01.06.09
Posted in Books at 4:00 pm by Jim
I have one of those obsessive personalities. I know it…most people that know me know it. For Christmas, I put a lot of Science Fiction/Fantasy books on my Christmas list at Amazon. I really enjoy the epic series where you get to read at least three novels with the same world/characters. Reading a lone novel is ok, but due to my obsessive nature of basically not being able to put a book down, I finish the thing in a day or two and am left wanting more story.
My family got me most of the books on my list, and I have already read many of them. I will get to them all eventually, but at the moment I am trying to finish off a couple of the series before I start new ones. My new Tulsa Public Library card has come in real handy as I have been checking out the books I don’t have in the series. This library thing is pretty cool (someone should have thought of that a LONG time ago, eh?).
Anyway, I highly recommend these two series. First, Mistborn
by Brandon Sanderson is excellent. The books have all the needed elements - an interesting approach to a magic system, political intrigue, war, death, strange creatures and some romance. The main character is a girl that rises from basically a slave class to nobility. The second series is Codex Alera by Jim Butcher. It has all the elements of the Mistborn series - with a boy that grows into a man as the man character. The timeline here is much longer, but still not an extended timeline by some series standards. The firstbook of this series is the weakest, so if you find yourself not liking it as much as you had hoped, don’t give up. The later books are much better.
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12.14.08
Posted in Uncategorized at 11:41 am by Jim
Well, the holidays have arrived. Will is enjoying the Christmas lights and the Christmas tree. We haven’t wrapped any presents, yet. I’m not sure he would understand the not getting to open them until Christmas morning part.
Melanie and I enjoy Cirque du Soleil and thanks to the new BOK Center, we got a chance to see a show without leaving town. Last night we went to Saltimbanco. One act in particular had me squeezing my armrests with genuine fear for the performers. I was actually thinking, “No, not again!” each time they started another daredevil move on the trapeze. So, if you get a chance to see the show - go. We found the new BOK center to be a good venue. There really wasn’t a bad seat in the house for this show. They only had about 30% of the arena open for the show, though.
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12.01.08
Posted in Family, Technology at 10:00 pm by Jim
In an effort to save both money and the environment, the Craddocks have implemented many “green” measures over the last year. Our first efforts were the quick ones - several years ago we switched to programmable thermostats and fluorescent lightbulbs. This year, we started recycling. We save our #1 and #2 plastics, newspapers, magazines, aluminum cans, container glass, steel cans and even our cardboard. Every couple weeks we transport it all to a charity in Broken Arrow. No tax deduction there, but we feel better about it. One bonus is that our big green trash can fills up at a much slower rate.
Last year, we switched to LED Christmas lights. The larger bulbs you would put on your house give off a slightly fainter light than the incandescent ones we used to have but they use only a fraction of the power of the old lights. The smaller lights are actually brighter than the old incandescent ones. They look great on the tree out front. I’m pretty sure we are the only ones in our neighborhood with LED lights on the house. This week, I started using a website a relative turned us onto. Catalogchoice.org is a website that allows you to selectively “opt-out” of catalogs. This is a great time of year to do that. Just today, we got no fewer than six catalogs in the mail. Four of those won’t be coming anymore.
I hope you had a great Thanksgiving.
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11.19.08
Posted in Finance, Will at 6:00 pm by Jim
Will likes bubbles. He always enjoys the bubble portion of his time at Little Gym. I think his favorite part is getting bubbles blown onto his belly. Not sure what the attraction is there, but so far I have resisted the urge to pull up my shirt, expose my hairy belly and ask for my share of bubbles.
My topic however is actually about economic bubbles. We have had the tech bubble and the real estate bubble. What is next? Well, I think we have two bubbles already underway right now.
The first one is pretty simple - US Treasuries. Those are what you buy if you want to effectively loan your money to Uncle Sam. The prices on these are at all-time highs. That means the interest rates or yields on them are at all-time lows. You actually PAY Uncle Sam money right now in some cases on the inflation protected series. You can effectively say that one is at its peak. If you want to put some money on the line betting that it will crash - TBT and PST are your exchange traded funds that are effectively bets on just that.
