Well... I did go day-after-Thanksgiving shopping. I know... that's soooo unlike me. But (thankfully) I didn't hit up the crowded malls looking for big savings on stuff I didn't need. Instead I took a five minute trip to the very uncrowded local Autozone where I paid full retail for something I didn't need. I treated myself to a very nice K&N Filtercharger Air Filter. Cost: about $45. Was it worth it? Yep, I think so.

You know, I really dislike Pontiac commercials. Pontiacs never get good reviews (except maybe the Pontiac Vibe which is just a rebadged Toyota Matrix). As far as I'm concered, the whole thing about Pontiacs being sporty is just a marketing gimmick.

On the other hand, I like Mazda commercials. As far as commercials go, I think they're generally well done, and they get my heart going as a driver. But until relatively recently, Mazda (like Pontiac) didn't have the products to back up their "Zoom-zoom" claims apart from the Miata. Apparently things have been changing at Mazda since those zoom-zoom commercials have started come out and Mazda has brought out some cars that auto journalists really like to write about. For a few years, the Mazda Protege has been praised as being the sportiest and most fun to drive compact sedan (apart from specially tuned models like the Civic Si, etc.). Then Mazda came out with the Protege 5 which also scored high with the journalists on the fun-to-drive scale. And now the Mazda 6 which is coming out soon has already received very good reviews. According to the reviews, the 6 should also be tops in the fun-to-drive scale among the mid-size, mid-priced family sedans. That's above the Camry, Accord, and even the sporty new Altima. Ooh, and just wait for the Mazdaspeed Protege, the successor to the MP3. The reviews admit that the Mazdas aren't the most powerful or the fastest in a straight line compared to their competitors, but they've got driving enjoyment pegged. In some sense, the same driving philosophy that gets engineered into BMWs is also getting engineered into newer Mazdas, at a family sedan price.

By the way, I really like the two new Mazda 6 commercials. Theres the one that's just the tachometer reving and getting pegged at 6 grand, and the other one where the car drifts in the dirt leaving behind a large dust cloud shaped like a 6.

Yeah yeah, I know none of you care.

By the way, did I ever mention that one of my dreams is to become a writer for a car magazine? Actually, that's more like a fantasy than a dream.

I decided not to post any more stock stuff on this blog any more. Instead, my online trading journal will be at sahntrade.blogspot.com. Now you guys won't have to wade through all that stuff.

Well... I wish I had something clever to say, but unfortunately I don't. So ... let's see what I can dig up from the stuff I had prepared for my previous website that was hosted on my school server so many months ago ...

Ahh ... a quote.

"If we men married the women we deserved, we should have a very bad time of it."
-- Oscar Wilde

This is for my buddy Mary who's looking for a finance job:

I found a handy finance calculator at this site.

I'd give their finance equation but I don't feel like typing it out... but in any case, I derived the formula for the general case for your problem from their equation.

          ir * pv

pmt = ---------------

      1/(1+ir)^np - 1

where
pmt = payment
ir = interest rate per payment period (e.g. 0.1 for 10% per year)
pv = present value (e.g. -100,000 for a balance owed of 100 grand)
np = for number of payments (e.g. 2 for 1 payment a year for 2 years)

thus, if you plug everything in, the answer comes out to $57,619.047619....

Sorry about the crappy posts the past few days. I know most of you don't give a damn about my work, or my stocks, or my car, or anything else that I've been writing about lately. It's a wonder that there are still readers left to read this. (Then again, maybe there aren't, in which case I'd still continue to write for the heck of it.) I think that one of the main reasons the quality of the posts has decreased while the number has increased of late is that my life has become so painfully mundane. I have extra time on my hands, and nothing to fill it with. My wells have become deplete of creative inspiration. No drama. No excitement. No painful recurring childhood memory. No emotional anguish. All in all, I'm doing well, and there's nothing interesting about that. One of my friends has been kind enough to give me a bit of constructive criticism, so I'll try my best to keep it interesting.

