Sunday, January 31, 2016

Fremont Bart site.



I don't have a lot for you this weekend because it's pretty much February. I have to start turning the soil for the garden. Last year the dirt was so dry I didn't even try. You literally felt like a criminal every time you used water outside because its California and all. But we've been getting normal rain this year. I am going to plant the crap out of some corn.

Anyway, some spring flowers are coming out now. I'm not sure if it's going to be as spectacular as last year since we are getting rain and the grass might have a chance to drown them all out.  I'd link to some of the images, but I know a lot of old images are still broken. I'm going to take a good amount of time this week to fix them.

The above image is the new Fremont Bart station.

Friday, January 29, 2016

Let's play - what if.

This morning I checked interest rates and a lot of them were down in the 3.5% range. Yesterday they were in the 3.67-3.75% range. Much lower than when the Fed raised. I think everything at that time was in the 3.80 - 4.% range.

The whole recession - the lowest I remember them getting was in the 3.50ish range. Because rates have to be that low attract buyers. Especially refi's. That was enough to push rates back up.

So it's kinda confusing to see where they might go if the Fed were to take the hike away. And what if they do - and nothing happens?! A quarter point isn't going to stimulate anything.

I've also heard people now making bets the US could flirt with negative interest rates. I don't think we will go into negative rates because we are a reserve currency. I think it was more likely they try to keep the dollar strong, as if they need to work that hard - the world is a mess! When Brazil cancels Mardi Gras (a revenue generator) things are really getting crazy.

I told you they were making shit up.

Oil rallied this week on false hopes for OPEC deal.

Additionally - the dollar weakened through December to January  coming down to around the low 97's. It was up over 100. This would obviously cause a rally in oil. However, that little Japan action last night sent the dollar up a penny. It's now at 99.58. Yesterdays read was 98.59.

The dollar controls everything right now. And I think it could even get stronger.

Thursday, January 28, 2016

That will teach you to eat my car.




Remember a while back I took my car into the shop and found out that a rat had eaten some of my wiring? Well, I went out and bought like a 100 dollars in traps and set them up in the garage. For weeks there has been nothing. Which was pretty shocking because who knows maybe I was New York style infested and I never knew it. You expect  to at least catch a rando.


Every day when I'd check then I couldn't believe I hadn't caught even one! Until yesterday. That is the big rat traps. I'm determined to catch every single rat in my neighborhood. Apparently it's just going to take me a long time.

Wednesday, January 27, 2016

I guess Yellen didn't get the memo about peddling fiction.

This is the problem for Republicans.

Every single time I hear the establishment Republicans say that Donald Trump is not a conservative (which is probably true) I think - I don't remember you being this bitchy when our own party is chock full of RINOS. Big government big spenders.

Even if Donald Trump is a democrat - he's more conservative than 90% of our own Republicans! We hate all those bastards. They basically did nothing and let President Money Bags run roughshod over everything. For that we are really, really, surly.

Trump is not my ideal candidate by any stretch of the imagination. Having said that - most of the candidates have already been in government and didn't do shit for us. And honestly, he's the only one I think truly believes in capitalism.  It's honestly the ONLY thing that matters to me.

Tuesday, January 26, 2016

Mr S. Reading me tweets -  Pantless motorist killed in crash was masturbating, watching pornn flick on phone.

Me - on a motorcycle!

Mr S. -  motorist.

Me - oh. (In a letdown tone) I was impressed for a second there.
There is nothing short of a hug from Obama that could kill Trumps chances.

I guess the market is going to learn about perverse incentives the hard way.

Every time I read that oil companies are going to cut production I roll my eyes. I don't really think they can cut production because they are heavily indebted. They basically have no choice but to keep drilling. And frankly, I think the most the analysts that write about oil are just making shit up at this point.

Take this ridiculous article from CNBC.

"But the oil minister of Iraq said on Tuesday OPEC kingpin Saudi Arabia and top non-OPEC producer Russia are showing signs of flexibility about agreeing to tackle an oil glut that has pushed prices to 12-year lows.

