Tuesday, September 30, 2003

The Other Animals Are Agin' Us
By Tim Bedore 2003

Did you see that in the paper the other day about those carp in the Mississippi River jumping into boats and bonking fisherman in the head? It's true. They're called big head carp, they're from Asia and they're attacking and severely injuring many fisherman.

Biologists claim the roar of boat motors agitates and excites these carp and they jump towards the sound but I think these biologists are naively missing an obvious connection. Fish are attacking fisherman. For the fish it's get them before they get you, kill or be killed. Even if these fisherman are practicing catch and release, that's a very painful, embarrassing experience for any fish and apparently they have had it.

What about the increase in mountain lion attacks? Great White sharks moving closer to shore? Moose have been showing up in towns and stomping on people. A squirrel was in my living room last spring. Am I the only one that sees a pattern here? People, wise up! The other animals are against us. It doesn't take a genius to see there's an inter-species conspiracy to thwart the urban expansion of man.

How do the squirrels fit in? Surveillance. They spy on what we people are doing in the cities and report back to the bigger species out there on the front lines.

And taken together these other species represent walking, we hope not yet talking, scratching, biting weapons of mass destruction. And if these other species can convince the insect world, for example a well known anti-human group like the killer bees, to join up our way of life and our democracy could be history.

The skeptical may ask why would these other species want to hurt us? Obviously, they hate us. They are jealous of our way of life. We swim in chlorinated, safe environment pools, then towel off and have an adult beverage. They are stuck eating sludge in the Mississippi, a river polluted by guess who: their mortal enemy man. And to top it all off we eat them.

This invasion of Asian carp is no accident. This is stage one of their well planned attack. We ignore the obvious at our own peril.

We can no longer sit back and wait for them to attack us. It's time we adopt a new doctrine regarding these other animals. We have to wipe out any and all species who are a lined against us, wherever they are. We can not rest until every big head carp, great white shark, mountain lion, moose and squirrel and any other species that associates with them are defeated.

If the U.N. wants to get involved fine, if not we can do it alone. Of course the British will show up, they always do, but we will fight to protect our way of life. And if you don't agree, you're an unpatriotic idiot who hates America.
Busy Bee

I had a switch fail in my network at work last week. All of the connections going into it just went poof. I scrambled to find a backup, all I could find was an old hub which only ran at 10 Mb/s and half duplex. The network was overloaded. I had to take a few runs down for the night until my company could overnight me a new switch.

So I got the replacement the next morning, why it's a 10 Mb/s half duplex hub! Wow, thanks guys. I found a 100 Mb/s switch running a lone workstation in a room that's hardly ever used. So I disconnected it, brought it to the server room and used that as my new replacement. Only problem is it only has eight ports. My original configuration used ten so I had to deem two connections unnecessary and leave them out of the switch over. It turned out those two connections were my PC and my printer. I put the replacement hub that was sent to me in the room I borrowed the switch from. It will do ok in that location.

Not having my PC on the network anymore shouldn't be a problem as long as corporate can ship me yet another replacement before the following Monday when I need the PC on the network to collect their data for them, burn it to CD and ship it back. Well it's a new fiscal year and guess what? They can't buy any new hardware until later next month. Well crap. Monday rolled around and I had to find some way to get a 200 Mb data file off of one of the machines, get it to my PC and burn it to CD. I grabbed my old 10 Mb/s hub, plugged it in, quickly pulled a connection out of the 100 Mb/s switch, a connection that really wasn't running anything too important and jammed it into the 10 Mb/s hub. Then I ran a short cat-5 cable from the 10 Mb/s hub down to the newly open port on the 100 Mb/s, now I have a node to plug my PC and printer in to even if it is only 10 Mb/s. Got the data and at a horrendous 1/10th of the speed I'm used to (took a full minute to transfer as opposed to six seconds). Can't wait for my replacement switch to get in. I can't work with these speeds.

More problems. Sunday one of the servers crashed. What's worse is it was the NIS master on a network that the machines use NFS to get their login, accounts and directory structure from (Solaris network). When it went down, they all locked up. It looks like it just ran out of memory. It had been running for 110 days straight. You should see the software I have to run on these servers - memory leak city. 110 days is impressive. I suppose I should reboot the others ones before they go.

