Visiting with my parents at their rented summer cottage in Northport is now an annual tradition. This year, I had the advantage of knowing the area a little better, given my work has taken me to Belfast, Bucksport, and beyond with some regularity. And as an added bonus/curse, I was under a deadline to bring up an optical network in the Downeast area (Calais to Bucksport) by this friday. This meant I was able to work during the day and stay with my parents overnight, rather than get a hotel room or drive 2 or more hours home every night.

But before the work began, Hank, Harriet, and I spent some time together over labor day weekend, culminating in a jaunt to Acadia on Labor Day. Again we ate at Jordan Pond restaurant and enjoyed their excellent popovers and superior service. And again, I endeavored to climb the Precipice trail - the most difficult hiking trail at Acadia (it's actually referred to as a "non-technical climbing trail"). Last year, I had been given a 45 minute time limit by the folks, and was unable to complete the climb. This year I was given carte blanche while they drove off to a bookstore in the interim.

Hikers are warned that people have died on the trail, and that it should not be attempted if one has any fear of heights whatsoever. Since I am afraid of heights, I saw this as the perfect opportunity to do a bit of character building. I had been a bit nervous at times last year, but the lower section is mostly a rock scramble, climbing over and under huge boulders and slabs with only minor risk of injury.

I was unprepared for what awaited me. The grade gets steeper and steeper as one ascends, until the right side of the trail is a sheer drop to certain death. The trail thins and a short iron guide rail is the only thing between your foot and hundreds of feet of air.

None of the photos here are mine - I forgot all about taking pictures after a certain point.

Those hand-rail sections weren't as bad - knowing I have a redundant set of limbs to keep me from disaster is quite a confidence booster. And here's another shot - the blue stripe is the trail marker, yes:

There are places more difficult than those pictured here. The mixture of mortal terror with enjoyment of the scenery is an interesting one that rivals any roller coaster. I put on a brave face and joked with the foreign tourists (who abound in Acadia) about the trails bodycount and the likelihood of any of us being able to save the other. My greatest fear was that I would have to go back down the way I came, but thankfully, on reaching the barren, windbeaten top of Champlain mountain, the trail maps guided me to a slightly easier descent.

That night, when I laid in bed and closed my eyes, all I could picture was that incredible view, and my ankles would feel weak as the memory of how easy it would have been to fall right into it. Thrice as I drifted off to sleep, I had the feeling of letting go, and jerked suddenly awake, limbs twitching and flailing. I haven't overcome my fear of heights, obviously. Some people would make that climb without a second thought, and I envy them. I don't know if I would do it again.

I love the show, don't get me wrong. It's got rich characters with evolving motivations, and some of the most clever dialogue I've ever heard. I miss it a lot, now that I've seen all 3 seasons.

But the shows portrayal of George Hearst disturbs me. Most characters in the show are very very loosely based on a real life counterpart, and Hearst is no exception. I can allow for some artistic leeway.But Hearst, from the history I have read of him, was a self-made man who brought himself from rage to riches by the honest sweat of his brow. In the show Deadwood, however, Hearst is an evil man, so bent on controlling every ounce of gold in his purview that he will murder those who oppose his designs willy-nilly. Nor is he averse, in the show, to a hands-on approach: in one episode he crushes Swearingen's hand with a pickaxe; in another, he spits on an underlings face and threatens the man should he dare wipe it off.

This is an ugly way to honor a great man. But this kind of treatment is common in Hollywood, which is still in thrall to a Marxist world-view. Anyone who has something must have taken it by force from someone else. Marxists cannot understand that a man like Hearst can create value. This despite the fact that these Hollywood leftists live in a society where even the poorest can obtain riches that dwarf kings of yore, and a world in which more men are alive than have died in all of previous human history, yet fewer starve. These facts and others stare them in the face, but they continue to believe that the wealthy are plunderers, and they continue to make shows and movies designed to promote this fiction. If all wealth is plunder, comes the logical conlusion of this view, then the government should control it completely and make sure its doled out equally to everyone, according to need. It saddens me that our brightest artistic minds actively promote totalitarianism in the face of common sense and all historical evidence.

