Back Up Your Files

I've seen one too many dead hard drives lately and every time someone loses some really important data. So if you haven't had this happen to you yet, I seriously urge you to *please* backup your data. And by backing up, I don't mean copying it to your flash drive/external hard drive and erasing it off your computer. Your flash drive/external hard drive are just as likely to malfunction as the drive on your computer (some may argue that they are more likely to malfunction).

How do I backup my data?

There are a few good options you can choose from.

• External hard drive backup solution - some come with backup software that makes it easy for you to pre-configure which folders/files you want to back up and it does so automatically. If you find one that has RAID functionality, I highly recommend that. RAID allows you to mirror your data on 2 drives. Trust me, the data is worth more than the drives so it's worth it for the added peace of mind. Pros: backups are relatively fast. Cons: if your house burns down, your external hard drive typically burns down with it.
• Online backup solution - there are many online backup solutions available on the market. The one I use is mozy.com and it's pretty easy to use and fairly inexpensive. With this service, your files are typically encrypted and then sent to a data center with proper equipment to keep your data safe. Pros: even if your house burns down, your data is still safe. Cons: typically slow to back up your data as you have to send info over the internet to a data center.

If you choose neither of the above, then at the very least, please make sure your computer is configured to do RAID mirroring.

Using Money to Make Money II

Finally, this is the conclusion from a previous blog on making money with money. Sorry about the wait.

After a series of mishaps with the lender, the lawyer and the broker, I finally got the mortgage arrangement I wanted. I extended my amortization by about 10 years and was able to pocket a cool sum while paying the same P&I each month.

On top of that, my home value went up and I was able to roll the additional equity as a line of credit.

Now I've some investment money at a pretty good rate of < 5%. The next thing is to find investment opportunities where I could comfortably beat 5% as a return on investment. I was toying with the idea of real estate for the longest time but eventually opted not to do real estate for 2 main reasons.

1. It didn't leave me much cash for a rainy day.
2. Based on my calculations, the rental ROI for a downtown property only allowed me to break even.

I have a simplistic way of calculating ROI for rentals:

100% * (Expected Monthly Rent * 11 / Price You Paid for the Property) - Expected Annual Expenses

Expected Monthly Rent is how much you can reasonably charge for your property in order to minimize your likelihood of vacancy. You multiply by 11 because chances are if you get a vacancy, it'll take you 1 month to fill it.

Price You Paid for the Property is exactly that.

Expected Annual Expenses should include things like repairs, maintenance fees, utilities, taxes and cost of borrowing.

I ended up investing half the sum I had in stocks and was able to break even within a couple of months.

How I Lost Weight

Before I begin my rant, I just want to warn that weight loss in itself shouldn't be a goal. It is better to adjust your goals to become more healthy - weight loss simply is a side effect of healthier living.

I was starting to get pretty out of shape round about 2 years ago. As a result I was about 15lbs overweight. In order to try to get back to a healthier lifestyle, I started to run 2 miles 3 times a week to see if I could get back in shape and lose some pounds. I also cut out my intake of soft drinks and sweets. This used to work wonders back when I was a teenager and even into my 20s. Exercise and better eating. A great starter combination toward healthier living.

But somehow, now in my 30s, the running sans-pop lifestyle didn't seem to do the trick. Net weight loss... zero. So now what? Well, it so happens my wife was put on a restrictive diet by her doctor due to allergy complications at around the same time. In support of her, I followed the same eating instructions. Lo and behold, it worked. I lost the 15lbs.

So what was the difference in what I ate before and what I now eat?

I'd say the biggest difference is in the amount of rice. I used to eat roughly a cup of rice per meal. It's now down to a quarter cup. To put that in perspective, it's about 3 spoonfuls. Yep. 3. The amount of meats I eat seems to have doubled. Roughly 6 - 8oz. That's about the size of a steak or two chicken legs. Lastly, way way way more veggies than I've ever eaten. Sorry, no dressing.

The first 10 days or so made me feel hungry all the time. Strangely though, I didn't feel tired or lacking in energy. I still played hockey on a regular basis and wasn't worse for wear. After the 10 days, I got used to the new amount I was eating. Seems my stomach must've shrunk cuz now I felt full way more quickly than before.

One last notable thing. I vary the foods from meal to meal to make sure I get an assortment of nutrients. I also take a multi-vitamin supplement.

At the end of the day, it still boils down to exercise and better eating habits. So much has changed, yet so much has stayed the same.

Caring for the Elderly

As the baby-boomer population ages, caring for the elderly becomes a more useful skill to have. I don't profess to be an expert on this but I read a great article about this very topic. The author summarizes the basic parts of providing care for the elderly to be:

• Provide a home
• Offer legal help and support
• Help with financial responsibilities
• Arrange resident nursing care
• Deal with mental health and medical issues related to aging such as dementia, Alzheimer's, etc.
• Meet their socialization needs
• Help the elderly make decisions, including those about dying, i.e. living wills, durable powers of attorney, etc.