The other bubble is more complex but still important. That bubble, as I see it, is college education. Tuition and books have shot up much higher than the cost of inflation over the last ten years. To educate your child at a highly ranked private school can cost $50,000 Per Year. That is simply ridiculous when you consider all that is being provided is schooling. Believe it or not, you can actually teach yourself just by reading a book. The problem is ingrained in the endowed chairs, the fancy buildings, the sports teams, the sculpted bushes and the need to attract the most prestigious students and faculty. I believe most courses taught to an undergraduate benefit little from the uber published professor or the retired industry executive. The current economic crisis may very well bring all that crashing down. I expect to see decreased private enrollment over the next few years. Whether or not public schools see a decrease remains to be seen, but they have also been subscribers to all the above policies, so it wouldn’t surprise me. The public schools have the benefit of gaining students that would have previously gone to private schools. The private schools don’t have that luxury. The consequences are hard to foresee at this point, but I think you will see a rise in online schooling, eventually. The type of technology being used today to faciliate online meetings for companies is perfect for teaching classes online. Furthermore, uploading the video to a website means the same professor can teach every single section of every class. In some subjects like math, that same video could be used for 100 years.
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11.18.08
Posted in Books at 11:04 am by Jim
Melanie got a library card recently. I think I will finally have to get around to getting my own card. My current reading list is hardly exciting. I am working on The Data Warehouse Toolkit: The Complete Guide to Dimensional Modeling (Second Edition)
. This is one of the industry “bibles” on data warehousing. We are looking at doing a large electronic medical record project at work, and I figured I should start learning about it. For general entertainment, I enjoy sci-fi and fantasy plus the occasional horror or thriller.
On a side note, I had to fill up the Pilot again this morning. The light was on, telling me that it was time to fill up. I could hardly believe it when the entire tank of gas cost me less than $30. I actually heard myself say “Wow!” when it stopped at $29.65.
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11.17.08
Posted in Family at 2:17 pm by Jim
I’m endeavoring to actually keep Will’s wishlist up-to-date for Christmas. It is linked on the right side of the homepage.
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11.10.08
Posted in Family, Finance, Will at 6:44 pm by Jim
I spent much of yesterday assembling a new bed for Will and disassembling his crib. The bed is a fire truck. You can see it here: KidKraft FireTruck Toddler Cot
. I highly recommend the bed. He loves trucks, trains, planes, busses, etc. and He really likes the bed and slept in it without incident last night. Other than that, we went to the Zoo on Saturday morning. It was a little chilly. I think we had underestimated the wind.
If you know of someone looking for a job, there is an opening in my group. We need someone bright that doesn’t want a lot of money. I’m sure most people doing the hiring think that. Anyway, send them my way if you know someone.
Oh, I also started running again. Hooray for me. I figured it was either that or get a bunch of new pants in another month or two when I started popping buttons.
A quick note on the markets and economy - from here it just gets bloodier. Today we have Circuit City filing chapter 11, DHL leaving the delivery business, and the Big Three finally getting realized as the negative value companies they have been for a long time. Meanwhile, our $85 Billion bailout of AIG is now $150 Billion or so, and there has been a total lack of transparency on the guy with the Big Checkbook over at the Treasury, aka Hank Paulson. In case you hadn’t heard, the Treasury’s total money loaned out since the $750 Billion was passed is now well North of $2 Trillion with no end in sight.
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10.22.08
Posted in Family, Running, Will at 11:50 am by Jim
Just some random thoughts, etc, today.
First off, I filled up the Pilot on Monday. While the little light telling me to fillup wasn’t on quite yet - I still managed to get in about 17 gallons. Grand total - $39.78! Wow, nice drop from the $66 fillup I had a few months back.
Your average master limited partnership is up a good 20% or more from when I recommended them. Not bad for a week or two. The market is still in the crapper though, and we might see some more blood before the lull I was expecting.
I had Will all to myself Monday night as Melanie was out of town for business. He gave me a little streak show during the middle of his bath (aka “bubble bap”) - getting out to supposedly “go potty” and then taking off running around his room and hiding behind his bed. He is going to be Spiderman for Halloween. I don’t think we will be taking him Trick-or-Treating this year, but I’m sure we will next year.
