fresh with humor. Like almost all NPR podcasts there is no political bias in It’s All Politics.

No Agenda

No Agenda is a weekly conversation between the old and cranky John C. Dvorak and the king of conspiracies Adam Curry. These two talk about politics, culture, news, tech and some off-beat topics as well. Dvorak and Curry have a great dynamic between them and they always manage to keep me entertained.

Econ Talk

Econ Talk is a the best economics podcast around. Econ Talk’s host Russ Roberts is a economics professor at George Mason University. Every week Russ picks a different topic and invites an expert on that topic. Russ runs the show excellently. He gives the guests enough time to explain there points of view. He also asks great questions and always seems to be very knowledgeable and well prepared for the different topics. I have learned more listing to Econ Talk than I have from any other podcast.

NPR: Talk of the Nation

Talk of the Nation is the best source of daily news on the internet. Not only does Talk of the Nation offer the most objective news around, they also cover a wide variety of topics. Talk of the Nation also invites a broad spectrum of guests on the show and allows them enough time to explain their point of view without interruption or shouting commonly found on other programs.

MacBreak Weekly

MacBreak Weekly is a lively chat between several great Mac Enthusiasts. MacBreak Weekly is hosted by the podcast king, Leo Laporte. MacBreak weekly frequently invites some of today’s best OS X developers and other Mac community members to be guests on the show. MacBreak weekly has good Mac software recommendations from all of the guests on the show and also offers a weekly book recomendation.

NPR: Planet Money

With all of the current chaos in the financial markets, I turn to NPR’s Planet Money for clear explanations. Planet Money has a great variety of guests on the show. Additionally, Planet Money covers a wide variety of topics from Iceland’s economic problems to Lancaster PA’s thriving Amish lending market. As a listener would expect from a NPR show, Planet Money gives unbiased and objective information.

This American Life

This American Life picks a unique and amusing new topic every week and devotes an hour to the topic. This American Life usually tells three to four different stories about that week’s topic. Although, they sometimes change up the format of the show to keep things interesting. This American Life is one of the most unique shows that I listen to.

Car Tech

Car Tech talks about the latest developments in the automotive industry. Car Tech covers the latest automotive news and technology. The show also gives listeners a in-car review every week.

Daily Source Code

The Daily Source Code is a great podcast that takes some obscure angles on current news from around the world. The Daily Source Code is one of the only podcasts that I know of that incorporates music. All in all the show’s host Adam Curry manages to put together a very entertaining show. One last note, although the title of this podcast is daily the show tends to be on a weekly basis.

Be sure to check back every now and then, as I will update this list as I find new and interesting podcasts. Lastly, if you have any podcasts you would like to recomend, please leave me a comment telling what podcasts you most like to listen to.

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With a brief look at the top five treasury buyers I found that none of them are looking to be very promising purchasers in the future. China, the largest purchaser of US treasuries, is not in the best of times. With news of China’s near $600 billion bailout it would be surprising to find China rapidly expanding its purchasing of treasuries. When looking at Japan’s economy there seems to be a consensus that Japan’s economy is looking at negative or no growth for 2009. Consequently, Japan is looking at a $110 billion dollar bailout. Combining the shrinking economy with increases of spending on Japan’s own economy would leave the second largest treasury holder little money left to purchase more U.S. treasuries. The third largest purchaser, The United Kingdom, is also not looking promising as a large purchaser of treasuries. Not only is the United Kingdom looking at a recession in 2009, it’s also looking at more massive deficit spending to help its own ailing economy.

Numbers four (Caribbean Banking Centers) and five (Oil Exporters) on the top five treasury buyers list are in worse conditions than the top three. In the current financial climate, the Caribbean Banking Centers may be the least likely to buy treasury bills. Can you guess what industry holds a majority of the money in the Caribbean Banking Centers? Yes, that’s right, banks. Looking at the current situation of most banks, I can’t imagine banks purchasing very many treasuries over the next couple of years. The fifth largest purchaser of US treasuries is the Oil Exporters. Crude oil closed today at $40.83 a barrel, down over $100 from its peak of $147. The low price of oil forces Venezuela, Iran, and many of other prominent oil exporting nations to make spending cuts. With the budget cuts coming to these countries I don’t foresee large increases in U.S. treasury purchases.

China is already spending $600 billion on its own economy. Japan and the United Kingdom are having to borrow the money to fund their economies. All the while, banks are in their worst condition in years and oil has had one of the largest price drops in history. Are these former treasury purchasers really going to be able to buy U.S. treasuries and fund our economy? Without the ability to borrow trillions and trillions of dollars, the U.S. government is faced with the hard political choice of cutting spending or the easy choice of printing money and pushing the problem off to another day. Which do you think they’re going to pick? Help make spending cuts an easier choice. Write to your local senators and congressmen and ask them to vote down any bailout or stimulas package. After all, they work for you.

