Free WiFi!!
Posted by bert at 10:00 AM on October 2, 2005 in ME.
As a Chinese American, there are few words i like to see more than the word "free"
So... imagine my joy when i saw this article
http://techdirt.com/articles/20050930/1851236_F.shtml
bert's musings
Entries for October, 2005
October 2nd, 2005
October 3rd, 2005
it has begun!!!
Posted by bert at 10:45 PM on October 3, 2005 in politics.
Rudywatch 2008
http://www.cnn.com/2005/POLITICS/10/02/guiliani.prez.ap/index.html
lets list the reasons:
proven leader in time of crisis
cleaned up crime in NYC
politically respected
isn't named hillary clinton
October 7th, 2005
playing hookie
Posted by bert at 05:13 PM on October 7, 2005 in ME.
somehwere along the line some of the world's greatest minds instituted senior ditch day in high schools across the land.
so.. in honor of them.. and the fact that i just don't want to work... we have implemented quarterly ditch day. So this monday.. i'm afraid i'll be feeling pretty ill, and will be resting in a place called the magic mountain. owned by six flags of course. Anyway.. see you guys on ditch day!.
October 10th, 2005
ditch day...
Posted by bert at 07:34 PM on October 10, 2005 in ME.
was glorious!
Magic Mountain for my first time. Went on every roller coaster there, so it was greatness. well except for the fact that they closed X!!! i mean.. wtf?!?!
anyway. went on the old school shockwave ride (named scream here). Went on goliath which was absolutely insane. This thing went 2x higher than shockwave. Prolly the best coaster i went on all day.. followed by the concept of dejavu...which was another insanely sick roller coaster. So.. that was great..
followed by a tripe to porto's bakery in glendale
and then dinner in ding tai fone in Arcadia. now the angels are winning 5-2 in the 6th inning. all in all a glorious night.
October 11th, 2005
investing update.
Posted by bert at 05:26 PM on October 11, 2005 in musings, ME.
So I FINALLY hired a guy to help me invest. Yeah.. I know it's kindasickening... but there are a lot of things I want to do with my money,
but don't or can't because I'm at work full time. (BTW, I seriously
believe I could make a killing daytrading, but that was effectively kill
everything I really wanted to do career wise.)
Anyway.. The name of the game was "diversification" and here I
thought I was diversifying a lot, but what seemed like diversity to me,
really wasn't too different from each other. The name of the game is
that I LOVE technology. I'm a tech nut, but my stocks shouldn't be.
Anyway..
Quick overview of my current portfolio. (invest with me at your own
risk!!!!)
Air Tran - I'm a cyclical commercial airline stock holder.. Oil prices
go in cycles, and so do followed by the airline stocks. Basically buy
low, sell high, and make 20% in the process everytime. Track the stock
and see what I'm talking about.
Avaya - VoIP telephony company. The largest provider out there, and
they have nearly every major corporate account possible. (including the
government.) They have huge volume of sales, and they're buying up
smaller companies at a rediculous clip. Reminds me of Cisco in the
90's. I'm serious.. If they're bottom line wasn't getting constantly
re-adjusted by takeovers, I think they would show a rediculous earnings
call and shoot the stock skyward. But alas.. I thikn the 11.50 mark is
a bit too high for them right now.
Boeing - yay... lets see.. I started here 2 years ago and it was at
39.00 a share.. It's at 67 today... and roughly 25% of my 401k is tied
to it... I think it's time to start dumping some of that into natural
growth stocks...
Cisco - Routers galour. Watch as all those huge hits they took 3 years
ago in laying massive fiber across the US start to pay off in the next
4-5 years. I can easily seeing them double to about 45 bucks by 2007.
Google - I like buying the "Google Cycle". Buy at ~290, sell at ~320.
rinse repeat.
JDSU - I'm taking a flyer on these guys.. Bought like 400 shares at $3 a
piece.. It's down to $2.. But they have a ton invested in fiber...
Level 3 - um.. Two words.. Internet Backbone.
Merck - Massive panick led to this pharm in particular dropping 40% in
one day last year.. And then 55% over the span of 2 weeks. Talk about
buying in cheap for me... I got in under $20, for a ton of cash... and
they pay nearly 8% YEARLY dividends... um.. Somehow I'm not worried
about my investment here.
Microsoft - gotta love big evil
Pfeizer - the other pharm that dropped huge.. 5% dividends.. Plenty of
growth. Always room for designer drugs in America.
Red Hat - God I love these guys... I could just as easily lose all my
cash I have here... or triple it.. So just in case.. I've pulled back
all my initial investments and am currently playing with house money...
when they finally make that china announcement with Sun Micro... oh
god... I expect massive Fireworks
Sun Micro - Speaking of which....
