LiveJournal Project - November 2005

And now it all starts to fall apart.

Date: 2005-11-01 13:50
Subject: revenge... on revenge?
bad things can happen to you when you link to someone's video content without their permission.

http://www.revenge-racing.com/

most definitely not work-safe, at least until the guy that runs the site figures out what happened to him and takes it down.
Mood: Amused

Date: 2005-11-03 16:18
Subject: just call me gimpy!
well, sort of. had surgery on the left shoulder yesterday. turns out that there was a tear in the rotator cuff / labrum area which didn't show up on the MRI. so now my arm's in a sling and i'm typing with one hand - at least until i get my voice recognition software set up. i see the doc next tuesday, at which point i'll find out how long i have to wear the sling for and what the rehab schedule is going to be like. at least it doesn't hurt (yet?)

Date: 2005-11-18 13:27
Subject: woo, and stuff.
i guess i'm about due for an update.

as many of you know, cory moved to vegas to get a job at the bellagio art gallery. i'm not thrilled with the whole concept of the long-distance relationship, but so far it's going pretty well. she's not that far away, we see each other pretty regularly, she likes her new job and i have plenty of shit to keep me busy. and, on top of all that, i'm buying a condo up there. no, i'm not moving to vegas - i'm doing this so that she'll have a place to live, i'll have an investment, and i'll also have a place to crash on holiday weekends (e.g., new years) that doesn't involve paying large sums of money to vegas strip hotels. i don't have pictures of the unit or the view or any of that, so for now you'll have to use your imagination. think top floor, strip + mountain view, about 5 miles south of mandalay bay. woo!

i get to stop wearing the sling from my shoulder surgery next week, although i'm at the point now where i only wear it to sleep and when i go out anyway. i'm just careful not to raise my arm above my head. physical therapy and the long road back to the weight room begins next week. woo!

in stock market news, i think i've finally started to figure out what the hell i'm doing. i've stopped trading stocks and started trading options instead, and the returns have been substantially better. for example, because amazon.com is going to be added to the S&P 500 after the close of trading today, all of the funds out there that track the S&P are going to have to buy it. that means that it's going to go up. the announcement was made earlier in the week, so a lot of traders that are thinking like me probably took action before i did, but in the end, i still bought 20 contracts of the amazon $60 january call at $0.10 / share - for a total of $200 + commission. that was two days ago. today, that same investment is worth $500, a profit of 122 percent. of course, it would have been great if i'd bought a lot more, but oh well - you can't go wrong when you double your money, no matter how large or small the starting pot is. i expect that amazon will go up again on monday when all of the institutional investors have to start buying it, at which point, it'll be time to, in the immortal words of jim cramer, "ring the register." right now amazon stock itself is trading around $47.50. i'm thinking it will go to $49 on monday. if it does, my $200 will be worth $700. woo!

in school news, the semester is almost over, and i've officially switched into "i don't give a shit" mode. i've got one chapter and change left to cover in my japanese class - that amounts to two oral exams, one kanji quiz, and two chapter tests between now and the final. i registered for classes next semester but i'm starting (as usual) to wonder if i really feel like doing it. i might just take japanese 314 and have that be my only class, but as it is, this is what i'm signed up for:

JPN314 - 3rd-year japanese II
POS401 - political statistics
CSE210 - design and data structures (can we say easy "A" boys and girls? i knew we could)
ECN111 - macroeconomic principles (i should really just take this online at rio salado if i'm interested in learning it - i'd probably save myself a lot of headaches)

i'm also thinking about going to japan for 6 weeks in july - this is pretty much the worst time to go to japan, weather-wise, but there's a japanese summer program (in tokyo) that i'm interested in doing. the way i see it, if i'm serious about learning the language, i should really spend some time over there and not just rely on a couple hours per week sitting in a classroom at ASU. working out the logistics of it all might be a pain in the ass, though, particularly when it comes to making sure that all of my business here at home is taken care of. we'll see.

Date: 2005-11-21 15:06
Subject: today is a ranting day.
went to UPS today to mail an ebay package, and while the girl is processing my shipment, there's a woman standing behind me next in line and another counter-droid comes up and asks if she can help her with anything. the woman says i've made some copies and need to pay for them - so droid #2 asks droid #1 (the one that's doing my package, the one that was in the queue first) if she can cut in front and use their computer to process the woman's purchase. what the fuck?! was i not here first? why am i suddenly being made to wait while someone else is magically transported ahead of me in line? it's not like my transaction is particularly complicated. so, unable to resist comment, i say "what, is there no concept of a line here?" to which droid #1 says "oh, we only have 2 computers and she just needs to pay for her copies." who the fuck cares what she needs to pay for? get in line, bitch! i should've just taken my package to the post office - it would've been cheaper to mail and i wouldn't have had to deal with any of this line-hopping shit. if i can wait my turn, so can the rest of you assclowns. isn't the S in UPS supposed to stand for SERVICE? i think maybe it should start standing for SUCK.

