Facebook IPO

My parents were pretty consistent in one particular way: Whenever I would get hurt doing something I was told not to do, the most sympathetic statement I was likely to hear was, "Serves you right."

"Analysts" insisted that Facebook stock was worth 100 times current earnings. No reason was ever given why that should be so given that Google, Apple and the like, are running around 10-12x earnings (historically normal valuations). It just was so shut up and dump your life savings into Facebook stock. Why anyone in their right mind would do such a thing is beyond me, but hey, good luck with that. So now everyone is speed-dialing lawyers looking for someone, anyone, to blame for the inevitable outcome. It's Zuckerberg's fault. It's this or that Wall Street firm's fault. It's the stock exchange's fault. It's Al Gore's fault. (Why not? Makes as much sense as anything else.)

First of all, why would anyone fall for the same scam that's been being run with internet IPO's since the late 1990's? We've heard all this crap before. It's different now. All those old metrics for judging the worth of a company don't apply in the Internet Age. XYZ's growth potential is unlimited. Revenue will only go up. Blah, blah, blah. And every time, it all turns into a giant, steaming pile. Every. Single. Time. If you fell for it again, well, serves you right.

Secondly, even it you've been living under a rock for the last decade, you have to know that the big Wall Street firms all operate the same way; fleece the retail investor for the benefit of themselves and a select few of their clients. This has always been the case, although back in the 80's and 90's, stock funds were returning enough money that no one took much notice. Now that the stock market seems to be on a perpetual cruise-to-nowhere, everyone has realized that certain people seem to make money no matter what happens, and those certain people don't include us. If you are so willfully ignorant that you don't know this and you're investing in stocks, serves you right.

Finally, Facebook is claiming that 1 in every 7 people on the planet will be a user by August. Just how much growth can you realistically expect beyond that? A 100-times-earnings valuation would imply an expectation of 10x growth. Have aliens contacted us and expressed interest in becoming Facebook users? In any case, like all straight-line projection, this is probably complete BS. If you invest in any company based on not just what is likely BS, but ridiculously flimsy BS, then serves you right.

We've been down this road not once, not twice, but dozens of times over the last decade and a half, so pardon me if I seem unsympathetic to those who have been crushed by this latest fiasco. Let me be completely clear: I am unsympathetic.

Moving Again

Everything has fallen into place and we are definitely moving across Florida to Zephyrhills to the same park my parents use as their snowbird nest. The place is smaller than what we are in now, and came filled up with the previous occupant's stuff. We've already tossed about 30 large garbage bags of anything small enough to bag up. Now we have to get rid of two kitchen tables with chairs, a recliner, a swivel rocker and a queen-size bed. Then the real fun: Getting rid off our stuff that we no longer need or just won't have room for. We also have some repairs and improvements that need to be made; the place has set empty for a couple years, which in Florida means water damage. We been in all the cracks and crevices cleaning stuff out and no sign of mold, so at least we don't have to deal with that, but water has definitely gotten in several places at some point.

So the focus has now shifted from figuring out if we can move and where, to figuring out the how. We have some time; our current lease doesn't run out until the end of July making it possible for us to gradually shift our junk rather than doing the big bang move-everything-in-48-hours kind of move we been doing. So for the next two-and-a-half months, we'll be spending our days off driving stuff across the state and doing a bit of work while we are there. That means even less here than usual. At some point, we'll take some photos after we've cleaned up more of the debris and gotten rid of some of the excess furniture so everyone can see our McMansion.

We spent our first night there this weekend. Definite improvement over our current location. It's probably the first time in over a year I haven't been woken up by some inconsiderate jackass. Being able to spend the occasional night there will definitely improve my over-all mood. I'm sure living there will have its challenges. For example, we already know that people there (including my parents) are very... um... interested in whatever you are doing. Most are retired and have little else to occupy their time, so they snoop. In fact, one guy was so interested that we scratched a possible off our list because it was too close to him. That wasn't the only reason why it didn't make the cut, but we really didn't want to live close to one of those people. But so far, it's a vast improvement over what we have now.

In any case, I need to get caught up after spending two days on the other side of the state and get ready for another exciting day at the library.