Amusing Childhood Memory

As hard as it may be to imagine, when I was a kid, I ran around and had fun with all the other kids. I'd come home from school caked in dirt and my face would be a black mess. At church after sunday school, the kids would always play tag or hide-and-go-seek.

I recall one particular Sunday when I was in kindergarten. One of the older kids (probably around Jr. High, but my memory fails me) remarked that my hair was like a troll doll's as he proceeded to give me a funky mohawk. You could stand my hair on end, and it would stay that way. Or you could bunch it up into two spikes. I'm sure he found that amusing. "What do you put in your hair?" he asked. I replied saying that I didn't put anything in my hair. "Then why does it do this?" he asked.

"Sweat!" I exclaimed cheerfully.

Life lesson of the day: If you get keys to the office, try them on the parking garage. It just might work!

After looking for the cause of that non-fatal bug for a few hours, I came to the conclusion that it wasn't really a bug. It was just that the server ran out of memory, and instead of saying that it ran out of memory, it said that the search failed. So I changed the code to say that the computer ran out of memory when it runs out of memory. However, during the course of the day, one of the testers discovered another fatal bug. And one that I could've sworn I fixed a few days ago.

What's worse than a bug that happens only sometimes? A bug that only happens only on some operating systems, and not on the operating system you're using to write and test the program.

One of the tester's noted that the server froze when a particular thing happened. And like I said, I could've sworn I already fixed that bug. So I wade through the code again trying to find out what could possibly be the problem. And I try a number of different things that don't seem to work, and I test it on my computer and the bug doesn't seem to show up. So my supervisor suggests that I put a lot of OutputDebugStrings (analogous to print statements) in the places that might potential be problem areas to let me know exactly what the server is doing. So I do that and sure enough, the server is behaving differently from the way that I'd expected, and differently than it does on my computer own computer. It turns out that a function that I use in my code behaves differently on Windows XP (my operating system) than it does on Windows NT 4.0 (the server's operating system).

For those of you that are technically inclined, I was using the system call WaitForSingleObject to wait for a semaphore. So image you're a computer program (or rather a thread) and you're happily chugging along and until you hit that function call, WaitForSingleObject, and the object you're waiting for is a semaphore. Then if that semaphore is locked, you wait for it to unlock before you move on. I had relied on the behavior that the program would stop waiting and move on if the semaphore it was waiting for was destroyed while it was waiting. In other words, let's say you're waiting for a semaphore and it get destroyed while you're waiting. I say you stop waiting and continue forward. After all, that's the way that it works in Windows XP (of course it returns an error, but I'm gonna ignore that). But ... it turns out that in Windows NT 4.0, if the semaphore your waiting for gets destroyed while you're waiting for it ... well, you wait forever. And thus the program freezes.

Next time, if the documentation for a function says that the behavior of that function in a particular situation is undefined, I'm going to avoid relying on a particular behavior in that situation just because it happens to work that way on my computer.

Anyhow, I fixed that bug by unlocking the semaphore just before I destroy it. So now the test should run through the weekend. And hopefully nothing bad will happen.

Did that make any sense?

Our test server survived the night of pounding without crashing. That's a very good sign. We did uncover one non-fatal bug but that should be fixed in short order.

I'm still at work now waiting for our new changes to the server to be tested. Right now it's just me and the head tester. I'm here to fix any small bugs that show up in the first few minutes of testing. About an hour or so ago, I finished fixing one of the bugs we found last night. I think that was the hairiest bug I've personally seen so far.

