Blessed by the Potato

I just found out that there’s a movie version of the Time Traveler’s Wife in the makings. I don’t think I’m going to go see it. It’s not that it’s shaping up to be bad: I don’t see any mention of Joel or Uwe, and the casting looks pretty appropriate. It’s just that it was such a good book. Such a powerful read. I don’t think the movie could ever be that good, that emotionally gripping and wrenching, so it would ultimately be a disappointment.

And if it was that good, I especially wouldn’t want to see it. I’ll recommend that book to just about anyone who will listen, but I don’t want to go through that again. I can’t.

Well, I had a disappointing day: I found out that a large SPSS file I was working on was somehow corrupted or had a data entry error all along. Basically, in a file with something like 8 rows and 500 columns full of data, about 200 rows down the data got all mixed up across the columns. I don’t know yet if it’s gone wrong in a predictable way that can be undone, but even if it has I’m still going to have to manually comb through all of that to make sure it’s right now before I can finish analyzing it and getting a paper out.

It’s a real bitch to have that sort of thing happen, especially after massaging a data set for a while to try to plumb the depths of its secrets. It’s a lot of wasted work. Drawing a simple scatter plot for myself might have been enough to catch the error earlier. Of course, if it wasn’t for the fact that one data point went way above any value that column should have had (a 91 in a column that should only have numbers 1-60 in it), I probably would never have noticed the scrambling in the first place. If the data was a little less screwed up, it might very well have gone on to get published in that state. Then we’d be stuck trying to defend that dirty data (assuming anyone read the paper). It makes me a little afraid working in science knowing how many little unconscious mistakes can potentially go into an experiment to really change things around. The (external) replication step seems even more important now.

I spend my Saturday afternoon at a workshop for science PhD students who may have an interest in working in industry called “Does your science degree prepare you for industrial careers?“. The workshop was to focus on “transferable skills” — that is, when a newly minted science PhD goes to work in industry, they are rarely hired for the specialized knowledge they gained in the course of their thesis. Rather, they are hired on the basis of their transferable skills, which can be applied to other subjects. For example, a PhD student whose thesis was on the migration patterns of unladen european swallows will probably not find a job directly relating to the migration of swallows, but may be able to apply their ability to analyze data, observe group behaviour, or load/unload small birds to other subjects of a more useful nature.

This is all stuff that I pretty much knew already, and that was present in the workshop description. I already knew that if I didn’t go into academia, that I could go do research in industry. But I didn’t know what other options were out there in industry. This workshop was part of a day long conference on teaching, so I thought that it might be useful in pointing out opportunities within industry to apply teaching skills, or where those skills might be valued. Sadly, the workshop seemed to have been designed for morons who didn’t even know that industry existed, because there really wasn’t any information provided beyond what was already in the course description. It was a slow, painful process of saying things like “well, if you do computer simulations of plasma, then you know how to use and program a computer, and that’s a transferable skill. If you volunteered as a lifeguard, then you know first aid and emergency management, and that’s a transferable skill.” I would have to say the workshop seems like it was designed for high school students or undergrads (especially since the pre-printed worksheets had examples like what transferable skills could you say you had from volunteer work or working in a restaurant, or what transferable skills would be gained from classes such as PSY131). It wasn’t the least bit specific to science, to PhD students, or to industry, despite the title and description.

I should have known that nothing good comes from waking up early on a Saturday. Ok, there was one interesting tidbit: a slide about the impressions that business leaders have of people with science PhDs:

Strengths:

• Lateral thinkers
• Problem solvers
• Quick learners
• Communication skills

Weaknesses:

• Fear of risk
• Time is not valued
• Priorities not valued
• No “big picture” perspective
• Poor people skills
• Failure to move beyond personal curiosity
• Poor project management

This was quite interesting to see. They’re the perceptions of business leaders, so it gives PhD students an idea of the sort of biases they have to push through. So rather than being moronic like the facilitator was suggesting and saying things like “my experience in this field shows that I’m a quick learner” or “my thesis work gave me X particular laboratory skill” or “I got a 99% in a class presentation which proves that I’m good at communicating” [I cringed when she suggested to the ESL kids that they say stuff like that in interviews to prove things] — one could leave those things mostly alone unless one really need to sell oneself. There’s a good chance that the business person already thinks some of those things about a PhD student, and instead one must push to show that they have strengths (or do not have weaknesses) in the other areas.

