Accessing Time Capsule's Network Drive From Vista

Creating a wireless network with Apple Time Capsule is straight forward, but accessing the network storage from Vista can be a bit tricky. In my experience, the capsule doesn't always show up under the Vista network discovery.

Solution:

1. Open the AirPort utility that came with Time Capsule.
2. The name of your Time Capsule will show up in the list on the left (note: this name is different from your wireless ssid). Make sure your Time Capsule is highlighted and click "Manual Setup".
3. Click the "Time Capsule" tab, and look under the "Time Capsule Name" field for a name that ends in ".local".
4. Make note of the text that precedes ".local", you will need this to map your network drive. Go to "Computer" from the Vista start menu.
5. Select "map network drive" from the top toolbar.
6. Type "\\" then click browse (don't type the ".local"!).
7. Select the folder you want to mount and click ok.
8. The capsule will now show up under "Computer" under the "Network Location" tab.

Just Browsing

Today my roommate and I arrived at la guardia where a taxi took us to the first apartment on our list. This was the apartment where the realtor didn't give tours, he just left the key on the doorframe. The location seemed pretty good, it was touching this awesome mexican restaurant called Block Heads (Check out the all day $3.00 margaritas, a very hard-to-beat deal in Manhattan). We go up to the door, and start feeling around the disgusting door frame -- who knows what was up there, we just kept feeling… and nothing. The key wasn't there! I tried calling the landlord with whom I previously spoke, but he did’t answer. The apt had a "renters wanted" sign with a number on it, which I called, but the lady just told me to call the land lord. I left a message, and we started walking to the next location which was around 78th and 2nd.

We called the agent for the exact address and he said he would meet us at the door in about 15 minutes. We weren't waiting long. He walked up, pretty friendly guy, shook our hands and showed us up to the apartment.

The first thing I noted was how big it was. Let me clarify, the apartment was by every definition small, but after reading all of these horror stories about the size of Manhattan apartments, my expectations were very, very low. That being said, we first walked into the living room which had this awesome track lighting and pretty good floor space, enough to have a nice size gathering. One thing I noticed however was the funky shape of the wall. The wall where I would put a couch was flat, but the wall where the tv would go protruded out in a way that would make the tv's location off center with the couch. I'm going off memory right now, but I will have pictures later, I just thought that was really weird.

The bedrooms were roughly the same size, I think the corner one was slightly bigger. They both had very modest closets, but they were definitely livable. I didn't look to much at the kitchen because I don’t really cook, but my roommate wasn't really happy with it, it was pretty small.

The bathroom was definitely the smallest bathroom I have ever seen. The toilet was damn near touching the tub, and the tub was so short it was almost in the shape of a square. I cant complain, ill sacrifice bathroom space for living room space any day of the week.

The landlord said we could apply immediately, and he could have a lease contract available that same day, we said we were interested, but we would have to call him back. He claimed that he had 6 other people scheduled to see the apt in the next couple of days, and warned it may be gone that same day. We just said ok, and told him we would be in touch. We had more places to see...

5 Foot Ceilings??

Sunday night (May 4th) I followed up on some of the inquries I made with various landlords and building managers around Manhattan. One of the listings I was checking out was a two bedroom, no fee apartment, that was walking distance from my job on lexington for only $2300. Most of the apts on Rent Direct New York in my price range were east of 1st avenue. After I told the building manager to set up a viewing for the next day, she mentioned one catch... one of the bedrooms had 5 foot ceilings.

Me: 9 foot?
Manager: no, 5 foot.
Me: So... I cant stand up in the bedroom?
Apt Manager: Correct. Do you still want to see it?

This was a deal breaker for sure. I told her it wouldn’t work, she asked me to clarify my budget, I said 2500. She then mentioned a two bedroom for 2550, in the same building. And this one had a large living room. I told her I would see it. After that, She added that this apt had a fee and required a gauranteer (a co-signer that had to earn about 80x a month's rent per year).

