Cape Cod 2016 - Part 1

welcome to the cape.....

'playground' beach

playground at school off 28 in yarmouth

Bass River Park / Horsefoot Cove

Bass River Park / Horsefoot Cove

Bass River Park / Horsefoot Cove

Bass River Park / Horsefoot Cove

Gray's Beach

Gray's Beach

Gray's Beach

Gray's Beach

Gray's Beach

Gray's Beach

Gray's Beach

Gray's Beach

'playground ave' playground

mbta costs

4.5 weeks per month
18 days into work per month (wfh friday)
36 rides total into work per month

10 ride zone5 = 85.00
1 ride = 8.50

36 rides per month* $8.50 = $306

vs $291.50 for a month pass

book - little book of common sense investing

 

 
Good book.  Simple advice.  A bit repetitious.  Good references/quotes from other finance folks.  Maybe somewhat biased. 

There are bits that agree with other investment books like "Invest Like a Pro: A 10-Day Investing Course" and "A Beginner's Guide to Investing: How to Grow Your Money the Smart and Easy Way"... and thankfully I haven't noticed any contradictions between them.

There are a few investment managers, of course, who are very good – though in the short run, it’s difficult to determine whether a great record is due to luck or talent. 

Most advisors, however, are far better at generating high fees than they are at generating high returns.

Trying to beat the stock market is theoretically a zero-sum game (for every winner, there must be a loser), but after the substantial costs of investing are deducted, it becomes a loser’s game. 

The simplest and most efficient investment strategy is to buy and hold all of the nation’s publicly held businesses at very low cost.  The classic index fund that owns this market portfolio is the only investment that guarantees you with your fair share of stock market returns. 

The real formula for investment success is to own the entire market, while significantly minimizing the costs of financial intermediation.  That’s what index investing is all about.  And that’s what this book is all about. 

Two main points of the book are:
1. Minimizing fees by utilizing low-cost index funds will almost certainly be more profitable over the long term than actively managed funds.  Yearly fees on some of the cheapest index funds are around .1% while actively managed funds usually range from .7% - 2%.

2. Tax minimization is one of the most important factors in investment success.  The best way to minimize taxes is by investing in 401k accounts or Roth IRA accounts.  In taxable accounts, the best way to minimize taxes is to purchase stocks and hold them for decades.  Tax on gains is not paid until stocks are sold.  Holding index funds for very long periods of time is a great strategy in taxable accounts for this reason.
 
There were a ton of big investment folks mentioned in the book which gave me more trust in the advice  (including Benjamin Graham, writer of  'The Intelligent Investor')


*I largely plagiarized summaries of the book and stole good reviews to put this page together 

book - pragmatic programmer

Went through this book.. some good stuff in here. 
Found a quick reference and wanted to stick it here for future reference:

1. Care About Your Craft
   Why spend your life developing software unless you care about doing it well?
2. Think! About Your Work
   Turn off the autopilot and take control. Constantly critique and appraise your work.
3. Provide Options, Don't Make Lame Excuses
   Instead of excuses, provide options. Don't say it can't be done; explain what can be done.
4. Don't Live with Broken Windows
   Fix bad designs, wrong decisions, and poor code when you see them.
5. Be a Catalyst for Change
   You can't force change on people. Instead, show them how the future might be and help them participate in creating it.
6. Remember the Big Picture
   Don't get so engrossed in the details that you forget to check what's happening around you.
7. Make Quality a Requirements Issue
   Involve your users in determining the project's real quality requirements.
8. Invest Regularly in Your Knowledge Portfolio
   Make learning a habit.
9. Critically Analyze What You Read and Hear
   Don't be swayed by vendors, media hype, or dogma. Analyze information in terms of you and your project.
10. It's Both What You Say and the Way You Say It
    There's no point in having great ideas if you don't communicate them effectively.
11. DRY – Don't Repeat Yourself
    Every piece of knowledge must have a single, unambiguous, authoritative representation within a system.
12. Make It Easy to Reuse
    If it's easy to reuse, people will. Create an environment that supports reuse.
13. Eliminate Effects Between Unrelated Things
    Design components that are self-contained. independent, and have a single, well-defined purpose.
14. There Are No Final Decisions
    No decision is cast in stone. Instead, consider each as being written in the sand at the beach, and plan for change.
15. Use Tracer Bullets to Find the Target
    Tracer bullets let you home in on your target by trying things and seeing how close they land.
16. Prototype to Learn
    Prototyping is a learning experience. Its value lies not in the code you produce, but in the lessons you learn.
17. Program Close to the Problem Domain
    Design and code in your user's language.
18. Estimate to Avoid Surprises
    Estimate before you start. You'll spot potential problems up front.
19. Iterate the Schedule with the Code
    Use experience you gain as you implement to refine the project time scales.
20. Keep Knowledge in Plain Text
    Plain text won't become obsolete. It helps leverage your work and simplifies debugging and testing.
21. Use the Power of Command Shells
    Use the shell when graphical user interfaces don't cut it.
22. Use a Single Editor Well
    The editor should be an extension of your hand; make sure your editor is configurable, extensible, and programmable.
23. Always Use Source Code Control
    Source code control is a time machine for your work – you can go back.
24. Fix the Problem, Not the Blame
    It doesn't really matter whether the bug is your fault or someone else's – it is still your problem, and it still needs to be fixed.
25. Don't Panic When Debugging
    Take a deep breath and THINK! about what could be causing the bug.
26. "select" Isn't Broken.
    It is rare to find a bug in the OS or the compiler, or even a third-party product or library. The bug is most likely in the application.
27. Don't Assume It – Prove It
    Prove your assumptions in the actual environment – with real data and boundary conditions.
28. Learn a Text Manipulation Language.
    You spend a large part of each day working with text. Why not have the computer do some of it for you?
29. Write Code That Writes Code
    Code generators increase your productivity and help avoid duplication.
30. You Can't Write Perfect Software
    Software can't be perfect. Protect your code and users from the inevitable errors.
31. Design with Contracts
    Use contracts to document and verify that code does no more and no less than it claims to do.
32. Crash Early
    A dead program normally does a lot less damage than a crippled one.
33. Use Assertions to Prevent the Impossible
    Assertions validate your assumptions. Use them to protect your code from an uncertain world.
34. Use Exceptions for Exceptional Problems
    Exceptions can suffer from all the readability and maintainability problems of classic spaghetti code. Reserve exceptions for exceptional things.
35. Finish What You Start
    Where possible, the routine or object that allocates a resource should be responsible for deallocating it.
36. Minimize Coupling Between Modules
    Avoid coupling by writing "shy" code and applying the Law of Demeter.
37. Configure, Don't Integrate
