Neville

September 2018 Goals

September 1, 2018 by Neville

Goal: LASIK Enhancement
About a year ago I got LASIK eye surgery. Most of my adult life I’ve had a -6.75 power in each eye. This means without contacts or glasses I couldn’t even see the big “E” on the eye chart.

For this reason I used to wear my contacts to sleep every night. Every single doctor has told me that is a bad and dangerous practice, but a combination of laziness and scariness (imagine you wake up at night with such bad vision you can’t see a damn thing) kept me doing it for years.

So I finally got LASIK and now have 20/20 vision.

Within a year of your LASIK you can get an “enhancement” which is pretty common for someone with a -6.75 power. We did some “contact tests” where I wore different power contacts for a few days at a time, and the optimal eagle-eye vision is if I get a 0.25 power increase.

So this month that LASIK Enhancement is scheduled, and it theoretically should be a pretty quick ordeal (they don’t make a cut in the eye for this upgrade, just a slight contouring of the eyes).

Goal: CFB
Trying to get it done by October.

Goal: Books to read:
The amount of full books I’ve read lately is crazy low…..but it’s because nowadays I think there’s so many awesome-er mediums for knowledge.

I can listen to a machine learning podcast and take notes.
I can watch a YouTube interview about building companies and take notes.
I can learn about economics from listening to a podcast in the shower:

There’s just other ways of consuming information that’ve become extremely easy (and have tons of high quality content) that’ve popped up within the last few years, that reading books sometimes seems like a slower medium of knowledge absorption.

Also……most books are way longer than they need to be so publishers can charge more money for them. It’s easier to charge $25 for a 340 page book rather than a 60 page book.

Anywho, I’ll be finishing 2 books this month.

Back to ATX soon:
I’ve successfully skipped most of the hot Austin summer in San Francisco, and now it’s back to ATX soon!

Some observations about going back-n-forth to two places:

⇒ You appreciate aspects of both places much more.

For example: If you live in SF people in SF complain it’s “too cold” during the summer….as someone who’s trying to escape heat, the cold is welcome! But if you stay too long then you also get annoyed.

⇒ You tend to make the most of your time in a city because it seems finite.

Since there’s an end date to which you leave, you make the most of your time vs a permanent stay which seems like there’s no end date.

Tropisueno Dinner

August 31, 2018 by Neville

Dinnertime!

Making the SidCycle

August 31, 2018 by Neville

The basic scaffolding that will attach to the frame

It’s a high strength crate attached to a cutting board for stability

Sid supervising the construction process

Doing some fault testing before putting Sid in

That’s an 80 lbs pitbull in a crate on a motorcycle!

Bahaha this is what someone would see in traffic

Warren Buffett Old Interview

August 29, 2018 by Neville

I enjoyed this old interview with Warren Buffett (1985):

Berkshire Hathaway was 20 years old at this time.

“If you buy things for far below what they’re worth, and you buy a group of them, you basically don’t lose money.” 1:05

Q: Warren, what do you consider the most important quality for an investment manager?

A: It’s a temperamental quality not an intellectual quality. You don’t need tons of IQ in this business. You do not have to be able to play three dimensional chess. You need a stable personality. You need the temperament that neither derives great pleasure from being with the crowd or against the crowd. This is not a business where you take polls, this is a business where you think. Ben Graham would say “You’re not right or wrong because a 1,000 people agree with you or disagree with you. You’re right because your facts and your reasoning are right.”

“The real test of whether you’re investing from a value stand point is if you care if the stock market is open tomorrow. If you’re making a good investment in a security, it shouldn’t both you if they close down the stock market for 5 years. All the ticker tells me is the price. Prices don’t tell me anything about a business. Business figures themselves tell me about a business. I’d rather evaluate a business first without knowing the price, so the price doesn’t influence me, then look at the price later to see if it’s way out of line than what my value is.” (2:20)

“There may be many wonderful pitches to swing at, but if you don’t know enough, you don’t have to swing. You can sit there and watch thousands of pitches and only swing at ONE when you know a bunch about it. I might not swing for 2 years. It would bore most people, and certainly boredom is a problem with most professional money managers.” (5:50)