razmaspaz

I’ve been going back and forth with Guest Poster Dylan Ross on fivecentnickel.com about market forces and a key phrase in his post :”For every dollar won over the market, one must be lost”. Ultimately I’ve decided I agree with him, but as a result of the conversation I’ve had some interesting side revelations. You can read the entire exchange in the comments. I think I’ve mostly served to frustrate Dylan, but its been a clarifying experience for me, helping to shed some misunderstandings and clarify some of my thoughts on the subject.

In my most recent response to Dylan’s comments I mention a shoe shine boy. The reference goes back to a story of John D. Rockefeller. Rockefeller was getting his shoes shined by a young boy, and the boy offered him some free advice on a stock. A tip if you will. Its assumed the boy had no idea who Rockefeller was and wanted to help the guy out. Rockefeller took a tip alright, but not the tip the boy gave him. He realized that if a shoe shine boy had advice on the market it must be overbought, and if it was overbought it was about to crash, about a year later it did just that, and Rockefeller pulled out just in time. I don’t know, or really care, that the story is true, it offers sage advice either way.

In my comment I made a comparison of the shoe shine boy to Jim Cramer. One I would think Jim wouldn’t be too happy about. Here’s my point. Jim Cramer wants to help the everyman to invest and make money in the stock market. Thats a laudable goal, and I can’t fault Jim for it at all. Jim’s show is wildly popular, I believe the most watched on CNBC. This has me wondering is Jim’s audience the shoe shine boy? Hes wildly popular with college kids, a portion of the demographic that would likely be better served spending their discretionary income on paying down debts than investing, and I think a good portion of his audience falls into a category of people who are in it for the short term.

So while Jim may have his heart in the right place, and be completely responsible in his actions on th show, I think his popularity could have been viewed as a bellwether that the market was overbought.

I don’t know what to do with that information. I’ve learned over time that trying to time the market is a fools errand. It does however make an interesting intellectual discussion. Take it for what its worth.

I was perusing the latest barrage of tips from Lifehacker today and I realized something.  Once or twice a day Lifehacker has some tidbit about Windows Vista, and I completely glaze over it.  I have distanced myself so far from Vista that I don’t even care about tips and news for the OS.  I can officially say I have never used, nor do I plan to ever use, the new OS.

That got me thinking.  Can I actually make it the rest of my life without using Vista?  I think the answer is yes.   I have a tower in my office that still has XP on it, but its just waiting for a motherboard upgrade for an excuse to become a Linux box.  (I’m not going Linux until I go 64bit)

When I say I’ve never used it, I mean I’ve never sat at a keyboard where the OS was installed, and I’ve never even sat through a demo of its features.  I think its fair to say I simply don’t care about the OS.  So will the day come when I’m using it at work?

Secretly I’m holding onto the idea that everyone will be using a Mac by the time that XP goes on the de-support list, but the truth is that won”t happen.  So will Vista become the OS of choice when XP is dropped, or will XP just continue to live on?  Personally I hope it survives.  It is afterall a pasable OS.  It functions reasonably well, doesn’t crash, and is (at least in my view) reasonably secure if you don’t go clicking on ads for porn and pills.  So maybe It’ll just stick around on extended support contracts for the next 20 years…IBM has managed to build an entire business on 30 year old mainframe support contracts because their stuff just works, so why can’t MS do the same?  They just might have to if Vista keeps turning out the sales numbers it has been.

If its important to point out complete and utter bullshit when it crops up, its even more important to point to the good stuff when it comes along.

The writing is terse and fragments are all over the page, but a sense place, like the feeling you get when drinking a great Burgundy, drips off the page. This is one of the best articles I’ve read in a long time, and possibly the best I’ve ever read on fishing. Somebody please knock some ice off the tribs so I can get out and catch a fish.

I haven’t decided if its Javascript, the lack of a decent Javascript editor, or people who abuse Javascript, but something about it smells really bad. That is all!

Its no secret among my friends that I’m an Apple Fanboy. I can’t help it, life really is better on the other side of the digital divide. February has been an interesting month for me when it comes to my Mac. With all the new releases scheduled for this month, I’ve been on edge, checking update site, and wondering when Apple will be so kind as to grace my life with the presence of their newest shiny toy.

Yesterday saw the release of two things that got me excited. First was Leopard 10.5.2. You can read all about it here, so I won’t dwell on the features. The biggest gain for me was that it got rid of that stupid translucent menu bar. Another rumored (though unmentioned) fix is that Time Machine does indeed work with arbitrary network disks. This doesn’t matter too much for me, as I don’t use Time Machine yet, but it will make a big difference soon.

The second release yesterday was Busy Sync 2.0 beta. This is a sync tool that allows Google Calendar to sync with iCal. Thats 2 way sync, not subscription. Yes there were tools for this before, gCal Daemon was one, it was great, then Leopard came along, and it wasn’t great anymore. Also on the market was Spanning Sync, but I felt the almost $25/year was a little steep. Busy Sync is only $19.95 if you act fast. At the end of the month it jumps to $25.

In addition to yesterday, Apple dropped a bomb this morning. Aperture 2. I’m not upgrading just yet, I don’t take the plunge on things like this overnight, but I suspect that this will be a welcome improvement to a piece of software that is making my leap into digital photography pretty easy.