This is the man who, sitting in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in the wake of 9/11, said "Seems to me this would be a good time to send, no strings attached, a check for $200 million to Iran".

Joe Biden is a stupid man, and a politician through and through, without much in the way of principles, lusting for power. The perfect running mate for Obama, I suppose.

and I must say, it is an incredible device. It has a few issues, such as no pictures in text messages, no smiley menu, and iTunes can be obnoxious - I am sorry Apple, but I am not buying music with any DRM on it (go Amazon!). But on the plus side, its got GPS integrated into google maps, my corporate and personal email and calendars seamlessly synced, the best web browsing Ive ever seen in a handheld, automatically finds and connnects to the nearest wifi access point, built-in VPN (and a decent SSH client called iTerm), an amazing touch screen keyboard (though I do sometimes miss not having to even look with the T9 system), and some good games that take advantage of the touch screen and accelerometer. In fact, the graphics on SuperMonkeyBall are as good or better than anything on the DS. Now, let's see some of the DS games ported over and I will really be a happy boy.

It is well worth the 200 dollars. Now the question is, will it be worth the 75-100 dollars a month? Based on current usage, yes.

NVDA dropped 30% today on some bad news. This has reduced the value of my portfolio by over 80%. I've had to sell shares to make the margin call. I still own some, however, as well as a huge pile of now nearly worthless options.

So, the first thing to do is reassess my position. I still believe in NVDA and I still believe it is undervalued. There is more competitive pressure from AMD than I had anticipated, and fabrication issues have caused the recall of 2-300 million dollars worth of their laptop chips, something I could not have anticipated. News like this is pure poison in today's bear market, and one can see the results. However, the long term picture is good and NVDA's P/E ratio is laughably low, so I will happily hold on to my remaining shares.

The second thing to do is find some value in this by learning my lesson. And the lesson is one that I have heard options traders propound many times, which I failed to heed. When your options lose half their value, sell them. As NVDA dropped, I stopped even watching my options, so confident was I that the stock would quickly rebound. Now, even a large rebound will likely not make me my money back (though they expire in september, so there's a glimmer of hope).

I doubled down as NVDA lost value, unwisely dipping into margin that would be covered by the same stock that I was borrowing to buy more of. Now, margin can be a useful tool, but I think my second lesson here is that it should be backed by securities other than the one you are buying, so that a huge dip of this nature is less likely to cause such damage. And hand in hand with this, while I still believe that the eggs should not be in too many baskets, from now on I will always own more than a single stock, if only for tactical reasons.

If I take these lessons to heart, the money lost will not be for naught. Thankfully, I am doing OK professionally, and I was able to move some money over from the bank, and I will continue to do so until I am fully reinvested. I may be a bit worse for wear, but I am eager to put these lessons, as well as others I have learned, to good work. It's still a great time to be an investor for the long term.

The virtue of honesty involves being open about ones failures as well as ones triumphs. Many stock traders will only tell you of their triumphs, but I think the preceding paragraphs are ample illustration that I try very hard not to evade even the most painful realities. And I can take a bit of pride in that, at least.

NVDA is down significantly since my last post - I bought in at 21.50, and the stock is now below 19 dollars. Does this mean I am panicking? Well, I won't deny that the desire is there, but now is the time for fortitude. I recommended it at 21.50 and I recommend it even more now. The market as a whole has been hammered, and it would be difficult at this point to find any stock that is not severely undervalued. Corning looks good again, BBT looks great, Intel is back down to reasonable levels, among others.

 My NVDA options expire in September, so I am going to sit back and hope that the market as a whole starts to turn around before that time. I think it's overdue at this point. I've sat through this same scenario with Intel and come out very well, and there is plenty of time yet. Still, it's hard not to second guess oneself when one could have sold a few weeks back and doubled ones money.

The good folks at Q97.9 took a lot of pictures, and scouring through them, I discovered some nice ones of our band (here's the post that explains). Without further ado:

Mike says I look like Stevie Wonder here. My retort was "at least I'm not making fart noises in my underarm". You can see our redheaded friend, studying us intently in preparation for his upcoming performance, standing directly between my breast and Wai's hip.