"We have seen some flexibility from the brothers in Saudi and a change in tone from Russia," Adel Abdel Mahdi, whose country is the second-largest producer in the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, said. "

Making shit up! Yesterday Russia came out to say they were going to stop lending to all countries except one. Iran. This is not the sign of a country that can afford to do anything about an oil glut.

"Russia will not lend to other countries anymore, said Sergei Storchak, the Deputy Minister of Finance on Jan. 25, reports Vesti.Finance.

In 2015, Russia allocated 10 loans, including several to countries from the Eurasian Customs Union (Belarus, Kazakhstan, Armenia and Kyrgyzstan). In 2016 there will be no loans to any countries, with Iran being the only possible exception.

“The financial situation has now changed and we can scarcely afford to provide loans to any country,” explained Storchak. Source.


You can't say you were't warned Europe.

Muslim openly threatens German man: "We will conquer you with births, we will marry your daughters!".

When I see what is happening in Europe - the only thing I can see in my head is this video. It came around the web at the beginning of November 2015. They told Germany exactly what they were going to do, but they decided on a shortcut to their plan. Just rape the women instead of marrying them and putting a baby in their belly's. Problem solved.

It feels totally horrible, but I don't feel bad for Europe at all! They told you what they were going to do, but Germany said - tell me what you really mean. I guess some people have to learn the hard way. Sadly.

Monday, January 25, 2016

I wanted to post something positive today. Then I looked at the world and ya know...

Saturday, January 23, 2016

Birds are sort of tards.



It seems like a couple of times a year I get a bird strike on one of the big windows on the back side of my house. This morning I heard that familiar "ting" that  happens when a bird hits glass.

Most of the time they shrug off flying into a glass wall.. I've definitely seen the outline of a bird strike on the windows far more times than seeing the dead bird right below the window. Which actually has been never. I wonder if the glass cushions them from death. Anyway, from time to time I do find a bird that's hit the window so hard I'm sure he's seeing stars. Or whatever birds see when they've been clocked.

This always elicits some stress in the Snarkolepsy household. I don't want them to sufferdie. The small birds would be easy to dispatch them, but this dove was starting to cross the line. Maybe I'd have to take it to Lindsey Wildlife in the East Bay because he was bigger. If a crow is stupid enough to hit the window he's definitely going to Linsey. Crows are crazy smart, There is probably some crow mafia or something. And they hang in gangs. Crows are getting yuge. Almost the size of dogs in some places. I recently saw a crow at a McDonalds on the way to Vegas and it was eating a full sized McDonald hash brown.

Anyway. Mr S. usually rolls his eyes. because whatever happens in natures way. I kind of go out from time to time to nudge them along. If a human can't stress them out enough to fly away - maybe I'm going to have to put it out of it's misery. I mean - Mr S. is going to have to put them out of their misery. Sometimes this whole process can go on for a few hours. Thankfully they have all eventually get their act together and we haven't had to kill any of them. Nature figures it out. Doves do have cute pink blush in their cheeks feathers though.




Wednesday, January 20, 2016

Peddling fiction since 2009.

This is how I read the news now. Well, I should say again. During parts of the Great Recession I had to use this is a tactic to figure out the world. Because every article I read was basically bullshit propaganda. Or I thought they just didn't know what they were talking about. It's very smoke and mirrors right now.

Headline - Here’s why you shouldn’t freak out about crude oil’s crash.

Me - Oh shit! I should freak out about the oil crash.

The article continues - Schwab’s Sonders argues oil’s drop won’t trigger U.S. recession.

Me - Great. We are in a recession. Which - we almost technically are. So, it's super crazy for someone at Schwab to say such a stupid thing. Manufacturing has been in technical contraction for two quarters. Three quarters of contraction is a technical recession by every standard. And oil is telegraphing that third quarter isn't looking great.

