kahunaburger

Wow - that stinks: Google closed at 320.50 today. Down almost 15% on a day when all other tech stocks were up. It dropped more than 60 points in the last few mins of the market.

SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) — Nasdaq said Tuesday afternoon that it has cancelled certain trades made on shares of Google Inc. (GOOG 320.50, -60.50, -15.9%) minutes before the closing bell Tuesday. In a statement, the exchange said it will cancel all trades on the stock at or above $425.29 and at or below $400.52 that were executed between 3:57 and 4:02 Eastern. The exchange also said it will be adjusting the Nasdaq Official Closing Cross (NOCP) and all trades executed in the cross to $400.52. The decision came after data late in the trading session seemed to indicate that shares of Google - which were trading up about 8% for most of the session - fell between 10-16% in the final minutes before the closing bell. The statement from Nasdaq did not give a reason for the other trades.

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Who came up with the brilliant idea of “Wall St. vs. Main St.”? You, inventor, if you read this, can you please remind people that over-using that term is making people sick and tired of it? Thanks!

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(photo courtesy of Doug Mills/The New York Times)

You read about the factual content of last Friday’s first debate between McCain and Obama ad nauseam all over the web. I watched the recorded debate in a few installments and just finished it last night. One can argue who “won” this debate: if you talk to McCain supporters they claim victory; if you listen to Obama supporters they also claim victory; if you listen to the sentiment in the press, Obama seems to have a slight advantage, but can’t claim a clear victory.

I want my next president to be likable. And if you watch the debate under this aspect, Obama is the clear winner.

McCain could be a nice, likable grandpa-figure. He could be the one who has anecdotes full of wisdom from a long life. But, I’m afraid, he’s not likable at all. If he was the grandpa reading bed-time stories to my daughter, I would be scared that my daughter would have nightmares afterwards.

I don’t know if it was tactic, but did you notice that he can’t look people in the eyes? He did not look at Obama once, not even when they shook hands in the beginning and when he faced Jim Lehrer his eye-lids were blinking like he was close to a seizure.

Your body talks while you are speaking and all I noticed about McCain was the remnants of his arms flapping like a seagull soaked in oil trying to escape from the ocean. I know the lack of range in his arms may be a result of his treatment in captivity, but if it is that difficult to raise your arms, then don’t raise them at all. I get the impression that he’s abusing that handicap to constantly remind people about his past.

Did you notice that he smirked a lot when there was no reason to smirk at all? When Obama criticized him you saw this evil grin on his face which seemed to be totally inappropriate at times. Obama on the other hand showed reactions that one would expect: anger on his face, shaking his head and raising his arm (slightly) to get Lehrer’s attention.

His posture, body-language and demeanor looked like he was fighting with a devil within, trying to contain him and resulting in behavior I know as “Uebersprungverhalten” (no idea what this translates to; it’s a biological term that describes an living being’s behavior under stress, which results in the being doing something irrational because of the stress situation).

I just hope that somebody with a psychological education is going to evaluate the speeches under those aspects. That would be more than interesting to read about.

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Update: Bear was found! Thanks everybody for looking

Pictured above if my friend Bill’s Chow “Bear”. He went missing on Saturday 9/27 around 1pm from Hondo Trail near Arroyo Hondo. Bear is 14 years old, weighs 60 lbs., is very friendly and hard of hearing. He wears a collar with tags.

If you’ve seen him or heard about this dog, please send me an email. I will contact the owners.

If you know people in the area, please forward this on to them.

Thanks!

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I should not have done it, but I did it anyway: earlier on today I logged on to Vanguard, where I have a managed 401(k) (retirement) account. Each pay period a certain amount is deducted from my pay-check and automatically transferred into the account. My employer matches my contribution up to a certain yearly maximum.

Now let me show you a depressing little chart:

I removed the account value (y-axis) that’s why you only see “.00″ there. However you still see the essence of the chart. The yellow line is how much money I (and my employer) have put into the account and the blue line represents the total account value. If the blue line is above the yellow line, it means that the funds Vanguard invested in actually had a higher return than what they initially cost (interest). If the blue line is below the yellow line, it means that I should have thrown the money out of the window instead.

The sharp drop off at the beginning of the chart is because of my divorce where some funds were moved over to my ex’ accounts. Then we have a period where blue is greater than yellow, which means that I had more money in the account than I had put into it (that’s the way it’s supposed to be). Since the beginning of 2008 the blue line has been consistently below the yellow line, meaning even after putting in $10, I only had $9 in the account. And that, my friend, is just plain wrong. I would not mind seeing a flat-line where the amount added to the account is equal to the account value, but seeing it drop below the invested amount is depressing to say the least.

Vanguard talks to a great extent about their “managed accounts” in this PDF document. Instead of managing the mix of assets (funds) in your account manually, you have a professional, who will move funds in and out based on Vanguard internal and public analysis. Over the past two years I see roughly 10 transactions where the “manager” moved funds in/out of my portfolio. All of them have less than stellar performance as witnessed in the chart above.

My one-year average return rate for this account? -13.2%

I guess this is just yet another indicator where we are headed …

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I’m almost sorry for posting all those videos today, but this one is just too much to swallow. If Palin claims that her proximity to Russia as a governor of Alaska counts as foreign experience, then I’m going to suggest that my daughter (5 y/o) runs as VP as well, because she has actually been to Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Mexico and Hawaii (psst - I know Hawaii is part of the US, but I bet Sarah does not know that - and, it’s pretty close to Australia, so Pia get’s some extra points for having been there).

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After the recent 5D MkII video post, I looked back over some old photographs and thought I give one a “tilt shift” treatment. The one above seemed to be most suitable - click on it to get a higher resolution version. And, yes, this is a real-world scene …

PS: Forgot to add that yesterday - here you can see the original scene …

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Over the past few days/weeks/months I ran into tons of issues with web-pages that claim that my Flash Player is not up-to-date and that I need to update my player version in order to see content available on particular sites. I’m using a pre-release version of Flash Player 10 from labs.adobe.com and most places don’t seem to mind.

However, some do seem to have problems. The most obnoxious notification is shown above: “… requires version 8 or higher! You are using version 10 …”. Last time I checked, “10″ was higher than “8″.
I know I may be biting myself, but is it really that difficult to compare some version numbers (encapsulated in strings) against each other? Do those sites really do a “String” compare “10″ vs. “8″?

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No matter what your opinion about Katie Couric is, the CBS video-segment below shows that she scored big time against Palin. Americablog even thinks that this is the reason why McCain plans to do a McDuck on Friday.

And to be fair: Kudos to the Palin-public-appearance-advisors; at least you told her to drop the damned, “Katie …”, “…, Katie, …” and “… Katie.” as in “Charlie …”, “…, Charlie, …” and “… Charlie.”

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This was posted in the headlines section of Democracy Now! on 9/22:

Army Unit to Deploy in October for Domestic Operations

Beginning in October, the Army plans to station an active unit inside the United States for the first time to serve as an on-call federal response in times of emergency. The 3rd Infantry Division’s 1st Brigade Combat Team has spent thirty-five of the last sixty months in Iraq, but now the unit is training for domestic operations. The unit will soon be under the day-to-day control of US Army North, the Army service component of Northern Command. The Army Times reports this new mission marks the first time an active unit has been given a dedicated assignment to Northern Command. The paper says the Army unit may be called upon to help with civil unrest and crowd control. The soldiers are learning to use so-called nonlethal weapons designed to subdue unruly or dangerous individuals and crowds.

Civil unrest and crowd control are the parts that stand out. Does somebody think there’s a reason for civil unrest and it’s control in the near future?

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