Month: June 2006

Shot and processed my first roll of the 100 expired rolls of Kodak film I bought for the trip. It looks good, and scans really well. Looks like a good purchase!

Isaac

That’s what the insurance company is going to give me for my car. I think that will pay for my ticket, the last round of dental work, and maybe even the last camera I bought. See, things can turn out pretty well if you let them. I was wondering what to do with the car, looks like it’s been taken care of for me. I’ll sell the thing for a couple of hundred right before I leave, in the meantime, it has allowed me to ensure my financial goal for the trip will be exceeded. The Lord works in mysterious ways…:-)

Isaac

Was just reading on Yahoo finance how the equities markets have lost 2 trillion dollars in the last month. Two months ago, my 401k was up over 14%, now it’s up by only 5% or so. It wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest if it finished in the red for the year. Not really a problem in my eyes, I’ll be in it for another 35-40 years. When I see selloffs like this, my reaction is BUY BUY BUY!!!!

It sounds stupid, but does anyone remember how to make money? Buy low and sell high. A lot of people buy high and sell low, and the more risky the investment, the more likely they are to do that. I do think that when dealing with individual companies, it’s best to get out and cut your losses if you don’t think the company can rebound. But if you’re in mutual funds, especially index funds, bear markets are where you should spend the most. The lower it goes, the more you should buy. I’m upping my contribution to the max it can be (15% I think) for the time being. In an ideal world, I’d be able to buy every time the market dipped and sell whenever it went higher. I’ve been told that most people lose money during bar markets… so don’t do what most people do….:-)

Isaac

I’ve gone on a mini binge on ITunes, well if three songs can be considered a binge… Anyway, they all have something in common, I hate all three bands. Really really hate them, but these particular songs are pretty good. So I guess they aren’t unredeemable like REO Speed Wagon, Loverboy, Rush, or Kansas. No, these groups have one decent song, so they’re just pretty bad… I got “Do Ya” by ELO, “Keep Your Hands to Yourself” by the Georgia Satellites, and “My Old School” by Steely Dan. Do Ya is a pretty good pop-rocker, and I’ve lived nearby two of the locations in Old school. Granted, the Georgia Satellites are pretty much indefensible… but they are, ummm…. evocative of the place I grew up. Anybody else got favorite songs from bands you hate?

Isaac

I have actually been out taking pictures the last couple of weekends, no really! I’ve put a couple up on my pictures page. They’re nothing all that special, and I’m not really happy with the way the scans (and therefore the web images) turned out, but they’re as good as I can get them… The prints look better… You can see them here.

Isaac

I do not have tickets yet. Turns out that my return date is too far in the future and the agent can’t place the order. I’m going to go down to the Yemen embassy on monday to see if I can fly in on a one way ticket. That would give me the most flexibility, I’d just buy another one way ticket when it was time to leave. I know that the US and the UK are not too keen on non residents coming in without a planned flight out. I’ll see if Yemen is the same.

Isaac

I’ve been trying to figure out what the fight is all about and I’m having trouble doing that. My gut reaction is to keep the level of government interference as low as possible and let companies charge what they want. I’ve heard arguments that worry about ISPs filtering or prioritizing content. Wouldn’t competition take care of that? If you didn’t like what your ISP is doing, I would think you could get another that you did like. Or am I missing something? My biggest worry is that if regulations are enacted, it will only screw up the growth of the internet. How can we predict how the internet will grow or what services will be demanded in the future? How can you write regulations that won’t screw it up? I’m still reading, let me know if you can enlighten me…

Isaac

You remember, the main character from “The Natural”? He’s the one that had some sort of odd poison administered to him that made him bleed from the side. I had some moles cut off of me the other day by my dermatologist, one of which was on my side. The sad thing is that the actual cuts they did with scalpels don’t bother me at all, bit their bandages hurt like hell! I pulled off the one on my side this morning and I realized that I was pulling the top layer of skin off of me! Ow ow ow! The whole area around the cut became really irritated and stung all day long. I walked around all day clutching my side, just like Roy Hobbs…

The other thing they cut off of me was right in between my shoulder blades. I realized what a tough place that is this morning when I was attempting to put on the special lotion and a new bandage. I could see it in the mirror, but when I tried to reach my arm around to place the bandage, I ended up turning so that I couldn’t see it… I ended up doing it by feel, I think I got it ok…

I usually heal pretty well with skin stuff, I rarely use a band aid, so I hope this clears up soon. And I hope that it isn’t so painful tomorrow morning!

