I had previously said that Lenox Park was one of my favorite subdivisions in Cartersville.  But, as they are getting closer to finishing development in this small community I’m afraid I have to take that statement back.

Instead of building the rest of the houses in the same format as the prior ones, these homes are without a doubt, townhomes. Unlike the other residences, there is no dividing space in between each unit. When finished they will blend in to an extent, but for me it’s a major detraction to the neighborhood as a whole. It puts forth an image of lower quality, which I’m sure is not what the current Lenox Park residents were expecting.

I’m curious as to if upcoming “mega-communities” like Carter Grove will start taking similar actions or if they’ll just weather out the current real estate cycle.

A lot has changed since my previous posting on this topic. I have reached my short-term goal of paying off my car (made the last payment on April 2). I’ve also increased my 401k contribution from 2% to 3% to take full advantage of my companies matching program.

So, how did things look last month?
401k: +25%
Roth IRA: +50%
Brokerage: +8%
Savings: +7%

Also not noted above, is the fact that my liabilities had an overall decrease of 17%. This was primarily due to me paying off the Xb and only in small part to a larger student loan payment. Next month, the decrease won’t be nearly as impressive, but it should be more than the usual clip of the last several months.

So, how has my net worth been affected by all of this? Well, it has increased by 1128%! I’m now back in the black. Hooray!

Lotus Notes continues to be the bane of all existence for email designers worldwide, but here are a few tips you can follow to ease the pain:

• Borders - If you don’t want them on your tables, don’t mention them….at all. Even if you specify a border of zero width, Notes will place a big ugly border around the table. Think of Notes as a disturbed mental patient that gets upset when you mention the word “borders”. Borders? Borders! Borders! BOOOOOOOOOOORDERS!!
• Cascading Style Sheets - In Notes, not all of your stylesheet properties are going to cascade. So, design your emails such that every style necessary for an element is specified within it’s own tag (it’s a safe bet to code all of your styles inline).
• No Unordered List Navs - Using an unordered list as your navigation element works for a lot of email clients, but not Notes. If you try this, you’ll quickly find your horizontal navigation has suddenly gone vertical. (Although, the actual bullets will still be removed. )
• Divs - You’re probably not going to be using divs in emails designed specifically for Notes. Why? Well, it doesn’t support the float property, among other things.
• Don’t rely on padding - If you want your links to have a space in between them, use a   tag or an actual space. Notes will completely ignore padding.

Got any of your own tips? Please add them as a comment to this post. Starting out in email design, I had very few guides to go by, so the tips above are from my own trials & errors.

Like most days in Atlanta, my drive home consists of a lot of time just sitting in traffic. Coming from a Computer Science background, some of that time has been spent thinking of how a computer engineer might approach solving the traffic congestion problems of the Greater Atlanta area. These are the solutions that I’ve come up with:

1. Increase the Bus Speed == Increase/Remove Speed Limits - Our traffic system is only going to be as fast as the slowest components. So, If we want to move more vehicles through these roads, we need to increase or remove speed limits.
2. Make the system Massively Parallel - When it comes to our computers, the data doesn’t have to flow directly to the CPU to be processed. For example, many graphics cards today can reduce the load on the primary CPU with it’s own CPU. Additionally, we’ve also got multiple processors and completely separate ALUs. The real life equivalent to this would be to implement: additional lanes, alternate high-speed roadways, increased bus transportation, and/or implementation of a rail system. Currently, we’re only really taking advantage of the first option….more lanes.
3. Better Thread Management - In the early days of computing, if something in your application was taking a long time to process, it would freeze your entire application. However, now we’re able to take advantage of multiple processing threads so that processes that are going to take a while don’t suspend all other activity. On the highway, this is comparable to traffic on one side of the interstate slowing down because of an accident on the other side. To tackle this, investments should be made in preventing either side of the highway from seeing each other. This could be done with a fixed item(such as a concrete wall) or as a remotely controlled shield that the DOT can raise or lower as needed.
4. Schedule Tasks during Low Loads - Your computer is capable of scheduling work to be done at night, that would normally slow your performance down if done during the day. So, why can’t the DOT? More often, you’ll see construction crews out during the middle of the day, causing severe traffic delays.

I read a lot of finance-oriented blogs, many of which discuss personal net worth. Consumerism Commentary provides an excel spreadsheet for determining this value. So, I downloaded the form and gave it a shot.  After going through my various accounts (checking, savings, 401k, etc.) I arrived at a number that was just a little bit surprising: ($325).

After factoring for thousands in student loans and an auto loan, I’m only down by $325. By my next paycheck, my total net worth will actually be in the green for the first time in at least 8 years(since incurring all of that debt in college).

What this tells me is that my automatic deductions into my savings account (one of the key reasons my net worth is steadily growing) and my increased auto-loan payments are continuing to push me towards a more financially secure future.

Currently, my short-term goals are to finish paying off my car. Then, in the long-term, I’m going to redirect some of the monthly payment towards funding my brokerage account and Roth IRA so that I can start investing in appreciating assets. Woohoo!