My Desultory Blog

Posted By RichC on March 26, 2021

The current opinion by many who review technology (and Consumer Reports) is that the best smartphone for 2021 is the Apple iPhone 12 Pro Max … although might be a bit larger than many are comfortable putting in their pockets.

Personally I’ve shifted from wanting something small, like my old Samsung SPH-i500 aluminum bodied flipphone (stlll a favorite) to an iPhone 5 (loved it) to my current much larger aging iPhone 7 Plus (photo right). If you are following along … the size I’ve been willing to stuff into my front pants pocket has grown and is often annoying. If I can’t get an Apple flip—iPhone in the near future, I’ll probably consider the smaller format iPhone 12 Pro.

For those in the Android OS world, the choices are probably more challenging as there are  a lot of options … but Consumer Reports does a little heavy lifting and suggested the Samsung Galaxy Note 20 Ultra 5G at the top end and the OnePlus Nord N10 5G as a budget “best phone” and OnePlus Nord N100 for Best Phone for All-Day Battery Life.

Consumer Reports’ battery champ, the OnePlus N100, slightly exceeded two days of power with a single charge. However, the handset featured some of the lowest rated cameras that the magazine has ever tested. Other phones scoring well with battery life included the Samsung Galaxy A71 (43 hours) and the iPhone 12 Pro Max (41 hours).

LINK

Category: Advice, Apple, Cellphone, Gadget, Shopping, Technology | No Comments »
Tags: 2021, 5G, android, apple, best phone, Cellphone, consumer reports, iphone, samsung, smartphone, tech friday, techfriday

Posted By RichC on March 25, 2021

For the most part, I’m a conservative investor, although a regular channel trader, and I rarely speculates on risky upstarts, IPOs, zero-profit tech stocks, pharmaceutical long-shots or the latest crazy … cryptocurrency trend. Since most “risk” involves speculation, I see it more akin to gambling than eyes-open informed value or growth investing … both which are subject to up’s and down’s in our economy. Do I often wish I had an “all or none” Bitcoin-trader personality? “Yes,” but early investing and living through company bankruptcies, buyouts, margin leverage positions, futures market trades and regular options losses … it taught me the comfort of a good night sleep and a “steady as she goes” slower growing diversified investment portfolio. One thing that never seems to be easy, is predicting market sell-offs and gyrations — 1987, 2001, 2008 and the 2020 coronavirus pandemic come to mind. Timing is never easy.

I also recognized there are some established companies that can provide steady income and growth which become more attractively priced on occasion (usually in hindsight). For example, Pfizer $PFE was one of the first out of the gate with a COVID19 vaccine and so I bought in early expecting a little more upside movement on top of a nice quarterly dividend. To my surprise, it didn’t happen … which I’m saying so that you take my next stock mention in the pharmaceutical sector with a proverbial “grain of salt.”

Having watched Vertex Pharmaceuticals $VRTX get hammered last fall when its alpha-1 antitrypsin deficiency lung-and-liver drug failed a trial and they announced it would be discontinued, the stock fell out of favor. The company still has a lot to offer, but a lot of investors turned away. Vertex is still profitable with patents in place until the 2030s on their cystic-fibrosis franchise of drugs and is still working on another alpha-1 antitrypsin deficiency drug which is currently in phase 2 trials.

So like a few pharmaceutical analysis that I read, I’m thinking $VRTX might be undervalued and worth buying on market weakness (buying under $210)? Early this month, the Cowen analyst Phil Nadeau called Vertex a top large cap pick for 2021 saying, "we expect Vertex to recover in 2021 and would use the recent weakness to build a position in this premier biotech."

Category: Advice, Financial, Health, Science | No Comments »
Tags: $PFE, $VRTX, biotech, bitcoin, charts, coronavirus, covid, cowen, cystic-fibrosis, Financial, grain of salt, idiom, idioms, investing, markets, pandemic, pfizer, phrases, stocks, trading, vertex

Posted By RichC on March 24, 2021

The more I think about it, the “lamer” it appears to be talking about shoes … but truth be told, the Sperry Topsider reviews and shoe insole posts still are in the top ten when it comes to blog numbers.

I’m posting a photo of my newly arrived clearance priced Vasque hiking boots and previous ones … as this will be my 4th pair of Vasque boots. The first pair were light-duty summer weight and lasted quite a few years of hiking with my buddy Jeff … until I started using them for work boots. I upgraded to a full leather pair which seemed to take forever to break in, but held up for years until the rubber sole split loose from the leather (poor design since they could not be re-stitched like older full leather hiking boots).

