Closure

I closed on the sale of my Ossining townhouse last Monday.  The sales price was 1.59 times what I paid back in 1989 off a bit from the high point of about two times for units like mine (back around 2006). At about 2% a year appreciation this didn't keep up with inflation. Even before deducting for the 5% real estate commission and other expenses. So in one sense this wasn't a very good investment. Although it wasn't terrible compared to renting. And on the other hand I got to live there 23 years rent free and I liked the place. Which is also an important consideration. 

I might done a bit better financially if I had been less slothful and gotten the place listed 6 months earlier in the Spring instead of the Fall of last year. Spring seems like a better time to list. There are more potential buyers looking and I think the complex is more attractive at that time of year with warmer weather and more greenery. Also I would have (potentially) saved some months expenses. 

I took the picture two days before the closing when I visited the place for the last time. My unit is behind the middle tree. It faced South so it was nice and sunny and I liked the views of the pond.

My Citations

I recently discovered the "My Citations" feature on Google Scholar.  It is kind of neat.  You set up a profile with a list of your papers and then Google Scholar finds, counts and lists many of papers which have cited each of your papers.  Listing my papers was easy as Google had already grouped most of them together and I just had to add the whole group and then delete a few interlopers (you would think Google would realize a paper published in the 1700s didn't belong with the others even if it was also written by James Shearer).  In order to make your profile public (so it shows up when you search Google Scholar for your name) you need a verified email address at an academic institution.  This was a bit of a problem for me as I don't have a current academic affiliation.  But then I figured out as a MIT graduate I could set up an email address at alum.mit.edu which would just forward email to my personal account.  After I did this (and waited a day for it to take effect) I was able to use it to pass Google's verification and make my profile public.

When I was at IBM I tried for a while (until I lost interest) to keep track (via Science Citation Index) of papers citing mine.  This is much easier.  And Google Scholar seems to be pretty good at tracking down free online versions of published papers.  It is interesting to see that the number of people citing my papers each year has been trending upward although I haven't been producing much in the way of new papers for a long time.  However I suspect this is mostly because the number of papers being published each year has also been steadily rising.     

In summary this seems like an interesting and worthwhile feature.  It does depend on authors setting it up for their papers.  At the moment many haven't but hopefully more will over time.

Address Change Delay

I moved out of my Ossining townhouse at the beginning of last year but it took me a while to get it listed for sale.  In the meantime I didn't file a change of address form with the post office as I was going up every few weeks to check on the place and could pick up my accumulated mail.  However I eventually got the place on the market last Fall and currently have a buyer.  If nothing goes wrong the closing should be in the next few weeks.  So when I was up there yesterday I went down to the Ossining post office and filled out a change of address form.  When I handed it in the clerk said it would be two or three weeks before it took effect which is a lot longer than I expected.  It doesn't make much difference for me as most of my mail is now going to my new address anyway but might be a bother in other circumstances.

Addendum (5/15): It seems I was likely given bad (or perhaps just highly pessimistic) information from the clerk. When I returned 2 weeks later for the final time I didn't have any additional mail in my box so it appears the change of address took effect almost immediately as I would have expected.

Tax Day

I mailed my tax returns Monday on the way to work.  I used to do my returns by hand but for the last few years I have been using TurboTax and did so again this year.  Tax software does make the process easier but TurboTax at least is far from perfect.  I had several problems with it this year.  A general complaint is that TurboTax seems to discourage using alternative more complicated tax calculation methods even though they can sometimes save substantial amounts of money.  I suppose they are worried that users will get annoyed if they work through a more difficult and complicated calculation only to find it has not saved them anything whereas if they stick to the simple method they will never know about any money they might have saved with a little more work.  This came up in two places on my return, tax refunds and estimated tax penalties.

Regarding tax refunds, these count as taxable income if you deducted the taxes in a previous year but only if (or to the extent) that the deduction saved you money.  In my case it hadn't because I was subject to the AMT (alternative minimum tax) which does not allow you to deduct state and local taxes paid.  Showing this requires refiguring your prior year's taxes which ideally TurboTax would automatically do for you (assuming you used it in the prior year) but which in any case isn't that complicated (assuming you were using TurboTax) although TurboTax explains it badly.

Regarding estimated tax payments the government doesn't want to wait until April 15th to get its money.  So it withholds taxes from your wages (and some other things) and requires quarterly estimated tax payments to cover the taxes on income (such as dividends or capital gains) not subject to withholding.  If you don't pay enough in estimated taxes you will in certain circumstances owe a penalty.  This includes cases where your total estimated tax payments were sufficient but you didn't pay them in equal installments throughout the year.  However you aren't required to predict the future, if your income comes in unevenly during the year your estimated tax payments can be uneven as well as long as they keep up with your income as received.  In my case I had large capital gains in December and made a large estimated tax payment in January.  If my income had come in evenly through the year I would have owed a substantial penalty but as it was I didn't.  However demonstrating this is a fairly involved process.   You have to figure your income (and deductions) for the first 3, 5 and 8 months of the year, annualize them, figure the tax and then show your payments (withholding and estimated tax) covered at least 90%  of the prorated tax amount.  There is unavoidably a lot of work in figuring your partial year income and deductions but once you have entered the amounts TurboTax should be able do the computations automatically.  But for some reason it doesn't, while it figures the regular tax on the annualized amounts it makes you figure the AMT yourself a fairly complicated calculation.  And then it uses the wrong threshold for the June 15 estimated tax payment.  This should cover 37.5% (90% of 5/12) of your annualized tax but TurboTax uses 45% (90% of 6/12 as if June was the seventh month of the year instead of the sixth).  This is not entirely its fault as it is following an IRS example with the same error (I am assuming this error hasn't actually been written into the tax laws).  Fortunately this didn't matter for me. 