Keep in mind this conversation happened Sunday, my roommate and I were going to be in NY on Monday. Also, the room would be ready for move in that Friday.

To prepare for the application process (you have to apply, which involves a background check, amoung other things), I made sure that I brought my w2 forms, offer letters, and last month's bank statements.

Apartment Listing Sites

Here are some of the apartment listing services I've been using:

Google Housing Search - Given search criteria, Google will display listings of matching properties along with their location on a google map. I'm not sure how google housing compiles its listings, but I did notice quite a few links pointed to hotpads.

hotpads - This site has a lot of listings. while the Google Housing Search includes some hotpads listings, you have to check out this site to see all the listings for your criteria.

Rent Direct - The source for no fee apartments. The listings here will usually put you in contact with the landlord directly, sidestepping the broker and avoiding a potentially deal breaking fee. Brokers fees are usually some percentage (like 15%) of a years rent. So if your apartment costs $2500 a month, 2500 x 12 x .15 = $4500. Going without a broker is a hassle though. Listings change daily, and coordinating apartment viewings with landlords can be tricky, or just awkward. Example:

Me: Hi, Id like to schedule an apartment viewing.

Landlord: Ok, when are you coming? ill put a key on top of the door, just let your self in and look around.

One caveat, Rent Direct is a fee service. I paid half of $269.85, so it was $135 per person.

Craig's List - Some decent listings, but the listing search is lousy compared to the above sites.

Manhattan Apts - An ok listing site, plus it has the option for no fee listings, but when I used it, I only got one result.

Starting tomorrow, I'm going to schedule apartment viewings with all the landlords I can. Hopefully, Ill be able to avoid the broker fee.

Song of the Day: Bold as Love - Jimi Hendrix

Apartment Markets

School's finished. Finishing up my Internship. Time to start looking for an NY place! Lets see if all those manhattan renting horror stories are true...

My roommate and I are flying out of Michigan on the 5th of May, and with the help of brokers and online listings, we're trying to get keys by the 8th of May. I'll document the experience (and the costs!) here. Hopefully this will shed some more light on the Manhattan renting process.

I'm looking for:

• Upper East Side, below 80th street and west of 2nd ave.


• 2 real bedrooms (i.e no rooms converted in to bedrooms)


• Under $2500

Planning on doing this in two trips. Roundtrip flight to get the place. One way to move in.
Round trip flight from Flint to La guardia: $288.99

Song of the day : "The Message" - Nas

Life Imitating Art Imitating...

Ok, its been a while since I last blogged. But I was inspired.

Remeber the "Days Go By" video by Dirty Vegas?

I saw this guy on Main St. that reminded me of that.

Obama's More Perfect Union

Checkout this link to the full video of Obama's groundbreaking speech on Race in America. I actually expected this to be a response to controversial and anti-American remarks by Obama's pastor, but it turned out to be a honest, thoughtful dialog on race in America.

My favorite quote (This was in response to calls to disown his pastor):

"I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother -- a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe."

Fact: people are complicated, that’s just the way the world is. We really get into trouble when we try to reduce people to just good or evil, black or white. Its just not that simple.

This speech is about 40 minutes, but you should definitely watch it in its entirety.

The Video

The Transcript

Index Fun(ds)!

Over time, the stock market has averaged about a 10% return annually.

This is a frequently quoted, often misunderstood, investing cliché. It is, however, valid. I’ve been researching strategies to achieve this great return, and apply it to building long term wealth. Before I get to what I found, I think a more practical way to state the above is:

A well diversified portfolio of stock, historically and in the long-run, averages about a 10% return annually.

Let’s take a closer look at what this means.

Well diversified – you will not get the 10% return in the long run by simply buying popular stocks, or buying stocks that you feel good about. Diversification is choosing stocks in a way that will minimize your exposure to fluctuations in the stock market. Done properly, you can significantly reduce the risk in your portfolio with minimal negative impact to your returns. The math behind this can get complicated, but for now let’s just say it means buying stocks from different companies and different industries.

