Music to Check Out

Riot! album by Paramore. There aren't enough good rock groups out there with a female singer, but this one comes through. I really enjoy this album and will have to check out their other one.

Minutes to Midnight album by Linkin Park. Even if you don't like LP, maybe especially if you don't like LP, you should at least find somewhere to listen to this. Apart from one or two songs, it is quite different than their previous work, and I like it. Mr. Hahn spends most of the album on a midi board; I miss him on the turntables, but the album works. The album kind of reminds me of the Silverchair album I discuss below. It has a bit of a pop edge to it, but it doesn't cross over into pop; it manages to accomplish a sound somehow different.

Diorama album by Silverchair. This is an older album that B. turned me on to. It has a really interesting sound, especially listening to it straight through. It's not good driving or exercise music, but it is a fantastic composition for just listening.

World of Monsters album by the Drovers. I've loved this album for a long time, since I helped a coworker at American Airlines find it way back in the 20th century and listened to it myself. They were a sort of celtic rock band from Chicago way back 'in the day'. The last track, When Fortune Turns Her Wheel, is one of my all-time favorites.

How to Save a Life album by the Fray. I know, some of these songs are overplayed, and the sound pretty similar to each other, but there are some gems on it. Hundred is one of my new favorite songs.

It Won't Be Soon Before Long album by Maroon 5. Really only the first 4 or 5 tracks are that good; then it slips into standard top 40 single-mode. You might not like it, but I think the beginning of the album is worth checking out.

Liberation Transmission album by the Lost Prophets. There are a few good songs on here, kind of in the vein of the Fray, in my opinion. (I don't know which came first; I'm just trying to make a comparison.) 4:AM Forever is probably the best track on the album.

Of course, I always have to mention Moxy Früvous. They aren't exactly what most people would like, but their talent, lyrics, humour, and general fun make them great to me and some others.

I'm not sure why I felt like sharing all that, but there you go. Enjoy!

And So It Goes

I know it's been a few weeks since I updated, but my promised motivation was not exactly forthcoming! (I'm lookin' at you, Q! ;) No, James, I don't want you to send me naked pictures when I don't post; the idea is enough motivation as it is.) While things have been happening since I made it back to Austin, actually, since I made it back to Oklahoma in late December, they have not really been the types of things that others would be very interested in; they have been events and actions important to me and advancing my personal goals. I have my classes setup (M-W) and have been working on stuff like my programming project, mentioned earlier. While I am not finished with anything really, I am getting past important milestones; You might say I've been fighting the battles that comprise the war.

I might be moving back into Spanish Trails in a couple of weeks. They have a 1-bedroom that might work and they are willing to do a lease until May 31st, which is great since I don't know where I am going after graduation. I should start working on that ;) Oh well, things always work out in the end, and as the hanging on Brooke's wall taught me to add to the end of that statement, "...if they aren't working out, it's not the end."

Here's my upcoming schedule: I'll be going to Houston from the 6th to the 10th of February, Boston from the 14th to the 19th of February, and D.C. from the 27th of February to the 3rd of March. Jill mentioned a possible trip to Mexico in late February, so I might get to see her from about the 22nd to the 25th. I think I am going to stay in Austin most of the time after that, including for Spring Break; Ken mentioned coming into town for SXSW and I figured I should show him around. That, school, and programming represent my life for the next few months. Come visit me in Austin if you get time!

A Quanting We Will Go (Or what I did on summer break)

It seems a lot of my friends don't really know what it is I do on the side with Stuart and, recently added to the team, Michael. For several years now, Stuart and I have been developing, off and on, an automated forex trading system. Forex is a term for foreign currency exchange, which means we sell one currency and buy another, shifting our assets between the currencies at, hopefully, opportune times. We deal with the Euro/US Dollar (abbreviated to EUR/USD) pair for a few not-to-be-disclosed reasons. So, when the Euro is high relative to the dollar, we exchange it for Dollars; when the Dollar is high relative to the Euro, we exchange it for Euros. The system we are building is automated, so it tracks various points of data and decides whether one of the currencies is high relative to the other and executes trades at the right times. There are, obviously, many pieces of information missing there, but that's the general idea without revealing trade secrets :)

This was one of the projects I took up when I got back from HK, part of the new-Britt system and the mantra 'Make it work.' When I made it back to Stillwater to see Stuart, I kicked this project into high gear after a long hiatus. I've been working on it since the end of December and have made substantial progress on the back-end (that means the programming part of it). Michael joined us a week or two ago, which is fantastic as he is a great programmer and on the short list of intellectual equals ;) His skillset is slightly different than my own or Stuart's, which helps a good deal. Mike and I have rebuilt the code from the ground-up, implementing new features, the ability to add more features in the future, and most importantly, rigorous testing features. Previously, I had to tweak our system and then watch it run on live data throughout the week, looking for patterns and tweaking further. We can now run the program off old data, seeing the results of a week's worth of trading within seconds. The last key part was finished by Mike tonight: charting. Having nigh instantaneous results is fantastic, but it takes me vast quantities of time to go over the data and look for patterns and fixes. When I get up later today, I should be able to do a little bit of programming and then jump right into my real job of quanting (yes, I made up that word).

Mike informed me that the position I filled for the company was officially called a Quantitative Analyst, or Quant. Basically, I look at all the data, find patterns, try to codify them, and then implement them in a program that takes advantage of those patterns. Starting tomorrow, I should be able to run a month's worth of data and then start zooming into various hot points of the month to examine what was happening with the markets and our system at the same time. This should allow me to pinpoint important changes and quickly test them, arriving at a vastly improved system in a fraction of the time. It may sound geeky (and it is), but I am very excited.