and then we have an even better one. on saturday, i received a letter in the mail from the condo company containing my earnest money deposit and a note saying that my contract had been cancelled per my request. what?!?!!? a few phone calls and emails later and it turns out that the escrow coordinator completely screwed the pooch and got my file mixed up with someone else's. hmm, let's see here - my last name is pretty unique, i don't know how you could mistake it for something else. the place i'm buying is in a complex called park avenue, the place that actually cancelled is in lake las vegas. hmmm... park avenue... lake las vegas... nope, can't see how you could mix those up, either. if this person worked for me and made a mistake of this magnitude, her ass would be in a sling, sore from the whack it took from the door as it hit her on the way out. their gross incompetence has caused an entire week to be lost at a time when time is of the essence, given the rapidly approaching holiday season. we're supposed to close escrow on december 12th, and escrow hasn't even been opened yet because someone couldn't read. at this point it looks like everything is going to work out ok - the seller is paying the wire transfer fees and i just wired them the money - but if anything else goes wrong on this deal i'm going to tell them to shove it up their collective asses. a condo in vegas would be great, but not if i have to deal with a bunch of fuckups to get it. at least my realtor knows her shit and doesn't suck ass, unlike the moron that i used when i bought my phoenix house. bleh.

i pity da next foo that pisses me off.

Date: 2005-11-28 17:09
Subject: the blackbird goes on an adventure.
well, nothing life-altering or anything like that - in doing my requisite grocery shopping, i decided to do something a little different and go check out whole foods instead of making the usual trek to fry's or safeway. the company's stock has been on a tear this past year (up 57%), so you have to think that they're doing something right, right? and hey, who knows, maybe an organic-cow burger will taste better than a standard processed one - but more on that later. anyway, the first thing i noticed when i went in the store is that i felt really out of place. i don't know if it was the preponderance of hippies, granolas, life-extension people and various other subculture elements that i don't really interact with on any sort of regular basis or if it was just my own sense of uncertainty at trying to navigate a supermarket that i'd never been in before while not knowing where to find the oreos (come to think of it, i don't think whole foods even carries oreos). anyway, i picked up a cart and started acquiring some items, ran into a guy from my kung fu school who commented on my absence from class (he didn't know about my shoulder repair), and then went on about my shopping. interestingly, WF has both non-organic and organic version of various things - and if nothing else, the price difference between the two types is incredibly apparent. "conventional" red bell pepper - $1.xx per pound, about the same price as you'd pay at fry's. "organic" red bell pepper, $6.99 per pound!! fuckin' christ!!! but, of course, i had to buy one because i'm making some ginger chicken later this week and i want to see if it's really any different. i will say this much - the organic bell peppers look a hell of a lot better than the regular ones. on to the meat section. organic ground cow, $2.99/lb - not bad - but maybe that's to make up for the sticker shock i felt when buying some chicken. i still can't believe that i paid $18 for 3 chicken breasts - at fry's, $18 will buy a hell of a lot more chicken than that. but, you know, i figure that if i'm going to try this organic business, i shouldn't half-ass it, right?

so anyway, today i decided to see if i had actually bought something different or if i'd just been taken by a bunch of neo-granola hippie hype. does organic food really taste different? you bet your ass it does. i just finished eating what was probably the best homemade burger that i've ever had. if the chicken is of similar quality, i'll feel justified in the ass-pounding i took to buy it. i think i can understand the reasons for the success of whole foods, but you know, shopping there is EXPENSIVE. i wonder if that will hinder their future growth or if people will continue to be willing (and able?) to pay higher prices for produce that isn't, as the cashier seemed intent on convincing me, genetically modified with bat genes. what you say? bat genes in my banana?! i don't know, i'm well aware that monsanto and others are all about doing weird shit to food in the name of "progress" and higher profits, but that one seems a little far-fetched. the other thing that i'm wondering about is the whole foods shopping "experience" -- i really did not feel comfortable in that store, and i wonder if that's a common feeling or if it's just my own neuroses. if the chicken turns out as good as the cow, i'll deal with it.

Date: 2005-11-29 16:13
Subject: hmm..
i'm sitting here watching mad money on CNBC (a stock and investment show run by a guy that rants and raves like a lunatic) and thought that it would be an interesting experiment to have my stock trading application open to watch what happens when cramer advocates a stock. he just suggested that people buy CAI (CACI International) as a play off of the randy cunningham bribery scandal, and as soon as the words came out of his mouth, the stock jumped a dollar. for anyone who watches the show, you know that he'll probably have one or two other picks over the course of the next hour, and i'm going to watch those as well. i'm predicting, based on the pre-show commercial, that he's going to recommend NTRI (nutri/system) - so we'll see what happens there. right now NTRI is at 39.35 in after-hours trading... ok, i was wrong... BDX. which just jumped 70 cents.

so anyway, here's what i can't help but wonder... how many of jim cramer's cronies get told what stocks he's going to mention before the show airs so they can go out and buy? it's not insider trading, because cramer doesn't actually work for any of these companies or have any information that's not available to the general public, but it definitely strikes me as ripe for impropriety. hmm.....

Date: 2005-11-30 11:19
Subject: are these people fuckin' crazy?
another house on my street went on the market last week. it's smaller than my house and has no pool. list price? $410,000.

are you shitting me?! what the fuck is wrong with my neighbors - i think they've all lost their minds or they're smokin' the really good shit. first we have the woman two houses down trying to sell hers for $425k, only to take it off the market a few days later, and now these people are trying to get $410k. i don't care if they've remodeled the entire interior, as far as i'm concerned, no house on this street is worth anywhere near that amount.

but you know, if they get anywhere close to what they're asking for, i think i might seriously consider putting my house up for sale, living in an apartment for a year, and then just moving to vegas. a profit of over $200k in 5 years would be pretty damn sweet.