The 3rd pair (current) were end of the season clearance boots and have held up well (photo), but definitely have not been used for hiking like the other two. They are probably still my favorites even though they are insulated (but I still wear all year around). Unfortunately they are starting to crack a bit and suspect they need to be replace before doing an hiking.

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Category: Blogs, Memories, Nature, Personal, Photos, Recreation, Shopping, Travel | No Comments »
Tags: backpacking, boots, breeze, canadian, family, glx, hiking, rei, rockies, shoes, trip, vasque

Posted By RichC on March 23, 2021

Besides what has become an annual photo of one of our lilac bushes pushing out buds, this past weekend was the first weekend of spring. Besides the new growth and greening lawn, we celebrated with our neighbors of 25 years, Pam and Jim by attending  their son’s wedding in Cincinnati. It was a beautiful wedding for a beautiful couple. Congratulations Andrea and Jared Miller.  

The great part for us was that the wedding was in East Walnut Hills at St. Francis de Sales Parish with 2+ hours between the service and reception dinner which gave us the afternoon to “walk” over to Taylor’s apartment and visit with him. Megan has given his apartment a female touch, although Taylor is just fine when it comes to caring for and decorating his place .. it has been a few years since college (wink, wink). It was great to spend the afternoon before driving down the the Bell Center for the reception and evening. We had a great time.

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Category: Friends, Personal, Photos, Video | No Comments »
Tags: angela, brenda, buds, jared, lilac, miller, neighbor, richc, spring, weather, wedding

Posted By RichC on March 22, 2021

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Category: Memories, Music, Video | No Comments »
Tags: 8-track, band, boston, brenda, cassette, chris carr, college, high school, mp3, Music, music monday, musicmonday, richc, rock and roll, tape deck, video, youtube

Posted By RichC on March 21, 2021

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Category: Archive, Holiday, Personal, Photos | No Comments »
Tags: ancestry, ancestry.com, annalyn, brenda, corbett, dna, ellerie, family, german, granddaughters, heritage, ireland, irish, richc, st patrick's day, taylor, welsh

Posted By RichC on March 20, 2021

A technology friend of mine, Scott Bilik (who was considered my Twitter “Godfather in 2007), has recently wiped some of the mud from his hypothetical digital footprints and is systematically freeing himself from Big Tech’s shackles. This current Silicon Valley monopoly has increased its political clout and has enticed or entrapped most of us in ways that it is difficult to sever. We’ve voluntarily given up privacy and personal liberty to use seemingly free or relatively low cost services in our modern connected lifestyle … and if we disagree with their edicts (or “wokism“), then are censored or banned.

My buddy Jeff (a Cybersecurity guy) has slowly been doing the same after cutting cords and his social media ties a few years ago. I’ve given thought to doing the same … but continue dabble with services offered by Google, Twitter, Facebook and to a somewhat lesser extent Apple, Amazon and Microsoft. I occasionally remind myself that I am behaving like the complaint German citizen who kept quiet, operated within the rules and allowed a National Socialism ideology to spread pre-World War II. They controlled the propaganda, schools and by threat and force by eliminating contrary opinions and people who opposed Nazism.

In today’s leftist totalitarian movement (see recent post), those wielding power have been pushing their ideology in our public education system, the media and used their control of technology as a way to silence and censor opposing and unwanted opinion. They restrict stories and promote those which they agree. They promote candidates and political views, while squelching those to which they disagree. All of us who use connected technology, if open-minded, can see this authoritarian behavior and know instinctively what happens if you say the wrong thing or step out of line … especially if it counters today’s “woke” leftist’s views. Many who remain compliant and quiet, do it because they agree with the leftist ideology … or out of the threat of being “cancelled.” There are plenty of examples of those being censored. Few want to be targeted by the left or want to live without the technology controlled by the Big Tech overlords (and their “chosen” political leaders).

Scott’s personal reasonings was excellent and well worth reading (here’s a link to his blog and a March 8th snippet):

Cultural Shifts at Big Tech

At times I’m glad I work in silicon design. I have memories of big tech companies that primarily focused on building cool, innovative products and services. They rarely touched upon matters of politics or culture.