The testing process. Specify one computer to be the server. Usually, the computer that's designated the server is the slowest one. Why the slowest one? Because it's more likely to crash, and if it crashes, then you've just found another bug. And you want to find (and fix) as many bugs as you possibly can before your release the product to the public. In the real world, you'd want the fastest computer to be the server because then it's less likely to crash. Get it? So you get the server up and running on a particularly slow computer. Then set up as many computers as you can get your hands on to be "clients" doing things that users would normally (and abnormally) be doing with our product. At least 20 is a good number. Tonight it looks like we'll have more than that. While our actual client product will be running on some of these computers, most of them will just run a script that will pretend to be a client. (A script is like a batch file, but usually written in a more robust language, like visual basic in our case). The benefit of using a script is that it can do things faster than our real client cause it doesn't have to worry about things like a user interface or even a user, and it can do things that we prevent the client from doing. For example, we prevent the client from starting a search and then immediately logging off without canceling the search. But the script can do that because we say it can. This lets us test the really bizarre cases, like when the client starts a search, and then immediately crashes (e.g. if it's running windows 95 that has a tendancy to crash) or gets it's ethernet cable cut or something like that. Plus the script can do lots of things right after another, like it it can search, and then sort, and then scan, and then index, and then search, and then search again without canceling the first search, and then log off before either search finishes, and then try to search again without logging back in and so on. And it can do it without giving the server time to breath. Once you've got everything set up, you let everything run and sit back and watch. Now you've got 20 or so clients pounding away at the slow server doing things that no user in their right mind would do. This is supposed to be like the absolute worst case scenario that our product would encounter in the real world. So we let the thing run overnight. If the server doesn't crash after all this pounding, then we breath a sigh of relief. But if it does, then the tester notes the crashes in a bug log and lets the developers figure out what went wrong. Then the developers (including me) find the bugs, fix the bugs, and the process repeats.

This server has actually been in beta testing outside our company for a while now with pretty good success. And it seems like the beta testers (which are actual companies use our product and have agreed to test the latest unreleased version of our product [after having signed a waiver saying that this product hasn't been thoroughly tested and our company isn't responsible if it screws everything up] just so they can have the absolute latest version) have been pretty satisfied. It's just the really funky bugs that'll happen once in a blue moon that we try to catch with these testing sessions. So once our server gets through a couple of these sessions unscathed (that is without crashing), I think it'll be ready for public release, which is a very good thing, because what we're working on is a patch, and customers have been clamoring for this patch for a while.

Well... the test has been running for about half an hour or so now and nothing bad has happened. I think I should be clear for me to go home soon. I'm crossing my fingers and hoping that tonight will be a successful test.

The tester just announced, "So far so good." So I think I'll be heading home now.

I am reminded of an age old programming adage. "Every program can be reduced by one line. Every program has at least one bug. Thus, by induction, every program can be reduced to a single line that doesn't work."

I closed out my last position today and I punched in the results of all my positions into a spreadsheet. Here are some stats on my performance (all numbers before commission unless otherwise stated):

Total gain/loss to account (after commission): -18.4%
Total gain/loss to account (before commission): -2.7%
Total loss due to commission: -15.7%
Total positions opened and closed: 23
Number of winning positions: 9
Average gain on winning positions: 7.17%
Number of losing positions: 14
Average loss on losing positions: -4.75%
Average gain/loss over all positions: -0.08%

Well... it looks like if it weren't for commission, I'd be just under breakeven. What's really interesting is the average gain/loss over all positions. On average, I've lost less than one tenth of one percent on each gamble I've made before comission. Now, how can I look at these numbers and adjust my strategy accordingly?

wow. I had another 12 hour day at work today. I almost feel like I'm back in school cramming long hours trying to finish a programming assignment I started too late on. Only now, I get paid for it, and I can't give up and take a lower grade if I don't feel like working on it anymore.