I don't know what is going to happen when people realize how much their pension funds are tied to oil stocks. They used to be the safe but boring play. The widows and orphans fund. First will go the divided. Which is really why most people bought them anyway. In Aug of last read I read an article about how CALPERS had lost 5 billion on their energy investments. I think oil was still up in the 40-50 dollar range but I will have to check.

Monday, January 18, 2016

Conversations with Mr S.

Me - Trump is crazy like a fox. First he gets us all to change the way we spell yuuuuge, and now he is making up words.

Mr S. - I wonder if Trump owns Ameritude.

Me - Probably. He goes through and just buys domains. Oooh. Let's check.

Mr S. - Ameritude is still open. Let's buy it and we can sell it for a yuuuge amount of money.

And no - we didn't buy it. You could be squatting on it forever. You have to bet that word might become popular. I'm not going to.

The solar ponzi scheme dominos are finally starting to fall.

"Solar company Sunrun says to end all operations in Nevada."

I read this headline and laughed and laughed and laughed. And then I laughed some more. You see I have always thought solar was a scam. You are essentially paying for your electricity in advance. And at the time everyone but everyone would tell you that energy prices never went down. We will see how this falls out. I don't think anyone knows where energy prices will settle a year from now. Maybe somewhere good. Maybe somewhere bad.

At any rate - last year Nevada decided they were going to start charging a tariff to all customers for upkeep of the grid. This included solar users. Which obviously undermines the whole industry. And now? Two - count them two solar companies have fled the State. Solar city and Sunrun. You didn't think the government was going to let people control their energy lives now did you? And I don't even feel bad for these people. They sold their soul to the devil for an energy subsidy. Oh I don't want to go on a rant, but all of you are going to be paying for this for years to come. The amount the government (YOU) has paid is unknown because it's been hidden the whole time. Hope you like being the governments prison bitch. Solyndra was heaven compared to this.

I'm quite fascinated with the way this will turn out since a lot of people are "renting" panels but are still obligated by contract to pay. Yet those companies don't exist in their State anymore.

Also not included I this is a whole bunch of subsidies that expired in 2016.Which I'm sure has nothing to do with this. Said in the most sarcastic way.

Friday, January 15, 2016

The strong dollar is crushing the world.

This article was written by Jack Rasmas on January 4th 2015. I blogged about it on the 29th of January last year.

I never post this much of some one's article, but I know most people won't click through. This guy is brilliant at explaining what is going on, and has been going on, for more than a year. The strong dollar is having very dire consequences right now. And none of that is going to get better until other currencies rise. Or ours falls. I would encourage EVERYONE to read the complete article which is quite a bit longer. It is a little dry, but it explains our economy right now. This is an extremely scary time. Especially if our dollar gets any stronger. Emphasis mine.

"What effect a deep and sustained oil price deflation will have on the global economy — which is already drifting toward stagnation and, simultaneously, rising financial instability — is hardly being discussed at all in the western business press. Instead, oil deflation is reported as a positive economic development, both for the advanced economies (AEs) and for emerging market economies (EMEs), as well as the global economy in general.

Economists, the business press, and governments in the advanced economies are all giving a ‘positive spin’ to falling oil prices, claiming it will mean lower costs to both businesses and consumers in the AEs. Lower oil prices mean lower gasoline prices and thus more for consumer households to spend elsewhere. Lower oil costs will stimulate business investment and spending, it is argued, and thus also boost economic growth. But this simplistic view may prove incorrect, not only for the AEs but for emerging market economies in particular and for the global economy in general. The combined negative effects of deep and sustained oil price deflation may well outweigh their positive effects.

There are at least three major potential impacts on global economic instability that will likely follow in the wake of global oil price deflation, some of which have already begun to appear:

First, a more rapid appreciation of the US dollar, and the corresponding relative decline in the currencies of a number of emerging market economies (EMEs) — in particular those dependent on commodity exports and especially those for whom oil exports make up a significant percent of total exports. There is a long, historical and documented relationship between falling oil prices and a rising US dollar. So global oil deflation means a rising US dollar.

