Off Topic Archives - Michael Bianco

Financial Directives for a New Graduate

Writing creates clarity, and defining directives for various areas of your life is an interesting exercise. I first ran into this idea via Derek Sivers: "It’s just a succinct and powerful way to communicate an idea. Focus on the action." I’ve tried distilling my personal investing principles as a series of directives. My siblings and other younger people I know also ask for my financial advice. This post is partly an effort to make it easy to share my thinking with others when it comes up so I don’t need to repeat myself. Obviously, I’m not a financial advisor, lawyer, CPA, etc. I’ve simply written down my personal opinions…

How to Transfer a Car Title in Pennsylvania

I recently purchased a new car and needed to transfer the title from the previous owner. For anyone else who hates digging through state and government websites or wasting time on the phone trying to determine the correct process, here is the cliff notes of how to transfer ownership of a car in Pennsylvania: How it works: You and the current owner of the car need to go to a tag/title notary service. Interestingly enough, you can transfer title without getting new license plates if the transfer is mother/son or father/son, but not between siblings…

Social Norms vs Market Valuation

I’m reading Predictably Irrational a really fascinating book, especially for those who have any interest in economics. One of the chapters that I’ve just finished discusses the ‘two worlds’ of valuation and exchange: one which is ruled by ‘social norms’ and the other by cold rational market analysis. The interesting psychological element to these two ‘worlds’ is that once you cross the threshold into the world of market analysis, you can’t go back. The author cites an example of a day care center which created a new rule which attached a monetary file to arriving late to pick up your child. Once the fine was implemented, more parents arrived later to pick up their children…

Back From Europe!

Just a couple days ago I got back from my four month excursion to Europe. It was an amazing experience, best time of my life. I was able to visit Ireland, Italy, Austria, Germany, Hungary, Croatia, Poland, and Bosnia. So many great memories and experiences, it would be impossible to overview everything that happened…

STM Evolution Laptop Backpack

About a year ago I was able to get a MacBook Pro at an incredible low price. I’ve had many of my friends break their laptop screens simply by walking from one location to another because of inadequate padding and protection and I didn’t want my laptop to suffer a similar fate. Putting the laptop in a incase sleeve wasn’t going to do it for me, and I didn’t want to lug around a ‘laptop bag’; I wanted a backpack specially designed for laptops. Luckily, to my surprise, I found exactly what I was looking for – the STM Evolution. The price on the bag was a little steep: $110. But thats a small price to pay for a easy to carry backpack that provides adequate padding. For the first couple months the bag worked great…

Here Goes Nothing

A couple days ago I went ahead and bought my first guitar, a Fender DG-8. Hopefully with this guitar, a couple teach-yourself DVDs, some books, and some help from my guitar-playing friends I’ll be able to become half-way decent at the guitar. Wish me luck!

Happy New Years!

Better late then never… I wish everybody a happy and prosperous new year! 2005 was a very good year for me, but I’m looking forward to what 2006 has in store!

Hurricane Katrina

A little late in reporting this, but life is busy… The devastation wrought by hurricane Katrina is enormous, its very saddening to see an American city looking like a third-world country. Even more saddening is level of crime that New Orleans is experiencing, the raping and stealing that is occurring is especially saddening. Instead of the citizens of New Orleans trying to be charitable to each other, help each other survive, and find a way out of the city; some citizens have given into evil-doing and are committing mass crimes preventing law officials from saving the various people all around the city….

Back From Vacation!

I’m back from vacationing in New Hampshire. I stayed up in the mountains near a small lake, a place I go to every year. It was awesome; I went sailing, nee-bording, tubing, boating, swimming, diving off of rocks, hiking, biking, eating :D- it was an awesome time. The rural landscape is awesome, the air is so clean- I can’t wait to go back next year. On another note, I’m preparing to release V1.0b of App Stop, it should be released within the next week. I’m pretty amazed at the popularity of my easingScrollBar class, it has received almost 1200 downloads to date. I’ve also finally decided to buy Write Great Code: Understanding the Machine (Amazon had the best deal)…

App Stop Comic?

I recently found this while browsing the web: It came from this web-site. Someone made a comic about my free-ware application.. hehe 😛

Category: Off Topic