Guard Dog

Well I finally broke down and bought Fallout New Vegas. I had been holding out for a GOTY edition with all the DLCs but if there was going to be one we'd have heard about it by now. Besides, it's going for $14.99 at Walmart so what the heck. It just finished loading so I'm going to drink a few beers and give it a look. And by the way Obsidian guys... no more Steam games. Seriously. Steam is an intense burning pain in the *** and it sucks the joy from the whole experience. It's the only reason I never bought Shogun 2 TW. So, cut that crap out.

I don't blame you in the least. Why do you think I've been arguing that we need to strip these suckers of as much of their power as possible? I'll make a libertarian of you before it's over Calax. The college commies can't have sunk their claws too deep into you yet!

Congrats on the new family members!

I celebrated by watching the Florida Panthers lose a heartbreaker to the Jets. Then spent the rest of the night watching Paranormal Activity (very good) then Paranormal Activity 2 (not so good).

It's easy to get turned around in that place. The parking lot is poorly lit and barely numbered and every exit looks the same. But it was funny!

You went to MDCC? Cool, now there is an up chance that i've bumped into you in real life. Yep, I finished my AA there from 1996 to 1999, all at night. Then I got my BS from FAU, finished in 2003. When were you there?

Malazan is a tricky series in that people inevitably love or hate it. Erikson doesn't tell his story in a straightforward, chronological way. For frame of reference: Combined with a huge cast of characters and a shockingly in-depth world...it can get confusing. I remember having a lot of trouble in the first few books. It gets easier once you become familiar with the world and its terminology. It's similar to GRRM's ASoIaF in that it nails a dark, gritty atmosphere but whereas Martin has a more low-fantasy world, Malazan is full of magic and gods who like to intervene (resurrection, making pawns, etc). Also, Malazan has a lot of characters but at the expense of depth, unfortunately. You probably won't find well-written characters on the level of ASoIaF. So if you prefer fantasy that doesn't rely on magic, stay away from these books. The closest parallel I can think of is Glen Cook's The Black Company. Chances are if you enjoy that, you'll like Malazan. Thanks, I don't think that's for me.

Funny story. Last night I got a call from a friend who went to a concert over at the Fed Ex forum in midtown. He said his truck had been stolen and he needed a ride. I drove out there and picked him and his wife up, the cops were gone but they had a police report in hand. So I picked them up on the east side of the Forum and was driving around to the the west side to exit when I noticed a shiny red Tahoe sitting right there about 20 spaces away from the exit. I asked him "Isn't that your truck?" It was. The fool forgot what side of the arena he parked on. I laughed and I laughed and the more I did the madder his wife got at him. That was worth the drive!

Point well taken Tig.

Well, if it were a normal case of the blues it probably would. What Calax is dealing with is a lot more complicated and not curable by the "chicken soup" method (something that makes you feel better without actually curing anything). But it certainly wouldn't hurt!

I had an interesting discussion in class with one of my professors back in college. It was in a Calculus class and I was having some difficulty with antiderivatives so I kept asking him questions that kept him on the subject longer than he wanted. He made an offhanded remark on my responsibilities as a student and his as a teacher. I explained to him that he was mistaken about the nature of our relationship. In my view I hired and paid for Miami Dade Community College to teach me the Calculus II class. MDCC then assigned him (as their employee) the task of carrying out their end of the agreement. That means I am not his student, I am his customer and he has an obligation to follow his syllabus and teach the material as agreed when I paid my tuition for his class. Not just "present it and move on". Needless to say he was not pleased to hear that his august and noble profession was really just little more than a paid service provider just like any other person with a job. But, that is what it is.

Now reading "The Savior" by Eugene Drucker about a german musician hired to entertain troops at a labor camp in WWII and has a crisis of conciense when he sees how the jewish prisioners are treated. You can pretty well guess where the plot is going but at least the cliche is delivered gracefully. BTW, how is Gardens of the Moon ? I bought it off the sale rack a while back but have never read it. I have a hard time getting into fantasy unless Tolkien or Martin wrote it.

Calax, you're still at University right? Hit up some bars man! Meet some new people! The noise would exacerbate my symptoms. You need to get a good roll in the hay. That will snap you right out of it, or at least make it go easier.

I have a fair sized garden and I just started raising rabbits. If I could find a way to make my own electricity (and dog food, and booze) I'd be fairly self sufficient. By that I mean make it in the quantities I'd want to be comfortable, not just subsusting.

One nice thing about getting out of design work, I'm getting home on time again, and then enjoying free time once I do get home. I'd forgotten how good that feels. Time to kick back with a big glass of iced tea and watch some Law & Order. Woo Hoo. No baseball tonight. Bummer.

Thanks for the kind words everyone. And you are all correct, she had a great run and went out happy and peacefully. Thats the best any of us can hope for. Except me. I'll be the dumbass that falls off a ladder while hanging a fan or something.

Yup yup... Brown! Congrats, that is outstanding! We were speaking of feeling old earlier, when I started coming to this board you, Krookie, Pixies, heck even Calax were all kids! Wild stuff.

Now reading We Are the Ship: The Story of Negro League Baseball by Kadir Nelson. If you like US History & Baseball it is definitely worth a look. Also reading Among Others by Jo Walton. I think you guys might like this one. It's a little sci-fi with a little modern fantasy. I just started it but it is very unusual. It sort of reminds me of Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell only not as cumbersome.

