-
This week I read The Newbie’s Guide to Cannabis & The Industry, because … I forget. Previously I read Marijuana Gateway to Health about the medical side of cannabis. This book is a great introduction since it practically covers everything you could possibly want to ask about cannabis. There is always more to learn, but I can’t think of a better place to start. Cannabis Cannabis is from India. This is where the name indica comes from. Cannabis grown in this tropical climate is good for medicine. Then the Europeans took cannabis and it adapted to colder climates and grew longer with smaller flowers as sativa, making its fibers useful for rope. There are both female and male plants. Males are useless except for making seeds. For medicine, you want the resin, which is plentiful in the female flowers. The best of which is the cola, the central bud on a female plant that looks like a fox tail. Cannabis is an annual plant, but by manipulating environment, you can get 3-6 generations a year. 18-24 hours of light keeps females from blooming. Switch to a 12 / 12 split of light and darkness for flowering cycle. Keep the temperature between 70-85 F. The plant prefers a 6.5 pH, slightly acidic. When the plant is starting out you want 80-90% humidity for seedings and clones to root. Then switch to 60-70% humidity for growth phase. Finally 40-60% for blooming. History
-
This week I read Effective C++ Second Edition, because it was on the bookshelf at work. This book was published in 1998, which was around the time I learned C++. I have about 20 years of programming experience. Wow, I’m old. After going through book, I realized I had a really good programming instructor, because most of these tips were ingrained into me by Mr. Simon. Although the book is good, you should probably read the newer edition of the book. I don’t think they program C++ now the same way they did in the 1990s. Some books describe a programming language. This book shows you best practices when using the language.
-
This week I read The 10% Entrepreneur, because it is the in thing to give your classmates free copies of your book to read and if you don’t read it, I’ll do it for you. Patrick J. McGinnis, originator of FOMO (fear of messing out), got screwed by playing it safe in life. He did everything he was supposed to do, get a Harvard MBA and a job at a company that was too big to fail, AIG. The thing is we know we are supposed to diversify our stock portfolio, which is an investment of our assets, but working for one company doesn’t yield any diversification. Adding an little entrepreneurship to the mix is an insurance policy. Everyone wants to be an entrepreneur, lured by rags to riches origin stories. I’ve learned that these origin stories are written after the fact by marketing forces. In reality most of the work done for the Apple computer was in Wozniak’s cubicle at HP. I learned in Founder’s At Work that he explicitly got written approval from HP that there was no conflict of interest. This book is written for people with good jobs and good skills who are willing to invest a portion their financial and intellectual capital for long term gains. Not very helpful for someone who is poor and stupid, but I finished the book anyway. Being a 10% Entrepreneur is to make small investments that provide for long term growth personally, financially and professionally. 5 Reasons Not to be a Full-time Entrepreneur
-
This week I read Zero Waste Home by Bea Johnson, because one day I hope to be rich enough to afford to be zero waste. This book has some tinges of the philosophy found in The Life Changing of Magic of Tidying Up, but it feels like Bea’s feelings of focus and uncluttering was a byproduct of her trying to achieve zero waste. This book is more about the tips to replace makeup, household cleaning supplies, grocery shopping, etc. Some are practical, some I find too extreme. I’m not going to bring jars to the fish counter, but I might try some of her vinegar based cleaning solutions. I learned that going commando is wasteful, because you need to wash your clothes more, so I should wear underwear and you should too. Bea admits her methods were a little extreme, like making her own butter, but even she had to relent on having video games in the home, because her children were spending more time at their friend’s place. The 5 Rs A zero waste lifestyle involves applying the 5 Rs to all aspects of your life.
-
This week I read The Visual Handbook of Building and Remodeling, because the previous book on building a home didn’t have anything about electrical and plumbing. Notice how both books are visual in nature. Easier to look at pictures and point rather than trying to read text. This book talked more about design and regulations, which is a good thing. Regulations are important. They are there, because someone died. Kids so often want to remove themselves from the gene pool by sticking their heads between railings, climbing railings and falling from the third floor or dropping from a window. When you are remodeling a building, you need to be able to picture how people will interact with their surroundings when you’re finished. Sometimes it is easier to gut the place and remodel it. Especially if you have neighbors trying to throw a wrench into things.
