fontosaurus

Added another stock to the portfolio yesterday -- Books-a-Million (BAMM) -- solid P/E ratio, pays a dividend regularly, and has a generally healthy set of data. I've added it to my Sharebuilder portfolio as an automatic investment and snapped-up a hundred shares of it yesterday.

Anyone else finding any gems on the market right now?

I just made a bit of a stock market gamble. It's not a huge investment on my part, but the potential payoff is there.

I bought 120 shares of Sirius-XM Radio (@ 25.4 cents per share).

SIRI is in a position where it probably won't be positive cashflow until 2010, and it just restructured its debt. But with Sirius-XM being available in almost 60% of new cars, I cannot see their overall subscriber list actually falling significantly in the next 3-5 years.

So I bought 120 shares, for about $40 (includes my trade fee of $9.95).

Anyone else know of any valuable stocks out there? I've heard TiVo has some potential due to winning its patent suit (finally) and due to its treasure trove of customer viewing data. Thoughts?

First of all, the upcoming Oliver Stone pic, entitled W, while a great idea, is coming in under the "too soon" category. Honestly, we've put up with the douchebag and his cronies for eight years now. Who in the name of god would pay money for a couple of extra hours? I've had about all I can stomach from the Republican party, and I don't care if it means higher taxes for me in the future, but I will never, ever, EVER vote for a Republican candidate again. Their opponent could be spit-roasting live kittens over a nuclear pebble-bed reactor to feed to starving children in some third-world pest-hole, and I'd still vote for them if it meant keeping a Republican out of office. Seriously. Between the debacle of Bush's pseudo-presidency and now the obvious idiocy and hypocrisy of the McCain-Palin campaign, I refuse to understand how anyone can take that party seriously.

I found this one online, and it's too fucking funny not to share. I wish the creator had signed their work, because they deserve serious kudos:



So I'm thinking about picking up a third source of income. I've got my job, and it's fairly secure. I've got my second job, which is probably secure, given that the bike industry as a whole has been having a banner friggin' year due to gas prices/the economy. I think I should probably consider picking up some freelance writing on the side -- just an hour or so of writing a day. I just need to track down a gig, is all. Remember folks, the people that thrive in a down economy are the ones who are in a position to buy when everyone else is selling.

On the more lighthearted side of things, the next time someone calls the NFC East the "NFC Beast", I think I'm either going to have an aneurysm or bitchslap them. I mean, really. Dallas will do what it always does under Tony Romo -- go out in the first round of the playoffs. The Eagles were starting to slip before Westbrook broke a few ribs, the Redskins have an average schedule of opponents, and the Giants, well, we'll see how that plays out. But the "Beast"? Really?

Lately, my apartment has fallen into a state of disarray, and that's been bothering me. The past year or so, I've gotten religious about keeping it clean. So last night, while the Vikes alternated between awesome and awful, I vacuumed, straightened things up, changed the litterbox, and took out the trash. And then I contemplated the reason that things have gone the way they have. Self analysis would indicate that with my move coming up in a month, that I am in a position where I believe that it's too much effort to clean something that's going to be an utter disaster soon anyway. I'm going to fight that mindset because I hate clutter.

I finally had a brilliant idea for a Halloween costume. It's going to take some SERIOUS DOING and probably won't be ready until 2009 or 2010, but it's going to be so unbelievably awesome that you'll shit when you finally see it. It's going to require taking some pre-existing 3D models, scaling them up, doing some CAD/CAM magic, and having parts cut from aluminum, but it should look seriously awesome when I'm finished. If I actually go the route of doing this, and it's a serious MAYBE right now, there will be a lot of pictures posted, and probably 15-30 minutes of Internet fame. (Plus I'll publicly share the HOWTO and the CAD files.)

Money has only been a mild concern for me lately -- even with the market tanking. Having my divorce settlement paid off at the beginning of September went a long way toward improving my financial situation, and I've used the freed-up money to start paying down other bills. Kate and I moving in together is going to help things significantly as well. We're going to spend the first three months making minimum payments and socking away money so that we have a small nest egg to cover us should things go south. (The good news is that she works for one of the most-stable banks in the U.S. -- Wells Fargo. That I'm a contractor at a Fortune 500 company that's laid off full-time staff also bodes well -- during rough economic patches, contractors usually see an improvement in employability. And I've landed in a position where if I am gone, the whole game changes for the worse.) I've been saving cash lately, and today I started buying up stocks now that they're good values. Apple saw an infusion of cash from me. Not much, granted, but it should keep Steve Jobs' jet aloft for a few hours.

As for the idea of opening my own bike shop, well, it's taken on a few twists of late, and I think that it's a realistic goal in the next 3 years. I've buckled-down and have given up on the crazy idea of a SuperShop on day one. I'm going to start more modestly, obviously, and do so not in Uptown, as planned, but in Northeast, where a lease will be less expensive, and I'll be closer to home. I'm going to get some of my marketing materials done over the course of the next week, and have started diddling with the code for my service management software. I've got a whole task list of things that have to be done prior to opening the shop, and I'm getting as many of them out of the way as possible.

I'm going to have to buy tickets for the Powerball tonight. It's like a $61 million jackpot. Figure you take the instant-payout option, which knocks you to $30 mil, then figure 30% for taxes, and that bumps you down to about $21 mil. Ouch.

The sad part is, all I can think about doing with that money is paying off my bills. And the fact that I would be able to skip looking for a job for awhile. Truth be told, I'd probably do something totally mundane like open the bike shop I've been dreaming of.

Shit. Realistically -- what would you do?