Exactly

xkcd hits one out of the park (if your eyes are old like mine, click the image to get a bigger version):

Couldn't have said it better myself.

The Universe is a Prankster

So today I finally decided that it's been more than long enough since I applied for my Enrolled Agent status with the IRS. I called the Enrolled Agent hotline this morning and the first thing I hear is a recording stating that everyone with a March 31 renewal date has had their existing license extended indefinitely due to the IRS being backed up processing renewals. That sounded hopeful. When I did the "press one to speak with a representative" thing, instead of being put into a queue I was dumped into some anonymous IRS drone's voice mail. Not expecting that, I managed to mumble some barely coherent message as to why I was calling. Not that it mattered; a couple hours later, I walked down to our mailbox to find this:

Sweet. If I had procrastinated just a whee bit longer, I could have saved myself a phone call. Now I get to make a second call telling whoever, "Never mind!" I also like how it is a violation of federal law for me to use the word "certified" when I describe myself, but not only did the IRS send me a "certificate" that I am required, by that same law, to have on display, the certificate says that it is to "certify" that I am enrolled to practice before the IRS. Nothing like having the right hand clueless as to what the left hand is up to.

In less happy news, I got a phone call a couple days ago from my parents to let me know that one of my "mom's" from the church I grew up in passed away. She's been in severe pain for years, and at the last, she was essentially kept in a coma with pain meds. But it's over now; rest in peace Aretha. And I'm sure the donuts are fantastic and are served all cut up into small pieces.

In other news, it is a near-certainty that we will be moving. We made an offer on a new place that we were sure would be rejected. It wasn't. So the next few months are going to be busy while we figure out what to pack, what to toss, what to sell and what to give away. The new place will be significantly smaller that our current place, so we need to do some serious downsizing once again. I'm OK with that; we can never have too little stuff. The nice thing is we will finally be in a place that we own instead of rent, so we can make changes. We'll also have a small patch of dirt we can play in for the first time since 2006. It's nothing fantastic and will likely end up in the Gulf of Mexico the next time a hurricane blows through, but if we can make it for two years and a bit without a major catastrophe, we'll be ahead of the rent-vs.-own game. In addition, it has the distinct advantage of not being anywhere near here. Nothing is final until two weeks from now, so there is still plenty of time for monkeys and wrenches to go flying, but at least the finish line is in sight.

Things will likely remain quiet here until we get settled.

Wipeout!!

The five most spectacular surfing wipeouts from the past year:



Gnarly, dude.

More Bulldogs

What is it with bulldogs and boards?

Lucky Friday the Thirteenth

Friday the Thirteenth falls on a Friday this month. We got word today that one obstacle to our move is now out of the way. Only 99 more to go.

Enjoy your paraskevidekatriaphobia.

Interregnum

We're currently on pause, like a DVD while everyone takes a pee-pee break. There are a couple things I need to work on over the next few days, but pretty much everything is just on hold waiting for the word to be given whether we jump or stay. Whenever we get into this situation, it's always a weird place to be. I want to do stuff, get started, but started doing what exactly? So I'm making bread.

Earlier this week, I ran across this excerpt from one of Dr. King's later sermons:



The full sermon is here:



The entire speech is relevant to our current situation as the World's Incompetent Empire, but there is a special part in there that Evangelical Christians, who have been in the forefront screaming for the blood of our "enemies", need to pay particular attention to.

If we ever needed a Dr. King, it's today. Instead we have the ungrammatical burblings of convicted rapist Mike Tyson calling for the assassination of George Zimmerman. If this is the best spokesperson the "black community" can come up with, then its members shouldn't be surprised to find themselves swept into history's dustbin.

Well, it's time to punch down my bread dough. Later.

