Interesting Tech Roundup

Heat your home with other people's computers for free: nerdalize.com.

A worldwide network of virtual pilots exists, some flying the same routes on
the same schedule as the real airlines.

A price war in cell phone plans is currently going on, mainly due to T-Mobile. This is a good time to renegotiate your current cell phone deal.

A company onlycoin is rolling out a single card that pretends to be all of your credit cards at once. But how are they going to adapt to the chip-and-pin cards coming to the U.S. (finally) in the wake of Target's little problem?

The 50 smartest companies? MIT Technology Review has a list.

Redox Power Systems' PowerSerg 2-80

Affordable fuel cells are coming, finally, in the next couple of years.

That's it for now ... comment on your suggestions for this feature please!

A selfie you'll never forget

... from superstar political cartoonist Mike Luckovich:

The easy way to buy a car, a crummy car dealership, an OK dealership, and my New Year's Resolution

Several years ago a friend recommended Heidi the Amazing Autowoman, an auto broker who will find the car you want at a price and list of options that you negotiate with her. All you have to do is meet her for 10 minutes, sign paperwork, write checks, and drive away in your new (or new used) car.

Heidi is terrific and I will never buy or lease a car any other way ever again.

Heidi happens to have a relationship with a local poorly run car dealership: Lee Johnson of Kirkland. This needn't have affected me, but I bought a Chevy Volt in late 2011 through Heidi and this dealership left out a couple of small parts: cargo net and front license plate holder.

They eventually got these parts in and I got them installed. They were a bit slow/sloppy in the way they handled this and I should have stopped going there after this. But I had an issue with the car losing the charge on its 12-volt battery, which runs the car's computer and locks and other systems and which is required to be able to start it. I called a tow truck who helped me jump it and I had them tow it, silly me, to Lee Johnson.

Not only did they no root cause analysis, they somehow goofed up the key fob that you use to get in and start the car ... and sent me off in the car without saying a word about this to me. If I hadn't had the owner's manual on the front seat I'd never have been able to figure what was going on (I thought at first the battery on the key fob had just run down) and get the car started again.

Clearly, this is egregiously bad customer service. (I got the car fixed at Michael's Chevrolet in Issaquah, who have been OK.)

I recently sold the original Volt and leased a new 2014 through Heidi ... via  Lee Johnson. I met Heidi at the dealership, sat in one of the LJ people's cubicle, signed paperwork, wrote checks, and was out in 10 minutes.

I had to go back and pick up my license plate when it was ready (actually about a month after it was ready, but that's my problem.) This was also at Lee Johnson, whose I guess subsidiary goes as Eastside Auto Licensing. I picked up the plates (and a refund check: $154.50; not sure why but I deposited it!)

The woman who gave me the plates said, brightly, "you can get the service department to install them for you!" I replied without thinking, "they messed up my previous Volt and I'll never do business with them again."

She looked stricken. I could have just kicked her dog or something. "That's terrible!" she said.

It was terrible, it was stupid, it was unnecessary. I'm telling you about my experience with the dealerships, but what good did it do to hit this lady over the head with this information? None.

So: (1) I forgive Lee Johnson. I still don't plan to do any more business with their service department, but I'm going to drop the chip on my shoulder and I don't have to broadcast my problem with them to any other individuals in person.

(2) If I have the chance of interacting with another of their employees, I'm going to bite my tongue and instead say "Oh, I'm a computer programmer and this is one of the few mechanical tasks I feel competent to handle and it's satisfying for me to be able to handle this." All true, and I got to dispose of the Lee Johnson advertising license plate frame at the same time.

I learned grudge-holding from my father and let it mostly go on an individual level years ago. But organizations are made up of individuals, many of whom don't have a clue about the running of the organization ... so no more!

The B612 Foundation: Finding the asteroids coming from our blind spot

Anytime you think you've had a bad day, just reflect on the fact that you haven't seen one of these coming:

Unfortunately, we have up to now only been able to see/track asteroids that are out where we can see them: on the side away from the sun, so the sun's light shines on them.

