I mentioned in the writeup for this month that we're going to be visiting haunted attractions, but up until now I've been too busy to write about any of them. However, due to a really late night and owing to the need to wake up and go to work, we never actually got through The Mummy which was scheduled for last night. So, temporarily lacking a movie for today, I'd like to go over some of the haunts we've been to so far.
Barrett's Haunted Mansion
We first went to Barrett's in Abington 3 years ago. It's an indoor haunt but the line is outside. I've always held it as noteworthy in that the ticket booth is part of the attraction and you usually get a scare on the way in before you've bought anything. While the interior of the house changes, the tickets are always sold in some sort of Diner of the Damned, and the booths are stocked with various undead monsters and corpses. The ticket line usually works its way through some sort of meat locker or walk-in freezer where you get boo'd. The first year we went through they included a false stop in the middle of the house where they placed a gift shop, upon being greeted in the gift shop and told the tour was over you were chased from the room by a monster and finished the house. It was great, but they've never quite managed a scare so amazing since. This year the main house includes a heavy Alice in Wonderland theme, which is very surreal. They've also added a 2nd attraction called "The Cell" which is a foggy maze walkthough set in an insane asylum. It gets really breakneck at times, especially when you get turned around and run back into the lunatic you were just trying to escape from. My only complaint is that the 2nd half has issues with the fogger, they can't run it too long or else it wafts into the main house and sets off fire detection equipment, plus makes it impossible to see in there. While not being able to match up to their first year, Barrett's is a great house. The Abington Ale house which they are right next door to, is not so great. Their food is mediocre for family dining fair, and while claiming to be an Ale House their beer selection is neither impressive nor respected. I'm pretty sure they served me the wrong beer the first time I was there 3 years ago, and they haven't improved as of this year.
Lakeville Haunted House
Lakeville Haunted House is a youth-run outdoor walkthrough in Lakeville. It's a cheap ticket, and includes a nice covered waiting area with picnic tables, food, light up toys, etc. They play music videos against a sheet, it's generally pretty nice. They then take you in small groups every few minutes into the haunt where volunteers shepherd you through. They have an interesting system where there is a gatekeeper up front after a short walk through some scenery that takes your ticket. And a few other points where they bottle neck you behind a gatekeeper, presumably to control flow as they like to have skits acted out in many rooms, though groups are sometimes paced poorly and you can get stuck into a super-group and ruin a skit. It's not the most high quality attraction or even the scariest since it's all kids, but it's got "heart". They've expanded this year and have several new sections, including Slender Man. I guess the meme is about over, but he's still a creepy bastard.
Zombie Apocalypse
This isn't so much a haunt as it is a semi-interactive indoor adventure. After waiting in line, you're grouped into a squad of 6 people and armed with a fake automatic rifle that basically just makes noise and shakes. You've been "enlisted" and now you have to debrief with your squad's commanding officer, who gives you the rules and the situation. The city outside has been overrun with zombies and your job is to clean out some key tactical points and then make it out the other side. The interior is a little sparse, which makes sense since it's basically a warehouse. It's all a pretty fun sprint through a few interiors. There's not a lot of variety, it's mostly go across this open area, clear this building, back out, along a wall, through this tunnel, etc. But the squad leaders pretty lively and make things fun. At $20 for the regular line and $40 for the VIP it's pushing it for the length of what it did offer, but if you can find it on groupon, it's worth. We went early in the season and the regular line wasn't terrible, but they can only have one group inside at a time, so it takes quite a while to work through their queue.
Ghoulie Manor
We'd never been to Ghoulie Manor before, it's a newish attraction (I believe in its 2nd year?) in the Silver City Galleria in Taunton. (or at least that's where it was this year, I'm not sure if they move yearly or not) It's entirely indoors, which is nice and probably makes it a great late-season house if you don't want to be too cold. While not a reason in deciding to go there this year, Ghoulie Manor was featured in a documentary on Netflix called The American Scream as being the result of a home-haunter being laid off from his Sysadmin job at State Street financial and deciding to take the opportunity to go pro with a haunted house. As a former financial services IT employee, I can sympathize. The haunt itself is super-professional and incredibly well done. Also, tickets are quite cheap, especially for the quality of what you get. The entire house is put together in a very coherent Victorian theme as the Goulet Manor family home, magically transported from the early 1800's to modern day. The line is walked by several well-developed characters who you are free to chat and interact with. They're not so much line-scarers like at many other parks as line-creepers. They send you through in extremely small groups, and we were able to go through as just the 2 of us. It's quite well paced and there are a lot of rooms. Even interstitial areas to make it more home-like, including a freaking scary little girl on a set of stairs. There's also a very good graveyard section. This has definitely skyrocketed to a position of favorite haunts, especially of indoor haunts. We decided not to go to Factory of Terror this year as they're too crowded and basically send people through in a continuous line rather than a group, this is probably a better house than even the best walk through Factory of Terror we did.
So that's the update as of today. This weekend we're making the journey out to Central New York for a haunted village that's held on the same campus(?) as the Sterling Renaissance Festival, and a haunted amusement park in Sylvan Beach. Fun times. Also we're going to be catching up with the movies at some point, so that entry will be back-dated to the correct time.
