Not your normal financial advice

Here's a great essay on "financial advice", although it isn't the normal "set a budget" and "spend wisely" that you normally read and instead focuses on how you manage your time (which has an indirect impact on your finances).  I know in the world of Facebook, Twitter, smart phones, and the internet I've definitely struggled with balancing everything with things that add value to my life and aren't just time wasters.  Where can you trim your "budget"? Read here

Some of my favorites:

• cut back on TV - I dumped cable and it has been awesome
• sleep - I think Saturday and Sunday mornings are two of my favorite times of the week.  Getting out and enjoying Boston before everyone else stirs I've found to be really peaceful and relaxing
• shopping - Amazon Prime for the win!  Boston Organics bi-monthly deliveries are also really tasty and excellent time savers
• Exercising- such a great way to clear your mind and ironically get more energy for the rest of the day
• Building relationships - my time on Facebook is mostly concentrated on friends that I'm close with and see regularly, not the random people from when I was 8 that I will never see again and it adds no value to know what they had for dinner the night before

What every guy wants

Someone once joked to me that everything you own takes batteries or plugs in.  They were right of course, except for my toilet.  Now that can change, although I can only imagine how expensive this is.  Check out the Kohler Numi toilet.  It includes features such as a full touch screen remote, self-cleaning wand, automatic opening/flushing/closing, heated seat, ambient lighting, speakers, water conservation features, and a bidet with a precision air dryer.  Where do I sign up?

Awesome ski trip out to Vail and Beaver Creek

I've always said, a winter isn't a real winter until I take a ski trip out West.  This year I really lucked out, not only did I get to head to Vail Mountain and Beaver Creek in Colorado for a few days skiing with some awesome friends, but I also was there for probably 2 or 3 of the best days they have experienced all season. Fresh powder on Day 1 at Beaver Creek meant that I spent most of the morning remembering how to ski powder, as it had been a few years. By the afternoon I was loving the glades with all of the hidden powder stashes.

Day 2 at Vail meant yet more fresh powder and an unbelievable day at an amazing mountain.    Favorite trails of the day:  Lover's Leap, the Glades between Cloud Nine and Steep and Deep (a completely deserted paradise in the trees), and the Shangri-La Glade.  For those that have never skied at Vail, picture this:  the front side of the mountain is 7 miles long.  You then take a lift up the front side and you have the entire backside of the mountain to ski.  Ski down the back bowls and take another lift up the next mountain (BlueSky).  For those of you on the East Coast that think Killington is big, Vail is 5,000+ acres compared to less than 700 for Killington.  WOW.  Even the trail map has to be split up into essentially three maps:  front side map and the backside/Bluesky map.

Day 3 was back at Beaver Creek.  No fresh powder today, but I got up early and hit some perfect groomed trails.  It was so smooth that I'm pretty sure I hit speeds I've never hit before on skis.  Once the crowds started to arrive I headed to the Rose Bowl and started to do laps on the Stone Creek Chutes.  The snow was amazing and this was some of the steepest and most challenging terrain I've ever skied down.  It was labeled as "Extreme Terrain", one step past a double diamond.  I liked the sign that described it as "any place within the ski area boundary that contains cliffs with a minimum twenty foot rise over a fifteen foot run, and slopes with a minimum fifty degree average pitch over a one-hundred foot run".  Unfortunately the pictures just don't do it justice, but when every turn you take snow goes whizzing by you down the hill in front of you, you know it's steep.

Video of me heading down Stone Creek Chutes:

http://vimeo.com/38193445

Here are some of the pictures I took on my iPhone (not as nice quality as my usual SLR pictures):

Saying Goodbye to a Job

Earlier this month was my last day at a job I've been in for almost 5 years. I started in the role only 1.5 years out of college with practically zero experience and leave my team (after some luck and lots of hard work) as a Senior Manager who was in many ways responsible for the day to day responsibilities of 10-15 people on any given day. That is "not your typical" jump in a large and conservative company and it has been a great ride to say the least. Saying goodbye to a job I'm leaving voluntarily is really hard and awkward. My day-to-day routine and the people I see and talk to more often than any friends or family (weird and depressing thought, huh?) are suddenly not going to be part of my day-to-day life. I will really miss most of my team members both in the US and India, everyone has been incredibly supportive, helpful, and hard working. It's especially awkward to be leaving people behind with the general understanding that I'm leaving to pursue newer and more exciting opportunities and yet they will be left behind with the same old challenges. Everyone has their own unique situation, but in some cases, many of the reasons that I'm moving for also apply to my team members, but I can't just outright say that.

Here are some other random observations:

• Saying goodbye to team members you've worked with for 5+ years over the phone and/or video conferencing because they are thousands of miles away in India really sucks. Super impersonal and cold
• One takes for granted what they know until you start to do knowledge transfer and you realize what others may not know. Ouch
• Being a "lame duck" manager isn't so much fun as suddenly you can't make the decisions that you are used to making on a day-to-day basis
• Over the past five years I've probably spent about $5+ million of my firm's money in the large projects I've delivered
• Transitioning away from being a Subject Matter Expert and a "go to" guy for answers to being the new guy that knows nothing will be a really humbling experience that I've already started to mentally prepare for
• My new job will be the first job I've ever started where I go into the job having a key set of competencies/skills that I will be expected to know from Day 1 and not just learn on the job.  Let's hope my assessment of these skills matches the expectations of my new employer