Author Archives: richardykuo

Quick revisit of pfSense

Posted on 2014/09/02 by richardykuo

pfSense on the Intel NUC continues to impress. It turns out that in the past few months some of the newest Intel NUC’s got full pfSense support.  I also discovered that booting pfSense off a USB drive works really well, … Continue reading →

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The Keyport slide: Pain in the ass to buy, but nice once you have it

Posted on 2014/08/14 by richardykuo

Let’s face it … keys are annoying. There may be a day, friends, when we can use biometrics to sign in everywhere … but that day is not here yet. In the meantime, we get by with lots and lots … Continue reading →

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Lost a bit of weight thanks to Grown Up Soda and Dry Soda

Posted on 2014/07/14 by richardykuo

    As we are perhaps all wont to do, I’ve gained a bit of weight in my older age.  Don’t take this the wrong way … I’m not exactly fat by any standard, and I don’t look old.  But … Continue reading →

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The consumption mentality

Posted on 2014/07/09 by richardykuo

Recently, I’ve been fascinated by various forums and blogs about personal finance … and the weird situations into which people get themselves. There’s a large subset of people out there (arguably, the vast majority, actually) that don’t think about how … Continue reading →

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What it’s like to live on the Las Vegas Strip

Posted on 2014/07/04 by richardykuo

Now that I own property in Las Vegas, I’ve made week long stays there several times.  While I’m not a full time resident, I think I’ve gotten enough of a feel to comment on what life on the Strip is … Continue reading →

Posted in Las Vegas, Lifestyle, Real Estate | Leave a comment

Playing around with the Nexus 7 (2013)

Posted on 2014/06/26 by richardykuo

                  I scored a 129 dollar official refurb of the latest generation of the Google Nexus 7 off eBay.  Granted, it’s probably about to be refreshed any day now, but it’s still … Continue reading →

Posted in Apple, Google, Technology | Leave a comment

Fundamental vs relative (or positional) value in real estate

Posted on 2014/06/15 by richardykuo

Two useful concepts to understand in real estate (or indeed, in any business) are the concepts of fundamental and relative or positional value. Fundamental value is best thought of as “cost plus”or “cost savings”.  As in, if the land costs x, … Continue reading →

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Surface Pro 3 impressions

Posted on 2014/06/08 by richardykuo

I got a chance to check out the new Surface Pro 3 at the Microsoft store today.  Most of the stores should have demos ready by now. Overall, it’s a big improvement from a Surface Pro 2. It’s surprisingly light … Continue reading →

Posted in Microsoft, Tablets | Leave a comment

The NYTimes Rent vs Buy calculator

Posted on 2014/06/05 by richardykuo

One of the often pointed to resources when deciding whether to buy a home is the New York Times Rent vs Buy calculator.  This is a fully interactive web page that takes in many assumptions and spits out how many … Continue reading →

Posted in Real Estate | Leave a comment

pfSense is great if you want to build your own router/gateway

Posted on 2014/06/05 by richardykuo

I’m pretty hard on my networking hardware.  For a few years, I’ve been quite happy with OpenWRT running on a WNDR3700 by Netgear.  Just the routing and gateway functions … I always separate wireless access point functionality onto other devices. … Continue reading →

Posted in Networking | 5 Comments