And as a special bonus, you can now visualize the aforementioned "douchebag in megadeth t-shirt":

Click on a picture to view it full size.

NVDA rose to nearly 25 since my last post, but in the past week has declined rapidly to 21.50, bringing it down to below my intial cost. I have margined myself out. If ever there were a time to buy a stock, it is now. And for speculations sake, I am very fond of the 25 dollar september call. Just six months ago NVDA was 36 dollars - a much fairer price for a company with NVDA's proven record of earnings growth. Concerns that Intel will destroy NVDA are unwarranted, and I still believe that it may unfold the other way around. Get in while you can!  

And we can breathe a little easier, thanks to the Republicans who filibustered it. This piece of fascism would have further enslaved US citizens to their government in the name of the "environment", via a slew of oppressive regulation designed to force energy producers to alter their actions to suit ignorant bureaucrats. Take a look at this PDF that illustrates the tangled web of mandates. If you think gas is expensive now, just wait until the government actually passes some version of this.

Sadly, there is no real organized resistance to environmentalist fascism. The republicans don't oppose it on principle, but for the sake of pragmatism. The republican presidential nominee actually endorses this garbage. In another year, make no mistake, some version of this bill WILL pass. But for now we have a stay of execution.

The only hope is that Americans wake up and realize that our environment should serve us, not the other way around. And further, that the price of oil is not due to secret conspiracies between oil company executives, or commodities speculators (who, as anyone with even passing familiarity of markets knows, actually serve a valuable purpose to our economy), but due to government intervention, whether it be outright nationalization of oil industries in other countries, or regulation in our own that prohibits the exploitation of oil resources (at least 10 billion barrels in ANWR, possibly up to 200 billion under Montana and North Dakota) and the refinement of oil.

The likelihood of that happening, given the overwhelmingly statist bent of our mass media, is about nil in the near term.

Mike, Wai and I headed down to the Old Port festival today to enter a Rock Band competition (grand prize 1000 dollars). For the first time in years, it was sunny at the festival, and the vast crowds threatened to overflow the old port. We shouldered our way through the countless fried dough and lemonade stands and made our way down to the Q97.9 booth to sign up. Being early, only the hardcore were present, a gaggle of teenagers, mostly, acne scarred, sporting Tool and Avenged Sevenfold T-Shirts. Me, I proudly sported a brand spanking new shirt that read "Enjoy Capitalism" in a Coca-Cola style (at one point, buying a beer at Gritty's, a cute girl turned to look me over and frowned in utter disgust at reading it - I was delighted!).

This crowd turned ugly quickly as we were informed that everyone would be forced to play at the medium level of difficulty. A jerk-off in a Megadeth T-shirt tried his best to berate our hosts into adapting to the immense skills of his posse, to no avail. He then informed us that his band was 4th best in the world at Green Grass and High Tides. I just smiled and reminded everyone that this is, as far as any of us know, the first public Rock Band event in Portland, and we should be grateful. Mike and I had a meeting and decided to change our song from Jet's Are You Gonna Be My Girl to the Smashing Pumpkins' Cherub Rock. The Jet song is just too easy and low scoring on medium.

The hardcore Rock Band kiddies all chose Green Grass and High Tides, of course, because no matter the difficulty, it's the longest song and therefore the highest scoring song. But we were there to have fun, and we wanted to represent with a song that we actually like. And it turned out well, because the organizers, upon realizing the endless length of this song, made all these bands change their selection (being whores for score, they all switched like clockwork to Welcome Home, which is at least a kickass song). Some of the bands were also upset to learn that a singer was required - no bass, guitar, drum setups allowed (3 person limit per band).

We were second in line. The douchebag in the Megadeth shirt was first, and behind us, a young and eager redheaded fella, his band also slated to perform Green Grass. We befriended band 3, and silently burned with loathing for band 1 (only the one guy though, the others seemed ok). With "2" stickers affixed to our chests, we went off for a bit of liquid courage before the performance.

