Plans and risks

I turned 41 today. I feel I should make a solid plan for the future. Actually, my motive is to retire early. So, here is my plan.

First, review my financials. I used to do this a lot but it all changed since I left it to the professional.

Second, don't be afraid to take risks. We probably think we don't gamble but the fact is every decision we make is a gamble. Our superannuation is most likely invested in the share market. We bet that our current jobs that we hold on so dearly are the best. We bet that when we commute to work today we won't get hit by a bus. Everything is a risk. Some are less riskier than others. So, without further ado, I'm going into the share market.

Third, consolidate my data. What on earth has this got to do with my early retirement plan? I feel that my accumulated possessions are bogging me down. The more I have the less mobile I am. I don't have a lot of physical belongings but I do have a lot of data. At present this data is stored all over the place across many hard disks and thumb drives. One day one of my thumb drives got corrupted. Luckily I backed it up before to another drive. Then I thought again, what if this backup drive fails. I can't afford the time to backup my data to a third or a fourth drive. So, I signed up with an online storage provider and going to backup all my important data there. Not-so-important data, be gone! What if the provider's system fails? Well, they are professional, they should know how to manage this risk. That's the risk I'm taking.

Well, for now I plan to enjoy my birthday today.

How to save the world

I just watched two old movies played by Ben Kingsley. I had known before that Gandhi was played by Kingsley, but I had not known that he was also in Schindler's List playing the Jewish accountant, Itzhak Stern.

The two movies have more things in common than Kingsley. Both Gandhi and Schindler are heroes to oppressed peoples. While Gandhi led his own people to independence, Schindler rescued a people he did not ethnically belong to. They both proved themselves to be selfless, but imperfect.

India became independent shortly after World War II. Gandhi had, on some occasions, written his opinions on Holocaust when it was taking place during the war.

The Deadliest Poison

King Solomon is well known for his wisdom and wealth. Many stories have been written about him. Some claim that he can speak to animals, but to me it makes more sense to say that he speaks "of" animals, in that he writes numerous poems and songs about animals. And who can forget the story of two women and a baby which gives rise to the expression The Judgment of Solomon. Despite such wisdom Solomon makes a drastic turn in his life. Being a king in that era he gets many fine things in life, including wives and concubines. His love for women gradually leads him to a very different life. 1 Kings 11:9 reads “The LORD became angry with Solomon because his heart had turned away from the LORD, the God of Israel, who had appeared to him twice.”

Here is one of the biggest tragedies in history. We hear of people whose theophanic experience gives them enormous strength to carry their mission to the end of their lives. In the Bible we know of Abraham, Jacob, Isaiah, Mary, Paul and outside it there are Joan of Arc and Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism. It's very rare that individuals who have seen God end up abandoning their calls. In Solomon's case his wisdom and wealth is attributed to his first encounter with God. The second encounter is ironic because it is a warning for him not to abandon God.

The Bible passage above mentions explicitly that God's anger is caused by Solomon's heart. Wisdom alone is not enough to please God. It may well be that wisdom itself changes one's heart. When one's heart has turned away from God, even God himself is powerless to mend it. The human heart is the deadliest poison.

Shambolic

I had a dream last night where a colleague of mine was telling another colleague how his credit card had been mistakenly charged. Somewhere in his remarks he mentioned a word which I didn't know the meaning but could only guess. The word sounded to me like schamboly. Mind you, in my dream I heard, not read, the word, so I just made up the spelling.
When I woke up I looked up the word and the closest I could get was shambolic, which was what I guessed what it meant in the dream. I'm not sure how I could have guess it correctly. I try to rationalise that by thinking that perhaps I have heard and understood that word before then forgot it but somehow it has sunk in my subconscious memory. Maybe, maybe not. As of now I have hardly any recollection of my first real encounter with that word.
Isn't it strange what dreams can do? A friend of mine told me about his dream. He dozed off in his sofa. In his dream the phone was ringing and when he picked up the phone it was his sister in another country half around the globe. He woke up, the phone was ringing and when he picked up the phone it was his sister in another country half around the globe. Sorry about the sentence repeat, but for a moment it was life imitating dream. Now, he told me that the sister usually called him once a year or something. Was it merely a coincidence that he guessed it right in his dream?
By the way, shambolic means chaotic or disorganised according to http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/shambolic. The root is shambles and apparently is a British slang. In my dream, that colleague of mine was American and he didn't look like any of my colleagues I know. Weird.

Is it a modem, is it a router? No, it's a modem router

I recently signed up for ADSL2+. I could hardly wait for the blazing fast Internet connection after years of wireless speed. Don't get me wrong, wireless Internet is good. However, the speed just can't cope with information bandwidth nowadays.
Five days of waiting was now over. The modem arrived from the ISP and they confirmed my line was now activated. Goodie, goodie, goodie. I wired the modem to my laptop Ethernet port, turned everything on, the modem lit up and several seconds later I was part of the world. It was blazing fast. Now, next step, let's go wireless!
Ok, I didn't mention one thing before. I had a wireless router. I bought it a while ago and had been using it happily with my soon-to-be-departed wireless modem. When I signed up with the new ISP I decided to buy just a simple modem and I would just link it to this old wireless router. After all, any Tom, Dick and Harry can connect a modem to a router.
Well, I wouldn't be blogging this if there was no drama. The wireless connection was temperamental. Dialing up PPPoE was always successful but there wasn't always Internet connection. Sometimes only after several connects did it manage to connect to the cloud. Some days of frustration later I rang up the ISP who, after running diagnostic and seeing no issue, advised me to contact the wireless router company since the ISP didn't support devices not purchased from them. She did notice one thing, that is she saw 2 connections coming from different IP addresses. She also mentioned something about setting the modem into a bridging mode. I had no idea what that was about.
I then rang the wireless router company. The technician advised me to upgrade the modem firmware. He also mentioned about bridging the modem. Adding one and one together I then did some googling and found this link http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-replies.cfm?t=814956. The epiphany was that I didn't just get a simple modem when I bought it. It was also a router.