Saying that stock market prices are wholly unpredictable is like saying you went to a Sotheby's auction and you didn't know when people were raising their bids.

courtesy of Google Trends searching

I live for that moment where you feel you've finally 'gotten' something.

You figured it out... you might not have totally solved the problem yet, but you're on the way there and you can taste it. Finishing up is important, but is nearly a foregone conclusion once you've actually _clicked_

And you do that again, and again, and again, and again.

Nothing better.

If Obama is really the incorruptible visionary leader he's supposed to be he will be assassinated.

An assassination attempt would legitimize Obama.

Disgusting? Yeah, pretty much.

True? Maybe.

update: this story about an assassination plot is awfully timely

From An Antichrist Obama in McCain Ad?:

Perhaps the most puzzling scene in the ad is an altered segment from The 10 Commandments that appears near the end. A Moses-playing Charlton Heston parts the animated waters of the Red Sea, out of which rises the quasi-presidential seal the Obama campaign used for a brief time earlier this summer before being mocked into retiring it. The seal, which features an eagle with wings spread, is not recognizable like the campaign's red-white-and-blue "O" logo. That confused Democratic consultant Eric Sapp until he went to his Bible and remembered that in the apocalyptic Book of Daniel, the Antichrist is described as rising from the sea as a creature with wings like an eagle.

Knowing very little about Christian theology (or most theology for that matter) I would never, ever, understand this reference without some serious help. Apparently, I'm not part of the target audience.

Check out the video for yourself. The end segment with the Obama seal is weird and unsettling. Cracks me up.

I think it's likely any US president is a rough approximation of the Antichrist (oh my god think about Hillary as president). I wonder what percentage of politicians rate as psychopaths.

So according to my box of Frosted Mini-Wheats it

has been clinically shown to improve kids' attentiveness by nearly 20%!

wowzers! that's probably better than 40mg of methylphenidate for those little munchkins!

The footnote is where it all comes together though.

Based upon independent clinical research, kids who ate Kellogg's Frosted Mini-Wheats cereal for breakfast had up to 18% better attentiveness three hours after breakfast than kids who ate no breakfast. For more information, visit www.frostedminiwheats.com [!!!!]

I have to say I'm floored. They even tell you it's all a bunch of garbage, if you're willing to read between the lines EVER SO SLIGHTLY AS IN NOT AT ALL.

Wow, being hungry and starving makes it hard to concentrate. I'm glad I have my mini-wheats!

The little Asian kid with his hand raised is too much for me. Can you handle it?

I checked my referrers today and noticed I had a few hits from this blog post about a recent trip to Peru

and while in Peru earlier this month they met a person they claim is George Ingram!

They give him only a passing mention, but it's priceless:

. . . we bumped into the same american who previously kept saying "so you're from LA, huh?" anyways, first thing he says is something about trying to unload $6M worth of gold bullion. you heard that right. he started talking about all the different businesses he owned and how much money he had. i couldn't decide whether or not to believe him. turns out he's this guy. serious weirdness.

anyways, before we knew it, we had to excuse ourselves and run to dinner . . .

Wow, he sure gets around.

A long time ago, I recommended Sun Times Media as a potential 'dead cat bounce'. The company was definitely a dead cat; went from NYSE to Pink in the blink of an eye. If you want some really 'entertaining' reading, check out their 8k.

I had always thought this stock pick was out of a hat, but it's interesting reading back on what I had to say regarding the potential future price action. Back then I sort of thought of it as a sort of 'Buffett' style move or some such hogwash, but I did seem to have somewhat of a handle on price action.

My story on SVN/SUTM was written somewhat after I bought the stock on Investopedia's simulator at the price of $1.05-1.14; I originally took notice of the stock at $1.00-1.02, and it was part of the reason I opened up a simulated account.

From the post:

Their share price has fallen to nearly a dollar. Currently they are selling for $1.31 a share in after hours trading. Their stock price has fallen due to the 'looting' of the company by the former CEO and others. They also cite the decline of the print advertising market as a major source of their woes. I do not have any idea if this company will do well over the long term. However, I believe that this company will experience somewhat of a rebound in share price over the next year if it does not completely explode. This is the rock bottom of the stock, I think it will get up to at least 2 dollars a share from where it's at now. After that, it's anyone's guess at this point.

...

However, my gut tells me that if nothing else, there's going to be enough speculation on this stock to make some money. This stock went up while the Dow and S&P went down.

This was posted on my Facebook wall by a guy I know from high school. For some reason, I doubt he authored this particular missive.

Yeah, he's gonna post a message on my Facebook wall out of the blue and leave that kind of garbage.