On top of all my issues I am trying to install a new version of software of one of the runs, have it configured and running by this Thursday for a visit from Corporate. It is fun to be under the gun.

Sorry blog for not writing to you, but you understand.

DJI 9261, SP5 994, NASDAQ 1794

Monday, September 22, 2003

There's That Word Again - Terrorist

The term terrorist must be the word of the year. It's fashionable to apply it to everything now apparently. Oh those salespeople didn't give me a discount on my purchase. Those terrorists!

I've seen it used in reference to forest fires in France and just recently in response to what looks like an animal rights activist who set 8000 minks free from a mink farm in Finland.

"This is a farm with seven to eight thousand animals and all of the cages had been opened. This was a well planned attack with many perpetrators," Finne said.

"For the farmer, this is an utter disaster. There will also be an impact on the local wildlife as the minks are predators who will try and find food. Some of the minks will face a painful death. This is a terrorist act, nothing else."

NOTHING else? How can you be so sure.
Heh Heh Heh, Allllllright!

Who says I don't get personal in my blog? Yesterday was my 12th anniversary. Marriage? Nope. Well wait a minute, yeah it coincides with that. I have been married three months as of the 21st but I mean to talk about something else. I lost something 12 years ago at the ripe ol' age of 18 (whew, just made it over the legal limit) and have yet to find it. I celebrate it because it was a big deal for me then and 12 years later, I'm still not tired of celebrating it. I estimate that I have celebrated it 2028 times to date with no end in sight.

I know it was important to me back when I first started out because I remember I used to keep a paper log of the number of encounters. I didn't get wordy, no thoughts or emotions were expressed, I just had a checkmark on the date like a prisoner counting the number of days of his incarceration on the stone wall. My first night, I was so happy to be celebrating I celebrated three times. Allllright. I quit recording the frequency of the celebrations on paper after about the 100th day. I'm not sure why I quit. Probably because I didn't see a point after the 100th mark. 2028 times later (estimated), that would be a few pages in the notebook. Plus, trying to carry that notebook through the years and keep it in decent condition was something I probably wasn't willing to do. Can you imagine me still writing in it 12 years later? It'd look like a medieval scroll, cover all bent up, corners ripped off, pages yellowed, aluminum spiral undoing the bind or all together missing. No thanks. My personal best for number of celebrations in one day, five times, five times, five times, five times, FIVE TIMES! Now can you dig that? Suckaaaaaaaaaaaa.

September 21, 1991 - ?

DJI 9541, SP5 1021, NASDAQ 1874

Friday, September 19, 2003


Hi. I don't have anything planned to talk about. I do have a list of potential topics I keep in a Word file that I can use for my blog here, but I don't feel like expanding on any of them today. What I would like to do is just freestyle, just come up with the stuff as I write this. It's fun to do, good for your creative writing skills. I am going to start off on the topic I study the most and like to talk about the most - money.

I think the U.S. financial market is in an interesting phase. The last three years it's been beaten down bad, setting record low numbers across the board, high unemployment, venture capitalists dropping off the face of the planet. We've lost enough money that would make the Great Depression look like someone just lost their change in the Coke machine. It was so bad, the president had to start two wars to try and improve his chances at reelection. He had nothing to lose. Poor economies don't get presidents reelected, just ask Jimmy Carter. Ok I'm being a bit critical. I'm sure the war in Afghanistan and Iraq were not started solely for the reason of improving an administration's image. I think we as a country got pissed about 9/11 and had to strike out at someone, even if they weren't involved. We wanted to make someone pay for our grief.

Anyway, back to my original point that I think the market is in an interesting phase. For so long, everything was taking a beating, hemorrhaging money (I love that term when it's used outside of a medical context), so we were used to losing our shirts. Here it is year four and the market is starting its recovery, at least according to the major index numbers and it's doing quite well I'd have to say. If this is just the start of its recovery, I think we're in for some good times ahead. That is why I opened my Roth IRA.

