Ruminations in the Land of the Big Fields

A Random Walk Guide to Investing

bigfields — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 17:27:55 +0000

Many years ago I received A Random Walk Down Wall Street by Burton G Malkiel for Christmas, but I never got around to reading beyond the first chapter on several occasions. I know that it’s a classic about investing and I desperately needed to read and learn from it for my poor portfolio but the book is fairly long and I was never motivated to go beyond the first chapter.

However, the other day at the library I found a companion to the classic A Random Walk Guide To Investing. It presents the material in a simple format with 10 rules for investing. I found that this method of presenting the information is better suited for my current investment knowledge/needs, and it’s an easier read. I’m still not finished reading the book, and will do a more thorough write up at some later point.

I think it’s a good book for the beginner investor who want some simple rules to follow to get started, and can read more advanced books as his investment knowledge increases.

Carpooling – Nintendo DS

bigfields — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 23:00:05 +0000

I drive my son and his classmate to school each morning. It can be a long ride taking anywhere from 30 – 45 minutes.

The first time I drove his classmate to school I was a little surprised that he popped out his Nintendo DS and started playing with it the minute he stepped in my car. Two of our family rules until then was

No DS playing on school days.
No DS playing in cars.

However, when his carpool buddy started playing with his DS every morning, my son got DS-envy and complained why his buddy got to play on the DS but he didn’t. My son looked miserable in the back of the car looking over his friends shoulder play DS for the entire trip.

I discussed it over with my wife and decided that we would give it a try and let him play with his DS on the mornings that he carpools. If I take him to school alone, then he wouldn’t be allowed to play with his DS, but it would give us a chance to strike up a conversation or to just sit quietly listening to music. I usually get home late from work or I’m busy with other things, and this commute had given up a chance to spend some time quality time together.

I think that it’s important for him to quiet his mind before he goes to school, but all the DS games he has are action packed and highly animated games that I’m afraid does the opposite from quieting down his mind. I’m not really into games or the DS, but I plan to look for games that are more gentle on the mind and eyes. I’m not looking for one that is educational because he’ll be using his mind plenty at school, but something that is quieter and gentler for the mind. I don’t know if such a beast exists and more importantly if my son will be into it if it does. Maybe all boys his age are only interested in the fast action arcade type games.

Hand Dryers are frightening!

bigfields — Thu, 07 Sep 2006 22:47:30 +0000

My 3 year old son is terrified of hand dryers that you find in public restrooms. Whenever we go anywhere new (stores, restaurants, parks, etc), before anything else, he’s obsessed with checking out the restrooms to see if it contains a hand dryer. If there is no hand dryer, then he knows that it’s safe to use the toilet, and he’s able to relax. BUT if he notices that the restroom has a hand dryer then he freaks out and becomes obsessed about it. He’ll canvas the area and open the bathroom door many times just to make sure that no one is using the hand dryer. When he could hear someone using the hand dryer from outside, he runs nervously away from the restroom and says that “the hand dryer is on, the hand dryer is on!!!”.

When he really needs to use a bathroom with a hand dryer, I’m sure that he’ll prefer to dirty his pants rather than use the restroom but he also realizes how comfortable it’ll be to walk around in soiled pants. It’s a tossup, but usually he gathers enough courage to ask my wife or me that that he needs to use the bathroom, but he makes us promise that the hand dryer won’t go off while he’s in the bathroom. We’ll reassure him countless times that he doesn’t need to need to use the hand dryer and that he could either use the paper towels, if available, or he could dry his hands using one of our shirts or just “naturally” by flapping his hands and drying them that way. Most of the time this works fine, because we’re in and out of the restroom quickly before anyone else has a chance to use the restroom and the hand dryer. However, we can’t always time it so that no one else uses the restroom and more specifically the hand dyer while we’re in there. In these cases, at the sound of the hand dryer going off, my son gets hysterical and screams “I’m scared!!! I’m scared!!! Turn off the hand dryer!!!”, and we’re out of the bathroom post-haste.

I know that this is only a phase that he’s going through, and hopefully, he’ll grow out of it soon. I’m not sure what else I could do to make him comfortable around hand dryers? Install one in my bathroom? Use a hair dryer to dry his hands at home?

From my experience with my child, I’ve become an expert on people’s behavior in public restrooms. I’ve noticed that not everyone washes their hands after using the restroom (ugh!), and out of the people who wash their hands, only a small fraction use a hand dryer. Maybe, hand dryers are an unecessary evil, and only there to frighten little kids.