My dog Leah passed away in her sleep this morning. She was fifteen years old. She came to me as a foster dog with fear issues seven years ago when I lived in Florida. I was fostering dogs for a private South Florida rescue organization then. Apparently she spent the first eight years of her life chained to a tree being mistreated by neighborhood kids. I don't know how she came to the rescue group but after working to boost her confidence and get her weight and health back to normal (she was terribly malnourished) she became a normal, happy and playful dog. Anyway she was so attached to me I decided to go from being her foster home to her forever home. She was a great girl and lived half a happy life at least. I am sad she is gone but I am also very happy and very blessed to have known her at all.

1) Big time 2) The majority of the worlds manufacturing so there is a lot of demand 3) Which also drives up the price of the finished goods and consequently the mark up percentage 4) This will happen. To quote Aristotle "Nature always finds the mean" this is true in investing as well. There are two kinds of commodity investor, real speculators who are following the demand and yeild, and those like myself who are hedging against instability elsewhere. Once the markets and national economies even out the prices of these things will drop as buyers rediversify. The trick is to understand when to buy in and when to get out. 5) True but if you are taking your research seriously this really should not sneak up on you. 6) Always a danger. Investing is inherently unsafe and not for the faint of heart.

No I definitely would not recommend buying gold now. At some point the price WILL correct (as long as the world economy does not collapse) and it will finally settle back around $900 or so. What I was driving at was the value of investments that have worth independent of currency fluctuations and do not represent a liability that may not be repaid. If I bought US savings bonds and the dollar collapses, those bonds are worthless and the investment is lost. If I bought stocks and the company goes bankrupt, odds are the investment is a total loss. A commodity will never be worth zero. Thats why their trading price skyrockets in times of economic crisis. When GW Bush began talking about massive cash infusions to banks in 2008 I knew the wheels were about to fall off. Don't get me wrong, I do not think the US or any other country will implode, we will all see the back side of this if, and only if, the governments of the world realize the root cause of the issue and correct their business model. Winston Churchill once said "Americans will always do the right thing, once they've tried everything else" I think that will prove true of all of us. My focus has been on how to protect my own assets during whatever comes and that has been behind the advice I've given here, and elsewhere. Now, Krezack has been harping on the wonders of the Australian economy, and it is one of the strongest in the world. Why? They are a worlds leader in export of raw materials and have a very small (by comparison to the other big nations) industrial market that exports finished goods. So the value of their resources is the key to their success. Their main exports are wheat, gold bullion, iron ore, tin & nickel. What are these things? Commodities, which as we have discussed are heavily traded and a little overpriced. Not a bad thing for the folks down under. However, they are also running a deficit in the 50-60B, range because their government is spend happy too. A manageable deficit in good time can be a crippling one in tough times and something like 69% of all Australians are employed in a service industry (which suffer dispropotionaly during economic bad times) so there is potential there for trouble. Their national debt is still only like 8% of GDP so while it is something they need to watch but nothing to be concerned about now. For the moment they are doing a good job running their house. Of course Australia will always be a prime location for tourisim and that never hurts. Heck I'd like to go one of these days.

I've been saying for a few years now (and practicing what I preach) the smart move for all of us as individuals is to reduce or even eliminate all investments that represent a liability for someone else (stocks, bonds, etc) and focus on something with real value like commodities, real estate, etc. In 2008 I sold off all my stocks and mutual shares and bought gold. That has turned out to be a smart move to say the least. Gold is way over priced now. In reality it is worth about $900USD give or take. It's trading at $1700 and hit $2k last month. The reason it is doing this is unlike currency it was intrinsic value. The US dollar, Euro, Yen may all become worthless someday. Probably not but possibly yes. Gold will never be worthless so it is a safety hedge as well as an investment. The same is true of Silver, Copper, or any other real commodity. Yes a collapse will come and it will be bad. But a recovery will follow assuming we don't start fighting each other again. Devaluaing currency as a means of monetizing debt is a recipie for disaster and that does appear to be the way Greece, Ireland, and others may go if the other EU members cannot or will not bail them out. But even bailing them out is throwing good money after bad if they continure the same flawed economic model. The truth is, if we want our way of life and standard of living to survive then all governments in the EU and the US will need to embrace some serious austerity measures. We need to ask our governments for less. And then they need to tax business and investment less. That will encourage the one thing that WILL save us all, economic growth.

Wow. If I want to go out loaded I had best get started drinking.

I know what you mean. Earlier this year I was on the way to work when I heard on the radio it was the 20th anniversary of the beginning of Desert Storm/Gulf War. I almost wrecked. How could that be so long ago when I remember all that so clearly? You know it never occurred to me that in a lot of our discussions on teh Gulf a lot of people I'm talking to don't remember the firt Gulf, let alone Iran-Iraq. Huh. Today I was teaching about the Crusades and religious fervor, and I tried to use Al-Queda as an example of fervor. Way too many kids gave me blank stares. I'd say half of them had no idea what I was talking about. There response to me was "We were only 2 when 9/11 happened!" One of my co-workers daughter house/dog sits for me when I'm on the road. The first time she did it she was asking about my Marine Corps stuff (I have my medals, marksmanship badges, etc in a display frame on the wall). I told her I got them in the Gulf War. She asked Iraq or Afghanistan. I laughed and said neither. She really knew nothing about it. Then I realized, she is seventeen! She was not even born then! That made me feel older than dirt.

Good riddance. Let's hope the Who did not have it right: "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss". But they probably will.