Showing posts with label life. Show all posts
Showing posts with label life. Show all posts
Wednesday, October 9, 2013
Thursday, May 16, 2013
The Beerening: On craft beer, beer styles, and how to "get into" beer
I've been thinking about the topic of introducing what I think is good beer to my friends for a long time, however it's very relevant at the time of writing since there have recently been a slew of articles with insider and outsider perceptions of what craft beer looks like and what it's like to get into. The actual points of view range from "Why does beer have to be so fancy, what have you guys done?" to "Craft beer has too many snobs, we need to chill" to a recent article that "Craft beer's obsession with extreme beers is giving craft beer culture a bad rep". But the point is that it's interesting, it's generating discussions which could get people into beer. Advertising and beerfests and brunches and all that, I don't think, get people into beer. Other people who genuinely like beer are what get people into beer.
But specifically I wanted to address some points I had about what seems to have been a pretty contentious style recently: The American IPA.
IPA stands for India Pale Ale, the history of it has a few origin stories, and some conflicting marketing and research complicating things. From what I've heard a great book that straightens the whole mess out is "IPA!" by Mitch Steele. However, I haven't had a chance to read it. Mitch's presentation at last year's NHC was very good though. I don't want to get too historic but basically the strength of the IPA as a style is dependent on the strength of your regions hop plants, and America has done some crazy things with hops between great growing conditions and breeding programs. It was a great way we could call beers "ours", by using our fresh great new American hops that smelled like pine trees and oranges and mangoes (and onions and cat pee depending who you ask). I don't know specifically what the IPA was like in pre-prohibition America but I know that post-prohibition we basically made American Lager and copied a few UK styles (like the IPA). But the IPA of the time wasn't what people wanted. It had morphed into a lower ABV, maltier, more subtle thing and lager was easier to drink. So as Lager became The American beer other beers fell to the wayside, and eventually we hit rock bottom in 1980.
When the US craft brewing scene began to resurrect itself it effectively did it with the Pale Ale and the IPA. A lot of people credit Sierra Nevada with beginning the resurgence, though I've also heard some of the credit go to Anchor Steam. It obviously appealed to a lot of people and now IPA is the most popular style of beer in the country. With that popularity comes a lot of breweries hoping to make themselves a reputation on a flagship IPA. Sometimes it's great, sometimes it flops, but the net result is a lot of creative people doing whatever they can think of the make their mark on IPA. I love the variety and a lot of it is regional which harkens back to a pre-modern notion of styles as beer brewed to the tastes and strengths of a particular region. But where I take issue is that the significant buzz around a single style like this has a tendency to obscure other, just as worthy, beers.
If you follow the larger online beer discussion the most extreme beers continually dominate the conversation. Which is fine since to a degree we're all beer nerds trying to find the next must-have, but when you picture yourself on the outside looking in it's a very different picture.
We're in a position now where craft beer is a big deal. Newcomers are hearing about craft beer and trying to find a good inroad. This is an huge contrast to when I got into beer 7-8 years ago when an "amazing" beer section was 3 shelves in the back of the store. I got into beer by spending a ton of money on beer I knew nothing about, and it was a really expensive way to learn about my tastes and styles. But I was young, just turned 21 and had my first real job so I was Capital-S Stupid with my money. I still spend a ton of money on beer, but I know what I'm getting into now. There are a lot of people who are looking at craft beer who are way smarter than I was and they won't do that, they're the people who want to look around the clubhouse a little and tour the gym before they decide if they want to join. And our club looks like a bunch of folks swimming around in a giant pile of green, sticky, hop cones.
The majority of our internal conversation is over hoppier beers. Specifically a very certain type of IPA, the majority of which is produced on the West Coast of the country. Where can I find Pliny the Elder, Pliny the Younger is about to be tapped. Green Flash puts hops in the beer 8 times. This bar is using a randall (a device which is used to force pressurized carbonated beer through a chamber of hops or other herbs/spices on the way to the glass for the freshest flavor)! I'll never claim that's all there is, because there's also a lot of discussion about new beers, seasonals (especially summer), oaked stuff, wild & sour beers, etc. And that's fine, but from the outside looking in you'd get a very skewed picture.
Further complicating the issue is beer rating sites, beer blogs and people's top 10 beer lists. If you, as a novice, wanting to see what's good you might look at a list of someone who seems to know what they're talking about. Odds are you will find extreme IPAs and Double IPAs. I'm not going to say that this is incorrect by any stretch but there's an element of hype that pushes these highly rated beers even higher on community sites (though personal lists may be more even-handed). Someone with context seeking out these beers because they're rated so highly could have a rough surprise.
While I do agree that the insane hype surrounding the Double IPA is not warranted, I'm not going to say we should stop talking about it so we don't turn people off. Just maybe stop talking about it so loudly so it doesn't look like we're saying it's the best beer in all creation.
Put another way: We in beer have a tendency to think of "beer" as it stands in the public consciousness as pale and bland, while craft beer is flavor. We tend to want to impress other people with the great flavors we have in craft beer and so try to trot out what we think our best flavors are, and a lot of people really like IPAs. But we forget that variety and quality is what makes craft beer something we enjoy, not always amazing and unique flavors. So we bungle the attempt at putting our best foot forward by putting our favorite beer forward, and that's not always the best approach.
So since this post thus far has been mostly reiteration, what do I think is the right way to go about this? Friendly guidance. People need to know that craft beer is about quality and variety, they need to be able to figure out ways to relate the flavors present in that variety to things they already know. Everyone knows that wine is made of grapes, but people have less of an idea of the variety of grains you can make beer out of. When people are interested in our beer we can't be absolute with them since it's all about taste. My favorite beer probably isn't yours. We cannot say "This IPA is AMAZING" to someone who doesn't have the context to understand IPA in the realm of beer, we have to know what flavors they might like and then can point out great beers in those styles. We also need to do away with misconceptions like hoppy == bitter and dark == heavy. But telling people they are wrong isn't going to work. If you're drinking with someone and they say they don't want your dry Irish stout because dark beers are too heavy, offer them a contrast like a black IPA that is generally crisp and refreshing with a touch of roastiness or something lighter colored that they might be more receptive to but still shares some flavors with stout like a scotch ale or an Irish red.
