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.

I have come to love Amazon as a destination for shopping, so that was where I looked first for a replacement TV.  After some browsing and comparing, I had a few in mind, and noticed that the Samsungs were being offered with 24 month interest free financing with the Amazon card.  Since buying myself an HDTV right before Christmas, in the middle of a recession no less, isn’t the best idea, having up to two years to pay for the damn thing would be great.

I apply for the account, and one thing is odd – it doesn’t ask for anything more than your birthday and social security number.  Maybe they ask for your income and whatnot later I thought, and clicked next.  Nope, next is a screen telling me I am approved for a $500 “store card”.   Now I’ve come to realize that this is not an Amazon Visa/Mastercard or whatever, but a high-interest ‘you can only use this here’ account.  Strike one.  Fuckin’ A.

Well, $500 isn’t going to buy shit as far as HDTVs go, so I follow the link in the email that they send me, which says I can manage the account online, and do things like request a credit line increase.  Problem is, to manage the account online, you need the account number, which is on the card that I will receive in 7-10 days.  Strike two.

So I call customer service, and am greeted by one of those absolutely infuriating automated systems that you have to talk to.  I finally get through the convoluted options to request an increase, and it still asks for no sort of income information.  It promptly denies my request. Strike three, NEXT BATTER.

Not to be deterred, I wade through the menus yet again, and eventually get to the magical customer service option.  After a few minutes on hold, I am greeted by some customer service drone in India.  I explain that I signed up for the card today, and that the limit is not enough to cover the purchase I want to make.  I explain that I tried the automatic credit line increase via the automated service, which was a failure.  Figuring that maybe an honest to god person might be able to make this right, and take down some REAL information that could be used to increase this fucking account, I ask if she can increase it. She was of no more use than the automated system, and told me that she could increase it to $900, still well below the price of the TV. Strike one.

So I tell her that amount is not acceptable, and to either close out this account, or transfer me to someone who can.  She misunderstands my request, thinking I want transferred to someone who can increase my limit.  Any good bank is going to have an entire department dedicated to making sure you don’t close your account, but apparently the recession is hitting GE Money Bank hard, as they have no such department – thus my request was lost on this woman.  Strike two.

I have to explain to her that no, I didn’t mean transfer me to someone that can increase the limit, that I want to close the card.  If I wanted, I could buy the TV several times over on credit if I wanted, the only reason for their account was for the interest free offer.  If I cannot make my purchase with the card, then their account is useless to me, and that it needs to be closed.  She tells me she has done so, and wishes me a nice day.  Yeah, fuck you too.  Strike three.

The proposal is being financed by a casino operator based in Minnesota, who operate casinos in several states. Their arguments for the casino are:

• an estimated $800 million in revenue a year, with up to 30% of that given to the state as taxes, to be distributed among all 88 counties based on population.
• 5000 new jobs, with an average salary of $34,000 a year.
• $600 million construction project to build the resort & casino
• Keep gambling revenues in Ohio, rather than leaving the state

Various other casino operators from neighboring states are fighting the measure, for obvious reasons.  Even if you think that Ohio should allow casinos, issue 6 is NOT the solution.  This measure has been crafted by the casino operators themselves, in order to best suit their interests.

The wording of the amendment calls for “authorizing no more than one privately-owned casino to be operated in the state of ohio”, and specifies that the casino can only reside on the tracts of land outlined in the amendment.  This locks out most competition from the state, essentially granting themselves a monopoly on casino operations in the state.

They pay no type of licensing fee in order to run their casino.  They will pay a one time fee of up to 15 million dollars for the state to setup a gaming commission and related costs, but whatever fee they payed is considered a forward on their tax obligations, and will come out of whatever they owe the state as taxes.  They are protected in the constitution from ever paying a fee to obtain or renew a license for the casino.

The wording states the tax rate would be “up to 30%”, there is no guarantee as to what that rate would be.  Important details like this are left to be decided later, after the measure has passed.  Also, if another casino is allowed to operate in the state, then their tax rate would be the lower of 25% and whatever rate the other casino(s) are paying.  This could reduce their tax rate to zero if an indian casino were to open in the state – under federal law, indian casinos cannot be taxed.

In general, a tribe can operate a casino if they can show ancestry to that state, and the state already permits gambling.  While no tribes currently have the required land in the state to run a casino, several tribes have been trying for years to get land for this purpose.  Allowing a private casino in the state will only strengthen their cause.  Since the tribal casinos cannot be taxed, they typically come to an arrangement with the state in which they pay out a decided upon amount.  This presents a gigantic loophole for Lakes Entertainment, which they claimed in August was an error that would be corrected.  Here we are three weeks before the election, and the wording is still the same.

