So it’s been just over a year since my original post on investing, and 10 months since it’s followup.  In hindsight, I wish I would have made a few posts during the market crash, but not much I can do about that now.  During the last 9 months, I’ve pretty much stayed away from the market, partly because I had cold feet, and partly because I was spending my money on silly things.  I’m looking to change that, as I feel the worst is over, and getting in now will provide solid returns as the market recovers.

First, let’s start off with what I’ve done since that post in August of 08.  I mentioned several video game companies, with a focus on Activision Blizzard (ATVI).  I ended up buying some ATVI about two weeks ahead of the stock split, however it is hard to say if it was better to get in before the split, due to the market crash happening directly after the split.

On September 7 (the day before the split), Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were placed into conservatorship.  ATVI still managed to split at $16.79 on September 8, just 6 cents cheaper than I had bought it at, and saw gains of about 3% through the week.  Things were just starting to unravel then, and on the 14th, Lehman Brothers collapsed, marking the beginning of the stock market collapse.  While I certainly could have got in cheaper if I had waited a few weeks after the split, this would have been because of the decline of the market in general, not due to the stock price dropping because of the split itself.

Unfortunately, this purchase is still down about 24% since I bought it, though ATVI has been making a strong recovery.  It is up nearly 50% on the year as I write this, while the NASDAQ is up just under 16%.  Based off of how well the stock has been performing, I doubled the amount of money I had in ATVI in mid-May, and have seen the value of that second purchase go up about 16%, helping to bring my overall loss to under 4%.  I look forward to seeing overall gains in the near future for this stock.  All in all, I still believe Activision Blizzard is a good purchase, and if I had more cash sitting around, I would not hesitate to buy more.

That’s all for now, perhaps next week sometime I will talk about my holdings in Intel and the emerging markets ETF I am in, as well as some ideas of what I may look at next.

This is the second of my two hall of shame posts for the day.  I previously spoke of the poor service I ran into with the manufacturer of my now deceased TV, and the problems didn’t stop there.  This hall of shame nod goes to GE Money Bank, fine purveyors of the “Amazon Store Card”, not to be confused with the Amazon Visa, which is issued by Chase. (more…)

This November, Ohioans will vote to amend the state constitution to allow a casino to be operated within the state.  Ohio has consistently voted against legalized casinos, as recently as two years ago, and based on the wording of this latest attempt, we should continue the trend. (more…)

So, its been two months since my original post about investing. In that time, one of my investments is up about 7%, the other is down about 14%. Even though I invested equal amounts in both, thanks to the wonders of MATHEMATICS, I am down 3.5% in the last two months (Really, this didn’t seem right to me, but the math works). In that same time, the DOW is down about 5%, and NASDAQ is down about 2%, so I guess if you split the difference between the two, i’m pretty much in line with how the US market has performed (ignoring that one of my stocks is an emerging markets fund). I supposed that is acceptable.

In the next month, I’ll be making two more buys, and here is what I’m currently thinking about. (more…)

So I recently decided that I would stop wastefully spending my money on whatever the hell I felt like, and start saving towards…something. At the moment, that something would be a down payment on a home, but after that, the something would be retirement. Putting the money in a savings account at .1% interest seems silly, when the bank is lending it back out at probably 50-100x that amount. I just setup an account with Scottrade, and am going to try my luck investing in the market.

At the moment, I am looking at some ETFs that follow emerging markets, like the Vanguard Emerging Markets ETF and the iShares MSCI Emerging Markets index. These both look at a wide range of countries, but their biggest three are Brazil, China and Korea, with Russia and Taiwan not far behind. With the US economy in the dumps, these markets seem that much more appealing.  This is likely where I will make my initial investment, and see where things go from there.
I also like the tech sector – not so much the internet space, but more so hardware companies. I’ve been following the emergence of the netbook, subnotebook, or whatever you want to call it. The small, lightweight, low power laptops like the Asus eee and the MSI Wind. I don’t necessarily think these companies are what to look at though. Intel has themselves in a good position with their Atom processor, and if they can get their foot into the mobile processor space, they could be an interesting option. I’d also like to a bit more research into some of the companies behind the hardware, such as Foxconn (owned by Hon Hai Precision Industries), and similar companies that make things such as RAM and solid state storage.  Marvell Technology may be a good option in that area.