In short, beer is about dialog and for once people outside of craft beer are starting that dialog. We have a great chance not to blow it by setting aside our personal favorites and using our knowledge to find the beer for them.
Drink on!
And, Cheers!
--PXA
(p.s. my favorite beer is Trappist Rochefort #8)
But specifically I wanted to address some points I had about what seems to have been a pretty contentious style recently: The American IPA.
IPA stands for India Pale Ale, the history of it has a few origin stories, and some conflicting marketing and research complicating things. From what I've heard a great book that straightens the whole mess out is "IPA!" by Mitch Steele. However, I haven't had a chance to read it. Mitch's presentation at last year's NHC was very good though. I don't want to get too historic but basically the strength of the IPA as a style is dependent on the strength of your regions hop plants, and America has done some crazy things with hops between great growing conditions and breeding programs. It was a great way we could call beers "ours", by using our fresh great new American hops that smelled like pine trees and oranges and mangoes (and onions and cat pee depending who you ask). I don't know specifically what the IPA was like in pre-prohibition America but I know that post-prohibition we basically made American Lager and copied a few UK styles (like the IPA). But the IPA of the time wasn't what people wanted. It had morphed into a lower ABV, maltier, more subtle thing and lager was easier to drink. So as Lager became The American beer other beers fell to the wayside, and eventually we hit rock bottom in 1980.
When the US craft brewing scene began to resurrect itself it effectively did it with the Pale Ale and the IPA. A lot of people credit Sierra Nevada with beginning the resurgence, though I've also heard some of the credit go to Anchor Steam. It obviously appealed to a lot of people and now IPA is the most popular style of beer in the country. With that popularity comes a lot of breweries hoping to make themselves a reputation on a flagship IPA. Sometimes it's great, sometimes it flops, but the net result is a lot of creative people doing whatever they can think of the make their mark on IPA. I love the variety and a lot of it is regional which harkens back to a pre-modern notion of styles as beer brewed to the tastes and strengths of a particular region. But where I take issue is that the significant buzz around a single style like this has a tendency to obscure other, just as worthy, beers.
If you follow the larger online beer discussion the most extreme beers continually dominate the conversation. Which is fine since to a degree we're all beer nerds trying to find the next must-have, but when you picture yourself on the outside looking in it's a very different picture.
We're in a position now where craft beer is a big deal. Newcomers are hearing about craft beer and trying to find a good inroad. This is an huge contrast to when I got into beer 7-8 years ago when an "amazing" beer section was 3 shelves in the back of the store. I got into beer by spending a ton of money on beer I knew nothing about, and it was a really expensive way to learn about my tastes and styles. But I was young, just turned 21 and had my first real job so I was Capital-S Stupid with my money. I still spend a ton of money on beer, but I know what I'm getting into now. There are a lot of people who are looking at craft beer who are way smarter than I was and they won't do that, they're the people who want to look around the clubhouse a little and tour the gym before they decide if they want to join. And our club looks like a bunch of folks swimming around in a giant pile of green, sticky, hop cones.
The majority of our internal conversation is over hoppier beers. Specifically a very certain type of IPA, the majority of which is produced on the West Coast of the country. Where can I find Pliny the Elder, Pliny the Younger is about to be tapped. Green Flash puts hops in the beer 8 times. This bar is using a randall (a device which is used to force pressurized carbonated beer through a chamber of hops or other herbs/spices on the way to the glass for the freshest flavor)! I'll never claim that's all there is, because there's also a lot of discussion about new beers, seasonals (especially summer), oaked stuff, wild & sour beers, etc. And that's fine, but from the outside looking in you'd get a very skewed picture.
Further complicating the issue is beer rating sites, beer blogs and people's top 10 beer lists. If you, as a novice, wanting to see what's good you might look at a list of someone who seems to know what they're talking about. Odds are you will find extreme IPAs and Double IPAs. I'm not going to say that this is incorrect by any stretch but there's an element of hype that pushes these highly rated beers even higher on community sites (though personal lists may be more even-handed). Someone with context seeking out these beers because they're rated so highly could have a rough surprise.
While I do agree that the insane hype surrounding the Double IPA is not warranted, I'm not going to say we should stop talking about it so we don't turn people off. Just maybe stop talking about it so loudly so it doesn't look like we're saying it's the best beer in all creation.
Put another way: We in beer have a tendency to think of "beer" as it stands in the public consciousness as pale and bland, while craft beer is flavor. We tend to want to impress other people with the great flavors we have in craft beer and so try to trot out what we think our best flavors are, and a lot of people really like IPAs. But we forget that variety and quality is what makes craft beer something we enjoy, not always amazing and unique flavors. So we bungle the attempt at putting our best foot forward by putting our favorite beer forward, and that's not always the best approach.
So since this post thus far has been mostly reiteration, what do I think is the right way to go about this? Friendly guidance. People need to know that craft beer is about quality and variety, they need to be able to figure out ways to relate the flavors present in that variety to things they already know. Everyone knows that wine is made of grapes, but people have less of an idea of the variety of grains you can make beer out of. When people are interested in our beer we can't be absolute with them since it's all about taste. My favorite beer probably isn't yours. We cannot say "This IPA is AMAZING" to someone who doesn't have the context to understand IPA in the realm of beer, we have to know what flavors they might like and then can point out great beers in those styles. We also need to do away with misconceptions like hoppy == bitter and dark == heavy. But telling people they are wrong isn't going to work. If you're drinking with someone and they say they don't want your dry Irish stout because dark beers are too heavy, offer them a contrast like a black IPA that is generally crisp and refreshing with a touch of roastiness or something lighter colored that they might be more receptive to but still shares some flavors with stout like a scotch ale or an Irish red.
