http://mxcl.github.com/homebrew/

The Rails 2.x has felt… hacky to me.  When I’ve looked at some of the code that has been generated, I’ve been turned off by the inline javascript I’ve seen.  I want the code that my framework creates to be extremely clean and standards oriented.  Inline javascript just doesn’t cut it for me.  Another thing that has bugged me is the disregard for other points of view.  In “Agile Web Development with Rails” book I read, the authors decided to denigrate the importance of having a very clean ORM layer because Rails didn’t have it.  It has felt that the Rails core team didn’t really care about correctness, they seemed hacky.  The merb team seemed to care about correctness in implementation which is why they were creating a lightweight, flexible foundation.  Because of this, Rails 3.0 excites me.

I’ve decided to do all my Rails development using 3.0.  I have no plans on releasing my software any time soon, and I really want to use the new bundler and the new routing features.  In order to do this, I want to be able to run multiple versions of Ruby on my machine.  My good friend Andrew Kavanaugh pointed me to RVM (Ruby Version Manager).

RVM Installation

I had no trouble following the directions to install RVM.  It installed without errors.  I encountered an error when I went to install a different Ruby version.  Inside the configure.error.log file, I had this line: “configure: error: C compiler cannot create executables”  Inside the configure.log file, I had “checking whether the C compiler works… no.”   When I upgraded to Snow Leopard, I didn’t upgrade my dev tools.  Once I installed Xcode 3.2.1, I had no problems installing my ruby versions.

RVM Usage

Install a new version of Ruby:

rvm install 1.9.2

List installed versions of Ruby:

rvm list

Change version of Ruby

rvm 1.9.2
rvm system

Change default

rvm 1.9.1 --default
rvm system --default

http://github.com/justinfrench/formtastic

He built the output to be based on a presentation given by Aaron Gustafson

http://github.com/justinfrench/formtastic

I’ve been doing web development for a LONG time so it’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking I know everything there is to know about something as basic as forms.  I’ve learned some really good stuff by Aaron Gustafson’s presentation that I’m going to immediately incorporate into my applications.

What I can tell so far, there are four major financial differences between being an employee and being a self employed individual. These four are health care, retirement, taxes (social security/medicare), and time.  I’m speaking from the perspective of someone who bills by the hour.

Health care is really dependent upon what your employer provides. I can get similar coverage to my old job for roughly the same as what my former employer was providing.  I wasn’t getting fantastic health coverage before though.  Some of the plans with low deductibles are quite expensive to get on your own.  I’m settling on a plan with a $10,000 family max out of pocket plan for around $350/mo for my family of five through Blue Cross.  On the plus side, it is an HSA.  So I can contribute to this account tax free money.  If I don’t use it on health care, it stays in the account.

Retirement is interesting. As an employee, you are limited to a maximum contribution of $16,500. With a SEP, the max you can contribute is 20% of business income up to $45,000. With a solo-401k, you can contribute more than 20% but still with a limit of $45,000.  I wouldn’t reach these maximum contributions in either case, but it is a nice benefit if you are earning lots of money.

A third area is taxes.  I knew that the employer paid the other half of the employment tax. I never really thought about the implications of it.  I didn’t see the actual dollar amount, and it was never reported on any of my W2s.  Employees pay this tax in the form of reduced wages so it is a hidden tax.  Employees only see 7.65% taken out for social security and medicare.  Self-Employed individuals pay 15.3%.  In order to compare your wages as an employee vs your income as a self employed individual, you need to make adjustments.  What this means practically is that you either need to work an extra 3 hours per a 40/hr week at the same pay rate as an employee, or you need to increase your rate by $0.83 for every $10 you were getting paid as an employee.

The fourth area is time.  As a self employed individual, time does indeed equal money.  If I’m not working, I’m not getting paid.  What this means practically is that holidays have a different feel to me.  I am not able to work or bill during a holiday.  It also means that when I take vacations, I am not getting paid.  It means that if a client doesn’t need me for any reason, I’m not getting paid.  If I’m actively seeking out new contracts, I’m not getting paid for this time.  You need to factor in this down time into your bill rate otherwise, you will find yourself making a lot less than you were previously.  The upside to this time factor is that if you are a hard worker, you can work a lot more than 40/hrs a week and can increase your income that way.