This is a useful list but I think I'd like to add one more thing - quality of life. Now for the most part, we're talking about caring for a loved-one. For these dear people, surely we would want to provide them the most dignified and fun environment to live in spite of their challenges. This means providing an environment that not only provides food and medical care, but also an element of relationships and recreational activities.

Is Shopping over Wi-Fi Safe?

It's very commonplace to see Wi-Fi hot spots in airports and coffee shops throughout North America, but it's even more common to see them in our homes. Many Internet providers are now bundling wireless access points with their service. The broadening availability of wireless internet access raises a very good question: Just how safe is it to surf wirelessly?

As you might have guessed, the answer is "it depends". You'll need to understand a little bit more about Wi-Fi to determine when it's safe to make those Paypal purchases over Wi-Fi.

Wi-Fi is intended to be a cordless substitute connection for computer networks to replace physical network cables. But in order to be a good substitute, Wi-Fi needs to provide the same functionality as a regular network cable. You may find some of these functions rather trivial but they cannot be overlooked. The assumption is that if you trust using physical network cables for your online shopping, then if Wi-Fi can provide all of the same functionality, you should be able to trust it as well.

Here are the functions that a regular network cable provides:

• Signal Connectivity - when you plug a copper wire between computers, you establish an electrical conductive path between them. This path allows the computers to send signals back and forth in the form of electric pulses. Wi-Fi accomplishes this by sending radio waves. Computers can signal to each other using radio signals as a substitute for electric pulses over a wire.
• Point-to-Point Connectivity - a cable has the property of having 2 ends. That means that signals sent at one end of the cable has only one intended recipient - the other end of the cable. The signal is not easily tapped by a 3rd party because of this property. Radio signals, however, do not have this characteristic. When a machine sends out a radio signal, every other machine within an "ear shot" can "hear" that signal. This is what we call a broadcasting signal. Wi-Fi gets around this by employing an addressing system. Many machines may "hear" the signals, but only one machine that recognizes the destination address as its own identifier will "receive" the signal. The other machines are supposed to ignore the signal based on an honour system.
• Cross Signal Protection - if you have 2 separate networks, A and B that are connected internally by wires but are not connected to each other, then the communications within network A will never be heard by network B and vice-versa. In Wi-Fi though, this is a problem. Network A and Network B can hear each others conversations as long as they are within "ear-shot". Wi-Fi implements a network identifier called SSID to get around this. In this example, machines in Network A are configured to listen to the SSID of Network A, while Network B machines are configured to listen to the SSID of Network B. Even though machines in Network B may hear signals from machines in Network A, it will ignore them since they are not configured to listen to that SSID. Once again, this is based on an honour system. SSIDs are mandatory for Wi-Fi access points.
  
• Access Security - when you plug a wire into a computer, you're only able to do it if you have physical access to the computer and the wire. If you don't have physical access, you won't be able to plug it. In Wi-Fi, access security is implemented using some kind of a password (you'll see it as WEP, PSK, etc. on your wireless access point). This feature is optional in Wi-Fi.
  
• Data Transfer Security - To tap the signal from a cable, a deviant literally has to gain physical access to it to make a fork in the cable. Then he/she has to connect the forked cable to a tapping device which can't be too easily done given that you can just follow the wire to find the crook. In Wi-Fi however, tapping is easily done and since addressing is generally done based on an honour system, another mechanism needs to be put in place to ensure that even if the signal is tapped, it is indecipherable. To accomplish this, Wi-Fi employs an encryption mechanism for all transferred data. The password that was used for access security is re-used for this purpose and acts as an encryption key. Encryption works based on probability. The stronger the encryption, the less probable it is for an intruder to decrypt the signals. This feature is optional in Wi-Fi.
  

So "it depends". As you can see, a couple of the security functions of a physical network cable is only optionally available in Wi-Fi. Unless the password and encryption features are used, Wi-Fi is not a good substitute for physical cables. But if they are used, then Wi-Fi is a decent substitute for physical cables.

Two final caveats...

I mentioned earlier that encryption is based on probability. You may have seen things like 64, 128, or 256 bit encryption. This is a measure of the encryption strength. The higher that number, the less likely it is for anyone to decrypt an encrypted message in their lifetime. That's also the reason why websites ask you to have long passwords. The longer the password, the harder it is to guess.

Lastly, encryption comes with a price. There is a processing overhead with having to encrypt and decrypt signals flying back and forth. So, you will notice that your internet connection runs slower over Wi-Fi when you turn on WEP or PSK. That's a trade-off worth taking.