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- Current Music:Ben Folds -- Cologne
This morning I could not help but to overhear a coworker talking about the financial crisis. She was explaining that she did not follow news, politics, or financial markets, so apparently all of the recent financial woes came as somewhat of a surprise to her. She, and the other coworker she was conversing with, began to talk about how everyone would be happier if they "Just didn't look at their 401ks for about 6 months." I have heard others lament about the extent of their financial losses in recent months, due to their major stock holdings for their 401k.
At a recent family gathering, I was discussing market conditions with one of my older cousins and one of my uncles. They lectured me on the principles of traditional investing -- be a long term investor, put the maximum into your 401k, never look at it and assume the market will handle it for you.
I can never buy into that kind of "conventional wisdom." Three or four months ago, I sat down and gave a hard look to the quarterly performance of the different stock packages I had my 401k nested into. I had been doing a little market research at the time, and I was convinced things were going to go south hard and fast by the end of summer. I decided conventional wisdom was not for me, and I took all of my current 401k balance and transferred it to a Government guaranteed income fund. This allocation, of course, gives a very small investment return (3% or thereabout), but you won't be losing money either. I kept my new incoming funds going to the same stock-based plans they had been going to before, so it wasn't a complete withdraw from the market, but I wanted to make sure what I had up until that point was "safe" as possible. Of course, it's still worth investing into your 401k the maximum amount your company will match, because no where else can you essentially get a 50% ROI, but going beyond the max match percent right now is simply not worth it. You're better off paying off debts or setting up some emergency cash, because it's not like the markets are paying out anyway.
Now, I am not a big fan of the stock market to begin with. To be honest, I've always found it somewhat contemptible, at least in the extent to where some rely on it as their sole means of making a living. See, I always liken stock values to monopoly money. After the Wall street Bailout was rejected yesterday, financial analysts have said that the U.S. market lost over one-and-a-quarter trillion U.S. dollars in equity in a single day.
Now, perhaps it's just me, but I always imagined money should be in a state akin to the first law of thermodynamics. You know, energy cannot be created nor destroyed, but it can change forms. How does $1.25tril disappear in a single day? Honestly, that tells you how volatile these markets are. A dollar itself is a meaningless object. Monetary values are kept as promise notes to physical, tangible goods. A U.S. dollar represents a share in a certain amount of U.S. gold. Stocks, however, are held as a representation of value, and therein is the difference. Just because you have $1mil in stocks does not mean you have $1mil, but the market tends to take that representation of value as actual physical financial money. However, it's only worth $1mil if someone is willing to pay you $1mil for it. It was never real money, just a representation of value which can change any day.
Call me crazy, but that's not the kind of situation I want the fruits of my hard work to be in. The work I do is tangible, and the profits should be as well. Let everyone else play their glorified, adult version of Monopoly.
So, I stayed up last night for all 15 innings of the All Star game. That was a great game (and pre-game). Too bad the National League couldn't pull it off, but they put up one hell of a fight. I feel pretty bad for Uggla, you could tell the kid was just getting more and more shook up as the game went on. But as much as the game itself was good, how cool was it to see the greats like Lou Brock, Hank Aaron, Yogi Berra, et all all together in one place? That was a real treat.
E3 is storming ahead and, to be honest, right now it's hard to keep track of it all. There's been a ton of great looking games coming out of the conferences for every console. I should sit down at some point and try to make a list of what all games actually look like they'd be worth keeping tabs on.
Time to get back to work. And by work, I mean thinking of the idea which I will ultimately drag you all into! Bwa ha ha.
-Steimel, your future CEO.
When you finish the game, among other things, you unlock a new difficulty level called "Extreme Boss." Well, Extreme Boss mode is... extreme. I started a few file to try and do a No Alerts, No Kills play through, but I'll be damned it is remarkably hard on that difficulty setting. So I may have to turn it back a notch.
I'm not sure what else I want to play, now. I've made some pretty good ground on my backlog in the last few weeks. I've still never played Metal Gear Portable Ops, which of course would be closer to the mood now. I'm not that far into GTA IV and I still have Twilight Princess unfinished. And then there is Mass Effect, which I never wound up starting.
Oh yeah, I finally started playing FF2 on the PSP. And wow -- it is definitely the worst game in the series! I feel an obligation to try and finish it, because I'd be annoyed having there still only be one game in the main series I have not completed, but I'll be damned if this game doesn't manage to ever go more than 5 minutes without pissing me off. Whether it's the extremely repetitive travel (you seem to spend many, many hours traveling between the same 4 cities, forced to fight the same mobs you could 1-shot many "levels" ago), the ridiculously poor balance (new dungeons filled with a mix of mobs where you one-shot some, and deal 0 damage to others), the usual annoyance of magic in early FFs (some mobs can only be hurt by magic, but you only have enough MP to cast 5 spells), or the ridiculous amount of thousands of gil needed and mobs often only drop 5. This game makes me wish Game Genies were still around.
