Personal Update

I am amazed how fast December came this year. I hardly remember what I did in November because I was so busy meeting an end of the month deadline at work ... by the way you need go buy something from RugsUSA.com using GoogleCheckout!

Even with the long hours at work I still have had some time to do some fun things. I read some very interesting research related to the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis by Kenneth Iverson. His paper was titled "Notation as a Tool of Thought" and I highly recommend it to anyone interested in the philosophical aspect of linguistics, computer languages, and mathematics.

I also made it through a good part of "Objectivist Epistemology" by Ayn Rand. Atheism not considered, I am able to relate to much of her ideas. I chose this book in particular because I believe it will help me understand my own religious beliefs (this will certainly be a future topic - once I fully understand it myself).

Rebecca and I also decided in November that we were going to convert some of our assets into gold. This decision was based on the declining value of the U.S. Dollar, the intrinsic value of gold, and other factors. We purchased pure gold coins to be stored in a bank deposit box close to home. If anyone is interested in purchasing through Monex please let me know as we get a referral incentive.

Last but not least, I have had the opportunity to start learning about the Spring Framework, which I am using for an application. This application will track the price of gold and other currency real-time and valuate our investment daily based on market prices. It will also send out notifications to us if configurable conditions are triggered. Features will be exposed as web services so it should be easy to tie in other functionality as time goes on. I expect to be completed within the next week or so, I will give an update then.