Тинькофф. Он такой же как все.

Вчера поддался соблазну и прочитал книжку Олега Тинькова "Я такой как все".

Читал в электронном варианте, но наврядли ощущения бы изменились.  За полдня.

Несмотря на то что многие считаю Тинькова и Чичваркина представителями одного "движения" в бизнесе и вообще, по мировосприятию, книжа "Чичваркин Е...гений" мне оставила гораздо больше эмоций.  

Да, что-то общее просматривается, но все равно кажется они совсем разные.  По-крайней мере книга о Чичваркине понравилась.  Книга Олега Тинькова оставила с ощущением того, что и пиарнулся, и понтанулся, а закончил словами "А чо я, я ничо.  Сижу, никого не трогаю, примус починяю..."

Много "дырок", недосказанности, с одной стороны миллионы туда-сюда, с другой стороны кредит не получить.  Если верить книжке, то снимаю шляпу, находчивость и безшабашность Олега вызывает внимание.  Однако, не уходит ощущение, что все так, но не совсем так.  Умение разогнать всех бандитов Питера силой воли и взглядом изподлобья - тоже хорошо, однако насколько Я помню 90-ые, хотя был еще пацаном, кроме авторитетной братвы с понятием, были просто беспредельщики.  А там - умеешь ты на фене ботать или нет - не всегда успеешь обсудить.  

Прочитать рекоммендую.  Во-первых, много времени не займет, а во-вторых, с такой книгой лучше сложить свое мнение, чем верить чужому.

# Posted via email from opportunity__cost

Review of the Rework

I just finished reading Rework http://www.amazon.com/dp/0307463745/?tag=iwhite-20 by two co-founders of so-popular-nowadays 37signals company.

Well, the book had its own auditory before it even appeared.  That's a crowd of news.yc.  Quite a crowd, I should say, so it would be stupid not to monetize (sorry, not to make money :) from them.  And that what they did.

I don't feel like discuss the ideas of the book.  But "forget everything what they taught you and do the opposite" wasn't the main idea (as considered by some reviewers).  Authors just restated the same ideas they were idolizing before and put them all together.

More the strategy book, rather than a guide.  However, the guide is still coming.  (I guess.)

Few notes: 

1. Starting a business on the side while keeping your day job can provide all the cash flow you need.
2. You might learn what not to do again, but how valuable is that?  You still don't know what you do next.
3. Working more doesn't mean you care more or get more done.  It just means you work more.
4. A business without a path to profit isn't a business, it's a hobby.
5. And what really matters is how to actually get customers and make money.
6. Do everything you can to remove layers of abstraction.

It's a good book.  Go for it, if you hadn't yet.

# Posted via email from opportunity__cost

Review of the alibaba story

I just finished reading the alibaba: The Inside Story Behind Jack Ma... http://www.amazon.com/dp/006167219X/?tag=iwhite-20

That was a nice book.  It didn't keep me all that hooked about what happens next, but I blame editor for that.  Organization is not that good, especially, keeping in mind that there was quite a story to tell.  Anyways, it's a good book.

One point to take from the book: there are markets that can't get owned by foreigners.  There is such a thing as mentality, that is a tough competitor for the theory, no matter how good is it.  Sometimes you have to live the life of those whom you're working with, and whom you're selling to, to become a leader.  You can hire the best minds, however, not having the same mentality will drive you wrong way (or will make you slower than others).  

An extra point: there is often a huge sales force behind a thing that gives a first impression as a social platform.  

Once nice quote: "Ten years ago, I applied to come to Harvard. I applied three times and was rejected three times. You all didn't even look at my application, I believe - you just turned me down!"

# Posted via email from opportunity__cost

HBR March 2010

Started my day with reading thru the March HBR. (Do you start your day like this?)

1. Nice research on page 30 concluding that getting cash makes you feel less pain or being socially excluded. (Yes, that's who we are.)  There is definitely a possible application of cash to many places to improve them, and it's interesting to see how it was put together.
2. One more nice article on page 38 on bankers' practices and the incentives, that, unfortunately, are not long term oriented.
3. On page 66 you can find great review of ways to get from the recession and typical strategies used.  This doesn't apply directly to the small businesses though, but more in general way, mostly because of operating costs and actual budgets range.

And, generally speaking, I liked this month's issue.  Good mix of articles worth reading.