In short, beer is about dialog and for once people outside of craft beer are starting that dialog. We have a great chance not to blow it by setting aside our personal favorites and using our knowledge to find the beer for them.
Drink on!
And, Cheers!
--PXA
(p.s. my favorite beer is Trappist Rochefort #8)
Tuesday, January 1, 2013
2013, Hello, how are you?
I had originally intended to write this around Christmas time to explain the radio silence on the site, but the holidays just get so incredibly busy I just couldn't find the time. So it's pretty late on New Year's Day and I figure I can write this pretty quickly.
2012 was a helluva year, it was the year I started trying to be a lot more regularly active on this site, writing the articles on Bro-horror and the video game articles about SCP-087 and Self-extension and the horror of Discovery. Also, a ton of movies.
The House at the end of the Street was probably the most disappointing movie I'd seen. I really ripped into it, and that may not have been fair but if I had seen this movie on Netflix instant I would have wandered off or found something else to watch.
I didn't write a full post about it, but The Woman in Black impressed the hell out of me. It was a bit of a comedy of errors trying to watch it, but on the 2nd attempt we got all the way through it and it was a great old-school horror movie. It had a lot of Thing-In-The-Background, Weird-Shape-In-The-Storm styles of scares. Almost no jump scares and false scares used well. I wasn't making nearly as many "Oh look it's Harry Potter" jokes as I was expecting, since the acting was actually not half-bad. I'm planning on getting this on DVD/Blu-Ray.
In other news I also went to the National Homebrewer's Convention this year. It was a wonderful experience, and also very educational. The 2013 Convention is going to be in Philly, and as usual you need an American Homebrewer's Association membership. If you brew ANYTHING, vinegar, kombucha, beer, wine, sake, etc. you should get an AHA membership. It's not expensive and they are doing good things for homebrewer's across the country.
Also in beer I made the official change to all-grain brewing and started kegging my homebrew. Kegging is much more satisfying than bottling, it's a worthwhile switch. In 2013 I'm switching from a braid filter to a false bottom. I recently re-attempted the Chocolate Orange Stout, but won't get to try that until 2013 as well. I'm also anticipating some sours beginning this year.
2012 also saw me traveling much more than I ever have before. As mentioned the NHC was in Seattle, so I had to fly there. I also went to Florida twice, once in February to visit my folks on vacation and then again in October for Halloween Horror Nights in Universal Studios. It was an incredible collection of haunted houses. The whole thing teemed of some very annoying people, but with a speed pass it was possible to see everything. All the haunted houses followed the same basic formula, which really good in some haunts and not so well in others but it was all really professional quality. I can only imagine the show will get better in 2013, though I'll probably get a multi-night pass and spread the visit out a bit.
However, one of the main reasons I haven't been writing as much is that I started a Youtube Channel. Currently the only show is is "Let's Drink to Gaming", which is a Let's Play-style show with themed cocktails. Check it out, the edges are still rough but the quality is improving. There are a few more things in planning, so stay tuned. It'll hopefully be interesting.
Anyway, that's some stuff that's been going on. Now I need to start getting used to writing 2013 on my checks.
--Phil
2012 was a helluva year, it was the year I started trying to be a lot more regularly active on this site, writing the articles on Bro-horror and the video game articles about SCP-087 and Self-extension and the horror of Discovery. Also, a ton of movies.
The House at the end of the Street was probably the most disappointing movie I'd seen. I really ripped into it, and that may not have been fair but if I had seen this movie on Netflix instant I would have wandered off or found something else to watch.
I didn't write a full post about it, but The Woman in Black impressed the hell out of me. It was a bit of a comedy of errors trying to watch it, but on the 2nd attempt we got all the way through it and it was a great old-school horror movie. It had a lot of Thing-In-The-Background, Weird-Shape-In-The-Storm styles of scares. Almost no jump scares and false scares used well. I wasn't making nearly as many "Oh look it's Harry Potter" jokes as I was expecting, since the acting was actually not half-bad. I'm planning on getting this on DVD/Blu-Ray.
In other news I also went to the National Homebrewer's Convention this year. It was a wonderful experience, and also very educational. The 2013 Convention is going to be in Philly, and as usual you need an American Homebrewer's Association membership. If you brew ANYTHING, vinegar, kombucha, beer, wine, sake, etc. you should get an AHA membership. It's not expensive and they are doing good things for homebrewer's across the country.
Also in beer I made the official change to all-grain brewing and started kegging my homebrew. Kegging is much more satisfying than bottling, it's a worthwhile switch. In 2013 I'm switching from a braid filter to a false bottom. I recently re-attempted the Chocolate Orange Stout, but won't get to try that until 2013 as well. I'm also anticipating some sours beginning this year.
2012 also saw me traveling much more than I ever have before. As mentioned the NHC was in Seattle, so I had to fly there. I also went to Florida twice, once in February to visit my folks on vacation and then again in October for Halloween Horror Nights in Universal Studios. It was an incredible collection of haunted houses. The whole thing teemed of some very annoying people, but with a speed pass it was possible to see everything. All the haunted houses followed the same basic formula, which really good in some haunts and not so well in others but it was all really professional quality. I can only imagine the show will get better in 2013, though I'll probably get a multi-night pass and spread the visit out a bit.
