The summer concert season was dismal, so I made up for it last week by attending 3 concerts. Of course, musicians don't come to Maine any more, so I had to drive to Mass for them.

First was Nine Inch Nails at the DCU center in Worcester Mass. If you know me, you know that NIN is my second favorite band after Tool. The last two albums haven't been as good as previous material, but are still better than 95% of the garbage out there today. The show itself was amazing. Trent Reznor is a perfectionist and it shows, from the overwhelming light show to the superb sound quality.

The crowd, however, was a bit sub par. Out on the floor, there seemed to be a great divide between those who did not want to be touched in any way, and those who wanted to break some noses in the mosh pit. The moshers were more annoying than ever, often choosing to mock the slow instrumental "ghosts" songs by moshing to them. Several mosh kiddies got ejected early on and that issue seemed to abate, however. On the other end of the spectrum, there was the annoying girl who would stomp on your foot if you happened to bump into her. Worse, at one point in the evening I felt an elbow in my back, which is not unusual - but this one kept pushing me into the girl in front of me. When I turned around, I recoiled at the sight of what had to be the 300 pound leader of the neo-nazis giving me an icy blue death gaze. Investigation revealed that I had somehow pissed off his girlfriend, but thankfully I was able to resolve the situation with some quick-thinking diplomacy.

One obnoxious side effect of the show was that I contracted a cold and I am still suffering under its adverse effects.But it did not stop me from dragging a similarly infected Mike down to Boston later in the week for 2 nights of concerts.

On friday night we went to the Paradise Rock Club to see Bang Camaro, who I've come to love from playing their music in Rock Band. This is a band that plays what could loosely be described as "80's cock rock". The founders claim to have expunged all the boring bits from that genre, while keeping everything that makes it great. In practice, this means the elimination of verses (choruses only) and a lot more guitar solos. Their lyrics are amusing, minimalist and abstract riffs on themes of sex, drugs, rock n roll, and fighting. One song, Swallow the Razor, repeats the lines "Hell bent, hell bent for liquor / wines fine but whiskey's quicker / I chop my breakfast on a mirror / swallow the razor!" over and over. These lyrics are sung by a chorus of men ever changing in number, but I counted 9 of them at the show we attended.

The venue itself made the night special. The Paradise is tiny, holding maybe 500 people. No matter where I stood, whether in front of the stage, or up on a balcony, I felt like I was right next to the band. I was also impressed, for the most part, with the opening acts. Leslie came out first and did some solid southern rock, followed by the very strange That Handsome Devil, sporting a super charismatic lead singer who was a joy to watch. THD threw condoms into the crowd, and a girl behind me gave me one, but I did not get laid. The final opening act, Hooray For Earth, was about as lame as one would expect with a name like that.

But none of them approached the glory of Bang Camaro itself. This is a band that is out there to have fun, and it shows. I saw quite a few of the singers out on the floor pounding beers during the opening acts, and some of them were so drunk i thought there would be some on-stage vomiting. The guitarists both kicked ass and did a great job of keeping the crowd pumped up through a long set that didn't end until 1 in the morning. If Mike and I hadn't been so exhausted, I'm sure we could have stuck around and partied with those guys. That's what's nice about seeing smaller acts. I really can't recommend Bang Camaro enough.

The following night, we went to the Wang Theatre to see the Smashing Pumpkins. The Wang is a nifty little venue too, made for stage productions, with high frescoed ceilings and vertigo-inducing balconies, probably seating a couple thousand. I had seen the Pumpkins maybe ten years ago and I was not impressed back then. Billy Corgan had railed at the audience for their boredom at his endless hippy space jams, berating them for only enjoying his hits. But I thought, maybe in ten years Billy has come to realize that people only like music that THEY ARE ALREADY FAMILIAR WITH. I was mistaken. This show was still better than the last, as even the obscure material he played was more structured into real songs. But he must have played every unreleased B side he's ever written, along with what I consider to be some of the worst of his older material (Cupid de Locke, really?). The few hits he played, seemed to be deliberately sped up so he could get back to the less focused psychedelic rock. The sound, too, was not fantastic, though it might have been the balcony seats we had.