As I recall TurboTax warns you the alternative computations above are a lot of work without providing useful guidance on when they are likely to save you money.  As a result I suspect some people are paying more in taxes than they are legally required to.

I found other aspects of the program irritating, it tries to sell various upgrades and when I printed out one copy of the return to mail and one for my records I got two copies of stuff like the filing instructions which is just a waste of paper (and ink). 

All in all I am not inclined to go back to doing my taxes by hand but I find the program irritating also.  Probably not enough to try a different program next year though.

Steve Jobs

I just finished reading Walter Isaacson's 2011 biography of Steve Jobs.  This book is basically a lengthy (630 pages with index and notes in hardcover) narrative account of Jobs's life.  Since Jobs led an eventful life (an adopted child and Reed College drop out who co-founded Apple Computer but left after losing a power struggle with John Sculley and then went on to found Next and finance Pixar before returning to lead Apple to great success until his death at 56) this makes for a fairly interesting read.  But the book is weaker when it comes to the bigger picture.  For example it is natural to ask why Jobs was so successful.  Was it mostly luck or did he have some rare and valuable talents (and if so what were they)?  This book isn't too helpful in answering this question although it provides plenty of material for speculation. 

Even considered just as narrative the book has weaknesses.  It isn't an authorised biography in the sense that Jobs had veto power over the text but Jobs did initiate the project by suggesting Isaacson write his biography and Jobs (and people close to him) cooperated by giving interviews in his final years.  This has obvious advantages for a biographer but also risks in that you can get too close to your subject (and their family and friends) and it can become hard to stay objective.  While the book includes plenty of negative material about Jobs it seems on occasion to incline towards not dwelling on it.  The discussion of Jobs's improperly backdated stock options is pretty cursory and I would have liked more about why his habits of driving around in a car without a license plate and parking in handicapped spaces apparently didn't cause him any problems.     

Another problem is the book appeared soon after Jobs died.  While there were no doubt good commercial reasons for this it also means the book lacks the added perspective (and material) which will be available in a few years.  I thought the last part of the book was not as good perhaps because it was rushed (or maybe this is just a sign the book was too long).  And for whatever reason the book says nothing about Jobs's will or the disposition of his sizable estate which seems a rather considerable omission. 

As to why Jobs was successful, certainly a large part of it was luck.  It is easy to imagine worlds in which Jobs dies an embittered failure, where he doesn't catch the breaks that led to the quick success which gave him credibility and made people more willing to tolerate his abrasive and obnoxious side.  But I don't think it was all luck.  I think the following traits contributed to his success.  He was willing to aim high and take chances. He was persistent.  He was generally decisive.  He recognized that good styling, appearance and image were important and worth considerable trouble and expense to get right.  He had good instincts about what would make a new product appealing.  He was an inspirational leader.  And he was willing to push his people hard and replace them if he came to believe they weren't the best available.  This last trait was somewhat double-edged of course as he could be a notoriously abusive boss but I think it is difficult to achieve what he did without being at least a bit of a jerk.   

In summary this is a reasonably entertaining (albeit lengthy) account of the life and career of Steve Jobs.  But it didn't seem particularly insightful to me and lacks the perspective that time will give.  And it concentrates on Jobs so is not a good choice if you want a broader view of events.  So unless you are particularly interested in Jobs and Apple perhaps you should skip this book.

Princeston, NY 08540

Well this is rather annoying.  When I moved from New York to New Jersey at the beginning of the year I made numerous change of address notifications.  One of them was to my former employer, IBM, which is paying me (through direct deposit) a monthly pension.  IBM somehow recorded the last line of my new address as being "Princeston, NY 08540" instead of the correct "Princeton, NJ 08540".  This was rather dumb of them as the zip code and the state are incompatible and a simple check would detect this.  However the post office managed to deliver the confirmation to my new address and I didn't notice the error until I received a year end summary showing all the state withholding had gone to New York instead of New Jersey.  So now I will have to file a New York return just to get these payments back.

I guess the lesson here is that just because the post office manages to deliver something doesn't mean the address was correct.

Cornell 2012

I attended the Cornell graduation over Memorial Day weekend.  There were 2 main events.  The Senior Class Convocation was on Saturday followed by the actual Commencement on Sunday.  Both were in an outdoor stadium.  The photo shows the stadium on Sunday morning before the graduating students file in and fill most of the chairs.

The main speaker on Saturday was Michael R. Bloomberg, currently serving his third term as Mayor of New York.  I thought his speech was reasonably good (as might be expected from a successful politician).  The main speaker on Sunday was the University President, David J. Skorton.  I was less impressed with his speech but perhaps he has other virtues.  In any case the main focus on Sunday was the graduation ritual itself.  First the thousands of students filing in and being seated and then the mass awarding of their degrees.

I stayed in a student dorm.  The accommodations were a little spartan (apparently indestructibility is still an important criteria) but tolerable.  There was a problem with the parking which was inadequate with no arrangements for overflow (at least that the staff on duty was aware of).  The campus and city of Ithaca looked interesting but unfortunately I didn't have much time to explore although I did catch some views of the famous gorges.