    Implement technology choices for an application as configuration options, not through integration or engineering.
38. Put Abstractions in Code, Details in Metadata
    Program for the general case, and put the specifics outside the compiled code base.
39. Analyze Workflow to Improve Concurrency
    Exploit concurrency in your user's workflow.
40. Design Using Services
    Design in terms of services – independent, concurrent objects behind well-defined, consistent interfaces.
41. Always Design for Concurrency
    Allow for concurrency, and you'll design cleaner interfaces with fewer assumptions.
42. Separate Views from Models
    Gain flexibility at low cost by designing your application in terms of models and views.
43. Use Blackboards to Coordinate Workflow
    Use blackboards to coordinate disparate facts and agents, while maintaining independence and isolation among participants.
44. Don't Program by Coincidence
    Rely only on reliable things. Beware of accidental complexity, and don't confuse a happy coincidence with a purposeful plan.
45. Estimate the Order of Your Algorithms
    Get a feel for how long things are likely to take before you write code.
46. Test Your Estimates
    Mathematical analysis of algorithms doesn't tell you everything. Try timing your code in its target environment.
47. Refactor Early, Refactor Often
    Just as you might weed and rearrange a garden, rewrite, rework, and re-architect code when it needs it. Fix the root of the problem.
48. Design to Test
    Start thinking about testing before you write a line of code.
49. Test Your Software, or Your Users Will
    Test ruthlessly. Don't make your users find bugs for you.
50. Don't Use Wizard Code You Don't Understand
    Wizards can generate reams of code. Make sure you understand all of it before you incorporate it into your project.
51. Don't Gather Requirements – Dig for Them
    Requirements rarely lie on the surface. They're buried deep beneath layers of assumptions, misconceptions, and politics.
52. Work With a User to Think Like a User
    It's the best way to gain insight into how the system will really be used.
53. Abstractions Live Longer than Details
    Invest in the abstraction, not the implementation. Abstractions can survive the barrage of changes from different implementations and new technologies.
54. Use a Project Glossary
    Create and maintain a single source of all the specific terms and vocabulary for a project.
55. Don't Think Outside the Box – Find the Box
    When faced with an impossible problem, identify the real constraints. Ask yourself: "Does it have to be done this way? Does it have to be done at all?"
56. Start When You're Ready.
    You've been building experience all your life. Don't ignore niggling doubts.
57. Some Things Are Better Done than Described
    Don't fall into the specification spiral – at some point you need to start coding.
58. Don't Be a Slave to Formal Methods.
    Don't blindly adopt any technique without putting it into the context of your development practices and capabilities.
59. Costly Tools Don't Produce Better Designs
    Beware of vendor hype, industry dogma, and the aura of the price tag. Judge tools on their merits.
60. Organize Teams Around Functionality
    Don't separate designers from coders, testers from data modelers. Build teams the way you build code.
61. Don't Use Manual Procedures
    A shell script or batch file will execute the same instructions, in the same order, time after time.
62. Test Early. Test Often. Test Automatically
    Tests that run with every build are much more effective than test plans that sit on a shelf.
63. Coding Ain't Done 'Til All the Tests Run
    'Nuff said.
64. Use Saboteurs to Test Your Testing
    Introduce bugs on purpose in a separate copy of the source to verify that testing will catch them.
65. Test State Coverage, Not Code Coverage
    Identify and test significant program states. Just testing lines of code isn't enough.
66. Find Bugs Once
    Once a human tester finds a bug, it should be the last time a human tester finds that bug. Automatic tests should check for it from then on.
67. English is Just a Programming Language
    Write documents as you would write code: honor the DRY principle, use metadata, MVC, automatic generation, and so on.
68. Build Documentation In, Don't Bolt It On
    Documentation created separately from code is less likely to be correct and up to date.
69. Gently Exceed Your Users' Expectations
    Come to understand your users' expectations, then deliver just that little bit more.
70. Sign Your Work
    Craftsmen of an earlier age were proud to sign their work. You should be, too. 