I did enjoy the show, don't get me wrong. Billy Corgan is a genius songwriter and has put out some truly unique and amazing songs over the past 20 years. I also appreciated that there was no opening act, and that the Pumpkins played for 2 and a half hours, which is a lot longer than most headliners are willing to get up there for. I just long to hear the songs I know, and Billy is way too self-indulgent to give that to me. I'm sure that's why the Pumpkins are playing a 2000 seat venue rather than a 10000 seat arena like their peers NIN.

I am certainly depressed about the election results. While we are already a partially socialist country, and have already largely forgotten the philosophy of our founders, and while John McCain was no alternative to socialism himself, an Obama presidency will no doubt bring us even deeper into the politics of extortion and redistribution.

I bought some Corning (GLW) options today with an expiration date in April, to supplement my holdings of the still freefalling NVDA. I desperately wanted to buy NVDA options, but after my recent capital depreciation, I will no longer leverage myself in a primary holding. And there are so many good buys out there right now that its not hard to find a deal.

I don't know when this crisis will end, and I certainly can't say for certain that it will end by April of next year. What I do know is that Corning is a very solid and well-run company with a strong balance sheet and much growth potential. And it's stock has been hammered by 50% from where I once judged it to be a good buy, making it a REALLY good buy. Intel also looks good, as does Cisco. And Bank of America is paying out roughly 11% in dividends!

I roll the dice on the options because the bulk of my savings is in a 401K plan that goes into a very low fee S&P 500 index fund. I highly recommend the Fidelity Spartan 500 fund, it's got a cost drag of 10 cents per 100 dollars (E-Trade and Vanguard have similarly low cost index funds). Cost drag is the most important thing to look for in a mutual fund - as the effects of cost drag (which is often as high as 1-2 dollars in actively managed funds) can easily kill your compounded annual return over an extended period of time. 

Past performance of a fund tells you NOTHING. The fact is, managed funds often do well when there is less capital in them, because the manager can act nimbly, but as market-beating performance brings in more and more customers year after year, it becomes very difficult to pair the action of buying the stocks with the commitment to buy. Buying has to be done a bit at a time, and the mere act of initiating a buy position will cause others to begin the pile-on, raising the price of the stock before enough capital can even be sunk into it. If you MUST buy a managed fund, try to buy one that has 20 billion dollars or less of capital.

Well, I am glad that the McCain campaign is finally bringing up Obama's association with Bill Ayers, a man who should have been executed a long time ago for treasonous military activity within this country on behalf of our enemies (of course, in today's climate of cultural self-loathing, he is instead a respected university professor). I highly doubt, however, that McCain and Palin will make all the necessary connections, so I write this post.

Yes, it is certainly reprehensible for Obama to have created what is best termed a political alliance with Bill Ayers, though I am sure that Obama is being honest when he says he does not condone Ayers' terrorist activities (that he wasn't aware of such activities is a laughable assertion, however).

But the real problem is not that Ayers was a terrorist; it's that he was, and is, a Marxist, dedicated to overthrowing this country, once by violent means, now by peaceful means. To that end, Ayers worked extensively with Obama in the Annenburg foundation to subvert education into something more akin to marxist indoctrination. Ayers has been very open in believing that the education system must be used as a political tool. Money to Annenburg was put to use by Obama for the kinds of programs that Ayers wanted: promotion of "social justice" (the poor must eat the rich) and "african-american studies" (creating a feeling of victimhood in students that must be addressed politically) in particular. Now, perhaps Obama is just a dupe of men like Ayers, who seek to turn schools into moral and political re-education camps, rather than teaching children reading, writing, and arithmetic (which is all just a control system of the bourgeouisie, in such mens minds). Perhaps Obama is unable to make the mental leap from abstract principle to concrete program, and it is merely coincidence that his entire campaign platform regarding education is an obvious furtherance of the work of Marxist thinkers like Ayers. But I doubt it.

Obama has merely learned to keep his principles close to the vest, rather than risk alienating voters by admitting his ideology. But his relationship with Ayers (and Jeremiah Wright) is quite instructive on what those principles must be.

Journalism has become an intellectually lazy profession, and nowhere is this more evident than in economic reporting. One would think a journalist who covers the economy would go out and get a degree in economics, or at least spend some time to gain a slightly more than rudimentary understanding of the subject; unfortunately, this is not so. 

