Doug Goldstein

So I opened a Datek account back in 1998 when I was 16. This of course meant that it had to be a custodial account which was fine at the time. When I turned 18, in 2000, I tried to convert the account to an individual account however they didn’t allow you to do that, you had to get something notarized by your custodian and open a new account and transfer the money in, which I did. However somewhere in between there was a dividend of $0.17 paid to my account so it never got closed. I had tried to call them back up to have them fix it but they again wanted a notarized form and for $0.17 it wasn’t worth the stamp, let alone the notarization. I let the account be, I then asked them 2 years later, in 2002, I again asked them to nuke the account since I had a new account and now even had a Roth IRA account with them. They wouldn’t budge without a notarized form, again not worth it. So 3 and half years later I call them up after receiving tax info on my $0.17 and a stack of offers on why to get this new account and that new service from that (this cost them $0.55 in postage to send to me), they put me on hold and got a manager. I politely explained the situation and that if they wanted me to jump through hoops it wouldn’t happen. Just write off the account and close it. I even described the package I held in my hand that cost them $0.55 to send to me. The manager agreed and did a misc charge of $0.17 and closed my account for being at $0. Finally! After 5 years of monthly statements, and 5 years of tax information and countless offers being double mailed to me (once for my regular account and one for this one). Datek, now Ameritrade realized this was stupid and closed the account.

Filed under: Financial
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So I’m getting really annoyed with Gentoo Experimental. The Gentopia overlay has been up and down so often, the connection hasn’t been reliable at all. Now finally it’s suppose to be steady like a rock but many people can’t access it even though I can. So basically this is a plea for help.

Can anyone provide us some reliable hosting?

Filed under: General, Gentopia, Linux
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So just over a week ago was my ex-girlfriend’s 23 birthday, so I decided I would call Jamie and wish her a Happy Birthday. Now I haven’t really blogged too much about her but as many of my friends know, she’s been on my mind a whole lot this past year. I’ve missed her a lot. And I did the real hard thing last year at the end of the Spring semester and told her that she couldn’t come over any more, she couldn’t park at my apartment and have me drive her to class, she couldn’t come over and have lunch with me anymore. It was hard at the time but it really was for the best. In that phone conversation I found out that the guy she started dating a few months back had proposed and she’d accepted. I thought hearing this would upset me but it didn’t upset me like I thought it would. I kept waiting for it to upset me but it never did upset me too much. The best analogy I can think of that compares how I felt is like that of a big thunderstorm banging and clanging around and pouring down rain. Once it passes and it’s getting sunny out again, but in the distance you can still see those dark clouds as they keep passing and still rumbling.

In the end, a part of me will always love her and care about her and want the best for her. She brought a lot of sunshine to my life when we were together and we had a great time together, and I’ll always be grateful for the time we spent together.

Filed under: Personal
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So I had some really crappy college jobs during 2005, I also had to work a lot to be able to pay bills, which resulted in my grades suffering. And 2005 put me deeper in the financial hole then I was in. But in the end it wasn’t as bad as it could have been.

I’ve begun to track my finances much better then I have in the past. I’ve switched to online savings accounts. Specifically HSBC and ING Direct. I personally like ING Direct better then HSBC because of their interface and ease of signing up. For a review of HSBC’s sign up process, check here. Or even for a good comparison between the online saving accounts, check here. In the end I made $65 through bonuses and interest over at ING and about $26 over at HSBC. While the total might not be that great ($91 total), it was money that would have sat idly in a checking account or in a Wachovia Savings account at a measly 0.8% interest which would have netted no where near that total.

I’ve also begun to track my total net worth monthly to see how I’m keeping in line with my spending and savings goals so that should help me out a little bit.

All in all, not much in the positive way of things happened but hopefully I understood and I’m able to improve from there. This posting is part of the goal of improving.

Filed under: Financial
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So the debate began again about creating developer docs. In the past there was an attempt to address this with the Developer Wiki but most of us are probably unaware of that site and it’s problems. Basically the biggest issue is that it’s so tightly locked down it’s nearly useless. Every developer has to request an account and request it of the correct person. I tried and still haven’t gotten an account.

Now in the past I was a supporter of creating a wiki and I still am. My idea is that we create a MediaWiki (I don’t like MoinMoin, sorry) and we give all @gentoo.org addresses access to sign up. It’ll be a quick code hack. If we want to let non-developers have access then we can add them on an individual basis. This allows for faster access, a more communal development model and faster development.

Currently the way to do it is to learn GuideXML and write GuideXML. Emerging some packages to test the GuideXML on your system. Now add a new project to CVS or add your doc to an existing project and commit it. Then you have to wait an hour to see your page show up on Gentoo Web. But it’s not linked from anywhere or searchable. So you somehow have to add links to make it accessible for people. The most common way to do this is to blog about it on Planet Gentoo or write an e-mail to -dev and after a week or so it gets lost in the clutter and it’s gone forever and no one ends up using it. Sure your project can add a link to it but the most important tool is a search feature or an index feature and that’s unavailable. Also the hour delay does not provide a conducive development environment.

That’s why I feel the best approach is to use the Wiki system. Sure some people want to use RST and xmlproc but why reinvent the wheel. Let’s just use a Wiki, it’s simple, easy to use, fast and communal. Detractors to this argument insist on not tying development to a web browser, but let’s face it folks, the end product is a web page. You’re going to have to use a web browser to test it.

Filed under: General, Linux
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I passed on working on some code and ebuilds I needed to work on to go to the mall and buy some clothes at American Eagle and Hollister. Anyway, it was kind of funny to me.

Filed under: General, Personal
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Something that I will always remember and Jenn will never let me forget is the fact that I’m really really really bad at telling when milk is bad. So I got a glass of milk but it was on the expiration date so I wasn’t sure if it was bad. I took a sip and it tasted like milk to me. I asked Jenn if she thought it was bad and she took the glass and took a sip. I have never seen someone run so fast to the sink and start spitting up as quickly as possible. Apparently the milk was bad and I couldn’t tell. I guess my taste buds can’t detect the level of milk spoiledness.

Jenn doesn’t hate me and hasn’t tried to poison me, she just gives me a hardtime about it. So that automatically makes her an awesome roommate. She’s an awesome roommate for a lot of reasons but this is just a funny one.

Filed under: Personal
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So I figured I’d post my New Year’s Resolutions on my blog this year so I can keep going back to them and remember them. Because let’s face it, we all make a list, whether it’s in our head or on an actual piece of paper and a week later we forget about it or we don’t follow half of them. If you don’t do this, then more power to you and you’re an inspriation to me. If you’re like me, then maybe one of your resolutions you should stick to is trying to stick to your other resolutions. Because looking over my 2004 list that I managed to find, “Following your Resolutions List” was on there, and did I? Nope.

The 2006 List:

• Graduate
• Work on resume/website/blog, basically improve possible corporate exposure (because most companies should at the very least punch your name into Google before hiring you)
• Get a decent job I’ll be happy with for now
• Start my business idea and hopefully minimize how long I have to work for someone before I have to just work for myself.
• Stop undervaluing myself
• Start working out again
• Track my finances a lot better then I’ve been doing and include some goals for myself.

Filed under: General, Personal
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