Shaine Mata Blog

I have mentioned ad nauseam that I am a big fan of  +Smartsheet  and use it to track all of my daily tasks and projects. I have discovered the power of adding a budget column to my tasks sheet. Stuff that relates to me, personally, has one big sheet that gets subdivided into sections and subsections for every aspect of being Shaine Lee Mata. Currently, it's a list with over 900 items. I agree with you that I have way too many items listed. I imagine that one could either give up on ever getting around to 900 items, or truly put everything into making a dent in the list. Yet, it seems that I am perpetually removing items that are done and adding some back. There are items that never seem to come off the list. They do eventually, but it seems like they never do. I wondered why some items were lingering more than others. Obviously, it's because I never got around to doing them; but, what was holding me back. So, I went down the list and asked myself what was stopping me from ...

A few weeks ago, I read an article about Slack, a marvelous business tool that is useful for team communications and project information gathering. Slack has been a hit among knowledge workers, particularly people who manage online services. I signed up for the free trial and was blown away. However, despite my deep respect for the product, I'm going to have to walk away from it. The issue is not with Slack itself. I think Slack is the victim of the "network effect" to some extent, or the reverse of it, rather. I don't have a network on Slack. Therefore, it is a really cool way to organize project information and data streams. However, I already have invested into  +Evernote  and  +Smartsheet . While I do not have networks on those products either, they are rather powerful without the network. And so, I find that the ability to create streams of information rather than a giant pile of...email is a great idea. Slack makes sense in so many ways. I have written in ...

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I have some problems with Bitcoin that cause me some concern for its long-term usage. These concerns are not about the immediate viability of the cryptocurrency. For now, I think Bitcoin is the right innovation for the modern world. However, there are some shortcomings that concern me. Lost Bitcoins If you lose your wallet information, let's say your dog ate the paper on which you wrote your keys, or maybe he ate your hard drive, then you have no way of accessing that lost Bitcoin, nor anybody else for that matter. This means that they are stuck on the ledger forever, never to be traded again. With a few million Bitcoin in circulation, this doesn't sound like a big deal, a few Bitcoin here and there. However, over time, these lost Bitcoins can add up, reducing the overall availability of Bitcoin for use. Things seem to be working more or less OK for the moment, but, if the ultimate goal is to get all 8 Billion people on Earth using Bitcoin for commerce, there already are...

Reading through the IRS Guidance on Bitcoin , it states that the IRS considers Bitcoin as personal property. So, if you, for example, buy a car for $1000 and sell it for $3000 after some minor repairs, the value added is considered income by the IRS and is taxable. Similarly, if you buy Bitcoin at $320 and sell it for $340, you pay taxes on the $20 profit. This is very similar to stocks, with the exception that you buy whole units of stocks, generally. You can take a loss or make a capital gain. The way you track this is by keeping records of how much you paid for the stock and for how much you sold it, typically using a FIFO (First In, First Out) basis. With stocks, you sell whole units as well. Tracking your stocks only gets ornery when you buy a stock on a recurring basis. With stocks, you also add transaction fees and commissions into your cost. With Bitcoin, accounting is pretty much the same, except that the arithmetic gets complicated because we do not deal with whole units ...

I've paid a price for consolidating my retirement accounts. I had a traditional IRA to which I sporadically contributed since age 20. It wasn't a lot of money, but it was something. In addition, having worked for the State of Texas, I had 401k and 401a accounts which were out of my control as a non-state employee. I decided to roll them together into one account at a local Edward Jones office. So, I've slowly been turning my rolled over money into stock positions. The funny thing is that we have been expecting a market correction. So, I decided to slowly put my money into positions rather than all at once. Of course, as soon as most of my money is alloted, the market takes a crap. I have positions in BBL , BP , DEM , GLD , HCN , HSBC , KO , RIG , and T  in the IRA. I bought most of that in the past couple months as the market was reaching its peaks. Sensing that a market correction is imminent, I added GLD to my portfolio so that I don't freak out so much. It has in...

Lately, I have been dedicating a little bit of spare time towards learning about cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin, Litecoin, Dogecoin, and others. On the surface, there isn't much difference between these newer coins and good old-fashioned Linden dollars from  +Second Life . Once you read into the currencies more, however, there are some significant differences, which don't seem of much use at the moment. I first got interested when I heard that Circle.com had opened up to the public. Signing up was much easier than opening a bank account, that's for certain. Rather than dive in with guns blazing, I decided to get started with just $20. My mistake was attempting to use my debit card to deposit. My first try was flat out declined. My second attempt a few days later contemplated depositing, but ultimately rejected the deposit. On my third try, I used a bank draft instead. That seemed to work just fine. Customer service at Circle was a little lame. They just give you gene...