The biggest change for me in being self employed is that I love what I do.  I get to work on different and interesting projects.  This is strange, but I no longer am sad it’s monday or happy it’s friday.  This really doesn’t have anything to do with working for myself.  It is entirely dependent on liking what I do.  I am pretty sure I could be just as happy working as an employee if the work was interesting.  I am getting to work on the Blackberry, the iPhone, Windows Mobile.  I am using Java and C#.  The Blackberry project is especially fulfilling.  Because of the Blackberry, the sales team are getting many more opportunities to sell.  I will have directly contributed to increasing the revenue of this company.  I love it!

The key to embedding fonts is to use the @font-face  css rule.

@font-face {
  font-family: "myfontname";
  src: url(myfont.ttf) format("truetype");
}

Once you’ve added this, you can simply use your font as you would any other font.

<p style="font-family:myfontname">My font name looks like this</p>

It is really simple…
EXCEPT

If you happen to choose a free font that is similarly named, you will run into troubles using Google Chrome.  I chose a font called Dakota that is almost identical to Handwriting Dakota on my Mac.  When I installed this font to try it out, my Mac warned me that it was a duplicate font, except the menu tool to remove duplicates was disabled.  No matter what I tried, I could not get it to work in Chrome.  Safari and Firefox both worked just fine.  The only way I could fix it was to edit the font and change the name.  I used the free tool Font Forge to do this.  While I was in the font, I had to fix a bunch of issues with the font and I changed the name to Dakkota.  Once I did that, I got it working in all three browsers on my Mac.

Tomorrow, I’m going to tackle IE and the EOT file format…

Step 1: you -> me  :^)
Step 2: me -> Shawna Rosso (my lovely sister)
Step 3: Shawna -> Ted Mondale (son of former Vice President)
Step 4: Ted -> Walter Mondale (former Vice President)
Step 5: Walter -> Jimmy Carter (former President)
Step 6: Jimmy -> Barack Obama (current President)

So my question is why does VB attract so many BAD developers. Javascript tends to do the same thing.

Why?  You can write really good javascript code.  You can write really good vb code (although it will always be ugly).  I just don’t understand why every vb project I look at appears that 10 year olds wrote it.

Now that I think about this some more, I’ve seen some really really horrible C++ code too.  I’m going to have to think about this one.  I’m just so tired of cleaning up after VB coders.

Gasoline

MPG seems to be the only thing that these articles focus on so let’s start there.  The VOLT is expected to get 230MPG.  The actual MPG is typically 15%-20% less than the reported MPG.  So that 230MPG is actually 195MPG (still awesome).  According to the EPA, the average passenger vehicle is driven about 12,000 miles per year.  So the cost per year of gasoline for the Volt will be (12,000 miles / 195 MPG) * (2.50$ per gallon of gas) = $153/year in gasoline.  Wow.

Like I said, my Dodge Durango is a gas HOG.  I’ve calculated the gas mileage ad I can’t get it above 12MPG.  The cost of gasoline is (12,000 miles / 12 MPG) * ($2.50 per gallon of gas) = $2,500/year in gasoline.  This means over the course of 6 years I will spend $15,000.  Ouch.

Note: I put closer to 8,000miles/year on my Durango,  so it really doesn’t cost me that much in fuel.

New vs. Used

According to J.D. Power, the average length of time a consumer owns a vehicle is 6 years. In order to compare these vehicles to see which one is cheaper, we will assume we sell this vehicle at the end of 6 years. According to consumer reports, the depreciation on a car for the first 6 years is roughly 70%. This means six years later, your new car will be worth 30% of what you paid for it.

The cost of a new Chevy Volt will be $40,000. 6 years later, it will be worth $12,000. That is a decrease in net worth of $28,000. Used Dodge Durango with 120,000 miles = $4,280. For this comparison, we will just assume you have to pay someone $50 to haul it away after 6 years. Not really fair since I’m still driving a 1994 Pontiac Grand Am and it has some value.

This right here is the real issue with the ownership costs of the Chevy Volt.  It isn’t specific to the Volt.  Really, this article boils down to new vs. used.  This right here is why if you are trying to save money, you should go out and buy a cheap gas gusling clunker instead of that shiny new hybrid.

Maintenance

Cars break down.  Older cars break down more often than newer cars.  I have no idea how to even quantify this.  My Durango doesn’t really go into the shop very often.  My 15 year old Grand Am goes in more regularly so I will use it to estimate my future Durango costs.  My Grand Am seems to break down a few times a year now and cost me $300-500 each time.  I am just going to use $1,000/year as a guess.