However, one of the main reasons I haven't been writing as much is that I started a Youtube Channel. Currently the only show is is "Let's Drink to Gaming", which is a Let's Play-style show with themed cocktails. Check it out, the edges are still rough but the quality is improving. There are a few more things in planning, so stay tuned. It'll hopefully be interesting.
Anyway, that's some stuff that's been going on. Now I need to start getting used to writing 2013 on my checks.
--Phil
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Perverting Common Wisdom (A stock market tale)
"Perverting common wisdom, Nephew, is the mark of all great conspiracies" - Baron Vladimir Harkonnen (Dune, Frank Herbet)
It's an accepted premise that to make money you need to spend money. And to spend money you need to have money. So by syllogism, to make money you need to have money. This applies to the stock market quite sensibly, and most people agree that you should start an investment account with $2,000 or else you simply won't be able to make the aggregate gains required to counter commission fees. Aggregate gains is very important, because it is really how you are to play the game correctly. Most stocks will not jump several hundred dollars, or for that matter several dozen dollars, in anything resembling a sensible period of time to hold a stock. Not without some major news coming out of that company. So you're looking to make a few cents to a few bucks on hundreds of shares.
But what if you don't have this $2,000 to invest, is it still possible to make money? With, say, $700? If you are careful, subtle, and lucky can you make not-enough into enough?
To this end I'm starting a new blogspot site: A Stock Market Tale
Hello, Readers. I'd like to play a game.
First, my rules:
The plan of attack:
Since I have a limited amount of money to invest I'm going to be looking exclusively at stocks priced at less than $10 a share. This is the only way I can make a net profit, any higher and I won't make enough aggregated over the number of shares to amount to counter commissions.
Since I have no news information other than what is freely available, and most of the companies I'll be looking at just don't make news, I will be relying purely on technical analysis to pick my stocks. I will also be mitigating my risks using stop loss orders to sell my positions if they drop too far past a level based solely upon an analysis of the chart.
As I buy and sell positions I will sporadically update the new site (A Stock Market Tale) with details of how I'm doing, and also why I'm moving the way I've decided to. Hopefully it'll be interesting.
--PXA
It's an accepted premise that to make money you need to spend money. And to spend money you need to have money. So by syllogism, to make money you need to have money. This applies to the stock market quite sensibly, and most people agree that you should start an investment account with $2,000 or else you simply won't be able to make the aggregate gains required to counter commission fees. Aggregate gains is very important, because it is really how you are to play the game correctly. Most stocks will not jump several hundred dollars, or for that matter several dozen dollars, in anything resembling a sensible period of time to hold a stock. Not without some major news coming out of that company. So you're looking to make a few cents to a few bucks on hundreds of shares.
But what if you don't have this $2,000 to invest, is it still possible to make money? With, say, $700? If you are careful, subtle, and lucky can you make not-enough into enough?
To this end I'm starting a new blogspot site: A Stock Market Tale
Hello, Readers. I'd like to play a game.
First, my rules:
- I can only use my initial investment of $700, and any money earned from this initial investment
- As I only have $700 and want to make the absolute most of it, I cannot pay for any service beyond my broker. Everything I use for my research will have to be free. No trials either, that's just lamesauce.
- Every purchase will be my own decision, I will not overtly take tips. I will be required to justify each decision based on clear and rational criteria. This isn't to say I might not ask my friends for opinions on things, but I will never ask "What should I buy?" or accept "Hey, you should buy ____, I think it'll go big."
- Sometimes I will have to stay in cash, but if I haven't made a move in 2 weeks I will declare game over. Temporarily, at least.
- If I lose too much I will declare defeat.
- I have absolutely no idea what I am doing. I am in no way implying that I have developed some super secret methods or intuition. You will not, under any circumstances, consider what I say as any form of advice. If I write that I am doing something it is in the interest of disclosure. If you make any decisions based on what I say, that is your own fault and I cannot be held responsible because this is not advice.
- What I am doing I am doing as my own personal interest. It is obviously not my job and outside of any profits I make I am not being paid for any of it. If AdSense on the side of the official blog make any money, it's a plus but it is not the point.
- I am not doing this as an endorsement of any official broker or any companies I might invest in. I do not intend to reflect onto my employer or any related entity.
- Please understand that I'm just a dude writing about stocks with no formal training or inside information.
The plan of attack:
Since I have a limited amount of money to invest I'm going to be looking exclusively at stocks priced at less than $10 a share. This is the only way I can make a net profit, any higher and I won't make enough aggregated over the number of shares to amount to counter commissions.
Since I have no news information other than what is freely available, and most of the companies I'll be looking at just don't make news, I will be relying purely on technical analysis to pick my stocks. I will also be mitigating my risks using stop loss orders to sell my positions if they drop too far past a level based solely upon an analysis of the chart.
As I buy and sell positions I will sporadically update the new site (A Stock Market Tale) with details of how I'm doing, and also why I'm moving the way I've decided to. Hopefully it'll be interesting.
--PXA
Monday, July 14, 2008
I do not own an iPhone.
I own a MOTORAZR.
My poor phone has had its balls unceremoniously removed by my wireless carrier. Yes, I admit, I have Verizon.
My Verizon contract is expiring in November. Since the standard cell contract is 2 years, I have been shopping for not only a new phone but a new carrier. I'm going to be graduating with this phone, and this carrier. Verizon got me when I was graduating high school. They were appealing on plan cost, "in" calling. I didn't care much about phones or features. Times have changed. I'm addicted to the internet, I need e-mail at my beck and call, IM available at all times...just in case. My life is ruled by Microsoft exchange. I'd really like to have that calendar at easy access.
