The Worst Thing in the World ...worst practices...

Oy! It took me forever (literally a week, and probably 4 different tries) to get the algebra right on this.

Let's say you have Incentive Stock Options.

When you buy stock through the ISO plan (exercise the options), you have to pay some money to the company. You will also probably owe some Alternative Minimum Tax, proportional to the difference between the strike price and the market price when you exercise the option.

Are you bored yet? Probably :) I'm not!

The internet is generally of the opinion that you should sell your ESPP stock as soon as possible, paying the penalty (in extra tax) of a disqualifying distribution.

The calculators I've made so far only show a pretty nice benefit for holding the stock. So why sell as soon as you can?

1. The increased risk that comes from holding the stock for a longer period of time. The increased profit from holding is a small part of the total profit, so a small swing in stock price or a market downturn can wipe that out

Overview

• This one plots the net profit of qualifying vs. disqualifying distributions over a range of sale prices.
• This graph does not consider the annualized return, which is much higher for an immediate disqualifying distribution (you sell right after you buy) than for the corresponding qualifying distribution, assuming you have to hold for 18 months.
• This graph also omits any treatment of the probability of a given sale price given the market price.

Overview

• An ESPP is a benefit plan that allows employees to purchase stock from their company at below market price. Usually income from your paycheck is withheld for a certain period of time (say, 6 months) and then used to buy stock at the end of the period.
• The tax you pay on the profits when you sell the stock depend on how long you hold the stock for.
• To get favorable tax treatment, you have to hold the stock for 2 years after the grant of the ESPP (the start of the withholding period) and 1 year after the stock is

I just got this really brusque email from Barack Obama demanding at least $3. It sort of feels like a neg - do they think I'm going to give them money if they are jerks about it? I mean, being nice, and then begging didn't work, so let's try demanding!

From: Barack Obama
Subject: Hey

Russell --

I need you with me on this one.

Tonight's deadline is our biggest yet, and I need everyone
pitching in.

Give $3 or whatever you can:

https://my.democrats.org/Today1

Let's go,

Barack

So, this is maybe the dumbest thing ever, but since I've been working a lot lately with a large codebase that's new to me and has many odd dependencies I do this a lot:


grep -lr someFunctionName someRepositoryWorkingCopy/


And for every interesting hit, I get about 5 hits from inside a .svn directory which makes it hard to see anything.

So then I have to go back and say


grep -lr someFunctionName someRepositoryWorkingCopy/ | grep -v svn


I have some OCD tendencies, and the primary vehicle for my disorder is pantry management. I really like using everything up. I'm willing to cook and consume occasionally terrible food to make sure ingredients get used within a reasonable timeframe (say, a year for most dry ingredients). Whenever I get a chance to cook in someone else's house, I always go through the whole pantry looking for old stuff that I can cook with or consolidate if I can get away with it.

Oy.

In an htaccess, I wanted to make some internal rewrites for a directory using mod_rewrite

It would have been better to use mod_alias for this, but you can't use Alias in a Directory/htaccess context, and I had no access to the vhost configuration.

Here's the first rewrite I tried:

RewriteRule ^some/path(.*) filesystem/directory$1

This worked and provided an internal rewrite for URLs like
- some/path/something
- some/path/

• A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds
• The consistency of pudding is foolish
• Pudding is a hobgoblin

QED

I've been trying to work up the courage to boo when there's a standing ovation that isn't deserved, but even though the goal is to bring down the average appreciation to something more reasonable it seems mean, and dishonest (unless it really was a bad performance).

My new suggestion is to turn upside in your chair and wave your feet in the air.