According to Consumer reports, repairs cost about 4% of the total cost of ownership in new cars for the first five years so I’m just going to use 4% of the depreciation of the vehicle. This works out to be about $1,120 over the course of six years. The actual repair costs will probably be higher since consumer reports only measured a five year period.

Sales Tax

Consumer Reports used national average of 4.9% to determine the sales tax in their evaluation of total cost of ownership.  I’ll do the same.  Chevy Volt sales tax is $1,932.  Sales tax on a used Durango is $206.

Interest on loan

I don’t think it’s a good idea to borrow money for a car, but that is a different post.  Since most Americans have car payments, I will factor it into this discussion.

According to J.D. Power, the average length of loan for a car is 5 years. Consumer reports used a 15% down payment and 6.8% interest rate to determine interest on the loan.  Using these numbers, the interest for a $40,000 Chevy Volt is $6,200.  Interest on the Durango would be $660.

Government subsities

The government will give you some of my money to buy yourself a new Volt.  They will give you $7,500 in fact.

Insurance, Registration Fees

All these would be higher for a new car. I’m feeling lazy so I’ll be generous and assume they are equal. Just keep in mind that insurance alone would be quite a bit more for a $40,000 car vs. a $4,000 car.

Adding it all up

Conclusion
Don’t buy a brand new hybrid expecting to save money in the long run. The math does not work. If you want to buy a hybrid for enviornmental concerns, then by all means. But don’t try to justify your purchase as a cheaper alternative. I used one of the worst possible vehicle to compare. I gave the hybrid every benefit and made assumptions in it’s favor. I used the government subsidy. I did all these things and the Durango still beat the Volt by $1,000. If I used a 1999 Pontiac Grand Am for comparison, it would be $15,000 cheaper than the Volt over 6 years.

Just to be clear, I’m not against hybrid vehicles and I want our country to be cleaner and free from dependence on foreign oil. I just don’t appreciate articles that distort the financial picture of these vehicles like the USA Today did claiming $0.03/mile. The total cost of the Volt is much much higher. Of course, if they factored in the actual cost to secure foreign oil, this would be a different article.

I wrote my first program as an 8 year old in 1980 after my dad gave me my first computer.  It was the Commodore Vic 20.  The 20 stood for 20kilobytes of RAM.  My new MacBook Pro has 2,000,000 times more RAM.  I saved my first program to a cassette tape.  I felt so powerful with my little 10 line basic program.  It wasn’t until 1990 that I truly fell in love with programming using Turbo Pascal 5.5.   I loved it because it was Object Oriented and I just “got it”.  In 1995 I became obsessed with the thought that I could put web pages on the school network and anybody in the world could see them.  In 1996, I learned Perl so I could write my first CGI programs.  I did this while I was supposed to be learning scheme I think.  In 1999, I fell in love with Java because it made programming for the Internet easy and object oriented.  In 2003 I learned C# because it was like java but you could write Windows apps.  In every single one of these situations, I learned the language just for the love of coding.

I met some passionate coders at the Startup Weekend in Boulder.  I went hoping to meet people who love technology and I was not disappointed.  There were lots of folks with passion.  Corey Donohoe especially reminded me of the passion I used to have.  Since I’m most passionate when I’m learning new things, I’ve decided to learn a new (to me) operating system, new (to me) programming languages, and I’ll even use technologies I previously thought were kinda dumb (twitter, facebook, etc).  During the weekend we were also encouraged to start a blog by Startup Weekend founder, Andrew Hyde .  I’ve toyed with the idea a while, but didn’t really think I had anything worth while to contribute.  Even if what I write has been written somewhere else, at the very least, I will be another entry that will show up in google when other people have problems with code.  Maybe a different perspective on the same solution will help others out.

This will basically chronical my experience as primarily a Windows/Java/C# developer learning all things Mac/Ruby/iPhone.  I’m learning how to use a Mac because they are just so darn pretty.  Well, the real reason is because I want to do mobile development.  Mobile development reminds me of 1995 when I first discovered the web.  And the king of all mobile devices is the iPhone.  Also, I can do blackberry and gphone apps on my Mac using Java.  I can even do windows mobile if I install Windows in a virtual machine on my Mac.  So logically it just makes sense to own a Mac.  Plus, I think the OS is a work of art and it’s past time I learn it.  I want to learn Ruby primarily because the folks I noticed that were most passionate were Ruby coders.  The Ruby website excites me when I read things like: “Its fans call it a beautiful, artful language.”   The Ruby on Rails website excites me with these statements: “optimized for developer happiness” and “lets you write beautiful code”.  I can’t wait to get started.