The assignment: the program crashes sometimes when you do this. The bugs that only happen sometimes are always the worst ones to fix, especially when the program is multithreaded (i.e. it's doing a bunch of things at once). The process: First try to reproduce the bug. This is oftentimes one of the hardest parts, especially if the bug only happens sometimes. Lots of times you just end up banging on the program in as many different ways you can think of hoping to get the program to crash in exactly the same way that the bug report describes. And the bug reports are always vague. The hardest bugs go something like, "the server crashed when there were 5 clients scanning, 3 indexing, and 2 searching." Ok.... the job then is to figure out if the program crashed because it someone was scanning, or because someone was indexing, or because someone was searching, or because two people were searching, or because someone was indexing and someone else was searching, or because more than three people were scanning and one was indexing or some other combination. So ... you gotta try it and try it and try it until you can get the program to crash in just the right way. In the end it turns out that the program crashes when you cancel a search at exactly the right moment. And scanning and index is irrelevant except for the fact that it slows down the computer making it a bit more likely that the program will crash. Now you got to find the actual like of code that causes the program to crash, but unfortunately, when the bug only happens sometimes, it's never a single line of code that's the culprit. It happens when different parts of the program doing different things at the same time line up just right giving you a tiny window when the bug will show up. So you got to read all the different parts of the code and theorize that if this and this and this all happen at the same time, the program will crash. Then you write code to fix your bug. And then you test it by doing exactly the same thing that caused the program to crash the first time. And then you discover that the program still crashes and you didn't quite fix it. So debug the code again. And then you rewrite it. And then you test it. And then you debug it. And then you rewrite it. And then you test it. And finally the bug gets fixed. But a few days later the testers come back to you telling you that your fix introduced another bug. So then you test. And debug. And rewrite. And test. And debug. And rewrite. And then the program gets released, and the customers complain about a bug thats happens even more infrequently and is even more difficult to debug. And you repeat the process. In the end, you hope to end up with a product that's unbreakable. But few programs of any considerable size ever really reach this stage. The best you can reasonably expect and still have your product get out the door in a reasonable time is that your program works almost always, and bugs only show up in extremely rare cases ... like when 4 people are scanning, and 2 are indexing, and 3 are searching, and one of the people searching cancels at exactly the same moment that someone else finishes indexing, and the two other people searching are standing on their head singing "Mary had a little lamb." By the way, if you didn't know, my company makes an enterprise database program, hence the scanning and indexing and searching from lots of different people at the same time.

Anyhow, I always feel a little light headed after long programming sessions. So I should get some rest and prepare myself for another day of testing, debugging, rewriting, testing, debugging, rewriting, testing debugging rewriting testingdebuggingrewritingtestingdebuggingrewriting......

Stock trading is tough and tricky. I've made my first trade on Oct 8 and though I hate to say it, I'm down about 17%. Still got lots to learn. I bet my broker is happy. Out of the 6 weeks I was in the market, I think there was maybe one that I ended up with more money than I started the week with, and that was the very first week. My two open positions are looking good, though, and this may be the second week I end up with more money than I started the week with.

This morning, I had 4 positions from last week and closed two of them during the course of the day. One of them, I closed at a loss, and the other I closed at a pretty spectacular gain. It was my single best trade I've ever made. Last Friday, I bought TTEK at 10.08. Today, I sold at 11.71. I held the position for a single trading day and made a profit of about 16%... or about 14.5% after commission. By comparison, I lost about 10% after commission on the losing trade I closed today, which I also held for a single trading day. Anyhow, I'm still going to stick to the plan of not opening any new positions this week. Here's something interesting ... my losing trade was closed at the very ominous price of 6.66. [shiver]

After reviewing past performance in my stock trades, my natural self-preservation instincts are starting to kick in, and I think I'd better take some time too cool my head before I get too desparate to make up my losses. I'm going to try to avoid opening any positions this week while I read the books I have waiting for me.The short term stock game is a difficult (and costly) game indeed.

As far as stocks go, I'm down about another 5 percent this week give or take a couple percent. Man, I suck! Maybe I can say I'm improving because I'm losing money more slowly now ... but still I suck. The only thing consistent about my trading is that I'm losing money. Seriously, this ride can be pretty gut wrenching. It's not uncommon for my portfolio to swing more than 5 percent in a day. I wish I had a coach.

