My Desultory Blog

Posted By RichC on October 15, 2014

It’s October … why would anybody be surprised by the market heading violently in the down direction? I posted earlier this afternoon while watching the market selloff across the board and figured the end of the day deserved an update. 

At one point the Dow was down 460 points with most stocks moving sharply to the down direction. By the end of the day, the DJIA closing down only 173.45 or 1.06% to 16,142 made the close tolerable. A few areas are concern are also a positive – that of oil prices. With WTI nearing $80/barrel due to plenty of crude oil on the market, gasoline and other fuels are less expensive. Unfortunately it is happening due to an economic slowdown in many areas around the world. This also impact our U.S. energy sector, one of the bright spots in the economy. Here’s a short audio clip of Chris Faulkner, the president and CEO of Breiltling Energy discussing his concerns with Kelly Evans of CNBC:

Hmm, U.S. Bakken oil costs $60 to pump out of the ground and an additional $10-$12/barrel to transport. How much profit can be made if oil prices go much lower than $80/barrel? An energy slowdown in North Dakota?

Category: Audio, Business, Financial | No Comments »
Tags: chris faulkner, cnbc, energy, finance, investing, mp3, oil

Posted By RichC on October 15, 2014

Will the Apple event on Thursday do much to ease the pain $AAPL shareholders are feeling in Wednesday’s afternoon sell-off? Share prices dropped over 3% in the last couple of days with today taking the biggest dive.

The expectation is for an iPad mini 3 an improved iPad Air with the new A8 64-bit chip, Touch ID and Apple Pay, but the same 9.4 x 6.6 size. (click for event on Thursday October 16, 2014 … and accidental release of photos according to Mashable.)

Category: Apple, Financial | 2 Comments »
Tags: aapl, apple, event, investing, ipad, stock, trading

Posted By RichC on October 15, 2014

WSJ’s “Ebola’s Deadly Reach” map of locations

I understand our government’s reluctance to over react to the deadly Ebola virus, but disagree with the lack of precautions being taken to prevent the spread by those traveling from Western Africa to the United States … particularly by air.

Commonsense dictates that we expect too much from airport screeners that ask questions and take surface temperatures of those entering the country. The risk of someone arriving who doesn’t have signs of Ebola and may only have come in contact is too high.  Just because they don’t show symptoms when they arrive, doesn’t mean they aren’t transporting the virus. We should at minimum error on the side of caution and temporarily restrict access to the general populace by travelers in the short term, at least until we have a better handle on things. When even the medical workers who know the dangers and take every precaution to wear protective gear are getting infected, having a traveler roaming around because they don’t show symptoms when exiting a flight is not the best way to retard the spread. We don’t know yet, but perhaps even having it on their person or luggage is too high of a risk. A quick read of what experts do know makes it clear that our current policies aren’t good enough.

Slightly Paraphrased below:

The Ebola virus can live longer on hard surfaces than porous – surfaces such as metal and glass. As well, there have been lab studies showing that dried samples of Ebola virus can survive for days; but other studies have found the virus doesn’t survive more than a few hours outside of a host.

It’s important to note that in the tests where the virus lived for days, they were kept in the dark, at low temperatures, around 4 degrees Celsius, which helped the viruses survive.

Category: Health, News, Politics | No Comments »
Tags: africa, airport, ebola, policies, screening, virus, wsj

Posted By RichC on October 14, 2014

Most offices (home and commercial) protect their computers and electronics with at least a surge strip and many of us with Uninterruptable Power Supplies … or UPS units. I’ve owned a couple from APC (now Schneider Electric) and over the years have been frustrated with having to replacing the expensive back-up batteries. The replacements are costly to replace and really don’t last that may years … considering how infrequently they are used.

SO … instead of replacing the batteries again, I’ve opted to run a a couple heavy cables with clips through a grommet in the side of my APC 650 box. I am clipping it to a spare 12 volt car battery (the older, but new-ish, separate starter battery that I replace on the boat). If I were buying new, I’d opt for a deep cycle marine battery, but the “Platinum AGM” will have to do for now. I’m hoping for at least 5 or 6 years?

I ran the garage shop night bulb (LED 60 watt equivalent) for 12 hours overnight on battery power and noted that it dropped the larger battery’s voltage less than 1 volt. I’m checking now to see if the APC unit’s charger will return that “1 volt.”  Once I move the APC box and battery back to my home office and plug in the big iMac, cable modem, external hard drive, NAS, 8-port VPN firewall and wireless access point we’ll see how it holds up. An update to come.