A second destabilizing impact from falling oil prices will be to contribute toward general deflation in Europe and Japan. Economies there have already entered recession. Despite trillions of dollars of liquidity injections by their central banks in recent months, price levels have still fallen to zero or less. Oil deflation will add significantly to a general deflationary drift in both Europe and Japan. That in turn will likely lead to even more liquidity injections by their central banks, in the form of more quantitative easing (QE), further feeding stock market and bond asset bubbles.

Third, decline in financial assets tied to oil could increase the tendency toward global financial instability. Oil deflation may lead to widespread bankruptcies and defaults for various non-financial companies, which will in turn precipitate financial instability events in banks tied to those companies. The collapse of financial assets associated with oil could also have a further ‘chain effect’ on other forms of financial assets, thus spreading the financial instability to other credit markets.

The positive impacts of falling oil prices on economies, including the USA, are generally over-rated. Oil price declines may not have as much positive impact on consumer spending and business investment that many in the AEs now assume. The total net effect on the global economy will therefore likely prove more negative than positive.

Oil Deflation’s Potential Impact on EMEs

The continued collapse of world oil prices since June has already been having a devastating effect on emerging market economies, especially those dependent on commodity exports — like Brazil, Chile, Argentina and South Africa, and even Australia and a number of economies in southeast Asia. Oil deflation has had an even more severe impact on those EMEs highly dependent on oil exports as a large percentage of their commodities mix — like Venezuela, Russia, Nigeria.

The initial transmission mechanism by which global oil deflation negatively impacts EMEs is falling currency exchange rates. Oil price deflation is generally associated with a corresponding rise in value of the US dollar relative to other currencies. A rising dollar in turn means falling currency values for other countries.

Since the collapse of global oil prices began in earnest last June, the Russian Ruble has fallen approximately 38 percent.  The Venezuelan currency, the Bolivar, by around 45 percent. Nigeria’s currency, the Naira, has declined 12 percent just since mid-October. Even the currency of developed oil exporting countries, like Norway’s Krone, has fallen 17 percent.  After having remained stable for several years, the US dollar clearly began to rise last June, as global oil prices commenced their freefall that same month. So falling oil prices drive the dollar up and in turn depress EME currencies, and especially depress the currency of oil exporting economies. And the more dependent the economy is on oil exports, the greater the EME currency decline.

I don't even know how saggy all the currencies are right now. This article was written a year ago, and things have not really recovered since then. I know Canada and Australia are down in the .70ish range. Which is not good honestly.

Wednesday, January 13, 2016

I think I was wrong about the dollar.



Source.
I thought the dollar was pretty much tapped out. While it is stronger then it's been in a decade, if you do a historical chart the dollar has gotten as high as 160.70. Currently it's at 98.89. As recently as the year 2000 it was at 120.65.

When you read twitter at night - you understand how important this is. The Asian market completely freaks out at night. Especially when people are basically shorting the Yuan to buy dollars. This will only make the dollar stronger. Making oil of course cheaper because oil is paid for in dollars.

Just so everyone knows - I was TOTALLY serious.

I think it was two days ago when I turned to Mr S. and said - if this election turns out to be Trump v Sanders I am going to pat myself on the back so hard my arm will break. I will be the earliest to predict that. Read: President Honey Badger don't care. Written Aug 25 2015.

He turns to me and says - I didn't think you were serious.

Me - Really! I was totally serious. The nation is at a fork in the road. Socialism v capitalism. At the time I wasn't sure we weren't leaning towards the dark side.

People love the idea of socialism - but I've had two very good friends live on a commune with their parents. One a childhood friend. It's kinda a popular California thing to do. Their words say they love socialism, their actions - not so much.

I absolutely believed this was the choice we would have.

Tuesday, January 12, 2016

Mortgage appilications have only had three up weeks in the last 12.



Source.