When we returned, a rather large crowd had coalesced in the area of the Q97.9 stage, as they'd brought up some boy-band type performer who grabbed his dick a lot and wore his baseball cap at a jaunty tilt. We ran into a few friends and coworkers and mingled happily in the sunlight, buzzing from the local summer ale. Once the live acts were done, it was announced the the first round of the Rock Band contest would begin.

The first band took the stage. My nemesis in the Megadeth shirt strapped on his guitar with palpable disdain at having to sink so low as to perform at anything less than expert. The former bassist, now singer, took the microphone with courage and explained to us all that he was singing for score and probably wouldn't sound good. These kids really need to learn to enjoy the game. Is it the number you remember? Or is it the camaraderie, or maybe the feeling of increasing your skill, or even enjoying music in a new way? For these guys, it was the number. And they got a high one. I have to hand it to the singer - though he mumbled through a lot of the song he was very good at keeping in pitch and it didn't sound half bad. Welcome Home is not easy to sing, let alone in front of a crowd of maybe a thousand.

Band 1 shuffled off and they brought us on. I couldn't resist holding out my drumsticks in triumph and screaming a nice loud "WOOOO" at the crowd. I wasn't nervous, as my part was easy, but I was nervous for Mike, having to sing the nasally Billy Corgan whine in a highly amplified manner. Wai was very nervous; it had taken much cajoling to get him out here, but he is our primary band mate, so it had to be done, and I bet he's glad he did it.

Our score was nowhere near as high as the first band. Wai and I had done pretty well, missing a few notes each, but Mike had only gotten a 68%, despite, near as I could tell, singing in perfect pitch (he regularly scores 100% on expert level, in our living room). Something had happened with all those speakers on the stage, distorting the mic input. We were lucky he didn't fail out. He put on a fine performance from the listeners standpoint. The crowd enjoyed us all. Mike was upset though.

He had occasion to cheer up when our friends in band 3 took the stage. The redhead who was normally their drummer had taken over vocal duties, and they'd changed their song to Train Kept A Rollin. I was impressed with the kid's fearlessness, but the lack of preparedness hurt them, and they failed out of the song quickly thanks to lackluster vocals combined with spotty mic input. I felt sorry for them, but also glad for Mike, as we now knew that the technical difficulties with singing were not a fluke. The next band came out to sing Nirvana's In Bloom, and their singer, also a novice, failed out as well (horribly, I might add). The final band we saw appeared to be a family, daughter singing, son on guitar, mom on drums. This band chose Cherub Rock as well. The scene could have been pulled from a sitcom. The song begins, the mom starts messing around on the drums (there's a period at the start where you can bang around and just make noise with no penalty), the daughter chides her from the mic "stop that mom". Then as the irregular drum beat begins - dada-dada-da-dada-dadada - the mom just screws it all up and they fail out before the girl can even kick into a verse. Oh, that mom is going to be hearing it for a long time.

We left after that, so we only know we didn't win, though we could have come in second. I loved playing Rock Band in a public venue, and I desperately hope that some local bars start picking it up. Seems silly that bars still have Guitar hero competitions when there is a game like Rock Band out there. If my Nvidia stock ever pays off, I'll have to open a bar specifically for that purpose.

It's official - last quarter's GDP growth was .6%, and the quarter before was also minimal growth. Not good numbers, but the definition of a recession is 2 successive quarters with negative growth; a sustained contraction, if you will. And obviously not what we are seeing. The fact that so many people bandy the term "recession" about without ever defining it is a testament to the subjectification of the english language. Now it's feelings, rather than reference to any objective truth, that define your term. It's a recession because some schlub can't pay his mortgage, and if you argue otherwise you must be a heartless bastard!

The market's happy reaction to the GDP report allowed me to sell the last of my Intel options at 60% profit, and one set of NVDA options at 20% profit (covering my margin - the market is up enough that I don't wish to remain so heavily leveraged). All my money is now in NVDA stock and september call options. Buy it while it's under 25 dollars.

Regardless of the subject, I do like a wee bit of diversification. But I rarely hold more than 4 stocks at a time.