-
-
This week I read A Guide to the Good Life by William B. Irvine, because I wanted to find out if my life is wasted or not. Doesn’t everybody want the good life? Everyone needs a philosophy for life just like they need an investment policy statement. The book says that we have historically thought of stoicism in the wrong way and they are people who actually get joy out of life. The Greeks created schools of philosophy and the Romans marketed Stoicism to make it more attractive. Ancient ascetics are like modern day homeless people or is that the other way around. If you want to modernize Stoicism, just replace the explanations that invoke Zeus with evolution and you’ll be fine. After reading this book, you can enjoy the good life as a stoic, but don’t tell anyone about it. It is easier to practice Stoicism in stealth. Stoic Psychological Techniques
-
This week I read The Complete Visual Guide to Building a House, because if you have a tear down, you need to build a new house from scratch. It is useful to know what your contractor and subcontractors are doing and what needs to be done. The book is fully illustrated, enabling a person like me easily understand things. The book goes over laying the foundation, framing the floors, walls and ceiling, roofing, windows, drywalling, tiling, flooring, stairs, doors and trim. It doesn’t go over electrical or plumbing, so you’ll have to rely on your subcontractors on that. What I did learn is that there are a lot of places to cut corners. Ideally, you get a pallet of construction grade lumber and sort out the straight pieces from the bent pieces. Use the straight pieces where straightness is important and find some other place to stick the not as straight pieces. If I was lazy, I wouldn’t bother sorting the wood and use whatever was quickly accessible. There are a lot of details to get right. The book provides a good general outline of how things are done, but different regions have different building codes. There are a lot of specific details in each part of the construction process. Don’t expect to take your pickup truck to Home Depot (HD) for materials and amigos and be able to build a house after reading this book.
-
This week I read Once Upon a Time in Russia by Ben Mezrich, the author of Bringing Down the House. I’m an ant and this book tells you how the world really works. How Russian oligarchs and Putin obtained their wealth and power. What happened in Russia is playing itself out in China, where you have fortunes being made through the privatization of government-owned companies. When you have politics, companies, power and wealth, you will always get corruption. Even in the United States, you have politicians putting their children into power at drug companies to raise the prices and fleece the public. Even throw in a fake MBA degree from a college while you’re at it. The book is mainly about Boris Berezovsky, an oligarch, who put Yeltsin and Putin in power, but ultimately fell out of favor with Putin. It also details the background of Alexander Litvinenko, who was assassinated by polonium poisoning. Roman Abramovich, Boris’ protege and 137th richest person in the world, represents a contrasting oligarch who was willing to play by Putin’s rules. When the house tells you that you should cash in your chips and leave, you should do so. Or you’ll leave in a body bag.
-
This week I read The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing by the amazing Marie Kondo. If you watch any videos of Marie, you’ll see why I call her amazing. She’ll change your life for the better. Marie developed her KonMari method after years of running a tidying business. Tidying is not just about making your living space uncluttered, it is about freeing your mind to focus on the things that bring you joy. As I learned in make space, people are heavily influenced by their environment. You must create an environment for people to thrive. This book is more about mindset than technique. You need to change the way your relationship with things, the final state of where you want to people and why you want to be there. Marie is not alone. Other people have reaped the benefit of tidying. James Altucher got rid of most of his possessions and found that minimalism brought him freedom and joy. A lawyer in Shanghai switched careers to run a tidying business just like Marie. Tidying Tidying is composed of two actions: discarding and deciding where to store things. You should not do a little bit of tidying every day. You should allocate time and make this a special event where you set yourself up with the proper habits. When you start tidying you should start by category and not by location. This lets you evaluate everything in that category. Discarding
-
This week I read Prison Ramen: Recipes and Stories Behind Bars, because if I was going to do any recruiting, I would need to know about the most valuable commodity in the prison economy. The ramen recipes provide a backdrop to the prison stories. Prison kind of sucks, but I guess that is the point of it. If you’re not a white male drug taking athlete from Stanford, you could possible end up in jail. There are some stories from celebrities like Danny Trejo and Shia LaBeouf, who talks about his time stealing Pokemon from Kmart. I learned that sugar-filled coffee can help with heroin withdrawal. Although I’d stay away from heroin since there is not much difference between a therapeutic dose and lethal dose. If you want some booze in prison, there’s a pruno recipe too. Racism
-
This week I read Founders at Work: Stories of Startup’s Early Days by Jessica Livingston, founding partner of Y Combinator. I had no idea what the book was about. When I opened it up, I thought this is just a bunch of interviews, which could possibly suck. The book is actually great and I learned a lot reading this book. The book came out in 2008, so they had an interview with some guy called Evan Williams who sold Blogger to Google after running out of money and having everyone quit before having a chance to lay everyone off. You get to hear the up and down journeys of well known companies. I gave up on startups early this year, so this was a nice chance to live vicariously. Learnings Some people like to rewrite history. Turns out that Jack thought up the idea to put the Hotmail tagline on each email, not Tim Draper. I need to remember to mention it to Sabeer, the next time I see him in the restroom. Frugality is a saving grace. Steve Wozinak was good, because he didn’t have money, so he spent a lot of time trying to reduce chips and design things on paper. Being frugal is very helpful as a startup founder. It lets you survive like a cockroach. Persistence is another theme. When people say “no”, it is just the start of the negotiation. Hiring good people is important. Y Combinator does not invest in good teams without good ideas. They tried it, but have learned not to do it without a good idea. I think it works, but it doesn’t work if you only have a 3 month time frame to get things done. Investing in good teams works if given enough time. It doesn’t matter what the business plan you used to raise money, you should build what the customers value and are willing to pay for. Most ideas change and don’t survive first contact with the customer. One of the best uses of money was to buy a $15,000 espresso machine. It turned around the company, because it changed the environment. Dealing with customers is a lot about managing feelings. You want everyone to feel great using your product. Actually, people are all about feelings. They are just squishy meatbags of feelings.