references:
http://blog.codinghorror.com/a-pragmatic-quick-reference/ 

book - clean code

This book was fantastic. Applicable to all programming languages.


Chapter 1: Clean Code
    There Will Be Code
    Bad Code
    The Total Cost of Owning a Mess
    The Grand Redesign in the Sky
    Attitude
    The Primal Conundrum
    The Art of Clean Code?
    What Is Clean Code?
    Schools of Thought
    We Are Authors
    The Boy Scout Rule
    Prequel and Principles
    Conclusion
    Bibliography
Chapter 2: Meaningful Names
    Introduction
    Use Intention-Revealing Names
    Avoid Disinformation
    Make Meaningful Distinctions
    Use Pronounceable Names
    Use Searchable Names
    Avoid Encodings
    Hungarian Notation
    Member Prefixes
    Interfaces and Implementations
    Avoid Mental Mapping
    Class Names
    Method Names
    Don’t Be Cute
    Pick One Word per Concept
    Don’t Pun
    Use Solution Domain Names
    Use Problem Domain Names
    Add Meaningful Context
    Don’t Add Gratuitous Context
    Final Words
Chapter 3: Functions
    Small!
    Blocks and Indenting
    Do One Thing
    Sections within Functions
    One Level of Abstraction per Function
    Reading Code from Top to Bottom: The Stepdown Rule
    Switch Statements
    Use Descriptive Names
    Function Arguments
    Common Monadic Forms
    Flag Arguments
    Dyadic Functions
    Triads
    Argument Objects
    Argument Lists
    Verbs and Keywords
    Have No Side Effects
    Output Arguments
    Command Query Separation
    Prefer Exceptions to Returning Error Codes
    Extract Try/Catch Blocks
    Error Handling Is One Thing
    The Error.java Dependency Magnet
    Don’t Repeat Yourself
    Structured Programming
    How Do You Write Functions Like This?
    Conclusion
    SetupTeardownIncluder
    Bibliography
Chapter 4: Comments
    Comments Do Not Make Up for Bad Code
    Explain Yourself in Code
    Good Comments
    Legal Comments
    Informative Comments
    Explanation of Intent
    Clarification
    Warning of Consequences
    TODO Comments
    Amplification
    Javadocs in Public APIs
    Bad Comments
    Mumbling
    Redundant Comments
    Misleading Comments
    Mandated Comments
    Journal Comments
    Noise Comments
    Scary Noise
    Don’t Use a Comment When You Can Use a Function or a Variable
    Position Markers
    Closing Brace Comments
    Attributions and Bylines
    Commented-Out Code
    HTML Comments
    Nonlocal Information
    Too Much Information
    Inobvious Connection
    Function Headers
    Javadocs in Nonpublic Code
    Example
    Bibliography
Chapter 5: Formatting
    The Purpose of Formatting
    Vertical Formatting
    The Newspaper Metaphor
    Vertical Openness Between Concepts
    Vertical Density
    Vertical Distance
    Vertical Ordering
    Horizontal Formatting
    Horizontal Openness and Density
    Horizontal Alignment
    Indentation
    Dummy Scopes
    Team Rules
    Uncle Bob’s Formatting Rules
Chapter 6: Objects and Data Structures
    Data Abstraction
    Data/Object Anti-Symmetry
    The Law of Demeter
    Train Wrecks
    Hybrids
    Hiding Structure
    Data Transfer Objects
    Active Record
    Conclusion
    Bibliography
Chapter 7: Error Handling
    Use Exceptions Rather Than Return Codes
    Write Your Try-Catch-Finally Statement First
    Use Unchecked Exceptions
    Provide Context with Exceptions
    Define Exception Classes in Terms of a Caller’s Needs
    Define the Normal Flow
    Don’t Return Null
    Don’t Pass Null
    Conclusion
    Bibliography
Chapter 8: Boundaries
    Using Third-Party Code
    Exploring and Learning Boundaries
    Learning log4j
    Learning Tests Are Better Than Free
    Using Code That Does Not Yet Exist
    Clean Boundaries
    Bibliography
Chapter 9: Unit Tests
    The Three Laws of TDD
    Keeping Tests Clean
    Tests Enable the -ilities
    Clean Tests
    Domain-Specific Testing Language
    A Dual Standard
    One Assert per Test
    Single Concept per Test
    F.I.R.S.T.
    Conclusion
    Bibliography
Chapter 10: Classes
    Class Organization
    Encapsulation
    Classes Should Be Small!
    The Single Responsibility Principle
    Cohesion
    Maintaining Cohesion Results in Many Small Classes
    Organizing for Change
    Isolating from Change
    Bibliography
Chapter 11: Systems
    How Would You Build a City?
    Separate Constructing a System from Using It
    Separation of Main
    Factories
    Dependency Injection
    Scaling Up
    Cross-Cutting Concerns
    Java Proxies
    Pure Java AOP Frameworks
    AspectJ Aspects
    Test Drive the System Architecture
    Optimize Decision Making
    Use Standards Wisely, When They Add Demonstrable Value
    Systems Need Domain-Specific Languages
    Conclusion
    Bibliography
Chapter 12: Emergence
    Getting Clean via Emergent Design
    Simple Design Rule 1: Runs All the Tests
    Simple Design Rules 2–4: Refactoring