Some of those biases may be inherent to doing a PhD: it’ s a pretty risk-averse and time-wasting path to take. If you had a big picture perspective and good long-term planning and thus knew you wanted to work in industry all along, you probably would have gotten an MSc and a job. So for me, I think that means that I’ve got to focus on building a record of good people skills (d’oh!), project management, and moving beyond personal curiosity to… err… well, what exactly is there beyond personal curiosity? :)

Way back in 2004 or so, my dad bought a new laptop for himself, but found out after getting it home that it was widescreen, and he didn’t like that, so he stuck to his old 4:3 for a while longer. I started using the new laptop, which he was keeping as a spare in case anything happened to his old one (he can’t afford to go a day without a computer). It was a pretty powerful model, a heavy desktop replacement with a P4 3 GHz processor, and a dedicated graphics card (a mobile radeon 9000, pretty crappy by the desktop standards of the time, but a revolution for laptops). That was good enough to play World of Warcraft on, which I did, and slowly the laptop went from something I borrowed from my dad while I was in town visiting to my laptop, which I brought to conferences, presentations, etc.

It’s always been a heavy, hot beast, and any little bit of blockage of the fans (even just a tablecloth on the table) will cause it to overheat and crash — if I’m going to use it for a long period of time, I prop the back up with something to improve airflow. That’s been kind of annoying, but it was something that could be manged. Then it started developing problems with the power supply not working properly. A loose connection of some sort that could be fixed by putting something under the power cord to keep it up at an angle and force a connection. Lately though, that’s been getting harder to accomplish, and it’s also been overheating and crashing more often. While at my parents’ house for the holidays it crashed over a dozen times (and I’m not even gaming on it much!).

I’ve tried to repair the bad power connection before, but after taking apart the case, I found some sort of plastic connection right there that I couldn’t remove, snap our, or unscrew, so I couldn’t even see the board the power connector attaches to, let alone find a way to solder it. For a while I’ve been thinking about just getting a new laptop: while this one is still reasonably powerful, responsive, and all the other things I need in a laptop, it’s just too damned annoying and unpredictable to use. Of course, a new laptop is really expensive (especially if I insist on getting a dedicated graphics card “just in case” I need to game on it), even with the boxing day sales (I’m still looking at about $1000!). That’s a waste of a lot of money, particularly since I only need one for visiting my parents and going to conferences. At my parents, I could set up a desktop somewhere to just check my email, or borrow one of my siblings’ computers. And I could borrow a laptop from Wayfare or even take one of the slow work ones when I have to go to a conference…

Fortunately, I’ve found instructions for repairing this apparently systematic problem with the Toshiba A70’s. I finally got around to doing the repair today, thanks especially to diassembly instructions I found. It took me about 3 hours to do total, with disassembly about 2 hours of that (largely because I was nervous and had never stripped a laptop down that far before). I have to say that having a half dozen Tim Horton’s cups in my office to collect screws was quite handy, since there are at least 4 different kinds of screws in there. The disassembly didn’t go perfectly smoothly: a large number of parts are held together by snap-together plastic, and it’s really held together well. At one point I snapped off a tiny plastic tab trying to free the upper case cover, but I don’t think I could have been any more gentle with it since a lot of pressure seemed to be needed to free pretty much every part, and I scratched up the case a fair bit using a tiny screw driver to pry those parts off. After that, I got really nervous about the part where I have to take the motherboard out of the case to get at the “top” side of the power supply connector. Looking from the exposed/”bottom” part where the solder is, the power supply terminal had been visibly burned out and looked like a poor connection. It tested fine with a multimeter, though I think resistivity was not a problem, but rather intermittent complete contact breaks. Not having much experience with solder I got someone from work to do it, which took him all of 30 seconds. I haven’t had much of a chance to test it, but the power lights did light up immediately after I plugged it in upon reassembly. No jiggling or holding it at weird angles required! Since I didn’t take it out to really clean off the power connector like the instructions above recommend, there’s a good chance this problem will recur. However, I figure I bought myself another year or so, and now that I have experience at it, this process shouldn’t be too bad to repeat in that amount of time. One more round (for a total of 2 extra years) and this beast will be thoroughly obsolete and ready for replacement.

Unfortunately, I didn’t have my camera anywhere handy to document the process. I did learn a bit more about the weight distribution of the computer. I figured it was something like 1/3 battery, 1/3 system case, 1/3 screen, but it’s 8.5 pounds are actually mostly concentrated in the battery and screen. Despite the intense amount of heatsinks and how seemingly strong the case is, the keyboard/motherboard part of the computer is actually fairly light. While I’m not impressed with the crappy power supply connection problem with this laptop, I have to say that I’m glad Toshiba stamped most of the plastic bits beside screw holes indicating what size screw goes where. Very helpful for putting the right screw in the right place when reassembling.

Never try to catch a falling knife.
Never shoot a running horse.

These are two simple sayings that investors use to remind them of how to manage getting into and out of a stock. They essentially boil down to one word: patience. Fortunately dear readers, you have me here to act as a giant stock market nooblar to reinforce the point for you. I’ve made two recent mis-steps in this volatile market.

Never try to catch a falling knife.

