Category - Software & Technology

The most common form of figuring inflation uses the consumer price index (CPI) to monitor the changes over time. These numbers are tracked and compiled, by region, by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. There are different indices but the most revealing of all is the CPI for all items. This includes energy, food, service, and other costs. The only notable thing it excludes is healthcare costs. These numbers give us an idea of what consumer spending is for many different items and categories over a period of time, which gives a fairly accurate depiction of inflation itself.

To figure inflation the first thing we will need is a data set for the regions you are interested in. I chose national and southeast. Keep in mind that it takes a while to compile all the data, so there is always a lag in what is available. Here are the numbers since 12/2006:

	National CPI	Southeast CPI
12/2006	201.800	194.800
01/2007	202.416	195.021
02/2007	203.499	195.950
03/2007	205.352	197.904
04/2007	206.686	199.618
05/2007	207.949	200.804
06/2007	208.352	201.675
07/2007	208.299	201.571
08/2007	207.917	201.041
09/2007	208.490	201.697
10/2007	208.936	202.155
11/2007	210.177	203.437
12/2007	210.036	203.457
01/2008	211.080	204.510
02/2008	211.693	205.060
03/2008	213.528	206.676
04/2008	214.823	208.085

 We can then use this formula to calculate the change over time as a percentage, which is inflation:

 % inflation for period = [ (cpi² – cpi¹) / cpi¹ ] * 100

To calculate the total inflation throughout 2007 we take the index from December 2006, to account for the change in January 2007, and the index from December 2007 and plug them into our formula:

[ ( 210.036 – 201.800 ) / 201.800 ] * 100 = 4.08%

Likewise, we can calculate the inflation for 2008 using the same methods, which show us to be off to a rocky start:

[ ( 214.823 – 210.036 ) / 210.036 ] * 100 = 2.28%

These calculations are important to keep in mind when it comes to negotiating salary, regardless of whether it is for a job offer, a raise, or anything else. If the inflation rate you calculate is less than when the compensation increase is, you are losing real income, if the inflation rate is the same then you are breaking even, and if the inflation rate is lower then you are increasing your compensation.

I ran across a rather cryptic piece of code today but luckily it was commented:

// This cause me 2+ days of debugging work

Seriously though, this is less than useless – it is counterproductive. The comment does nothing but state an irrelevant fact that has nothing to do with the code. Instead, a useful line or two explaining what the code did and, more importantly, why it did it, would save me the same two days of debugging work that are likely to follow.

If you write a comment anywhere, anytime make sure that it:

1. Is relevant

2.  Explains WHY

3. Possibly explains what is happening – this won’t be needed in most cases if the WHY is explained well enough

This is a re-post from the Charleston SC JUG site. 

We had our second users group meeting last night and had a small but great event. We had Chuck Peterson and Mark dos Santos from BEA join us and talk about virtualization, how it affects java applications, and some of their solutions for improving it. While it was a sales presentation, it was a highly technical one, chock full of interesting information about how virtualization works, how it interacts with the JVM, common problems with it, and ways of eeking quite a bit more performance out of it.

I blame myself for the small turnout. There was an event at my work that conflicted that I was unaware of and I didn’t do a great job of championing this meetings due to my new baby and my recent injury. I plan on doing a better job next time.

So along these lines, here’s what I am looking for in the community:

1. Someone to help champion the group and get the word out

2. Someone to help find corporate sponsors to fund meetings.

This can be two different people or the same person and you can devote as much or as little time as you want. If you are interested, contact me.

P.S. Thanks again for coming to speak with us, Chuck and Mark.