On the other side, we're looking right into the sun and the asteroids disappear. This is apparently what happened last year at Chelyabinsk in Siberia.

These things can ruin one's whole day.

Since our government is paralyzed when it comes to important things like this (although one would think it could be spun as "national defense"), there's a private foundation working on a satellite to be able to view the blind spot.

The B612 Foundation is that foundation and they're getting my support. How about you?

Scott Adams on the Open Office Format

I guess the trend of this kind of office has peaked since Microsoft just started doing it. (A friend of mine just left the Visual Studio team there as they were planning this shift.)

And Scott Adams has his barbed pen aligned with mine:

I'm just about to move into options trading for a living (I think) so this will no longer be an issue for me. But anybody who hates to sit in this kind of space will have to look for a telecommuting gig or for one of the few places that still offers developers a modicum of privacy.

Options Trading 101: Some helpful resources on video and other recommendations

I've posted several suggestions for book to read and brokerages to consider for beginning traders. But there are a couple of video resources that are worth a look for anybody just considering trading options.

First: Tradeking's Youtube Series. These run around 8 minutes each and start from the bottom, explaining puts and calls and what they represent, and emphasizing mistakes that many beginners make.

Second: Tastytrade. This is a phenomenal resource, with the founder of ThinkOrSwim, Tom Sosnoff and some colleagues broadcasting a mix of market news, options trading studies, beginner info, and more. Beginners should focus on "Where should I start?" and the "Liz and JNY" show as well as several other beginner's segments. If you subscribe with an email address they will send you a daily highlight list. They broadcast from 7 to 3 Central Time every trading day, so not possible for most folks to watch it all in real time. But they archive everything so you can pick and choose what you want.

And finally today: the two insights on options that I wish I'd had starting out:

• It isn't necessary to hold options to expiration to make money; in fact it's generally a detriment.  I read every book in the local library without coming across this; almost every book for amateurs that I've seen assumes holding everything to expiration. But you can make plenty of money and take far less risk by selling out the position before it expires (in almost all cases.)
• You might think that an in-the-money option moves at the same rate as the stock, but it doesn't. It may move only 50% or 70% as fast; this ratio is called its delta. This is something I didn't get for the first couple of years and it cost me dearly!

Happy trading!

Amazon destroyed the Audible Android App ... but I found something better!

I have generally become cavalier about downloading updates to the apps on my Android phone. So I didn't think much of it when I had a series of updates to the Audible app.

I understand that the first versions of the Android Audible apps were written after Amazon bought Audible, and they were usable if not spectacular:

It did allow you to download Audible-purchased books directly to the phone and it performed
reasonably in most respects.  I never looked for an alternative book player for this phone, though a friend of mine kept raving about an alternative.

The most recent update of this app, though ...

... slowed down (at least on my 2011 phone) to the point it was unusable. It changed to a 'wait -- loading' type screen every time I changed the orientation of the phone. I found it maddening.

I went back to my friend with the alternative and listened to what he had to say. He uses Ambling Book Player Pro:

I bought a copy ($8.99). This works, it's fast ... but it does require a different piece of software to break the DRM copyright on Audible-format books. There are several out there. My friend is a PC user who runs Sound Taxi. I mostly use a Macintosh and found a similar Audiobook Converter from Macsome ($34.95). It actually runs much faster than SoundTaxi (though still takes a few hours to convert a 20-hour audiobook on my 2008 Macbook.)

The overall usage is more complex than for the Audible app; you have to

•  download the book to the computer
•  load it into iTunes (the only way Macsome will grab it, trying to look non-pirate!)
•  run Macsome
•  connect the phone to the computer,
•  copy the converted files (Note! one book per directory)
• run Ambling to load books from the location in your phone where you stored them

But worth it! At least on this phone. I am planning a phone upgrade early next year and will review all apps then, but for the moment this works for me.

Happy listening!