A Good Imagination and a Pile of Junk

more later.

Yeah I haven’t been posting much over the last…ooh… 2+ months I think. That about coincides with… yep, that’s about right.

Currently I’m working on a piece of webby software, a couple cgis really. It’s a duct-tape collection of code to make trading easier and allow me to be a bit quicker on the draw (when do you hear anyone complaining about THAT eh?)

It’s kinda fun, though wholly trite and monkey-workful.

There are a couple pieces of writing kicking around in my head that I mean to get to, but I’ve just not seemed to go looking too hard for the time to write them, which I ought to do something about.

Eh. Just checking in. Yeah, I’m still here.

It’s just that some things aren’t for this forum; otherwise I’d be a smidge more talkative, as you might imagine.

o/

Still Think Only Women Play That Game?
Five-year-old son: I’m mad at you.
Mom: Why honey?
Five-year-old son: Because you wouldn’t buy me an umbrella!
Mom: You never asked for one!

–Times Square Shuttle

Overheard by: Heather
via Overheard in New York, Jul 24, 2008

I’m starting to settle on this idea that I need to either join a c++ project of significant scope (i.e. on sourceforge) or just start one myself.

I MIGHT be able to back off of my language of choice. But it really is my language of choice and I’m getting sick of not using it.

Problem is I’ve got this incredible blank spot where my good ideas usually come from.

So I’m going to start playing brainstorming games and such again.

Of course if anyone has any ideas, lemme know.

then I have days like today where I’m up $0.52 over three positions.

I slept rather remarkably poorly last night owing to a mess of factors.

There were at least three solid moves today that I just watched go by because I wasn’t quick enough on the trigger.

Now, saying “but if I had only” is a fools game.

But if I had only.

NYT REJECTS MCCAIN’S EDITORIAL; SHOULD ‘MIRROR’ OBAMA
Mon Jul 21 2008 12:00:25 ET

An editorial written by Republican presidential hopeful McCain has been rejected by the NEW YORK TIMES — less than a week after the paper published an essay written by Obama, the DRUDGE REPORT has learned.

The paper’s decision to refuse McCain’s direct rebuttal to Obama’s ‘My Plan for Iraq’ has ignited explosive charges of media bias in top Republican circles.

‘It would be terrific to have an article from Senator McCain that mirrors Senator Obama’s piece,’ NYT Op-Ed editor David Shipley explained in an email late Friday to McCain’s staff. ‘I’m not going to be able to accept this piece as currently written.’

Give me a fucking break.

Highest gain day ever.

Electronic Arts (ERTS) I took them for a few short positions.

And let’s see…what was that other one… hmm… some money housy thingie.

Oh right, Freddie Mac :)

Nabbed 10% on them within about 10 minutes this morning. Wasn’t a huge stake, but it was big enough to make it my biggest day.

Tomorrow I’m going to The Last HOPE.

The Obamessiah doesn’t like people criticizing his wife…

WASHINGTON (AP) - What gets under Barack Obama’s skin? Criticism of his wife, Michelle Obama.

In an interview with Glamour magazine, Obama said attacks on his wife are “infuriating.” The likely Democratic presidential nominee blamed the conservative press for going after his wife as if she were the candidate.

“If they have a difference with me on policy, they should debate me. Not her,” Obama told the magazine.

That’s fine actually.

Tell you what though… stop using your wife as media canon fodder to feel out the crowd on your less tasteful policies and positions so they’re not seen as coming out of your mouth first.

Deal?

Yeah, didn’t think so.

Andrew Breitbart has a delightful piece about the politics of hollywood.

From the comments:

Bridget1145
It’s taken me more years than I care to say to arrive at the conclusion that being a liberal Democrat was helping destroy our culture and country. As I look over the many films, tv shows, newspaper articles that influenced my younger years, I see them from very different eyes. There’s a sickness that has overtaken the thinking of the Democrats and liberals - - intolerance of ideas other than their own, destruction of anything even alluding to the overwhelming positive influence of Christianity, shameless behavior without consequences or criticism and opposition to any moral sensibility…

Having been one early in my life I can relate.

“And we’ll now return to the hearings. There’s senator schumer, we’ll be right back after this break.”

I loled :-)

(bloviating fuckweed)

I miss programming.

