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useful life of computers

Useful life of a computer for someone in the tech industry is two to three years for developers, two to four years for everyone else.

Useful life of a computer for a business is until it dies, ceases to perform it's function.

For tax purposes for businesses, computers can be written off in the first year via Section 179 or depreciated over five years. Section 179 is cool (accountant in my former life).

For home buyers, I'm guessing in reality the useful life of a computer is five to seven years. It should be more like seven plus years but then we can also break this down into parts, e.g. 1 TB hard drive should last 10 years, network hub 10 years, monitor 7 years, actual computer 5 years. It really sucks that this is the case. Computers should last longer, at least 10 – 12 years.

Our current computer set-up

  • Our home setup (Mac Mini still on Panther) was put into place on April 2006.
  • Work setup (MacBook now w/ Leopard) was put in place on August 2006.
  • Work setup (IBM X31 laptop, with Windows XP) was put in place on August 2004.

Next year will be when we do our hardware upgrade.

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chocolate

I'm not a chocolate connoisseur either.

As we're nearing Valentine's Day here are my favorites:

But, I usually just eat slivers of the big baking chocolate bars

* Part of the Eatwell Ecosystem

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coffee

I'm not a coffee connoisseur but lucky to be in the Bay Area where there's lots of really good coffee.  These are the coffee blends I like:

  • Blue Bottle (Oakland based) – Bella Donovan and Espresso Temescal usually
  • Cole Coffee (Oakland based) – Max's Blend, for cyclists
  • Mr. Espresso (Oakland based) – Gold Medal Blend
  • Peet's (Berkeley based) – Major Dickinson's Blend, for cyclists
  • Peerless coffee (Oakland based)- not sure what blend I like but lots of restaurants and donut shops serve their coffee
  • Lion Coffee – 100% Kona coffee

I use a Chemex coffee maker primarily and also a Bialetti espresso maker, and a French press.

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the California Active Lifestyle Diet

Apparently, the California Active Lifestyle Diet doesn't exist.  So let's make it up.

The diet is going to consist of the following:

  • Setting up the environment
  • Exercise – a lot of it, 6 days a week at least one hour, and pretty much all weekend
  • Local food and just enough
  • Motivation
  • Tools

Setting up the environment is about hanging out with the right people, keeping the kitchen free from junk and temptation, setting up the home so that it's conducive to exercise, and getting all the right equipment for working out.

Exercise.  If in California and in the Bay Area especially, we've got a gorgeous playground.

Just enough food and local and fresh is best.  Will start out with basics and expand.

Motivation – health, family, long life.  But seeing normal people lose crazy weight helps too.

Tools – a journal, a scale, a water bottle, exercise mat, etc.

——-

  • The goal: 100lbs. in one year.  2 lbs a week.
  • My goal is to drop 15-20lbs by July.
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good looking suits

There are some nice looking suits from Hart Schaffner Marx (where President Obama gets his suits) at quite a reasonable price — from $350 on sale to $700 regular price.  If I didn't have suits already, I'd buy a few like the solid navy and navy pinstripe worsted, the charcoal worsted, and maybe the black w/ rust stripe.

They look like they're well made.

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Icestone, Paperstone, scissors…

We're doing a light kitchen remodel hopefully start end of January and end in February, early March:

  • range, cork floors, new sink/faucet, new counter tops, range hood, backsplash

We're going to go with Paperstone for the counter tops, a 100% recycled paper product. Cheap, looks good, and seems like a responsible company/product. Vetrazzo and Icestone do recycle glass counter tops that look great too. May yet go with one of those companies but might be too expensive.

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in 2008

I'm looking forward to the following this year:

  • product launches
  • Summer Olympics
  • Presidential Election
  • Mozilla 10 year anniversary, Firefox 3 (IE 8 probably won't launch until late 2009 or mid 2010 fwiw)
  • Honu Half triathlon with  in May, Chronicle Marathon in August
  • Wrap up home remodeling

Fairly basic. That's it for now.