    No Duplication
    Expressive
    Minimal Classes and Methods
    Conclusion
    Bibliography
Chapter 13: Concurrency
    Why Concurrency?
    Myths and Misconceptions
    Challenges
    Concurrency Defense Principles
    Single Responsibility Principle
    Corollary: Limit the Scope of Data
    Corollary: Use Copies of Data
    Corollary: Threads Should Be as Independent as Possible
    Know Your Library
    Thread-Safe Collections
    Know Your Execution Models
    Producer-Consumer
    Readers-Writers
    Dining Philosophers
    Beware Dependencies Between Synchronized Methods
    Keep Synchronized Sections Small
    Writing Correct Shut-Down Code Is Hard
    Testing Threaded Code
    Treat Spurious Failures as Candidate Threading Issues
    Get Your Nonthreaded Code Working First
    Make Your Threaded Code Pluggable
    Make Your Threaded Code Tunable
    Run with More Threads Than Processors
    Run on Different Platforms
    Instrument Your Code to Try and Force Failures
    Hand-Coded
    Automated
    Conclusion
    Bibliography
Chapter 14: Successive Refinement
    Args Implementation
    How Did I Do This?
    Args: The Rough Draft
    So I Stopped
    On Incrementalism
    String Arguments
    Conclusion
Chapter 15: JUnit Internals
    The JUnit Framework
    Conclusion
Chapter 16: Refactoring SerialDate
    First, Make It Work
    Then Make It Right
    Conclusion
    Bibliography
Chapter 17: Smells and Heuristics
    Comments
    C1: Inappropriate Information
    C2: Obsolete Comment
    C3: Redundant Comment
    C4: Poorly Written Comment
    C5: Commented-Out Code
    Environment
    E1: Build Requires More Than One Step
    E2: Tests Require More Than One Step
    Functions
    F1: Too Many Arguments
    F2: Output Arguments
    F3: Flag Arguments
    F4: Dead Function
    General
    G1: Multiple Languages in One Source File
    G2: Obvious Behavior Is Unimplemented
    G3: Incorrect Behavior at the Boundaries
    G4: Overridden Safeties
    G5: Duplication
    G6: Code at Wrong Level of Abstraction
    G7: Base Classes Depending on Their Derivatives
    G8: Too Much Information
    G9: Dead Code
    G10: Vertical Separation
    G11: Inconsistency
    G12: Clutter
    G13: Artificial Coupling
    G14: Feature Envy
    G15: Selector Arguments
    G16: Obscured Intent
    G17: Misplaced Responsibility
    G18: Inappropriate Static
    G19: Use Explanatory Variables
    G20: Function Names Should Say What They Do
    G21: Understand the Algorithm
    G22: Make Logical Dependencies Physical
    G23: Prefer Polymorphism to If/Else or Switch/Case
    G24: Follow Standard Conventions
    G25: Replace Magic Numbers with Named Constants
    G26: Be Precise
    G27: Structure over Convention
    G28: Encapsulate Conditionals
    G29: Avoid Negative Conditionals
    G30: Functions Should Do One Thing
    G31: Hidden Temporal Couplings
    G32: Don’t Be Arbitrary
    G33: Encapsulate Boundary Conditions
    G34: Functions Should Descend Only One Level of Abstraction
    G35: Keep Configurable Data at High Levels
    G36: Avoid Transitive Navigation
    Java
    J1: Avoid Long Import Lists by Using Wildcards
    J2: Don’t Inherit Constants
    J3: Constants versus Enums
    Names
    N1: Choose Descriptive Names
    N2: Choose Names at the Appropriate Level of Abstraction
    N3: Use Standard Nomenclature Where Possible
    N4: Unambiguous Names
    N5: Use Long Names for Long Scopes
    N6: Avoid Encodings
    N7: Names Should Describe Side-Effects.
    Tests
    T1: Insufficient Tests
    T2: Use a Coverage Tool!
    T3: Don’t Skip Trivial Tests
    T4: An Ignored Test Is a Question about an Ambiguity
    T5: Test Boundary Conditions
    T6: Exhaustively Test Near Bugs
    T7: Patterns of Failure Are Revealing
    T8: Test Coverage Patterns Can Be Revealing
    T9: Tests Should Be Fast
Conclusion
Bibliography
Appendix A: Concurrency II
    Client/Server Example
    The Server
    Adding Threading
    Server Observations
    Conclusion
    Possible Paths of Execution
    Number of Paths
    Digging Deeper
    Conclusion
    Knowing Your Library
    Executor Framework
    Nonblocking Solutions
    Nonthread-Safe Classes
    Dependencies Between Methods Can Break Concurrent Code
    Tolerate the Failure
    Client-Based Locking
    Server-Based Locking
    Increasing Throughput
    Single-Thread Calculation of Throughput
    Multithread Calculation of Throughput
    Deadlock
    Mutual Exclusion
    Lock & Wait
    No Preemption
    Circular Wait
    Breaking Mutual Exclusion
    Breaking Lock & Wait
    Breaking Preemption
    Breaking Circular Wait
    Testing Multithreaded Code
    Tool Support for Testing Thread-Based Code
    Conclusion
    Tutorial: Full Code Examples
    Client/Server Nonthreaded
    Client/Server Using Threads
Appendix B: org.jfree.date.SerialDate
Appendix C: Cross References of Heuristics
Epilogue