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Where to Buy

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

• Amazon.com*

The Total Money Makeover

• Amazon.com*

Good to Great

• Amazon.com*

Rich Dad, Poor Dad

• Amazon.com*

*Affiliate link

Ever read a book that changed your life? Here is a list of books that have substantially changed the the way I handle different aspects of my life. These books helped me become self sufficient, more efficient with my time, gain control of my money, and inspired me to be above average (maybe Congress and the Senate should read some of these books). The books are listed in no particular order, as they are equally important and build on each other.

The first book is The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People By Stephen R. Covey. I read this book when I was in my early teens and the biggest lesson I learned from the book is to be in true control of my life. In the the words of Covey, to be proactive instead of reactive. The book also gave me tools to become more efficient. It got me started on using a calendar and organizing tasks by their priority. This book is filled with timeless principles and is a great read for a person of any age.

The second book is The Total Money Makeover: A Proven Plan for Financial Fitness by Dave Ramsey. The total money makeover has transformed how my family and me manage money. This book gives readers simple and easy to follow steps to get out of debt forever and to build wealth. The plan in the book gives readers a highly motivational process to relieve them of debt. This book is not for someone looking for a quick fix to their money problems, but for someone looking for a fix that will work. But don’t think this book is just for poor people. This book can help people with an income of $250,000 or more per year.

The last book is From Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap… and Others Don’t by Jim Collins. While this book may seem like it only applies to business, it will inspire any individual, organization, or business to take the extra steps to become great. While the average person may think this book will be boring, it in fact, is very interesting. This book has inspired me to not get discouraged when things don’t immediately take off. Good to Great taught me not to look for a quick solution, but to apply consistent effort toward a carefully planned goal and eventually I will achieve it. Even if business books are not your thing I highly encourage people to read this book as they will find great principles and the interesting stories behind truly great CEO’s and leaders.

Another book that deserves honerable mention is Rich Dad, Poor Dad: What the Rich Teach Their Kids About Money–That the Poor and Middle Class Do Not! by Robert T. Kiyosaki and Sharon L. Lechter. I just finished this book about a week ago so I can’t tell if it will have a lasting change on my life. But, from what I can tell, it reinforces the principles taught by the other books I’ve mentioned. Hope everybody enjoys reading these books. And remember, the best way to help yourself is to continue reading new material throughout your whole life. Take the time to listen to other points of view and most of all, look for the good in every situation.

© jonfleck88 for JonFleck.com, 2008. | Permalink | No comments | Add to del.icio.us
Post tags: change, debt, habits, money, self help, self help books, self improvement books, wealth

Next, I wanted to test the latency. Previously, whenever I started a Bittorrent client the latency on my families network would increase dramatically. The high latency made Skype calls, Xbox Live, or any other service that depended on a low latency connection impossible to use. The first test I performed was a test on Xbox Live. I had my younger brother sign into Xbox Live, because he plays more frequently than me and knows how the service normally performs. After fifteen minutes my younger brother confirmed that Xbox Live had no more lag than usual, even though I was uploading torrents at 80 kb/s.

Skype was the next test. My dad frequently makes phone calls over Skype to save minutes on his cell phone bill. Previously, I would hear him yelling at me to pause my BitTorrent transfers because they were causing his Skype calls to drop. Needless to say, I was pretty anxious to see if I could run BitTorrent while he was on Skype (which even with an ISP that doesn’t traffic shape is a pretty amazing feat). That Tuesday evening my Dad made a Skype call to a friend from Arizona. After fifteen minutes in Skype, my dad confirmed that that call was working flawlessly even though I was using BitTorrent.

Next I tested the latency of my connection. I used Terminal to ping a Google IP address. When I was having trouble with my BitTorrent connections I would frequently get pings all the way up too 500 ms or get pings that never came back. To see how much my latency improved, I pinged Google four times with Terminal while running BitTorrent at full speed. The pings had an average speed of 57.502 ms with 0% packet loss. Although not a perfect ping it is fairly respectable. I wish I had exact ping times and packet loss numbers from before, but sadly I don’t.

After a few days of playing with BitTorrent on my “new connection” I found that my upload speed would change depending on the time of day. I get a much faster upload speed at night, usually around 130 kb/s. Presumably, because Comcast now uses a smarter traffic shaping system. I also found out from my younger brother that his Xbox Live would still occasionally lag (not as bad of a lag as before, but enough of a lag to be annoying). I fixed this problem by capping my BitTorrent upload to 80 kb/s during the day and 130 kb/s at night.

All in all, this makes me much happier with Comcast’s internet service. I would really like to know if other Comcast users are able to upload at the same speed with similar latency. I tested and achieved similar upload speeds in Rehoboth, Delaware and Columbia, Pennsylvania both on 8MB connections. I believe this change in the handling of Bittorrent traffic is in response to the recent complaints from the FCC. I can now happily recommend Comcast as a 100% viable ISP even for Bittorrent users.

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