A fisher saved my life
Since I switched my blog to Wordpress and moved it to this domain here at LiveFreeOrScream.com, I’ve seen a nice increase in traffic, and it continues to rise month over month. But with that has also come an amazing amount of comment spam. Thankfully, the Akismet Wordpress plugin is spectacular at detecting such spam and prevents most of it from appearing on the blog. From time to time, I review the spam pile to make sure there weren’t any false positives. Most of the spam comments are obvious spam, but some are quite creative and I’m surprised Akismet is able… Continue reading
Swing trading update: Life as a major bagholder
Since my last update, I’ve continued to add to my trading wins. After a few successful trades today, I have now achieved a 500% return on my original investment back in December. However, I’ve also fallen into a problem commonly experienced by beginning traders: I have a lot of “big bags”. A “bag” is trader slang for a huge losing position in a stock. And I have a bunch.
Getting stuck with an underwater stock is bad because now I have to decide whether to sell at a big loss or to wait it out and hope it… Continue reading
Something I learned today: Schuyler Colfax
Again, something I learned from a random item in my Twitter stream: We had a U.S. Vice President named Schuyler Colfax. Besides having such a cool name, this guy has looks that belong on money!
Mr. Colfax was Vice President alongside President Ulysses Grant, 1869-1873. Grant and Colfax had the distinction of being the youngest Presidential team (46 and 45, respectively) until Bill Clinton and Al Gore took office in 1993.
How Zynga can make Draw Something great
Popular game developer Zynga recently purchased OMGPOP, the company responsible for development of the relatively new and suddenly popular mobile game Draw Something. This is a good thing because Zynga will give the game the polish it needs.
In case you don’t know, Draw Something is basically Pictionary for two players brought to mobile devices and tablets. In its current state, the game is quite simple. You are given a list of three words. You draw a picture of one of the words and then send it to one of your Facebook friends or a random player. The other player… Continue reading
Facebook buyout of Instagram: Let’s hope it’s a killer deal
Today Facebook announced the purchase of Instagram, the popular social photo app. This is one buyout I’m hoping is being done to kill the product. The social media world will be a better place if Instagram is killed. There have been two major problems with Instagram:
1. It includes a variety of photo-tweaking filters that actually degrade the quality of the photos.
2. It’s one more place to share photos (unneeded and dilutive).
It’d be better if Facebook was the de facto photo sharing platform and if the filters included in the app actually improved the photos.
Film idea: 5 Who Died
As we approach “tax day” in the U.S., it bothers me that most Americans fill out their tax forms without really considering how their hard-earned money is being used by the government. The most egregious is that it pays for our military involvement around the world which is resulting in countless deaths of innocent people.
To get people to understand this, we need a well-publicized film that really pulls at the emotions of American viewers. I propose the title, “5 Who Died”. It could be either a documentary or a drama based on real life events. But it should focus… Continue reading
The 2011 Florida RV show and secret blog posts
Back in late 2010, I knew I wanted to make big changes in my life and I wanted to document my thoughts but I wasn’t ready to share them with the world. I wanted to be able to talk about my frustration with my job and various aspects of my life without worrying about how people would react. So I started a private blog (basically a secret online journal).
I recently decided I would be comfortable releasing those posts into the wild and have since copied them to this blog with some minor editing to remove some things I’m still… Continue reading
Coriolis down the drain
You’ve probably heard of the Coriolis effect, or at least are familiar with its principle. It involves centrifugal forces of rotating bodies and is the reason hurricanes rotate counter-clockwise in the northern hemisphere and clockwise in the southern.
A common household experiment is to see which way the water rotates when draining from a bathtub. On a recent trip to South America, my dad did the experiment to verify it drained counter-clockwise. The problem is that this is simply bad science. The Coriolis effect due to the Earth’s rotation is basically negligible on anything smaller than major weather patterns… Continue reading
The Three Political Parties of America
I had an idea for a post about the sad state of politics in the U.S. as we approach the next Presidential election. But then today Robin Koerner went and posted an excellent one over at the Huffington Post. It’s so good I’m not even going to try to top it. Funny, sad, and accurate. Be sure to check it out.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robin-koerner/the-three-political-parti_b_1355340.html?
Swing trading update
Almost two months ago I wrote about how I had discovered the fun of swing trading stocks. Well, I’m still at it, and in fact, it’s turned into a full time activity for me.
I’m finding that my hunger for learning and my ability to stay calm in stressful situations are valuable skills for short-term stock trading. I still have a lot to learn but have had more successes than failures so far and am still enjoying it immensely.
I’m planning some future posts showing the details of my trading setup, how I research opportunities, and what a typical… Continue reading
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