Matthew Botos

An op-ed this week in the Wall Street Journal argued that The Next Sexual Revolution is better technology for freezing eggs and later pregnancies. The new plan for ambitious, career-oriented women is apparently to freeze your young eggs, throw yourself into your career, and then have a child alone at 50.

I have a tough time seeing that actually work. My younger friends who are having kids find it’s an exhausting enterprise even with two parents, and I can’t imagine it gets easier with age or while you’re trying to maintain a career and a family on your own. There’s also an important distinction between “having a child” and “raising a family”.

Overall, it seems like a lot of people have forgotten that life is a balance and its different phases have different priorities. As the author notes, compromises are possible, even in more competitive fields like medicine.

The younger generation (Gen X, Y, and the Millenials) are supposedly more focused on this balance, though the self-described passions of my online and offline dates are more split. About half are passionate about their careers, the other half their family and friends, and ostensibly starting families of their own. My own passions are still listed as travel and photography, though in practice I devote more time to looking for the right person to start that next phase of life - and a family.

As a satisfied seven-year customer of Netbank, I was surprised to hear the FDIC Shuts Down NetBank Due to Defaults. For an Internet-only bank, they’ve been quite solid while paying above-average interest rates. They also offered free online bill paying while local banks were still trying to make a quick buck on it. Unfortunately, it seems they got sucked into the housing bubble and wrote too many bad mortgages.

It is a bit disconcerting to read about it online instead of getting an email from Netbank itself. They do seem to have a decent transition plan; logging into my account brought up a message that by Sunday night transactions would resume under ING’s ownership. That’s a quick turnaround over the weekend and convenient since I would’ve moved my money to ING anyway. Speaking of which, you don’t think of that $100,000 FDIC insurance much these days, but it certainly saved a bunch of people’s money yesterday.

From a technical point of view, I was curious how they could manage to move such a large financial system in two days and on a weekend no less. The simple solution, though, is likely a non-technical one: it’s all the same hardware, software, and people, just operating under different owners.

I’ve had my kitten Meadow for just about five weeks, though it already feels like she’s always been a part of my family. People have always told me cats are great company, and now I definitely agree.

It’s fun to have someone else around, even when she is getting into trouble. My place definitely looks a little more lived in: cat toys and other things she’s taken an interest in lying around, dirt pawed out of the plants, and grains of litter kicked around the bathroom. (I did pick up a good tip on the plants: put a layer of small stones over the dirt. Looks a little more elegant, too.)

I’ve had to get a bit better about defending my food; we’re still working on the concepts of “people food” vs “cat food”. But she more than makes up for the trails, by making a nice nest out of my lap while I’m on the couch or in front of the computer. (I’m one secret volcano away from becoming a Bond villian!)

For as disciplined as I am about investing, there’s one beginning rule I’ve always ignored: buy what you know. I came across this a long time ago, and the theory went that you should buy some stock in the companies whose products you use and have some connection to, making it more likely that you’ll take an interest in the news and performance of your investment.

Instead, I’ve opted for a broadly diversified portfolio of index and sector funds. The only single company stock I own is in my employer, which has actually beat the market a good number of the years I’ve been there.

That changed today, though - I bought stock in two companies who I believe in  and have been a longtime customer. They’re innovators, first movers who offer a superior product that I believe will outlive their cheaper imitators. My new picks? Tivo and Netflix.

1. Corporate America doesn’t care how smart you are. A wise man once told me your first degree might get you in the door, but after that it’s all about what you do in the workplace. And the best thing you can do is network with the right people, maintain upward momentum, and if at all possible, avoid doing any real work. Unfortunately, there’s little glory or reward for the technical experts who really make things work and bring in the dollars that the CEOs brag about on their new yachts.

2. You should’ve found your soul mate already. The dating scene changes dramatically after college; no longer are you surrounded by people your age and intelligence. People are tougher to find, much less idealistic, and many are already married or in long term relationships.

3. You never stop learning. The technical world moves so fast that almost anything practical you learned is outdated before the ink is dry on your diploma. Many work in fields only loosely-coupled to their studies, and being successful often means learning a good bit about related disciplines. One caveat is to avoid letting yourself become spread too thin; another piece of good advice I’ve heard is to be knowledgeable about all areas and an expert in one.

I closed last year’s blog about turning 28 with this: “Hopefully at 29 I�ll be able to say my wisdom has climbed another minute notch.” That prophecy has been fulfilled; in the last year I’ve gained a better grasp on the realities of my life and the wisdom that comes with that. As always, it seems that everything big in my life these days comes down to dating and work.

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Today marks a year that I’ve been blogging here! 229 posts in 28 categories, 35 real comments, and 5,071 spam comments blocked by Akismet. It’s been an enjoyable experience, getting to exercise my writing skills on topics from my life and dating to the technical minutiae of running a blog. The latter has tended to become a bit disproportionate, but I couldn’t see satisfying my urge to tinker without running something like WordPress and the 25 plugins I’ve accumulated.

Blogging about my travels turned out to be unexpectedly exceptionally fun. I’ve often kept travel journals that have languished in dark drawers, but being able to post daily updates from Oregon, London, and Aspen was much more fun for myself and family and friends who usually just get a brief postcard.

For the future, I hope to balance the technical and more personal topics, and of course, to continue to have fun doing it!

Reaing a bit more of Travels with Samantha, I found some more relationship quotes to add to the one about Transactional Relationships:

Ken’s attitude reminded me of Socrates’s advice: “By all means marry. If you have a good wife, you will be happy. If you have a bad wife, you will become a philosopher.”

We parted warmly, even if our reunion underscored a friend’s philosophy: “We need to see ex-girlfriends occasionally so that we remember why we aren’t with them anymore.”

The two most destructive forces in the universe are man’s desire to be with woman and the automobile; disaster is certain when the two are combined.

Though I only started this blog in April of this year, it’s already accumulated 153 entries. Here are some of the best from this year:

• 28
• Staying Home
• High School Reunion
• MacBook Unboxing was by far the most popular
• A Long, Short Local Trip
• Bilingual Plugin Hacking
• Travel entries were the most fun to write and better than postcards for friends and family
• Web 2.0, Executive Blogging, and the Google Appliance
• The MBA and the Mexican Fisherman

I had seen this article on how to get that perfect shave ages ago, and finally decided give old school shaving a shot about six weeks ago. I dropped out of the razor tech arms race with the Mach 3 and have since tried various shaving gels to sooth one particularly irritable area of my neck with limited success.

A brush and lather with the same razor yielded much better results! There’s definitely some truth to the brush making whiskers stand up, and heating my face with a hot washcloth when I haven’t showered before also helps soften them. The final change I’ve made is replacing blades more ofter, putting my face above excess frugality. With the right size plastic container, the system is even quite portable, and there was a certain charm to lathering up with the brush in an old hotel in England.