Historically – The 10% return is based on the average of a long market history. The past is no indicator of the future, but it can often provide clues and trends that we can act on.

The long-run – This implies buying and holding. Yes, this is boring and requires Zen-like discipline, but to fully take advantage of the general upward trend of the markets, you will need stick through the ups and downs. How long is long-run? I would say a period of longer than 10 years. Since in this article I’m stressing long term financial security, I personally would be keeping this investment strategy for 30-plus years. Don’t try to micromanage your portfolio! If you have a long term strategy for investing it is wrong to look at your portfolio at the end of the month (or even worse at the end of day), and compare it to some benchmark index like the Dow Jones or the S&P 500. Short run analysis on long run strategies will yield little helpful results in critiquing your investment strategy. Successful strategic investing is a long-run process.

You may be thinking an easy way to get a long-term diverse portfolio is just to buy a traditional mutual fund, right? Right idea, but the problem with most mutual funds is that they are actively managed. Which means some of your returns will be paying for the large salaries of fund managers and analysts who are constantly buying and selling stocks to try and improve fund performance. Mutual Fund managers very rarely outperform the market over the long run, in fact, partially because of fees, 80% will underperform. Let’s consider another investment strategy.

To avoid the costly mutual fund managers while still retaining the benefits of diversification and time, your best bet would be to buy into an index fund, which is passively managed. An index fund is a special type of mutual fund that allocates stocks in a way that will closely follow the movements of an index like the S&P 500. Because the stocks in an index change very rarely, little management is needed to run them. Minimal management costs mean larger returns for you.

FYI, 10% isn’t the highest return you can expect with the index fund strategy; you can change your expected return based on your risk tolerance. If you want to try for a higher return, you can find indices that will shoot for higher returns at the cost of increased volatility, or risk. The opposite is also true; you can get an index that may only earn a small return, but will provide less risk. If you are still young, you may want to opt for a slightly riskier investment strategy because you will have a longer time to reap the rewards. However, if you are retiring relatively soon, you probably want to protect the money you do have and stick with less risky index funds.

What investment article would be complete with a amazing compound interest example?

Let’s say you are 25 now, and you want to retire at 55. If you start off with $0, and put $10,000 a year into an index fund returning 10%, you will have about 1.8 Million when you retire! Cool right? Want to test out some different possibilities? Here’s a simple calculator to play with:

Compound interest calculator

Further Reading

Index Funds

The S&P 500 Index Fund

Off The Record?

Thanks Facebook, now I can’t run for president.

Done in by a single message. The text wasn't too incriminating, but it was certainly not something I would want to explain during any run for public office. The question I forgot to ask myself --and will not forget again-- was: who can/will be reading this?

The answer? Who knows. But in the worst case, everyone. Lets take a look into what exactly Facebook tracks about users. The following is from the Facebook Privacy Policy.

"When you use Facebook, you may set up your personal profile, form relationships, send messages, perform searches and queries, form groups, set up events, add applications, and transmit information through various channels. We collect this information so that we can provide you the service and offer personalized features. "
http://www.facebook.com/policy.php

Yikes! That means there is some database containing every message I have ever sent. Even worse is Facebook's policy about collecting "[information transmitted] through various channels". This was vaguely worded, but it implies that Facebook can do all sorts of neat stuff, like see which profiles you visit, and how frequently... creepy right?

Ok, enough with the "Big Brother" conspiracy theory BS, let’s get some concrete examples of the costs of wrongly assuming you're have privacy… Take for example:

Exhibit A

Kwame Kilpatrick

Busted, rather dramatically, when his text message history revealed a steamy love affair with his Chief of Staff...

Skip internet privacy, this next guy got caught with the wiretap. Yes, he fell for the oldest trick in the book.

Exhibit B

Eliot Spitzer

Forced to resign after allegedly spending the night with a prostitute. On the day before Valentines! Shame!

Exhibit C

Tony Soprano

My man Tony Soprano wouldn't be setting up shit like that over the phone, no way.

Exhibit D

But this Tony Soprano look-a-like might...