lessons learned

5 posts available

The Best Way to Buy a New Car

April 9, 2017 capitalism general lessons learned

I recently bought a new car.

It was my first car purchase in 8 years, and being the obsessive geek that I am, I researched every last detail of the optimal process for buying a new car. By optimal I basically mean “get exactly the car you want for the lowest possible price.”

Since I put in all the time to do the research, I figured I’d share everything I learned in the hopes that it helps someone out if they’re ready to buy a new car. That, and my Dad asked me for details, too.

Just to cut right to the chase, I wound up saving over $3,500 from the original price I was quoted (which included a trade-in of a 2008 BMW 328i Coupe). I won’t bother mentioning the specific car I bought because it’s not relevant to this post, but its MSRP was around $30,000.

A Proposal for a new type of media source: "True News"

November 25, 2016 capitalism general lessons learned social dynamics

The November 2016 election has made me think about democracy, government, and our society in new ways for the first time in my life. One topic that seems to keep coming up is this idea of truth in the media.

I think most people would say they’d rather read news they know to be true than live in a fantasy world where they read news they like but which they know to be false. It’s basically an alternate take on the famous thought experiment, the Experience Machine, and comes to the same conclusion: truth matters.

In fact, truth may be the single-most important attribute of the news we read. And if you really start to think about it, truth becomes a really slippery concept.

Doing Business in The Right Order

October 4, 2014 lessons learned entrepreneurship

Recently I celebrated my 10th year at Omedix, the company I started when I was 24 years old. At 34, it is a little hard to imagine I’ve done anything for 10 years!

The milestone has made me reflect on some of the early decisions I made when I first got started. There were many really good decisions, but there were plenty of bad ones, too. And of course when you’re in your early 20’s you have that perfect combination of extreme confidence and supreme ignorance. Sometimes that can be a good thing, and sometimes it can be as bad as it sounds.

Ally Bank. I Hardly Knew Ye.

September 10, 2014 software lessons learned

This is my review of my first couple of weeks with Ally Bank, and why I ultimately decided to stay with stodgy, old Chase.

When I was 16 years old, I went with my Mom to a local Bank One branch to open my own personal checking account. Bank One eventually got acquired by Chase, and so I’ve effectively been a Chase customer for more than half my life!

But it’s been a love-hate relationship. On the positive side, it seems that no matter where in the United States I am, I’m always less than 3 miles from a Chase branch, so it’s definitely convenient. I also don’t worry about Chase failing so it seems like a safe place to keep my family’s money. Their iPhone app is actually pretty good, especially the ability to remotely deposit checks.

But on the downside, I often get a “big bank” feel from them, mostly owing to the fact that I don’t really have a personal relationship with anyone there. I find I’m usually just engaging the “Chase Infrastructure” rather than contacting a specific person I know.

Checks and Balances in Agile Development

December 5, 2013 general software lessons learned

Recently, I worked on a sprint as part of our company’s scrum process. This sprint was somewhat unusual in that I was the sole developer. Not only that but I knew most of the specs in my head, so our product manager and I agreed it wasn’t necessary to write acceptance criteria for the user stories I would be working on. Since I wrote the acceptance criteria, it made sense that I would be the one who ultimately signed off on the user stories.

I hate bureaucracy so I was excited about how “lightweight” this process for the sprint was. But I found something kind of interesting.

When I was wearing my developer hat, I realized how much I enjoyed taking time to learn about other technologies. I had made a commitment to my teammates to get a certain amount of work done by a certain date, and we came up with estimates to make sure that the work was achievable.

But once I was doing it, my human nature started subconsciously looking for ways to “cheat”. I still wanted to get the work done, and done well. I wanted to be acknowledged by my colleagues for having delivered what was expected with high quality. But I also wanted to sneak in extra time so I could do more tech learning on the side.