I had another long day at work. Logged almost 10 hours today. Surprisingly, it's really not all that bad staying at work late frantically trying to fix bugs no one else wants to touch. But any more of this and I'll probably get sick of it.

After getting that power steering pump replaced, my car feels great. I find that I have to relearn how to drive my car fast again.

Lately, I've been spending less time reflecting and more time doing. I think that's a good sign. It probably means I'm becoming more comfortable with myself.

Well... this has been an incredibly lame Friday night. I came home from work late, and I stayed home. Now I'll probably take a shower and go to bed. Whoopdeedoo! With Joon and Steve's birthday coming up, hopefully this weekend will be more exciting.

Imagine you're a programmer. What do you think would be more stressful and demanding? The upcoming release of a new product, or the upcoming release of a patch for an old one? The new product would be more demanding, right? You got to get in those last minute features, and bug fixes, gotta get it ready for beta testing, gotta train your sales force and technical support, get the marketing material prepared. Lots of stuff to do. Right?

Actually, it's the patch release that's a lot more stressful. If you're releasing a new product, people don't know it exists yet so they can't really demand to get it sooner. They don't know what features it doesn't have so they can't ask to get those features added. If you miss the deadline, who's going to know? Certainly not the customers.

On the other hand, if you're releasing a patch, the people who are interested in the patch are the people who have already bought the product and have to deal with the bugs that got through testing. And they can become pretty vocal about those bugs.

Since beginning work at my company, I've done some work on two new products, and one patch. And I the patch is much more demanding. With the new product, if thinks don't quit work out according to schedule, you can move the release date back without too much pain. And it's unheard of to move the release date of a new producat forward. On the other hand, if you miss the deadline for the patch, that's BAD news. In fact, the release date of patches can be moved forward quite dramatically the more customers complain about bugs.

And because of that fact, I logged about 12 hours at work today in order to get this patch out as soon as possible. That was pretty interesting, to say the least.

Random Thought of the Day

Taking care of your car and getting repairs done and all that can be a major hassle, especially if you have a mechanic you don't trust. So if you guys are having problems with your car, or with your mechanic, let me give you a little advice. Visit Jonathan Kim who runs the show at H&K Auto Repair. He's the guy I went to when I needed to replace the starter a few months ago, and this past weekend when I needed to replace my power steering pump. I even bought my car from him. (He has a tiny used car lot next door to his garage.) He's nice, trustworthy, takes his work seriously, and does high quality repairs. For example, he will refuse to install anything from a manufacturer that has a questionable reputation, or that he's had problems with before, so you can be sure that the stuff he installs won't be some (cheap) shoddy part that will break down on you in a few weeks. (On the other hand, if you're the kind of person that likes to buy parts yourself and bring them to the mechanic to install, you'd best get his thumbs up before you bring it to him lest he be blamed if the part you brought breaks down. E.g. A clearance part from Pep Boys probably isn't going to cut it, but a geniune OEM part from the dealer probably will.) My dad has been going to him for years. Though his prices are pretty dang good (a lot cheaper than going to the dealer), he admits that sometimes his customers say that they can get the job done cheaper elsewhere. His response is that they should by all means go see the other mechanic. Usually, they end up coming back (and he has to fix what the other guy screwed up). Spending the day in his office convinced me of two things: (One) that this is the guy to see for repairs, and (two) that running a garage is a pretty dang stressful job. Jon has a big thumbs up from me.