On top of all that there are still two more nuggets to come from Apple. Time Capsule, the network drive/wireless router/print server/backup utility from Apple. My wireless router is literally falling apart at the seams and goes on the fritz every couple weeks, so this is a compelling product for me. Also on the list is the iPhone SDK. I don’t own an iPhone, I won’t buy one until it has 3G and 32GB, but the SDK is highly anticipated by many. Here’s to hoping it will be a worthwhile development platform.

February has already been a good month for me and my digital sanity, lets hope that it ends with a bang and that Time Capsule and the SDK are as compelling as they were made out to be.

In this time of war, I simply cannot let my campaign be a part of aiding a surrender to terror. This is not an easy decision. I hate to lose - Mit Romney

Yeah, thats what Romney said as he announced he was “suspending” his campaign. I’m not a political crazy. I don’t want this blog to become about politics, politicians, or anything remotely in that vein. But I do want it to point out asinine crap when it occurs.

First of all, you don’t suspend a presidential campaign. You drop out of the race. The idea of suspending it and maybe jumping back in after skipping 15 states is just plain silly. If Romney kept plowing money into the race, he might remain somewhat competitive, but with no campaigning going on, there is no way he stays competitive enough to get back in it. Why is it so hard to just say “I’m dropping out”? What is more face saving about the term suspended?

The suspended thing could be dropped, I don’t get it, but whatever. What is a big deal is his cheap parting shot. The idea that if he doesn’t drop out of the race the terrorists are going to win is silly. The very thought that voluntarily reducing the number of choices for president makes us safer from terrorism is ludicrous. Choice is American, Presidential Elections are American, screaming and yelling ’till we turn blue in the face is American. Romney’s participation in the Race was patriotic and embodies everything about this country that is so great. His dropping out was not a blow to terrorism, nor was it a windfall. It was just the passing of another candidate in this year’s running of our most American Tradition.

I read a few photography focused blogs, and of late many of them ahve been mentioning hte “You Suck at Photoshop” series. Its crude humor to be sure, but there is some good stuff to be learned in there, and its VERY funny. I’m not going to link to it, frankly because I can’t figure out the backwards video sharing site its on, but a quick google search will give up the goods. It appears that its on youtube (which was not where I watched it), so thats good.

I’m excited. I’ve got lots of plans in the coming weeks to get outdoors and do stuff. Despite the foot of snow about to be dumped on the north burbs I’ve got plans to go skiing, fishing, backpacking, and all sorts of other outdoor adventures.

This weekend I’m off to Devils Head for the second time this year. 2 days of skiing is just what I need to warm me up. Devils Head isn’t great skiing. After visiting several mountains out west, I don’t even think I’d call it good skiing, but its skiing. 3 hours from Chicago, and its just the ticket. A chance to hone my skills, and scratch the skiing itch.

After that it looks like a good bet for some steelhead fishing in the lake Michigan Tribs. Steelheading heats up in the Spring as the monster fish make their ways into the streams and rivers that feed the big lake. Good fishing can be had within half an hour of my house. I plan to take advantage often.

The steelhead season will kick off the start to what is promising to be a really good year for Wisconsin Trout Fishing. Reports from the northland say that the water tables look good for consistent flows throughout the spring and summer. That means consistent fishing, and you can believe that come opening day I’ll be out there fly rod and pheasant tail in hand looking to land a lunker (though more likely I’ll land a 6″ brookie). I’m also planning a long weekend in May to tempt brookies and browns with my best caddis imitation.

My planning dinner this weekend was a success. I’ve got a trip to Garden of the Gods planned for April, and a big one coming up in September to Colorado. Garden of the Gods is great. Its not going to offer the bang that a trip to California, Alaska, of Colorado would, but its a pretty area, and its fairly easy to find some space down there. If nothing else its a good warm up to the rest of the season. I’m checking water sources beforehand this time though, because a previous trip came with a near water disaster.

How are you kicking the winter blues this spring?

Today is the date of the primary in roughly 2 dozen states. If you’re in one of them, go vote. If you aren’t registered to vote, use today as the day to get registered. Then when November rolls around, you’ll be ready to go.

Tim Bray, as he usually does, has a very insightful point about the MS/Yahoo deal. Lets just say for a second that Yahoo has 1billion users. That number is probably high, but lest just say. Microsoft just payed $44.50/user for yahoo. In all likelihood the number is probably closer to 500 million making the cost/user closer to $100. Thats a lot of money. Here’s why.

For this to be profitable for Microsoft, you, me, and every other user of Yahoo has to generate yearly incremental profit of roughly $5-7. That means that you have to click on ads, buy software, or otherwise do something that makes MS $20-50, and you have to do it every year until you die. That doesn’t seem so hard, except…

I’m what I would consider an avid internet user. I spend more time than most on the internet, doing work, borwsing, shopping, whatever. Thing is, I don’t use Yahoo for much. In fact that only thing my Yahoo ID ever does is log me into Flickr ( a service that is now almost certain to be ruined). I don’t buy photos on Flickr, so I generate no revenue for Yahoo or MS. There might be some possibility of a synergy between MS and Yahoo that would propel me to buy Vista (read auto export of images to Flickr from MS Photo Viewer) or something, but the truth is, I’m trying to get as far away from the windows world as possible, so the likelihood of me buying any new MS products because of something Yahoo does is near zilch.

We’ll have to wait and see if this pans out, but I can tell you for sure that I wasn’t worth the $44.50, were you?