# Posted via email from opportunity__cost

Ooma vs Vonage

My Ooma just arrrived.  Sorry, I can't resist saving money any longer.

Lets do the simple math.  Ooma Telo is $199.99 on Amazon right now.  Premier service with free number port is $119.99 for 1 year, with $11.99 regulatory fee recovering (starts from the second year, but I'll count it in right away).  For one year of usage the price is $331.97.  

Lets do the Vonage math.  Nothing counts (I already got the whole set), but the monthly fee.  I'm paying $33.13 total for $24.99 plan in Los Angeles county. (That's a lot of different fees!)  The annual usage of the plan would be $397.56.

So Ooma wins.  If even I'll change Vonage to annual plan with $59.98 (20%) of savings, it's still $337.58, more expensive then Ooma.  And the second year is when we're either making (Ooma) or loosing (Vonage) money.  

I can also downgrade Ooma to the basic plan, still have all the features (but the call forwarding when the device is offline), and pay $11.99 a year.  With Vonage, the second year is still $300+ more.  And so on and so forth.

By the way, I am not going to use either Vonage or Ooma much.  That's why keeping the costs as low as possible is very important.

Do your math, stop wasting money for something with no value. P.S. And Ooma looks better.  Even if I keep it hidden in the closet, it's always nice to know. :)

# Posted via email from opportunity__cost

Tracking Amazon prices

via camelcamelcamel.com

I really liked using @camelcamelcamel for tracking down Amazon price for ooma Telo, which I'm about to enjoy (almost free calls for ever!). Instant email & Twitter notification saved me almost 20%. Plus you can see the history back. Very recommended!

# Posted via web from opportunity__cost

The Smashing Book

via shop.smashingmagazine.com

I've just finished this book. Well, my impression is mixed. This is a solid product from the reputable resource, however, I didn't find much for myself in it. It was a worthwhile reading though.

It's sold exclusively by the Smashing Magazine, and I had a chance to get it with 20% discount and free shipping my pre-ordering. It's a little bit on expensive side now ($29.90 plus shipping costs), but the print is great. (However, because of the format, I wasn't feeling comfortable reading it -- to tight and small.)

If you're in the Web business, and, especially, designing stuff, make sure to take a look at it.

# Posted via web from opportunity__cost

The Smashing Book

The book has 300 pages in all, full of practical and useful knowledge for designers and Web developers. It contains 10 chapters and is printed in full color. The book is a paperback and is 8.27 × 5.5 inches (21 × 14 cm).

The book is available exclusively from Smashing Magazine and nowhere else. This first and only Smashing Book looks at Web design rules of thumb, color theory, usability guidelines, user interface design, best coding and optimization practices, as well as typography, marketing, branding and exclusive insights from top designers across the globe.

It was written by Jacob Gube (SixRevisions), Dmitry Fadeev (UsabilityPost), Chris Spooner (Spoongraphics), Darius A Monsef IV (COLOURlovers.com), Alessandro Cattaneo (with co-editing by Jon Tan), Steven Snell (VandelayDesign), David Leggett (UXBooth), Andrew Maier (UXBooth), Kayla Knight (regular writer on SM), Yves Peters (Typographica.org), René Schmidt (system administrator of our servers) and the Smashing Magazine editorial team, Vitaly Friedman and Sven Lennartz.

via shop.smashingmagazine.com

While I can hardly wait for my copy of The Smashing Book to arrive, I was unpleasantly surprised that the shipping time is 30-40 days. Damn. I'd never call this *free shipping* if I'd knew. But I'm hoping for the best and that the book is worth it.

# Posted via web from opportunity__cost

"Tough" questions from GMAT 800

I saw a number of positive reviews for the sample questions from the Kaplan GMAT 800 book (now Kaplan GMAT Advanced).  Not a problem, just got a copy for myself, and went through it.

To avoid confusion, I completed only Critical Reasoning part of it.  However, making in average 75% of correct answers (1 mistake in every 4 questions set), I got some serious doubts about extraordinary type of questions there.  

They are good, but not much more.  

On the other note, format of the book is really weird.  I don't like it.  I believe the willingness to do a guidebook drove them to such a style, but it doesn't help at all.  I'd prefer something closer to a "classic" approach, when I clearly have a set of questions to work through, and the answers to clearly state correct answer, but not looking for it in the several blocks of explanations.