Shuffle Master - lets see.. Casinos are taking off.. And these guys make
ALL the shuffling machines for all the casinos.. Prolly not going ot
grow much more.. But a pretty good long term growth stock.. Just you
wait till trump starts investing in Vegas.... =)
What I "diversified" into
I sold off some of my tech (Google, L3, MSFT, and Air Tran) and invested
in the following.
Alcoa (AA) - they do like aluminum and stuff. Lets see.. We're
rebuilding.... Afghanistan, Iraq, New Orleans, etc etc... someone's
gotta provide the aluminum (yes I know I'm awful).
Harley Davidson (HDI) - nothing like a loyal brand. It's near its
52-week low with x-mas coming up. America's BEST Playtoy is revving
up. Yes this is what I call a flyer stock.
Intel (INTC) - I couldn't get completely away from tech. But is there a
more dominant monopoly anywhere outside of Redmond, Washington? Prolly
not. And now they're going to completely obliterate everyone else in
the one chip market that REALLY matters. The lower-power high yield
processor market. Really the only one that matters right now. All the
growth... once they make them more commercially feasable.. Corps should
be buying up Dell Computers that are packed with these things to save on
POWER costs.. Yeah.. The savings are that great.
DELL - Speaking of Dell.. Did you know the computer I use for work is
just a standard desktop. Nothing really special.. P4 2.1 GHZ, DVD-rom,
512 kb mem.. Yada yada... costs my work, over $3k. Now how many people
work for Boeing... or Lockheed... or Rockwell Collins... or Northrupp
Grumman... or... yeah.. Do some math and bow behind the greatness that
is known as Michael Dell.
October 16th, 2005
Wow!!! Gotta Love College Football
Posted by bert at 01:40 PM on October 16, 2005 in ME.
was at the corner office yesterday for a day full of sports watching.
quick summary.
Saw:
Oregon State upset CAL at CAL.
LSU/FLA matchup.
Penn State get screwed by the refs in their matchup with Michigan.
Notre Dame almost pull off the upset of teh year against USC.
Roger Clemens pitch a gem to win game 3 for the astros
White Sox take a 3-1 game lead in the ALCS behind another masterful pitching performance (this time from Freddy Garcia.)
and then my night began.... =) Happy Birthday Scott!
October 20th, 2005
I'm Leaving... On a Jet Plane...
Posted by bert at 03:57 PM on October 20, 2005 in ME.
so i'm in hawaii.. be jealous
e
October 25th, 2005
Hawaii Trip 2005
Posted by bert at 12:26 AM on October 25, 2005 in ME.
So here’s the low-down. Me and a few friends had an opportunity to go to Hawaii and babysit Suzy’s parents’ dog, Katie since her parents were out in Chicago ( I think) for some business. In the mean time we had full use of the house, and full access to the Island, and all that for the price of roundtrip airfare. Yeah.. Work sucks anyway, so we said “Aloha Hawai’i,” and “peace out SoCal.” All in all, it was me, Suzy, Amit, Tim, David, and Stephanie chilling out cool in Hawaii.
Day 1. arrived and hit one of davin’s restraints.. had an ahi tuna sandwich on taro root bread. OMG.. and the great food began. We arrived at Suzy’s place and… well.. lets just put it this way, there are some famous people involved in active TV shows like… say… LOST (which is filmed in Hawaii btw) who own big ass houses in Honolulu. They all live on the same hill as the Schapperles. Simply amazing. All the shots of the same bay… those are all from her PATIO!. ‘nuff said.
We went back out and got Dave, lounged by the pool, went to the supermarket and then I cooked steaks for dinner. Quite simply a very, VERY relaxing first day in paradise. We followed that night with drinking games in the patio. Hilarity definitely ensued.
Day 2. Being on a 3 hour time delay with my work sleep schedule fully intact, I was up at… *gasp* 5:45 AM!. Some relaxation huh? But being up early definitely has its benefits. i.e. I got to walk Katie during the sunrise. Absolutely gorgeous as you could guess. Hell I even got in some WoW (yeah sad&hellip
while waiting for the other stragglers to wake up. We went to Pearl Harbor and did the touristy thing. Its actually a very nice… monument? (I dunno, but I feel wrong calling it a tourist attraction.) and I enjoyed it, but I need some action. I did do my best to take a bunch of stupid photographs, (I’m so AzN….) lets see… lunch at L&L’s (omg stew is so good). And then… a weird thing happened… I’m not entirely sure wtf we did.. but it was suddenly dinner and we were at Duke’s for yummy Mai Tais. We me an incredibly nice duo from London, who we enjoyed dinner with. OMG the mango ribs are a must. Probably the best $11 I spent on this trip. More drinking followed and somehow I made it back to Suzy’s house. I passed out and suddenly….
