Feel bad for GM, I couldn't make this up

I went researching to Chevy Volt to find some facts to offset my calculator below. I did get lots of feedback about people thinking that price is not the only factor here. So when I went to chevy to look at ‘affordability’ I found this. Check the URL [caption id=“attachment_229” align=“aligncenter” width=“441” caption=“GM Working on affordability”][/caption]

August 12, 2009 · 1 min · Aaron Held

ROI of MPG

I’ve been car shopping lately and thinking about what mileage I need in the new vehicle. The cars that I like and are more fun to drive hover just under 30mpg while the 35+ models tend to be a bit mushy on the gas (or tiny) Today I came across this: http://www.comcast.net/articles/finance/20090811/US.GM.Volt.Mileage/ GM is unveiling a car that get 230MPG in the city! I thought that was awesome until I came across 3 facts...

August 12, 2009 · 1 min · Aaron Held

Specialization is for Insects part II

Came across the Heinlein quote again today: http://personalmba.com/core-human-skills this time in the context of a “Business” professional. There is another point made in the blog post about how to be successful. You can either be an expert in a narrow field (top 1%) or be very good (top 25%) in multiple fields. The author calls these “Core Human Skills” This is worth a read, and I will definitely abstract these concepts out in my interview process....

July 20, 2009 · 1 min · Aaron Held

Project Management is critical for Useless projects

This about this: If you have a project with an estimated cost of $1MM and you expect a return of $1.1MM then strict governance and process controls are critical to success. A variance of 10% will take you from profitability to a loss. If you have a project with the same estimated $1MM cost but an expected return of $50MM then project management is less critical. a 10% variance will not really matter in the big picture....

July 17, 2009 · 1 min · Aaron Held

Designing a new Infrastructure is like buying a new car

Because I happen to be both buying a new car and deploying new infrastructure the realization dawned upon me about how similar these two activities are. You start the investigation with some preconceived “gut-level” notions. code: Multiprocess distributed job engine is what I need car : I want a Mazda 3 with “Zoom Zoom” Everybody has a story about why your choice is bad code: “In my last job I used a python-C++ wrapper from vcron” car : My cousin"s friends brother had a mazda and the engine fell out on 95...

June 17, 2009 · 3 min · Aaron Held