H&K Auto Repair
(ASE Certified)

Engine & Transmission, Tune-ups, Computer & Fuel Injection, Smog Check, Clutches, Axles, Auto Electrical, Brakes, Towing

Jonathan Kim
Service Manager

18526 S. Normandie Ave.
Gardena, Ca 90248
(310) 532-2163
Fax: (310) 516-2154

Well... I spent most of today sitting at the auto repair shop. The mechanic told me that if I wanted to get my car done today, I'd have to bring it in early in the morning, so I brought it in at 9:30. And rather than going back home, I decided to sit there and wait until it was done. Yes, he warned me that it wouldn't be done until about 2 to 2:30, but I had come with a book. So I started reading. It turned out that he was rather busy and finished my car a little past 4:00 (despite the fact that he usually closes his shop at 3:00 on saturdays) and I by the time my car was finished, I had read the book cover to cover. It's not very often that I read a book cover to cover in a single sitting. Yep, another trading book.

Well, it's about time for my weekly stock update...

After that big gain on monday and tuesday of last week, my portfolio basically tanked at the end of last week and the beginning of this week. On monday, I had five positions and closed three positions. On tuesday I opened another position which got stopped out this thursday at a loss. Also on thursday, I accidentally closed another position that could've been mildly profitable by not paying attention to the numbers when I was setting a stop. And today I opened position leaving me with two open positions. I've lost a bit more than 10% this week. Very painful indeed. Now I can't make the excuse that most of my losses are coming from commission. My recommendation to the rest of you, don't try this unless you have a very strong stomach, or no emotions whatsoever. If I cared more about the money I've lost, I could be crying. But I'm not. Instead, I read another trading book this week, and I'll probably read another one this weekend. I have to take this more seriously, and spend more time looking at charts (as if I wasn't serious before). A few minutes in the morning and a few minutes during lunch isn't going to cut it, at least not for an amateur like me. I also need to be more patient and wait for the really good opportunities rather than throwing my money at mediocre signals. Finally, one last thought: trailing stops to protect profits. Someday this is all going to work out.

It rained today. My car is scheduled to see the mechanic on Saturday. Coincidence, perhaps? I think not!

As I mentioned before, my car's steering wheel vibrates at around 70 mph and when I corner reasonably hard. I've been meaning to get it fixed for a long time, but I've just never gotten to it. Frankly, I get nervous whenever I take my car to the mechanic. You know, the same way little kids get nervous when they go to see the doctor.

Anyhow, about two weeks ago, it rained for the first time this season. I noticed when I went out for my afternoon break. When I saw that rain, a wide smile spread across my face. I couldn't help it. At first I thought to myself, "Why am I so happy that it's raining?" And then the memories came flooding back. Ahh yes, I remember. Drifting and power-sliding in slow motion. Whoo-boy, rain has the power to turn the daily commute into a slip-sliding adventure. I remember my random drives up to Mount Baldy after the snowfall. I remember stabbing the gas mid-turn just to get my rear to break loose. I remember sliding in the parking lot at school just for the heck of it, and then coming back to see if I could make out my tire tracks. Yes, rain has the magical ability to make my underpowered import feel like an overpriced exotic.

Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately), I haven't been up to those shenanigans lately because the steering wheel vibrating in my hands while cornering gives me the emasculating sensation that my car is about to fall apart. (No, my car isn't an extension of me in that sense, but you get my point.) When the rain came and brought all those memories flooding back, I decided to get my car fixed. Actually, I considered doing stage 1 mentioned previously, but I decided against it in favor of dealing with just the problem at hand. So, I visited my mechanic this past Saturday; he told me the wheel-shimmy was caused by a dying power-steering pump; and I told him to get me a new one. (Actually, short-story long... I told him to get rid of the power-steering, but he told me I shouldn't, so then I told him to get me a new pump.) Come Saturday afternoon, my car should (hopefully) be as good as new... well... as good as it was last winter.

I even wrote some verse to commemorate:

It's raining, it's pouring,
My engine is roaring.
I swing my rear
And counter-steer
'Cause rain is fun for drifting.

It's raining, it's pouring,
My spirits are soaring.
I stomp my heel
And spin my wheels.
My passenger is groaning.