My falling knife was Russel Metals (TSE:RUS). As I mentioned earlier, I had accumulated a bit of cash over the last two years or so and didn’t put it to very good work. It was at least in a high interest savings account, but I felt that a good portion of that money could serve me better in the stock market. So I spent a weekend with my dad looking for stocks to buy (and then discovered the magic of low-MER index funds). There were a few that I liked, but except for TD (which I’ll get to), I thought they were all a little too expensive for me. Russel metals in particular was one that both my dad and I liked. It’s a steel company, and they make a variety of steel parts, particularly tubular steel for oil sands projects. Their expertise in rolled steel and proximity to the oil sands lead me to think that they would have a pretty steady business as long as the oil sands kept pumping. They also paid a decent dividend. However, I just didn’t like them at the price they were at (around $26 at the time), and figured (via a valuation calculation that, given my inexperience, might as well have been composed of a dart and price target) that under $24 seemed right to me, so I put in an order at $23.75 and just kept renewing it every few weeks.

I got it at that price not too long ago, in the middle of a steep fall to it’s current price around $20. If I had waited for it to settle in to its current price, I probably would have been a lot happier. Of course, I can’t be too upset: as long as they keep up their dividend, I should make 7% on that money. And I think it’s a good long-term hold, and the day before I got it, it looked like it would take quite a downward spike to hit my bid. Though there are all kinds of ways to feel stupid when a stock you just bought falls over 16% in just a few days. If I had more money to invest, I probably would have bought it in a few separate lots as it was falling.

Never shoot a running horse

TD Bank is perhaps my favourite bank stock. They may not have as much of a dividend as some of the others, but they have such a great retail bank business that always seems to get at least decent word of mouth, combined with the longer hours inherited from Canada Trust. They have a great discount brokerage service, and have been prudent with their US acquisitions; overall it’s a company I feel proud to own a part of (new call centre excepted). Moreover, they managed to sidestep most of the subprime fiasco (I say most because while they may have avoided investing in ABCP, the reasoning goes that there’s a good chance a mortgage given by TD to a perfectly low-risk client could be under a sub-prime second mortgage, and if that client goes into arrears, it’ll hurt TD just as much as if TD made the sub-prime loan in the first place). That, in my mind, makes them a shining beacon of conservative, intelligent management in this sea of financial sector disaster. At $65/share back in November, I thought they were a good bargain and bought some up. It shot up to $75 within two weeks. However, I was in it for the long term, and didn’t end up taking any profit there. I got to watch that high slowly erode as TD was dragged down with the rest of the financial sector, all the way back down to where I bought it. It’s been unusually volatile these last few weeks, and to be honest, I got spooked, particularly when it fell below my supposed more-than-fair buy price. My dad phoned me up and told me to sell it and cut my losses — while TD may be a great bank, possibly the very greatest these days, the market sentiment (or the “macro picture”) just wasn’t behind banks, and TD was going to get killed with the rest.

So I put in a sell order with an ask price of $67/share two days ago, hoping to catch another inexplicable spike back up, and get out with a modest profit to watch from the sidelines. That happened today. I can’t really complain: I made 2% after commissions in just over two months. However, if I had the time to watch it today, I might not have sold so soon into its huge rally at the end of the day — it closed up over $68. By selling while it was in the midst of its upswing (shooting the running horse), I gave up a fairly decent amount of potential profits. Who knows what tomorrow might bring?

Again, it was a bit of a noobish thing to do, but I’m trying not to beat myself up over it too much. While I still like TD for the long-haul, this volatility makes me think I can get it for a better price than I had. So, I take a bit of a profit today, and sit back with my cash and wait for a better buying opportunity.

Speaking of buying opportunities, I bought some more Priszm income fund (TSE:QSR.UN) today. Priszm is an income trust that manages several fast food restaurants, mostly KFC and Pizza Hut locations. They’ve had some financial troubles of late (and I can understand why — when I drive by KFC it’s always empty!), and had to cut their distribution for a few months while they got the company back in order. They had been paying out at about 6% during this time. Now they’ve just announced that the distribution is going back up to $1.20/year. At the current share price of $6, that’s a 20% return! There are some concerns: the TD analyst who did the report felt that $1.20/year might be unsustainable for Priszm, and I can totally see where they’re coming from. However, the distribution the analyst suggests, and that my dad also thinks they’ll settle to in a few more months would still represent about a 15% return. It might be a bit of a troubled company, but I’ll take a gamble on getting 20% on my money, with a decent shot at 15%, and what looks to be a fairly solid floor of 6%. Of course, since it does appear to be higher-risk, I only put about half the money I got back from my TD sale into Priszm. The rest will wait for this volatile market to bring me another buying opportunity.

I don’t know why I’d need a disclaimer about not following my advice in the very post where I talk about the nooblar mistakes I made, but just in case it’s needed: I am not a financial advisor. This is not financial advice. Don’t buy or sell based on my recommendation, and if you do, don’t come whining to me afterward.