However, given the recent market trend upward, some of my favorites are looking a little less appealing next to NVDA. So I have divested myself of Corning (GLW) with a small profit, and I have sold off the bulk ot my Intel options. These options have made me tremendous returns, with an average cost basis of 1.00 and an average sell price of 1.40. I still hold a handful of these in the hope that I will get the big score, secure in the knowledge that even should they fall to 0, I have profited greatly from what is already sold.

The bulk of my savings is now in NVDA shares, and today I upped the ante with a set of September 25 calls, adding some leverage. The way things look now, I will probably be 100% invested in NVDA within a week.

 That's not to say Intel and Corning are bad stocks, I would still recommend them, but NVDA remains near its lows, yet has far more opportunity for growth, at 11 billion market capitalization, than either of the former. NVDA is much more volatile than Corning or Intel, and therefore a much more risky prospect for options trading. I would recommend owning the shares rather than derivatives, in general, and I have devoted 70 percent of my portfolio to these shares.

I bought shares of NVDA today, my old stalwart, and the company that has made me the most money in the past. It's come down nearly 50% from its 12 month high and it is looking pretty cheap at 22 dollars. Near term volatility may bring it down even further, but this is a long term hold.

Ive been buying on dips and selling on highs on the Intel calls, and doing pretty well. My July 22.50 calls are hovering right now at around my cost basis. I still think its a great buy.

I don't know if I mentioned buying PetMed Express, but I ended up selling those shares, as I felt more confident in the Intel calls and in stocks like NVDA, that I know well. I lost 30 dollars in the process. I will still keep an eye out on this stock though and possibly reinvest in the future, if it stays below 13 dollars.

And I would love to say something nice about him, since he had such a way with words and all.

But his vitriolic hatred for Ayn Rand and his self-satisfied "purging" of her from a movement she never even asked to be part of, made Buckley ultimately worthy of at least a little contempt.

Go ahead and read Whittaker Chambers' review of Atlas Shrugged, proudly published in Buckley's magazine, and still proudly displayed on the National Review Online web site. It's a nonstop stream of vitriol that can barely take a break from telling us how evil Rand is to spare a few words for the pathetic quality of the writing. The style of it is nearly a parody of a Rand villian, full of vague innuendo, always circling warily around logic. From the second paragraph: "The news about this book seems to me to be that any ordinarily sensible head could not possibly take it seriously, and that, apparently, a good many do." Rand's villains always desperately tried to avoid making a concrete point (and often, any sense at all). They also use "seem" a lot because to them, nothing ever truly "is" (similarly, in the very first sentence of the review, we are told that Rand's novels "are said to have sold some four hundred thousand copies". Chambers sneers at reality along with the best Rand villains by publicly refusing to even determine the validity of Rand's book sales).

But the most disgusting offense of the NR review of Atlas Shrugged is this line, which indicates utter ignorance about the subject matter of the novel he just read, combined with vicious personal hatred of Rand: "From almost any page of Atlas Shrugged, a voice can be heard, from painful necessity, commanding: "To a gas chamber — go!"

Fuck you, National Review. And Mr. Buckley, I am so sorry you had to learn the hard way that there is no God.

And I blew 200 dollars on my HD-DVD drive, as well as being influenced into buying the Xbox 360 in the mistaken belief that HD-DVD would win the format war. I remain pleased with the Xbox and it's near-perfect Live service, and I have a nice, yet small, collection of HD-DVDs that are all great films (with the exception of King Kong, which came with the player and has never been removed from its shrink wrap).

But somehow, Blu-Ray has won, and it's getting near time to buy a PS3 in capitulation to this reality. Many studios have gone to Blu-Ray only, and in the wake of this, I received an email from Netflix today telling me that they are ceasing to buy HD-DVD's. Supressing my immediate desire to toss off an angry reply cancelling my service in retribution for my whims not being catered to, I reflected for a moment, and realized I would do the same in their shoes. In fact, I was in Best Buy the other day, and I walked right past the HD-DVD section, knowing I wouldn't be buying any more myself.