Outline: Warren Buffett's Management Secrets

by Mary Buffett and David Clark

Step 1. Pick the right business to work for (business that offers greatest career opportunities)

Chapter 1. how to find companies that offer greatest career opportunities (w/ durable competitive advantage)

have products that:
- never really change
- easy to sell
- own a piece of consumer's mind

come in 3 basic business models:
- sell unique product, e.g. Coca Cola, Hershey
- sell unique service, sell what people need
- low cost buyer and seller of product/service that the public is consistently in need of - offer low cost through high volum, e.g. Walmart, Costco, Burlington

Chapter 2. quick test for identifying the best company to work for 

- per share earnings test (10 year period) - consistent and has upward trend
- debt test - long term debt must be low, debt load should be < 5*net earnings
- gross margin test - must be higher
      gross profit = revenue - cost of good sold
      gross margin = gross profit/revenue

Step 2. Delegate

Chapter 3. rules for delegating authority 

- every business culture is unique
- leave managers alone - let them continue to think their business as their own
- managers must have a GREAT deal of INTEGRITY

Step 3. Find the right manager for the job

Chapter 4. where to start search for manager 

- change manager only when necessary
- promote from within if possible
- look for talent w/ proven talent record

Chapter 5. victor or victim

- must have an internal locus of control
- victor = with internal locus of control - in control of themselves, take responsibility for their failures
- victim = with external locus of control - don't believe that they have power to solve their problems

Chapter 6. work at a job you like

- do what you love/love what you do, must not be driven by money

Chapter 7. put a winning sales team together

- find people who believe in the product

Chapter 8. obsession

- sd

Useful Maven Commands

• mvn --version - displays the Maven version in use
• mvn dependency:tree - displays the dependency tree for this project
• mvn eclipse:eclipse - creates/updates Java eclipse project settings (.project, .classpath, .setting/org.eclipse.jdt.core.prefs, & other config files)
• mvn eclipse:clean - cleans/removes Java eclipse project settings (.project, .classpath, .setting/org.eclipse.jdt.core.prefs, & other config files)

Useful DB2 Queries

ALL TABLES:
select * from sysibm.systables

TABLE DESCRIPTION:
select * from sysibm.syscolumns where tbname = 'tableName'
- NOT VERY RELIABLE, SOME COLs MIGHT BE MISSING

or

select colname, typename, length, scale from syscat.columns
where tabschema = 'schemaName' and tabname = 'tableName'
- NOT VERY RELIABLE, SOME COLs MIGHT BE MISSING

or

describe table tableName - DOES NOT WORK :(

Note: Use SYSCAT views rather than the SYSIBM tables. Reason being is that from release to release the tables are being revised while DB2 development tries hard to keep the SYSCAT view signatures compatible. For this reason SYSCAT is being described in the SQL Reference while SYSIBM is not.

GET CURRENT DATE/TIME:
select current date from sysibm.sysdummy1
select current time from sysibm.sysdummy1
select current timestamp from sysibm.sysdummy1

Note: sysibm.sysdummy1 table is a special in-memory table that can be used to discover the value of DB2 registers

Sources:
http://www.databaseteam.org/9-db2/b4ac3f33bec9fb23.htm#.UfdJQ41OS6M
http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/data/library/techarticle/0211yip/0211yip3.html

Database Normalization

First Normal Form (1NF)
- no duplicate columns, e.g. teacher, student1, student2, student3
- no non-atomic columns, e.g. teacher, students
- rows must be have unique identifier (primary key), e.g. teacher, studentID, studentName

 Second Normal Form (2NF)
- satisfied 1NF
use foreign key (move subset of data/column that apply to multiple rows of a table to another table and connect them through the foreign key)
e.g.
studentID, studentName, courseID, courseName to
studentID, studentName, courseID and courseID, courseName

Third Normal Form (3NF)
- 2NF
- remove columns that are not dependent upon primary key
e.g.

Boyce-Codd Normal Form (BCNF or 3.5NF)

Fourth Normal Form

Apache log4j

DEBUG < INFO < WARN < ERROR < FATAL

HTML

Complete list of HTML tags: http://www.w3schools.com/tags/default.asp

- HTML stands for Hyper Text Markup Language
- HTML is not a programming language, it is a markup language
- Practically speaking, there is no difference between the htm and html extensions
- In XHTML, all elements must be closed. Adding a slash inside the start tag, like
, is the proper way of closing empty elements in XHTML (and XML)
- HTML tags, attribute names and attribute values are not case sensitive but World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) recommends lowercase in HTML 4, and demands lowercase tags in XHTML. Newer versions of (X)HTML will demand lowercase attributes
- In XHTML, XML, elements with no end tag (closing tag) are not allowed
- attribute id vs name: id must be unique and is used as an identifier of an HTML element while name is used for form elements and form elements can share the same name
- HTML comment sample:

 <!-- This is a comment --> 

- The <center>, <font>, <basefont>, <s>, <strike> and <u> tags and align, bgcolor and color attributes are deprecated in HTML 4, and removed from HTML5. Style sheets (CSS) should be used to define the layout and display properties for many HTML element
- Always add a trailing slash to subfolder references. If you link like this: href="http://www.w3schools.com/html", you will generate two requests to the server, the server will first add a slash to the address, and then create a new request like this: href="http://www.w3schools.com/html/"
- HTML frames are obsolete in HTML5. Cons: http://webdesign.about.com/od/framesprosandcons/a/aaframesyuck_2.htm
- The doctype declaration refers to a Document Type Definition (DTD). The DTD specifies the rules for the markup language, so that the browsers render the content correctly. 

 <!-- This is a comment --> 

Reference: http://www.w3schools.com

How to create Sublabels / Hierarchical Labels in Blogspot

I always wanted my label section to look like the archive section where labels can have hierarchy and the number of posts is displayed beside each label. I learned how to create the hierarchical tree from this blog but the nodes have to be added one by one and the number of posts per label are not displayed so I tweaked it a little to suit my needs. Here are the steps:

1. Add the Labels gadget if is not yet added
   From your dashboard, click Layout -> Add a Gadget and select Labels
2. Add an HTML gadget. This is where you will create your hierarchical labels.
   From your dashboard, click Layout -> Add a Gadget and select HTML/Javascript
3. Ensure that the Labels gadget comes first before the HTML gadget in your layout.
   From your dashboard, click Layout and arrange your gadgets by dragging them to the desired location so that the Labels gadget is on top or comes first before the HTML gadget
4. Update the Template
   
   1. Add the dtree javascript.
      From your dashboard, click Template -> Edit HTML -> Proceed and check Expand Widget Templates. Copy and paste this code

      <link href='https://sites.google.com/site/efekefek/file-js/dtree.css' rel='StyleSheet' type='text/css'/>
      <script src='https://sites.google.com/site/efekefek/file-js/createdtree.js' type='text/javascript'/>

      after this tag
      

      <b:skin><![CDATA[/*

   2. Remove the Label widget content
      Find the Label widget code. It looks like this

      <b:widget id='Label1' locked='false' title='Labels' type='Label'>
      <b:includable id='main'>
          
       ...  
      
      </b:includable>
      </b:widget>

      Replace the code inside <b:includable id='main'> and </b:includable> with this code

      <script type='text/javascript'>
        var labelCountMap = {};
        <b:loop values='data:labels' var='label'>
           labelCountMap ["<data:label.name/>"] = "<data:label.count/>";
         </b:loop>
      </script>

   3. Save template
5. Prepare the code of the Hierarchical Labels
   Copy the code below and replace the data with your own Labels. The data is in format
   

   parentLabel: { subLabels }

   The subLabels are comma separated. If the parentLabel doesn't have subLabels, replace it with {}.
   

   <div class="dtree">
   <p><a href="javascript: d.openAll();">open all</a> | <a href="javascript: d.closeAll();">close all</a></p>
   <script type="text/javascript">
   <!--
   function isEmpty(obj) {
       for(var prop in obj) {
           if(obj.hasOwnProperty(prop))
               return false;
       }
       return true;
   }
   
   function addMap(d, startingNode, parentNode, map) {
    for (var key in map) {
     if (isEmpty(map[key])) {
      d.add(startingNode++,parentNode,key+' ('+labelCountMap[key]+')','/search/label/'+key);
     } else {
      d.add(startingNode++,parentNode,key+' ('+labelCountMap[key]+')','/search/label/'+key);
      startingNode = addMap(d, startingNode, startingNode-1, map[key]);
     }
     
    }
    return startingNode; 
   }
   
   var data = {
    'Label 1' : {
     'Label 1.1' : {},
     'Label 1.2' : {
      'Label 1.2.1' : {}
     }, 
     'Label 1.3' : {}
    }, 
    'Label 2' : {
     'Label 2.1' : {}, 
     'Label 2.2' : {}
    }, 
    'Label 3' : {}, 
    'Label 4' : {}};
   
   d = new dTree('d');
   d.config.useLines = true;
   d.config.useIcons = false;
   d.config.inOrder = true;
   
   d.add(0,-1,'');   
   addMap(d, 1, 0, data);
   
   document.write(d);
   //-->
   </script>
   </div>

6. Paste the code in the HTML widget
   From your dashboard, click Layout and Edit the HTML widget. Paste the code inside Content and Save