Latest Posts

• Book of the Week: The 4-Hour Workweek

  The 4-Hour Workweek is one of those well known bestseller type of books. I thought I read it before, but after reading it again, maybe I didn’t read it before. Tim offers a 4-step program (DEAL) to work toward a 4-hour workweek and become one of the new rich (NR) instead of living a deferred (D) life. From previous books on wealth, it looks like I have to save to become wealthy. I know I’ll eventually become wealthy if I save, but then what? Does the knowledge of being financially independent help me sleep better at night? Or would I rather live like a millionaire now?

• Book of the Week: The Millionaire Next Door

  I forgot why I wanted to read The Millionaire Next Door. It was probably mentioned in another book. After reading Rich Dad, Poor Dad and I Will Teach You To Be Rich, I was getting tired of reading books about the wealthy. This book was written by two PhDs that study wealthy people. Some areas of the book are heavily focused on material from their research like how the wealthy buy cars. They had the data, so they shoved it into the book. This is a book about the wealthy, not a book on how to become wealthy. 7 Common Denominators of Wealthy People

• Book of the Week: Flour

  After working on cooke recipe substitutions, I needed to learn more about baking. This week I read Flour: Spectacular Recipes from Boston’s Flour Bakery + Cafe by Joanne Chang. These recipes were modified to work in your home kitchen from her bakery. Overachiever Joanne graduated with degrees applied mathematics and economics from Harvard and worked at a management consulting firm before going into the food industry. What’s with Asians food people and degrees from prestiges schools? Ming Tsai majored in mechanical engineering at Yale. She got job after job in the food industry after gliding through brief interviews, so she learned from experience and not culinary school. Eventually she opened up her ownsuccessful bakery called Flour. She also mentions that Chinese meals have no dessert, which is relevant, because she’s Chinese and makes desserts. The last chapter of the Language of Food explains why. Techniques There are a dozen techniques that a home baker should know. She goes over each technique with insightful tips.

• Book of the Week: The Boglehead's Guide to Investing

  I skimmed through The Boglehead’s Guide to Investing. It is a good source if you don’t want to scour the internet and lurk in forums for information about investing. It covers more than you want to know in plain english. I found it more useful than The Bogleheads’ Guide to Retirement Planning.

• Book of the Week: I Will Teach You To Be Rich

  This book was recommended to me. I Will Teach You To Be Rich by Ramit Sethi is a 6-week program that puts you on better financial footing. As I was reading the book, it was like preaching to the choir. The book is written by a young adult for other young adults. It is a quick read, but it covers what that every adult should know about money. Being Rich

• Book of the Week: The Blind Side

  I liked Flash Boys, also by Michael Lewis, so I decided to give The Blind Side a try. The book is a mix of Michael Oher’s story of a poor black kid being picked up by a rich white family because of his physical gifts and the changing way football is played. The Blind Side Bill Walsh developed the west coast offense where the quarterback throws quick short timed passes and the receiver gains yards after the catch instead of long 20 yard bombs. This shifted teams from calling running plays to passing plays, because they became more effective. This made the quarterback more important. For the predominantly right-handed quarterbacks to release the ball in time to complete the pass, they needed protection on their blind side (left side) or they would be drilled into the ground by the defense end. Michael Oher played the left tackle position, which protects the blind side.

• Book of the Week: Life in Motion

  Life in Motion: An Unlikely Ballerina is about Misty Copeland’s journey through adversity to become a principal ballerina. I first heard about her in an NPR interview. She was featured in an under armour commercial. [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZY0cdXr_1MA&w;=560&h;=315] Oh, and yeah, she’s black too.

• Book of the Week: The Language of Food

  Dan Jurafsky taught a class, wrote a blog and book on The Language of Food. If you want to get a feel for the book, you can watch a talk he gave at Wit.ai. If you’re from San Francisco, reading the book will give you a bit of nostalgia since he mentions a lot of places to eat. If you speak many foreign languages, you’ll get a lot of the references and see the connections. Looking at the language of food helps you understand how we are all connected. There’s a chapter explaining how ketchup came from Chinese fish sauce. The book is nice break from looking at language from a statistical point of view. [vimeo 114949808 w=500 h=281] Dan Jurafsky - the Language of Food from Wit.ai on Vimeo.

• Book of the Week: Traction

  This week I decided to learn more about marketing by reading Traction, written by the founder of DuckDuckGo and another guy. One of difficult parts about marketing is knowing where to start. This book lists many possible channels and gives some background into each one. Since they cover so many channels, it is hard to go deep into each one, but I learned things that I did not know before. They put channels in relation to each other with the bull’s eye framework. For a company to be successful, you need to develop both your product and distribution channels at the same time. 19 Traction Channels

• Book of the Week: Lean In

  This week I read Lean In. There need to be more women leaders, because women are awesome and the man is keeping them from being awesome.

• Book of the Week: Perfectly Reasonable Deviations from the Beaten Track

  Perfectly Reasonable Deviations from the Beaten Track is a collection of letters of Richard P. Feynman’s correspondence with his family, friends, fans and colleagues. They are organized in chronological order from his first marriage, the atomic bomb, the Nobel Prize, the Challenger investigation, cancer to his death. The letters give a glimpse into the personal side of Feynman, especially the letters between him and his first wife. I read this book, because Elaine sent me this post about What Problems to Solve concerning a letter from his former student. There’s a TED talk I like by Leonard Susskind about his friend Richard Feynman, but I could not find a letter between the two in the book. [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Waurx8e-1o&w;=560&h;=315]

• Book of the Week: The Richest Man in Babylon

  Either Rich Dad, Poor Dad plagiarized from 5,000 year old documents or that the way to get rich is as old as money. The Richest Man in Babylon is a collection of stories that give lessons on building wealth from richest man in Babylon. These principles are still applicable today. It’s not rocket science, yet lots of people are poor, because they don’t save and invest. 7 Remedies for a Lean Purse