My iPod is beginning to die out. Bad battery, freezing hard drive...it's out of warranty. Why buy two devices when I can get one? Unfortunately the only "one" device is the iPhone. There are a few that come close in cool. And given the type of people who've jumped on the iPhone...I've really been trying to avoid buying an iPhone.
So I've been looking for my transition phone on the eve of the release of Apple's next massive lifestyle addon. And HOO-Boy, it's hard to avoid.
However there are several other phones available on the market (Closed source/proprietary OS phones only...I have yet to see hide or hair of a LiMo or Android phone) with compelling feature sets.
This excludes the Windows Mobile and Blackberry phones. I don't know why, but it always feels like these phones are trying to violate my corneas in incredibly inappropriate ways. SO! I ignore them.
The LG Dare: 4 Cool points.
The LG Dare is an all touch screen feature phone. I think it is of note because it is the only phone I have seen that has a concept resembling a desktop, and not just a collection of shortcuts. The "dumped" look of the icons on the "desktop" is very interesting, and very indicative of the amount of eyecandy the phone presents. The phone uses the same mobile e-mail app as most Verizon phones. It also has its balls removed, like most Verizon phones. The calendar is passable by itself, but it doesn't sync to...anything. The e-mail app on the touch phone doesn't provide the most compelling interface, since it's just an update of the old app to use touch interaction, but it serves well. The screen is very bright and clear and the touch is very responsive. But in the pure-touch contest it can't compete with the Samsung Instinct or the iPhone, it just doesn't have the features those do.
The LG Voyager: 6 Cool points.
The Voyager is a dual screen phone carried by Verizon. There is a touch screen on the front allowing access to the phone, contacts list, some other features. It does a very good job here, the phone is very easy to use. To use any of the advanced features like the browser or the text client, you simply FLIP the phone open to reveal a full QWERTY keyboard and another GREAT screen. This one's not touch though. Aside from the interface differences (The keyboard, the dual screen) this one doesn't have anything on the Dare. The Dare I used at the store actually had the e-mail app installed, the Voyager didn't. The phone actually loses there. The Voyager does have several cool points on the Dare, simply by virtue of its unique interface.
The Samsung Instinct: 8 Cool points.
This phone is seriously one of the coolest things I've ever held in my hands, next to girl-parts. This is another all touch screen phone. It has a very large screen, a bit smaller than the iPhone's, but larger than pretty much everything else on the market. Even those eye-porking blackberries. The colors are smooth, the screen is great...even for video. The browser is marginally better than the Verizon standard browser. The phone also has a pretty-ok music player and a standard headphone jack. Which serves my purposes well. I love the interface on the phone, the menus are very intuitive, the keyboard is surprisingly good, the phone app is slick. The haptic feedback is done quite well, it's present but not obnoxious. Sometimes it lags a little bit when switching layouts or moving between applications but it's still better than anything Apple's done. The e-mail application on the phone configures almost effortlessly to work with Outlook Web Access, but doesn't sync to the calendar. The lack of calendar sync is really the ONLY thing I don't like about the phone. Since they're scraping OWA already it'd be pretty inconsequential for Samsung/Sprint to hook this into the calendar, much like the Evolution Linux e-mail client. Unfortunately the platform the phone runs on is closed so no one can write a bridge...Samsung will have to do it, and they really ought to do this, if they want to compete with the iPhone. And WOAH they want to compete with the iPhone.
Apple iPhone 3G: 9 Cool points.
This phone has been written and talked about ad-nauseum. I'll keep it short. Think of the Samsung Instinct: now make it a little wider, taper the edges, brighten the interface, add calendar synchronization to Exchange, add some more applications on the phone by default, remove the haptic feedback, double the maximum storage capacity (but remove the expandability), and add an SDK. The iPhone uses a heat sensitive screen for its touch, not pressure like most of the touch phones on the market, slight difference but given the SDK people could actually use this. Also add that it's an Apple product, and everything that comes along with that.
...Turtlenecks, berets, inability to upgrade computer hardware, a strange desire to round all the corners on websites, goatees...
So there is the not quite objective review of feature phones. Despite my very strong desire to NOT like the iPhone, it still wins on cool...but only barely beyond the Instinct. Unfortunately Apple's always going to have the upper hand since the phone runs OS X under the hood and that allows for the robust SDK. A proprietary platform like the Instinct's will never compete with this. Samsung's only move would be to adopt LiMo or Android. (*wink*) I have reserved the 10/10 cool point rating for a phone like the Samsung Instinct running an open platform. An unencumbered phone WILL beat the iPhone...because OSS developers will make it so.
--PXA
My poor phone has had its balls unceremoniously removed by my wireless carrier. Yes, I admit, I have Verizon.
My Verizon contract is expiring in November. Since the standard cell contract is 2 years, I have been shopping for not only a new phone but a new carrier. I'm going to be graduating with this phone, and this carrier. Verizon got me when I was graduating high school. They were appealing on plan cost, "in" calling. I didn't care much about phones or features. Times have changed. I'm addicted to the internet, I need e-mail at my beck and call, IM available at all times...just in case. My life is ruled by Microsoft exchange. I'd really like to have that calendar at easy access.
My iPod is beginning to die out. Bad battery, freezing hard drive...it's out of warranty. Why buy two devices when I can get one? Unfortunately the only "one" device is the iPhone. There are a few that come close in cool. And given the type of people who've jumped on the iPhone...I've really been trying to avoid buying an iPhone.
So I've been looking for my transition phone on the eve of the release of Apple's next massive lifestyle addon. And HOO-Boy, it's hard to avoid.