That is one of the things I do outside of law school (and law completely). I also write, edit, and project manage games for Wizards of the Coast (Hasbro), but that's ending this summer and was more of a hobby that turned into a job. It also doesn't sound nearly as impressive ;)

Almost 'Home'

Well, I head back to Austin tomorrow. As I have said before, I don't really feel like I have a 'home', more just a temporary living location, but Austin is the closest I have right now. I've been visiting family and friends in Houston, Tulsa, and Stillwater the past two weeks, since I returned from Hong Kong. I look forward to seeing my friends there and settling down for a while, but I still know it's not permanent and I will be moving somewhere else within the year. When that happens, I want to find somewhere to stay for a while; I want a real home for once. I just have to find out where that home is going to be. We'll see how things work out.

And now that I have completed the Trifecta of posts three days in a row, Quinci has to send me naked pictures of herself. MWAHAHAH!

Happy New Year

Just in case you are living on Neptune or some other heavenly body where solar years have a different duration, we are now in the year 2008. If you are completely unfamiliar with the superstitions and traditions of modern culture (perhaps you are an unfrozen, caveman lawyer), you were supposed to do several things on the 1st of January, such as make resolutions you really don't intend to keep and eat black eyed peas.

Personally, I've never been a huge fan of New Year's resolutions. How many people actually keep their resolutions, or make meaningful ones? If you don't have a better reason to change than the fact that it is now time to put the wrong date on all your checks, you are very unlikely to succeed in those changes. And if you do have a better reason, why are you waiting until the first of January to start, you lazy schmuck?

Don't get me wrong, I am an avid fan of personal improvement, especially if it doesn't involve reading a book. Over the past several years, I have spent a good deal of time on introspection and self assessment; I have tried to identify my personal problems and work to correct them. This process I jokingly model in my Britt versioning system. (I am a geek. If you are reading this, that shouldn't surprise you.) Britt 1.0 was way back in the days of yore, the early 90s, when the Wii would have been on Star Trek: the Next Generation, and Rock Band meant Guns N' Roses. Britt 2.0 occupied the latter half of the 1990s and is affectionately referred to as 'Dark Britt' by those in the know. Britt 3.0 and 4.0 only lasted a few years each, from about 2000 to 2003 and 2004 to 2007, respectively. As the 21st and 7/100ths century dawns, it is time to unveil Britt 5.0.

So, given my disdain for New Year's resolutions, how do I justify attempts to change myself at this time? For me, it just so happens that the time to change happens to coincide with the new year. I didn't plan to make changes on the first, nor is it really a sudden change. We are all changing all the time, or should be, and I have been working on some drastic changes consistently over the past five months. I just got back from Hong Kong and have been thinking about some important life choices and one of the final changes will be worked on over the next few months.

I don't really like talking about myself that much, and I adore being vague and mysterious, so I am not going into what changes I have made or intend to make. Suffice to say, I don't know how well this will work, as it involves acting, which has never been my forte. As my friend Jessica A. pointed out, likely correctly, I am scared of it; but, as Mary Schimch suggested, I should do one thing every day that scares me. I don't know exactly why I am scared of acting; I don't know if it is a fear of success, failure, loss of options, or being the cause of an eventual downfall of mankind and rise of a flying monkey empire, but I do recognize that I am scared of action, irrationally, and that I should do something about that.

So, now that I have ridiculed anyone that might possibly answer this question, did any of you make New Year's resolutions? Or do you have any thoughts about what I said above or New Year's resolutions in general?

Home again

I am back in the US, seeing everyone for the holidays, and missing HK and the people I met/know there. I am currently in Stillwater, OK (home of Oklahoma State University). Last night we went to Kyoto, the only (as far as I know) Japanese restaurant in town. Our waitress turned out to be from HK, so I got to talk to her about how much I missed it, how bored I was here, how spread out everything is, how hard it is to get anywhere, and everything else I'm not liking about being home. Unfortunately, she has been away from HK for about 2 years and doesn't miss it too terribly much.

To be honest, I also don't miss the city horribly. It's more that I miss the people so much and don't like it here. On a scale of -10 to 10, I have about a -5 or -6 feeling about being back home or maybe just this part of the country in general, maybe a 4 to 6 feeling about HK, and an 8 or 9 for the people in HK or that I met there. Sure, I'm glad to see the people back home, but I am seeing them about as much as I ever do. There's also the realization that many of the people here I will always be able to see and will continue to see for many years, though it be sporadicly. Many of the people I met in HK I may never see again, or may only see in passing, fleeting, shallow instances.

I think the difference may be that I have had plenty of time with the people at home to develop lasting relationships and for us to really get to know each other; with the people that I met in HK, I have only had enough time to scratch the surface, to get an idea of what might have been or how much I would have enjoyed getting to know them better, and letting them get to know me. Perhaps I will move to HK to work, but even then, the students from HKU are spreading out to their respective cities. No matter where I move to live and work in the future, I will never be able to connect meaningfully with all of them; it is a geographic impossibility. That is probably the hardest part for me. People and relationships are very important to me, though I guess that sounds trite; I am sure almost anyone would say the same thing if they were asked or were thinking about it.

I'm really not sure what to do about it, or if there is anything I can do. I've been thinking about it a little, tangentially, lately. I believe this is going to be one of the important issues I need to solve or address in the next few months, before I determine what I'm going to do with the next few years of my life; that is really still completely open and unclear. Feel free to discuss and help shape the future of Britt ;)