Matthew Botos

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 The technical world moves so fast that almost anything practical you learned is outdated before the ink is dry on your diploma.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.

I was down in Philly last night for a Cornell Club happy hour well-attended by some of the younger grads from ‘04 and ‘06. Talking with them brought back some good memories of what was like to be just out of school, still feeling like you could do anything. Not that I feel like I’ve given up on my dreams as I’ve gotten older. Rather, I’ve developed a much more accurate sense of self and found where my strengths lie and what really makes my life rewarding.

A quick trip out to run errands on a Saturday afternoon turned into a long, car-towing odessy. I did meet some nice people along the way, though, which is a rarity for my introverted nature.

My last stop was a Lowe’s, where I didn’t find what I was looking for. Instead, as soon as I pulled out of the parking spot, I found the clutch on my Maxima just sunk to the floor. Using instincts finely honed from using computers every day, I restarted with no gain. After some tinkering and grumbling, I found the clutch fluid reservoir under the hood, which was bone dry.

Luckily, across the barren expanse of two big box parking lots was a Target. Two engineering degress came in handy in a staredown with bottles of brake fluid that made no mention of also being good for the clutch. I finally reasoned that both were hydraulic and covered in the same section of the manual, and that if it didn’t work, the system would have to be flushed anyway.

Back under the hood, the grimy reservoir cover confirmed my assumption before taking a paltry amount of fluid that didn’t do anything to solve the problem. With my cell phone safely at home, I trekked into Lowe’s to find a phone. Pay phones have become extinct in our cell phone culture, but the folks at the service desk were nice enough to provide a phone and deliciously dead tree phone book.

My luck wasn’t so good with the complimentary Firestone MasterCare road service. After providing all the details of my situation, just shy of smart bomb worthy geographic precision, they came back from a long hold to offer me an hour wait and a $250 bill for a 5-mile tow. I must’ve dialed the sucker hotline. The first local place recommended another one (usually a good sign), who in turn offered me a similar wait but a much more reasonable $55 + $3/mile.

With time to kill, I pulled up a barstool with anthropomorphic legs at nearby Max & Erma’s and ended up chatting with a guy who restores older cars. Discussing cable versus hydraulic clutch activation was much more entertaining than the golf tournament that was on TV.

Steve showed up a little early with his tow truck and placid dog Gracie in the back seat. The truck was quite the marvel of modern technology: the rear view camera and wireless controller were only reined in by the paper note pads carpeting the dash. We discussed the relative durability of the Maxima on the way to Firestone, which was surprisingly still open.

The local Firestone, despite being a large chain, has earned my trust over the years. One of the early times I took my car in for a mystery problem, they spent all day swapping parts that didn’t fix the problem and charged me nothing for the effort. They earned extra points today; one of the mechanics, Chad, was kind enough to offer me a lift home after they closed.

Which leads me to the final twist in this little vignette: while waiting, the TV was tuned to an ungarage-like choice: Alton Brown road tripping on the Food Network.

Douglas Coupland captures a key geek personality trait in Microserfs when he talks about overfocusing. Bringing an obsessive, microscopic focus to the task at hand allows smart technical people to perfect the myriad small components that make up a complex system. In personal pursuits, it often shows itself in a mastery of a few chosen interests.

The liability of overfocusing is burning out while concentrating on things beyond one’s control and any logical solution. Couple this with a need for short-term measurable progress towards a goal, and you have my typical source of frustration. Both work and my romantic life fall squarely in this category; for all my effort I often have little to show because of external factors. Even with this logical knowledge, it’s still difficult to find the patience to wait for results.