Archive for May, 2010

Stuff I did today.

Wednesday, May 26th, 2010

Early on this afternoon, I quit fucking around on the internet and went in to the mighty city to buy groceries and get my sister a little something for her birthday. I came back and decided I would go to the USA Furniture store not to far from here and check out the rocking recliners.

I went back after I dropped off the groceries because I was worried about them possibly going bad in the car and found a chair I liked. I asked my mom and she came with me. It was kind of funny because when we walked in, the sales guy asked if my mom was Linda. Linda is my aunt, her sister and it turns out the sales guy went to elementary school with my mom, aunts and uncles.

So after test sitting a few chairs, I found one I liked, but kept checking out more to see if there were any others that I would like more. There was a really nice one, but it was over $100 more than the first one I liked. The guy had me check out the wall recliner, but that one kind of sucked. He said they only keep two in stock because people rarely buy them anymore.

So he and I walked up to the place where you pay for it and my mom was saying that I should just use my debit card and the guy said “We don’t do plastic anymore.” He said they did plastic for a while, but with the merchant fees being getting pretty ridiculous, they were losing a lot of money on the cards. So now they only do checks and cash, which is how it used to be done back in the old days at most stores. They were able to lower their prices a little by going back to cash and checks only. I went and got my checkbook before I went to the furniture store so it wasn’t a problem for me. So yeah, much cooler than the local electronics store that has an 18% annual percentage rate for overdue accounts.

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Gold buying tips.

Saturday, May 22nd, 2010

I don’t own any gold, but recently there’s been a lot of stuff about how Glenn Beck has some company called Goldline as a sponsor. Basically they’re gold sellers. Earlier this week congress man Anthony Weiner, who probably just wants to make a name for himself, held a press conference saying that this Goldline company rips people off. Ok, maybe this Goldline company does, I have no idea. But if you do get ripped off from Goldline, then maybe you didn’t do your fucking homework on buying gold. It’s not like it’s all that hard to do. There’s this thing called the internet and usually you can comparison shop and look at multiple options. Maybe this Goldline company actually has the best prices. Maybe this congressman just doesn’t want people buying gold from this company because he doesn’t like Glenn Beck.

There are other companies beside just Goldline. I looked up and found a company that sells United States Gold Eagle cons for $1,270.34 when the market price for them is $1,276. The funny thing is that at the bottom of the page is a disclaimer that says that gold is subject to devaluation and there can be risk in owning gold.

So what about Goldline, any such disclaimers? Yep they say on their Risk Disclosure page, which they have a link to right at their main page:

Goldline does not guarantee that any client buying for investment purposes will be able to sell for a profit in the future.

Yep, they admit that. Also:

We strongly recommend that you acquire a sound understanding of precious metals, coins, and their markets before you make your first purchase. Be prepared to invest some time and effort into understanding the market and the grading of your coins or currency. Do not commit more than 5% to 20% of your investment funds to rare coins or precious metals

So apparently, Goldline is a bunch of assholes who actually admit that Gold might not be the safest of investments, that the person should be well versed in the gold market and gold buying before they buy from them and that you shouldn’t sink all your money in to gold.

Finally, I went over to Vanguard, a Mutual Fund company to see if they had any sort of Risk Disclosure page. I couldn’t find one. Mutual Funds could also go down in price and present a risk as well, but I suppose that legally, since they probably don’t advertise with Glenn Beck or at the very least don’t advertise with just conservative radio hosts that they don’t need a risk disclosure page. Any bets on this Anthony Weiner dude complaining about Mutual Funds being a rip off or a bad investment? Probably not.

UPDATE 12:45 PM:

Ok, doing a bit more reasearch in to this whole Goldline thing. Apparently, the gold coins that Goldline was charging twice as much as the cost of the gold itself were rare collectible coins, pre-1933. Buying the United States Gold Eagle will cost about the same as an ounce of gold. So essentially, Anthony Weiner seems to be suggesting that antique coins should only be worth the gold they’re made out of.

By that logic, this is just a crummy piece of paper. Selling for hundreds of thousands of dollars is much worse than the antique gold coins, if you melt this down all you’ll have are some ashes. Or if you have an 18th century armoire it’s sell price should be the same as a pile of lumber. Right?

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World of Running Around.

Saturday, May 15th, 2010

I just did this quest in Warcraft. I thought what he said when I turned it in was great:

They’ll do. Likely I won’t even need them.

But it was fun watching you run around at my command.

Hahahaha! At that point, I realized that the entire game was me running around at the NPC’s commands. Go kill Hogger. Go kill those guys and bring me their ears (even though they won’t all drop ears). Go get me those weeds from the oasis that’s surrounded by centaurs so I can finish my potion.

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Sleep.

Tuesday, May 11th, 2010

Tonight I saw the Parks and Recreation episode called Telethon. In it the main character falls asleep for 22 straight hours after being up for two straight days.

That reminded me of being in Europe. Towards the end of the four weeks we were there, I was just becoming exhausted. For the first three weeks, we were usually going to bed around midnight or 1:00 in the morning and then waking up at 5:00 or 6:00 in the morning. We would shower, eat breakfast, pack up our stuff and get in the tour bus. And we would go see stuff that day. We’d get to the Hostel at 6:00 or 7:00 at night. We would then do what we wanted until midnight or so. Going to sleep before that was useless as the loudest kids wouldn’t let people sleep until about midnight or 1:00 in the morning.