OK, but enough BS about video games. So, what other fun stuff has been happening. Well, I got caught in a dust storm yesterday. And then an hour later, I managed to hydroplane -through- an intersection. That was awesome! Although I almost died. Last week, AK and I took the john boat out to go fishing on Tuesday (took the day off), and we got stopped by conservation police (who almost tried to "board the vessel"). They made me row to shore since we didn't have life jackets on board. The whole story is actually pretty funny, but it'd have to be told in person!
I woke up this morning far earlier than I normally do -- which is to say, essentially, that I actually woke up on time -- so I took a few minutes to sit and watch CNN while waiting for my brain to wake up. On the morning edition, they had a brief sit & chat with one Ron Paul, a Republican candidate who, until the last weekend, didn't see much news coverage. I have to admit, a few of the things he said were probably some of the more honest statements I've heard among all the Election 2008 BS so far. Not to say I agree with him on everything or that I think any one President could make some of the changes he was touting, but he at least seemed a little more disconnected from the Hive Mind crap McCain/Clinton/Obama bring to the table.
I'm torn over how to vote. I can say, with conviction, that I pretty much hate the Big Three. Between McCain, Clinton, and Obama, I think they would all be terrible Presidents. Who would have made a good ticket? I don't know, perhaps Paul v Edwards? That's a much more difficult call. I am, however, pretty distraught at the current options.
My personal opinion on Hillary is that if she had a Y Chromosome and a different surname, she never would have been elected in New York, let alone made her way onto the Democratic Ballot. And while Obama is a fine speaker, he's little more than an idealogy spewer -- he has no concrete plans on how to achieve anything he says. Of course, that's enough to get the attention of most younger voters. And McCain, well -- he truly does earn the "Republicrat" badge.
So, then comes the choice. Do I take the "Vote for the lesser of the three evils" route, or if someone else I find more interesting is on the ticket, vote for them out of principle. Or even do a write-in. When I was younger, I didn't like the idea of what I perceived as a wasted vote. However, I can't help but wonder if people voting not based on who they thought was best, but instead on who they *didn't* want to win, is how we got into this sort of situation to begin with.
The amount of kiddy-grade politics going back and forth right now is driving me crazy. November cannot get here soon enough. The Democrats could not possibly be embarassing themselves more (I'm ashamed, honestly, to have ever associated myself with the party), and the amount of water cooler chatter the primaries are still generating is reaching the point of political involvement burnout for a lot of folks. I did find it funny, though, that this morning CNN had a poll -- "Have you heard enough about Reverand Jeremiah Wright?" The numbers, at the time, were somewhere around 70% "Yes, please move on." and 30% "No, tell me more." And of course, they followed that poll with probably 10 minutes of coverage on the Reverand.
I would love to rant more, but I have a lot of work to do.
I hear a lot of people talking about how "The Rich get Richer and the Poor get Poorer." Well, my grandpa used to say "The Rich get Richer and the poor go to jail", although he had a different view on things. I suppose if I were to also alter this old quote for my own beliefs on the matter, it would be "The rich get richer, and the poor get richer but less happy."
No one seems to like to talk about the rising standard of living. You will know see people who proclaim themselves to be barely getting by, but they have a big screen TV, a car less than a decade old, and many other comforts. Americans tend to not like to speak about this. Having a car in America is such a standard thing in many areas (larger cities with robust community travel services, i.e. trains, bus routes, et cetera are different, understandably) that not having a car when you're 16 is seen as being very poor. Of course, in other parts of the world having a your own private vehicle places you among the elite. Perhaps happiness is out of reach for so many people because the media sets the bar so high. There was a day when someone would be the happiest person in the world just for putting food on the table.
I guess I'm thinking about these things today because I have been working with a co-worker from the other half of the world (literally, 12 hour time difference). Unfortunately I had to have him stay pretty late tonight for his time, and he was teasing me that his fiancé was very angry at me. I told him to be safe going home at this hour, and he said it would be awhile before he could go due to riots, which were primarily incited by "racial" (more so, regional) comments by a politician, that politician's arrest, and the subsequent rioting by that politician's supporters. Apparently 4 of my friend's co-workers in the same office had been, as he put it, "manhandled" by rioters just while trying to get to work.
I guess sometimes we forget how well we have it. We are in the middle of what could be considered a fairly intense election, by our standards, but I cannot see there ever being a night where it is not safe for me to go home.
And no matter how many things I think our government does wrong at times, things like that are still worthy of being thankful for.
However, in regards to my comments last week of "Oh gee, Giants versus Pats... who cares." I take it back. 100%. That was one of the best Superbowls, and honestly the best Championship games of any kind in a long time. I wanted the Pats to lose because I was tired of their attitude (Did you see the pre-game interview with Randy Moss? I mean, seriously), and throughout the entire game it just felt like the Giants wanted it more. Great game to watch.
Dear Whoever is in charge of commercials for Cadillac: I freaking LOVE you. First you unveil the new CTS with a commercial featuring local heroes Hum. And now there is a CTS commercial out with some music from Justice? You are a ballsy, pop-culture defying hero(ine). I salute you.