# Posted via email from opportunity__cost

Sentence Correction must-have book

There is one book that is absolutely must have for you to do well on Sentence Correction part of GMAT.

That's a "Sentence Correction GMAT Preparation Guide" by Manhattan GMAT.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0982423861/prokhorenkous-20

They do not have any either sample GMAT questions or a bunch of tests to try yourself on. But they did their best to cover a lot of potential tricks taken by GMAT creators to find your gaps in English. I'm really surprised and really excited about going through this. I just came to Chapter 4 and I have already learned a bunch of stuff. This is so great.

However, I do miss the sample GMAT questions. The books sends me to Official Guide and this is sorta lame. Been there, done that.

# Posted via email from opportunity__cost

Typo hunter's on the road again

Typos happen.  Sometimes they don't bother you much.  Sometimes, the do.  Like in the books that have question and answer combos.

Like, you know, for the quantitative part of GMAT, for example.

Yes, I'm talking about the EZ basic math workbook.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1605621579/iwhite-20

It has a lot of typos.  What's worse, it has a lot of errors, too.  Like the one show above, which is page 113, question #20.  Twice 32 equals 64, but not 62.  Where the heck is editor?  Proofreader?  Anybody else?

It's not the only example, but I just wanted to show you that reviews like this (even if it's the only one), should not be ignored:

there are a lot of examples in the book that are completely wrong. The further you go in the book the worse it gets. Its like the author got exhausted by the end.

ex:
1) a question will ask you about blue ribbons but will calculate due to green ribbons.
2) some of the combinatorics questions have missing combinations that the question is asking about.

I can go on and on ...

The book is very easy and has bunch of errors. Work with it at your own risk.

BTW to put some weight behind my words: I have already taken GMAT and got above 700. 

by BebaZyabovna.

Take care.

# Posted via email from opportunity__cost

EZ Basic Math

Okay, I've got 200 more sample questions and 2 parts left from the EZ basic math workbook.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1605621579/iwhite-20

Listen. Get it if your math is really bad. I mean, you really suck. Or you feel like you suck. Otherwise, you don't need it. It sucks to be able to solve all samples. I'm not the brightest guy, but it's too easy even for me.

So I'm planning to take a pause with math and get back to Sentence Correction.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0982423861/iwhite-20

And only after it I'm going to spend more time with EZ advanced math workbook. I hope it would be way more interesting, because I found myself doing pretty well with The Quest for 700: Weekly GMAT Challenge posted every Wednesday on http://www.mbamission.com with answer following Thursday. Otherwise, screw the Amazon's reviews for EZ books, because they're wrong. Anyway I don't like the format of EZ books. I'd prefer to stay closer to GMAT format, because, well, you know... this is for GMAT. Why is it titled so, huh?

# Posted via email from opportunity__cost

Must read books and resources

Books/Blogs for Startups

Must Read Books
Strategy Books for Startups
New Product Introduction Methodologies
“Marketing as Strategy” Books
“War as Strategy” Books
Marketing Communications Books
Sales
Startup Nuts & Bolts
Manufacturing
Product Design
Culture/Human Resources
Venture Capital
History
Must Read Blogs

via steveblank.com

One of the best lists of books and resources from Silicon Valley legend Steve Blank.

The only thing that could be better is to accompany this list with the list from the Lean Startup Circle discussion here:

http://groups.google.com/group/lean-startup-circle/browse_thread/thread/56ed7bdf2b4450e

For my personal taste, I'm really interested in the Clara Shih's "The Facebook Era":

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0137152221/iwhite-20

I didn't read it yet, but heard a lot of very positive thoughts about. I'm planning to add it to my reading list shortly.

# Posted via web from opportunity__cost

My progress with EZ basic math

While I didn't spend a decent time with the book, the results so far so good. Out of almost 200 questions, I've yellow-marked 4 or 5 solutions, even scoring the 100% correct answers. Those solutions were a little bit easier way comparing to what I chose.

This is quite a nice number to see, however, I was expecting for something more challenging. It's easy to be a smart guy when you're facing very basic problems, isn't it? :) I'm starting to think that getting a basic math workbook was not so good idea. I should start from advanced one. However, I'm not going to drop out now, and I'm going to complete it.

# Posted via email from opportunity__cost

Sentence Correction freaks me out

Out of 113 question I'm scoring barely 60% correctly. This is a total crash. I'm wasted.