Category: Computer, How-To, Technology | No Comments »
Tags: accessory, apc, back up, Computer, electronics, gadgets, protection, ups

Posted By RichC on October 13, 2014

Before my childhood home photos are gone from Bing’s Maps, I wanted to archive a couple aerials of the house where I grew up in a rural Curtice, Ohio on Lake Erie. Although my family moved to the “metropolis” of Sidney Ohio when I was in high school, my fondest memories were of growing up on the lake.

I’ve mentioned growing up here a few times before (Link 1, 2, 3 … with old photos), but since our old house was torn down a couple years ago, I wanted to save the last couple images left on Bing. What is amazing to me is that this old house survived several owners, a couple of significant floods (the bigger ones in 1966 and 1973). Eventually the Corp of Engineers added the rock dike to protected the homes and all those living in lower areas inland. Unfortunately for us with beach frontage, this pretty much ruined the view and activities on the water that were part of my youth. I’m glad we had those years.

Category: Archive, Personal, Photos | No Comments »
Tags: aerial, archive, curtice, erie, home, images, lagoon, lake, Photos

Posted By RichC on October 12, 2014

Somewhat an excuse to slip in a Hank Williams song, but the Dome Homes article was intriguing because we explored this area with my college buddies in the late 1970s every Christmas break. I’d still like to get back there by sailboat and anchor for a few days …weeks … or maybe months … and just drop off the grid.

It also brings back the memory of putting plywood sheets on the roof of the car and then placing them one after the other as we drove through the sand trails to get to a deserted beach … now known as Tiger Tail Beach on Marco Island. Hmm … a little development going on in the last 40 years?

Category: Music, Travel, Video | No Comments »
Tags: blog, development, dome, florida, homes, memories

Posted By RichC on October 11, 2014

This content is restricted.

Category: Audio, Music, Video | 1 Comment »
Tags: bus sessions, mp3, Music, nicki bluhm, van sessions, youtube

Posted By RichC on October 10, 2014

Sort of a timely website find if you are an amateur meteorologist or just enjoy watching and learning about weather. Check out MeteoEarth.com or their MeteroEarth smartphone app for $2.99. (explainer video) There are some pretty powerful features and the real time software offers stunning visual views of weather happenings — like the current Typhoon Vongfong in the western Pacific.

The storm (above from the International Space Station – click for larger) was a monster storm and comparable to a Cat 5 hurricane in the Atlantic. Meteorologists say that it is winding down but still projected to cause significant damage when it comes ashore this weekend in Okinawa. “It could be devastating when it comes ashore in Japan,” remarked Peter Saskina who has been plotting and tracking for the last week.

Category: Cellphone, Computer, Software, Space, Technology, Weather | No Comments »
Tags: app, hurricane, meteoearth, techfriday, typhoon, vongfong, weather, website

Posted By RichC on October 10, 2014

Investors have a love-hate relationship with the month of October. It is a volatile month and has had its share of stock market ups and stock market downs. Those of us who were around and investing in 1987, we mostly remember the “down.” In those days before Internet investing, hearing and seeing share prices drop 20% in and instant was painful… we don’t easily forget the pain.

The memories are still vivid to me as I had just remodeled a new building for my company (old photos) and signed an order for a new printing press at the big Print Expo trade show in Chicago. To fund this purchase we planned the sale of stock from my previous job and my wife’s stock purchase plan. Along came Black Monday and we took big hit on on our investments that we now had to sell to pay for this new equipment. The DJIA dropped 22.61% in one sickening day (see chart below). To make matters worse, this particular offset press ended up not being one of the more productive pieces of equipment in our shop; it sat idle on most days. It did prove to be both a lesson in equipment purchasing and financial investing … especially when it comes to the month of October.

For some perspective as to the size of the 1987 one day event … visualize the the current day DJIA 17,000 dropping 3845 points in a single one day move … that’s 14 times as large as the 270 point swings we had this past week.

Black Monday – October 19, 1987

Category: Business, Financial | No Comments »
Tags: Business, cbnc, cpp, giphy.com, investing, memories, stock market

Posted By RichC on October 9, 2014

Volatile financial markets seesaw so far this week. From 2% down on Tuesday, to 2% up on Wednesday and now back down 2% on Thursday … Friday should be an interesting day and right in keeping with October trading. Here are a few thoughts from Jeff Macke (Yahoo Finance) concluding that the “stock market has gone a little bonkers lately.”

Category: Business, Financial | No Comments »
Tags: djia, financial markets, investing, nasdaq, stocks, trading