However there are several other phones available on the market (Closed source/proprietary OS phones only...I have yet to see hide or hair of a LiMo or Android phone) with compelling feature sets.
This excludes the Windows Mobile and Blackberry phones. I don't know why, but it always feels like these phones are trying to violate my corneas in incredibly inappropriate ways. SO! I ignore them.
The LG Dare: 4 Cool points.
The LG Dare is an all touch screen feature phone. I think it is of note because it is the only phone I have seen that has a concept resembling a desktop, and not just a collection of shortcuts. The "dumped" look of the icons on the "desktop" is very interesting, and very indicative of the amount of eyecandy the phone presents. The phone uses the same mobile e-mail app as most Verizon phones. It also has its balls removed, like most Verizon phones. The calendar is passable by itself, but it doesn't sync to...anything. The e-mail app on the touch phone doesn't provide the most compelling interface, since it's just an update of the old app to use touch interaction, but it serves well. The screen is very bright and clear and the touch is very responsive. But in the pure-touch contest it can't compete with the Samsung Instinct or the iPhone, it just doesn't have the features those do.
The LG Voyager: 6 Cool points.
The Voyager is a dual screen phone carried by Verizon. There is a touch screen on the front allowing access to the phone, contacts list, some other features. It does a very good job here, the phone is very easy to use. To use any of the advanced features like the browser or the text client, you simply FLIP the phone open to reveal a full QWERTY keyboard and another GREAT screen. This one's not touch though. Aside from the interface differences (The keyboard, the dual screen) this one doesn't have anything on the Dare. The Dare I used at the store actually had the e-mail app installed, the Voyager didn't. The phone actually loses there. The Voyager does have several cool points on the Dare, simply by virtue of its unique interface.
The Samsung Instinct: 8 Cool points.
This phone is seriously one of the coolest things I've ever held in my hands, next to girl-parts. This is another all touch screen phone. It has a very large screen, a bit smaller than the iPhone's, but larger than pretty much everything else on the market. Even those eye-porking blackberries. The colors are smooth, the screen is great...even for video. The browser is marginally better than the Verizon standard browser. The phone also has a pretty-ok music player and a standard headphone jack. Which serves my purposes well. I love the interface on the phone, the menus are very intuitive, the keyboard is surprisingly good, the phone app is slick. The haptic feedback is done quite well, it's present but not obnoxious. Sometimes it lags a little bit when switching layouts or moving between applications but it's still better than anything Apple's done. The e-mail application on the phone configures almost effortlessly to work with Outlook Web Access, but doesn't sync to the calendar. The lack of calendar sync is really the ONLY thing I don't like about the phone. Since they're scraping OWA already it'd be pretty inconsequential for Samsung/Sprint to hook this into the calendar, much like the Evolution Linux e-mail client. Unfortunately the platform the phone runs on is closed so no one can write a bridge...Samsung will have to do it, and they really ought to do this, if they want to compete with the iPhone. And WOAH they want to compete with the iPhone.
Apple iPhone 3G: 9 Cool points.
This phone has been written and talked about ad-nauseum. I'll keep it short. Think of the Samsung Instinct: now make it a little wider, taper the edges, brighten the interface, add calendar synchronization to Exchange, add some more applications on the phone by default, remove the haptic feedback, double the maximum storage capacity (but remove the expandability), and add an SDK. The iPhone uses a heat sensitive screen for its touch, not pressure like most of the touch phones on the market, slight difference but given the SDK people could actually use this. Also add that it's an Apple product, and everything that comes along with that.
...Turtlenecks, berets, inability to upgrade computer hardware, a strange desire to round all the corners on websites, goatees...
So there is the not quite objective review of feature phones. Despite my very strong desire to NOT like the iPhone, it still wins on cool...but only barely beyond the Instinct. Unfortunately Apple's always going to have the upper hand since the phone runs OS X under the hood and that allows for the robust SDK. A proprietary platform like the Instinct's will never compete with this. Samsung's only move would be to adopt LiMo or Android. (*wink*) I have reserved the 10/10 cool point rating for a phone like the Samsung Instinct running an open platform. An unencumbered phone WILL beat the iPhone...because OSS developers will make it so.
--PXA
Thursday, April 17, 2008
Checking for life...... Not found.
Since the last update to BE, RIT has been bending me over the desk as is its custom. I have a small amount of time free at the moment and I feel I need to keep a modicum of momentum in my quest to have a regularly updated web log. Since I have nothing major to report I will just summarize.
RIT SG:
RIT Student Government Elections are this week, I have already voted. My initial thoughts on the election can be found at the RIT Sentinel:
http://sentinel.ironcouncil.net/2008/04/07/sg-election-time-2008-edition/
As a note, apparently SG will actually count votes for the cockboat this year.
Unfortunately, due to academic concerns, I was not able to make it to the RIT Parking Advisory Group meeting this month. Which is actually quite a pity considering I finally don't have class or work during the hour of the meeting and would've have been able to go if my System Administration lab hadn't taken 6 hours to do. It's hard to find the time to be politically active.