New mortgage disclosure rules took affect in the week of October 11th. That is why they were down almost 28%. This is a slower part of the year, so we'll see how this washes out. Oddly, there is a data gap from last week

Turn your real pets into virtual pets.



I've pretty much rejected the whole fitbit sector of Silicon Valley because I don't understand why 20 year olds think they need to excessively check their heart rate. It's one of the biggest fads ever. I've done the whole pedometer thing. That's how I know I logged 8 mile at CES one year. But you get over checking that pretty quickly. Once you've done 8 miles, you kinda get an idea what it takes to do 8 miles. Unless you are doing over that.... so what.

After going to CES this year though, I think you are gonna have to start checking your glucose a lot more because the market thinks everything is going to be automated. EVERYTHING. I don't even get up to change the temperature on the heater anymore because I have a Nest. I sort of hate that I love it so much.

At CES they pretty much had a device to feed your pets, let them contact you through twitter or video (I'm only half joking), and then a device to take the cat poop out of your litter so you don't have to clean the box anymore. There are also devices to entertain your cat with lasers.



How all the "experts" were wrong on oil and I was right.

I wrote this article almost one year ago. Jan 29, 2015.

What if oil doesn't go back up?.

"Yesterday I went over to find how much oil we had in floating storage. Because during the recession we had around 100 million barrels in floating storage. I was curious about this because we've been in contango for a few months. This is where people buy oil and store it to sell at a later date. I started wondering how much it costs to store this oil. I mean, how this could be cost effective? What if oil doesn't go back up very quickly?

In Feb of 2009 prices bottomed out at 43 bucks a barrel. If you can believe the above chart. I've read reports of oil getting to 35 bucks a barrel during that time, and this chart doesn't reflect that. By May of 2009 oil had snapped back to roughly 65 bucks a barrel. It took until Nov 2009 to get back to 85 dollars a barrel which is where oil was in the winter 2006.

Why do I bring this up? Because we are clearly floating in oil, yet the giant tankers they use to store this oil for future sale are only on third full. Self I said - how can we have the most oil we've had in 80 years, and the storage vessels are only a third full?

I think this only can be true if they don't expect a 2009 like rebound in the price of oil. If they don't want to risk storing this oil for sale later in the year, maybe they don't think oil will recover by the end of the year. In 2009 it sounded like a lot of people made a ton of money that way."

Oil prices are now lower than any time during the Great recession. Yesterday I read that one of the Fed members admitted they were wrong when they predicted low oil prices would be a boon to the economy. And I pretty much flipped out. I couldn't understand how someone like me could have figured this out and people who are being paid to know this stuff - didn't. And it isn't because I'm all that smart. I don't even have a college education. It was because I was in huge financial distress at the time.

You see - the whole time I've been alive, Silicon Valley has always been a safe haven for jobs. I've thought of moving from the state untold amount of times, but I never have because California has always been were the jobs are.

During the recession my two properties were down 50%, and I always expected Silicon Valley to pick up the slack as it had in all of the previous recessions. But everyone from California was moving to Texas for energy jobs. This was the ONLY area of growth anywhere to be seen in the US. And it was depressing. It went on so long even I told Mr S. we should just give up and move to Texas too. This was probably four years into the recession. Perhaps if my properties weren't underwater, maybe I would have eventually moved too. The people of Texas are the best. I lived there for a while. And I do love me some BBQ.

Also back during the recession traffic would always be savage around the Bay Area yet the economy still stayed in a dire shape. People clearly were NOT spending money, but they were driving places. Mr S. and I would be aghast at the disconnect. Where are these people going I would exclaim! In hindsight, gas was cheap and it got you out of your house to distract you from the crappy economy. But low gas prices never made one single difference to the economy.

You don't have to be professionally educated to figure out the world - you just have to pay attention. Especially in the bad times.

Monday, January 11, 2016

Over the summer I actually started becoming somewhat anxious that China actually gain reserve currency status. Six months later ...... I think there is a snowballs chance in hell that will happen. If there is anything you want in a reserve currency - it's stability. In six short months China toasted that.