Isaac

For once, the legislature is poised to roll back a tax that should have been abolished a long time ago. The so called death tax was the subject of 2 op-ed pieces in the Post today. The first one left me stunned, I can’t believe that someone actually thinks that way. Here is the general gist of his essay: There is too big a division between rich and poor, inheritances solidify the rich’s hold on the top tier and excludes the poor from advancing. Plus, how can you eliminate a tax when spending and deficits keep growing?

OK, to the first point, I can understand the desire to help the poor, but I cannot for the life of me understand the desire to hurt people that are not poor. There is a simpler name for the death tax, it’s called theft. Because a group of people think that some people have “too much” money does not entitle them to simply take it and give it to whomever they want. It’s one thing to offer a deal, I’ll tax you and in exchange I’ll give you certain services. That is defensible, telling people that someone else deserves their money is not. In my mind, when the government starts taking property from citizens and doesn’t even pretend that it is helping those people, it is at best bullying and at worst a warning sign of impending fascism.

The entire argument presupposes that there is a finite amount of wealth. If there is x amount of money and the “rich” own half of it, that leaves much less for everyone else. It’s a pretty common viewpoint, but it is very inaccurate. There is always more wealth to be made (as long as the economy is allowed to do its thing), it is never captured and hidden from everyone else by greedy capitalists.

As to the second point, the solution presents itself. Stop spending so goddamned much money! It’s one thing if you try to expand your own budget so that you can spend more, but when you are using other people’s money (without their consent) it is difficult to justify stealing from inheritances to pay for your largess.

Frankly, I’m amazed that the repeal process has gotten as far as it has, I trust that the senate will do the right thing and go along with the house. Do you realize that we just had a tax repealed that was designed to pay for the Spanish American war? It was a tax on interstate long distance calls (originally made for telegraphs). I kid you not, the Spanish American war! Like I said, I’m amazed that this has gotten as far as it has, lets make sure that it goes the rest of the way…

Isaac

I’ve had better days… Fridays are my longest day, 12 hours at the store. Tonight I forgot that they closed my ramp going home so that meant at least an extra half hour to wind myself back the right way. In the ensuing backup, I got rear ended. The force sent me into the women in front of me. Here’s the kicker, the guy that hit me drove off, I didn’t have time to get a tag number or anything… Grrrr…. So me and the woman in front of me waited 40 minutes for the state police to arrive. Everything went smoothly enough after that but grrrrrr. Truth be told, I’m more upset about that jackass leaving the scene, I’m a little worried about what will happen insurance wise. Everyone was fine, but I’m a little worried about what they’ll do to my car. It isn’t worth a great deal of money at this point. If they total it, I’m not sure what I’ll do. The damage isn’t spectacular, but I know how expensive repairs can be… I only need the car for 4 months…

I did get my airline tickets bought today. I’ll be leaving Oct. 25th. I saved about $400 from the best price I could find. That’s the good news. The bad news is that it still cost me $1950! It also looks as though getting there will be a bit of an adventure, the initial itinerary took two days to get there with 3 connecting flights. One to Newark, one to Germany, one to Dubai, and then finally Sanna. Normally, I would avoid that many connecting flights like the plague, but 400 extra dollars might allow me to stay an extra month. I’ll trade 2 days of airport boredom for an extra month anyday. The other reason the ticket cost so much is that it is good for an entire year. I can get out of dodge if necessary earlier, but I at least have a year there. I’ll play it by ear if I decide to stay longer. OK, one very big thing crossed off my list of things to do…

Isaac