Once they do get setup, there is little the state can do to regulate them.  The amendment allows them to run any games allowed under the law in Nevada, as well as any neighboring states, except for racing and sports betting.  It prohibits limits on wagers, as well as any restrictions on operating hours.   They can basically run what they want, when they want, for as much as they want.  The local government where the casino will be operated has no say in the matter – this will preempt any existing ordinance or regulation in regards to the casino being located there, as well as protecting them from any future action.

Their argument for keeping revenues in Ohio is questionable at best.  Aside from the fact that the financial backers are from out of state, gamblers on the borders with Michigan, Pennsylvania, Indiana and West Virginia are still going to gamble where it is most convienent.  Just because there is a casino in central Ohio, that doesn’t mean people are going to go there.

I’m not going to stand on a soap box and preach to the evils of gambling – if people want to waste their money away in a casino, they are going to do it, whether this happens in Ohio or some other state .  Given that every state around us except Kentucky have casinos, perhaps Ohio is missing out on a source of tax revenue.  However, Issue 6 is not what we need – it has been finely tuned by the casino operator, and is only on the ballot because they gathered the required 402,275 signatures.  In a state of over 11 million people, this is not a huge number, especially when they use a signature gathering company that has been accused of using shady tactics in the gathering of signatures.

So, come November 4th, be sure to head to the polls and VOTE NO ON ISSUE 6.

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

Activision Blizzard (ATVI) – Activision Blizzard began trading as a merged company just last week, and after a quick 13% jump, it has held steady. They will be doing a 2:1 split for any shareholders as of 8/25, so the question becomes, get in before the split, or wait until after and see if it dips. I need to do some research into other newly merged companies – how they have performed historically in the short term after a merger, how long before they really start to merge operations and start cutting costs and you know, getting all the benefits of a merged company. The things that make me want to get in with them are World of Warcraft and Guitar Hero.

Early reviews of Guitar Hero: World Tour have been pretty good – they may gain back some of the fans they lost to Rock Band after the lackluster showing of Guitar Hero 3 (though it still sold like crazy). Blizzard claims the WoW expansion will hit before the end of the year – and with millions and millions of players, and the expansion pack pretty much a necessity for every one of them, that is money in the bank. Not to mention the amount of subscribers that will come back for the expansion, and that the expansion should keep the on-and-off players like myself busy for at least a few months, racking up some major subscription fees. Looking further down the line, there is Starcraft 2, Diablo III, and a yet-unnamed MMO game that has been in development for some time now. They all basically amount to licenses to print money. They also publish the Call of Duty, Crash Bandicoot and Spyro the Dragon series of games.

Another thing I will keep an eye on is the EA / Take Two situation. EA has had an offer standing for the last 6 months to buy take two at like 25 a share. They are letting that offer expire tonight. The TTWO folks will be heading over to EA with their charts and graphs in order to plead their case to EA as to why they are worth more than $25 a share. The people who are sticking with TTWO are hoping that EA will see the light and make a higher offer, and a friendly buyout can take place. Those jumping ship at this news likely think EA will laugh at TTWO’s numbers, their stock will plummet back down into the mid to high teens where it was before the EA offer was made, and then EA can come back as the white knight and easily get control of the company. Should be interesting however it happens, and I think regardless that TTWO will end up a part of EA. If the stock does plummet, it would be tempting to get in and hope for the best.

So after quenching my thirst for a video game company stock, now I look for something in a different market – agriculture. Seeds, Fertilizers, Equipment, etc. In particular, I have been looking at companies involved in the mining of potash, the fertilizer variety. What interests me most here is that a bunch of the agriculture cos were way up in june, but have faced a market correction which has caused their prices to drop by 20-30% since then. I want to keep my eye on this, because if the correction seems to have worked itself out, it would be a great time to get in. Also, demand for crops like corn is at an all time high, farmers have seen gains due to the rising prices of crops, and with more and more corn being turned into ethanol and increased demand from emerging countries, growers could be looking to expand their crops, which means more seeds, fertilizer and equipment. Alternatively, the price of potash has increased significantly, so these same farmers may get stung by the high prices of fertilizer and gasoline in order to expand their operations. Obviously it is a guessing game, can I make the right guesses and ride it for some nice profits?

So those are my current thoughts. As a CYA, none of this is meant to be stock advice. I am not a stock broker, I am not in any sort of position to be making recommendations. You shouldn’t invest any money in any companies that I have mentioned based on what you read here. Do your homework, talk to your financial adviser, and invest accordingly.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

“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.