Yes, I'm a maniac.

well... it's well into autumn and the days are getting shorter, the weather is getting colder, and all that stuff. Do you know what the worst part is? The worst part is that it's already night time by the time I leave work. I get to work in the morning, and I leave at night. It's just not very pleasant. Maybe I should try to get to work early enough that I can leave before dark.

Besides the thing about it getting dark so early, work has been moving along pretty nicely. There were some bugs I had to squash in the past few weeks but nothing that caused me to bang my head on the wall for a few days. Those bug fixes should appear in the patch that's soon to be released and I'm now working on added to features to the next version of our product that should be released sometime next year.

As for my stocks ... well, I promised I'd cut down on the stock posts, so you'll have to wait till the end of the week. (Do I hear a collective sigh of relief?)

I finished the trading book I was reading, and as a result decided that the system I was using in round 2 was utterly simplistic. Therefore, I hereby declare round 2 over. I'm going to let my current positions run their course and not open any new positions until I've developed a better system for myself. I'm probably going to read another book, reread the book I just finished, and take notes this time around. I've lost enough already, and it's time to reconsider my approach... again. Round 3 will probably begin next monday.

Despite the fact that I've lost money so far, it feels good to have actually gotten my feet wet. I started reading up on investing about 4 months ago, decided that I'd start after I got a little more informed, so I read some more and got started. I've been trying to follow the advice of these authors to the best of my ability while keeping my emotions at bay, but it'll still take some time before the lessons sink in (hence the decision to reread this book). While it isn't rocket science, stock trading is still a pretty dense and dry subject if you do it right. (If trading gets really exciting, you're probably doing it wrong.)

A note to my brother: Don't get discouraged or frustrated. Know your disadvantages and learn to work around them. Don't get emotional. Don't trade on hunches. Formulate a plan. Study. Learn to use technical indicators. Learn the basics of deloping a trading system. Make an effort to make great trades with great risk/reward ratios. Make great trades because they're great trades while not getting caught up in the dollar amounts. Try to use good money management. Admit when you're wrong. Know when the trade you made was a bad trade, and know when the strategy you're using isn't working. If you need a break, take a break. Study trading as an art (or martial art if you'd rather). You've yet much to learn, grasshopper. (and by the way, don't forget to keep up in your classes, too.)

On Halloween night, I saw "Spirited Away" with some high school friends. The theater was nearly empty so it was almost like a private screening. Anyhow, when the movie began, for a moment I felt like I was back in my dorm room watching some anime off the network on my computer (yeah, pretty lame, I know). The movie was pretty good in a sorta freakish, cute sort of way, but it didn't have the "impact" I was expecting. Nope, none of that childish wonderment. Also, I gotta say that the movie looked somewhat primitive compared to some of the newer cartoons coming out of dreamworks and disney and whatnot. It didn't have the same "eat you alive and swallow you whole" sort of flowing 3-D scenery. Movie screen or not, I still felt like I was watching it on video. I guess anime is better appreciated when you get to see it for free on your computer and you have nothing better to do... or rather, you have a million things to do but you just feel like procrastinating.

I think I'll make the stock updates weekly. So here's the first weekly update.

I had a good run monday and tuesday, but that was the end of it. On thursday I closed a position at a loss of about 5% on top of 2% for commission. Total loss: 7%. I had opened that position on Monday. I also opened two new positions for a total of 6 open. Today, I closed another position at a gain of about 2% minus 2% for commission with an end result of about breakeven. I had opened that position last thursday. Now I have 5 positions open. Also, today and yesterday, my positions took a very bad beating. Today, all but one of my stocks moved against me leaving me about 4% worse off than last week. So ... I was up about 7% for the week by tuesday, and now I'm down 4% for the week. Was this just bad luck or do I just suck? Overall, I'm down about 8.5% since I started (about a month ago). Anyhow, these wild swings can be pretty gut-wrenching. I think I'll try to finish the trading book I'm reading this weekend. Once again, next week is a new week. Anything can happen.