Day 3. We raced off to Hanauma Bay to get in some snorkeling action. On the way there we greeted with what soon became our Anthem, the Laffy Taffy song. I’m not entirely sure what the name of the song is.. but we shook our laffy taffy the whole way there. Perhaps the most awful song we heard this trip. Snorkling was great too! I got to see fish and not drink too much saltwater in the process. Oh.. and David doesn’t know how to swim!!.. so between the wet beaver and david capino.., we were screwed. Yes Timmy, we’re hosed. But ‘lo and behold, my new friend Stephanie came to the rescue and we took off to explore the mini reefs that are way too populated with touristy losers from the mainland. On the way back, we hit up Costco for gifts, and a tasty strip mall for food. Some of the group got Quizno’s for lunch. Silly bastards, instead I got bi bim bop that was most delicious. We went back to shower and ended up doing NOTHING. UCLA game was on… World Series game 1 was on. We didn’t do anything until it was like 6 p.m. when we went to auntie pasto’s, where I had some amazing gniocci. Then it started pouring, so the day was over. We went back, and I busted out Batman Begins and Along Came Polly to fill movie night. A nice day of relaxation.
Day 4. Notice we haven’t really gone to the beach yet? A few of us had realized this and we were like.. screw this… we’re going damnit, so we did. Half our group broke off to get an amazing Champaign breakfast at the Halekulani, and well.. despite paying $40 for food… lets just say it was well worth it. Simply GREAT food.. the guava juice was good, the passion fruit juice was better. And the food… Jeez… lets just say… I would go back. After gorging ourselves, we had the nicest parking lady in the world (charged us only $2 for parking) and we were on the way to the beach. A quick pitstop in the ABC store later, and we had our mats to layout. Which we did, and now I’m a nice crispy bronze to boot! I even got in about an hour of surfing and Steph got in her boogie boarding as well. David, well… he still can’t swim, but at least he’s darker now.
Around 1’ish we decided to call our other group and see how they were doing. They went back to the mall, and were playing games at Dave and Busters. Ok… whatever.. we stayed at the beach. Did some shopping at their night markets. Hell, I even spent over $100 on clothes =P. we ended up getting to D&B around 6 p.m. and kept playing games for almost 3 more hours before leaving. (missed Roy’s restaurant though), but had a nice consolation dinner at Zippy’s who has the most amazing chili. (Yes you fool.. I went to Hawaii and got CHILI!).
Day 5: airport… sad.. go home.. and it’s the first morning where it didn’t rain.. oh well.. can’t complain much. For a $300 trip… it was worth every penny.. and now I have some chocolate covered nuts to bring back for the wahinis =P
Summary:
I learned how to “swoop” stuff
And I learned how to shake my laffy taffy.
And I just might be narcoleptic.
October 26th, 2005
The Letdown...
Posted by bert at 06:45 PM on October 26, 2005 in ME.
man.. seriously.. there is such a letdown after having a great vacation and then returning to work.. still not in the mood to do anything... not even last night's 14th inning victory by the white sox really got me in the mood to celebrate...
*sigh*. oh well hopefully they can just finish it all off tonight.
in the meantime... well.. crap nevermind... there really isn't a meantime. oh well.. i'm done. i think i'll go clean or something.
Go Sox
Posted by bert at 09:53 PM on October 26, 2005 in ME.
well white sox won game 4, 1-0.
and i'm frankly speachless. But alas... i actually (yeah i know this is blasphemy for a whitesox fan...) was MORE excited last year when the Red Sox won it.
yeah.. really.
now... i must admit... the point I knew they palehose would win? when in the bottom of the 9th there was a foul ball go into the stands.. Juan Uribe caught it when there was no steve bartman to be found.
In the end.. the whitesox are champs.. and tomorrow is another day. Really odd.. but glorious.
and nothing like when my Bucs won the Superbowl.
October 28th, 2005
Halloween
Posted by bert at 06:53 PM on October 28, 2005 in ME.
oh.. the glorious holiday is upon us....
i mean any excuse girls can have to dress slutty is a good thing right? this holiday makes it perfectly acceptable.
hrm.. don't expect pictures =)
now i wonder if i can wear my costume to work on monday... LOL...
well maybe i should post 1 picture....
so it's pretty wrong.. but if you can figure out what i[m supposed to be... more power to you. if not.. well... it's still wrong and we had a LOT of fun =P