Is it supposed to be that tough? I guess it's not tough for the most of natives, but what about not-native ones, like me? I don't have an academic experience in US.

While my math score is running high 80% - low 90%, and both Reading Comprehension and Critical Reasoning sections don't fall down the high 70% (what does, frankly speaking, suck too), Sentence Correction is a disaster.

I do have the 4th edition of Kaplan's Sentence Correction already. I heard a lot of positives about this book and hopefully it's suitable for non-native speakers, like I am. I'll do my best to spend the most quality time on it, to make sure I can improve my score and get to at least 80%'s. I'll let you know how it works out.

Okay, now I'm planning to get back to EZ solutions set of two math workbooks. While I think it's getting easier to me, I still want to make sure that I can get a solid 90%'s percentage on sample questions, so these two books might help me.

The rest is Sentence Correction one (ouch!) and that's it. I'm planning to run a few full-time sample tests and schedule a date.

See you soon.

# Posted via email from opportunity__cost

Crownless watches

Oops, every time when I'm thinking that I've found the most rare crown position, I'm about to discover one more pearl in the sand.

And today I'd like to tell you about crown-less watches. No, not like quartz ones without crown, but mechanical ones without crown. At all.

No crown. While it might be not so rare design approach nowadays -- frankly speaking I never looked into it -- it probably still pretty hard to spot around. A good and descriptive representative in this group would be a Hardwood watches, that started in early 1920's. They got rid of crown at all, using the kinetic energy of the wrist for winding and using a rotating bezel as a setting mechanism. I believe all of the Hardwood watches are using the same design principle, but I'd like mention the Hardwood Steel 516.10.11 here.

- Hardwood Steel

Hopefully, this one is not the end of my challenge, but just a start of hunting down the rare and unusual crown positions. :)

See the complete list of crowns on watches here in my blog.

Crowns and the power of community

Since I wrote the first blog post about crowns on watches, even despite on a very short period passed, I discovered many more different models of watches, that utilize the unusual position of a crown.

Community rocks.

Even my recent blog post about 8 o'clock watches, which I thought to be a "steal", can be appended today by one more sample.

8 o'clock. One of the pretty mature examples is Citizen Promaster. I think there are several models featuring the 8 o'clock crown, but this particular one is NY0054-04EB and it's pretty inexpensive.

- Citizen Promaster


So as for now I pretty much nailed down my list to all positions, but 5 & 7 and 1 & 11. While I'm starting to think that there is a reason for that -- placing a crown there will disturb either side of the lug, so why bother? -- it makes my challenge even more exciting to hunt them down.

Stay with me. ;)

See the complete list of crowns on watches here in my blog.

Poor scores and everything else

Well, I took my chance to complete the quantitative section of the sample exam section from Kaplan's book. Frankly speaking, I was planning to get at least low 80%'s, however, I failed, and got higher 50%s.

I just missed the huge block of consecutive questions. They don't look similar for me, but I missed literally all of them. Some of them are careless ones, but speaking about other ones I remember being rather confident about. They definitely weren't the fast-answer-ones, but I thought that I took my time and getting really close. I was pretty wrong.

Pages 438-442 are really interesting from the standpoint of calculating of your score and getting to idea what GMAT score does it relate to. While I understand that it's a rough estimation, at least it's something to operate, right?

According to that table, I can allow myself less then 10% of wrong answers in the verbal section still to get close to 700's score. I'm not sure I can make it, I think the best I can do is 20% of wrong ones, but still it's a good food for thoughts and work on my skills.

On the other note, I'm helping a friend of mine with her car over the last several days. It's about 7 years old and rarely driven, mostly on short distances, pretty well cared, with no too much enthusiasm about though. ;) But they don't drive too far, so they don't really need an everyday-ready-for-a-ride one.

As everybody knows already, shit happens. It happen the day when my friend planned a long run and something went just wrong. As we figured out it was a crankshaft sensor. And while this is not a complete failure, the car just goes into some kind of emergency loop and keep on low rpm's, but you can still drive at 70-80 mph on the freeway to get to the service.

