Assorted Experience

At some point in your life you may have the mis-fortune to require a financial planner. This is not as great a misfortune as having to require a lawyer, but still ...  One interesting tidbit of information is to inform yourself of the difference between a broker and a fiduciary. The short of it is that: A broker is free to sell you stuff regardless of whether it is financially healthy to you - they are usually paid off commission and that depends on how much stuff they can get you to buy A fiduciary is required to act in your best interests and receive compensation independent of what financial decisions you make. An interesting website is https://brokercheck.finra.org where you can get the employment and educational history of a financial advisor.

As a young man, one of the things I wanted was a powerful home server - running Linux - on which I could create an AI. That desire for having raw computing power under the desk, or in the basement, decreased somewhat with the easy accessibility of servers in the lab or (now) in the office. But a man's heart wants what it wants. I finally found my excuse when the spouse wondered out loud that, wouldn't it be wonderful if we could have multiple speakers at different parts of the house and we could stream our music collection to which ever set of speakers we wanted, especially a wireless speaker placed outside on the patio, for parties? You don't need to ask me twice.  An email sent to a list where my gaming buddies hang out retrieved a few important keywords: Sonos, Chromecast Audio, Synology and S3 bucket. I had two main aims - find a good home for our photos and, as the spouse wanted, stream music to speakers.  I debated more than you would think before laying o...