Stove Top Popcorn

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One of my major fitness goals for 2015 was to cut out added sugar whenever possible. It’s a great goal, but it makes finding snacks really difficult. It’s amazing how much added sugar is put into just about every packaged snack food.

One of my favorite snacks is popcorn, but there’s a good chance that packaged popcorn will contain some amounts of sugar, or extra salt to enhance the flavor. So buying in the bag was out. Microwave popcorn is supposedly bad for you, so it got nixed, too. It left hot air and doing it on the stove as the other viable options.

Since I don’t own a hot air popper, it left finding a good stove top recipe as the best alternative. Of course, doing a quick Google search made one easy to find. Thanks to Elise over at Simply Recipes, I discovered a great, and easy to make popcorn recipe.

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Book review: Fluency

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Fluency by Jennifer Foehner WellsEven though one of my major reading themes for 2015 is to stay close to authors I know and like, it’s important to mix in a new author every now and then. I never know when I might stumble across another author to add to my trusted list. So for my most recent book, I decided to stray off the beaten path and read Fluency by Jennifer Foehner Wells. It’s a science fiction book that had shown up numerous times through the Amazon recommendation engine since its release last summer. When it showed up on Amazon’s Daily Deal list near the end of last year, I figured I would get it. It only took 8 months, but I finally got around to reading it.

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Updated Gas vs Oil Prices

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It’s been a frustrating year for gas prices in Southern California (and California in general). While the rest of the country has been paying well under $3/gallon for gas, we’ve been dealing with prices that are around $4/gallon. Some of the so-called reasons for the price disparity are special gas formulations for California, refinery capacity issues, and shortage of raw materials for making California’s special gas.

Either way, it seemed like a good time to update my gas price vs oil price analysis to see if the current price of gas made sense given the drop in oil prices over the last year. Last summer, oil prices were around $100/barrel, and gas prices were around $3.60 – $3.70. This summer, oil prices have been hovering around $50/barrel. In year’s past, when oil has been this price, gas prices have been in the $2.20 – $2.30 range. How does this year compare?

Gas vs Oil Prices - May 2015

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Book review: Same Side Selling – A Radical Approach to Break Through Sales Barriers

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Same Side Selling: A Radical Approach to Break Through Sales Barriers by Jack Quarles and Ian AltmanAs part of running my own company, I’m always looking for ways to improve various pieces of the business and my performance in it. Since one of the most important parts of any business is the sales process, I am constantly on the lookout for resources that will help me to understand the process better and to identify ways to improve it. Amazon must know it too, because their recommendation engine suggested the following to me – Same Side Selling: A Radical Approach to Break Through Sales Barriers by Jack Quarles and Ian Altman. Even though I’m not in love with the Amazon recommendation engine, I went ahead and picked it up.

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The Circle of Life

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2015 Graduation at University of California Davis

On June 13, 2015, Lisa, the family, and I traveled to Davis, CA for to watch our oldest graduate from college. It was nearly 19 years to the day when I graduated from UCLA with my MBA degree. Amanda’s graduation brought back memories of my graduation, and there was one particular moment from that ceremony that I will always remember.

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Book review: Little Brother

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Little Brother by Cory DoctorowThree of my primary criteria for putting books on my 2015 reading list were recommendations from trusted sources, sampling “classic” sci-fi authors, and avoiding book series. Little Brother by Cory Doctorow fit all of these. It was recommended by one of my favorite authors, William Hertling. It is by a renowned sci-fi author. And, although it is the first in a series, it reads perfectly fine as a stand-alone story. Needless to say, I was anxious to pick it up and was happy to see it at the top of my reading list.

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UCSB ECE189 Capstone Project Day – 2015

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ECE189 and ECE188 Capstone Project DayFor the third consecutive year, my good friend Dr. John Johnson invited me to be a judge for the ECE189 Capstone Projects at UCSB. Given my experience the last two years (which I documented here and here), accepting was a no-brainer.

This year, there were only two projects. It was a much smaller number than the last two years, which should have made the judging easier. On the contrary, both projects were so well done, that me and my fellow judges, Shelly Villata and Ali Yousefi, had a very difficult time choosing a winner. Here’s a quick overview of the two projects, and the one we selected as the winner after a lot of deliberation.

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Book review: User Story Mapping – Discover the Whole Story, Build the Right Product

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User Story Mapping by Jeff PattonI am on a quest to continuously improve my understanding of software development, particularly as it applies to agile development practices. I started it by reading one of the classics on software development, The Mythical Man Month, which I found very informative. While good, I wanted something that would help me understand the concepts behind agile software development. I read a couple of books on creating user stories a few months ago, but I still felt like I was missing critical pieces to the puzzle. Then I read User Story Mapping: Discover the Whole Story, Build the Right Product by Jeff Patton.

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What’s your why?

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One of the startup blogs that I follow is written by Sean Murphy, who does sales and business development consulting for startups. A recent post he wrote contained a great passage in response to an article by Morgan Housel titled “I’m Just Now Realizing How Stupid We Are”.

Sean Murphy highlights one of Housel’s lessons learned:

I’ve learned that people’s expectations grow faster than their wealth. The country is richer than it’s ever been. I don’t think it’s as happy as it’s ever been.

and relates it to a startup:

Too many entrepreneurs think that wealth will solve their problems or make up for other shortcomings. I have watched a lot of people get wealthy, very few were improved by it. If they were unhappy or held back by bad habits wealth enabled them to engage in worse behavior and only pointed out the need for personal transformation.

It got me thinking as to why people become entrepreneurs.

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Book review: Sand

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Sand by Hugh HoweyAccording to my standards, I’ve read quite a few books over the last three years. When I decided to increase my rate of reading, I relied a lot on the Amazon recommendation engine (which I pretend to hate) to fill my reading list. That worked well for the first year or so, but this year I decided to populate my reading list as much as possible with books recommended by trusted sources or written by authors I like. Since I really enjoyed the Silo series by Hugh Howey, I decided to add his next book titled Sand to the list.

I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that I approached Sand with a bit of trepidation. The premise of a society mired in dirt and grit didn’t seem like it would make for much of a story. However, since I liked Wool so much, I figured I should give it a shot. Hugh Howey didn’t let me down.

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