Whatever, it happens Sunday evening. The craziest thing is that in the capital of California -- Sacramento -- in the country that has so many cars around -- there is no 24x7 car service to get the car fixed. You just supposed to stay until Monday, wait for the part to arrive (an extra 24 hours!), and then, maybe, get it fixed. That's a freaking startup idea here. Get those services, get a Web locator for them and you are a) saving money b) saving nervous system which goes nuts when something is wrong, but you have no idea what and what to do now.

I had many different cars in Ukraine. I think my youngest one was a brand new (pretty big failure ;), the oldest one was dated 1993 in 2004 I guess. Yes, 10-years-old cars can be a headache. However, the driving conditions were way different those days.

Here, in US, I had only two cars. One was 3 years old SUV, Mitsubishi Outlander, still on a dealership warranty for 2 or 3 years more (or 30K, whatever comes first), so I cared very little about it. My present one is 2 years old Toyota Prius, but I got it brand new, and it's covered for 7 years by manufacturer, unless I will keep my driving habits and keep increasing mileage up (I have a warranty cap at 100K miles).

Anyway, all I want to say that sometimes the car that is over 7 years old might be a more expensive investment, then getting a new one. Typically, I think that an average working family get allow themselves to get a new car every 5 years. Keep it less luxurious if it's too expensive, but get a new one.

A friend of mine has already wasted $1.2K for servicing her 7 years old car (damn, it doesn't sound old, does it?) and nobody knows what's coming next. And this could be money for a down payment for a new car.

Gyms

I just got back from my first day (of the 14 days free trial) at 24 hour fitness in Millbrae. Yes, the one which is Super Sport.

Likely, I wasn't given a hard time by the sales guy (actually, sales gal), but it doesn't change much. Whatever happens, I'm not going to waste fifty something a month for the gym which is one third of LA Fitness in Pasadena.

I can get the same shit at any regular 24 hour fitness gym (Daly City, San Mateo or Pacifica's one), paying as little as $10-20/month. Yes, the regular gyms are about 5 miles away from my place, while this one is just a mile or even less. This doesn't change anything.

The gym is fine, but crowded. About 80-90% of it was taken. Well, yeah, I know the timing wasn't good -- I've got there around 6pm and stayed for an hour - an hour and a half. However, still not nice to see in the gym you're paying high fifty for.

The equipment is good enough, pretty new (I believe two to three years old), about one fifth of cardio machines have got private small LCD TVs with just 5 or 6 channels on: news, sports, new, sport and I guess some entertainment channel, which had some prank show on it. Good enough, but that's it.

I did only cardio today -- haven't been in gym for a while so don't want to wake up tomorrow totally broken. Usually I have about 30 minutes on cardio, and about 30 minutes with 4-5 machines and free weights, closing with 15 minutes on light cardio. (Yes, I'm loosing weight.)

Normally, if I will keep and intensive schedule, I can get 20 pounds less in about 2-3 months. That's my plan for today.

Reading Comprehension

Done with the set of 50 questions quiz on Reading Comprehension.

The questions are okay. I tried to keep 80-90% success rate over the track, however, the uncomfortable place which I used to work at added some discomfort and I missed the set of several questions in the end, getting down to ~75% of correct answers.

I still don't know how will this adjust to a real score. My originally idea was that scoring 65%+ on both verbal and math can be matched to high 600's or low 700's. Never got any confirmation for that, yet. ;)

Overall RC questions come easy when they're talking about something you can absorb (say, business topics), and come pretty bad when they're up to bacterias, molecules or other shit. (I never liked chemistry in school.)

So well, half of the book is done, but I still kind of miss the feeling of learning something new. Just 150 sample questions and that's it. The next part is math, but it feels like it's not going to be any better.

Now off-topic note. I can't stop wondering how low can be the price of vacation booked some time in advance.

The moderate room at South Lake Tahoe, CA in the middle of August could be booked for less then $145/5 weekdays, very close to the lake, cable TV & Internet, microwave & fridge, air conditioning, with pool & SPA on-site and continental breakfast included. Damn, that's hot. The room is good for 2 adults, sharing one king bed. If you're lucky, you might find a deal for two queen size beds for the same price (or close).

To compare, I recently talked to a friend of mine in Ukraine, who was struggling to book a "room" in Crimea (on Azov sea). The owners charged him ~$12/day per person, and the "room" is to be shared between 2 adults, more like a big-box-type-of-container, featuring nothing but two full-sized beds and few steps between them to "get up and out". The luckiest ones will get a fan in the room.

Nice.