Remodeling is an investment?

How do you interpret this clip from an article on remodeling?

On average a Kitchen Remodel will yield an ROI of 80-100%! This is an amazing rate of return on any investment, but the added bonus is that as a homeowner you get to enjoy the benefits of your Kitchen Remodel until you sell your home.

Ok, so if I spend $100k on my kitchen, the price of my house will go up $180k to $200k....right?  After all, the definition of ROI is profit divided by cost.  The first $100k would go to pay back what I spent, and the remaining $80k to $100k would be my profit.  Then I saw this tidbit in another article :

Homeowners can recoup an average of 83% for a vinyl siding replacement and 78% of their investment for a mid-range bathroom renovation

Wait a minute!  Recoup 83% means you didn't get back all the money you spent.  That means a negative profit and a negative ROI of 17%!

So why do they state--incorrectly--that the ROI is 83%?  Because it sounds better.  Because it makes people spend more money at Home Depot.  I'm not saying that people shouldn't remodel their homes, just realize that you're doing it primarily for your own enjoyment and not to make money!

Yelp == Mafia?

I'm a pretty big user of yelp.com, and there have always been concerns about competitor restaurants writing bad reviews.  But accusations of extortion --oh my!

G1 Android problems connecting to my Linksys WRT110 Wifi

The only way I could get the Android G1 to even acknowledge the existence of my wireless network was to change from "Mixed" mode to "Wireless G" mode only. Before that the SSID wouldn't even show up; after that it has worked perfectly.

Windows Vista Killed my Network

Good thing my wife noticed that whenever I booted up my brand-spanking-new HP Pavillion dv7-1232nr, our whole wireless network would stop working. Nobody had internet connectivity!

Strange. REALLY strange. An OS that can bring down your network?!!!

After wading though a lot of MS propaganda (they must hire blog writers on Mechanical Turk) that the problems are with "your outdated router" I came across this post which explains that you should disable IPv6 in Windows Vista. I'll repeat here:

Ok, I think I figured it out: I had the same problem as people on this thread ... the WRT110 router with firmware V 1.0.04 crashed as soon as my HP Laptop with Vista and 3945A chipset tried to connect. 100% consistent.

This is the fix that worked for me: I went to the Control Panel --> Network connections ... right clicked on the "wireless" icon and selected "properties" from the menu, then I UNCHECKED the "Internet Protocol Version 6 (TCP/IPv6)" entry ... and clicked OK. That's it, now it works reliably, never had a problem since!

I am disappointed in the Linksys service though, I would have figured they would have helped in this case instead of letting the customers spend HOURS to figure it out.

I also saw some posts which state that you should disable UPnP on the router. That didn't work for me, but YMMV.

Update (2010.03.11): This post seems to have figured everything out: http://keyliner.blogspot.com/2008/12/vista-unidentified-network-problem.html

Google Bookmarks in Chrome!

And many other (javascript bookmarklet) add-ons:

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/make_add-ons_for_google_chrome.php

Atari 800 : my first computer

My dad paid $2000 for an Atari 800 with 16k in RAM and a cassette drive back around 1981.  According to MeasuringWorth, in todays dollars that would be like spending

	$4,560.48	using the Consumer Price Index
	$4,052.84	using the GDP deflator
	$5,843.89	using the value of consumer bundle *
	$4,536.14	using the unskilled wage *
	$6,721.12	using the nominal GDP per capita
	$8,827.20	using the relative share of GDP

We also had the 410 cassette drive and BASIC Computer Games (see the scanned book in its full glory) which made for some loooong typing sessions for some very simple games!

The Evolution of Language

I never realized how bad it was, until the Internet was born.  

Grammar, that is.  In chat sessions, forums, and emails the level of English displayed is amazingly low.  People show no sign of knowing the difference between they're, their, and there.  Or between to and too.  I'm talking about basic 4th grade English here.  Not esoterica like why it is incorrect to use beg the question in the way most people use it...

What's interesting is that English is evolving MUCH faster than it did before.  Why?  Because in the old days, our primary reading materials were newspapers, books, and magazines.  Things scrutinized by editors for correctness.  This limited the degredation/evolution of the language from generation to generation.  

But with the Internet as our primary reading material, there is no restoring force.  Nothing to pull us constantly toward a fixed standard of English.  Descriptive linguists should have a field day with this; prescriptive linguists will probably be crying if they aren't already.