Also in the tech sector, I’m interested in videogame companies. Activision is shacking up with Vivendi Universal‘s games division – which gives them control of the money printing license that is World of Warcraft, EA is trying to buy Take Two and get gems like the GTA series, Bioshock, etc., and Ubisoft (Assassin’s Creed, Prince of Persia) is both a target of EA’s and a potential purchaser of smaller game companies. Infogrames is buying out the remaining 49% of Atari that they didn’t already own. Could companies like Konami, THQ or Midway be gobbled up by Activision Blizzard, EA or Ubi? And of course you can’t forget about good old Nintendo – the Wii is perpetually out of stock, the Nintendo DS is another money printing license, and they appear to have another hit with Wii Fit.

And of course, there is Apple. They are up 50% in the last year. The iPod may start to cool off – how many people who want a portable music player don’t have one these days? And how many of those that have them really care if they can get one with more storage? The iPhone may make up for this, as it may be the next cool thing to have, especially if they break off the exclusivity with AT&T. Oh ya, they make computers too, and while they might not have a huge market share, they are EXPENSIVE, and given that they now use common PC components, the margin on those things has got to be insane. Couple that with lower than average salaries, and its a recipe for success.  Or not, who knows.  June 2005 – $38.  June 2006 – $60.  June 2007 – $122.  June 2008 – $180.  Will it hit $270 by June 2009?  Doubtful, but how about 25% growth to $225?

OK, that is my first lame attempt at writing about the market. Do share your thoughts.

Check out this Biofuel comparison chart.

So what do you think?  Nevermind that corn ethanol is indirectly cutting our precious Tequila supply, it’s clear that we don’t have a solution now.   Do any of these look good long term?  Sure, if we get the algae burning automobiles with “gas” tanks that actually incubate the algae internally we’ll truly be living in The Future!

But that’s all beside the point.  Look, we’re going about it slightly wrong, and I’ll tell you the right way(s).

1. Gas is actually a biofuel anyway, the problem is that it’s such a wicked old biofuel that it’s nonrenewable.  Let’s try to make crude oil into a renewable resource.  If we simulate dinosaur decomposition then we keep the (awesome) cars we have.  That’d be ideal (and would bankrupt the OPEC too!) but it probably won’t happen since they shut down Jurassic Park.

2.  Try the biofuel options like ethanol and biodiesel.  I am definitely jumping the gun here, but let’s just call it a miserable failure, get our tequila production back on track, and move on to something more interesting.

3.  Biofuels for mechanized people movers?  Illogical.  Look at the biofuels that we have technology to use: corn, sugar, soy.  What’s the problem with those?  We use them for food.  We, organic critters, use those items as “fuel” for our own movement and operation.  See where I’m going with this?  Grow us some fucking cars!  Get some mad scientists on the job and let’s shift the paradigm from “fueling up” to “feeding” our rides.  Catbus anyone?
PS I am aware that “My Important Thoughts” is redundant.

Last night I downloaded the Amazon music downloader program for OS X and bought the new Gnarls Barkley album, The Odd Couple.  Rather than comparing the experience against that of iTunes or Oink I’ll just compare it against 2 other things I did last night.

First, the details.  For $8.99 American (roughly 6 Pesos w/ the current exchange rate) you get 13 songs encoded as 256KBps MP3s w/o DRM.  Pretty good!  But how does it stack up against the crepes I made for dinner?

The crepes featured real butter, while the MP3s were fat free.  I had a raspberry spread between crepe folds, but no whipped creme.  You might think the lack of whipped creme was a deal-breaker because the Amazon downloader automatically imported the songs into iTunes, but you underestimate the powdered sugar I sprinkled on top.  Crepes win.