Faraday Future.



There has been a lot of buzz around this car. It was in a dimly lit very enclosed area of the hall.  So, my pictures kinda suck.

A lot of the electric car makers this year seem to think that people will want to sit in line/cockpit style, rather than next to each other side by side. I think that is ridiculous. We aren't that anti social yet. I'm guessing they are trying to save weight. Even the Blade Supercar I saw months back was a cockpit style car.

Just look at how groups of bicyclists behave. It used to be riders would ride one in front of the other. These days you mostly find groups riding side by side. I only noticed this because bike lanes were made for the old riding style. I can't tell you how many times I've wanted to yell out the window -single file! Especially since California has made a rule you have to give them so much extra space. Sometimes they take up half of the car lane. You get stuck around them more often than you'd imagine. You really can't hear people talking well when you ride front to back. So I understand why they do it. It's just annoying. If bikers behave like this, I'm guessing people in cars will still want to sit side by side as well.

Mr S thinks this car will never be built. It's only a shell anyway. Jalopnic seemed to be shocked this was the case. Everyone knows how CES works..... right? Wait...Jalopnic knows how ALL car concept shows work. Right? That Trion Nemisis also was a shell. This is more the rule than the exception when it comes to concept cars. Some are one offs. Some are shells. It doesn't mean you can't give them shit about it. But at least be honest and give them all shit about it. Because it happens all the time. The Trion was at least of the stage of taking pre-orders. So it's pretty close to being a real car.

Mr S. thinks they are just creating buzz so they can get funding to make more affordable models. Tesla Style.  Tesla started out with a very expensive model. They are just now getting to more affordable models.













Sunday, January 10, 2016

3D printing makes me excited again.



I've been writing about 3D printing for a solid 10 years now. So, I've really been sort of bored with this sector for a while. I've been waiting for the printer wars to sort themselves out. And really to find out who lives. The sector is struggling at the moment. I still think its absolutely the future, but they took this open source I believe to get more people into the tent. That also makes everyone in the tent make less money.

I personally think the resin printers will win. They have much better resolution, and it's the closest to what the inventor Chuck Hull envisioned. From wikipedia "Hull first came up with the idea in 1983 when he was using UV light to harden tabletop coatings." Plus, I've never really thought people would be okay having spools of filament sitting around everywhere. And I really mean everywhere. Look how much space this takes up!



Now look at how much space these new bottles from DWS LAB take up. I didn't even really take pictures of the printer (which you can see a little in the background)  because I'm still bored by that. You can go to their website if you are interested enough. But the printer resin I can now see people storing in their homes. Which really made me excited. No girl wants to have a closet full of printer spools. Something needs to bring this garage device into the home. And I think these fashionable resin bottles might get us closer to that.



Saturday, January 09, 2016

This is a nine liter twin turbo charged V8.



I'll wait for your tard laugh to stop. It's called the Trion Nemisis. Apparently the motor is a stock motor from Mercury racing. I've never heard of a 9 liter motor before. Just to give you an idea what a monster that is - the Bugatti Veyron has an 8 liter engine.









It's no wonder I have crushing ADD.



The plan this morning was to simply pick my car (which has been in the shop for almost three weeks) and then start unpacking my photos from CES. You may remember a few weeks ago I told you I took my car in for a tune up and they discovered mice had decided to make a nest in my motor and eat some of my wires. While I didn't think it was impossible I had mice, I didn't think I did because I don't keep food in there and I sweep up all the time. I hadn't seen any droppings. But the neighbors have outside dogs and cats and they feed anything that has legs. I generally think there are mice everywhere.