Rather than regale you with the stupidity of the mass media regarding the current financial crisis, let me show you what the Internet can do for us when we search out actual Economists online who are vastly knowledgeable and can make a compelling argument:

First, here is Don Luskin, asking a simple question: why is the government seeking 700 billion dollars to guarantee 521 billion dollars in mortgages? Would a "professional" journalist actually take the time to determine the sum total of all mortgages the way Luskin did? It's an incredibly informative article and it must be read.

Now, if you are a product of modern education, you might have trouble with this next one. It's George Reisman on the exact mechanisms by which the current crisis has unfolded, and how far it is capable of going. His descriptions of leverage and credit contractions, which are very difficult abstractions, are incredibly clear and concise (but they do demand intense focus regardless). You will feel much smarter after reading this piece.

Now, compare those two pieces with what you read in the paper or saw on the news today.

I've previously said that I'll probably vote McCain because I will take the pro-America socialist over the anti-America socialist any day. But that's an oversimplification; my reasoning is more complicated than that.

I've learned, in talking to people amid the recent Sarah Palin hooplah, that there is great concern on the left that we are drifting toward something like theocracy. Sarah Palin once invoked the name of God in a speech, after all. Since I am an atheist, many leftists wonder why I would vote for a republican, given this coming theocracy.

 I must admit, such reasoning befuddles me, for I see more of what I would call "theocracy" in Barack Obama or any leftist for that matter, than in the right.

Obama may not claim that his positions are inspired by God, or invoke the name of God in enacting his platform upon us, but his platform is theocracy insofar as he will be using the power of government to enforce his morality upon the rest of us. That morality, of course, is altruism. And in nearly every policy prescription, Obama promises to make us all into altruists, whether we like it or not.

Under Obama, schools will become indoctrination centers to form young minds into the altruist mold, by forcing all middle and high school students to perform 50 hours of community service a year. College students will be given 4000 dollars a year to perform 100 hours of community service per year (40 dollars an hour, thats very generous of you, Obama!). Undoubtedly, the work these students do will be of benefit to Obama, the democrats, and the ever expanding welfare state. Obama will also turn college work-study programs into "public service" programs. Similarly, at the low end, Obama will start getting the state involved in children's lives from birth to age 5, and though the details of this venture have not been fleshed out, you can be assured that it will involve a lot of taxpayer money and that service to others will be actively promoted (probably with a lot of forced "sharing", it's a great way to prepare the kid to give up his earnings to the taxman later in life).

Once a student has been fully brainwashed into the insane belief that morality is nothing more than putting the needs of others ahead of ones own, they must be given some way to work that does not involve the greedy and selfish capitalist "rat-race". Obama has foreseen this challenge and will begin his restructuring of our economy on collectivist-altruist lines by expanding the "AmeriCorps", another wasteful leftist program that gives money to people so that they might "volunteer" to "selflessly" serve others, from 75,000 to 250,000 people.

Now, most of the preceding two paragraphs describe how Obama wants to force us to think like altruists. I could, of course, write volumes on how he wants to force us to act like altruists, but I will limit myself to a few of his most egregious plans.

Obviously, the rich will be forced to pay more taxes under Obama, via rollback of the Bush tax cuts, increased capital gains tax, increased corporate tax rate, and a potentially massive increase in the social security tax aimed at those making more than 250K. But once you've gone through an Obama-approved curriculum, you will defintely be amenable to these changes.

Additionally, Obama will work to appropriate more and more taxpayer money to socialize our economy. Starting with health care, of course, because how can a person argue when their money is being taken from them to pay for a poor disabled girl's operation? Then its the energy companies, who will be given massive amounts of taxpayer money in exchange for falling in line with bureacratic dictates. Then the automobile makers, who will be told what kind of cars to build, and how many (I'm sure this will do wonders for their bottom line - but we love a good bailout, don't we?).

This list goes on and on, and I grow tired of reciting it.

So, on the one hand, we have Obama, with a comprehensive plan on how to indoctrinate children into a morality, and then enact that morality into a comprehensive legal framework that will involve massive state control of our lives to insure compliance. And on the other hand, we have people who believe in forcing their morality on us by ... possibly restricting the right to have an abortion. Now, I am all in favor of abortion, but I'm also big into context. And in the larger picture, McCain-Palin might not be perfect, but they are obviously willing to allow me to continue to live my life selfishly. They might believe in altruism, as most people do, but they also have some understanding that people have the right to choose what to do with their earnings.

So, yeah, I'm voting McCain-Palin. The alternative is frightening.

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 rags 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 buffoon, 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.