The indexes are approaching two year highs. The first year we didn't lose too much, just the accelerated growth of the tech boom slowed down. It wasn't until the second year that the markets turned south, in the third year took a huge dump but right now they are back up near those highs from three years ago. But who's noticed? Interestingly the pop started the week the Iraq war began. Right now, since March the major indexes are up over 20 percent, some close to 30. 30 percent in six months! In an average year, the markets do not make that in 12 months. There is not a mutual fund that can consistently make 30 percent in that amount of time. So why haven't we heard anything about this? 30 percent in six months is amazing progress yet there has been little media coverage on it, no declarations from experts saying that all is well. Bush's approval rating is actually going down as our inexperience of nation building becomes more obvious in Iraq. A 30 percent climb in six months is the kind of improvement we enjoyed during the technology sector boom, so why aren't we taking to the streets and throwing a ticker tape parade? Haven't you noticed there hasn't been much in the news lately about the supposed bankruptcy of the airline industry? You want to know why, it's because each of those companies stocks are up 50 percent in that same six month period. FIFTY PERCENT! They're doing better than the market overall. No complaints, but no cheers either. Why isn't this all over front page news?

I'll tell you why, part of it is the distraction of war in Iraq but once in awhile it still produces a slow news day. It's because of habit and the wounds we're still licking. For the past three years, we got nailed, retirements wiped, people laid off, huge super companies bankrupt because of accounting scandals. Three years of a bear market, we're not ready to declare that the bull has returned after an amazing six months.

And you know what? I like it that way. If the markets can make 30 percent without fan fare, without anyone really noticing, then there's nothing to stop it. It's news and reports that guides investors. 30 percent on no news is amazing. That climb will in turn produce capital to be invested back in to the business then they will have something good to report. If the people and corporations who support market advances with investments haven't even noticed or are still too afraid to commit, what do you think will happen when they start hearing the good news of recovery? They will come back in droves and get the boom started again. The longer we can pretend that things just really still suck while we rake in the cash, the longer we can run up the recovery. How cool is that? We preach doom but do so at the bank with a secret smile.

On another topic, many posts back, I used to include a list of what movies I had recently seen both in the theater and at home plus what music CD I was listening to. It was supposed to be a nostalgic reminder for me of that period in my life when I made the post. I haven't given any updates on that because nothing has changed in the last month. I haven't seen any new movies in the theater and I still have the same CD in my car stereo. What I would like to start doing is posting the financial market indexes. It might be fun to see a snapshot of the condition of the market at the time of the post. Sometimes, I'm sure it has an effect on my mood and it'd be interesting to find a correleation if there is one.


DJI 9633, SP5 1034, NASDAQ 1902

Tuesday, September 16, 2003

I Know You Because I've Seen You Sleep

I love studies, especially studies on human behavior and personality. I use cues to read people, even if they are unaware that they're giving anything away about themselves so this sleeping study piqued my interest. I don't get to see a lot of people sleep but it was interesting anyway.

A British sleep expert says your personality can be determined by the sleeping position you take.

Fetal position is the most common. It is associated with shy and sensitive personalities.

Soldier position which is flat on your back, with arms at your side are quiet and reserved.

The log position which is sleeping on your side with legs stretched out and arms down indicates social, easy-going personality. If the arms are stretched straight out away from you in this position, you tend to be more suspicious.

The freefall position which has you flat on your stomach and hands at the side of your head, which is how I always start out when going to sleep, is the most unusual position. Only 6.5% prefer it and it generally means you are brash and seeking the company of others, especially those of your own kind.

Starfish position which puts you on your back, arms and legs stretched out, which is where I end up by the time I wake up, means you are a good listener.

So apparently I want to be brash and gregarious but I ultimately end up being a good listener. I think I actually hit all of these positions at some point during the sleep, so that must make me Cybil.

Now you know.

Monday, September 15, 2003

History of DivX

What's DivX? It's a codec.

What's a codec? It's a video compression method. COmpress/DECompress. It is to video what mp3 is to CD audio.

A long, long time ago, in 1998, Circuit City wanted to make a video standard built in with common DVD players to play a codec created movie. The idea was that they could offer movies on disposable CDs or online. In 1998, broadband was barely on the radar so online meant through your standard telephone. In DVD format, we're talking 4 GB+ which is also too big for a standard "disposable" CD. Even if the world had broadband in 1998, the DVD download would still be so long, you could go watch another movie before your downloaded one was ready. So Circuit City set out to shrink the enormous size and they wanted to do it without sacrifice the video quality DVD offers.