That’s fine and dandy, but how does digital music purchasing compare to a massive nosebleed?  The Amazon downloaded hid any download speed info, but the entire album was finished in under 2 minutes.  My nosebleed was epic and extremely inconvenient.  The inconvenience made me mad, and the madder I got the faster the blood squirted out of my nose.  It was difficult to throttle blood download speed, while I would never throttle MP3 downloads.  Also, the Gnarls Barkley album didn’t leave my bathroom a bloody mess.  Amazon wins.

Now it is clear:

Crepes > Amazon music downloads > bloody noses

My advice to you is that you go fetch some Egg Beaters and Nutella from the store and make yourself some lovely crepes.  While you are digesting, go download The Odd Couple, which is clinically proven to sound delicious.

And lawyers wonder whey they get such bad reps…

A class action lawsuit was started a few years ago against Seagate, because they based their GB calculations on a factor of 1000 instead of 1024.  So, a hard drive advertised as 100gb by Seagate would contain 100,000,000,000 bytes, rather than 107,374,182,400 had they based it off the actual size of a gigabyte.  So, your 100 gigabyte hard drive is really only 931 gigabytes.  A difference of around 7%.

It’s pretty shitty, and I don’t know how the hard drive manufacturers have gotten away with advertising their drives like this for so long (Seagate is not the only guilty party).  As we start moving to larger sized drives, obviously the difference in the calculations becomes more apparent.  Sure, nobody probably cared too much back when their hundred megabyte hard drive was really only 93mb.  But now when your shiny new terabyte drive is coming up 70gb short in explorer, you wonder, wtf.

My problem is how obscene these settlements are.  If you purchased a drive between 2001 and 2006 from an authorized reseller, if you can provide all the necessary documentation, you are eligible for a refund of 5%, excluding taxes and refunds.  When I was at Best Buy, you could get an 80gb drive for about $30-40 after rebates.  A 120gb drive for maybe $50-75.  Even if you paid full price, you might have paid 100-200 for a typical hard drive.  So if you can jump through the hoops, you might be able to claim $5-10 for this gross injustice.

The three lines in the settlement agreement that really get me are these:

“As part of the settlement, Seagate will make certain disclosures regarding the storage capacity of its retail hard drives.”

So big fucking deal.  So what, now a drive will be advertised as 500gb*, and in tiny tiny print somewhere on the box that asterisk will be followed by a line saying that the size is based off of the 1000 calculation, and that your system may report differently depending on how it calculates a gigabyte.   Unless they are going to start calculating the size based on the correct calculation, this entire case was pointless.
“If the settlement is approved, plaintiff’s counsel will apply for an award of attorneys’ fees, expenses and incentive awards not to exceed $1,792,000, to be paid separately from and in addition to the benefits available to settlement class members.”

So all the people who are ACTUALLY affected by this might get enough to buy their lunch for a day, and the lawyers collect close to 2 million.  Fantastic.  Was there really any benefit to this entire proceeding, other than the layers getting paid?  No, not really, because:

“Seagate has denied and continues to deny each and all of plaintiff’s claims, and denies that anyone has been harmed or deserves compensation.”

So great, Seagate doesn’t think they’ve done anything wrong, so obviously they haven’t learned anything here, like that maybe you shouldn’t use misleading packaging in order to push drives!

I think it should be pretty obvious by now that I have very little tolerance for shitty service. I like to think that I work hard for my money, and if I don’t feel like I’m getting what I paid for, then I will do my best to make sure I don’t send any more money the same way, and post here to try and influence others to not spend their money with those inducted into the Hall of Shame.

So, we have a dual-inductee post here. First up is Shirt.Woot. Woot, if you don’t know, is a site that posts a deal a day, of a random (usually) tech-oriented item. Earlier this year, they started up a new site, where they put up a shirt for sale every day. I needed some new tshirts, so I was browsing through and picked out a few – four to be exact. This was on October 4th. On the fifth, I get emails with four tracking numbers for each of the four shirts I ordered – there is no way to buy multiple items in one order, so each one is shipped individually.