George Carlin Speaks Truth

I miss George Carlin. Here he nails what the American Dream really is:

Crisis Week

Monday was an interesting day at work. For no apparent reason, two grown men decided to go at each other right in the middle of the library. When I came out of the stacks after hearing several f-bombs at high volume, I saw one of the librarians, who is about four-foot nothing and maybe 80 pounds if you dunked her in water fully clothed, standing between two 6-foot-plus men standing toe-to-toe with one pulling back his fist. I accelerated to warp, got between them and had one moving to the door and the other sitting down in about 10 seconds. After escorting the one I already had moving to his car and making sure he drove off, I went back in and made sure Asshat #2 was sitting quietly. (Oddly, he was; probably had something to do with me telling him that if I came back in and he wasn't sitting quietly, he would find himself skipping across the parking lot on his backside.) Then I went back to shelving books. No big. Just another day in central Florida. Then the cop shows up. Then the backup cop shows up. Somehow in the few seconds it took to end the fracus, ten people called 911 to report a fight in the library. So I did my blab with the first cop, which wasn't much other than telling him I got one of the guys to his car and by the time he left, he was apologizing and shaking my hand, and the other guy was playing innocent. The cop gave me a knowing look: I'm sure he hears that a lot. "I didn't do nutin'!" Anyway, he grilled the other guy for about ten minutes, then walked him out to his car to make sure the other guy wasn't waiting in the parking lot. Then the cop and the librarian had to do a bunch of paperwork. And in less than 45 minutes, it was like nothing had happened.

Except my co-workers going on and on about what a great job I did and how I saved the librarian and wasn't I scared the guy had a gun and how authoritative I was, yada yada yada. When I was talking to Debbie about it while we were making dinner Monday night, I told her that by the time I came in for my next shift on Thursday, they'd have me flying around the library in spandex and a cape. And the world really isn't ready for me in spandex. Or a cape.

Anyway, our other bit of drama this week was with my Yahoo e-mail account that I've had practically since there was Yahoo Mail. The first sign of trouble was when I logged into my account yesterday morning to find over 100 e-mail messages when I normally have only one or two. They were all bounce-backs from bad e-mail addresses hanging out in my address book. Ruh roh. The bounce-back's contained nothing but a link to a web page on a domain that looked suspiciously like a Russian porn site/phishing scam site. Double ruh roh. Then I started getting e-mails from people wanting to know why I was sending out spam. Mega ruh roh.

At least I could get into my account, so I was pretty sure They hadn't accessed it; usually the first thing They do is change the password. But after burning out my retinas looking at headers, it looks like they were able to somehow grab my address book from outside my account, and send out e-mails with the headers spoofed to make the e-mail appear at first glance to come from inside my account. None of that is particularly difficult if someone were to find a back door into the Yahoo Mail system. I changed my password, deleted my address book, then delete deleted the deleted addresses from the special do-you-really-want-to-delete-these folder, forwarded any important saved messages to a different e-mail account, deleted every e-mail and folder, then purged the Trash and Spam folders. So far today, nothing more seems to have gone out. If this doesn't fix it, I'll just delete the account, although I'll have to spend the next couple weeks finding and changing every web site that uses that address for a contact or, worse, a user ID. (A practice which should, in my ever-so-humble opinion, be banned from the internet.)

So other than all that, not much going on. We did some very preliminary research into our possible move that may or may not happen. We got a lot done, but we really don't have much more in the way of definite plans than we did a couple weeks ago. A lot of pieces need to fall just right for this to happen; otherwise, we're just staying in our dark little ghetto apartment.

An Italian town has banned death. "Unfortunately, two elderly citizens disobeyed." Yea, that will happen. Gotta keep an eye on those old people.

The Jumpstart Our Business Startups (JOBS; clever, right?) bill is sitting on Obama's desk. At least one group of people are excited by the prospects this bill will open up: con men.

[Ex-con man Mark L. Morze] says he’s baffled that President Barack Obama plans to sign a law today that amounts to an open invitation for fraud. “I wish legislators would consult with people like me before they write something like this,” he says, sounding dead serious about the offer. “I could tell them, ‘I know what your intent was with this wording, but we can get around it so easily, it cracks me up.”’

Yea, really cracks me up too. The safest place for the average person's money remains a coffee can buried under the house.

The Trayvon Martin case continues to be a hot topic with the no-nothing talking heads and our no-nothing president. From where I sit, it looks to me as if no one will be happy until downtown Sanford is looted and burned. Not that I care; we have no stake in anything here, and if the worst happens, we can be gone in a matter of hours. The nice thing about living like a tumbleweed is that we never have substantial roots. A former cop has probably the most rational summary of the whole mess I've seen to date if you want real information about the case.

Well, I need to get ready for another exciting day of shelving books and bouncing asshats.