Gotta figure out a way to make time. I’m feeling that part of my brain getting mushy.

The problems facing “alternate energy” are fundamental, deep, and are show-stoppers. They are not things that will be surmounted by one lone incremental improvement in one small area, announced breathlessly by a startup which is trying to drum up funding.

The way you can tell that a fan of “alternate energy” is a religious cultist is to ask them this question: If your preferred alternate source of energy is practical, why isn’t it already in use?

From, of course, Mr. Steven Den Beste

Didn’t pull the trigger on it, but there was a nice short move on ANR just before noon today. I’d called it on paper but wasn’t sure what the proper trigger was.

Given a downtrending market, the 9/12/26 MACD sell signal on the 5 minute chart would’ve just been beautiful.

Currently it’s bouncing off of the $100 line, which makes sense. That would’ve been a near 2% move for 20 minutes work.

Usually 23skidoo posts videos of herself dancing; lindy hop, charleston, etc. All of which is a delight to watch.

But I checked back and just saw this:

Apparently it’s been there a couple months.

And out of the description here’s a link to their myspace profile

If listening to that doesn’t make ya smile well… then I don’t know how I can help.

I’ve been seeing crap like this all over:

Long lines of disgruntled customers wrapped around city blocks across the globe today as Apple scrambled to fix a glitch in iTunes that prevented iPhone acolytes from activating the next-generation phones they had waited hours, even days, to buy.

from ABC News

It’s insane. People’s expectations are utterly foolish. I have no sympathy for these fools. I had the same issues. It was a little frustrating certainly, but it cleared up and worked within a few hours.

Entitlement culture ftl.

A missile too many…

Ok, it’s up. Apparently it was just waiting to activate.

I’ve been able to download a few applications via wi-fi connection to my home network, so I’ve got Jott, Bloomberg, the google app and weatherbug at the moment.

I haven’t been able to get it to play nicely with the itunes store at all, but that’s due to the original server-side issues.

A couple thoughts on the device itself:

- The button is a little too soft-touch. The 1.0 had a nice definitive click, but this one feels a bit more flimsy. I’m sure I’ll get used to it.
- The “keyboard” is tough to get used to again. After a year with a normal 0-9 phone it’s going to frustrate the crap out of me.
- Sound quality is a little odd. It definitely sounds like there’s noise reduction and signal processing going on. That may prove to be effective, dunno. I’ve so far only had one call.
- It’s thicker and heavier than the 1.0.

But it’s a lot prettier.

I’ve played around with the accelerometer (you really don’t wanna know) and it’s much more responsive than my original as far as when it switches the interface on and off. That was my primary frustration with the 1.0 device.

I haven’t noodled with any of the standard applications much yet. But I assume they’ll be fine or marginally better.

I’m interested to see some of the “automatically post your pics as you take them, with geocoding” applications working. I don’t see a flickr one though, which seems…stupid.

The store is full of pretty interesting applications. Something close to 1000 of them. A lot of very useful looking ones are free and the price point of the others is from $0.99 to $10 for the lion’s share, with the predictable “and up” factor for some delusional vendors.

I’ll keep you updated.

have I pulled some shit like this.

My buddy called me up yesterday morning and said “Dude, come wait on line with me tomorrow morning!”

“You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me. I’m no fanboy.”
“Oh, come oooon.”
“Yeah yeah, ok.”

So it’s now 5:58 and I’m up, wearing my w00t! shirt and we’re gonna go hit the 59th street store line for iPhones.

Once every 20 years doesn’t seem SO bad.

I’m gonna bring my camera to photograph uhm… all those stupid apple fanboy people.

UPDATE: So I’ve got one, near as I can tell. The registration was slow as a dog at the store so they said “yeah, you can do this at home” so I took it home… hours ago. Apparently the servers are slammed. My old phone is deactivated, the iPhone is not activated (still thinking, please wait… restart itunes some “error -4″ thingie.)

The line wasn’t bad. I was #344. Not gonna lie, I might’ve been a bit tricksy about that.

Physically it is thicker than the old one, it’s just got rounded edges. *shrug*

So we’ll see. In the meantime, I’m without a phone and am trying to keep focused on the market and not on whether or not iTunes finishes registration THIS time, which isn’t working so well.

Market’s a nightmare anyway.