Finally on the 10th, one of the tracking numbers worked. On the 11th, another one worked – both of these showed the shirts being picked up on 10/9. A few more days go by, and the other two tracking numbers still don’t work. So I email them on 10/14, asking whats up with my other two shirts. This is the ENTIRE response that I received this morning, 10/16:

“I apologize that you received tracking numbers for these 2 shirts. We are out of the XL. We are currently waiting for them to be reprinted so we can get those that ordered both designs in those sized shipped out.”

Now, if the shirts were out of stock, don’t you think you would email your customer to tell them? Why did I have to contact them? How did their system even let them send me a tracking number? What the fuck? If I hadn’t emailed them, would they have ever even known that they didn’t send me the shirts, since they had already given me tracking numbers?
So I get home today, and there are two Shirt.Woot bags sitting outside my door. Twelve days after placing my order, two of my shirts had finally arrived – or had they? I open the first bag, and saw three skulls looking back at me – as expected for shirt number one. I open the second bag, to see a shirt with a car and a clusterfuck of flora, a snake, a woman, and some playing cards. Not even close to the shirt I ordered.

So here I am, with one of the shirts that I ordered. No doubt that it I will hit the 2 week mark since ordering before I hear back about their shipping screwup. So I’ve sent them an email, asking where I can send this brown shirt back to, and how I can get my $45 back for the other three shirts they have been unable to deliver in a timely manner. I can’t wait for the response.

For the record, here is the shirt I was epecting to be in the second bag (titled “Stop Digital Piracy”, get it?), followed by what was actually in the bag:

And here are the other three shirts I ordered – the only one I have received is the first one:

I really liked the Hot Wings shirt, I’m kind of sad that I won’t be getting it (unless woot refuses to cancel/refund my order).

UPDATE – 10/25

So, I emailed woot, asking for a refund for the three shirts they didn’t send me.  Their response?

“We will have the correct shirt shipped out today overnight at no charge.”

Thats it.  That is all they have to say.  That email was on the 17th, and I received the digital piracy shirt on the 18th.  A few days later, I received the Sore Thumbs shirt.  Still no word on the Hot Wings shirt.  They ignored my refund request all together, and have ignored the email I sent them on 10/20 asking why they ignored my refund request.  I sent them another email, if no reply, I guess I file a complaint with the BBB and dispute the charges over the 4th shirt.

I saw an article on a “smokeless tobacco” called snus that is coming to the US. It had a quote that struck me as entirely odd:

“Societies should adopt all measures that are effective in combating smoking-related diseases.”

Lars Rutqvist, VP for scientific affairs at Swedish Match

Funded by tobaccy companies or not, some people believe that sentiment. What I can’t figure out is how people can, with a straight face, advocate government intervention in reducing nicotine-laden tobacco-related diseases while not suggesting the banning of cigarettes.  “We should do everything to control the effect, except control the cause!”
Don’t get me wrong, I love the entire idea of smoking. It’s one of the last vestiges of “survival of the fittest” that we allow in the civilised world. Only a fucking moron would smoke cigarettes these days, because they obviously kill you. Certainly it’s not as good as if they made smokers sterile and therefore unable to clog the gene pool with cancerous offspring, but hey, it’s a start.

But come on, how the fuck can we justify allowing smoking, even though it clearly causes cancer, whilst waving the banner of personal responsibility and keeping the government out of our personal affairs, and still keep much safer “drugs” illegal? The government is just protecting us from the dangers that aren’t profitable to corporations. We could try to kill Big Tobacco (ha) or we could just give them a different profit source.

Hey, R. J. and Phil Morris, quit fucking around and lobby to switch crops, you bastards.

I could kill myself with cigarettes, but I couldn’t get high on weed because… what? Anybody got a single fucking answer? I dare you to tell me it causes cancer (like cigarettes), makes you into a bad driver (like alcohol), is a gateway drug (weed & munchies -> crack & crime) or any of that other propaganda. I wish I hadn’t been lied to because it was politically convenient, but there you go.
Safer tobacco… That’s like going from 30 grit to 40 grit when what you really need is some Charmin.