Mega Millions

Nope ---- I am one of the many that decided to take that chance at one of the largest lotto jackpots -- and did not win the jackpot. :-( Nobody won, so it continues to build! Since Florida is not one of the states in the Mega Millions Lotto, I had to call my Mom in Michigan to go buy me five tickets. LOL

Sorry, Mom; can't share that mega winnings with you since my numbers did not win more than $10! Maybe next drawing?!

Busy Week

The last week has been crazy with me working something like 9 out of the last 10 days, plus being on the phone or biking up to the doctor's office whenever I'm not working. Today is the first day I've had to catch my breath and get caught up with all my house-husband stuff.

The doctor issue is two-part. The first is just the usual scrambling that goes with changing doctors. I have no idea why switching doctors is more difficult, time-consuming and expensive than moving from one side of the country to the other, but it's certainly a pain. Then to keep things interesting, my A1C came back so bad (14+) that my doctor nearly sent EMS to the apartment, convinced that I had lapsed into a coma when I didn't call the office back right away. When I told him that the reason I hadn't called until the next day was because I was busy biking the 7-mile distance to my job, he just shook his head. I get that a lot. My other blood work also showed all the markers of final-stage leukemia, which also had him a bit worried, but those all disappeared on retesting, so either it was something transient related to whatever has been killing my lungs since the first of the year, or a lab screw-up. In any case, I seem to have appeased the gods of the medical industrial complex for a few months at least. Maybe now I'll finally have time to bake a couple loaves of bread.

Proportional representation has some downsides compared to the winner-take-all approach we use here in the United States, but one of its major advantages is the opportunity for fringe parties to develop:

Four members of the German Pirate Party have been elected to the Saarland state parliament, the second state in the country in which the party, associated with copyright issues, has gotten a foothold.

Disappointingly, no eye-patches or parrots; just geeks looking to reform copyright law, unlike the  Polish Beer-Lover's Party (or PPPP, no doubt in reference to the fact that you only rent beer), which is exactly what the name would lead one to expect. The Polish Beer-Lover's Party is, alas, no more, the victim of a split between the large- and small-beer factions.

Best Buy is closing another 50 stores and refocusing on being a cell phone reseller. Thus history repeats as Best Buy follows the business model of Radio Shack, which transformed itself about 15 years ago from a store that was actually interesting to enter, into a chain of cell phone kiosks. Way to innovate, Best Buy, and good luck with that.

Bigger picture is the continued implosion of big-box retail as they try to race Amazon to the bottom on price while slashing knowledgeable staff and customer service, the very areas they could give Amazon a serious spanking. But when you view your customers not as fellow human beings, but amorphous blobs of protoplasm labeled "consumers" contributing to the corporate bottom line, it wouldn't occur to you to act any differently.

Speaking of which, it looks like on April 1, Blogger will be forcing everyone to switch to the crappy new "minimalist" design that is supposed to look better on a smartphone or tablet. Having never used either of those, I can't say if the new design meets that goal or not, but on a computer with a real screen, it's like a trip in the way-back machine to how web sites looked in 1994. I'm sure I'll get used to it.

All the yapping about the shooting of Trayvon Martin continues. The county has had to close down its office in Sanford twice in as many weeks due to "rallies" by "supporters" of the Martin family. Meanwhile, in spite of attempts by the local news stations to slant the story in favor of Martin, details continue to leak out that show him as anything but the innocent little Boy Scout victimized by the big bad white dude (who was in fact Hispanic). Meanwhile, the Black Panthers have announced a $10K reward for the location of Zimmerman (the shooter) who has gone into hiding for obvious reasons. Here's the thing: Hispanics as a rule hate blacks with a white-hot hatred, and the feeling is certainly mutual. We had a number of incidents in the ghetto tax prep office between black customers and Hispanic staff as well as between black and Hispanic customers. And I'm sure it didn't go unnoticed by either side that my white cracker self and the Hispanic women were inside the air-conditioned office doing taxes while all the black employees were outside on the side of the road wearing a humiliating costume and waving a sign. Bottom line is that a number of people are attempting to light a fuse in the mistaken notion that the resulting explosion will somehow benefit them. The last thing we need is another long, hot summer.