So.... we come to bring the car into the garage and I see one of the many traps we set was tripped. The mechanic said I was lucky they got the only hit the fuel injector wire cluster. He pointed to some other wire cluster and made it seem tons more expensive. I don't really want to poison them, not because I'm against chemicals - I'd napalm them if I could, I just don't want them to go off and die in some weird place and start smelling. Instead we decided to take this war high tech. Apparently you can taser mice! I think we have every kind of trap in the garage now except chemicals. Electrocution, sticky traps, pheromone, big traps, small traps, shark traps, mice hotels. Seriously I have like 20 traps in the garage now. And we figured out that mice do not like nutella at all. Which is kinda the way I feel about it too. I was hoping they would like it so I wouldn't feel guilty throwing it out. They'd eaten the peanut butter from a couple of the other traps.

This time the shop did the repair for free because I just bought the car a few months ago, but they are not going to do that again for sure. If I have to catch every single mouse in the neighborhood - that's what I'm going to have to do.

Oh! And then I heard the Silicon Valley Auto show was going to have a bad ass car. I wasn't planning to do that show this year because it really never has anything interesting, but I had to go and see it. Pictures to follow. CES shots are still coming.

Thursday, January 07, 2016

Men - forget jet packs!



Personal flying drones could be in your future with the Ehang 184. More information here. It was super hard to get photos of this thing. The crush of people was immense.









I probably will not get to a full dump of CES until Saturday. I always think I'm going to post pictures while I'm here. Normally I only do one day. This year I'm doing two days which was a super good thing.

Before I came I read all these articles about how CES had gotten too big. I sort of thought they were woosies. I normally do CES marathon style. Almost a sprint at the end of the day to get everything. But CES this year was yuuuuuge. One year I did eight miles at CES. I would not be shocked if I did twice that this year. So i'm not going to get much out tonight.

There have been a lot of years were CES made me feel pretty freaked about the world. This was not one of those years. Which looking at some of the news is not a bad thing right now.

Its gonna take me a day to drive back.


Wednesday, January 06, 2016

Mercedes IAA concept.







One or two got through.



When I read CES wasn't letting rolling luggage into the convention halls I couldn't believe they were serious. But they were totally serious, and it was totally awesome. I think it's the the first time terrorism has ever produced something positive. I don't know where people put their stuff. But at least I wasn't tripping over it. I mean, people exposed to shiny lights just stop in the middle of isles, and adding rolling luggage to that - well I'm sure I don't have to explain it.

They had the bomb sniffing dogs this year. I didn't get searched, but I saw women with purses or anything larger getting searched. They did wand people. Amazingly the only negative was not the searching, but they had all the entrances and exits very locked down. You could only go in certain doors and only out others. And they were totally serious about keeping a tight ship. Before a door was a door. Which does add some time to the gauntlet. But that was a small price to pay to get rid of such a giant irritation.

Tuesday, January 05, 2016

I've decided that doing CES drunk probably is the best thing. Then maybe I won't get so pissy about all that rolling luggage.

Monday, January 04, 2016

Only terrorism can stop the rolling luggage.

I hope. Or maybe rolling luggage causes the terrorism. I'm not sure. You do want to beat the crap out of a lot of people before you get out of CES though. Rolling luggage is the top culprit.

"The safety of all in attendance at CES is our top priority. In light of recent tragedies, we have enhanced our security procedures with the goal of maintaining the safety of all of our industry guests while doing business at CES. Changes include limitations on both the size, number and type of bags allowed in official CES venues. All bags will be subject to search and attendees will be subject to metal detector screenings and body pat downs upon entering show premises. We encourage you to visit CESweb.org/security for complete details on our security procedures."

Americans cling to their guns and windows?

"Windows 10 budges a bit as masses cling to Windows 7."

I personally think Microsoft is trying to kill themselves. They seem to think that Windows users are a captive audience because they think upgrading all your stuff to a new OS is cost prohibitive for most people. I've known a lot of dead Silicon Valley companies who had that same philosophy.

The thing they don't realise is people, I mean "clingers" have put off buying windows machines for quite a few years now. These machines are going to start dying, and that cost won't seem like such a burden.