Circuit City got financial backing from the likes of Disney, Dreamworks, Panasonic, Paramout plus a few others to create a new digitial video quality that would change the future of movie rentals. They were successful with the invention part of it which became one of the world's first codecs named Divx. Now they just needed to revolutionize how consumers buy and rent movies. Just so you know, we're still waiting on the latter to happen.

So what happened?

There is a difference between DivX and Divx; notice the X on the end. Divx died out as do most of electronic store specialized brands. DivX however was reborn from the ashes of the Divx Pheonix (sort of) by some French hacker who had the same idea as Circuit City to shrink DVD's bulky data size but not for the same purposes of reinvinting the video rental industry. He had his own goals in mind for the smaller movie files so that they could be transported more easily. Now what does a hacker want with easily transported movie files?

I mentioned DivX was sort of reborn from Divx. I say that because Divx and DivX actually have little in common except their name and the fact that they accomplish the same end result. The French hacker actually got the code for DivX from a beta version of Windows Media Player many years ago. WMP uses MPEG-4 compression so DivX is actually a form of MPEG-4, Microsoft's attempt to digitize high quality video. The hacker took the code and passed it among the hacker community which is what made DivX what it is today. MPEG-4 went the way of the Dodo (sorry, more bird references) but DivX remained. It was turned into a company, they have a CEO, their own website and millions of downloads a year. Now what do millions of computer users want with a codec that turns high quality videos into manageable file sizes? I can't imagine.

If you try to play a compressed movie file from your computer and you only get sound but no video, then you are missing the codec plugin that was used to encode that movie. To fix that, you install the codec on your computer. Sometimes, it's hard to tell what codec was used to encode the movie file so people generally just install a bunch of them hoping to hit the one they need. DivX is popular but isn't always used. Listed below are the four most widely used codecs. If you install all four, you'll be able to play 98% of the movies out there.

XviD - Gee where did they get that palindromic name?

Thursday, September 11, 2003

This article was written for a British periodical one year ago today which refers to the events that happened to the United States two years ago today. Change the references to 'one year' to 'two years' and I think it still applies. Enjoy.

One Year Later
by Tony Parsons
London Daily Mirror
September 11, 2002

ONE year ago, the world witnessed a unique kind of broadcasting-the mass murder of thousands, live on television. As a lesson in the pitiless cruelty of the human race, September 11 was up there with Pol Pot's mountain of skulls in Cambodia, or the skeletal bodies stacked like garbage in the Nazi concentration camps.

An unspeakable act so cruel, so calculated and so utterly merciless that surely the world could agree on one thing - nobody deserves this fate. Surely there could be consensus: the victims were truly innocent, the perpetrators truly evil.

But to the world's eternal shame, 9/11 is increasingly seen as America's comeuppance. Incredibly, anti-Americanism has increased over the last year.

There has always been a simmering resentment to the USA in this country too loud, too rich, too full of themselves and so much happier than Europeans - but it has become an epidemic. And it seems incredible to me. More than that, it turns my stomach.

America is this country's greatest friend and our staunchest ally. We are bonded to the US by culture, language and blood. A little over half a century ago, around half a million Americans died for our freedoms, as well as their own. Have we forgotten so soon? And exactly a year ago, thousands of ordinary men, women and children - not just Americans, but from dozens of countries - were butchered by a small group of religious fanatics. Are we so quick to betray them?

What touched the heart about those who died in the twin towers and on the planes was that we recognized them. Young fathers and mothers, somebody's son and somebody's daughter, husbands and wives, and children, some unborn.

And these people brought it on themselves? And their nation is to blame for their meticulously planned slaughter?

These days you don't have to be some dust-encrusted nut job in Kabul or Karachi or Finsbury Park to see America as the Great Satan. The anti-American alliance is made up of self-loathing liberals who blame the Americans for every ill in the Third World, and conservatives suffering from power-envy, bitter that the world's only superpower can do what it likes without having to ask permission.


Remember, remember.

Remember the gut-wrenching tapes of weeping men phoning their wives to say, "I love you," before they were burned alive.