And finally, no I’m not running in the Tulsa Run this weekend - or the half marathon coming up. I kinda wimped out on running in mid-summer when we all had to stack our hands on working a full day at work. I hope to get back to it soon.
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10.20.08
Posted in Finance at 2:33 pm by Jim
Well, the market is down 35% or so year-to-date, home prices are off (although mostly just in the markets that got very overheated), job losses are increasing and the average U.S. taxpayer has involuntarily taken on ownership in a bunch of banks. It can’t get worse than this, right? Actually it can. However, I think we are at a momentary pause. Why? Well, in short, I think people want to think it can’t get worse and that in and of itself will lead to a short-term lull. Plus, we have the election coming up and I’m sure the election of Senator Obama will “inspire” some more short-term positivity.
In the long-run, however, we are pretty much screwed. Now you are thinking, “Why?” Right? This graph says it better than I ever could:
You see that graph? You see how the numbers have increased so dramatically in the last few years? That is the United States and its citizens borrowing money. Ratio like this don’t just get bigger and bigger and bigger. At some point, they return to a more normal range. What does that mean? It means we have to pay back the debt or grow GDP. I think we can rule out GDP growing much anytime soon - with one exception which I will address last.
So, if GDP doesn’t go up, debt must come down. That means less borrowing. So, you have to ask yourself, why does one borrow less? The answer is simple - because doing so has too high of a cost. The cost of borrowing is the interest that you pay. So, in brief, that means interest rates will have to go up if we are to borrow less. But interest rates are low, you say. Well, actually, they have started up and up they will continue. You see, at some point, the foreign countries that are currently financing our debt, are going to start realizing that we might not be able to pay it back. Then interest rates will have to go up - this will happen in the form of US Treasuries selling at lower and lower values. Thus, when Uncle Sam goes out to “borrow” money by selling Treasuries, he will get less cash for the same T-Bill he sold the month before. This will happen pretty dramatically, too, because right now the government is mostly selling very short-term bills - meaning they must be resold very frequently because they come due quickly. The is the same thing as if you bought a 30 - Day CD from your bank. You would be very much at the mercy of quick shifts in interest rates. Whereas, if you bought a 2 yr CD, you would suffer less from the month to month vagaries. In this case, the move will be in one direction and one direction only - UP. If you figure the average rate on government debt is probably 2% or less right now - and our INTEREST payments make up about 20% of our federal budget. What do you think a 4% rate will do to us - and that is not a large move in rates. We could easily be looking at rates of 8% or more. Obviously, the US Government cannot afford a rate of 8% or even 4%.
The one way it does become affordable is not pretty. That way is inflation - that is the one sure way out and the ONLY way out if you assume you cannot grow GDP at rates of 5% or more for a good solid decade. Inflation would make the GDP number grow and the debt number would become less of an issue. So, while today we have deflation the likes of which has not been seen since The Great Depression, at some point in the next decade we will have inflation the likes of which has not been seen since at least the 1970’s.
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10.16.08
Posted in Uncategorized at 4:13 pm by Jim
I saw this article on Yahoo.com today. Here are a couple excepts:
autumn air temperatures in the Arctic are at a record 9 degrees Fahrenheit (5 Celsius) above normal
and
The Arctic Ocean continued to warm and freshen due to ice melt. This was accompanied by an “unprecedented” rate of sea level rise of nearly 0.1 inch per year.
• Warming has continued around Greenland in 2007 resulting in a record amount of ice melt. The Greenland ice sheet lost 24 cubic miles of ice, making it the largest single contributor to global sea level rise.
One-tenth of an inch might not sound like much, but previously they talk about that type of rate over a decade or more. At that rate, a noticeable amount of Florida and Louisiana will be gone within Will’s lifetime, if not mine.
Now, I don’t know about you, but I don’t see how there can be anyone left that disputes global warming. The ones I know that used to dispute it, now say, “Well, it exists, but we don’t know why.” Basically, they gave up one line of defense and moved back into the fortified defense of “Yeah, so what!” Really mature.
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