Buy MSFT

Those who know me, know that I'm interested in every subject under the sun (with the exception of needlecraft, but that's another story). So, yes, investing is of interest to me. Generally, though, I don't do much of it. I mean, I make regular, healthy RRSP contributions and everything, but I don't trade. In fact, since I'm still a long way from retirement and can't be bothered with mutual funds whose managers get rich whether they suck or not, I simply stuff everything into the S&P TSX index and let 'er roll.

With one exception.

Microsoft.

Why MSFT? Why not something more hip? More courant? With a bit more momentum, flair, flash, zing, bang...you know, something more exciting?

Well, here's the thing: value. The PE is low. Margins are high. ROE is very high. By classic value investing standards, it's a good buy.

And here's the other thing: growth. I don't mean necessarily this quarter or even this year, I mean over the long term. Fret all you will about Google, Apple, Red Hat or whatever alternative flavour of the month you choose. Information technology is on a relentless forward march, and Microsoft is better positioned than anyone to take advantage of it. Look at their breadth and depth of research and products.

Good company, good growth, good value. Buy.

Gnot Going Google?

Just stumbled on a CNET article about Google's new "Going Google" campaign to hype their non-search stuff like Apps and Gmail as alternatives to Office. I tried this experiment myself and found Apps wanting, so when Microsoft made a personal plea to me to check out Office 2010 and give them some pointers (OK, I got lucky and got into the tech preview), I abandoned the idea once and for all. I even ditched Gmail for Hotmail, which was a painless switch. Anyway, it'll be interesting to see just how genuine the going has gotten -- I suspect that many of the reportedly 20 million users who've "switched to Google Apps" have in fact tried it out and gone straight back to Office.

Reaction to Obama's UN Address

The CBC is reporting on Obama's UN address. Yours truly had this to say:

It's hard to read this as anything other than an attempt to continue to further American foreign policy in the face of a debt and deficit so outrageous as to threaten the acceptance of the US fiat currency. Clearly, America cannot afford to unilaterally prosecute foreign wars and is attempting to shift the cost burden onto others. The examples of "challenges facing the world" that Obama cites are merely those which America deems important. A less disingenuous approach to re-engaging with the world would perhaps have started with an invitation to jointly decide exactly what the challenges are.

Long Overdue Apology to Turing

The CBC is reporting that the UK government has, at long last, issued a formal apology for its treatment of Alan Turing.

Turing was of course instrumental in the Allies' success in World War Two, and his contributions to computer science are difficult to overstate; arguably, his premature death set the information technology industry back by years.

We must remember, though, that Turing is merely among the more prominent of many homosexuals who suffered, and in many cases continue to suffer, at the prejudiced hands of religious and government officials, as well as private citizens. This is a step in the right direction, but only a step in a journey that is far too long.

Ugly VBA

So I wanted to do a sort of VLOOKUP in Excel today, but instead of scanning from the top of the lookup range down, I needed to scan from the bottom up. Annoyingly, it seems you can't do that, so my Pragmatic Laziness kicked in and I wrote this very ugly bit of Excel VBA code. It scans its way up from the given cell and, having found a value matching that of the given cell, looks back a column (another thing VLOOKUP doesn't do very well) and returns the value. Here's the code in case you ever want to try something like this. It's called "ParentLookup" because in this particular case I was traversing a hierarchy (the variable PSID is "Parent Short ID") but it's the sort of thing you could hack into a general purpose function if you were so inclined.

Function ParentLookup(levelCell As Range)
  level = levelCell.Value
  PSID = 0
  cellRow = levelCell.Row
  currentRow = cellRow - 1
  While ((PSID = 0) And (currentRow > 1))
    If (levelCell.Offset(currentRow - cellRow, 0).Value = level) Then
      PSID = levelCell.Offset(currentRow - cellRow, -1)
    End If
    currentRow = currentRow - 1
  Wend
  ParentLookup = PSID
End Function

Christmas in - er - August

Like a lot of geeks, I've been looking forward to today as my first chance to get my hands on the Windows 7 RTM (release to manufacturing) build. As if that weren't enough to turn me into a child on Christmas Eve, the nice people at Microsoft decided to put another present under the tree and accepted me into the Office 2010 Technical Preview. Looks like somebody won't be getting much sleep tonight.

DAMA DMBOK now available

Back in January, I expressed my enthusiasm for DAMA's Data Management Body of Knowledge (DMBOK). I've been remiss in not reporting that the DMBOK was published on June 16th. I had ordered a copy through Amazon, but for whatever reason they weren't able to fill my order. So, yesterday I ordered it directly from the publisher, Technics Publications, which is the brainchild of noted data modeling guru Steve Hoberman. Steve promptly e-mailed me to ensure that I'd had a positive experience with his brand-spankin'-new website (which I had) and to let me know that he'd be shipping my order first thing in the morning. As soon as it arrives and I've had a chance to digest it, I'll post a review here. In the meantime, if data management is at all a part of your job then I'd encourage you to visit the sites above to learn more.