I took one of my Windows machines out of rotation this Christmas which was actually a huge deal for the Snarkolepsy household. I worked at Apple back in the day and vowed to never buy one of their products.

Your move Microsoft.

This is the only thing you need to know about oil.


Source.

Cushing right now sits at 62,993 thousand barrels. Quite a bit more than the 80 year high everyone was freaking out about in April of last year when Cushing stood at a mere 61,868 thousand barrels. Its going to take a long time to work through this excess. I believe that oil could reach the rumored 18 dollars a barrel.

What if instead of peak oil - we were in an oil bubble all along? A couple of weeks ago HAL was having a horrible day. So I went over to see what was happening. For the year things looked really ugly. But if you did a historical chart, HAL normally trades in the 6 dollar range. Last year it was over 70 bucks a share.



Sunday, January 03, 2016

I haven't done a protest in a while.



Honestly, my reserve nerve has been dead for a while. So, I didn't even have one brain cell that would find any of this entertaining. Which I kinda used to before it was so real. But a couple of days ago I noticed our local news was advertising a protest. Which I thought was really odd. Well, mostly. I'll explain later. I wasn't willing to go to San Fransisco for this crap like I have in the past, but I will go to San Jose.

I had sort of suspected that NBC had encouraged this protest. The news van was there pretty much before anyone even arrived. We went early and got burgers at The Counter. Our local news will cover the most minuscule protest as long as it's about how Merica sucks.  Really, there could be one person protesting and the local news would be there. Where sometimes people get killed in my city and no coverage at all. Also the usual places you find information about protests didn't have this particular one. Nothing on twitter. Nothing on indybay. Anyway.



To my surprise the usual instigators were not in attendance. No ANSWER INTERNATIONAL. Or any of the RevCom people. Usually every protest is a mishmash of stupidity. This group was manly protesting that Imam getting executed and the repressive regime of Saudi Arabia. A lot of the signs said Saudi Arabia = ISIS. I think there are a lot more pressing issues than the Saudi's right about now. But that is me.










It wasn't until I got to this guy that he actually engaged with me. Which has never happened before. I'm really happy to walk the shadows. I'm not about getting into a protest fight. He said " I hope you really understand what this means".  My thought bubble was saying a bunch of nasty stuff about other repressive regimes in the region, but I basically said - you tell me. Because I'm at a point where I have a lot of issues with the Middle East, but it never hurts trying to know what stupid circular logic protesters are using these days.

My basic agenda starting out was - say, I completely agree with you.  How would you solve this problem? Knowing the whole time whatever this guy says is likely a lie. This whole culture knows we don't understand them well, so they can say anything.

He went on about the repressive regime of Saudi Arabia. Which I told him I greed with. But I didn't understand why they didn't protest about other repressive regimes from the same region. Most of the conversation was diversionary. I would say. He thought free college was a great thing which had nothing to do with anything. Then a girl decided to take over the free college torch. Whatever. It was odd how much social benefits filled the conversation though. The only thing I could really get out of them was they wanted the government to stop calling Saudi Arabia an ally. That apparently would solve everything. And from the signs they wanted sanctions which IMO never do anything.



They did manage to squeeze out about a hundred people though. The more interesting part though is - I didn't want to walk the gauntlet to get back to the car. So we walked down the block and crossed the street. When we got back about in line with the protesters on the other side of the street was one of those sign guys. As we got close to him he took out his ear buds and asked us what we thought of this. Mr. S. said he wasn't sure and relayed what the protesters told us. We asked him what he thought of it because his job was to spin a sign on the other side of the road. All he has was time to watch. He said he wasn't sure either but he seemed miffed that Obama was siding with the Muslims. Which was freaky because this guy was black. A part of my heart grew two sizes bigger. He was the unicorn! I guess prison left him a little unhappy with the Muslim faith. Yeah. People will literally tell me anything.



Friday, January 01, 2016

Day 1 - I'm starting to think I might not have mice. I at least thought I might have caught a rando even if it wasn't living in my garage.