We then stayed with assigned families for a week after the first three weeks were over. And during this time, we had to go to school. Even though, I had just graduated from high school. The first two nights with the families, we went out and did stuff, mostly just hang out with the other kids I went to Europe with. The third day after school, the mom wanted me to go see this older town with lots of neat stuff. After several hours there, we got back to the house and I fell asleep at around 6:00 in the evening. I did not wake up once to go to the bathroom or get something to eat. I woke up and it was still bright out. I looked at the clock and it said it was 6:00. The kid said it was time to get up and go to school. I then realized I was asleep for 12 hours.

Another guy on the tour asked what I did the night before and I just said “Sleep”. It was probably the awesomest sleep I ever got. And it really helped me get through the last four or five days before I was back in the good ol’ US of A. The only thing that came close to it was the night of August 5, 2005, asleep at 9 woke up at 6. But that was because I couldn’t sleep the night before.

So that’s my sleep story.

The Pirates were sleeping tonight. They only got one god damn hit in the game. Charlie Morton continued to not suck as he went 6 innings and gave up 3 runs, although I heard he didn’t have his best stuff.14-18 now. It’s just not turning out to be a great season, but knowledgeable Pirates fan knew that the 2010 season would probably suck back in 2007.

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Do Panic!

Friday, May 7th, 2010

The Cubs have decided that with a three game sweep (OMGZ! That’s never happened before), that they need their best prospect, Starlin Castro, to come up to the majors now. Never mind that he was in AA, hasn’t played one game in AAA and is only 20 years old. This whole thing could be Jose Guillen all over again…

Clearly, Cubs GM Jim Hendry is worried about his job and has hit the panic button that Lou Pinella hit a few weeks ago when he moved Zambrano to the bullpen. The window for the Cubs to win anything with the current group of players is quickly closing and the Cubs are hoping to grasp on to one more winning season and moving Castro up is just desperation.

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Road Trip 2010.

Thursday, May 6th, 2010

So I’m thinking of going to Pittsburgh again. The thing is that I’ve noticed that the airlines are too freaking expensive and inconvenient. Here in Dubuque, for example, the ticket price for the days I wanna go are nearly $600. Even the ticket prices for the Cedar Rapids airport are nearly $500. So doing the math in my head tonight while milking, I’ve realized that driving there makes a lot more sense. First of all, we have the driving time. I might miss one full day of work more than originally planned, which would be a Thursday. I’d get there Thursday night after a full day of driving. Originally, I figured leave on a Friday morning and come back by Monday afternoon with the plane from Cedar Rapids. Sadly, however, hotels are fucking expensive. I remember when I could go to Pittsburgh on a plane and stay at a hotel for a few days and go to a few games for less than $500. That just isn’t possible anymore.

But mostly, I want to drive there for the car, because he’s always stuck in the garage and not doing anything and not going anywhere. He needs a nice long road trip. Just me and the car and that awesome iPod car stereo I bought last year. It’ll be fucking awesome.

Also the game tonight was fucking awesome. The Pirates beat the Cubs 11-1. The Cubs starter was out after just two innings and the Pirates Brian Burres really shut down the Cubs, which is cool considering he was a minor league free agent they signed.

Watching Judge Judy now. Judy asks the asshole defendant how much money he got from the plaintiff and he says $2080. In the audience behind him this woman opens her mouth and her eyes bulge out. It’s fucking funny.

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The No Brains List.

Wednesday, May 5th, 2010

From a CNN article about the alleged terrorist who reportedly put a non-functional bomb in a vehicle in New York City:

He was able to board Emirates Flight 202 late Monday despite being put on a no-fly list earlier in the day, leading some to question whether the no-fly list worked.

Typical No-Fly List bullshit. It lets people who are terrorist board planes while preventing people who are not terrorist from boarding planes. I don’t feel any safer with a so called No Fly List. Time to scrap the whole thing since the stupid thing doesn’t work at all.

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Got no future, great big past.

Sunday, May 2nd, 2010

My elementary school had an open house today to celebrate 50 years and stuff. My parents said I should go, so I went. Basically it’s pretty much the same school it was in 1992 with a whole lot more added to it. Honestly, it’s hard to remember a lot about it. Some of the rooms looked familiar, but there was a whole lot there that didn’t look familiar.

In the new gym (I don’t know what was wrong with the old gym, it seemed adequate when I was there) they had all sorts of stuff in there, including my 4th grade teachers plate collection. She had her class sign a plate every year. I saw the class I was in and there was my “signature”. I had the worst hand writing in the class, although one kid’s was almost as bad as mine. And the really sad thing is that my hand writing isn’t any better today, except that my signature today is in cursive….sorta.

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Random Oil Spill Expert.

Sunday, May 2nd, 2010

Typical CNN poll:

Do you approve of the way President Obama has handled the Gulf of Mexico oil spill?

And you can answer either Yes or No. How about “I don’t know anything about oil spill cleanups and you should go ask experts to grade him instead of asking any asshole with a computer/internet connection who happens to stop by CNN.com what he thinks.”

Also, CNN.com readers aren’t experts. It’s basically right down the middle 52-48 right now. Really, I would say people have no idea if he’s doing a good job and all these polls that CNN has had lately seem to split right down the middle.

I bet it’s a lot like that Simpsons episode where they save the cute animals for celebrities/politicians and make the regular people showing up to clean lots and lots of rocks.

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