Remember the hundreds of firemen buried alive.

Remember the smiling face of that beautiful little girl who was on one of the planes with her mum.

Remember, remember - and realize that America has never retaliated for 9/11 in anything like the way it could have.



AMERICA could have turned a large chunk of the world into a parking lot. That it didn't is a sign of strength. American voices are already being raised against attacking Iraq - that's what a democracy is for. How many in the Islamic world will have a minute's silence for the slaughtered innocents of 9/11? How many Islamic leaders will have the guts to say that the mass murder of 9/11 was an abomination?

When the news of 9/11 broke on the West Bank, those freedom-loving Palestinians were dancing in the street. America watched all of that - and didn't push the button. We should thank the stars that America is the most powerful nation in the world. I still find it incredible that 9/11 did not provoke all-out war. Not a "war on terrorism." A real war.

The fundamentalist dudes are talking about "opening the gates of hell," if America attacks Iraq. Well, America could have opened the gates of hell like you wouldn't believe.

The US is the most militarily powerful nation that ever strode the face of the earth. The campaign in Afghanistan may have been less than perfect and the planned war on Iraq may be misconceived.

But don't blame America for not bringing peace and light to these wretched countries. How many democracies are there in the Middle East, or in the Muslim world? You can count them on the fingers of one hand - assuming you haven't had any chopped off for minor shoplifting.

I love America, yet America is hated. I guess that makes me Bush's poodle. But I would rather be a dog in New York City than a Prince in Riyadh. Above all, America is hated because it is what every country wants to be - rich, free, strong, open, optimistic. Not ground down by the past, or religion, or some caste system. America is the best friend this country ever had and we should start remembering that.



To our shame, George Bush gets a worse press than Saddam Hussein. Once we were told that Saddam gassed the Kurds, tortured his own people and set up rape-camps in Kuwait. Now we are told he likes Quality Street. Save me the orange center, oh mighty one!


No, do more than remember. Never forget.

Tony Parsons
London, England UK

Wednesday, September 10, 2003

Dollar Dollar

I opened a Roth IRA today. Well it's processing anyway. Market is down past couple of days so no hurry on having the paperwork go through. I put in the max $3k I am legally allowed but I split it between two funds. $1k went into the equivalent of the S&P 500 index to hedge any losses I might take from the $2k that went into a very aggressive mutual fund called Emerging Markets. It's a risk but what isn't when you want to invest?

I have a pretty good size 401k that's growing as the market rebounds. I'm glad to see that. I'll always have that.

I used to dabble in stocks too but sold them back in January to pay off all of my bills. I'm quite happy to be bill free this year so it was definitely worth it. That investment actually was an interesting period. Originally my investment was $3k I put into a strategy known as the Foolish Four which is something that the guys at Fool.com came up with. The Foolish Four is a spin off of an older strategy called Dogs of the Dow. In Dogs of the Dow, you take the ten companies of the Dow Jones Industrial Average with the highest yield and invest in those ten companies for one year. Yield is the relationship between the stock's price and what they pay out in dividends. In Yield, the idea is if a stock is paying a lot of dividends, it probably means its oversold which explains the low price and the price is most likely due for a comeback, so you ride the comeback. If it doesn't rebound, well you're getting pretty good dividends and you wait a year to reallocate your investments. The Foolish Four takes the top four instead of the top ten. It's cheaper, less broker fees to pay for the transactions and you have less stocks you have to keep an eye on. I put my three grand in the Foolish Four in May 1999. That's right, the height of the tech boom. Within a couple of years, that 3k was at 1700. Almost a 50 percent drop on a strategy that's supposed to average 20 percent gains per year. If you go back to the Fool site, you'll notice (or not) they no longer support the Foolish Four. Gee I wonder why? So I ate my losses, sold my four supposed-to-be oversold stocks, took my measly 1700 and started playing around with cyclical stocks.