Well, the bread ain't gonna bake itself. Later.

Oliphaunts!!

Our baby elephant was playing shy last time we made a run down to Animal Kingdom, so here's some video of a different one gettin' a bath:

In an Uproar

Sanford is in an uproar over a white guy shooting an unarmed black kid. The details are still murky at best, but that hasn't stopped everyone from Al Sharpton to the Federal Justice Department (who still has utterly failed to even slow down the criminal activity in our major banks) from jumping all over this. Never mind all the other murders, rapes, robberies, car-jackings or even the 108 registered sex offenders in Sanford. A white guy shot a black kid. In an election year!!! So we have protests and calls for resignations and fights in the city council, all before the police even have time to collect evidence and interview witnesses. Nice.

I am once again wondering if the morons in the media or any of the self-appointed "community leaders" have clue one about the damage they cause outside their little gated enclaves? None of which has effected us personally other than the constant yapping on the boob tube. We may have a Sanford mailing address, but we don't live, work, or frankly even drive through Sanford proper now that I no longer work for the ghetto tax prep store.

In spite of the second course of antibiotics and the steroid kicker, I'm still battling whatever is trying to kill me by slow suffocation. Things have improved mostly due to the steroids loosening things up, but I still have a lot of fluid in my lungs and now I have a sinus infection that I picked up while on antibiotics. Sweet. I have an appointment next week to follow up on this and labs, etc. We'll see what the new doc has to say.

Not much else going on. Debbie's work seems to be going in fits and starts with the phones ringing off the hook some days and other days so dead everyone is counting the holes in the ceiling tiles. As usual, the next batch of new-hires will be hitting the floor just as busy season ends; too late to help out when things were crazy and the company was losing customers because everyone was so backed up, but just in time to drive everyone's number into the dirt so management can stop paying bonuses.

The carpet project I was supposed to be working on this weekend was canceled, so now I'm spending my time on "special projects" trying to kill time. Normally, there is no lack of work, but it has been incredibly slow the last week or so. So I dust and scrape old gum and rearrange shelves and "shelf read" (check every single book on the shelves to make sure they are in the correct order) and other fun little bits. No one knows what is going on with the carpet project; the company discovered some problems when doing our branch (the first) and now is trying to renegotiate with the county for more money to do the other library branches the right way. What that means for the quality of the work they did at our branch is fuzzy, but they won't back the work at the other branches unless they get the additional money to do it right. While the county seems to be doing OK budget-wise, I doubt they have several tens of thousands sitting around not allocated to anything as a "just in case" fund.

Well, I have to go start getting ready for a long day of reading Dewey decimal numbers.

Miscellaneous

The energy is definitely lacking. There has been something attacking my lungs since January. I've had one course of antibiotics already and am now on my second with a massive steroid kicker. It doesn't seem to be getting any better. Maybe I should just go dig my dying hole.

The good news is that I am rid of the ghetto clinic and have a real doctor now, complete with an M.D. after his name and everything! It's like I'm living in the First World or something! I've also started research into getting some of my meds cheaper and discovered another strike against the ghetto clinic/pharmacy. First, they lied about/were ignorant about which of my meds are eligible for discount or free. Second they lied about/were ignorant about how the meds could be delivered to me, insisting I had to pick them up at the ghetto pharmacy, when in fact they could have been delivered directly from the manufacturer to my house. And third, they were marking up meds they were getting for free with a handling charge. Done and done.

Good Tom the Dancing Bug:

Who would have thought we would ever be in such a place. The only "good news" is that Peak Oil will bring an end to much of this nonsense over the next few generations. Not that what replaces it will necessarily be any better, but at least the opportunity will be there.

With my crazy work schedule, we haven't had any time to do much of anything. We did manage a quick trip down to Animal Kingdom on Thursday. It wasn't as much fun as usual what with me stopping to gasp for air every 20 steps or so, but it was still a break from sitting in the ghetto apartment. We were hoping to see Jabali, the baby elephant born last August, but I think Mom is keeping him hid away from the tourists. I caught a quick glimpse of the two of them behind the boulders first thing in the morning, and nothing when we went back later in the day.