Google Sync:
I have made a pretty decent amount of progress on the Exchange -> Google implementation, however there are still some problems translating Microsoft to Standards. This makes for some annoyances when applying recurring appointments. I was hoping to avoid having to parse and then reassemble the RRULE myself, but this appears to be the only way to get Google to play ball. The UNTIL clause of some RRULEs uses a date/time format which looks like "20080512T010000" or yearmonthdayThourminutesecond. According to Austin from Google's API team I should be saying "20080512T010000Z", I don't get why something that is likely just looking at the day/month/year stuff cares about what timezone the stamp is in (Z refers to Zulu time which was an older name for what became UTC)
Samba:
Recently a co-worker upgraded all the Vista computers in the office where I work to SP1 of Vista, which generally went unnoticed until he went to update our department's intranet site (called DSWeb). DSWeb has been a bit of a pet project for a while for me, working on my sysadmin skills in a practical application environment. The new update to Vista breaks the way it talks to standard Samba servers. Windows based shares (Win 2k3, XP) are likely not affected but the open source implementation Samba, which emulates bits of Windows networking in Linux to allow Linux to do things like Windows File Sharing or join Active Directory managed domains, cannot speak the new dialect that Vista is using. Something about SP1 causes Samba to fail decrypting the challenge when a Vista machine is trying to authenticate. After much misadventure I found that Samba released a bugfix version, 3.0.28a, to address the issue. This is generally marked as unstable or testing by most distributions and must be explicitly installed at this time. However, I have seen no major issues with it and it did fix the Vista issue without even having to modify the configuration file.
Steak & Whiskey Night:
Back in the fall my apartment began a celebration/tradition called Steak & Whiskey Night. It can be celebrated at any time, as often as we want to. This became quite popular, even in the short span of time it existed before Rochester weather became too cold to enjoy the outdoors.
This May, Steak & Whiskey Night returns! It is currently planned for Friday, May 2nd. Attendees are encouraged to bring their own cuts of meat or custom steak rubs. It promises to be delicious.
Graduation:
Is approaching, that is all. With any luck if I can hack around some requirements and get another co-op soon, I will likely be RIT Alumni come next Winter. This concept is bizarre, and frankly a little frightening. I have paid over $32,000 a year for 4 years of my life for this education, and everything I consider at this point to be a marketable skill I have no learned from RIT. I have taught myself, or learned on the job. When my knowledge and RIT's curriculum overlapped, I was told I was out of luck and had to sit through their version. My self-motivation and ability to learn very technical skills on my own was NOT rewarded like I always thought it would be in college, it was effectively punished. So...if they're not going to teach me anything...and I'm not learning anything...Why am I paying this much again? And why does this degree matter? ...Do these skills even matter?
It's probably just Realworld-phobia. I hope.
RIT SG:
RIT Student Government Elections are this week, I have already voted. My initial thoughts on the election can be found at the RIT Sentinel:
http://sentinel.ironcouncil.net/2008/04/07/sg-election-time-2008-edition/
As a note, apparently SG will actually count votes for the cockboat this year.
Unfortunately, due to academic concerns, I was not able to make it to the RIT Parking Advisory Group meeting this month. Which is actually quite a pity considering I finally don't have class or work during the hour of the meeting and would've have been able to go if my System Administration lab hadn't taken 6 hours to do. It's hard to find the time to be politically active.
Google Sync:
I have made a pretty decent amount of progress on the Exchange -> Google implementation, however there are still some problems translating Microsoft to Standards. This makes for some annoyances when applying recurring appointments. I was hoping to avoid having to parse and then reassemble the RRULE myself, but this appears to be the only way to get Google to play ball. The UNTIL clause of some RRULEs uses a date/time format which looks like "20080512T010000" or yearmonthdayThourminutesecond. According to Austin from Google's API team I should be saying "20080512T010000Z", I don't get why something that is likely just looking at the day/month/year stuff cares about what timezone the stamp is in (Z refers to Zulu time which was an older name for what became UTC)
Samba:
Recently a co-worker upgraded all the Vista computers in the office where I work to SP1 of Vista, which generally went unnoticed until he went to update our department's intranet site (called DSWeb). DSWeb has been a bit of a pet project for a while for me, working on my sysadmin skills in a practical application environment. The new update to Vista breaks the way it talks to standard Samba servers. Windows based shares (Win 2k3, XP) are likely not affected but the open source implementation Samba, which emulates bits of Windows networking in Linux to allow Linux to do things like Windows File Sharing or join Active Directory managed domains, cannot speak the new dialect that Vista is using. Something about SP1 causes Samba to fail decrypting the challenge when a Vista machine is trying to authenticate. After much misadventure I found that Samba released a bugfix version, 3.0.28a, to address the issue. This is generally marked as unstable or testing by most distributions and must be explicitly installed at this time. However, I have seen no major issues with it and it did fix the Vista issue without even having to modify the configuration file.
Steak & Whiskey Night:
Back in the fall my apartment began a celebration/tradition called Steak & Whiskey Night. It can be celebrated at any time, as often as we want to. This became quite popular, even in the short span of time it existed before Rochester weather became too cold to enjoy the outdoors.
This May, Steak & Whiskey Night returns! It is currently planned for Friday, May 2nd. Attendees are encouraged to bring their own cuts of meat or custom steak rubs. It promises to be delicious.
Graduation:
Is approaching, that is all. With any luck if I can hack around some requirements and get another co-op soon, I will likely be RIT Alumni come next Winter. This concept is bizarre, and frankly a little frightening. I have paid over $32,000 a year for 4 years of my life for this education, and everything I consider at this point to be a marketable skill I have no learned from RIT. I have taught myself, or learned on the job. When my knowledge and RIT's curriculum overlapped, I was told I was out of luck and had to sit through their version. My self-motivation and ability to learn very technical skills on my own was NOT rewarded like I always thought it would be in college, it was effectively punished. So...if they're not going to teach me anything...and I'm not learning anything...Why am I paying this much again? And why does this degree matter? ...Do these skills even matter?
It's probably just Realworld-phobia. I hope.
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