These past several years I’ve noticed more that these companies – which started out rather open – are making ever more stringent rules on what is allowable content. For many sites I can’t get over the flip in what content is allowed and what is quarantined or banned. “Move your life To The Cloud,” they said. They then proceeded to lock down allowable content further and further each year. When I was a teen I’d see bumper stickers that would say “Question Authority”. Online that is becoming increasingly difficult.

–> read full post

Category: Blogs, Cloud, Computer, Education, Personal, Politics, Social Media, Software, Technology | No Comments »
Tags: big tech, blog, culture, digital, jeff pitts, national socialism, nazi, opinion, Politics, propaganda, scott bilik, Technology

Posted By RichC on March 19, 2021

Although I’m not in the market for a new iPad just yet, I am (or was) a multiple hours a day user back when traveling a bit more and interested in what a Thunderbolt and M1 chipped iPad Pro might offer. At least that’s the rumor for the April 2021 launch … but who knows if it will be worth the premium price?

The Apple Silicon M1 chip is the most interesting improvement for me as it should offer speed and processing power rivaling the MacBook Air M1, but still be in the handy tablet format and running iPad OS (???) … at least until the computer and mobile operating systems come together. According to several reports I’ve been reading, the addition of a Thunderbolt port will give the iPad Pro access to peripherals such as external monitors and hard drives … something we have all wanted for a long time. Of course most of my tablet file sizes are smallish nowadays and with faster wireless speeds and cloud services … this wired connection may not prove all that necessary?

Again, I’m happy with my current iPad and Brydge keyboard setup, but as my aging Lenovo Yoga 710 notebook computer isn’t used as much, having a single travel device “again” would be appealing … but suspect a new iPhone to replace my 7 plus might be a priority?

Category: Apple, Gadget, Software, Technology | No Comments »
Tags: apple, brydge, ipad, ipad os, ipad pro, keyboard, lenovo, m1 chip, rumor, silicon, tech friday, techfriday, yoga 710

Posted By RichC on March 18, 2021

Real estate has been on a tear in many markets as the coronavirus has people moving from cities to the suburbs and their own piece of land. In my opinion it is not just COVID19 related, but that fact that cities aren’t as secure or as tax friendly to live in, especially on the east and west coasts.

Since I have adult children in exactly the same shoes Brenda and I were decades ago, I also understand the remodeling, house hunting and desire to build your own home. As I recall, it was both a stressful and expensive endeavor when we moved from Hudson to Cincinnati … but paid off over time (something real estate and homes have done in previous generations). As my father-in-law would say about buying more land as he added to his property over the years in western NY, “they’re not making land anymore.”

Smiles and good memories aside, the cost of building (and homes) has definitely risen this past year and with stimulus dollars, the economy recovering and the cheap money in the form of low mortgage interest rates continuing, it will probably continue boost for real estate until the next crisis hits.

Commodities Boom Hits Home

Rock-bottom mortgage rates have made owning a house more affordable, while the Fed’s purchasing of mortgage-backed securities has spurred lending. Lower household spending during the lockdown and federal stimulus checks have helped people accumulate down payments. House hunters are bidding up properties alongside legions of investors who are buying and building a growing share of America’s houses and renting them out.

The competition for houses has lifted home prices in almost every part of the country …

Lumber and other wood products took off last summer and have remained aloft. Futures for delivery this month ran up to $1,040 per thousand board feet, nearly triple the typical price this time of year. The story is similar for oriented strand board, used for walls, floors and roofs. Many engineered wood products are in short supply and hard to find.

The National Association of Home Builders says that rising lumber prices have added $24,000 to the cost of building the average single-family home … MORE

Category: Business, Financial, News | No Comments »
Tags: building, commodities, coronavirus, covid19, economy, federal reserve, house, housing, inflation, interest rates, lumber, mortgages, real estate, wsj

Posted By RichC on March 17, 2021

At one time, I thought I was better at time management, but clearly after spending over an hour disassembling, de-rusting and polishing a folding IKEA stainless steel rack, I am not. In retrospect, buying a new one would have been a better way to use my time … but I found out they don’t carry this particular version (since it rusts, I know why). Still, it would have been nice to replace it with one mounted to the side wall like the Kungsfors and open up counterspace below it.

EDIT: After a trip to IKEA .. Brenda vetoed the idea. It wasn’t all that attractive or appropriate for the kitchen anyway.

Category: Ideas, Personal, Photos, Productivity, Shopping | No Comments »
Tags: dishes, drying, ikea, inefficient, polish, rack, rust, time managment