Speaking of work, they did manage to get the carpet installed in our branch, although everything was done to screw it up and the job wasn't finished until late Monday. We opened anyway and just had the unfinished parts roped off. Now that it's done, we can hopefully put the library completely back together for the first time since I started volunteering there 18 months ago. And because it was so much fun to do it once, I'm being loaned out to another branch next week so I can do it all again. Wheeee!! At least after that, my schedule goes back to something that approximates normality, although the "Ric never EVER gets a Sunday off even if he requests it" rule still seems to be in effect. We'll see what the next schedule looks like.

And I'm probably getting ahead of things saying this, but we may be moving. Yea, yea; big sooprise: Ric and Debbie are thinking about relocating. We don't have anything at this point other than a vague possibility. And it won't be a long move this time, just a quick relocate to the "good" side of Florida.

And that's all I have for today.

Bad Day at Goldman Sachs

The current management at Goldman Sachs is probably too busy swimming in the gold coins in their vaults, Uncle-Scrooge-McDuck-style, to notice, but a dark cloud has eclipsed the sun at 200 West Street:

The firm changed the way it thought about leadership. Leadership used to be about ideas, setting an example and doing the right thing. Today, if you make enough money for the firm (and are not currently an ax murderer) you will be promoted into a position of influence.

You can read the rest of Greg Smith's exit piece at the New York Times. The response from Goldman Sachs is the usual, "We disagree! We're fabulous people!" The stock market has pushed the stock down a tad so far this morning, but I'm sure that will be corrected fairly quickly. After all, GS is extremely efficient at Hoovering money out of their clients wallets, and I'm certain no op-ed from some disgruntled, former employee will change that.

I'm off to see if a doctor in private practice is any better at 3rd grade math than the "doctor" at the ghetto clinic. While I'm there, I'm going to see if he has some idea why I can't walk the four steps from our living room to the kitchen without getting out of breath.

The Stupid! It Burns!!!

First we have the idiot meth-head who burns down a 3,500-year-old tree while using it as her personal drug den, takes pictures of the fire, then posts them on the internet for the entire world to see.

Now we have an idiot pot-head who steals a judge's nameplate while on parole for petty theft, takes pictures of himself posing with his haul, then posts them on the internet for the entire world to see.

Both live in Florida, of course.

I remember with great fondness when connecting to the internet required at least a room temperature IQ.

Greatest Literary Analysis Evar!!

Davey Jones, RIP

Once again, deliberately avoiding the news caused me to miss the announcement of the death of someone I marginally care about. Davey Jones, one of the four members of the made-for-TV band, The Monkeys, died last week on Leap Day. I was a big fan of the TV show, but in my defense, I was about five.

Anyway, I don't have much else. I never saw them live and never owned any of their albums until I ended up with a reunion double-CD from sometime in the mid-1990's. They were just a TV show I watched after I got home from kindergarten.

If a train leaves Chicago going west at 50mph...

So I was peddling home yesterday into a 20mph wind, barely managing to hold a 9mph average, when it occurred to me that I was really going close to 30mph air speed. If the freaks of physical conditioning in the Olympics get wind-speed adjustments while jumping and running around, why shouldn't a fat, bald 47-year-old guy huffing and wheezing his way home from work?

So yea; I averaged 29.7mph over my 7-mile ride home.

Neil Tyson is one of the most articulate space geeks in human history:



It's not a time-lapse, but you will still want to watch it full-screen and hi-def.

Today is going to be a sort of catching-up-with-stuff-I'm-going-to-get-behind-on-over-the-next-few-days kind of day. If that makes sense. Tomorrow, the library is closing at noon so we can spend the next eight hours trying to relocate several tens of thousands of books while somehow keeping them in the correct order. We all have Friday off so the carpet people can do their thing, then we all come back on noon Saturday so we can move all the books back and be ready to open Sunday at the normal time. So far I've been unimpressed with the planning phase of this little project, but maybe our Fearless Leader will manage to pull it together. Or this could be a major disaster. In either case, my part is simple; "I lift books up and put them down." Life is so much easier when someone else is in charge. In any case, I'm trying to get everything done today (cookies, bread, meals for the next few days, laundry, etc.) that I won't have time for over the next few days.

Well, the no-bakes should be cool enough to peel off the foil, so gotta go.