However, this bit of Facebook wall-spam came right after receiving a couple friend requests that were awful suspicious. Take a look at the first profile:

It's interesting that she has almost no friends that are all in one place, and certainly no one that I know. Why would they want to be my Facebook friend? The profile also has no real content in it - just a picture.

Then I got another friend request a week or so later from an awfully similar profile:

This one at least is attached to a university I might actually know someone at, but still, the profile is in the same pattern.

• highly geographically scattered 'friends' with no high concentration locales

• absence of any unique personal information
• no wall
• female

Why does female matter? I assume the bot creators have a higher response rate if they use female pictures in the profiles that they use to 'friend' males with.

the wall spam

I think that seeing this Facebook wall-spam indicates we have achieved an interesting new level of potential network compromise. I can only see two possible situations whereby someone could manipulate a Facebook account in this way. The first is simply that the account login and password have been compromised, and possibly the Facebook spams are carried out by a program running on my friend's computer (accidentally downloaded virus perhaps). This is somewhat likely, but I believe that this spam is the result of a malicious third-party Facebook application.

I can easily see the situation where a malicious program is able to run on Facebook's own servers in the guise of a third-party application that someone has added to their profile. Although I doubt the Facebook development kit is full-featured enough to have exploits hidden inside it that could be particularly damaging, it would seem that this sort of bot creation is certainly not impossible. Imagine it - a bot that's largely not detectable by administrators, because it's not really doing anything it's not supposed to be allowed to do. It operates within its own layer inside the Facebook cloud, never having infected the thin-client used to access the cloud, or the cloud itself, per se.

However, if we are to assume it's a malicious program, or 'computer virus', it would have to have a vector of infection, correct? Well, based on my buddy's page, it seems he's ripe for the plucking. Here's a random screenshot:


Even if I'm totally wrong about this whole thing, something of the sort seems inevitable:

the computer virus's second cousin, twice removed

Welcome to the dawn of a new era in Cloud Computing.

One common method for promoting blog posts and websites is to look for other blog posts and websites that discuss similar items and then leave a comment with a link back to relevant content.

What is interesting about this approach is that people regulate their comments very tightly. Let us examine two approaches that I have encountered when attempting to promote my website through this sort of largely harmless and possibly helpful, comment 'spam'.

I promote my Zecco review on The Sun's Financial Diary

So naturally, I want my articles to have high search engine ranking. So what do I do? I search for the keywords that I want other people to get to my site by using, and look for the blogs, because those will allow the posting of comments.

Here is a search for 'Zecco Review' on Google. When I wanted to open up a brokerage account, I used this review to help determine I first open a Zecco account, so when it came full circle and I commented on it and left a link to my review, it seemed quite appropriate. Sun (the website operator) was kind enough to reply to my comment and agree with my general opinion that Zecco was a so-so broker at best.

I attempt to promote my Zecco review on Debtkid's website

The very first result of that Google search leads right to a review of Zecco on Debtkid's site. Naturally, I wanted to promote my website on the Number 1 result for 'Zecco Review'! I believe I posted almost the exact same comment that you can see on the Sun's website, and shortly thereafter, I noticed that I received a few referrals from his site.

However within a day the referrals dried up. What happened? I went back to Debtkid's site, and surprise, my comment might as well have never existed! Why would this happen?

My comment was deleted because Debtkid, as an affiliate of Zecco, is trying to receive commissions for selling Zecco account signups, and people reading my so-so to possibly negative review is not going to help him do that.

In short, Debtkid has a conflict of interest and did not act with integrity by deleting my comment

The Sun also receives compensation for people signing up with Zecco, but because he is an ethical person that acts with integrity, he is not going to attempt to omit and hide the truth in order to line his pockets like Debtkid.

I left the following comment on Debtkid's site, I doubt it will ever show up:

Debtkid is vested in having you guys sign up for Zecco; of course he's not going to write a bad review.

I attempted to drop a link here to my more nuanced and not-so conflicted-of-interest review (I am not an affiliate of any brokerage unlike Debtkid) , but Debtkid apparently did not think my comment worthy of posting.

My review of Zecco in 2008
Some difficulties I have had with Zecco, and also, SogoTrade.

And of course, the only comment on this review is blandly positive nearly content-less praise:

I love Zecco so far, and I’ve been with them for over a year. Not only do you get the 10 free trades but the rates are pretty low for options and trades after ten, lower than most all the other sites I’ve looked at. Their customer service has also been great for me so far. I recently had a technical question, emailed them and not only got back an email back within a half-hour, but also got a call from one of their engineers who helped me solve the problem.

Where were those awesome engineers when Zecco decided to take the day off and read the paper while taking a huge dump on Monday, April 14th, 2008?