Cyclical stocks have prices that show a pattern of going up and down over a period of time. This is more like day trading. You buy low, sell high, find another at its low point and do it again. Sometimes you can come back to the same stock after its tumbled. Some people even short the stock (shorting a stock is where you borrow shares from your broker, sell them off at hopefully a high price, then when it drops, buy the shares back, return them to your broker and you keep the savings) on the way down, buy them on the way up and keep doing this all on one stock. I never shorted a stock in my life but in 2002 I was able to take my 1700 and turn it into 3400. That's right, 100 percent gains in one year using cyclical stocks. Not bad if I do say so myself. That whoops every mutual fund's rate of return in this world by a huge margin! Take that Warren Buffett! And since I sold my Foolish Four losses in the same year I made the huge profit, I hardly had any taxes on it. Technically I only netted 400 dollars that year. So I sold that $3400 to pay the rest of my bills early this year.

You might ask, why not stick with your new strategy and try and turn your 3400 into 6800 this year? Because I know when to quit when I'm ahead, I just got burned on the previous strategy so having a new strategy that actually didn't cost me money made me elated, plus it's more important to pay off bills before you try to make money, you're guaranteed to save money paying off your bills first.

What's nice is I still have a couple of grand saved (it's easy to have this much when you don't have bills). I think I'm going to get back into trading stocks with that 2k and see what I can do with it. 100% per year is a very nice rate of return. I'll be happy if I can make 20%. What am I saying, I'll be happy if I don't lose it.

Tuesday, September 09, 2003

There's No Business Like Music Piracy

I was watching World News Tonight and they had a segment on the RIAA's insane decision to sue their customers and in one particular scene, they showed a popular peer2peer program with a long list of song titles this particular patron was downloading.

The list read like this:

Rosemary Clooney

Ok. If that wasn't staged just for the story, then someone has split personalities.

Sunday, September 07, 2003

Graveyard Shift Tonight

Another late night at work for the FAA. They're hooking up a new system to their air traffic system which could affect my feed to their air traffic system. So I'm here to make sure my stuff doesn't break. I'm only needed at the start of it to take my system offline and at the end of it to make sure it goes back into operation. In between I twiddle my thumbs. Actually, I brought a DVD, Ecks vs. Sever. I heard bad things about it, but I get to look at Lucy Liu while getting paid for it, so it can't be too bad.

I don't have to do these late night sessions too often. Just whenever the FAA makes a major change to one of their systems. The work has to be done in the dead of night to lessen the safety risk for the air traffic controllers should something go very wrong. I don't mind doing this once in awhile, it's a nice change of pace, keeps things interesting and reminds my superiors that I'm dedicated to the job. I've had worse shifts than this. I used to be on mids permanantly at one point. It wasn't too bad, but I never could figure out if I should go to bed as soon as I got home or stay up and sleep later, waking up just before I had to go in. I also had a shift where I worked ten days in a row, followed by four days off then do it again. That was probably the most interesting shift I ever had to work. It was tough but I was in my early twenties then so my body could handle it even if my mind was all screwed up. I had another shift where it was four ten hour days with a three day weekend. Doesn't sound bad but I had to be here at 5a Sunday morning, 5a Monday then switched to second shift 2p Tuesday and Wednesday. It sounds odd but the switch in shift between Monday and Tuesday was the easy part. The hard part was being able to sleep in five days out of the week then have to be in on Sunday and Monday by 5a. On those days, I sometimes didn't even remember the drive in to work.

Anyway, we're about to get started. Time to start my movie.

Friday, September 05, 2003


It's true you don't appreciate something until it's gone. We had bad flooding here Monday, supposedly worst in 108 years and it caused state-wide damage to lots of equpiment including whatever took my DSL connection out at work. The phone company had to make so many repairs, this business customer had to wait a week before they would get to my problem and restore my connection. In the meantime, I had to go next door to another building to use a 56k dial up to conduct my work. What's worse is the dialup is not a local provider, my corporation has its own dial in provider 1000 miles away. So not only do I have to use a dial up, I have to use it long distance and use the proxy servers provided by my company. For anyone who has to use company proxy servers, you know just how lightning fast these can be. It took me half an hour to print off three FedEx invoices. Talk about a test of patience. And of course while you're using company proxy, you can't look at personal sites and that's what was really driving me nuts. I couldn't get my news, market updates, update my blog, read other blogs, chat in instant messenger, play Google's website roulette or otherwise just generally goof off. I missed that! Oh internet access you sweet sweet bird, never leave me again.